![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Feb. 14th, 2011 01:21 pmBobbed Hair and Bathtub Gin: Writers Running Wild in the Twenties is probably the lightest and gossipiest book ever written about alcoholism and addiction and abortion and suicide attempts.
First of all, if you are looking for an in-depth, thoughtful or cohesive study of Zelda Fitzgerald, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Dorothy Parker and/or Edna Ferber, and how they might have influenced each other or what they had to say about each other . . . this is not it. Apparently the authors just sort of picked a list of 1920s writers who ran in vaguely the same social circle and a decade as a boundary point and wrote four independent, gossipy biographies that are pretty much only connected because a few of the same characters appear in both of them, and because they're arranged as if they should be. This is extra frustrating because you definitely can trace points of commonality, and nothing much is done to follow up on them. There's also little to no literary analysis - we're told vaguely who wrote what when and briefly why, but mostly to find out whether reviewers were catty about it. If more thought had gone into it, this could have been a much better book than it is.
That being said, if what you are looking for is dead-author gossip - and I will freely admit I have a weakness for lurid dead-author gossip - then this is a great book for that! Edna St. Vincent Millay's threesomes, porn photos and delusional attachments, and Dorothy Parker's depression, alcoholism and ill-advised love affairs are discussed in loving detail. Poor Edna Ferber always comes across as sort of an afterthought, because Edna Ferber does not seem to have had any ill-advised love affairs or deep-rooted tragic insecurities and in fact apparently spent her whole life being cheerfully successful and relatively happy. The authors spend a chapter speculating on the possibility of an ill-advised love affair for her too, I think mostly because they are otherwise bored with her. Zelda Fitzgerald's sections are half an interesting and sympathetic portrait of Zelda and herambitions, and half a chance to rag on Scott - which, okay, is it even possible to write a pro-Zelda biography without ragging on Scott, or a pro-Scott biography without ragging on Zelda? Is there anyone out there who is equally a fan of both Zelda and Scott? (Or, alternately, hates them both equally?) Inquiring minds wish to know!
Then the book cuts abruptly off in 1930, which was not the end of anybody's story, but They Are Writing About The Twenties So Oh Well. All in all, not particuarly well-constructed, and I was definitely hoping for more substance, but I was pretty okay being entertained by what I got.
First of all, if you are looking for an in-depth, thoughtful or cohesive study of Zelda Fitzgerald, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Dorothy Parker and/or Edna Ferber, and how they might have influenced each other or what they had to say about each other . . . this is not it. Apparently the authors just sort of picked a list of 1920s writers who ran in vaguely the same social circle and a decade as a boundary point and wrote four independent, gossipy biographies that are pretty much only connected because a few of the same characters appear in both of them, and because they're arranged as if they should be. This is extra frustrating because you definitely can trace points of commonality, and nothing much is done to follow up on them. There's also little to no literary analysis - we're told vaguely who wrote what when and briefly why, but mostly to find out whether reviewers were catty about it. If more thought had gone into it, this could have been a much better book than it is.
That being said, if what you are looking for is dead-author gossip - and I will freely admit I have a weakness for lurid dead-author gossip - then this is a great book for that! Edna St. Vincent Millay's threesomes, porn photos and delusional attachments, and Dorothy Parker's depression, alcoholism and ill-advised love affairs are discussed in loving detail. Poor Edna Ferber always comes across as sort of an afterthought, because Edna Ferber does not seem to have had any ill-advised love affairs or deep-rooted tragic insecurities and in fact apparently spent her whole life being cheerfully successful and relatively happy. The authors spend a chapter speculating on the possibility of an ill-advised love affair for her too, I think mostly because they are otherwise bored with her. Zelda Fitzgerald's sections are half an interesting and sympathetic portrait of Zelda and herambitions, and half a chance to rag on Scott - which, okay, is it even possible to write a pro-Zelda biography without ragging on Scott, or a pro-Scott biography without ragging on Zelda? Is there anyone out there who is equally a fan of both Zelda and Scott? (Or, alternately, hates them both equally?) Inquiring minds wish to know!
Then the book cuts abruptly off in 1930, which was not the end of anybody's story, but They Are Writing About The Twenties So Oh Well. All in all, not particuarly well-constructed, and I was definitely hoping for more substance, but I was pretty okay being entertained by what I got.
