Carol's Comments December 2011

Carol’s Comments by Carol Rusinek

December 2011

          Hello, Everyone! Welcome to another issue of Carol’s Comments. I love biographies especially ones about unconventional, independent women who lead extraordinary lives. Three books on this topic that I read over the holidays were the perfect choice.

          I first selected Wendy and the Lost Boys: the Uncommon Life of Wendy Wasserstein by Julie Salamon. In this provocative and somewhat sensational biography, Salamon painstakingly chronicles Wasserstein’s life from her unconventional childhood and adolescence in the 1950’s and 1960’s through her successful years as a playwright up to her untimely death at 55 in 2006. The revealing book describes how her eccentric family (who the author compares to the madcap Glass family featured in J.D. Salinger’s novel  Franny and Zooey) not only greatly influenced her plays like Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award winner , The Heidi Chronicles but all her personal and professional relationships. Since her parents didn’t divulge many family secrets, Wasserstein was a young woman before she discovered she had a mentally handicapped brother who was institutionalized before she was born and that her mother’s first husband was her late Uncle George Wasserstein who was her three older siblings’ father.

          Wasserstein also kept many secrets by withholding important personal information from her close friends and family. For instance, she never told anyone about her pregnancy at 48 or revealed the identity of her daughter Lucy Jane’s father.

          Along with offering a fascinating glimpse of the New York theater scene during the past 40 years, this absorbing profile vividly illustrates how Wendy Wasserstein’s plays realistically captured the aspirations and experiences of the Baby Boom generation,

          As many of you know, I absolutely adored The Paris Wife by Paula McLain. So when I read in Maureen Dowd’s New York Times’ column that Harper Perennial had recently reissued Gioia Diliberto’s 1992 biography about Hadley Richardson Hemingway which McLain’s bestseller was primarily based, I rushed to the library to get it.

          Paris Without End: the True Story of Hemingway’s First Wife extensively explores the Hemingways’ loving yet tumultuous marriage from 1921 to 1927.  In this well researched and intelligently written biography, Diliberto vividly depicts the couple’s expatriate life in Jazz Age Paris and also shows how Hadley greatly influenced Ernest Hemingway’s fiction written not only during  the 1920’s but years later. This intriguing biography is an essential companion to The Paris Wife and Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast. In fact, I think all three books would make excellent choices for any local area book club.

          Ever since college, I’ve been a big fan of Woody Allen movies especially those featuring Diane Keaton. After thoroughly enjoying the comprehensive two-part Woody Allen documentary on PBS before Thanksgiving, I was very excited when I read in Entertainment Weekly that Diane Keaton had just published her memoir Then Again.

          In his very nontraditional autobiography, Keaton focuses on two lives; her mother’s and her own by interweaving Dorothy Keaton Hall’s journals into her own very readable narrative.

          Then Again examines Dorothy Hall’s aspirations and unfulfilled dreams while also describing Diane Keaton’s acting career, relationships with Woody Allen, Warren Beatty and Al Pacino and being a single mother at 50. More importantly, her mother’s insightful journals reveal how she encouraged her daughter to become the unconventional, independent woman she is today.  Keaton’s direct, conversational writing style was so addictive that I read the book in two days!

          My obsession with Hemingway, life in the 1920’s and Woody Allen continued when Midnight in Paris was finally released on DVD in December. Written and directed by Woody Allen, Midnight in Paris stars Owen Wilson as Gil Pender, a disenchanted screenwriter suffering from severe writers block. While visiting Paris with his fiancée Inez and her parents, he becomes utterly captivated with the city. One night he is magically transported back in time to 1920’s bohemian Paris where he meets F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Gertrude Stein and Picasso. During his midnight adventures, these artistic giants inspire Gil to rediscover his imagination and become a serious novelist. If you enjoy quirky romantic comedies combined with time travel, you’ll love this delightful film.

          These books as well as other Woody Allen movies like Midnight in Paris can be found at all SJCPL locations.  For more information, visit the library’s website at www.libraryforlife.org . Thanks for reading. See you next time.

Previously published at SJCPL blog