cover image In My Own Sweet Time: An Autobiography

In My Own Sweet Time: An Autobiography

Blanche Cooney. Swallow Press, $24.95 (246pp) ISBN 978-0-8040-0966-9

In 1936, over the objections of her Jewish parents, 18-year-old Blanche Rosenthal married a 27-year-old penniless radical writer of Irish descent named Joe Cooney. In simple yet eloquent prose, she tells the story of her Bronx childhood, of her Greenwich Village romance and of her marriage that spanned 49 years (Joe died in 1985) and produced four children. The Cooneys wandered, living in, among other places, Woodstock, N.Y., where they first published the Phoenix , a literary periodical that printed the work of such banned writers as Henry Miller and Anais Nin and espoused revolutionary and pacifist causes. Chasing Joe's dream of a visionary farming community, the family endured harsh rural poverty and lived without running water or electricity. Frank about the drawbacks of life with a husband who was often selfish and dictatorial, the author also affectingly evokes their consuming love for each other. Photos. (June)