At Christmastime in 1973, she received another interesting job offer. John Doar, a friend from the days of the civil rights movement and, like her, a Republican, was now majority counsel for the Nixon impeachment inquiry of the House Judiciary Committee. He wondered if she would be interested in writing speeches for the committee chairman, Peter Rodino. She was. It happened that she was already close to another lawyer on the committee, Burke Marshall, a married Washington veteran about 15 years her senior and a law professor at Yale. Indeed, addressing a fictionalized form of Marshall in ''Pitch Dark,'' the narrator, who is a recognizable version of Adler, says, ''You are, you know, you were the nearest thing to a real story to happen in my life.''
-"renata adler is making enemies again," by arthur lubow, published in ny times, January 16, 2000