MARION WINIK accentuates post-9/11 positivity

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Oprah’s favorite memoirist especially misses the ol’ ATX gayborhood while healing from terrorism

RELENTLESSLY POZ: Marion Winik, ’97, Austin. [Photo: Sookie Hwang. Makeup: Troy Breeding. Styling: Kyle McGaw.]

By DANIEL KUSNER | Sept. 28, 2001

Email inboxes have been clogged with forwarded sentiments concerning the Pentagon and World Trade Center attacks. 

Of the more hopeful messages, one written by NPR’s Marion Winik stood out as inspiring and pragmatic. 

Winik’s Mothers Against Symbolism and Indiscriminate Revenge commentary — which aired on “All Things Considered” two days after the attacks and was later transcribed — reminded us that big buildings full of people were destroyed. Not symbols of American power, riches or world domination.

She writes, “If terrorists wanted to destroy a symbol, they could have gone to the Statue of Liberty at night. They could have paint-balled the Washington Monument.”

“It’s fine for something to be a symbol if it’s in a poem or in a philosophical argument. Once you’re in a real world — with real planes and real bombs — there’s not much use of thinking of something as a symbol,” Winik says from her home in Glenrock, PA. “Letting it be a symbol is giving in. Anytime you start losing the grip on other people — and how very real they are — then you start to wander into the area of megalomania and bigotry. Like Jerry Falwell, who’s obviously crazy.”

Winik says the response to her 9/11 essay is similar to reactions from her 1994 memoir, “First Comes Love” (Pantheon, 1997), about assisting the suicide of her husband, Tony, who suffered from AIDS complications.

RIVETING CHARM: Winik’s memoir was an Oprah fave.

“I don’t even remember if I had email back then. But I got, like, 800 letters. However, I’m really in awe of how this new piece is getting around. I know it’s because of how people are feeling — and how much they want to share ideas that mean something to them,” she says.

Winik now teaches in Baltimore and raises a family with op-ed writer Crispin Straw.

She leads a more domestic life compared to her younger “shooting heroin and getting beaten up on the Lower East Side” days. 

MOMMIE MARION: Winik leads an ideally domestic life. [Photo: Sooki Hwang. Styling: Troy Breeding.]

“I now live in South Central, PA. Nothing but cows and country out here. I’ve always loved fun — and still do. But in my youth, I had this bad combination of loving fun and being self-destructive. And that’s changed. I still love laughing and having a vibrant edge of life. But what’s different now is that I’m so relentlessly positive,” she says.

She has wonderful ATX memories. She fondly remembers her late husband Tony as a gifted father who honed a natural ability to care for infants.

She also misses the patio at Oilcan Harry’s.

“I had so many great times there. If I was going out on my birthday... Even after Tony died, to me, Oilcan’s was the funnest place to go. It was so easy to hang out there. I wish it was out here, that’s for damn sure,” she laughs.

The memoirist, left, and Yours Truly inside Winik’s Austin living room. [Photo: Sooki Hwang.]