Welcome to Litsy!

A fiercely personal memoir about Miller�s coming of age in the male-dominated literary world of the nineties, becoming, at twenty-five, the first female literary editor of Esquire, and her personal and working relationship with David Foster Wallace Adrienne Miller was a na�ve twenty-two-year-old from the Midwest when she got a lucky break and was hired as an editorial assistant at GQ. The mid-nineties was still the golden age of print journalism, and a publication like GQ then seemed the red-hot center of the literary world, even if its sensibilities were manifestly mid-century�the martinis, the male egos, and the unquestioned authority of kings. Still, Miller learned to hold her own in a man�s world, and three years later, she forged her own path, becoming the first woman to hold the role of literary editor of Esquire. She was at Esquire during a unique moment in history that simultaneously saw the last days of the old guard of literary titans and the rise of a new movement, as exemplified by McSweeney�s and by David Foster Wallace. Through Miller�s work as his editor at the magazine, Wallace would become her closest friend, confidant�and antagonist. Here is the untold story of an intellectual and artistic exchange that grew into a highly charged relationship between a young woman finding her voice and one of the most prominent writers of the era. This is a candid portrait of the mercurial man behind the spotlight, and an account of the shrouded literary world, which asks the question: How does a young woman fit into this culture and at what cost? With wit and deep intelligence, Miller presents a moving portrayal of a young woman�s education in a land of men.