Melissa Bank, the witty and acerbic author whose first book, A Girl’s Guide to Hunting and Fishing, became a global publishing phenomenon in 1999, died Tuesday at her home in East Hampton, New York. She was 61 years old.
Her sister, Margery Banks, said the cause was lung cancer.
Bank’s success didn’t happen overnight. She spent 12 years writing a book of her stories, partly because her bicycle accident left her temporarily unable to write. Her day job as a copywriter for a large advertising firm also kept her busy.
But after the title story was published in 1998 in Zoetrope: All Story, a literary magazine founded by director Francis Ford Coppola, Bank suddenly became America’s most talked-about unpublished author. She quickly got an agent, bidding wars began, Viking her press won over eight of her other publishers, and paid an advance of $275,000 (equivalent to about $475,000 today). rice field. Debut her collection of short stories.
A Girl’s Guide to Hunting and Fishing quickly made the New York Times bestseller list and remained there for several months. Mr. Coppola chose it for the film.It has been translated into dozens of languages and has sold over 1.5 million copies.
The seven linked stories in “The Girls’ Guide” revolve around a young girl named Jane Rosenal and her adulthood spanning two decades, from age 14 to her mid-30s, during which she experienced sex, Navigate through death, money and friends. Jane is sharp, independent, acerbic and funny. She is just like Mr. Bunk himself.
In one story, after Jane told her editor, an older lover, that she had lost her job, Jane suggested she work for him.
“I can accuse you of that,” she says.
“what?”
“Work harassment in sexual settings”
Despite the fact that critics compared her understated and austere language to that of many male writers, including Hemingway and Salinger, the Los Angeles Times called it “just funny, like John Cheever.” Female-centric fiction has been derisively labeled as “chick lit.”
Given the trendy times of the late 1990s, perhaps it was inevitable. “Allie McBeal” was a hit for Fox. ‘Sex and the City’ debuted on his HBO in 1998, the same year Helen Fielding’s novel ‘Bridget Jones’s Diary’ was published.
Critics and fans enthusiastically linked Ms. Bunk’s book with Ms. Fielding’s. The two appeared together at her 92nd Street Y in Manhattan for a panel titled “What Single Women Want.”
But discerning critics saw more differences than similarities, especially in Mr. Bunk’s ability to convey generosity and empathy.
Rebecca Mead wrote in The New Yorker in 1999:
Bunk followed A Girl’s Guide to Hunting and Fishing in 2005 with a series of similarly linked stories called Wonder Spots. Although it didn’t sell as well as The Girls’ Guide, many critics thought: It’s a much better book.
“‘The Wonder Spot’ is my perfect book.” Hadley Freeman Writing to The Guardian in 2020:
Melissa Susan Bank was born on October 11, 1960 in Boston and raised in Elkins Park, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Philadelphia. Her father, Arnold Banks, was a neurologist and her mother, Joanne (Levine) Banks, was a teacher.
Along with her sister, she is survived by her brother Andrew Bank and longtime partner Todd Dimston.
Mr. Bank attended Hobart College and William Smith College in Geneva, New York, graduating in 1982 with a degree in American Studies. He earned his MFA from Cornell University in 1987.
She began writing what would become “The Girls’ Guide” shortly after leaving Cornell. She wrote in the evenings, turning town promotions into her job to save her time and creativity. She showed promise early on and in 1993 she won the Nelson She Algren Literature Prize short story competition.
But in 1994, her work slowed down when her car hit her bike and sent her flying forward. She landed on her head with enough force to split the helmet in half. The sequelae of her concussion left her with difficulty speaking and writing for about two years.
She managed to publish several articles and soon caught the eye of Adrienne Brodeur, the editor of Zoetrope. Coppola asked Brodule to write a story that capitalized on the success of Ellen Fein and Sherri Schneider’s “Rule: The Age-old Secret to Winning Mr. Right’s Heart.” 1995.
The resulting narrative by Ms. Bunk, in which her character Jane follows a thinly veiled version of “The Rules” and then discards it, elevated the profile of both the fledgling zoetrope and the author. Editors and agents started calling and she scrambled to put the manuscript together.
Carol Desanti, the editor who obtained the Vikings book, said in a telephone interview, “I remember sitting down and reading all the submissions, just like I sat down and read Melissa’s manuscript.” , I still remember where I was sitting, because the chair I was sitting in in my apartment at the time, and the fact that I couldn’t get up, felt like I was in front of a voice.”
Two stories from this book were adapted into the 2007 film Suburban Girl starring Sarah Michelle Gellar and Alec Baldwin.
Although it was clearly a work of fiction, Ms. Bunk admitted that “The Girl’s Guide” portrayed aspects of her own life. Both of her fathers died early of leukemia.
Following the success of ‘The Girls’ Guide’, Mr. Bunk began teaching at the Southampton Writers’ Conference on Long Island and later oversaw the MFA program at Stony Brook University’s Southampton campus.
She continued writing after publishing ‘The Wonder Spot’. She had a contract to produce another book for Vikings, which she worked on right up until her death.
