Adler was born in Milan, Italy, to Frederick L. and Erna Adler while they were traveling from Germany to the United States.^[2] She has two older brothers. Her family had fled Nazi Germany in 1933 and moved to the U.S. in 1939.^[3]

Adler grew up in Danbury, Connecticut and attended Bryn Mawr College, where she studied philosophy and German literature under José Ferrater Mora. She graduated summa cum laude in 1959.^[4][5] She then pursued her interest in philosophy, linguistics and structuralism at the Sorbonne under the tutelage of Jean Wahl and Claude Lévi-Strauss, graduating in 1961. She also studied comparative literature under I. A. Richards and Roman Jakobson at Harvard University, graduating with an M.A. in 1962.^[4] She went on to receive a J.D. from Yale Law School in 1979.^[6]

Journalism edit

In 1962, Adler became a staff writer for The New Yorker, working under William Shawn.^[3][7] Around the same time, she also worked briefly as a book reviewer for Harper's Bazaar under a pseudonym.^[8] In 1967, she traveled to Vietnam on assignment for McCall's Magazine; while traveling abroad, she also covered the Six-Day War for The New Yorker.^[9][7] Adler also reported on the Nigerian Civil War in Biafra as well as the Selma March.^[7] While at the New Yorker, Adler became a mentee and close friend of colleague Hannah Arendt.^[10][7] In 1968, despite not being involved in the film trade, she was hired by Arthur Gelb to succeed Bosley Crowther as film critic for The New York Times.^[9] Her esoteric, literary reviews were not well received by film studio distributors. She was not happy with the Times's deadlines and in February 1969, she was replaced by Vincent Canby and returned to The New Yorker.^[11]

Her film reviews were collected in her book, A Year in the Dark. During her time at the Times she retained her office at The New Yorker and she rejoined the staff there after leaving the Times, remaining for four decades.^[11][12]

Her reporting and essays for The New Yorker on politics, war, and civil rights were reprinted in Toward a Radical Middle. Her introduction to that volume provided an early definition of radical centrism as a political philosophy.^[13] Her "Letter from the Palmer House" was included in the collection The Best Magazine Articles of the Seventies.

In the early 1970s, Adler taught theater and film at Hunter College.^[14][15][16] In 1973, John Doar, who Adler had met while covering the Selma March, approached her with an offer to write speeches for Peter Rodino, the chairman of the Nixon impeachment inquiry of the House Judiciary Committee.^[17][7] Adler accepted, and would later publish Pitch Dark (2013), which fictionalized an affair she had with Burke Marshall, a fellow committee member.^[3]

In 1980, upon the publication of her New Yorker colleague Pauline Kael's collection When the Lights Go Down, she published an 8,000-word review in The New York Review of Books that dismissed the book as "jarringly, piece by piece, line by line, and without interruption, worthless",^[18] arguing that Kael's post-1960s work contained "nothing certainly of intelligence or sensibility", and faulting her "quirks [and] mannerisms", including Kael's repeated use of the "bullying" imperative and rhetorical question. Adler's motivations were considered to be either wanting to "uphold The New Yorker's usually high standards" or stemming from "personal differences with Kael". The piece, which stunned Kael and quickly became infamous in literary circles,^[19] was described by Time as "the New York literary Mafia['s] bloodiest case of assault and battery in years." New Yorker editor William Shawn called Adler's attack "unfortunate" and mentioned his admiration for Kael, saying that her "work is its own defense"; David Denby, of New York magazine, wrote that Adler "had an old-fashioned notion of prose". Kael's own response was indifferent: "I'm sorry that Ms. Adler doesn't respond to my writing. What else can I say?"^[20]

In 1998, Adler wrote a long essay about the Starr Report (issued by Independent Counsel Ken Starr about his investigation of President Bill Clinton) for Vanity Fair magazine. The Starr Report led to Clinton's impeachment; Adler argued that it contained evidence of Starr's abuse of power in his pursuit of Clinton.^[21] She called the Starr Report "an utterly preposterous document: inaccurate, mindless, biased, disorganized, unprofessional, and corrupt. What it is textually is a voluminous work of demented pornography, with many fascinating characters and several largely hidden story lines. What it is politically is an attempt, through its own limitless preoccupation with sexual material, to set aside, even obliterate, the relatively dull requirements of real evidence and constitutional procedure."^[21]

In 2001, reflecting on her years in journalism, Adler said, "The New York Times was pretty good, although there were always limits on what it could do culturally. But they were so aware of their power that the question of what was honorable was very important to the editors of that time. I have the impression it does not arise any longer at The New Yorker or at The New York Times."^[2]

Adler taught journalism and English literature for three years at Boston University, also serving in the University Professors Program.^[7][15]

In 1968, Adler's essay "Letter from the Palmer House", which appeared in The New Yorker, was included in The Best Magazine Articles of 1967. In 1973, Adler received a Guggenheim Fellowship for General Nonfiction.^[16] In 1975, Adler's short story "Brownstone" received first prize in the O. Henry Awards Best Short Stories of 1974.^[22] The same story was selected for the O. Henry Collection Best Short Stories of the Seventies.^{[citation needed]}

In 1977, Adler's novel Speedboat won the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award, an annual award to recognize a distinguished achievement in debut fiction.^[23] In 1987, she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and in 1989 she received an honorary doctorate from the Georgetown University School of Law.^[24][25] In 2021, Adler received an honorary doctorate from Oberlin College.^[26]

Her "Letter from Selma", originally published in the New Yorker in 1965,^[27] was included in the Library of America compendium Reporting Civil Rights: American Journalism 1963–1973 (2003),^[28] and an essay from her tenure as film critic of The New York Times, on In Cold Blood, is included in the Library of America compendium American Movie Critics: An Anthology From the Silents Until Now. In 2004, Adler served as a media fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution.^[29]

Adler was selected as the 2016 Writer-in-Residence for the International Literature Festival held at Utrecht University.^[30]

In the 1960s, Adler was briefly engaged to Reuel Wilson, the son of Edmund Wilson and Mary McCarthy, whom she met while studying at Harvard.^[17][3] Adler has one son, Stephen, whom she adopted as an infant in 1986.^[3] As of 2013^[update], she lives in Newtown, Connecticut.^[31]

In her memoir Then Again, Diane Keaton said that her character Renata in the 1978 Woody Allen movie Interiors was inspired by Adler.^[32]

Fiction

• Speedboat. New York: Random House. 1976. ISBN 0-394-48876-8.
• Pitch Dark. New York: Knopf. 1983. ISBN 0-394-50374-0.

Nonfiction

• A Year in the Dark: Journal of a Film Critic, 1968–69. New York: Random House. 1969.
• Toward a Radical Middle: Fourteen Pieces of Reporting and Criticism. New York: Random House. 1970.
• Reckless Disregard: Westmoreland v. CBS et al., Sharon v. Time. New York: Knopf. 1986. ISBN 0-394-52751-8.
• Gone: The Last Days of The New Yorker. New York: Simon & Schuster. 1999. ISBN 0-684-80816-1.
• Canaries in the Mineshaft: Essays on Politics and the Media. New York: St. Martin's Press. 2001. ISBN 0-312-27520-X.
• Irreparable Harm: The U.S. Supreme Court and the Decision that Made George W. Bush President. Hoboken, New Jersey: Melville House Pub. 2004. ISBN 0-9749609-5-0.
• After the Tall Timber: Collected Non-Fiction. New York: New York Review of Books. 2015. ISBN 978-1-59017-879-9.

• Appearances on C-SPAN