Plot spoiler:  This is the book whose title and author I tried to conjure up today.

I don't remember why this author, whose name I couldn't remember, and book, whose title I couldn't remember came to mind, making me wonder "Whatever became of...?"  Maybe it was because I was working on a eulogy for Dana, whose urged me for years to have a memorial while still alive and bring the fun back in funeral.  It was in the 1980s that she and I took the trip to Oklahoma to search for links to our mother's birth mother.  It was also the 1980s when we had our family reunion with Daddy and I found out the musical "White Christmas" didn't conjure in us both the same sweet memories.  That was the decade I got a part-time teaching job at City College and the decade my first marriage ended.  That was also the decade I had my 40th birthday party and got quite a lot of attention from the Examiner-Chronicle--even on the front page (now framed) along with Reagan and Marcos.  

Whatever happened to...I had my iPhone with me and Googled SF writer of book about the 80s Gornick, getting Vivian Gornick.  After several failed attempts, I started an email to Leah Garchik

Dear Leah~

Thank you for recommending the film "Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight."  Because of your enthusiasm, a couple of friends and I saw it before it left the Opera Plaza, and we all loved it.  (It fits in with my favorite film about childhood, "My Life as a Dog.")

I have an unrelated question:  Who was the thirty-ish local writer in the 1980s who wrote a book of essays on being single in the 1980's?  I think her last name was something like Gonnick or Gornick.  I can't remember her first name, but she was definitely not Vivian Gornick.   She also wrote a poem for the SF Chronicle in the style of "The Night Before Christmas," but I think it was about San Francisco and the times. She had a column too for a while.

Any idea?

Thanks again,

Tina

 Now I see the column was "Failing at Living."