Largely apocryphal and hardly scholarly, but a lot of fun.
A snappy, anecdotal tale of the writerly Jazz Age ladies—Fitzgerald, Millay, Parker, and Ferber—and the men who adored them.
Hard to believe there's anything new to learn about the celebrated writers in the tap-happy ’20s, but veteran celebrity biographer Meade (The Unruly Life of Woody Allen, 2000, etc.), her eye ever on the swinging detail, manages to scrounge a fresh tidbit as she traces the erratic intersection of her characters from year to year over the decade. Dorothy “Dottie” Parker is her favorite protagonist, fired from her job at Vanity Fair at age 26 in 1920 to embark on a celebrated, albeit hard-won trajectory as critic, short-story writer, and, eventually, novelist, as she struggles personally over the years with her first disintegrating marriage, alcoholism, and tendency toward suicidal depression. Edna St. Vincent Millay, called “Vincent” throughout, takes no prisoners in her amatory swath of Greenwich Village, where she conquers Edmund “Bunny” Wilson, among others, while trying to create a writer's life away from her two meddling sisters and mother. By 1923, Vincent has won the Pulitzer (still rare for a woman) for her Ballad of the Harp-Weaver, and eventually switches gears to settle down in the Berkshires with her Dutch businessman husband. Alabama belle Zelda Sayre, meanwhile, marries Scott Fitzgerald at age 19 in St. Patrick's Cathedral, intent on a wild public spectacle of flapperhood with the publication of This Side of Paradise. Meade's Zelda, however, is no shrinking violet: a muse to her husband (who regularly appropriates her diary entries and ideas), she develops discipline and ambition in ballet and story-writing to supplement the family income. Meanwhile, Edna Ferber, who, like Parker, is a favorite of the Algonquin Round Table, appears all too sketchily here, as the towering proto-feminist, novelist, playwright, and screenwriter who did it all on her own—a marvelous study of brains, ambition, and hobnobbing. Overall, Meade supplies plenty of unsavory superfluity among the well-worn facts (abortions, sad marriages, boozy cutups), and even some recipes for Prohibition cocktails.
Largely apocryphal and hardly scholarly, but a lot of fun.Pub Date: June 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-385-50242-7
Page Count: 344
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2004
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
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