A Different Voice

I first discovered Anna Quindlen when I was 16, reading the New York Times in the morning with bleary eyes. Her biweekly column was unique on a editorial page which focused on issues such as the latest economic agreement. She talked instead about what seemed to be more human concerns: her three year old who was afraid of the dark, dysfunctional Barbie dolls, the plight of a homeless individual.

As the lone woman on the Times op-ed page, Anna Quindlen for years effectively managed to convey a voice that combined elements of the personal with the more public realm. She has been both praised and criticized for her style, one that raises questions about women's writing and its place in traditional male arenas. Was Quindlen's voice a refreshing addition to the Times, or a reinforcement of the stereotype that a woman only writes about the private sphere?

Her recent departure from the New York Times spun off a torrent of debate, including Marjorie Williams' less than flattering article in Vanity Fair several weeks before Quindlen's announcement. Is Anna Quindlen selling out by rejecting the gleaming apple of a possible executive editorship, or is she just exercising her own choices as a woman by opting to write novels at home, allowing her to spend more time with her three children?

The answer, it seems, lies in Quindlen's own writing, a style that attempts to entertain readers while striving to enlighten them. For, as Williams so wryly noted in Vanity Fair, a Pulitzer Prize winning writer such as Quindlen has the "journalistic equivalent of tenure at Harvard"--she can say anything she pleases without fear of retribution. Yet her writing is strangely reminiscent of the nineteenth century branch of feminism that preached a woman's role to be that of a social reformer, urging readers to wake up to such issues as the plight of children in the inner cities.

There is, of course, nothing wrong with using a column as a vehicle for social change. And Quindlen's writings have been bitingly sharp, as in one of her September columns when she explained in quite clear terms why Barbie does not endure P.M.S. Before Quindlen, such social commentaries were taboo for the staid Times.

She is also to be admired for her tenacity in forcing the Times to yield to her demands to combine both motherhood and a career. Very few women quit a major metropolitan newspaper to have children and find themselves offered a posh spot on the op-ed page instead.

What will happen now that Quindlen has vanished from the pages of the New York Times? It appears that the next editorial slot has been promised to Thomas L. Friedman, a man who, while a brilliant writer in his own right, has none of Quindlen's own personal touch. And with Quindlen gone, it seems clear that there will be no chance of a woman being named executive editor in the near future.

There will eventually be other women columnists after Quindlen, of course, but there is no telling if their writings will achieve the same mix of social commentary and personal reflection. They may instead choose a style more similar to columnists A.M. Rosenthal or William Safire.

For now, the demise of Quindlen's "Public and Private" column represents the demise of a style of writing on the Times op-ed page: the loss of a voice that cultivates both the personal and political. There may be no other social commentator--male or female--that can replace that.

Hallie Levine's column appears on alternate Saturdays.