Roaring 20s...and 30s...and 40s
Reading-wise, I've been on an early 20th century kick lately. I started with Norma Miller's autobiography, Swingin' at the Savoy, continued with Flapper, by Joshua Zeitz, a history of the Jazz Era, then moved on to Art Spiegelman's Maus comics about the experiences of an Auschwitz survivor (where the Jews are drawn as mice and the Nazis as cats), and now I'm on Stripping Gypsy, by Noralee Frankel, about the life of burlesque queen Gypsy Rose Lee.
I've had Norma Miller's book on my shelf for a long time, since I went to Seattle for a dance event. Miller is a sassy lady, decidedly opinionated, with a very high opinion of herself. Her book is fascinating for its portrayal of an important era in American music and dance, but suffers from disorganization and sloppy editing. Honestly, if it had been about any other subject, I might have put it down.
The Zeitz book I picked up entirely on a whim from the dollar table at Borders, and it was one of the better whims I've had. It's a far-reaching work that covers fashion, literature, music, dance, feminism, sexuality, cinema, and probably six other areas I'm forgetting, in a lively writing style that keeps you turning pages. Highly recommended.
Also highly recommended are the Spiegelman comics. The comic medium allows for clever symbolism that would be lost in a traditional volume. Not only are the Jews portrayed as mice, and the Nazis as cats, but each nationality has its own signature animal. The Poles are pigs (possibly a reference to Orwell's Animal Farm?), the Americans are long-eared hound dogs, the French (of course) are frogs, and amusingly, during the protagonist's stay in Sweden, the Swedes are drawn as reindeer. This symbolism lets Spiegelman create some interesting images: when the protagonist (the author's father) is pretending not to be Jewish, he is drawn as a mouse wearing a pig mask. Later, when the author is being interviewed about the public reception of his work (Speigelman breaks the fourth wall with reckless abandon, interspersing his account of his father's war experience with real-time narration of the process of interviewing, writing, and publishing), he portrays himself wearing a mouse mask, indicating, perhaps that he feels a bit of a fraud as a Jew.
I'm still in the middle of the book about Gypsy Rose Lee, but so far my impression is that, while it's meticulously researched and annotated, it's a bit dry and curiously superficial. Many fascinating-looking details are glossed over, and the timeline of the book jumps around confusingly. It has, however, spurred an interest in reading Gypsy's own autobiography (keeping mind that she was not always truthful in relating her life story, making Frankel's painstaking research necessary), and her two mystery novels, The G-String Murders and Mother Finds a Body. Neither of these received particularly good reviews when they were written, but stories that take place in burlesque, written by America's premier burlesque queen--how could you pass that up?
I've had Norma Miller's book on my shelf for a long time, since I went to Seattle for a dance event. Miller is a sassy lady, decidedly opinionated, with a very high opinion of herself. Her book is fascinating for its portrayal of an important era in American music and dance, but suffers from disorganization and sloppy editing. Honestly, if it had been about any other subject, I might have put it down.
The Zeitz book I picked up entirely on a whim from the dollar table at Borders, and it was one of the better whims I've had. It's a far-reaching work that covers fashion, literature, music, dance, feminism, sexuality, cinema, and probably six other areas I'm forgetting, in a lively writing style that keeps you turning pages. Highly recommended.
Also highly recommended are the Spiegelman comics. The comic medium allows for clever symbolism that would be lost in a traditional volume. Not only are the Jews portrayed as mice, and the Nazis as cats, but each nationality has its own signature animal. The Poles are pigs (possibly a reference to Orwell's Animal Farm?), the Americans are long-eared hound dogs, the French (of course) are frogs, and amusingly, during the protagonist's stay in Sweden, the Swedes are drawn as reindeer. This symbolism lets Spiegelman create some interesting images: when the protagonist (the author's father) is pretending not to be Jewish, he is drawn as a mouse wearing a pig mask. Later, when the author is being interviewed about the public reception of his work (Speigelman breaks the fourth wall with reckless abandon, interspersing his account of his father's war experience with real-time narration of the process of interviewing, writing, and publishing), he portrays himself wearing a mouse mask, indicating, perhaps that he feels a bit of a fraud as a Jew.
I'm still in the middle of the book about Gypsy Rose Lee, but so far my impression is that, while it's meticulously researched and annotated, it's a bit dry and curiously superficial. Many fascinating-looking details are glossed over, and the timeline of the book jumps around confusingly. It has, however, spurred an interest in reading Gypsy's own autobiography (keeping mind that she was not always truthful in relating her life story, making Frankel's painstaking research necessary), and her two mystery novels, The G-String Murders and Mother Finds a Body. Neither of these received particularly good reviews when they were written, but stories that take place in burlesque, written by America's premier burlesque queen--how could you pass that up?