Franz Lidz

Early life

Lidz was born in Manhattan, to Sidney, an electronics engineer who designed the first transistorized portable tape recorder (the Steelman Transitape). His father gave him early exposure to authors like Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter and Eugène Ionesco.

At age nine, Lidz moved to the Philadelphia suburbs. Lidz attended high school in Cheltenham and college at Antioch College, where he was a theater major.

Career

Lidz was a novice reporters at the weekly Sanford Star, where he wrote a column and covered police and fire beats. He left Maine to become a crime reporter and write a column called "Insect Jazz" for an alternative newspaper in Baltimore. He later became an editor of Johns Hopkins University Magazine.

In 1980, he joined the staff of Sports Illustrated, even though he had never read the magazine and had covered only one sporting event in his life - a pigeon race in Shapleigh, Maine. Lidz remained on the writing staff for 27 years. Among his most controversial magazine features are essays on George Steinbrenner and the New York Yankees' line of succession; the hijinks of onetime Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling; and a groundbreaking S.I. cover story with NBA player Jason Collins in which Collins became the first active male in one of the four major North American team sports to announce he was gay.

Unstrung Heroes

Unstrung Heroes is about Franz Lidz's childhood, with his father Sidney and four uncles. Sidney is the youngest brother. He had previously written about two of the uncles in Sports Illustrated.

The New York Times, Christopher Lehmann-Haupt reviewed "Unstrung Heroes". Jonathan Kirsch of the Los Angeles Times also reviewed this book. It was also reviewed by The Village Voice.

In 1995, Unstrung Heroes was adapted into a film of the same title. The setting was switched from New York City to Southern California, and the four uncles were portrayed different from the book. Lidz was unhappy with the adaptation, but was prevented by his contract from publicly criticizing it. "My initial fear was that Disney would turn my uncles into Grumpy and Dopey," he told New York magazine. "I never imagined my life could be turned into Old Yeller." In a later essay for the New York Times, he said that the cinematic Selma had died not of cancer, but of 'Old Movie Disease'. "Someday somebody may find a cure for cancer, but the terminal sappiness of cancer movies is probably beyond remedy."

Ghosty Men

Ghosty Men (2003) is the story of the Collyer brothers. Lidz has said that he was inspired by the real-life cautionary tales that his father told him, the most macabre of which was the tale of the Collyer brothers, the hermit hoarders of Harlem. The book also recounts the parallel life of Arthur Lidz, the hermit uncle of Unstrung Heroes, who grew up near the Collyer mansion.

Washington Post critic Adam Bernstein reviewed the book, "The Collyer Brothers made compelling reading then, as they do now in this short...book."

Fairway to Hell

Fairway to Hell is a 2008 memoir centering on Lidz' unusual golfing experiences like encountering celebrities or dangerous courses. Bill Littlefield reviewed the book positively on the National Public Radio show Only A Game, saying "His estimable wit is also evident in Fairway To Hell."

Collaborations

Lidz has written numerous essays for The New York Times with novelist and former Sports Illustrated colleague Steve Rushin. Three of them appear under the title Piscopo Agonistes in the 2000 collection Mirth of a Nation: The Best Contemporary Humor.

Lidz has been a commentator for Morning Edition on NPR, and a guest film critic on Roger Ebert's syndicated TV show. He has also appeared on David Letterman's show.

Personal life

Lidz shares a six-acre farm in Chester County, Pennsylvania with his wife, Maggie Lidz (an author and onetime historian at the Winterthur Museum in Delaware). They have two daughters