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I realize I have done a disservice to some of my new friends who I roped in on journalfen with the promise of book reviews and then haven't done a single review since they have joined. Mea culpa. I've read quite a few books, but I don't want to overload anyone (especially ME, who has to write it all in one session) with SUPER LONG POST, so I'll just be doing BH&BG. Dunno what's next. Either Essential She-Hulk or Persepolis. Maybe Autobiography of a Face if I finish it within the next day or so (highly likely). I'll add a mini-review of Thanks for the Memories, Mr. President, too somewhere. Lirael will wait until I've read Abhorsen, although the former annoyed me so much I might not read the latter for up to a month.
OK, review time.
One of the things that constantly seems to surprise people is that writers are human beings, and usually not very nice ones. It's unfair ... we're exposed to the brilliant, most beautiful side of them that they can muster and then get smacked when we learn that inspiring writer of beautiful poetry once was not so nice to her family and did two guys at once.
The big complaint about the book is that three of its four principal subjects: Dorothy Parker, Edna St. Vincent Millay and Zelda Fitzgerald are not model humans. They curse and drink and make snap judgments and don't seem like very nice people. And its fourth subject, Edna Ferber, is a nice woman but considered boring by comparison. To this I say, "Who cares?" Yeah, it might burst your bubble a bit, but at some point you have to realize that every hero or heroine you ever have will disappoint you. And who doesn't want to hear about Edna St. Vincent Millay doing two guys at once?
The book is kind of funky. It's kind of a biography of a decade (1920-1930) in all these womens' lives, but its also the story of their friends and neighbors and Algonquin Table/French expatriate literary circle. So its about those four women but also about Edmund Wilson and Ernest Hemingway and Harold Ross and a bunch of other people who haven't made an impression on my memory yet. If the book has a big flaw, it's that it's not very n00b-friendly. The list of cameos is HUGE and the book doesn't have an index. So I spent a lot of the book going, "Now WHO is this person? I think they're friends of Dorothy*, but now they're hanging out with Edna Ferber ... and they've shown up at Millay's house now ... HELP!"
Still, while the cameos are annoying, it helps give an overall picture of the world these four writers moved in. One of my problems with history is it's taught on such a specific level. We learn about, say, the American Revolution but then only have a cursory knowledge of what's going on at the time elsewhere. In my mind, sometimes history rests in my head like a big, unput-together puzzle. I can see pieces, but not how they fit together. This book helps bring those pieces together in a way I don't think a specific biography about one person could have done.
I also think the best thing a biography of a writer can do is give you a good idea of who they were and how who they were may have affected their work. This book definitely does that.
So what did I learn from the book?
Dorothy Parker
Dorothy Parker was the only writer who I'd had intense exposure to before the book. I became a die-hard fan last year and read the entire third edition of The Portable Dorothy Parker over last and this year. So the book didn't have a whole lot of new stuff to offer, although I was exposed to her life a little more up close, especially her (platonic) relationship with Robert Benchley and the details of her three suicide attempts. I also heard some funny jokes from her.
The story that hit me the hardest came around the middle of the book. After her second suicide attempt, Parker went to France and confided in Ernest Hemingway about her problems. Hemingway was really nice to her and even gave her books for her trip back to America, but after she left he wrote a nasty poem making fun of her suicide attempts and poetry and read it to their mutual friends. (Their mutual friends were not amused.)
I was really pissed until my step-grandfather pointed out, "You know, that's kind of ironic he did that, considering he was the one who ended up killing himself and she died of natural causes." Something to think about.
Of course, Parker wasn't exactly nice to everyone. She could make snap judgments about people (like Zelda and Ferber), but on the other hand she seems like she was at the very least loyal to her friends, like how she went to the sanatorium with the Murphys when their son contracted tuberculosis. So ... even hearing about the bad things she'd said didn't change my opinion of her.
Edna St. Vincent Millay
... was a ho. But considering many male writers were also hos, she is in very good company.
Her sections had two opposite effects on me. Out of all the writers, I probably liked her the least as a person but hearing about her poetry gave me a feeling that I am really missing out on something. As much as I've had a pretty politically correct high school education, I always felt like female-written love poetry was pretty rare, so I was happy to hear that's Millay's forte.
Actually, as much as I made a big deal about her sleeping with two guys at once (ONE OF THEM WAS EDMUND WILSON!) I wasn't really so shocked by her sexual choices. I mean, it was surprising and funny, but hey ... she was young and crazy. But I didn't like how she treated her family and how she acted like she was above them. Actually, at most parts of the book she seemed rather self-centered and unaware of others, even those who cared about her. It left kind of a bad taste in my mouth.
Still, the poetry seems quite nice, and that's all I can expect.
Zelda Fitzgerald
I was really interested in learning about Zelda, but after awhile I grew to dread reading about her parts of the book because it was always about F. Scott Fitzgerald denigrating or throwing things at her. It's unfortunate. She starts out in 1920 as this sort of bubblehead whose only focused on marrying a rich man who will take care of her, slowly develops a consciousness of herself and a wish to express herself creatively, gets minor success as a writer and as a ballerina and then cracks up before she ever really gets the chance to fly.
Not that she was perfect. She seemed like an absentee mom (although that may have been common back then) and wasn't always nice to her husband. But ... still, poor Zelda.
When I read Tender is the Night, I'm going to read Save me the Waltz right after. It should be interesting.
Edna Ferber
a.k.a. the mostly normal one
I think the book did her a great service. Sure, she comes off as the boring one ... writing like a workhorse, rarely drinking, not having any crazy love affairs. But, really, in the first decade in which women had the right to vote, she was making an honest-to-god career and getting MAJOR success in it. She received the Pulitzer (although partly through nepotism) and saw her work adapted into major plays/musicals in her lifetime. I mean ... wow! I don't know if I would have been interested in or known about her normally but this made me want to read her book. Kind of odd since I didn't like the Showboat musical much.
... Yeah, that's it. She's kind of dull.
Anyway, I liked and recommend this book if you're into this type of thing. It's probably more valuable if you have a basic knowledge of the writers, but even if you don't, I'd check it out. Just leave open Wikipedia in case you forget the names.
* Sorry, I couldn't help it.
OK, review time.
One of the things that constantly seems to surprise people is that writers are human beings, and usually not very nice ones. It's unfair ... we're exposed to the brilliant, most beautiful side of them that they can muster and then get smacked when we learn that inspiring writer of beautiful poetry once was not so nice to her family and did two guys at once.
The big complaint about the book is that three of its four principal subjects: Dorothy Parker, Edna St. Vincent Millay and Zelda Fitzgerald are not model humans. They curse and drink and make snap judgments and don't seem like very nice people. And its fourth subject, Edna Ferber, is a nice woman but considered boring by comparison. To this I say, "Who cares?" Yeah, it might burst your bubble a bit, but at some point you have to realize that every hero or heroine you ever have will disappoint you. And who doesn't want to hear about Edna St. Vincent Millay doing two guys at once?
The book is kind of funky. It's kind of a biography of a decade (1920-1930) in all these womens' lives, but its also the story of their friends and neighbors and Algonquin Table/French expatriate literary circle. So its about those four women but also about Edmund Wilson and Ernest Hemingway and Harold Ross and a bunch of other people who haven't made an impression on my memory yet. If the book has a big flaw, it's that it's not very n00b-friendly. The list of cameos is HUGE and the book doesn't have an index. So I spent a lot of the book going, "Now WHO is this person? I think they're friends of Dorothy*, but now they're hanging out with Edna Ferber ... and they've shown up at Millay's house now ... HELP!"
Still, while the cameos are annoying, it helps give an overall picture of the world these four writers moved in. One of my problems with history is it's taught on such a specific level. We learn about, say, the American Revolution but then only have a cursory knowledge of what's going on at the time elsewhere. In my mind, sometimes history rests in my head like a big, unput-together puzzle. I can see pieces, but not how they fit together. This book helps bring those pieces together in a way I don't think a specific biography about one person could have done.
I also think the best thing a biography of a writer can do is give you a good idea of who they were and how who they were may have affected their work. This book definitely does that.
So what did I learn from the book?
Dorothy Parker
Dorothy Parker was the only writer who I'd had intense exposure to before the book. I became a die-hard fan last year and read the entire third edition of The Portable Dorothy Parker over last and this year. So the book didn't have a whole lot of new stuff to offer, although I was exposed to her life a little more up close, especially her (platonic) relationship with Robert Benchley and the details of her three suicide attempts. I also heard some funny jokes from her.
The story that hit me the hardest came around the middle of the book. After her second suicide attempt, Parker went to France and confided in Ernest Hemingway about her problems. Hemingway was really nice to her and even gave her books for her trip back to America, but after she left he wrote a nasty poem making fun of her suicide attempts and poetry and read it to their mutual friends. (Their mutual friends were not amused.)
I was really pissed until my step-grandfather pointed out, "You know, that's kind of ironic he did that, considering he was the one who ended up killing himself and she died of natural causes." Something to think about.
Of course, Parker wasn't exactly nice to everyone. She could make snap judgments about people (like Zelda and Ferber), but on the other hand she seems like she was at the very least loyal to her friends, like how she went to the sanatorium with the Murphys when their son contracted tuberculosis. So ... even hearing about the bad things she'd said didn't change my opinion of her.
Edna St. Vincent Millay
... was a ho. But considering many male writers were also hos, she is in very good company.
Her sections had two opposite effects on me. Out of all the writers, I probably liked her the least as a person but hearing about her poetry gave me a feeling that I am really missing out on something. As much as I've had a pretty politically correct high school education, I always felt like female-written love poetry was pretty rare, so I was happy to hear that's Millay's forte.
Actually, as much as I made a big deal about her sleeping with two guys at once (ONE OF THEM WAS EDMUND WILSON!) I wasn't really so shocked by her sexual choices. I mean, it was surprising and funny, but hey ... she was young and crazy. But I didn't like how she treated her family and how she acted like she was above them. Actually, at most parts of the book she seemed rather self-centered and unaware of others, even those who cared about her. It left kind of a bad taste in my mouth.
Still, the poetry seems quite nice, and that's all I can expect.
Zelda Fitzgerald
I was really interested in learning about Zelda, but after awhile I grew to dread reading about her parts of the book because it was always about F. Scott Fitzgerald denigrating or throwing things at her. It's unfortunate. She starts out in 1920 as this sort of bubblehead whose only focused on marrying a rich man who will take care of her, slowly develops a consciousness of herself and a wish to express herself creatively, gets minor success as a writer and as a ballerina and then cracks up before she ever really gets the chance to fly.
Not that she was perfect. She seemed like an absentee mom (although that may have been common back then) and wasn't always nice to her husband. But ... still, poor Zelda.
When I read Tender is the Night, I'm going to read Save me the Waltz right after. It should be interesting.
Edna Ferber
a.k.a. the mostly normal one
I think the book did her a great service. Sure, she comes off as the boring one ... writing like a workhorse, rarely drinking, not having any crazy love affairs. But, really, in the first decade in which women had the right to vote, she was making an honest-to-god career and getting MAJOR success in it. She received the Pulitzer (although partly through nepotism) and saw her work adapted into major plays/musicals in her lifetime. I mean ... wow! I don't know if I would have been interested in or known about her normally but this made me want to read her book. Kind of odd since I didn't like the Showboat musical much.
... Yeah, that's it. She's kind of dull.
Anyway, I liked and recommend this book if you're into this type of thing. It's probably more valuable if you have a basic knowledge of the writers, but even if you don't, I'd check it out. Just leave open Wikipedia in case you forget the names.
* Sorry, I couldn't help it.
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