Also A Poet by Ada Calhoun

This is a circuitous book from start to finish. It began as the author's attempt to complete the biography of Frank O’Hara that her father, the late art critic Peter Schjeldahl, never finished. Like her father, Calhoun was thwarted in her efforts by the Frank O’Hara literary estate and, to be sure, he book is a product of this thwarting: it is a memoir that does surreptitious triple duty as a partial, unauthorized O’Hara biography, a meditation on the purpose and function of the genre, and an unanticipated investigation into the powers of literary estates to determine what, when, and how an author's legacy is managed. She started when she discovers dozens of interviews conducted for her father’s ambitious, authoritative O’Hara biography stored on dusty cassette tapes in their East Village basement. Schjeldahl’s biography had been authorized by O’Hara’s literary estate, and he was well acquainted with him personally, but then it wasn't--thwarted by Mr. O'Hara's sister. Ms. Calhoun tries to do what her father failed to, and while she ran into the same road blocks, she somewhat remarkably moves around them, and probably much to the chagrin of the aforementioned estate, manages to leave a decidedly unflattering portrayal of Frank O'Hara in her wake.