All the Robbins biographies have their merits, but this empathetic and accessible take is the one most likely to appeal to...
Greg Lawrence exposed a monster (Dance with Demons, 2001), and Deborah Jowitt honored a choreographer (Jerome Robbins, 2004), but Vaill captures a human being in her account of the man who transformed 20th-century Broadway and ballet.
As she did in her biography of Gerald and Sara Murphy (Everybody Was So Young, 1998), the author takes what seems like a shopworn subject and refreshes it with her discerning eye. In her view, Jerome Robbins (1918–98) was driven by the fear that sooner or later he would be exposed as, in his words, “not talented . . . a little Jewish kike.” His art always yearned for a place where he would be accepted and wholeheartedly loved—the “Somewhere” of West Side Story, the paradigm-altering musical Robbins conceived, choreographed and directed in 1957. That fear may have fueled his notorious cruelty in rehearsals (acknowledged but not dwelled on by the author) and his reluctant naming of names for HUAC in 1953 (Vaill blames his lawyer, possibly an FBI informant). It might also explain his tendency toward three-sided affairs that precluded permanent commitment to a man or woman. (Famous bedmates included Montgomery Clift, Slim Hayward, Nora Kaye and perhaps Leonard Bernstein; the predominantly homosexual Robbins had a deep need for female companionship and love.) On the subject of his brilliant career in two fields, Vaill does better with the Broadway side—On the Town, Gypsy, The King and I, etc.—but capably covers his efforts to make ballet an American form, from Fancy Free when he was only 25 to his years with New York City Ballet as resident choreographer second only (but always) to Balanchine. The author doesn’t really try to parse Robbins’s complex relationship with Mr. B., nor does she spend much time considering why he walked away from Broadway at the height of his commercial success with Fiddler on the Roof for the more austere rewards of ballets like Dances at a Gathering. She emphasizes the artistic commitment and courage of an amazingly unhappy, neurotic man whose triumphs were commensurate with the tortures through which he put himself and everyone around him in order to achieve.
All the Robbins biographies have their merits, but this empathetic and accessible take is the one most likely to appeal to general readers.Pub Date: Nov. 21, 2006
ISBN: 0-7679-0420-6
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Broadway
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2006
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Highly recommended, even for those who have already read the excerpts in the New Yorker. Fey is one of the funniest people...
One of the world’s cleverest comedy writers debuts with a frequently hilarious memoir.
Perhaps best known to mass audiences for her writing and performances on Saturday Night Live, Fey’s most inventive work is likely her writing for the critically acclaimed TV show 30 Rock, in which she stars alongside Alec Baldwin and fellow SNL alum Tracy Morgan. In typical self-deprecating style, the author traces her awkward childhood and adolescence, rise within the improv ranks of Second City and career on the sets of SNL and 30 Rock. The chapter titles—e.g., “The Windy City, Full of Meat,” “Peeing in Jars with Boys” and “There’s a Drunk Midget in My House”—provide hints at the author’s tone, but Fey is such a fluid writer, with her impeccable sense of comic timing extending to the printed page, that near-constant jokes and frequent sidebars won’t keep readers from breezing through the book with little trouble, laughing most of the way. Though she rarely breaks the onslaught of jokes (most at her own expense), she does offer an insightful section on the exhaustively analyzed concept of the “working mom,” which she finds tedious. (Even here, the author finds plenty of room for humor—not wanting to admit she uses a nanny, Fey writes, “I will henceforth refer to our nanny as our Coordinator of Toddlery.”) Fey may not sling a lot of dirt about her many famous co-stars in Second City, SNL and 30 Rock, but her thoughts on her geeky adolescence, the joys of motherhood and her rise to TV stardom are spot-on and nearly always elicit a hearty laugh. Even the jacket copy is amusing: “Once in a generation a woman comes along who changes everything. Tina Fey is not that woman, but she met that woman once and acted weird around her.”
Highly recommended, even for those who have already read the excerpts in the New Yorker. Fey is one of the funniest people working today.Pub Date: April 5, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-316-05686-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Reagan Arthur/Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: July 23, 2011
An engrossing memoir as well as a lively treatise on what extraordinary grace under extraordinary pressure looks like.
The former first lady opens up about her early life, her journey to the White House, and the eight history-making years that followed.
It’s not surprising that Obama grew up a rambunctious kid with a stubborn streak and an “I’ll show you” attitude. After all, it takes a special kind of moxie to survive being the first African-American FLOTUS—and not only survive, but thrive. For eight years, we witnessed the adversity the first family had to face, and now we get to read what it was really like growing up in a working-class family on Chicago’s South Side and ending up at the world’s most famous address. As the author amply shows, her can-do attitude was daunted at times by racism, leaving her wondering if she was good enough. Nevertheless, she persisted, graduating from Chicago’s first magnet high school, Princeton, and Harvard Law School, and pursuing careers in law and the nonprofit world. With her characteristic candor and dry wit, she recounts the story of her fateful meeting with her future husband. Once they were officially a couple, her feelings for him turned into a “toppling blast of lust, gratitude, fulfillment, wonder.” But for someone with a “natural resistance to chaos,” being the wife of an ambitious politician was no small feat, and becoming a mother along the way added another layer of complexity. Throw a presidential campaign into the mix, and even the most assured woman could begin to crack under the pressure. Later, adjusting to life in the White House was a formidable challenge for the self-described “control freak”—not to mention the difficulty of sparing their daughters the ugly side of politics and preserving their privacy as much as possible. Through it all, Obama remained determined to serve with grace and help others through initiatives like the White House garden and her campaign to fight childhood obesity. And even though she deems herself “not a political person,” she shares frank thoughts about the 2016 election.
An engrossing memoir as well as a lively treatise on what extraordinary grace under extraordinary pressure looks like.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5247-6313-8
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 30, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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