OK, now I've had a chance to read Antiques Flee Market, the predecessor to Barbara Allan's Antiques Bizarre which I which I blogged about last week.
A great sigh of relief because here's the Brandy Borne I liked so much better. It's probably fitting I read these 2 entries in the Trash 'n' Treasures Mystery series out of order because I've been out of order all week long. The switch to DST derailed my adjustment from Central to Pacific Standard Time. You'd think that getting back an hour would have helped, but it hasn't so I'm going to blame it all on finishing Surely Your Joking, Mr. Feynman and The Beat of a Different Drum (more about those later.)
I loved Antiques Flee Market; I thought the whodunnit was better and appreciated hearing more about characters introduced in earlier books who were missing or walk-ons in Antiques Bizarre. Best of all, the 3rd volume showcased Brandy in all her relationship hits and misses, high-gear shopping expeditions, high-end designer name obsessions, Prozac insulation, etc., etc.
Giving Vivian 2 whole chapters in this book was super. Featuring her latest theatre production was so much better than just reading Brandy's acerbic comments on the doings at the local playhouse. Continuing on a theme, I loved having a map of Serenity (loosely based on the authors' hometown of Muscatine, IA?) as a frontispiece again. The church floorplan was ok but since the action happened on several different levels of that building, it wasn't much of a help. Since it was a library copy, I had to refrain from marking up which suspects were where.
Whatever the writing team of Max Allan and Barbara Collins have planned for their heroine's next adventure, I hope it gives readers more of the old self-absorbed Brandy (and correspondingly less new, nice Brandy). Perhaps, given Brandy's condition, the authors will have an excuse for letting Vivian Bourne share more of the story-telling.
Friday, March 19, 2010
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BRANDY BORNE?
The first two books in Barbara Allan's Trash 'n' Treasures Mystery series, Antiques Roadkill and Antiques Maul were positively delightful. I've taken steps to rectify skipping the third entry Antiques Flee Market (i.e., I placed a hold on a copy at the SVPL). What can I say, I'm a fan which makes it hard to say that Antiques Bizarre was a let-down.
First off, the book is way too short; somehow, Brandy and her mom round up all the possible suspects long before I was ready to have the mystery solved. I'm not sure if this was due to the constraints of keeping the novel an homage to Agatha Christie, the publisher's demand for a short and breezy work or the authors' (Barbara Allan is a joint pseudonym used by Max Allan Collins and Barbara Collins) need to move on to other projects.
Because Serenity (guessing that the town is based on the Collins' hometown of Muscatine, Iowa, I found the wikipedia article with its photos most helpful) is recovering from a particularly severe spring flood, most of the action takes place atop one of the highest hills in town, providing a classic locked-room setting. In this case it is St. Mary's Church and the book opens with a suitable drawing of the main floor to allow those who so desire to trace the action. But this location tends to limit Brandy's and Vivian's opportunities to get as crazy with vehicles as they have in the past which is a disappointment (did Iowa law enforcement ask for this concession?)
The normally flamboyant Vivian is almost subdued and generally quite practical -- her mania is mostly confined to Brandy's fears that her mom will act up. Peggy Sue, Jake, and Tina are among the returning characters but their roles are cameos; of the supporting players only Sushi gets a lot of page time.
Even the prime suspects (the out-of-town bidders) are sketchy with little to distinguish one from the other. Ok, one is a glutton from Russia and another is a female representing a major auction house but the best one of the lot is eliminated early in the proceedings.
I think I could forgive/overlook all of the above if Brandy was unchanged but, like so many series characters (be they in novels, movies or tv shows), she's been softened. Off Prozac, being a surrogate mother, reconciled to her old boyfriend's return to his wife and daughter, tender-hearted when her ex-husband drops Jake off for a visit, minimal designer name-dropping, and even less concern about makeup add up to a Brandy who's in danger of turning into a dull girl. She's even surprisingly accepting of Peggy Sue's latest deception. If pp. 229-230 are correct, what Brandy has learned sets up an important element of the next book.
I gather the authors have submitted that manuscript to their publisher so there's hope that Brandy's flirtation with domesticity/nest-building will be over soon. Meanwhile, don't start reading the series with this entry unless you're a strict family values adherent or desperate for an Agatha-style locked-room mystery.
First off, the book is way too short; somehow, Brandy and her mom round up all the possible suspects long before I was ready to have the mystery solved. I'm not sure if this was due to the constraints of keeping the novel an homage to Agatha Christie, the publisher's demand for a short and breezy work or the authors' (Barbara Allan is a joint pseudonym used by Max Allan Collins and Barbara Collins) need to move on to other projects.
Because Serenity (guessing that the town is based on the Collins' hometown of Muscatine, Iowa, I found the wikipedia article with its photos most helpful) is recovering from a particularly severe spring flood, most of the action takes place atop one of the highest hills in town, providing a classic locked-room setting. In this case it is St. Mary's Church and the book opens with a suitable drawing of the main floor to allow those who so desire to trace the action. But this location tends to limit Brandy's and Vivian's opportunities to get as crazy with vehicles as they have in the past which is a disappointment (did Iowa law enforcement ask for this concession?)
The normally flamboyant Vivian is almost subdued and generally quite practical -- her mania is mostly confined to Brandy's fears that her mom will act up. Peggy Sue, Jake, and Tina are among the returning characters but their roles are cameos; of the supporting players only Sushi gets a lot of page time.
Even the prime suspects (the out-of-town bidders) are sketchy with little to distinguish one from the other. Ok, one is a glutton from Russia and another is a female representing a major auction house but the best one of the lot is eliminated early in the proceedings.
I think I could forgive/overlook all of the above if Brandy was unchanged but, like so many series characters (be they in novels, movies or tv shows), she's been softened. Off Prozac, being a surrogate mother, reconciled to her old boyfriend's return to his wife and daughter, tender-hearted when her ex-husband drops Jake off for a visit, minimal designer name-dropping, and even less concern about makeup add up to a Brandy who's in danger of turning into a dull girl. She's even surprisingly accepting of Peggy Sue's latest deception. If pp. 229-230 are correct, what Brandy has learned sets up an important element of the next book.
I gather the authors have submitted that manuscript to their publisher so there's hope that Brandy's flirtation with domesticity/nest-building will be over soon. Meanwhile, don't start reading the series with this entry unless you're a strict family values adherent or desperate for an Agatha-style locked-room mystery.
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
THE HUMBOLDT CURRENT by Aaron Sachs
Cornell University professor Aaron Sachs traces the shift in environmental activism from the cosmopolitan, global approach of explorer naturalist Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) to the lococentrism of 21st century advocates concentrating on wilderness protection and preservation of green spaces in urban areas in the aptly titled The Humboldt Current. Subtitled Nineteenth-Century Exploration and the Roots of American Environmentalism, the account begins in the final year of the 18th century when Humboldt sails from La Coruna, Spain at the start of an odyssey that takes him to Venezuela and much of South America, with 2 side trips to Cuba and a brief stay in the U.S. where he meets with President Thomas Jefferson and other notables.
Divided into 4 parts - EAST "Humboldt and the Influence of Europe", SOUTH "J.N. Reynolds and the "More Comprehensive Promise of the Antarctic"", WEST "Clarence King's Experience of the Frontier" and NORTH (George Wallace Melville and John Muir in Extremis", each part is completed by an "Excursion", a fascinating vignette in itself.
The word lococentrism frustrated me. Wikipedia doesn't define the word, but treats it as a typo for logocentrism. A google search turned up instances of the word in a bewildering array of scholarly articles that would only be accessible to a person using a very good academic library. The generally excellent index in The Humboldt Current does not list the term as an entry. So the best I can do is define negatively, i.e., it is the opposite of cosmopolitan. I suspect this is a less than complete understanding of the term but it addresses the loco part which doesn't necessarily convey crazy; rather it was derived from the Latin word for place - locus.
As a result of working in a natural history museum in a very German city for 31 years, I was introduced to Alexander von Humboldt years ago which puts me in a decided minority according to Sachs. Learning more about Humboldt and the impact his ideas and methods had on a series of naturalist-explorers with whom I'm more familiar made for a book that was a real pleasure to read. In my mind's eye I keep seeing the volumes of Kosmos (in sadly bedraggled bindings) in the DDC 500 section of the library. At some point Humboldt's writings must have been very influential at MPM -- perhaps the early curators used the books until their bindings fell apart. Of course the volumes might have already been beat up by the 1880's since it was the members of the mid-19th century Wisconsin Natural History Society (which also goes by a long German name that I'll surely misspell) who convinced the city to accept their collections and establish what was became known as the Public Museum of the City of Milwaukee, later the Milwaukee Public Museum.
Pardon the digression and back to the book -- I was charmed and captivated upon opening it to learn about the author's adventures in Nevada. I'd only been in Nevade for four days at that point and was making my first visit to the public library, when I checked out a book which began with the story of an effort to find Humboldt, Nevada -- talk about immediately connecting to a book!
Some impressions upon finishing the book -- it has a very helpful chronology and a long section of my favorite kind of notes those which give the source of the information or quote and a discussion of the more complex topics and controversial statements. Hopefully, this book has settled the confusion about J.N. Reynolds first name -- he opts for J for James rather than Jeremiah and John as some sources call the lecturer and explorer (the N is for Neilson) -- see p. 21 and Note 39 (p.382). How sad to go down to posterity with one's first name a mystery but this has been the fate of many 19th century science writers who preferred to sign their articles with first (and middle) initials rather than their given names.
Divided into 4 parts - EAST "Humboldt and the Influence of Europe", SOUTH "J.N. Reynolds and the "More Comprehensive Promise of the Antarctic"", WEST "Clarence King's Experience of the Frontier" and NORTH (George Wallace Melville and John Muir in Extremis", each part is completed by an "Excursion", a fascinating vignette in itself.
The word lococentrism frustrated me. Wikipedia doesn't define the word, but treats it as a typo for logocentrism. A google search turned up instances of the word in a bewildering array of scholarly articles that would only be accessible to a person using a very good academic library. The generally excellent index in The Humboldt Current does not list the term as an entry. So the best I can do is define negatively, i.e., it is the opposite of cosmopolitan. I suspect this is a less than complete understanding of the term but it addresses the loco part which doesn't necessarily convey crazy; rather it was derived from the Latin word for place - locus.
As a result of working in a natural history museum in a very German city for 31 years, I was introduced to Alexander von Humboldt years ago which puts me in a decided minority according to Sachs. Learning more about Humboldt and the impact his ideas and methods had on a series of naturalist-explorers with whom I'm more familiar made for a book that was a real pleasure to read. In my mind's eye I keep seeing the volumes of Kosmos (in sadly bedraggled bindings) in the DDC 500 section of the library. At some point Humboldt's writings must have been very influential at MPM -- perhaps the early curators used the books until their bindings fell apart. Of course the volumes might have already been beat up by the 1880's since it was the members of the mid-19th century Wisconsin Natural History Society (which also goes by a long German name that I'll surely misspell) who convinced the city to accept their collections and establish what was became known as the Public Museum of the City of Milwaukee, later the Milwaukee Public Museum.
Pardon the digression and back to the book -- I was charmed and captivated upon opening it to learn about the author's adventures in Nevada. I'd only been in Nevade for four days at that point and was making my first visit to the public library, when I checked out a book which began with the story of an effort to find Humboldt, Nevada -- talk about immediately connecting to a book!
Some impressions upon finishing the book -- it has a very helpful chronology and a long section of my favorite kind of notes those which give the source of the information or quote and a discussion of the more complex topics and controversial statements. Hopefully, this book has settled the confusion about J.N. Reynolds first name -- he opts for J for James rather than Jeremiah and John as some sources call the lecturer and explorer (the N is for Neilson) -- see p. 21 and Note 39 (p.382). How sad to go down to posterity with one's first name a mystery but this has been the fate of many 19th century science writers who preferred to sign their articles with first (and middle) initials rather than their given names.
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
DOOMSDAY MEN by P.D. Smith
Somewhere along the 2000-mile drive I recently took from Wisconsin to Nevada, I managed to lose my copy of Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman with just a couple of chapters of this intriguing memoir to go. Naturally one of the first things I did after finding a permanent residence here was to visit the Spring Valley branch of the Las Vegas - Clark County Library District and get a card. And one of the first books I requested via the library district's online catalog was Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman.
Since the book had to come from another LVCC library, I borrowed Spring Valley's copy of Doomsday Men by P.D. Smith, a British "independent researcher and writer." You can find out more about him at this website, www.petersmith.com. Now physics was one of my h.s. washouts and I was able to avoid it in college.
Basically I never found out if I could cope with the subject since fitting it into my schedule senior year was preventing me from taking the French and Spanish courses I wanted. The situation was not helped by the fact that the instructor, who'd been my freshman year homeroom and religion teacher, and I never got along with particularly well.
Turns out I might have stuck with it if P.D. Smith had written his book 40 years sooner. The late 60's were a fascinating period of time for the "science of the 20th century." Physicists had gone from being the "saviour scientists" of popular culture and the public imagination to being "Dr. Strangeloves." Over the course of 2 world wars and the Cold War, physicists had moved away from backwater lab benches and entered into a Faustian partnership with politicians and the military in order to continue their research.
Smith traces the history of the physics and its all-compelling search for the superweapon to end wars, a replacement for the chemical warfare which had failed to end the "war to end all wars." Discovery built upon discovery yet secrecy was also the order of the day. The author takes us on an exciting, incredible journey into effort to get to the heart of the atom and then the nucleus.
Along the way readers are introduced to a variety of fascinating and a few repellent characters but the most unforgettable physicist in Mr. Smith's rendering has got to be Leo Szilard, a Hungarian by birth, citizen of the Weimar Republic by choice and finally refugee from Hitler's Europe in England and then the U.S. Szilard knew everybody in the field in those years and his scientific insights and political attitudes have had enormous impact on modern physics, even if his name is less familiar than Einstein, Bohr, Heisenberg, Teller, Oppenheimer and others, all of whom Szilard considered colleagues, if not friends. From the Curies to General Curtis LeMay, Doomsday Men takes the reader on an eye-opening trip through 20th century battlegrounds, labs and research centers, and into the dead-dealing nexus of politics and big science.
Darn, I wish I could have worked that senior year schedule out a little better, not to mention been more willing to tackle a subject that required more work on my part than most of what I studied in high school.
Since the book had to come from another LVCC library, I borrowed Spring Valley's copy of Doomsday Men by P.D. Smith, a British "independent researcher and writer." You can find out more about him at this website, www.petersmith.com. Now physics was one of my h.s. washouts and I was able to avoid it in college.
Basically I never found out if I could cope with the subject since fitting it into my schedule senior year was preventing me from taking the French and Spanish courses I wanted. The situation was not helped by the fact that the instructor, who'd been my freshman year homeroom and religion teacher, and I never got along with particularly well.
Turns out I might have stuck with it if P.D. Smith had written his book 40 years sooner. The late 60's were a fascinating period of time for the "science of the 20th century." Physicists had gone from being the "saviour scientists" of popular culture and the public imagination to being "Dr. Strangeloves." Over the course of 2 world wars and the Cold War, physicists had moved away from backwater lab benches and entered into a Faustian partnership with politicians and the military in order to continue their research.
Smith traces the history of the physics and its all-compelling search for the superweapon to end wars, a replacement for the chemical warfare which had failed to end the "war to end all wars." Discovery built upon discovery yet secrecy was also the order of the day. The author takes us on an exciting, incredible journey into effort to get to the heart of the atom and then the nucleus.
Along the way readers are introduced to a variety of fascinating and a few repellent characters but the most unforgettable physicist in Mr. Smith's rendering has got to be Leo Szilard, a Hungarian by birth, citizen of the Weimar Republic by choice and finally refugee from Hitler's Europe in England and then the U.S. Szilard knew everybody in the field in those years and his scientific insights and political attitudes have had enormous impact on modern physics, even if his name is less familiar than Einstein, Bohr, Heisenberg, Teller, Oppenheimer and others, all of whom Szilard considered colleagues, if not friends. From the Curies to General Curtis LeMay, Doomsday Men takes the reader on an eye-opening trip through 20th century battlegrounds, labs and research centers, and into the dead-dealing nexus of politics and big science.
Darn, I wish I could have worked that senior year schedule out a little better, not to mention been more willing to tackle a subject that required more work on my part than most of what I studied in high school.
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
Vintage Sacks
Wow, I was going to post the next paragraph as a comment to the blog entry I thought I made months ago and discovered it was still in my draft file. Must have buried it under newer entries, Now I am resolved to look it over again, correct typos and publish it with intended comment leading off.
Antonia Fraser and her husband, Harold Pinter, visited Ollie [aka Dr. Oliver Sacks] at his "little dark-red clapboard house" on City Island, a most un Bronx-like section of the Bronx. The only other details she provides about the house was that it had a porch and "was extremely close to the sea. She also mentions that Sacks told her and Pinter that he swam "in and out of the moored boats like a seal." Fraser, Antonia, Must You Go? My Life with Harold Pinter, p.141. A line from Awakenings was the seed of inspiration for Pinter's play A Kind of Alaska which premiered at the NT with Judi Dench as Deborah.
A friend of mine occasionally bikes on City Island so I've asked him to check this out and send me a photo if he identifies the place. Of course, many of the houses on the island are near water and piers -- several films have been shot on City Island as was much of the final episode of the U.S. version of Life on Mars if you want some idea of the area. In any case, if I get a photo of Oliver Sack's [old?] house, I'll share it here.
Like many people I first became aware of the work of Dr. Oliver Sacks from the 1990 film, Awakenings. Memorably portrayed by Robin Williams, the film's neurologist finds that a new drug, L-DOPA, "awakens" patients who survived the 1917-1928 epidemic of encephalitis lethargica but have spent the intervening 30-40 years in a catatonic state. The movie was a fictionalized version of the book of the in which Dr. Sacks chronicled of his efforts in the late 1960s to help patients at Beth Abraham Hospital, a Bronx, New York hospital, which was providing long-term care for a sizable group of individuals who had contacted this form of "sleeping sickness."
Oliver Sacks is a master storyteller and Vintage Sacks shows him to great advantage. For readers who must read Sacks' work as soon as it is published, this collection serves to highlight the best and possibly refresh the memory. For those like me who haven't done as good a job keeping it up, it was a re-introduction to a remarkable human being and scientist who could have had a full-time career as a writer, if the mysteries of the human neurological system hadn't led him along another path.
Antonia Fraser and her husband, Harold Pinter, visited Ollie [aka Dr. Oliver Sacks] at his "little dark-red clapboard house" on City Island, a most un Bronx-like section of the Bronx. The only other details she provides about the house was that it had a porch and "was extremely close to the sea. She also mentions that Sacks told her and Pinter that he swam "in and out of the moored boats like a seal." Fraser, Antonia, Must You Go? My Life with Harold Pinter, p.141. A line from Awakenings was the seed of inspiration for Pinter's play A Kind of Alaska which premiered at the NT with Judi Dench as Deborah.
A friend of mine occasionally bikes on City Island so I've asked him to check this out and send me a photo if he identifies the place. Of course, many of the houses on the island are near water and piers -- several films have been shot on City Island as was much of the final episode of the U.S. version of Life on Mars if you want some idea of the area. In any case, if I get a photo of Oliver Sack's [old?] house, I'll share it here.
Like many people I first became aware of the work of Dr. Oliver Sacks from the 1990 film, Awakenings. Memorably portrayed by Robin Williams, the film's neurologist finds that a new drug, L-DOPA, "awakens" patients who survived the 1917-1928 epidemic of encephalitis lethargica but have spent the intervening 30-40 years in a catatonic state. The movie was a fictionalized version of the book of the in which Dr. Sacks chronicled of his efforts in the late 1960s to help patients at Beth Abraham Hospital, a Bronx, New York hospital, which was providing long-term care for a sizable group of individuals who had contacted this form of "sleeping sickness."
Oliver Sacks is a master storyteller and Vintage Sacks shows him to great advantage. For readers who must read Sacks' work as soon as it is published, this collection serves to highlight the best and possibly refresh the memory. For those like me who haven't done as good a job keeping it up, it was a re-introduction to a remarkable human being and scientist who could have had a full-time career as a writer, if the mysteries of the human neurological system hadn't led him along another path.
Glamour Girls
Glamour Girls of Sixties Hollywood : Seventy-five Profiles by Tom Lisanti (2008) is a title from McFarland Publishing's extensive film and television performing arts category (http://www.mcfarlandpub.com/about.html). Sometimes it's hard to believe any more can be written about Hollywood in the 1960's but new angles on the motion pictures and television shows of the era keep popping up. In this book author Lisanti profiles 75 actresses of the era, most of whom briefly (some in close to the blink of an eye) passed across the big and little screens. Each actress gets at least one nice photograph from her heyday, a short description of career highlights, a longer section on "groovy" roles of the 60's, background on their pre-Hollywood years, and a section - lengths vary - on their post-1960's life and career(s). 13 of the women are interviewed as well and these interviews are the most interesting part of the book, imo.
For me, the most amazing thing about this book was a fleeting appearance by actor Steven Rogers (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0734779/). Mr. Rogers is shown getting close to one of the lovely ladies who are under a beach umbrella in one of those mid-60's beach movies. Rogers portrayed Doc on the first season of a hugely popular tv series, Combat! (the actual title includes a stylized bayonet, but an exclamation point is as close as my keyboard will get) and I had a huge crush on him. He disappeared from the show at the start of its second season (a sob from my pre-teen self), opting for the cushier life of beach and ski movies for a few years before departing from show business. A quick check of the yahoo group, combatfan, failed to provide much information beyond the imdb info.
All in all this is a fun read for fans of American films and television shows of the 1960's aimed at the teenaged audience that was dominating the tv set at home, if not the box office of the local movie theatre. Unfortunately, library books with excellent photos of movie actresses (or actors) are apt to have been vandalized at some point during their shelf life. This copy of Glamour Girls was no exception. Happily, the high quality of the book production work, another McFarland seliing point, has prevented the excisions from becoming too noticeable unless the reader goes through from cover to cover. In this case it was only a few pages into the Introduction before I realized 4 pages were missing and missing pages continued through to the end, generally in 4-page blocks. A less well-constructed book would have likely fallen apart before it had circulated very many times.
I meant to stick a note in when I returned it to the library the other morning but forgot; I'll try to remember to look up the catalog record and see which library owns the copy I read and call about the condition. Perhaps they'll take it out of circulation and obtain photocopies of the missing pages or replace it entirely before it goes out-of-print. Once someone has removed pages or otherwise damaged a book, subsequent users tend to be less careful than normal.
For me, the most amazing thing about this book was a fleeting appearance by actor Steven Rogers (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0734779/). Mr. Rogers is shown getting close to one of the lovely ladies who are under a beach umbrella in one of those mid-60's beach movies. Rogers portrayed Doc on the first season of a hugely popular tv series, Combat! (the actual title includes a stylized bayonet, but an exclamation point is as close as my keyboard will get) and I had a huge crush on him. He disappeared from the show at the start of its second season (a sob from my pre-teen self), opting for the cushier life of beach and ski movies for a few years before departing from show business. A quick check of the yahoo group, combatfan, failed to provide much information beyond the imdb info.
All in all this is a fun read for fans of American films and television shows of the 1960's aimed at the teenaged audience that was dominating the tv set at home, if not the box office of the local movie theatre. Unfortunately, library books with excellent photos of movie actresses (or actors) are apt to have been vandalized at some point during their shelf life. This copy of Glamour Girls was no exception. Happily, the high quality of the book production work, another McFarland seliing point, has prevented the excisions from becoming too noticeable unless the reader goes through from cover to cover. In this case it was only a few pages into the Introduction before I realized 4 pages were missing and missing pages continued through to the end, generally in 4-page blocks. A less well-constructed book would have likely fallen apart before it had circulated very many times.
I meant to stick a note in when I returned it to the library the other morning but forgot; I'll try to remember to look up the catalog record and see which library owns the copy I read and call about the condition. Perhaps they'll take it out of circulation and obtain photocopies of the missing pages or replace it entirely before it goes out-of-print. Once someone has removed pages or otherwise damaged a book, subsequent users tend to be less careful than normal.
Sunday, November 1, 2009
Stanley Kubrick : a biography (John Baxter)
John Baxter's Stanley Kubrick : a biography made for absorbing reading. The book covers his life, films and relationships with members of the filmmaking community -- stars, producers, other directors, technical crews and, with varying degrees of success, the authors and screenwriters whose work he transformed into images on the big screen. As a group these writers tend to be Mr. Baxter's most revealing sources.
There haven't been too many people to whom the dictum Less is More applies better than to Kubrick and not simply in terms of the number of films he made over the course of his career. By the end of his life as this biography tells it, S. K. comes across as a cross between Howard Hughes and Greta Garbo with a penchant for secrecy, obsession with security and the limited number of associates allowed through the gates. In shunning the celebrity culture of Hollywood for the relative isolation which he needed to remain creative, Kubrick may have created more fascination with his life and work than he would have if he'd chosen to reside in Malibu.
There haven't been too many people to whom the dictum Less is More applies better than to Kubrick and not simply in terms of the number of films he made over the course of his career. By the end of his life as this biography tells it, S. K. comes across as a cross between Howard Hughes and Greta Garbo with a penchant for secrecy, obsession with security and the limited number of associates allowed through the gates. In shunning the celebrity culture of Hollywood for the relative isolation which he needed to remain creative, Kubrick may have created more fascination with his life and work than he would have if he'd chosen to reside in Malibu.
Needless to say, Kubrick wasn't an active participant in the making of this biography and the people who were interviewed by John Baxter were former associates, not people working with him during the researching and writing of this biography.
Published in 1997 by Carroll & Graf Publishers and distributed by Publishers Group West, this 399-page work includes some terrific illustrations and a section of notes for each chapter. Alas the specific reference aren't noted by page or phrase so any reader (or future Kubrick biographer) wishing to fact-check using this book will have a job to untangle the background information.
On a personal note I was amazed to learn that one of the addresses for the Kubrick family during Stanley's high school years and also the address of his future wife, Toba Metz, was 1414 Shakespeare Avenue in the Highbridge section of the Bronx. In the 1940's my maternal and paternal grandparents lived a few blocks south of the Kubricks. My parents were only 2 and 4 years older than Stanley but both attended Catholic high schools in Manhattan, not William Howard Taft H.S., the "neighborhood" public h.s. for this area where Stanley and Toba went to school.
Researchers interested in delving into the Stanley Kubrick story more deeply should visit http://www.arts.ac.uk/kubrick.htm, the website of the archive of the acclaimed film maker's personal papers. The Archive contains more than 1000 boxes of material, including scripts, props, costumes, photography, correspondence, equipment and research.
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