She knows how lucky she is, admitting, \u201cI have had a golden run, which makes me feel very fortunate, and also a little vulnerable.\u201d Anyone with a writing career as impressive and glamorous as Orlean\u2019s would be bound to attract some detractors, but encountering her enthusiasm and aplomb, it\u2019s hard to be anything less than inspired. With enormous candor, she acknowledges that the writer\u2019s life is \u201cnever boring, but that\u2019s also why it\u2019s always a little terrifying, why every time I\u2019ve sat down to write since 1978, I wonder if this is the time I simply won\u2019t be able to do it and words will fail me. But so far, so good.\u201d <\/p>\n
That tension fuels a rollicking career marked by improbable stories. Orlean reflects, \u201cWriters fall into two categories: There are those who have something they want to say to the world, and there are those who believe the world has something to tell them. I\u2019m wholly of the second sort.\u201d Her evocative and immersive reportage, to name just three pieces, includes a profile for Esquire on an ordinary, not-famous 10-year-old boy; a Village Voice cover story about a charismatic cult leader; and her New Yorker feature on a New York City cab driver who was also named the king of Ghanaian Ashanti tribespeople living in the United States. These are mere highlights in a body of work that has leapt nimbly from short, keen observations to longer, heavily reported work that then evolved into books. All the while, we\u2019re along for the ride, reveling in her eclectic passion for people and experiences outside her own.<\/p>\n
As she moves from one passage of life or period of employment to another, she rightfully speaks about her illuminating moxie, intelligence, and determination. She also measures her successes against an ongoing battle to be taken seriously by the bosses who pay her less than her male counterparts and her first husband, whose microaggressions metastasize over years from simmering resentment to impeccably timed emotional assault. On the night of her debut book\u2019s launch party, she learns of her husband\u2019s infidelity. Years later, after they try to reconcile and have a baby together, on the night that she is launching her bestselling book The Orchid Thief, she discovers that he\u2019s still cheating on her. Hers is a charmed life, to be sure, but it\u2019s not without sharp swerves and stark moments of reevaluation.<\/p>\n
In the wake of her divorce, Orlean finds herself a bestselling author but also back in love\u2014this time with a man open, ready, and game for a true partner, John Gillespie. Before long, she is enjoying Adaptation, the unconventional film adaptation of The Orchid Thief; a sustaining new marriage; and motherhood. As her peripatetic life toggles back and forth between coasts, her book research for Rin Tin Tin: The Life and the Legend links her to California. \u201cI never expected to live in California,\u201d she writes. \u201cMore accurately, I never thought I quite deserved to live in California. It was too pretty, too cool, too desirable. It was like yearning to date the captain of the football team.\u2026 After trying so hard to resist it because it was too easy to love, and feeling not quite entitled to it because it was too exciting and sexy and fast and fun, we grabbed Los Angeles and we got it, a foothold in this mad, maddening, marvelous place.\u201d\u2022<\/p>\n
JOYRIDE, BY SUSAN ORLEAN<\/p>\n
![\"<i>JOYRIDE<\/i>,](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/1760570451-susan-orlean-joyride-1024x1024-68f02b2d2516b.jpg\" "\\"<i>JOYRIDE<\/i>,")
<\/a>Credit: Avid Reader Press\/Simon & SchusterRelated Stories![\"Lettermark\"](\"https:\/\/www.altaonline.com\/_assets\/design-tokens\/fre\/static\/images\/logos\/lettermark.05d81be.svg?primary=%2523000\")
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