Lives and Letters by Robert Gottlieb

Lives and Letters Reviews

• 
  Jane

  The author is a former editor of "The New Yorker" magazine, among many other accomplishments.
  Mr Gottlieb's writing and acute perceptions kept me engrossed throughout.
  
  One essay in particular on the French child poetess, Minou Drouet, who was famous throughout the world as a prodigy, is moving and troubling. Questions arose as to the authenticity of the poetry. Her mother was suspected of being the author, and many pronounced Minou a fraud. A test was devised.
  
  The little child was required to write a poem on the spot on a topic just presented to her in front of witnesses, and produced a work of undoubted genius. The saga of her life (she is still alive and well) is such that I am most surprised it has not been made into an art film.
• 
  Judy

  I received this book from Goodreads Giveaway and have had such fun picking it up at various times and entering the world of many notable people....James Thurber,Mae West,Harry Houdini, royalty,etc. Robert Gottlieb's collection of essays written at different times in his life is very well written. I found him very wise and entertaining. I continue to think about his subjects and their influence on cultures even after finishing the book. I love when a book does that to me!
• 
  Adam Gossman

  Overrated nonsense.
• 
  Kelly Buchanan

  I won this book through a Goodreads giveaway, requesting it somewhat on a whim. Overall, I'm glad I did. It's a somewhat strange book to try to review, as it is largely a collection of previously published material on divergent subjects, much of which is very short in length. Robert Gottlieb, who has served as editor in chief of both Simon and Schuster and Alfred A. Knopf publishing, as well as spending time as editor of "The New Yorker," is a sharp and engaging writer whose expertise in his field is clearly felt. The book is particularly strong on cultural figures of the early twentieth century, with Gottlieb's most elegant and personal writing represented in his sections on ballet and dance, clearly personal passions for him. Artistic giants such as Isadora Duncan, Sarah Bernhardt, and Sergei Diaghalev share the stage with film stars from Hollywood's Golden Age and famous political figures. Gottlieb also writes particularly insightfully about literature, giving succinct, thoughtful accounts of Dickens, Steinbeck, Thackeray, Kipling, and more recent figures such as James Thurber. This eclectic mix makes for a collection that is rarely boring, and reading through the whole takes on certain aspects of a treasure hunt. The next ten pages could be about anyone, from anywhere.
  
  I will admit that the brevity of many of the essays, presumably due to their former lives as journalistic pieces, occasionally left me dizzy. A large portion of the "lives" sit somewhere between book review and super-speed biography. For much of the book, however, this was part of the fun. Gottlieb's collection presents tantalizing tidbits on a fascinating set of characters, and his reviews often spark an interest to read on these subjects further. In this, Gottlieb's point is successfully made. While the final three pieces in the collection (revealed by Gottlieb in the introduction to be the most personal of the works) are written in a pseudo-memoir style that I found to be effective, it was difficult at times to swallow the personal intrusions into earlier pieces in the work. It may be journalistic integrity that prompts Gottlieb to reveal his personal relationships with some of his subjects, but at times it comes to feel a bit more like name-dropping.
  
  I found it helpful to take this book in small doses, so that I didn't end up reading ten 5-page pieces about ten different people in one day. The organization of the book was troubling at times. The first chunk of the book, the "lives" section is roughly organized alphabetically by the name of the subject, much like a biography section in a library would be. Though this is logical, it does not always work for the book. I feel that a chronological order, either by the subjects' dates, or by the date of the pieces original publication, might have been more illuminating. It would have given the reader a chance to see how people who crossed paths with one another in their own times may have interacted. Despite a few reservations, this was an enjoyable read. Gottlieb's self-assurance enhances his writing, and his extensive experience with the publishing world and its colorful characters are assets for this book.
• 
  Carolyn

  As one would expect from an editor (The New Yorker, Scribner's, other major publishers) this collection of short pieces (mostly 4-7 pages) is superbly written. (Gottlieb complains of sloppy writing and gives examples. I applaud!) Each piece is a review of one or more biographies of the piece's subject. They range from Rudolph Valentino, Isadora Duncan, Douglas Fairbanks, Bing Crosby, Judy Garland, Porfirio Rubirosa, Katharine Hepburn, the Windsors, and Elia Kazan, to James Thurber, Rudyard Kipling, and John Steinbeck. I didn't read all the pieces, partly because it's a hardbound library book and I'm leaving for Costa Rica tomorrow (dental tourism), and partly because they didn't all interest me to the same degree. (Check the book's TOC on amazon for the complete list of biographees.) If a complex and fascinating life can be summed up in a few paragraphs, Gottlieb is the man to do it.
• 
  Joseph Dispenza

  It's wonderful. Some of the entries are not as good as others -- I could have done without Houdini and Ana May Wong, but even their profiles had some interest. He's just a very, very good writer, and has a huge wealth of information stored up in him. The best so far, and I'm almost at the end, are Sarah Bernhardt and George S. Kaufman.
• 
  John

  Recycled book reviews and a snippy but poor polemic against Renata Adler's New Yorker book.
  
  A couple of examinations (exhumations?) of former literary great men, Thurber and Steinbeck of some interest to those of us of a certain age.
  
  You'll be kicking yourself in the ass if you bought it and wasting your time if you got it from the library.
• 
  Ashley

  i really enjoyed this books summaries. i though they were very well written, i also enjoyed the variety of pieces in the book