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 enlarge | Author: Meryle Secrest
Publisher: Delta
Category: Book
List Price: $14.95
Buy Used: $3.50
You Save: $11.45 (77%)
New (2) Used (12) Collectible (2) from $3.50
Avg. Customer Rating:  28 reviews
Sales Rank: 232126
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 480
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 9 x 6.1 x 1.3
ISBN: 0385334125
Dewey Decimal Number: 782.14092
EAN: 9780385334129
ASIN: 0385334125
Publication Date: June 8, 1999
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 A bold and moving book on a moving and complicated man May 3, 1999
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Since 1959 (I was in Lisbon, then, with my actor-playwriter-composer husband - very well known, by now) when I first heard of Stephen Sondheim. it was love at first sound - West Side Story lyrics, for a 22 years actress to be were a dream - and now, 40 years got by and, reading this MARVELLOUS and HONEST book, I KNOW WHY I fell so in love with the man and his work - am finishing the book, and about to recommence it! CECILIA THOMPSON (Guarnieri) Sao Paulo, BRAZIL
 A word of protest ! April 27, 1999
6 out of 7 found this review helpful
I am a passionate admirer of Stephen Sondheim's output, and joyfully anticipated reading this book. It is pedestrian and uninspiring - - surely Mr. Sondheim could have entrusted this work to a writer with more flair, skill and specialist knowledge of the creative and professional worlds he inhabits. The most striking aspect of Ms. Secrest's book, in my view, is the snobbish and insupportable bit of American bashing she indulges in. She introduces the notion that Sondheim has found a more receptive audience for his work in England than he has in the US, and posits that this is attributable to the superior "training" of the English theatre-going public (e.g., rigorously schooled in Shakespeare, a native love of language, etc.). I am an American and an avid theatre-goer who has been resident in London for seven years, and cannot identify any justification for Ms. Secrest's absurd obervations! They signify what these kinds of remarks always do - the desperate and embittered attempts of a surpassed culture to cling to the romance of its imagined regality.
Mis-identification of photo of Mimi Lynch March 26, 1999
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I am the granddaughter of Mimi Lynch, who is mis-identified in a photograph in your book. The black haired woman standing next to Dorothy Hammerstein is not my grandmother, Mimi Lynch. I, nor my mother, who grew up with the Hammersteins, recognize this woman, but we are certain it is not our relative.
A disappointing biography. March 25, 1999
7 out of 7 found this review helpful
I, like many other people, approached this biography with high hopes. Unfortunately, I found an often poorly and pretentiously written book. Some of it is so incoherent that it was hard to believe it had been edited and copy-edited. There were also a number of factual errors in the book, many of them minor, some not so minor, but surprising in a book like this (especially one that Sondheim was apparently allowed to see and comment on before publication).However, what is the Sondheim addict to do? Craig Zadan's "Sondheim and Co." and Stephen Banfield's "Sondheim's Broadway Musicals" both have much of value (Martin Gottfried's "Sondheim" is awful), even if Banfield's often brilliant and certainly ground-breaking book has a few factual errors of its own. But they are not biographies. If you love Sondheim, this is a book you're going to want to read; there is unquestionably much that is of interest here. Hopefully, no one will read it under the illusion that it is definitive. In the meantime, I look forward to the next Sondheim biography in the hope that when it comes, it is better than this one.
Oh, All Right March 13, 1999
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
This was worth reading for the insights Sondheim provided into his work and for the numerous interviews conducted in its writing, but I wish someone would tell Ms. Secrest that the numerous analogies she draws between Mr. Sondheim's life and classical literature are both pretentious and overdone. What's the point you're trying to make Meryle? I'm sure it's not how well read you happen to be. And one other thing: being a homosexual does NOT mean that everything you produce artistically is colored by your sexuality. Couldn't she think of any thing else to say that was relevant? I guess not, but this book is worth reading for die-hard Sondheim fans.
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