by Stanley Kauffmann ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 9, 1980
From the eminent film and theater critic: ten short, shapely pieces of memoir which, at their very best (not too often), suggest the intense but austere emotional close-ups of Lillian Hellman's finer autobiographical vignettes. City-boy Kauffmann remembers his proud teenage summers of working on a farm--encountering full adult responsibilities and mortality in the raw. He recalls (in glimpses that are rather too austere and sketchy) his ill, prematurely old mother. He lists his late-teenage encounters (one real affair) with older women, leading to disillusionment: ""I saw that romance was a male invention, licensed by women and sometimes pitied by them."" But far better than these slightly precious, sepia-tinted flashes is the longest piece here, ""Album of a Director""--about Stanley's ten years, beginning in college in 1931, as right-hand man to the old-fashioned, charismatic director of a Manhattan-and-upstate theater troupe; Kauffmann captures both his joyful, limitless theater passion (scavenging props from an Albany undertaker, improvising solutions to mid-performance disasters) and his growing discomfiture as the quasi-protÉgÉ of a mentor whose narrow views and obsessive attachments (whether or not actively homosexual) were destroying the company: ""I couldn't spend the rest of my life as a supporter of something increasingly chipped. . . ."" Less rich, but amusing and intriguing, are Kauffmann's 1940s work as a comic-book editor, his stab at doctoring a doomed Broadway-bound play, his 1954 debut as ""Terry Kirk,"" writer of westerns (he needed money). And there's quiet power in his wartime experiences as a volunteer orderly--enough bedpans, madmen, and corpses to make up for being 4-F while friends were being killed. Other pieces here seem forced (deals with London publishers, acquaintances who committed suicide)--but, on the whole, this is a graceful, keen-edged gathering of memories that cannily skirts the pressures and longueurs of full-scale autobiography.
Pub Date: Oct. 9, 1980
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Ticknor & Fields/Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: N/A
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1980
Categories: NONFICTION
© Copyright 2022 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Hey there, book lover.
We’re glad you found a book that interests you!
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Trouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Trouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Don’t fret. We’ll find you.