A candid and revealing snapshot of mid–20th-century cultural life, seen through eccentric but shrewdly perceptive eyes.
The British critic’s personal jottings from the 1970s chronicle a glamorous life with characteristic wit, underpinned by melancholy.
It wasn’t an entirely happy decade for Tynan, who found it increasingly difficult to write as his emphysema worsened. (Diagnosed in the late ’60s, the disease finally killed the cigarette-smoking 53-year-old in 1980.) The entries begin in the closing years of his tenure as literary manager of Britain’s National Theatre, where he was frequently frustrated by executive director Laurence Olivier’s timidity regarding the politically and sexually provocative plays Tynan championed. Nasty comments about Olivier, on whose acting Tynan had lavished praise as a critic in the ’50s and ’60s, reveal a decidedly catty side to his personality, as do the vitriolic remarks concerning director Peter Hall, who bumpily assumed the reins at the National in 1973. After he left the National, Tynan drifted, trying to get financing for an erotic film and to stage a follow-up to his scandalously successful stage review, Oh! Calcutta! His own sex life revolved around spankings and whippings described in juicy and surprisingly cheerful detail—leave it to Tynan to make S&M sound like a day at the beach. Since the hairbrush got applied mostly to girlfriend Alison, relations with wife Kathleen were understandably strained in this period. Tynan’s habit of attending glittering upper-crust parties and favoring the guests with his adamantly socialist opinions can’t have enhanced his popularity either: “I enjoy testing people,” he admits in one entry. He enjoys hobnobbing with them too: name after famous name, from Marlene Dietrich to Mel Brooks, appears after the words “dinner with” or “drinks with.” The mood darkens in the late ’70s, as Tynan is plagued by money worries and health problems, but his prose still sparkles, his opinions still strike sparks. We sorely miss a critic who writes sentences like: “It is a dangerous fallacy to assume that being a perfectionist is the same thing as having good taste.”
A candid and revealing snapshot of mid–20th-century cultural life, seen through eccentric but shrewdly perceptive eyes.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2001
ISBN: 1-58234-160-5
Page Count: 420
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2001
BOOK REVIEW
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
An enjoyable slice of 20th-century music journalism almost certain to provide something for most readers, no matter one’s...
Music journalist and musician Wald (Talking 'Bout Your Mama: The Dozens, Snaps, and the Deep Roots of Rap, 2014, etc.) focuses on one evening in music history to explain the evolution of contemporary music, especially folk, blues, and rock.
The date of that evening is July 25, 1965, at the Newport Folk Festival, where there was an unbelievably unexpected occurrence: singer/songwriter Bob Dylan, already a living legend in his early 20s, overriding the acoustic music that made him famous in favor of electronically based music, causing reactions ranging from adoration to intense resentment among other musicians, DJs, and record buyers. Dylan has told his own stories (those stories vary because that’s Dylan’s character), and plenty of other music journalists have explored the Dylan phenomenon. What sets Wald's book apart is his laser focus on that one date. The detailed recounting of what did and did not occur on stage and in the audience that night contains contradictory evidence sorted skillfully by the author. He offers a wealth of context; in fact, his account of Dylan's stage appearance does not arrive until 250 pages in. The author cites dozens of sources, well-known and otherwise, but the key storylines, other than Dylan, involve acoustic folk music guru Pete Seeger and the rich history of the Newport festival, a history that had created expectations smashed by Dylan. Furthermore, the appearances on the pages by other musicians—e.g., Joan Baez, the Weaver, Peter, Paul, and Mary, Dave Van Ronk, and Gordon Lightfoot—give the book enough of an expansive feel. Wald's personal knowledge seems encyclopedic, and his endnotes show how he ranged far beyond personal knowledge to produce the book.
An enjoyable slice of 20th-century music journalism almost certain to provide something for most readers, no matter one’s personal feelings about Dylan's music or persona.Pub Date: July 25, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-236668-9
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Dey Street/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2015
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