CRITIC'S CHOICE
If you bet that Bob Dylan would hawk women's underwear on TV before he'd ever tell his life story, you've won—and this antimemoir won't make you rethink your assumptions. About as forthcoming as the KGB, Dylan barely mentions his greatest recordings (the only two albums he delves into are obscure ones: 1970's New Morning and 1989's Oh Mercy). He has more to say about his idol Woody Guthrie than his parents, and he doesn't mention the names of his two wives or six kids.
So why is this an essential work, as throbbingly alive as Dylan's "bible," Jack Kerouac's On the Road? It's the mad Beat rush of impressionistic images: Folksinger Dave Van Ronk "was passionate and stinging, sang like a soldier of fortune and sounded like he paid the price." As Dylan is about to hit it big, "everything was in transition and I was standing in the gateway. Soon I'd step in heavy loaded, fully alive and revved up." At a low point in 1987, "my hay stacks weren't tied down and I was beginning to fear the wind." At times Dylan seems a dazed prophet adrift in a landscape of his own creation; he wanders into a movie called The Mighty Quinn—named for a song of his. It turns out to star Denzel Washington—who will later act in a film inspired by another Dylan song, "Hurricane." More seriously, when Dylan, shackled by fame in the '60s, arms himself and hides from mobs of fans in Woodstock, N.Y., one group demanding he come out to lead the revolution is the Weathermen—named after a line in still another of his songs. "I wanted to set fire to these people," he writes. Shivery metaphors appear again and again: midnight, murder, fire. Reading this book is like slipping into the skin of a poet, the poet of our time.
NOVEL
by David Lodge
You need not be a fan of Henry James's mannered novels of manners (The Portrait of a Lady) to be captivated by this fictionalized portrait of a gentleman. A posh Bostonian who spent much of his life in Victorian England, James kept secrets to the end (including whether he was gay), but Lodge supposes that he died a virgin and that his novelist friend Constance Fenimore Woolson committed suicide because he failed to return her love.
The book isn't all tragedy though; Lodge delivers warmth and comedy, even suspense, all of which are scarce in a rival novel about James, Colm Toíbín's The Master, which came out in June. Here, James is a painfully shy underdog who, despite familial riches and his literary prestige, fumbled for speech, struggled to connect with people and saw his career nearly sunk by the failure of his play Guy Domville in 1895. But Lodge sees James as a comeback kid—a decent, kind soul who used life's reverses both to make himself a better man and to write great books. This one does him justice.
NOVEL
by Jennifer Weiner
There's nothing like new motherhood to inspire friendship among women who would otherwise have nothing to do with each other, as Weiner makes clear in the lively, witty, and often touching follow-up to her 2002 bestseller In Her Shoes. Her account of the postbirth bond that brings together an up-and-coming Hollywood star, a tightly wound event planner, a stunning NBA wife and an overweight, wisecracking chef is full of details that will resonate with anyone who remembers when her signature scent was "B.O., breast milk, and desperation" and she couldn't go out in public without donning nipple shields "that looked like tiny sombreros." A rosy picture of motherhood this isn't, but Weiner's snappy dialogue and captivating characters make it endlessly appealing. Cynics may have a hard time with four exhausted and overwhelmed new moms whose lives seem enchanted even as they care for insomniac babies and husbands who no longer understand them, but Weiner's blend of fizzy romanticism tamped down with just the right amount of dark reality makes her latest novel an ideal escape for the What to Expect crowd.
BIOGRAPHY
by Marc Eliot
Cary Grant may have exuded charm onscreen, but much of his life wasn't charmed, as Eliot's highly readable biography shows. At 10, young Archie Leach of Bristol, England, was told his mother had died. He joined a theater troupe at 14, came to America, and not until he visited England in 1933 as promising actor Cary Grant (with a name assist from Fay Wray) did he learn that his mother was alive, having been committed to an asylum for 19 years by his father. Feeling betrayed by both parents may have been the root of his deep emotional conflicts: Alcoholic and stingy, Grant worked as a gigolo in the 1920s but had gay roommates; he spent a confusing, competitive 11 years with lover Randolph Scott, and after their split, Grant married five times. Eliot also details Grant's chumminess with Howard Hughes; they partied together and in 1947 were reported—erroneously—to have died together in a plane crash.
Eliot offers a shrewd analysis of the actor's career, including Grant's audacity in cutting himself loose from the studio system in 1936. (The author also can be unreliable: He asserts that if Grant had played Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady he would likely have won an Oscar, but then says that Grant would have been a laughingstock in the role.) It was Alfred Hitchcock, Eliot argues, who elicited Grant's best work—as a sexual manipulator in Notorious and a parasitic husband in Suspicion. Glimpses of the debonair leading man's dark side are the most intriguing elements of this welcome biography.
NOVEL
by Muriel Spark
Nina and Rowland, a young British couple, have founded a private academy that hopscotches around Europe a few steps ahead of its creditors. Their eight students are the sort that wash up at undemanding schools on the Continent: an heiress, an obscure Balkan royal and 17-year-old Chris, who (like Rowland) is writing a novel. Chris's work progresses nicely, but Rowland's does not, which sets up an unhealthy competition between the two. Their mutual obsession and its surprising outcome give this slim book its psychological heft.
May Contain Nuts: A Very Loose Canon of American Humor Edited by Michael J. Rosen. Along with pieces by R J. O'Rourke and Mark O'Donnell come impossibly erudite side-splitters (we read 'em and laughed out loud) from our droll man Tom Gliatto.
Saving Body & Soul: The Mission of Mary Jo Copeland Photographs by Keri Pickett, Essays & Interviews by Margaret Nelson. Veteran reporter Nelson expands on her 1999 People story about a sweetly eccentric mother of 12, herself the product of an abusive home, who founded a thriving ministry for the poor in Minneapolis.
Anne Geddes & Celine Dion
A photographer known for her work with infants and a singer passionate about her own little one celebrate new life in a book plus music.
HOW DID THIS PARTNERSHIP COME ABOUT? Geddes: We've been friends for about four years; we often said, "Let's do something that's fun, but it needs to be something fantastic." We came up with this concept. She did the singing and I did the photography.
WHAT WERE THE SHOOTS LIKE? Dion: The babies are the stars. The ambience is like the babies are coming out of their mom's belly. The room was kept at about 90°, and mostly classical music was played. It was very peaceful.
THE BOOK COMES WITH A CD BY CELINE?
Geddes: Yes, and a DVD on creating the book. Miracle was inspired by a song given to Celine by songwriter Linda Thompson as a present for René-Charles [now 3]. We decided to illustrate six songs in all—not lullabies as such, but songs like "What a Wonderful World."
WHERE DO YOU FIND YOUR MODELS? Geddes: Truly, the parents find me. All newborns are so beautiful and precious that we would never need to audition them.
WAS IT HARD POSING WITH NEWBORNS? Dion: When you take positions for three to five minutes, you try to be relaxed, but you're holding someone else's baby! I was nervous.
HOW DID YOU CREATE THE ILLUSION OF BABIES SLEEPING INSIDE FLOWERS? Geddes: I shot the flowers first and made soft foam shapes in the position the babies needed to be in. We photographed them sleeping in the shapes and then put it all together on computer.
BERNE BRILLSTEIN
Hollywood producer/manager Brillstein swims with the sharks—but has a reputation as a pussycat. His new book, The Little Stuff Matters Most, reveals how he uses—surprise!—civility to trump his competitors. Brillstein shares some of his top tips with PEOPLE.
THINK ABOUT THE OTHER GUY As obvious as this sounds, lots of people don't do it: Listen instead of talking. Don't worry about what you want to sell, worry about what the customer wants to buy. If you treat people fairly, you'll always be ahead.
WINNERS MAKE TOUGH CALLS It's easy to call someone when they've just had a hit, but it's more important to make the call when someone is cold, when they've flopped.
DON'T TALK BEHIND SOMEONE'S BACK IN FRONT OF THEM Translation: If someone is across the room and you're talking about them, they know. People at Hollywood cocktail parties do it all the time. It's suicide.
WINNERS DON'T HAVE TO BE ASS——-Some leaders employ fear or arrogance. But if you set yourself up as a real separatist, when you make a mistake you learn the real meaning of being alone. Look at Michael Jackson.
- Contributors:
- Kyle Smith,
- Debby Waldman,
- Edward Karam,
- Lee Aitken.
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
