Lives of Consequence
Eric Lax '66, L.H.D. '93
Author
In a career defined by creativity, curiosity, and service, Eric Lax has written 11 books — several of them best sellers in the U.S. and abroad—on subjects as diverse as the discovery and development of penicillin, his own faith, and the life and work of Woody Allen.
After graduating with a degree in English, Lax joined the Peace Corps, serving in Truk (now Chuuk) in the Caroline Islands of Micronesia, teaching English as a Second Language and doing community development work. He was the first outsider to live on an island of 185 people and a quarter-square mile of land, an experience that, as he told the Pulteney St. Survey in 2015, “taught me how to see the world with different eyes and gave me an understanding of how different yet, in many ways, how much the same people are.” After completing his two-year assignment and helping to train two new groups of volunteers, he worked in Washington, D.C., first as a Peace Corps Fellow, then as Overseas Director of the Peace Corps School Partnership Program, which allowed him to travel to over 40 countries.
Lax’s longtime passion for comedy resulted in his first book, On Being Funny (1975), in which he used the work and insights of Woody Allen as a means of writing about comedy in general. In 1984, Lax authored Life and Death on 10 West, his account of more than six months observing the frontier of medicine on the bone marrow transplantation ward at the UCLA Medical Center, which was headed at the time by classmate Dr. Robert Peter Gale ’66, L.H.D.’87. Lax’s work was recognized by The New York Times Book Review as one of the Notable Books of the Year and received an award from the American Leukemia Society.
In 1991, Lax published the bestseller and New York Times Notable Book of the Year, Woody Allen: A Biography, which was translated into 17 languages. Bogart, with A. M. Sperber, a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in Biography, was published in 1997. Among his books of the current century are: The Mold in Dr. Florey’s Coat, about the development of penicillin at the University of Oxford in the midst of World War II; Faith, Interrupted, in part about the war in Viet Nam and the different paths he and his Hobart roommate George Packard took; and Radiation: What It Is, What You Need to Know, with Dr. Gale. Lax has contributed to many magazines, including The Atlantic, Life, The Washington Monthly; the Book Review sections of The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times; and The New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, and Esquire, where he was a contributing editor.
He also has given decades of his time to a variety of literary and human rights non-profit organizations, especially PEN International, the global writers association based in London with 150 centers around the world. PEN advocates for freedom of expression and the safety of writers who have been imprisoned, beaten or murdered for their work, on behalf of minority languages, translation, and linguistic rights, and for women writers, who in many countries are abused and heavily discriminated against. He was a board member and is a past president of PEN Center USA, in Los Angeles; a member of the PEN International Board from 2001-2016; and chair of the trustees of the PEN Foundation. In 2017 he was made an International Vice President of PEN, and currently serves as the organization’s Treasurer and as a member of its board and Executive Committee. He has also served on the Advisory Board of The Columbia Journalism Review, and currently is on the board of the Los Angeles Review of Books. Born in Canada but raised in Southern California, he is a member of the International Advisory Board of the Toronto-based Institute for Canadian Citizenship, which sponsors programs and special projects that inspire inclusion, create opportunities to connect, and encourage active citizenship.
He is the Hobart Alumni Association’s West Coast Regional Vice President and co-chaired his Class’s 40th and 50th Reunion Committees, alongside Edie Sparago Irons ’66, his friend since their first day on campus. He and his wife Karen Sulzberger live in Beverly Hills and have two sons, Simon and John.
In 2019, Lax was a guest on the Pulteney Street Podcast with President Joyce P. Jacobsen, during which he discussed his wide-ranging books, his service in the Peace Corps and PEN, and the lasting impact of HWS on both his life and his career.