It is with sadness that I write about the passing of my friend Annette Grant. I originally got to know her husband, Jonathan Baumbach, when we shared a table at the yearly Sheffield Library Author’s Day. I admired his work and knew, too, that he was the father of filmmaker Noah Baumbach. So we had much to share as people perused our books and purchased few.
When I visited his home in Great Barrington, I met Annette. She was welcoming and easy. She had worked at the New York Times, having been the editor of the Living section, then editor of the Weekend section and, finally, art editor of the Arts & Leisure section. But I remembered her name from an earlier employer. She’d been the articles and fiction editor at Seventeen magazine, which bought and published my first article, “Are You Just Like Your Mother?” We had worked together on the phone and through mail but I had never actually met her.
Jonathan told me that he had met Annette at a dinner the writer Maureen Howard arranged in her Village apartment. Annette had recently been widowed from her first husband, Steele Commager, a classicist from Columbia. Jon drove Annette home. They lived together for several years, then married, together for over 30 years.
Though Virginia Annette Grant was born in Abilene, Texas, I never detected a Texas accent. She was a consummate New Yorker, sharing a Brooklyn brownstone with Jonathan, which appeared in Nora Ephron’s film “Heartburn.” They sold the brownstone several years ago and moved full-time to their house in Great Barrington.
The Berkshires offered Annette the opportunity to continue her involvement with the arts. She supported Jacob’s Pillow and would attend its most avant-garde offerings, likewise the Berkshire Playwrights Lab. Berkshire Grown was her special interest as she was a passionate gardener and prepared gourmet dishes with her homegrown greens and herbs.
In Noah’s most recent film, “The Meyerowitz Stories,” Emma Thompson portrays Maureen, the father’s current wife. Her hair is fair, falling in waves, not unlike Annette’s, and she has her witty repartee and American accent. Though the portrait is not strictly autobiographical, one can’t help but notice similarities—not too shabby to have been played by Emma Thompson.
On Feb. 2, when Jonathan called to tell us that Annette passed, I thought I had misheard him. Annette and I had just talked the day before. We were mid-conversation, chatting about her future. She’d been hospitalized as she had been before, because she had trouble breathing. She was in rehab at Laurel Lake and was feeling better. She sounded hopeful.
Annette Grant was 78 years old. She will be missed by many of us.
