@ Download PDF An Affair to Remember: My Life with Cary Grant, by Maureen Donaldson, William Royce

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An exceptional copy; fine in an equally fine dw, now mylar-sleeved. Surprisingly and particularly well-preserved; tight, bright, clean and especially sharp-cornered. Literally as new; 288 pages; Description: 288 p. , 16 leaves of plates : ill. ; 24 cm. Subjects: Grant, Cary (1904-1986) --Donaldson, Maureen (1946-) --Motion picture actors and actresses --United States --Jounalists --Biography

• Sales Rank: #1352444 in Books
• Published on: 1989-02-16
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: 20.00" h x 20.00" w x 20.00" l,
• Binding: Hardcover
• 288 pages

Most helpful customer reviews

0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
this is the best Cary Grant book written
By Alex
So far, this is the best Cary Grant book written!

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful.
Reading Past Midnight
By Ms_Scout
I give this book 5 stars because there are not too many books that keep me awake at night. Usually even a good book puts me to sleep sooner or later. Not this one.

Maureen Donaldson had a four year relationship with legendary Hollywood actor Cary Grant from 1973-1977 after he had retired from film making. Her descriptions of meeting and first getting to know Grant made me feel like I was almost experiencing it with her. I could definitely identify with her feelings of awe and being overwhelmed that Cary Grant was interested in her. I would have felt the same way. As she got to know him and spend more time with him, she saw that he was only human (aren't we all). In fact, he was very human, with many of the same fears, insecurities and childhood hurts that so many of us have to deal with ourselves.

I agree with other reviewers who feel this book is not a trash Cary Grant book. I don't think that was her intention. I don't think less of Grant now than before I read the book. From everything I have read about Grant in this book and elsewhere, it seems he had a very rock-solid core to him. He comes across as a very loyal friend, surprisingly generous at times (when the mood struck him), tender-hearted and kind.

Maureen tells in her book how Grant read a daily devotional each day of the year out of a Christian booklet he had a subscription to. After they broke up Maureen said she continued the practice of reading those daily selections herself.

She took Grant to an Alice Cooper concert (with Grant in disguise). He hated it, but the fact that she talked him into going proves to me that he really cared about her. A man his age going to an Alice Cooper concert? That is love.

I do wonder why she wrote this book. I guess I should not try to speculate. According to Maureen, Grant tried to get her to marry him and even enlisted Jennifer Jones and her last husband to offer their home as a wedding site.

Even after reading the whole book I still can't help but think Maureen was nuts not to marry him.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful.
...
By S. Harper
I've just finished reading this and i'm a little shellshocked. Not because I feel Grant has been villified but perhaps merely because it shows such a debonair and enigmatic idol of mine as a true fallible human being.

Like the other reviewer commented, I too thought it seemed to be written with a fair amount of objectivity. It did not come across to me as a bitter and delibrate attempt to trash or undermine Grant. It does come across, however, as a bit of a tacky and harrowing romance novel, even the presentation of the book conveys such an image.

I think if you're a Cary Grant fan that wants to find out a little more about Archie Leach and is willing to accept the fact that their view of Cary may be tarnished in the process; then go ahead and read this, it is an interesting and (from what I can tell) balanced read.

Let's all hope he was happy in the end.

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? Ebook Download The One from the Other, by Philip Kerr

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Germany, 1949: Amid the chaos of defeat, it's a place of dirty deals, rampant greed, fleeing Nazis, and all the intrigue and deceit readers have come to expect from this immensely talented thriller writer. In The One from the Other, Hitler's legacy lives on. For Bernie Gunther, Berlin has become too dangerous, and he now works as a private detective in Munich. Business is slow and his funds are dwindling when a woman hires him to investigate her husband's disappearance. No, she doesn't want him back-he's a war criminal. She merely wants confirmation that he is dead. It's a simple job, but in postwar Germany, nothing is simple-nothing is what it appears to be. Accepting the case,Bernie takes on far more than he'd bargained for, and before long, he is on the run, facing enemies from every side.

• Sales Rank: #395405 in Books
• Brand: A Marian Wood Book/Putnam
• Published on: 2006-09-07
• Released on: 2006-09-07
• Ingredients: Example Ingredients
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: 9.26" h x 1.30" w x 6.26" l,
• Binding: Hardcover
• 384 pages

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• Great product!

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Set in 1949, Kerr's excellent fourth novel to feature Bernhard Gunther (after 1991's German Requiem) finds the erstwhile PI managing a failing hotel about a mile from the site of the Dachau concentration camp. After the death of his wife, Kirsten, in a mental hospital, he calls it quits and opens a private detective agency. A series of missing-Nazi cases sets Bernie on a course that becomes increasingly complicated until he's beaten to a near pulp, had his little finger chopped off and is sent to a mysterious private estate to recover. There he's drawn into a nightmare involving the American occupation and the CIA, and soon his life hangs in the balance. Kerr's stylish noir writing makes every page a joy to read ("The little mouth tightened into a smile that was all lips and no teeth, like a newly stitched scar"). Perfectly plotted, the book builds to a satisfying conclusion. (Sept.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
After a 15-year hiatus during which he's taken readers from the Himalayan snows to Enlightenment England, Kerr returns to the war-torn Germany of his Berlin Noir trilogy with a fourth case for sardonic detective Bernhard Gunther. It is 1949, and fed up with trying to run a hotel next door to Dachau, Gunther hangs out his shingle and in walks a tall blond with marriage on her mind and a missing husband on her conscience. Gunther sets out to track down the renowned sadist, one of many SS spiders able to slip through the Allies' dragnet and find refuge in the Americas. Of course, nothing is quite as it seems, and our knight's detached weltschmerz gets a fresh coat of tarnish. As with his earlier Gunther books, Kerr follows Raymond Chandler's playbook closely, adapting his trademark metaphors with all the subtlety of a goose-step and the restraint of Hermann Goring at a knackwurst-eating contest, to say nothing of the relish. Still, the knockabout action should please most fans of classic hard-boiled mystery and historical espionage. David Wright
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review
Grim and gripping, with all the author's customary sure-handedness in evidence. -- Kirkus Reviews, starred review, August 1, 2006

[I]n terms of narrative, dialogue, plot, pace and characterizations, he's in a league with John le Carre and Alan Furst. -- Washington Post, September 11, 2006

Most helpful customer reviews

32 of 34 people found the following review helpful.
Orwell or Koestler couldn't have done it better--and they were there
By Bill Donovan
I am pleased to give this book my unqualified endorsement. Ingeniously, Kerr reintroduces the old Bernie in a pre-war prologue, giving readers new to the series a good taste of the original character. The main story takes place ten years later.

The reviewer who observed that Bernie has lost his snap may be right, but only to a point. Kerr has aged Bernie masterfully, reflecting the horrors, compromises and deprivations of the war and its aftermath in the older man. Of course, he's somewhat subdued, but he's as determined, resourceful and decent as ever. The plot is excellent but read this book for character. You won't be disappointed. In fact, I think you'll find yourself thinking about Bernie--and his creator--for days afterward.

Note to P. Kerr: Well done. Thank you.

27 of 30 people found the following review helpful.
Enjoyable though clichéd
By Seher mit Hirn
I just finished reading this book without having read the Noir books before, so Bernie Gunther was not an old acquaintance of mine. I really enjoyed the book for what it is - a crime novel. The only thing that I found annoying as time progressed was that Bernie's hard-boiledness comes a little forced at times. Sometimes there are simply too many metaphors. One thing is never just big, it is as big as ...whatever. All these metaphors and similes just were a bit much for my taste.
Now, I am a historian and I am German. And from that point of view I have another point of criticism.
Having grown up in Germany (even though not in the post-war years) Bernie's cultural references always seem odd. He seems to know things that would have been unknown to a regular German police officer even after 1945. E.g, Bernie compares something he has seen to an elephant with enormous ears and pink color. That's a clear reference to Dumbo, a movie that wasn't shown in Germany until 1951. And there are more of these little things that - for me - take away from Bernie's credibility as a character. They simply tear me away from the story and make me shake my head a couple of times before I manage to get back into the story.
Bernie is a believable hard-boiled gumshoe. But an American one, I'm afraid.
And a personal pet peeve - some of the German words used simply don't make any sense. That is something that - with a bit of care - could have been avoided.

38 of 44 people found the following review helpful.
And mark how well the sequel hangs together
By Lonya
William Shakespeare, King Richard III, Act III. Scene VI.

And mark also how well "One From the Other", the sequel to Philip Kerr's Berlin Noir trilogy, hangs together. I picked up Kerr's latest Bernie Gunther novel soon after reading the first three novels. Despite what I consider a flawed plot, One From the Other was an entertaining read.

The first three Gunther novels took place in Germany (usually Berlin) in 1936, 1938, and 1947. They pretty much tracked the rise and fall of the Third Reich. One From the Other takes us into 1949. Germany is still a defeated nation and a divided one as the Cold War continues to get colder. Gunther's wife is in the hospital after suffering a complete nervous breakdown and Bernie is managing his late father-in law's run down hotel. The hotel is located a stone's throw from Dachau's notorious concentration camp and it is no surprise to find that visitors are few and far between. A chance meeting with a U.S. Army officer at the hotel sets off a chain of events that plunges Bernie back into the detective business. Before long, Bernie is swimming through a deadly sea of ex-Nazis fleeing persecution and those secret organizations created to help them escape.

The strong point of all four Bernie Gunther books has been Kerr's excellent portrayal of Bernie Gunther. From the outset Gunther has been the quintessential hardboiled detective (Kerr obviously has great affection for the genre) while at the same time coming across as a believable and all-too human character. One From the Other is no different. Here we find Gunther aging none too gracefully. He is not as spry or as tough as he used to be and he knows it. He is something of a defeated man in a defeated country.

The weak point of "The One From the Other" is its plot. The plots of the first three Gunther struck me as all being well within the realm of possibility, even as Gunther worked his way (at cross purposes) with Nazi higher ups such as Himmler and Heydrich. The plot here just did not fall within those parameters for me. Others may disagree but the one plot device (which cannot be revealed in a review) that propels this story just struck me as being a bit beyond the pale. The plot was not so far fetched as to ruin the story but it did leave me shaking my head a bit.

Despite my quibble over the plot device I found "The One From The Other" to be an enjoyable read. As noted, Kerr is a master at characterization and anyone who has read the earlier Gunther novels should be happy (as I was) to see how Gunther's life is going in post-war Germany.

Four stars for the writing; three and one half stars for the plot. Recommended. L. Fleisig

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!! Free PDF V is for Vengeance: A Kinsey Millhone Novel, by Sue Grafton

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A spiderweb of dangerous relationships lies at the heart of V is for Vengeance, Sue Grafton's daring new Kinsey Millhone novel.

A woman with a murky past who kills herself-or was it murder? A spoiled kid awash in gambling debt who thinks he can beat the system. A lovely woman whose life is about to splinter into a thousand fragments. A professional shoplifting ring working for the Mob, racking up millions from stolen goods. A wandering husband, rich and ruthless. A dirty cop so entrenched on the force he is immune to exposure. A sinister gangster, conscienceless and brutal. A lonely widower mourning the death of his lover, desperate for answers, which may be worse than the pain of his loss. A private detective, Kinsey Millhone, whose thirty-eighth-birthday gift is a punch in the face that leaves her with two black eyes and a busted nose.

And an elegant and powerful businessman whose dealings are definitely outside the law: the magus at the center of the web.

V: Victim. Violence. Vengeance.

• Sales Rank: #242492 in Books
• Brand: A Marian Wood Book/Putnam
• Published on: 2011-11-14
• Released on: 2011-11-14
• Ingredients: Example Ingredients
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: 9.50" h x 1.35" w x 6.50" l, 1.50 pounds
• Binding: Hardcover
• 448 pages

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• Great product!

Amazon.com Review

Amazon Exclusive: A Letter from Sue Grafton

As with the last several books in the series, V Is for Vengeance was a long time in the making. I work by trial and error, keeping a running account of the process in journals that in this case totaled 967 single-spaced pages. It took me from March, 2009 until March, 2010 to settle on a storyline, and after that, it was ten months of hard labor. Women give birth to babies in less time, but surely without as much suffering. Brave soul that I am, I stuck with it, picking my way painstakingly from beginning to middle to end.

What sets the narrative in motion is Kinsey Millhone’s spotting a shoplifter in an upscale department store. She alerts a sales clerk, who in turn notifies Security, which results in the woman’s arrest. Within two days, the sticky-fingered thief has taken a dive off a four-hundred-foot-high bridge, leaving her fiancé with troubling questions. While the overall subject matter is organized retail theft, of greater concern to Ms. Millhone is the fact that at the height of the action, shortly before she’s punched in the face, she realizes it’s her thirty-eighth birthday and thus ends up celebrating the milestone with a broken nose and two black eyes.

--Sue Grafton, November, 2011

Review
Praise for V is for Vengeance:

"Sure to satisfy."—USA Today

“Central to the books’ appeal is not the hoodlums and their crimes—which are often fueled by alcohol or stupidity rather than the epic, high-stakes evil driving other crime books—but rather Kinsey herself…She is witty and weary and a lot of fun.”—Los Angeles Times

“One of Kinsey Millhone’s best outings…must reading for Grafton fans.”—The Globe and Mail (Canada)

“Grafton exhibits the pace, form, and technique of a marathon champ in her latest.”—The Kansas City Star

“The author has hit a high mark with her latest offering, a complex tale of love, betrayal, ambition, and, of course, murder…The only bad thing: There are just four letters left in the alphabet.”—The Associated Press

“Terrific.”—Booklist

About the Author
New York Times bestselling author Sue Grafton is published in 28 countries and 26 languages—including Estonian, Bulgarian, and Indonesian. Books in her alphabet series, begun in 1982, are international bestsellers with readership in the millions. And like Raymond Chandler, Ross Macdonald, Robert Parker, and John D. MacDonald—the best of her breed—Sue Grafton has earned new respect for the mystery form. Her readers appreciate her buoyant style, her eye for detail, her deft hand with character, her acute social observances, and her abundant storytelling talents.

Sue divides her time between Montecito, California and Louisville, Kentucky, where she was born and raised. She has three children and two grandchildren. Grafton has been married to Steve Humphrey for more than twenty years. She loves cats, gardens, and good cuisine.

Most helpful customer reviews

141 of 162 people found the following review helpful.
Kinsey Millhone is back with a vengeance!
By L. Dean Murphy
Following U is for Undertow, Kinsey Millhone is back with a vengeance! She gets a 38th birthday "punch in the face and busted nose" in May 1988. A cake would have been nice. Kinsey is a pragmatist, "a big fan of forgiveness as long as I'm given the opportunity to get even first."

Reluctantly shopping at an upscale retailer, Kinsey spies Audrey Vance stealing expensive silk PJs. The civic-minded P.I. discovers the woman is in cahoots with another and reports them both. Vance is arrested, while the other scofflaw nearly runs Kinsey down in the parking garage with a Mercedes. Vance is later found dead, an apparent suicide, but homicide is soon suspected.

In a parallel plot, Lorenzo Dante, Jr., known simply as Dante, is a loan shark with alleged Mafia ties. Dante has quite an inferno of illicit businesses burning --- and a red-hot romance with a powerful attorney's wife. One of those enterprises is a highly organized ring of shoplifters, whose kingpin was Audrey Vance. Vance's unsuspecting fiancé hires Kinsey to investigate what he thinks are bogus shoplifting charges, and the improbable suicide. Thrown into the mix are a corrupt cop, and a gambling addict who sells his soul to Dante.

Predictably, characters face death during the investigation, and Kinsey is pulled into the vortex. Ghosts from novels past haunt Kinsey, even likeable petty criminal Pinky Ford is instrumental in the dénouement. Vixen reporter Diana Alvarez from "Undertow" is a thorn in Kinsey's side but eventually proves beneficial. Heartthrob and former flame Cheney Phillips keeps readers guessing if the fire will rekindle. Unfortunately, friend and landlord Henry is away, visiting one of his ancient siblings with a broken bone.

The structurally complex plot is simplified with the help of Kinsey's index cards that are "like the pieces of a puzzle that would fall into place once I understood what I was looking at." That, and her intuition. "The purpose of intuition is to warn us when the wolf arrives at the door dressed as Little Red Riding Hood."

Any Sue Grafton novel reads like a welcomed but long-overdue letter from the iconic private eye, bringing readers up to speed with her latest escapade. The queen of Alphabet Soup-titled mysteries (who earned the title of Grand Master by Mystery Writers of America) has made a quantum leap by taking on social issues in the last few of her 22 too-realistic-to-be-fiction works.

With perpetrators identified early on, this is more of a whydunit than a whodunit, validating Grafton's title of Grand Master bestowed by her peers. While Kinsey--an average Jo--has learned to leap hurdles in her career, Sue Grafton has become an Olympic-class pole vaulter in hers. Impeccable plot, prose as rich as Wall Street, and everyone's favorite investigator make this a surefire bestseller.

V is for Vengeance (Kinsey Millhone Mystery)
--- Reviewed by L. Dean Murphy

110 of 127 people found the following review helpful.
Not quite up to her usual standard but still good in parts.
By Bookworm
There is something bleak in the new Kinsey adventure. At 38, the detective is lonelier than ever. Maybe this is why she lets herself get involved in two apparently unconnected affairs, neither likely to bring in the big bucks. The pace is slow, at times bordering on sluggish. While she plods on, two other characters are brought in. We sense that there will ultimately be a connection, but do not care greatly. Of course, towards the end everything fits neatly - too neatly? with some highly improbable developments. To tell the truth, by that time one just wants it over and done with. Yet this is not a bad book, and a host of well loved characters make cameo appearances (though we could do with less details about Rosie's cooking).
What can I say, I shall buy the next Sue Grafton...

22 of 23 people found the following review helpful.
Bloated and Overblown Entry in an otherwise fine series
By Bruce Simon
Each year, I eagerly await the next installment in the Kinsey Milhone series. And now for the second time I have been disappointed. "U is for Undertow" left me submerged in indifference and now "V is for Vengeance" became a chore for me to wade through in order to reach a conclusion I found rather obvious. This latest installment is an overblown, turgid tome which either meanders at a less accelerated pace or needlessly editorializes by going back and forth to the viewpoints of certain major characters and consigning Kinsey Milhone to a lesser role. "V is for Vengeance" tries to present psychological profiles (i.e Nora,spouse of a lawyer with questionable ethics, who seethes at her husband's infidelities or Lorenzo Dante, a gangster seeking the elusive trappings of refinement while running a criminal enterprise. The plot shows promise with Kinsey almost being killed by an escaping shoplifter and her investigation into an elaborate shoplifting ring, spurred on by the mysterious death of a suspected perpetrator.
Certain supporting characters are well drawn out such as a grieving fiancee of the dead shoplifter, who refuses to believe his beloved could do any wrong, a malevolent, corrupt cop from Kinsey's past and a burglar trying hard to reform. yet the drawbacks of this novel revolve around its length. A mystery novel should never try to imitate the volume of either a Michener or a Tom Clancy.Then the book becomes a cumbersome tome and tends to obscure the intent of the reason for the mystery to begin with. Sue Grafton still has the talent to take this long running mystery series to the final letter but her final entries should be less weighty and analytical and present more of an original puzzle for the reader to savor than the past two books have.

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~~ Download PDF Fire Ice (The Numa Files), by Clive Cussler, Paul Kemprecos

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In Serpent, Clive Cussler introduced a hero for the new millennium in Kurt Austin, the leader of NUMA's Special Assignments Team. In previous encounters, Austin and his colleague Joe Zavala have battled eco-extortionists and mad empire builders-but they have never faced a menace like the one before them now.

In the heart of the old Soviet Union, a mining tycoon has proclaimed himself czar of Russia. Claiming Romanov ancestry and backed by billions of dollars, he is determined to overthrow the already shaky Russian government-and U.S. opposition doesn't bother him one bit. A little crisis of their own should distract the Americans for a while, and he knows just the thing. . . .

Filled with all the hair-raising action and endless imagination that are Cussler's hallmarks, Fire Ice is a dazzling thriller from the grandmaster of adventure fiction.

• Sales Rank: #923187 in Books
• Brand: Putnam
• Published on: 2002-06-03
• Released on: 2002-06-03
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: 9.32" h x 1.40" w x 6.34" l, 1.75 pounds
• Binding: Hardcover
• 434 pages

Features

• Great product!

From Publishers Weekly
This newest addition to the Kurt Austin series (after Blue Gold) has the men from NUMA ([National] Underwater & Marine Agency) team up with former KGB spies to face down a Russian mobster with czarist aspirations and a zealot's hatred for the "corruption and materialism" of the Western lifestyle. The NUMA research vessel Argo is in the Black Sea for a PR jaunt when Austin spots the overdue TV crew being chased down an island beach by mounted Cossacks. Austin learns from his old KGB Cold War adversary Vladimir Petrov that the island is a mothballed submarine base commandeered by paranoid mobster Mikhail Razov (employer of the Cossacks), a billionaire who built Ataman Industries by taking over utilities and mines sold by the state. Razov claims descent from the Romanovs and is plotting to assume the throne. Meanwhile, when a U.S. Navy sub goes missing and a mysterious tidal wave swamps a Maine coastal town, the NUMA team figures out that Ataman is mining "fire ice" unstable and explosive solid methane in the high-pressure deep-sea bottom. Austin and his oceanographic team join forces with Petrov and set out to foil Razov's plot. Cussler is in top form here, working in a role for Old Ironsides and Czar Nicholas II's crown while throwing in enough derring-do and eco-lore to leave his fans breathless. Coauthor Kemprecos (Blue Gold, with Cussler) adds his oceanographic expertise to the mix.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal
Adult/High School-Deposits of "fire ice," frozen methane hydrate found in abundance off of the East Coast of the United States, become potential hazards of monumental proportions. When an insane Russian mining mogul decides he can use the sub stance to threaten and destroy large areas of major national powers, he becomes the target for Kurt Austin, leader of NUMA's (National Underwater and Marine Agency) Special Assignments Team. Austin and his partner in the fight against crime, Joe Zavala, encounter a band of traditionally dressed and armed Cossacks; an underground bunker of a Nazi sub; and the Russian mogul's assistant, who looks and acts like Rasputin. With its many surprises, constant action, and Cussler's special brand of characters, the book will be just the thing for readers who enjoy fast-paced action-adventure flavored with some alternate-history events.
Pam Johnson, Fairfax County Public Library, VA
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
This is the third in the series of Kurt Austin novels coauthored by Cussler and Kemprecos. Austin is a larger-than-life hero in the mold of Dirk Pitt, the central character of more than a dozen novels authored by Cussler alone. His latest adventure includes such good stuff as tidal waves, a mad Russian mining tycoon who thinks he's the tsar, his Rasputin-like assistant, murders, Cossacks charging, Old Ironsides firing, and, oh, yes, the inevitable gorgeous heroine. While the fast-paced plot is wildly improbable (it revolves around "fire ice," the frozen methane hydrate deposits in the depths of the ocean, which, if disturbed, will accelerate global warming and destroy the environment), and there's nary a doubt that Austin will save the day, the novel is still a lot of good fun. With Cussler's following, this is bound to be a good summertime hit. For all general collections. Robert Conroy, Warren, MI
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Most helpful customer reviews

0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
Fits the Cussler motif. Very Enjoyable.
By Richard
Another great Cussler tale with more changes in direction than you could ever imagine. As usual, a bit of a tedious start, but lots of action to counterbalance the story as a whole. Hard to put it down for the last 30%.

0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
Five Stars
By Paul F. Figueroa
Excellent book as are all in the Clive Cussler series.

0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
Another Great Read!!
By Suzanne Hooper
Another brilliant book by Clive Cussler!

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~ Free PDF Gerard Manley Hopkins: A Very Private Life, by Robert Bernard Martin

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Will surely rank as one of the foremost literary biographies of our time.' John Carey, Sunday Times In his lifetime Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889) published just a single poem - only a few close friends were aware he wrote. Much of his work was burnt by fellow Jesuits on his death. And yet Hopkins is today a huge figure in English literature. Homosexual but terribly repressed, he channeled his emotions toward nature and God, with profound results. Princeton emeritus professor Martin, the only biographer to have unrestricted use of Hopkins' private papers, tells this extraordinary story from Hopkins' early life and studies at Oxford, through his tortuous conversion from Anglicanism to Catholicism, to his struggle in later years to retain his very sanity. 'In Martin, the unhappy and tormented genius has found the most sympathetic and intelligent interpreter . . . [The book] goes to the heart of Hopkins, and plants him firmly before us as a Victorian, and a great one.' Allan Massie, Sunday Telegraph 'Martin follows Hopkins through his toils with sympathy and a great unshowy command of the facts. In this magnificently solicitous biography he has re-established the contours of the story definitively and made the homosexual drama integral to the better-known drama of conversion and poetics.' Seamus Heaney, Independent on Sunday 'The triumph of this learned, scrupulously detailed and persuasive biography is that it brings the reader as near as it is perhaps possible to come to living Hopkins' life, to sensing the mysterious crushing pressures that were for him intimately bound up with the richness and complexity of his writing.' Hilary Spurling, Daily Telegraph

• Sales Rank: #929140 in Books
• Published on: 1991-06-27
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: 20.00" h x 20.00" w x 20.00" l,
• Binding: Hardcover
• 448 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Hopkins (1844-1889), the gentle, scholarly poet-priest, greatly admired soldiers and harbored a propensity for militaristic jingoism. Neurotically obsessed with death, which he simultaneously feared and welcomed, he channeled this obsession into a "pattern of identification with female saints and martyrs." Wracked by guilt over his homosexual impulses, he repeatedly called himself a "eunuch" in his poems, and expressed his deepest religious emotions in sexual metaphors. Mentally unbalanced in his later years, he wrote sonnets and pagan hymns to physical beauty as a means to hold onto his sanity, according to Princeton emeritus professor Martin, the only biographer to gain unrestricted access to Hopkins's notebooks and jottings. This superlative, often astonishing portrait of Hopkins provides the fullest account to date of his agonized conversion from the Anglican faith to Roman Catholicism, and of the inner forces that drove him to create phenomenally observant poetry. Photos.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews
Martin (English/Princeton) brings his ranging knowledge of English Victorian life and his understanding of the poetic sensibility (Tennyson, 1980; With Friends Possessed: A Life of Edward Fitzgerald, 1985) to the subtle, obscure, introverted, and spare life and works of Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-89), the Jesuit priest whose work, published first in 1918, 29 years after his death, is considered as influential as T.S. Eliot's in initiating the modern movement in poetry. Chapter one, ``The Importance of Being Manley,'' introduces the major struggle in Hopkins's life--a strong sexuality conflicted between what his family expected of him in giving him a name he seldom used and his own homoerotic impulses, suppressed, dislocated, and ultimately projected on nature and God, producing his religiously charged sensual poetry. Educated at Oxford, Hopkins later discovered in the discipline, intellectuality, and fellowship of the Jesuit order a refuge for his quirky personality, querulous nature, and personal style of piety. His subtle and unique philosophy of ``inscape,'' a highly complex sense of identity, and ``instress,'' the thrust of energy that allows one to apprehend the unique identity of each individual, found expression in a cryptic, dense, evocative experimental poetry, manipulating syntax, diction, and rhythm to reflect his sense of himself, his world, and his very personal relationship with God. Beset by melancholy, fears of his own unworthiness, and guilt at his lack of accomplishment, he published only one, nearly inscrutable, poem during his lifetime: The Wreck of the Deutschland (1875), describing the drowning of five nuns in a shipwreck. Along with sympathy, tact, appreciation, and humor, Martin brings new information from previously unpublished sources to elucidate the shadows in which Hopkins's life and poetry had been enfolded by well-meaning friends, scholars, and the critics who have made an industry of him. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About the Author
Robert Bernard Martin (1918-1999) was born in Illinois. He had a distinguished academic career and was Professor Emeritus of English at Princeton University, USA, from 1951 to 1975, before retiring to Oxford, where he became a writer. He published ten books about the Victorian era, including biographies such as Tennyson, the Unquiet Heart in 1980 and A Very Private Life in 1991.

Most helpful customer reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful.
The definitive biography of Hopkins
By J. P. Reynolds
Hopkins is one of my favorite poets. I am biased, though, because I, too, had been a Jesuit priest in the earlier years of my life. Given that background, I approached this biography with an even more critical eye.

Martin has given Hopkins a worthy biography. He explores his life within the Catholic Church, the Jesuits and ministry with an acute and sensitive eye. Hopkins’ poetry is not the easiest to read or understand and his life is even more difficult to make sense of. Martin allows Hopkins to be not just a priest or poet, but a man in full, mature complexity. This is the definitive biography for some time to come.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful.
Of the three books I have read on Hopkins recently ...
By William E. Biebel
Of the three books I have read on Hopkins recently, this is the most scholarly and contains much of his poetry. I am enjoying it very much.

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## Ebook Download The Birthday Party: A Memoir of Survival, by Stanley N. Alpert

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On January 21, 1998, the night before his thirty-eighth birthday, federal prosecutor Stanley Alpert was kidnapped off the streets of Manhattan. This is the story of what happened next. . . .

Alpert was taken by a carful of gun-toting thugs looking to use his ATM card, but when they learned his bank balance the plan changed. They took him, blindfolded with his own scarf, to a Brooklyn apartment, with the idea of going to a bank the next day and withdrawing most of his money. But the later it got, the more the plan changed again . . . and again . . . as his captors alternately held guns to his head, threatened his family, engaged him in discussions of "gangsta" philosophy, sought his legal advice, and, once they learned it was his birthday, offered him sexual favors from their prostitute girlfriends as a "birthday present." All the while, Alpert, still blindfolded, talked with them, played on their attitudes and fears, tried to figure out where their mood swings would take them next, and memorized every detail he could in the event that he ever managed to get out of there alive.

In the meantime, his friends and law enforcement colleagues, worried that they hadn't heard from him, launched a major police and FBI investigation. It, too, would take many twists and turns before it was done-and some of them would be very strange indeed.

Filled with immediacy, drama, and extraordinary characters, told not only from Alpert's memory and notes but from police reports, interviews with NYPD detectives, FBI agents, and witnesses, videotaped confessions, and court records, The Birthday Party reads like a thriller-but every word is true.

• Sales Rank: #1997027 in Books
• Published on: 2007-01-18
• Released on: 2007-01-18
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: 9.30" h x 1.16" w x 6.34" l,
• Binding: Hardcover
• 306 pages

From Publishers Weekly
In this tartly written memoir recalling his 1998 kidnapping, Alpert, a former assistant U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, describes his abduction and release, and the subsequent trial of the kidnappers, with an impressive amount of detail and only the occasional note of self-congratulation for how he handled the ordeal. On the night before his 38th birthday, Alpert was forced at gunpoint into a car near his Greenwich Village apartment, blindfolded, made to relinquish his ATM and PIN, and driven to Brooklyn, where he was kept in an apartment full of oddly personable, gun-wielding youths and teenage prostitutes. In between violent threats, the criminals solicited legal advice concerning past crimes and offered him pot and sexual favors in honor of his birthday. After 25 hours, they handed their hostage $20 cab money and left him in Prospect Park. Though the second part of the account, detailing the mechanics of the arrests and sentencing of the perpetrators, along with Alpert's return to normalcy, is relatively dry and slow, Alpert delivers an honest, vivid chronicle of the suspenseful event itself in the memoir's first half. (Jan.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
The view from inside the trunk of a car is delivered in this harrowing, first-person account of kidnapping, robbery, and revenge. Alpert, who now heads his own law firm, worked for 13 years as an assistant U. S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York. On January 21, 1988, the eve of Alpert's thirty-eighth birthday, he was snatched from a Greenwich Village sidewalk by a carful of thugs, blindfolded and held at gunpoint, and taken to a Brooklyn apartment where his captors tried to figure out how to profit from their big catch. This story is told in two parts, effectively giving a satisfying narrative arc to Alpert's complex ordeal: the first part is "Mouse," recounting Alpert's victimization; the second part is "Cat," in which Alpert pursues his former captors. A street-smart prosecutor, Alpert delivers an unflinching look at the humiliating, terrifying role of the victim, lacing his plight with commentary on contemporary crime and the creaking judicial system. The second part reads as compellingly as the first and with every bit as much suspense. An effective, one-two punch of a memoir. Connie Fletcher
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review
The Birthday Party [is] one of the most exhilarating, improbable New York stories ever told. -- New York Times, January 24, 2007

Alpert wins over the reader the same way he did the kidnappers, with the force of his canny, self-assured, bighearted personality. -- New York Times Book Review, April 22, 2007

Favorite Books of 2007 Nonfiction:

Alpert was kidnapped in 1998 in Manhattan after his 38th birthday party; his memoir of the experience is "like watching a slow-motion train wreck -- difficult to look at but impossible to turn away from." -- Los Angeles Times Book Review, December 9, 2007

On Jan. 21, 1998, Assistant U.S. Attorney Stanley Alpert is about to celebrate his 38th birthday. Coming home to his Greenwich Village apartment after a disappointing blind date, he becomes the target of a hapless gang of stupidly vicious punks who kidnap him, hoping to use his ATM card to gain access to his bank account.

"The Birthday Party: A Memoir of Survival" is not a funny book, although some of what happens in the course of the harrowing next 26 hours is funny. It may be hard to remember that in 1998 cell phones were far from ubiquitous and the horrors of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks hadn't happened.

Despite the passage of time, however, I have no doubt that Alpert's recollection of those events and conversations, including the lame jokes, are entirely accurate. Life-changing experiences are often seared into memory, complete with details of sound, smell and taste that defy ordinary recall. And even though he eventually escapes from his captors and sees his assailants brought to justice, it is clear that Alpert continues to grapple with the disturbing effects of that violation.

Contrast is everything: We see Alpert's $70 Florsheims as opposed to the thugs' $130 Air Jordans. The punks drive a black Lexus. The lawyer doesn't own a car. Alpert and his captors are products of New York's mean streets. Alpert grew up as a nice Jewish kid in Brooklyn just as the safe, working-class neighborhood was changing to a gang- and drug-infested one. His parents divorced. His family was poor, and he grew up dealing with routine muggings. Ultimately, this impoverished childhood served as the catalyst to a desire to succeed and sent him in search of an education. His attackers see their backgrounds, ironically not all that different from Alpert's, as excuses for turning to lives of crime and drugs and as a justification for their stealing what Alpert has legitimately earned. "Hey, you have an education. You can always earn it back," one said.

In the face of his captors' terrifying threats, Alpert forces himself to remain calm. When the thugs threaten to harm his elderly father, the blindfolded hostage engages in a life-and-death game of mental chess to protect his family without inflaming his captors. Throughout the ordeal, he is faced with the very real understanding that his assailants have nothing to lose and that these may be his last few precious hours on this earth.

Anyone who has ever watched "Cops" knows that most crooks aren't geniuses. These bad guys here are no exception. Their schemes are violent, overblown and essentially stupid, but what's truly chilling is how young these perpetrators are, how devoid of any moral compass and how ignorant they are of how the world works. Their behavior is ultimately so bizarre (including offering their captive sex with one of their group's female members) and so puzzling (they let him go for no clear reason) that investigators don't believe Alpert's story.

At first they think that he made up the whole thing. But the clues Alpert manages to provide - part of a cell phone number, the pattern of tiles in a brownstone lobby and the name of a local deli - eventually provide enough information so that the kidnappers are found and brought to justice. Their videotaped interrogations and unwittingly damning confessions, rendered verbatim, are simultaneously incredibly arrogant and incredibly sad. These are young people who know not they know not.

Reading "The Birthday Party" is like watching a slow-motion train wreck - difficult to look at but impossible to turn away from. Alpert depicts good guys and bad guys in vivid detail, bringing into focus the motivations and backgrounds of both the perpetrators and the cops, FBI agents and district attorneys.

Those telling details - alternately funny, appalling, fascinating and scary - are the product of some hard-won wisdom on Alpert's part. That's the real gift he received on the occasion of his remarkably memorable 38th birthday. "The Birthday Party" is a good read, but it is also an object lesson. We all need to pay attention to it. -- Newsday, February 4, 2007

Stark and honest. -- Kirkus Reviews, starred review, November 1, 2006

THE BIRTHDAY PARTY: A Memoir of Survival. By Stanley N. Alpert. (Putnam, $24.95.) In the 1970s, muggings in the Brooklyn neighborhood where Alpert, a federal prosecutor, grew up were so frequent that they followed a shorthand script ("Yo, lend me a dime"). The racial tensions of that era form the backdrop for Alpert's account of his ordeal as the victim of a kidnapping that took place in 1998, on the night before his 38th birthday. Grabbed at gunpoint in Greenwich Village by three toughs who demanded his A.T.M. password and took $800 from his account, Alpert was then held overnight at the apartment of an associate of the kidnappers in preparation for a half-baked scheme to compel him to withdraw $50,000 from his bank the next day. The night was by turns harrowing and farcical; his captors' friends came by to eat McDonald's takeout, smoke pot and have sex in the presence of the blindfolded, terror-stricken prisoner. Alpert remained acutely alert during his captivity, psychologically manipulating his kidnappers and noting every feature of his surroundings to help investigators should he survive. The rest of his tale, a more conventional police procedural, is something of an anticlimax, though well served by his litigator's sense for dramatic pacing and the telling detail. And throughout, Alpert wins over the reader the same way he did the kidnappers, with the force of his canny, self-assured, bighearted personality. -- New York Times Sunday Book Review, April 22, 2006

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0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
Good read. Suspenseful page-turner.
By Benjamin
This is the sort of story that wouldn't work as fiction -- just slightly too bizarre to be believable. But it all really happened, and all the facts are fully substantiated. That makes it suspenseful and exciting and occasionally very funny. I really couldn't put it down. That said, the editing, mostly in part 2, leaves something to be desired.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful.
The Birthday Party--An Amazing Story and Even Better Book
By Brett Field
I just finished reading The Birthday Party by Stanley Alpert and I was completely taken by it. On its surface the book tells the true story of a regular guy who gets snatched from the streets of New York City and is plunged into another world where his life hangs in the balance at the whim of the thugs who kidnapped him. But the book is really about much more than that. It is about friends, about family, and about the incredible blessing each of us have to wake up each morning and to be alive. As the author relates in the book nothing makes you more appreciative of your friends, family and the ones you love than the prospect of never seeing them again. Along the way the book is exciting, harrowing, scary and pretty darn funny. It paints a vivid picture or New York City from the late 90s that people may have never seen (or if they lived through it they may not remember how crazy those times were in NYC). It also explores all sorts of relationships--between father and son, buddy and buddy, boyfriend and girlfriend, captor and captive--that will both remind you of what you already know about those relationships and offer new perspectives on them.

The book is fantastic, well written, and an easy read as it quickly takes us from scene to scene. I hung on every page and shed a few tears when it was done. I highly recommend The Birthday Party. Read it. You will be glad you did.

48 of 61 people found the following review helpful.
How to Save Your Own Life
By J Brown Room
The writer was kidnapped by men with automatic weapons, forcing him into the backseat of a shiny new black Lexus. Money was stolen from the kidnap victim's bank account, and he was held at gunpoint, blindfolded for 26 hours. The writer survived a hellish living nightmare due to his own resourceful answers to kidnappers's questions. Reading his weighing of these answers is one of the MANY great parts of this book. Others are the vividness with which he portrays all the harrowing and terrifying and yes, comical moments of this crime. This is an unbelievable story (law enforcement did not even believe the story for a day or 2!) told unbelievably well.

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!! Download Ebook Private Demons: The Life of Shirley Jackson, by Judy Oppenheimer

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• Sales Rank: #515116 in Books
• Published on: 1988-07-13
• Released on: 1988-07-13
• Ingredients: Example Ingredients
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: 6.28" h x 1.22" w x 9.32" l,
• Binding: Hardcover
• 304 pages

From Publishers Weekly
A porpoise born to a tenacious goldfish (in the words of one of her sons), Shirley Jackson (1916-1965) early rejected the torch of her family's gracious country-club conventionality. "She would laugh at it, flaunt it, rebel against it. But she would carry her mother within her, an unexorcised demon," throughout her short life. This sympathetic biography confirms that the meeting of Jackson (a loner, whose route led her inward) and Stanley Edgar Hyman ("a bearded, loud-mouthed communist Jew" who thrived on having an audience) set her firmly on her career path. Famous above all for "The Lottery," she wrote plays, short stories, light novels, gothics and science fiction, while Hyman produced some of the most brilliant criticism of his time. For 25 years, surrounded by a coterie of creative people at colleges in New York and Vermont, this improbable couple taught, wrote, argued, emoted, smoked and drank to excess (Jackson alone ate a pound of butter a day)and died too young. They left a mixed legacy: four troubled, "somewhat reclusive" children, and some of the most lively writing of mid-century America. Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Although scholarly and well researched, this biography is made highly entertaining by its numerous anecdotes, collected in extensive personal interviews with friends and family of Shirley Jackson. Combining critical analysis with a discussion of her life, this first biography of Jackson reveals how the author of a chiller like The Haunting of Hill House can be the same woman who, in her Life Among the Savages , was a forerunner of Erma Bombeck. It further reveals how Jackson's own volatile lifestyle and diverse personality contributed to her early death, a tragedy not so unlike the frightening conclusion of her widely known story "The Lottery." Sandra Dayton, Homer Community Lib., Ill.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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28 of 30 people found the following review helpful.
Well-written and insightful
By Mike Christie
Most people find out about Shirley Jackson through her famous story "The Lottery", but her many fans will tell you there is much more to her than that one, admittedly wonderful, story. "We Have Always Lived in the Castle" and "The Haunting of Hill House" are compulsory reads for any Jackson fan, and Oppenheimer's book should be on the must-read list too.
Jackson wrote some fine horror, and some wonderfully funny "women's magazine" humour: "Life Among the Savages" and "Raising Demons". This book makes it easier to understand the woman behind the two very different kinds of work she produced. Oppenheimer has gathered enough detail to paint a picture of a talented, not very pretty, but determined young woman. There are plenty of details about Jackson's work--including, for example, quite some detail about the creation of "The Lottery", which Jackson's husband, the critic Stanley Hyman, apparently recognized at once for the masterpiece it was.
However, the children are as interesting as the books. If you have read Jackson's collections of stories about her children, these portraits will be among the most fascinating parts of the book. Oppenheimer follows up somewhat on the children's lives after Shirley's death, helping to fill in the picture--the youngest, Barry, was only twelve when she died.
Recommended.

20 of 26 people found the following review helpful.
My review is the opposite of the others; months to prepare this.
By David Seaman
Addendum: Ruth Mitchell will release a new biography of Shirley Jackson with Liveright Publishing in September of 2016.

Judy Oppenheimer is the only person to have written a biography of America's most important writer, Shirley Jackson. It is aggressively titled "Private Demons" playing not only off of her reputation as a writer of Gothic supernatural fiction (which is a tiny fraction of her catalog) and what Ms Oppenheimer has decided was a life that was heavily peppered with misery, fear and mental illness. If one were to interview the people surrounding Judy Oppenheimer's life and then select only the trials and difficulties about which to write her own biography could be titled, "The Tormented Biographer." How do I know this? Because we are all the same and the same could be said of your own biography.

Don't get me wrong: you will enjoy this book. Calling it non-fiction is a bit of a stretch.

The thrill of writing a biography is the level to which the author can manipulate the material; it is very easy to combine the words of several different interviews to allow a questionable thesis to come out. That said, you will love this book, even if you're not a fan of Shirley Jackson. Jackson's life is really not that different than most of our lives, particularly the life of one of the few woman writers of serious literature in the first half of the 20th century. Her house was filled with people like Nemerov, Ellison, Salinger, even Dylan Thomas. (Ralph Ellison is the godfather to her youngest son, Barry.) Oppenheimer takes a rumor of a sexual tryst between Dylan Thomas and Jackson and elaborates upon it to great length despite the fact that she must concede that the only people who know exactly what happened are Shirley Jackson (a woman who was entirely devoted to her husband and family) and Dylan Thomas. Both writers wrote of their meeting but neither suggested anything other than literature discussion took place.) Jackson's short story "The Visit" is dedicated to Dylan Thomas but even that fictionalized story (and anyone who writes fiction knows that plots or events may well come from reality, but with the license of fiction they must be peppered with untruths and the unvented.) "The Visit" was not the title her story was originally published under: a different title without the dedication. Her husband, Stanley Edgar Hyman, re-published the story after her death with the original title and dedication back in place. It is known that the two spent about a half hour alone on Jackson's North Bennington porch but nothing more is known. By thinking about what we know of Shirley Jackson it is far more likely that she and Thomas discussed poetry and the difficulties of fame. To pass on the gossip of many speculators of that event is the work of a second rate biographer.

Judy Oppenheimer reprinted every bit of gossip and speculation that Jackson's friends and colleagues spit out twenty years after her death. And it is this very thing that makes her book great fun. It is clear that Oppenheimer did ample research: she interviewed all four of Jackson's children, every friend, teacher, childhood friend and spent countless hours at the Library of Congress going through box after box of Jackson's personal papers, all of which were donated to the LOC by Stanley Hyman in 1968 according to the wishes of Ms Jackson. When a biographer is sitting with countless bits of interview, quotes, published stories, it is similar to a jigsaw puzzle in putting together a life, at the same time, this is a jigsaw that has pieces made of smooth rounded edges; elements can be left out, the commentary of the author in between factual quotes can be written in any form. The truth is that art- all art - is about manipulating an audience. To prove that, look at my review. It is not at all appropriate to write a critical review in first person, yet due to my passion about Jackson as a writer I am deeply aware that by personalizing the experience I had in researching for this review my essay will carry more power to you, the reader, by learning of the extremes that I personally went to to prepare this review. However it is no more manipulative than writing a piece of music the subject of which is sad and finishing on the I chord; open and spread, the root below the F clef, the third a tenth higher and the fifth a tenth above that. (Db, F, Ab) The elements I use as a composer are all tools but can be seen as forms of manipulations so that the audience will hear a simple ending, open and hollow; in short, sad.

Just one week ago, in an email exchange this critic had with Barry Hyman, the youngest of Jackson's children, Barry had this to say: "Do not believe anything you read in the SJ biography Private Demons. The author was more suited for malicious gossip columns than serious literary biography..."

Again, I repeat, anyone will enjoy reading this book and the truth is the same with any and all biographies. The author has great power to manipulate the facts to create the story he wants. The emotional breakdown of Jackson described by Oppenheimer isn't much different than the breakdown that William Styron wrote of in his autobiographical book "Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness." About 25% of the population has suffered the hell that Jackson suffered in her anxiety and depression and the effect that it had on her family is no different than the effect that it has on the loved ones of anyone fighting depression and anxiety. Stop and think: Have you suffered from de[pression of anxiety? Has a friend or family member suffered thus? This is a medical iollness and was not what created the brilliant works of Shirley Jackson. To toss around words such as "mad" or insnane" is a testament to what we do not know about the medicine of the mind. In a hundred years behavioral medicine and physical medicine will fall under the same catagory and we will fell as guilty about how we've spoken of Sylvia Plath and Shirley Jackson as we now feel about the burning of the depressed in the 15th century for their possession by demons. (Is this not what nearly all of Jackson's work was about?)

There is no illness worse on the planet. But to tie it into her writing, to seek blame in between the quotes is not at all professional. To suggest that Shirley Jackson "willed" herself into death based on a single letter sent to her agent written before her death and delivered after her death is nothing more than a manipulation of specific pitches in a specific key placed on the staff in a specific place. As tears come to your eyes with the final chords of Bernstein's "West Side Story" a reader can just as easily be moved by "Private Demons". "West Side Story" is a work of fiction, but the elements of that story occur every day. In fact, I daresay there is not a soul alive who has not suffered at the hands of love. The difference is that our lives are not underscored. Our day to day actions are not peppered with adverbs and adjectives.

That said, if you want the gossip and if you adore Jackson her written words aren't enough for you then this is an excellent addition. I've been studying the work of Shirley Jackson since I read "Life Among The Savages" in sixth grade (1973) and "The Lottery" in eighth grade. Judy Oppenheimer does manage to capture a thesis of which Jackson would approve: the greatest evil on the planet comes from other people. It is clear that as a woman, married to a man, with immeasurable IQ's failing to fit into the mold of a 1950's housewife while being the bestselling author of that decade, she would definitely suffer the gossip of the townsfolk who live around d her and the third rate news media. A small village in Vermont is prone to hypocrisy and bigotry- the smaller a population the more pronounced its voice becomes (Jackson married the son of an orthodox Jew and at a young age they both embraced the Socialist views of Karl Marx. Anti-Semitism was rampant in the United States then, just as it is now) they raised their children with creative imagination. This isn't all that different from many other families and each and every person in the world feels as though he fails to fit into the social mold of what one should be. That is the cornerstone of American Media: emaciated women with perfect makeup; television shows showing families with whom we can never measure up; fiction that fails to depict the mundane elements of our lives. Common sense, really. And it is unquestionable that the life of Shirley Jackson was just as mundane as all of our lives. Keep that in mind as you read "Private Demons" because this biography is written to make the life of Shirley Jackson seem like one of Jackson's books. We all have private Demons and the only difference here is that Oppenheimer has dragged them kicking into the sunlight. The element that makes Shirley Jackson so unusual is the fact that she managed to be a famous best-selling author and raise a family in a traditional manner. She used her creativity to create wonderful experiences for her children and husband. She wrote after the children went to bed. Stephen King writes in the morning. William Styron wrote from after lunch until cocktail hour. It's impossible to find a control group because other than Flannery O'Connell, what woman was on a par with Shirley Jackson between 1946 and 1962?

A good biographer transcribes every single interview and then sends it to the subject for approval and a second chance to make his/her words clear. A good biographer- or at least a fair biographer- sends the completed manuscript to the main subjects before publication. In this case that would be the four children of Shirley Jackson. This can alter the power a biographer has, even his thesis, but when a writer is claiming to write non-fiction, there are obligations attached. Speculation must be marked as such. Sounds dissapointing? Perhaps, but wait: a biographer who does this can earn much more than the pleasure of having completed a book and that would be the respect of the subject's family. Occasionally that means keeping a family secret about one of America's first female composers at the request of a great nephew now living in Germany. It could mean a gift of an original manuscript from the son of a famous American composer. Even the act of researching a review for someone else's biography can bring new friendships and the thrill to discover that a famous writer's son is a gifted composer and his life work is the same as yours. But what it means mostly is the respect of these people and the eventual respect of scholars who search for truth instead of a biography filled with carefully selected adjectives and adverbs chosen to guide the reader toward following any thesis. (The second draft of any document should involve the removal of as many adverbs as possible.)

I apologize to Oppenheimer for pulling the rug from beneath her; I am aware of the intense amount of work that goes into researching an entire biography,(Okay, for me it is great fun- touching history first hand through latex gloves and loose leaf paper or adjusting a tape recorder before the descendent of one whom you idolize) but more is owed to truth. "Private Demons" is an important book to read if a scholar of Jackson or Hyman but it must be a small fragment of it. Given how Jackson felt, the best way to study Shirley Jackson is to simply read her books and her stories. This is, after all, a woman who went to her grave without adding a single comment to her culture changing story, "The Lottery." If one requires more than was on the page the only thing to do is re-read the story. Jackson wrote an essay called "The Biography of a Story" about the public's reaction to "The Lottery" and in reading this it is quite clear that Jackson found the nation's reaction humorous. Oppenheimer's quotes of reactions from that essay lead one to believe that she wasn't laughing at all of it. She was. And her quick wit and responses taken in context are very appropriate. This essay is published in "Come Al0ong With Me." Read it if you require proof.

"Private Demons" was published in 1988 and twenty five years ago, Jackson had faded into some obscurity. Now, however, there are more literary critics writing about her work and she has been "outed" as one of the finest writers of English language fiction in history. Jackson is now defined as one of the first "pre-post modernists". This is common, after all, Sondheim's "Follies"- the most celebrated and respected Broadway musical ever written- closed on Broadway in 1970 losing all of its initial investments. In 1988 one could not find most of Jackson's works, long out of print. Today, every word she ever wrote is readily available with new cover art and with rapid sales on Amazon as well as entire shelves at Barnes & Noble. Stephen King- America's most famous writer of what happens inside the human mind- counts Jackson among his favorite writers and, in fact, his 1980 novel "Firestarter" was dedicated to Shirley Jackson. King had nothing to do with the rebirth of Jackson's fame- they fall into two different categories entirely. Jackson is on a par with Henry James, Edgar Allen Poe and James Joyce and was consistently so. Stephen King has written just as brilliantly, but not as consistently and where King appears to be the most prolific writer in history he is third after Agatha Christie and (of course) Shirley Jackson, who wrote more than he in a twelve year period of publishing than during Kings thirty five years of publishing. Judy Oppenheimer can be thanked for keeping Jackson alive and for being the first to risk writing a biography on a mind so brilliant that not even Frued could have kept pace.

So regarding Oppenheimer's "Private Demons" I repeat that you will enjoy reading it but suggest only AFTER you've read every word that Jackson wrote herself. The fact that you can't take "Private Demons" as fact doesn't mean you won't enjoy the book. If you read every other review you will note that all the other critics were taken in by the gossip, the charm and the adverbs and adjectives that Oppenheimer used. They had a good time and walked away feeling a little bit on "the inside." Still, it`s worth closing by repeating Barry Hyman's words regarding this book about his mother: "Do not believe anything you read in the SJ biography Private Demons. The author was more suited for malicious gossip columns than serious literary biography..."

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful.
A WELL-CRAFTED BIO WITH BOTH TRIUMPH AND TRAGEDY
By Allen Smalling
Most people remember Shirley Jackson as the talented author of THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE and WE HAVE ALWAYS LIVED IN THE CASTLE, not to mention the deeply disturbing and still popular short story "The Lottery." Some of us also have lucked onto her two story collections-slash-novels about family life and kids, LIFE AMONG THE SAVAGES (1953)and RAISING DEMONS (1957), books with a surprisingly comedic view of life with four small children, in which Jackson portrays herself as a harried homemaker, not a nationwide celebrity with book contracts and a schedule of (not entirely welcome) speaking engagements.

Yet who was this Shirley Jackson? Talented, yes, and accomplished. But the cost of expressing those talents took an already unbalanced individual and set her on the path of multiple doom due to excessive and steady consumption of sweets, cigarettes, brandy and amphetamines. There were many sides to Shirley Jackson, says the author, and she justifies that by offering a warts-and-all bio that is conversant with feminist theory (the book dates from the 1980s) but not under its thumb; knowledgeable about psychobiography but not entirely a psycho-bio of a book, and understanding how Jackson's past influenced her adult life.

We return to Burlingame, California (suburban San Francisco) for Shirley's grammar-school years and to upstate New York for her teen and college years. With every intention otherwise, Shirley was a thorn in her mother's side, a striking but not particularly pretty face and a body that leant itself to obesity. Shirley was also a bright if not totally focused student and early on leant more toward poetry and short-story writing than the graceful suburban airs and superficial beauty that her mother would much rather have preferred.

There is a great deal of truth in the comedies-of-family life LIFE AMONG THE SAVAGES and RAISING DEMONS and a great deal of omission, too. Through those books we gather a picture of her husband, scholar Stanley Hyman, as a reticent and somewhat reserved man; when in fact Stanley Hyman was a political firebrand who loved debating and plain old arguing. When Shirley narrates that she went to bed "with a mystery," there's no mystery now that a portable typewriter, pack of cigs and snifter of brandy probably climbed in too.

This woman of many contradictions fiercely loved her children and was fiercely protective of them, yet was at best a mediocre homemaker who occasionally enjoyed cooking but rarely got the chance or took the chance. What we don't hear--and hear only in this significant biography--was that as the Hyman - Jackson family expanded, so did their standard of living. There were housekeepers some of the time, and generally they didn't work out. But there was also the money for some travel and to send the two middle children--both girls--to prep school out of town.

In some ways, Jackson was a kind of "multiple" personality who found it more and more difficult to reconcile her roles or personae as happy homemaker yet sophisticated party person, a sensible but hard-headed and politically sensitive citizen who did not shy from pursuing justice to get a malfeasant public-school teacher fired, yet a woman who bemoaned the deep gulf between adopted town North Bennington, Vermont's locals and the faculty at the still-newish Bennington College.

Shirley Jackson used all her writerly talents in her letters home to mother, striving for a relentlessly sunny tone, despite being deeply given to depression, especially the "post-partum" type when the artist finishes a significant work. Just a plain old regular harried housewife, as she portrayed herself in SAVAGES and DEMONS, would have found life with four exuberant children and without today's labor-saving devices difficult enough, but with a full-time-plus career as author, her personal life became untenable even as her novels gained ever more acceptance and acclaim -- and she leaned on her crutches ever more.

In essence, as Shirley Jackson continued to expand her work by moving into novels instead of short stories, her crutches became her addictions. She had been taking Amphetamines since the 1950s when they were considered fairly harmless "diet drugs" or "pep pills." Shirley always worried about her weight, in large part occasioned by her fear she was a failure in the eyes of her mother. She died very overweight before her fiftieth birthday, a sad combination of liquor and drugs that would be roundly condemned today, and also without thanks from cigarettes and chocolates. Sadly, only the youngest child, Barry, was home at the time.

What also comes through in this book is the love all four of her children held for their mother, and a much more rounded picture of an author under great psychogical strain who strained even harder to fit a picture of small-town normality. In this book we get to hear how her real life differed from the charming LIFE AMONG THE SAVAGES and RAISING DEMONS; also we get to understand why the back chambers of her tortured soul formed the impetus and inspiration for her very best writing. This is the only full-scale biography of Shirley Jackson we are likely to get, at least anytime soon. While not particularly "academic," the book is excellent and thorough journalism that is a pleasure to read even as we learn of the pain that composed so much of Shirley Jackson's life. Highest recommendation.

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