MEMOIRS OF AN AMNESIAC

by Oscar Levant ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 5, 1965

Oscar Levant is the Intelligent Man's celebrity, the Dostoevsky of TV, the GBS of Benzedrine. Actually, benny is an amphetamine, while Oscar has been waging a circular war against barbiturates for the past ten years. Here, with unabating sarcasm, he reveals the relentless tensions that have driven him into a nightmare of hospital wards, psychosomatic ills, heart attacks, and addiction. A course of eighteen shock treatments wiped away much of his memory but none of his wit (and incidentally provided the Russian gallows humor of his title). One period of his life he can't remember is told here by his wife of 25 years standing. He calls himself a basket-case neurotic. Recalling his early years he is doubly frank, telling of happy days at Polly Adler's famous ""house,"" palling around with Mafia hoods, seducing chorus girls, all the while expanding his classical piano repertoire, dropping in at the Toscaninis, and hopping from Carnegie Hall to Information Please. Today his piano playing takes second place to him gifted egomania as a raconteur. His autobiography rises like an Everest above the confessional non-books of his fellow celebs. He is the epigrammatic inheritor of Wilde and could probably write a play, say The Importance of Being Oscar.

Pub Date: Aug. 5, 1965

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Putnam

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1965

Categories: NONFICTION