A short life of the author
Susan Orlean (b. 1955) was born on 31 October 1955 in Cleveland, Ohio. She studied at the University of Michigan. She has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1992 and has contributed to Rolling Stone, Esquire, Vogue, and Outside.
Life and Career
Saturday Night (1990) — a kaleidoscopic portrait of what Americans do on Saturday nights — was her first book. The Orchid Thief (1998) — about John Laroche, a charismatic, toothless plant dealer arrested for poaching rare ghost orchids from a Florida swamp, and the subculture of obsessive orchid collectors — was a bestseller and established her method: find an apparently marginal subject, immerse yourself in it, and reveal what it says about human desire.
The book was adapted by Charlie Kaufman into Adaptation (2002), in which Kaufman wrote himself into the screenplay as a screenwriter struggling to adapt the book. Meryl Streep played Orlean; Nicolas Cage played Kaufman. The film made the book more famous than it already was.
Rin Tin Tin: The Life and the Legend (2011) — about the German Shepherd who became one of the biggest movie stars in Hollywood — was characteristic Orlean: a subject that seems trivial until she reveals it isn’t. The Library Book (2018) — which investigated the 1986 fire that destroyed or damaged over a million books at the Los Angeles Central Library — was a love letter to libraries, reading, and the human need to preserve knowledge.
Major Works and Themes
Orlean writes about obsession, eccentricity, and the hidden depth of apparently ordinary subjects. Her New Yorker profiles — of a ten-year-old boy, a surfing donkey, a taxidermist — are models of the form. Her method is immersive: she embeds herself in her subjects’ worlds for months or years, and the resulting narratives combine detailed reporting with a novelist’s eye for character and scene.
What distinguishes her from other narrative nonfiction writers is her ability to make the reader care about subjects they did not know they were interested in. Orchid collecting, dog acting, taxidermy, library fires — these are not obviously compelling subjects, and Orlean’s gift is to reveal the human stories — of desire, loss, dedication, and sometimes madness — that lie beneath them.
Her relationship with the New Yorker — where she has published for over thirty years — places her in the tradition of Joseph Mitchell, Lillian Ross, and John McPhee. Like them, she has made the long-form profile into an art form.
Critical Reception and Legacy
The Orchid Thief is regarded as one of the finest works of American narrative nonfiction of the 1990s. The meta-fictional treatment of the book in Adaptation — in which Kaufman’s screenplay about the impossibility of adapting the book becomes the adaptation itself — added a layer of cultural significance that few nonfiction books achieve.
Key Works
- Saturday Night (1990)
- The Orchid Thief (1998)
- The Bullfighter Checks Her Makeup (2001, profiles)
- Rin Tin Tin (2011)
- The Library Book (2018)
Collecting Orlean
Saturday Night (1990, Alfred A. Knopf) — her debut — brings $20–$60. The Orchid Thief (1998, Random House) — the breakthrough — brings $15–$50 for fine first editions.
The Library Book (2018, Simon & Schuster) brings $10–$25. Orlean signs at literary events and New Yorker Festival appearances.
Her Bullfighter Checks Her Makeup (2001, Random House) — a collection of her New Yorker profiles — brings $10–$25 and is a useful entry point for collectors of her work.