Martin, Steve 1945-

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MARTIN, Steve 1945-

PERSONAL: Born August 14, 1945, Waco, TX; son of Glenn (a realtor) and Mary (Lee) Martin; married Victoria Tennant (an actress), 1986 (divorced, 1994). Education: Attended Cal State University at Long Beach and University of California at Los Angeles. Hobbies and other interests: Reading old magic books, art books, museum catalogs, and the New Yorker magazine; playing horseshoes; skiing.

ADDRESSES: Home—Beverly Hills, CA Office—P.O. Box 929, Beverly Hills, CA 90213. Agent—c/o Ed Limato, International Creative Management, 8942 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills, CA 90211.

CAREER: Comedian, actor, and writer. Partner in the Aspen Film Society and 40 Share Productions. Worked at Disneyland and Knott's Berry Farm in the early 1960s; performer in coffeehouses, c. 1963; comedy writer for television programs, including The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, 1968, The John Denver Rocky Mountain Christmas Show, 1975, and Van Dyke and Company, 1975, and for performers, including Glen Campbell, Ray Stevens, Pat Paulsen, John Denver, and Sonny and Cher; has made numerous guest appearances on television programs, including The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, Dinah!, The Merv Griffin Show, The Dick Cavett Show, and Saturday Night Live; executive producer, Domestic Life (television series), Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS), 1984; actor in motion pictures, including The Absent-Minded Waiter, 1977, The Jerk, 1979, Pennies from Heaven, 1981, Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid, 1982, The Man with Two Brains, 1983, The Lonely Guy, 1984, All of Me, 1984, Little Shop of Horrors, 1986, Three Amigos!, 1986, Roxanne, 1987, Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, 1987, Dirty RottenScoundrels, 1988, Parenthood, 1989, My Blue Heaven, 1990, Father of the Bride, 1991, Grand Canyon, 1991, L. A. Story, 1991, Housesitter, 1992, Leap of Faith, 1993, Mixed Nuts, 1994, A Simple Twist of Fate, 1994, Father of the Bride Part II, 1995, Sgt. Bilko, 1996, Bowfinger, 1999, The Out of Towners, 1999, Joe Gould's Secret, 2000, Novocaine, 2001, and Bringing Down the House, 2003; also actor in (theater) Waiting for Godot, 1988, and (television) And the Band Played On, 1993.

MEMBER: Screen Actors Guild, American Guild of Variety Artists, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists.

AWARDS, HONORS: Emmy Award, National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, 1969, for best achievement in comedy, variety, or music for The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour; Emmy Award nomination, 1975, for best writing in a comedy, variety, or music special for Van Dyke and Company; Georgie Award, American Guild of Variety Artists, 1977; Academy Award nomination, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, 1977, for The Absent-Minded Waiter; Jack Benny Award, University of California at Los Angeles, 1978, for entertainment excellence; Grammy Award, National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, 1978, for Let's Get Small, and 1979, for A Wild and Crazy Guy; National Society of Film Critics Award and New York Film Critics Circle Award, both 1984, both for role in All of Me; best actor award from Los Angeles Film Critics Association and best screenplay award from Writers Guild of America, both 1987, both for Roxanne; two New York Critics Outer Circle Awards, for best play and best playwright, 1996, for Picasso at the Lapin Agile; Boston Film Excellence Award, 2001.

WRITINGS:

Cruel Shoes (humorous sketches; Literary Guild alternate selection; Playboy Book Club featured alternate), Press of the Pegacycle Lady, 1977, revised and enlarged edition, Putnam (New York, NY), 1979.

The Absent-Minded Waiter (screenplay), Paramount (Los Angeles, CA), 1977.

Let's Get Small (recording), Warner Bros. (Los Angeles, CA), 1977.

Steve Martin: A Wild and Crazy Guy (television special), National Broadcasting Corporation (NBC), 1978.

A Wild and Crazy Guy (recording), Warner Bros. (Los Angeles, CA), 1978.

King Tut (recording), Warner Bros. (Los Angeles, CA), 1978.

Comedy Is Not Pretty (recording; also see below), Warner Bros. (Los Angeles, CA), 1979.

(With Carl Reiner) The Jerk (screenplay), Universal (Los Angeles, CA), 1979.

Comedy Is Not Pretty (television special), NBC, 1980.

Steve Martin's Best Show Ever (television special), NBC, 1981.

The Steve Martin Brothers (recording), Warner Bros. (Los Angeles, CA), 1982.

(With Carl Reiner and George Gipe) Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid (screenplay), Universal (Los Angeles, CA), 1982.

(Cowriter) The Man with Two Brains (screenplay), Warner Bros. (Los Angeles, CA), 1983.

(With Lorne Michaels and Randy Newman; and executive producer) Three Amigos! (screenplay), Orion (Los Angeles, CA), 1986.

(And executive producer) Roxanne (screenplay; based on Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond Rostand), Columbia (Los Angeles, CA), 1987.

L. A. Story, Tri-Star (Los Angeles, CA), 1991.

Picasso at the Lapin Agile (play; also see below), first produced in Chicago by Steppenwolf Theater Co., 1993.

A Simple Twist of Fate (screenplay), Buena Vista Pictures (Los Angeles, CA), 1994.

WASP (play; also see below), first produced in New York City at the Public Theater, 1995.

Picasso at the Lapin Agile and Other Plays, Grove Press (New York, NY), 1996.

L. A. Story; and, Roxanne: Two Screenplays, Grove Press (New York, NY), 1997.

Meteor Shower (play), first produced in Los Angeles, 1997.

Pure Drivel, Hyperion (New York, NY), 1998.

WASP and Other Plays, Samuel French (New York, NY), 1998.

Bowfinger, Universal (Los Angeles, CA), 1999.

Shopgirl (novella), Hyperion (New York, NY), 2000.

The Pleasure of My Company, Hyperion (New York, NY), 2003.

Contributor of essays to New Yorker, Rolling Stone, and New York Times. Also adapted Carl Sternheim's play The Underpants for a production by the Classic Stage Company in New York, April, 2002.

ADAPTATIONS: Shopgirl is to appear as a film; Picasso at the Lapin Agile, adapted and directed by Fred Schepisi, was produced in 2003.

SIDELIGHTS: "Well, EXCUUUUSE MEEEE!!!" Steve Martin would roar during his stand-up comedy routine, his entire body shaking with indignation, and the audience, many sporting giant bunny ears or a fake arrow through the head, erupting with howls, cheers, and an ovation comparable to those heard at rock concerts. The bizarre incongruity of a junior-executive type wearing balloons on his head, latex nose and glasses, and a white, custom-tailored, three-piece suit struck the perfect chord with American audiences in the 1970s. Martin's sudden attacks of "happy feet" took him lurching across the stage; he twisted balloons into absurd shapes, then named them "Puppy dog! Venereal disease! The Sistine Chapel!" He performed magic tricks that did not quite work. But most of all, Martin parodied the whole idea of a comedian standing on stage telling jokes. Playing the part of a "wild and crazy guy," Martin became one of the most notable stand-up comics of the decade. His first two comedy albums won Grammy Awards and sold millions of copies; he scored a hit single with the absurd song, "King Tut"; and the book, Cruel Shoes, his collection of humorous sketches, was a national best-seller. By 1979 Martin had graduated to films, making the box-office smash, The Jerk, and following with a string of other films throughout the 1980s. His performance in 1984's All of Me earned popular acclaim as well as awards from the National Society of Film Critics and the New York Film Critics Circle. Roxanne showed him capable of touching character portrayals, while Planes, Trains, and Automobiles gave Martin the chance to play the straight man. Over the course of two decades, Martin "evolved from a coolly absurdist stand-up comic to a fully formed, amazingly nimble comic actor," noted Janet Maslin in the New York Times.

In the 1990s Martin's evolution continued, this time in unexpected directions. He began to write pieces for the New Yorker, and these reflected not only his comedic talents but a literary bent as well. He also began to write plays, including the popular Picasso at the Lapin Agile. The dawn of the twenty-first century has found Martin to be less engaged in television and film comedy and more engaged in serious creative endeavors, including his well-received novellas, Shop-girl and The Pleasure of My Company. Reflecting on his move into fiction-writing, Martin told Time magazine: "'A lot of people think that celebrities are isolated. But the truth is that every minute of their lives is as melodramatic as every minute of everybody else's. So you can extrapolate from your own experience into almost anything. The emotions are no different.'"

Martin's fascination with the entertainment world stems back to his childhood. He was stage-struck at the age of three and grew up idolizing such comedians as Laurel and Hardy, Jerry Lewis, and Red Skelton. "The first day I saw a movie," he told Newsweek's Tony Schwartz, "I knew that's what I wanted to do." By the age of five, he was memorizing Red Skelton's television skits and performing them at school show-and-tells. When his family moved to California, he hiked over to the new Disneyland amusement park and got a part-time job selling guidebooks, magic tricks, and Frontierland rodeo ropes. "I had mystical summer nights there," he recalled. "Fireworks, lights in the trees, a dance band playing music from the '40s."

During working hours he would sneak away to watch an old vaudevillian comic, Wally Boag, at Disneyland's Golden Horseshoe Revue. The comedian performed a routine of songs, jokes, and balloon tricks that Martin committed to memory. Soon Martin was performing the tricks he sold, twirling a lasso, playing the banjo, and appearing in a Boag production called "It's Vaudeville Again." After eight years at the Magic Kingdom, Martin left for nearby Knott's Berry Farm to act in melodrama at the Birdcage Theatre and perform his own fifteen-minute routines of comedy, magic, and banjo music.

Martin's budding career was cut short by his discovery of education. He fell in love with Stormy, an actress in the Birdcage company, who persuaded him to read Somerset Maugham's The Razor's Edge. "It was all about a person who questions life," Martin told Schwartz. "I read it and I can remember afterward sitting in a park and Stormy saying, 'Knowledge is the most important thing there is.'" Convinced, Martin enrolled at Long Beach State College where he studied philosophy for the next three years. But when he came across the arguments of Ludwig Wittgenstein concerning semantics, and the philosopher's contention that nothing was absolutely true, his interest in philosophy waned. Martin concluded that "the only logical thing was comedy because you don't have to explain it or justify it." He transferred to the University of California and changed his major to theatre.

Martin's first big break in show business came when he submitted some of his written material to Mason Williams, the head writer for CBS-TV's The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. At the time, Martin was broke, living in a maid's quarters in Bel Air, struggling as a performer at small clubs and coffeehouses, and studying television writing at UCLA. Williams invited him to join the writing staff of the show, one of the highest-rated on television at the time. "I didn't have any idea what I was doing there," he admitted. "So young and inexperienced in such a big-league job. But I was too busy repressing it all to deal with it." CBS cancelled the show in 1968, but Martin and the show's ten other writers won an Emmy for their work. The award tripled Martin's value as a writer, and he was soon making $1,500 a week writing for entertainers like Glen Campbell, Ray Stevens, Pat Paulsen, John Denver, and Sonny and Cher. Still, his ambition was to work onstage: "I decided to stop writing for other people and perform full-time again," he told Kathy Lowry of New Times. "I was bored with writing all that formula stuff. I wanted to deal directly with the audience."

The early 1970s proved to be a dismal period in Martin's career. He took his stand-up act on the road, playing every small club he could find and opening for rock groups whose drugged, impatient audiences shouted him off the stage. "Back then they didn't know what a comedian was," Martin told Janet Coleman in New York. He later satirized the period in one of his routines: a marijuana-smoking hippie is watching Martin perform, nods slowly, then drawls, "These guys are good." Coleman noted that Martin is "still annoyed by the ritual sloppiness and inattention of the 'love generation' audience."

Success as a stand-up comedian came when Martin developed a distinctive stage persona. He was a pioneer of postmodernist comedy, or comedy poking fun at the entertainment industry itself. When doing his act, Martin became a parody of a comedian. His character was shallow and slick, desperate for acceptance, full of insincere show-business asides to the audience, and unaware of his own stupidity. Balloon gags, juggling, banjo playing, and rabbit ears were all used in a deliberately hokey attempt to get laughs. Pauline Kael described Martin's stand-up act in the New Yorker: "Onstage, he puts across the idea that he's going to do some cornball routine, and then when he does it, it has quotation marks around it, and that's what makes it hilarious. He does the routine straight, yet he's totally facetious."

His usual performance would begin with Martin walking out in his six-hundred-dollar white suit, an expensive banjo slung over his shoulder, and announcing: "Hi, I'm Steve Martin, and I'll be out in just a minute!" For a few moments, he would goof in the spotlight, hum to himself, look around aimlessly. He was "waiting for the drugs to take effect," he would explain. Then, "Okay, you paid the money, you're expecting to see a professional show, so let's not waste any more time, here we go with Professional Show Business, let's go, hey!" He steps back, starts tuning the banjo, plucking one string then another, turning a peg or two, then moves up and smashes his nose into the microphone. "Okay, we're moving now, eh folks? Yes, these are the good times and we're having them, ah ha ha ha."

"I mean," David Felton wondered in Rolling Stone, "what is this shit? Here's one of the hottest comedians in the business . . . and he's standing up there like a jerk, an idiot, a f—-ing asshole! And that's the whole point." Lowry explained: "Steve Martin just wants to get a laugh; he doesn't much care about being profound or pricking society's conscience."Tony Schwartz in Newsweek claimed that Martin's style "is a pie in the faces of Lenny Bruce, Dick Gregory, Mort Sahl and all the iconoclastic comics who dominated the stand-up scene in the '60s." Martin agreed. Speaking to U.S. News & World Report, he revealed: "The '60s was a time of humorlessness in America. Everybody was so dead earnest. . . . During this time, the cheapest way to get a laugh was to make a political joke. . . . When I made my breakthrough in comedy in the early 1970s, politics was very much on everybody's mind. I saw it as my job to take it off their minds and so left politics out of my comedy. I think that was a big part of my success. There was no moralizing, no left, no right; it was just about a human being."

Martin transferred his stage persona to the screen in 1979's The Jerk, a film that grossed over seventy million dollars at the box office. Playing the white son in a poor black family (obviously an adopted son, but Martin doesn't realize it), he goes on to win and lose a fortune with a crazy invention. Audiences loved the movie, but critics found it wanting, expecting it to be somehow more "relevant" or provocative. Martin's next few efforts were also met with critical coolness. Audience appeal was also limited. Pennies from Heaven, a lush musical set in the 1930s, lost money; Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid, a spoof of the hardboiled detective genre that incorporated scenes from vintage movies, was a box-office disappointment. Speaking of this period to Kenneth Turan in Rolling Stone, Martin said, "It was like a dog scratching around to find a place to sit, getting up and down, walking around five or six times, before finally settling somewhere. That's the way I kept walking, trying to find the right screen persona to sit in. Something I like playing. Something I can do again."

It was only with All of Me, in which Martin costarred with Lily Tomlin, that he discovered a comfortable screen character. Ironically for the comic who had made his reputation as a "wild man," Martin's new character was a normal fellow who is beset with unusual problems. In the film, Martin plays a lawyer who becomes possessed by the spirit of a dead woman. One side of his body is controlled by the woman, the other side by him. Martin's amazing ability to portray this absurd physical condition—half male and half female—drew widespread critical praise and won him two major film awards as well. "To see his physical contortions in All of Me," wrote Turan, "to watch him trying to play both sexes simultaneously . . . is so boggling that audiences are often far too flabbergasted to laugh at all. Had he been born in another century, Martin might have been burned at the stake for witchcraft or demonic possession." In addition to the film's physical humor, Jack Barth maintained in Film Comment: "All of Me is Martin's first comedy to subjugate gags to story and characterization. . . . [It] is also the first Martin film to deliver a satisfying ending." The result pleased the filmgoing public as well as the critics. "All of Me," noted Turan, was "the number one film in America, with reviews to match."

Martin further developed his new screen character in subsequent films, particularly in Roxanne, a gentle, updated version of the classic Cyrano de Bergerac. Martin plays a small-town fireman with an absurdly long nose. Called upon to assist a friend woo the new woman in town, Martin falls in love with her himself. Writing in the Chicago Tribune, Dave Kehr called the film "a romantic comedy of grace, buoyancy and surprising emotional depth, filled with civilized pleasures." Tom Shales in the Washington Post reported that "critics have adored the writing, but have also likened Martin's comedic agility onscreen to Charlie Chaplin's. There have been references to things like 'comic genius' bursting forth." In her review for the Los Angeles Times, Sheila Benson stated, "I can't think of a current movie in which every element is in such balance: Martin seems unfettered, expansive, utterly at ease, capable of any physical feat. . . . There's a tenderness to him that's magnetic." David Ansen in Newsweek concluded: "Roxanne is a charmer. Sweet-spirited, relaxed, it's a sun-dappled romantic comedy. . . . This is the culmination of a long quest to exorcise [Martin's] stage persona as a wild and crazy guy."

By the late 1980s Martin had left his stand-up "wild and crazy" image behind him. He had become, in the words of Richard Corliss of Time, "this decade's most charming and resourceful comic actor." A wide variety of film comedy roles were suddenly available to him. In Planes, Trains, and Automobiles Martin played the straight man to John Candy, in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels he played a con man with Michael Caine, and inParenthood he was a middle-class father. And all three films, in pleasant contrast to several earlier Martin efforts, were solid box-office hits.

Martin's fame as a film star has overshadowed the considerable efforts he has put into writing over the years. He created his own stand-up comedy routines and has screenplay credits in many of his films, including Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid, L. A. Story, Roxanne, and Bowfinger. It was therefore a natural progression for him to move into other genres as a creative writer, and he has enjoyed some significant successes with plays, essays, and fiction. In 1993 his play Picasso at the Lapin Agile had its premiere in Chicago at the Steppenwolf Theater Company, and the show has since been performed on national tour and in London. The play provides a whimsical look at what might have happened if Albert Einstein, Pablo Picasso, and Elvis Presley all met at a celebrated Parisian bar circa 1910. WASP, another Martin theater piece, made its debut at New York City's Public Theater.

Another breakthrough for Martin occurred when the New Yorker began to publish his humorous essays. These pieces, collected in the book Pure Drivel, demonstrate his facility with wordplay as well as his talent as a satirist. "Twenty years ago you wouldn't have thought of Steve in the tradition of James Thurber and S. J. Perelman, but now he's really established himself as a prose writer," noted publisher David Ebershoff in Yahoo! News. Ebershoff added: "Steve is a rare figure in American humor because these days, rightly or wrongly, humor is thought of in terms of performance and not writing." In her New York Times Book Review critique of Pure Drivel, Susan Shapiro praised the work for its "chameleon quality," noting that the tone "ranges from parody to irony to just plain silliness." Booklist correspondent Donna Seaman commended Pure Drivel for its "intelligent, innovative, and self-conscious humor." Seaman also observed that Martin crafts prose "as notable for its meticulousness as for its drollery." A Kirkus Reviews critic deemed the pieces "lighter-than-air mockery. Often ingenious."

Shopgirl, Martin's first novella, shows the artist working a different vein of material. While not completely lacking in humor, the tale of a young store clerk and her affair with a noncommittal middle-aged businessman is an earnest exploration of mismanaged relationships and thwarted ambitions. "The funny thing about Steve Martin's first work of extended fiction, Shopgirl, is that it's not funny," wrote Richard Corliss in Time. "Shopgirl . . . offers quieter pleasures: a delicate portrait of people inflicting subtle pain on others and themselves, and an appeal to the intelligent heart." In the New York Times Book Review, John Lanchester described the novella as "elegant, bleak, desolatingly sad," adding that the work "has an edge to it, and a deep unassuageable loneliness. Steve Martin's most achieved work to date may well have the strange effect of making people glad not to be Steve Martin." A Publishers Weekly reviewer was impressed by Martin's ability to write serious fiction, concluding that Shopgirl is "yet another of this intelligent performer's attempts to expand his range." Bonnie Smothers made a similar observation in Booklist when she suggested that the novella "may mark a new direction in a noteworthy writer's career."

Martin's second novella, The Pleasure of My Company, is about a somewhat neurotic, obsessive-compulsive man, Daniel Pecan Cambridge, who lives alone in a rundown Santa Monica, California, apartment. Cambridge cannot hold a job and passes his dull, lonely days imagining romances and awaiting visits from his social worker. He is also driven to keep exactly 1,125 watts of lightbulbs burning at all times in his apartment, and he relies on driveways when walking around his neighborhood since he cannot bring himself to step over curbs. A Publishers Weekly reviewer found the book to be "funnier than Shopgirl but put together just as smartly," adding, "What's most remarkable about it, though, is its tenderness, a complex mix of wit, poignancy and Martin's clear, great affection for his characters." A reviewer in Kirkus Reviews agreed that The Pleasure of My Company is "a joy. . . . Although Martin succumbs to a banal plot choice later on, when his neurotic goes on a road trip, this is a genuinely funny and surprisingly touching tale."

While Martin does not intend to retire from films, he is encouraged by the new direction his career has taken and by what serious writing has taught him. He told the Detroit Free Press: "It was time to focus on a more narrow range of interest. I talk to my friend Marty Short about this conscious withdrawal from competing in the Hollywood world. It would be embarrassing if we didn't. I know a little bit more about myself now, enough to write. I know now that other people exist." Asked by the Knight-Ridder/Tribune News Service about his methods, he said: "I'm lazy. I do most of my writing when I'm on my bicycle in the park, and I come home and type it up. So when I get a line, I always remember where I was when I wrote it. It's sort of nice actually—like remembering where you were when you first met someone."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Contemporary Literary Criticism, Volume 30, Thomson Gale (Detroit, MI), 1984.

Lenburg, Greg, Randy Skretvedt, and Jeff Lenburg, Steve Martin: The Unauthorized Biography, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 1980.

PERIODICALS

American Film, June, 1982; November, 1988; August, 1989.

Booklist, September 1, 1998, Donna Seaman, review of Pure Drivel; July, 2000, Bonnie Smothers, review of Shopgirl, p. 1974.

Chicago Tribune, June 19, 1987; July 13, 1987.

Detroit Free Press, November 1, 2000, Bruce Weber, "Actor Branches Out to Book Writing," p. D9.

Esquire, March 27, 1979; April, 1996, p. 66.

Film Comment, January, 1979.

Films in Review, February, 1988.

Gentlemen's Quarterly, July, 1990, p. 116.

Kirkus Reviews, September 1, 1998, review of Pure Drivel; August 1, 2003, review of The Pleasure of My Company, p. 982.

Knight-Ridder/Tribune News Service, December 6, 1995, Chris Hewitt, "Steve Martin Downplays His Contribution to Father of the Bride Sequel," p. K2855; April 11, 1997, Lynn Carey, "Probing the Agile Comic Mind behind Picasso at the Lapin Agile," p. K6300; October 18, 2000, John Mark Eberhart, "More Writers Find Solace in the Novella," p. K4898.

Life, March, 1992, p. 46.

Los Angeles Times, December 27, 1984; June 19, 1987; June 28, 1987; June 30, 1987.

New Republic, March 11, 1991, Stanley Kauffmann, review of L. A. Story, p. 28.

Newsweek, January 31, 1977; April 3, 1978; June 22, 1987.

New Times, September 2, 1977.

New York, August 22, 1977.

New Yorker, June 27, 1983; November 29, 1993, p. 98.

New York Times, January 14, 1980; May 21, 1982; June 19, 1987; July 12, 1987; May 31, 1992, p. 28; October 17, 2000, Bruce Weber, "Arrow out of the Head and into a Shy Heroine's Heart," p. B1.

New York Times Book Review, September 13, 1998, Susan Shapiro, review of Pure Drivel; October 29, 2000, John Lanchester, "The Counter Life."

People, May 1, 1978; July 6, 1987; February 25, 1991, Ralph Novak, review of L. A. Story, p. 11; October 16, 2000, Kyle Smith, review of Shopgirl, p. 55.

Publishers Weekly, August 7, 2000, review of Shopgirl, p. 72; September 15, 2003, review of The Pleasure of My Company, p. 44.

Rolling Stone, December 1, 1977; July 27, 1978; November 30, 1978; April 5, 1979; November 8, 1984.

Saturday Evening Post, November-December, 1989, p. 52.

Time, October 31, 1977; June 15, 1987; August 24, 1987; October 16, 2000, Richard Corliss, "But Seriously, Folks: Steve Martin Talks about His First Novella, a Delicate, Poignant Modern Romance about a Shy Shopgirl," p. 113.

U.S. News & World Report, June 17, 1985.

Washington Post, September 15, 1977; June 3, 1979; June 23, 1979; June 19, 1987.