Recently The New York Times reviewed The Critic’s Daughter by Priscilla Gilman, and one passage in particular will be of interest to fans of John Updike:

“As a critic, Gilman was brilliant; he made the light in your head brighten by a few lumens. He was also a hanging judge. The New York Times critic John Leonard described his style as ‘confrontation criticism.’ He often got as good as he gave. John Updike zinged him on several occasions and gave an unpleasant lawyer the name Gilman in his novel S. These barbs only refreshed Gilman’s zeal for battle.”

Gilman’s memoir, released last week, is described at Amazon as “an exquisitely rendered portrait of a unique father-daughter relationship and a moving memoir of family and identity.” Her father was writer, theater critic, and Yale School of Drama professor Richard Gilman, and her mother the renowned literary agent Lynn Nesbit. Their marriage ended when Priscilla was 10 years old. “The resulting cascade of disturbing relations—about her parents’ hollow marriage, her father’s double life and tortured sexual identity—fundamentally changed Priscilla’s perception of her father, as she attempted to protect him from the depression that had long shadowed him”