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Biography 23.4 (2000) 787-838



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Reviewed Elsewhere

Contributing editors William Bruneau, Brian Cassity, Judith Coullie, Michael Fassiotto, Corey Hollis, Noel Kent, Gabriel Merle, Barbara Bennett Peterson, Bronwen Solyom, and Paula Willoquet-Maricondi provided the excerpts for this issue.

Publications reviewed include Albion, French Review, French Studies, The Globe and Mail (Toronto), The Historian, The Independent on Saturday (Durban), Los Angeles Times Book Review (LATBR), Le Monde des Livres, New York Review of Books (NYRB), New York Times Book Review (NYTBR), The New Yorker, Pacific Historical Review, Presidential Studies Quarterly, Revue d'histoire littéraire de la France, Sight and Sound, Southern African Review of Books (on-line ed.), The Sunday Tribune (Durban), Times Literary Supplement (TLS), Washington Post National Weekly Edition (WP), The Weekend Australian, and The Women's Review of Books.



Allen, Woody
The Unruly Life of Woody Allen. Marion Meade. Sydney: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2000. 384 pp. $Aus45.00.

"Meade has jerrybuilt a loathsome, prying, unjust, venomous and hypocritical book. . . . It would be less disgusting if it were merely about the scandal, like Vanity Fair's superb long piece on [Michael] Jackson's almost certain innocence. But it purports to take Allen's career as a film-maker seriously, and it does not. It claims to deal in depth with his emotional and artistic development, and it does not. . . . He is a sinner, it seems, and therefore cannot (must not) be talented, skillful, hard-working, charming or even funny. This is, alas, America in one of its periodic pumped-up fits of malicious morality, and it's pretty unattractive, pretty hypocritical, and I hate it."

Bob Ellis. Weekend Australian, May 20-21, 2000: 14.

Amis, Martin
Experience. Martin Amis. Toronto: Knopf Canada, 2000. 401 pp. $Can35.95.

"In Experience . . . traumas are cunningly interlaced with memories from the remote and more recent past. . . . With its recurrent themes and nimble shifts from one period to another, Experience is well made and ingeniously stitched together. It's also extremely well written."

Jeremy Lewis. Globe and Mail, May 27, 2000: D8-9. [End Page 787]

Anderson, Laurie
Laurie Anderson. Roselee Goldberg. New York: Abrams, 2000. 204 pp. $39.95.

"Although Goldberg assumes the reader is familiar with performance art, her descriptions of Anderson's pieces are vivid and illuminating, and she shows the seamless continuity of Anderson's daily life, dreams and work."

Eric P. Nash. NYTBR, June 11, 2000: 23.

Anderson, Marian
Marian Anderson: A Singer's Journey. Allan Keiler. New York: Lisa Drew/ Scribner, 2000. 447 pp. $Can40.00; $30.00.

"It is hard to avoid the conclusion that Anderson went from being an exploited minority to being an exploited individual, a sweet and helpful woman who was unable to and unwilling to say no to the needy and the greedy. She emerges from this biography as a more fragile and conflicted figure than previously imagined, which makes her titanic contribution to African-American struggle in the 20th century all the more inspiring."

Philip Anson. Globe and Mail, April 22, 2000: D10.

"Keiler's impressively researched book supplements and supersedes Anderson's 1956 autobiography, a typically guarded affair. He covers the life chronologically, avoiding psychological analyses. The massively discreet Anderson remains opaque. In public, Anderson did not exude much humor; neither does her biographer. There are no startling revelations. But by putting his emphasis on her career, Keiler gives Marian Anderson the homage she deserves. It is a quietly amazing story."

Anthony Heilbut. NYTBR, Apr. 2, 2000: 17-18.

Andréas-Salomé, Lou
Lou Andréas-Salomé, l'alliée de la vie. Stéphane Michaud. Paris: Seuil, 2000. 196 pp. F128.

After H. F. Peters' inebriating biography of Lou Andréas-Salomé, Michaud's gives us a rather conventional image of that mediocre novelist who was the friend of Nietzsche and Freud. It is well documented, rather syrupy, with a taste of herbal tea.

Roland Jaccard. Le Monde des Livres, Mar. 31, 2000: 11.

Armstrong, Lance
It's Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life. Lance Armstrong with Sally Jenkins. New York: Putnam, 2000. 275 pp. $Can34.99.

"Liked the book, but not the author. . . . Many of us...

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