Some of Lipsky's turns-of-phrase made me pause to savor the words: pages 194-98 (the reverie about Richard's Dad) was very moving. It gave me lots to chew on after I finished the book. And I loved the description of Edith and the "desexification" of middle-aged women. The observations about fame and power are so insightful that I "starred" some of the passages so I could go back and read them after I was finished. (If you work or travel at all in artistic circles you will have strong moments of recognition AND, possibly, embarrassment.)

The canoe episode at the end of the book was beautiful, and the ending actually was chilling as Richard and his mother drove back into NYC: the word "towers" taking on new meaning now.

The opening was just plain fun to read as Richard travels from one separated parent to the other (cross country) with the descriptions of a very young Richard knowing that crying will get him the stewardesses' sympathies and a first-class seat.

It's a great book, and I just want to encourage anyone with any ounce of curiousity to read it. It made me squirm to read the Oedipal passages, but the honesty in Richard's narration makes the story fascinating: He is so self-aware, yet completely in denial at the same time-kind of like all of us.

Before you read
further, let me caution you that this book teems with suggestiveness.
If that sort of thing isn't your cup of tea, skip this book.

The
photographs are the best part of thebook. There are large numbers of
outstanding examples of work by Edward Steichen and Annie Leibovitz.

The pages are oversized, and many images are done as double
spreads. This makes for seeing very large features of the stars
portrayed, and this has high impact effects on the viewer -- evoking a
sense of the wide screen. The editing was wisely done to select many
images that can be reasonably faithfully reproduced that way.

Unfortunately, many fine photographs were reproduced with the
middle fold through an important part of the image. Some of the
images that were not so spoiled also were overinked in a way that make
the details hard to discern. Inexplicably, there were no credits
listed for many photographs. I graded the book down one star for
being insufficiently well designed, credited and printed to portray
all of the photographs to their best advantage.

Except for this
very regrettable and significant set of flaws on the photography side,
the book is very well done. The selection of photographs was
brilliantly done to not only highlight great ones, but to create
interplay among them . . . and among themes . . . and among
generations of Hollywood performers. I found it all quite exciting
and entertaining.

Some of my favorite photographs in the book
are:

Jack Nicholson; Annie Leibovitz, 1992

Robin Williams, Eddie
Murphy, and Jim Carrey; Annie Leibovitz, 1997

Doris Day; John
Florea, 1953

Spencer Tracy and Katherine Kapburn; n.c., 1949

Nancy and Ronald Reagan; Harry Benson, 1985

Pee-Wee Herman; Annie
Leibovitz, 1984

Walt Disney; Edward Steichen, 1933

Dustin
Hoffman; Herb Ritts, 1996

Rita Hayworth; n.c., 1946

Robert
Redford; George Gorman, 1984

Meryl Streep; Annie Leibovitz,
1982

Gloria Swanson; Edward Steichen, 1928

I also liked the
caricature of Greta Garbo by Miguel Covarrubias from 1932.

The
essays were more of a mixed lot. My favoite was D.H. Lawrence on sex
appeal. "Sex appeal is only a dirty name for a bit of life
flame." Other essays looked at Charlie Chaplin, Greta Garbo (by
Walter Winchell), the queens of gossip columnists, and agent Sue
Mengers.

After you have finished enjoying this close-up look at
Hollywood, ask yourself where your dreams come from. Then consider
where they should come from. Should Hollywood be the source of your
dreams, the reinforcement of your dreams, or simply be a source of
entertainment? You'll have to decide. But do so explicitly. Your
dreams are too important to turn over to others to create and
manipulate.

As the Everly Brothers used to sing: "Dream, Dream,
Dream . . ."

My mother used to talk about how wonderful the World's Fair had been.

One of the cruel things about intergenerational relations is how impossible it is to communicate important things about social change. I _want_ to tell my kids about Kennedy, about Vietnam, about the McCarthy era. I hear myself talking and I know it sounds just as boring as it was to me hearing my folks talking about Roosevelt, or the Depression, or the World's Fair.

This book is fascinating and moving and it has important things to say. Gelernter is trying, with honesty and intelligence, to explore the question "What was it really like for our folks?" How can anyone _really_ know? Nobody can, but for a time as recent as 1939 it's well worth trying.

I did go to the, was it 1963, New York World's Fair. My mother said I just _had_ to, even though everybody said it was a pale shadow of the 1939 fair. I remember an IBM exhibit done by Charles Eames, featuring twelve movie screens and simultaneous shots from twelve viewpoints of, say, two train cars coupling (one closeup, one aerial, one of the dispatchers board) while the narrator said something stupid and shallow about data and information. I remember that the Coca-Cola pavilion smelled of Coke. It wasn't like 1939.

About once a chapter something pulls you up short. Sometimes it's a trivial detail ("those tractor trains at the Bronx Zoo whose horns played "Boys and Girls Together" were from the Fair.") Other times it's not so trivial.

William Manchester tried something like this in "The Glory and the Dream." Let's see, was it David Halberstam who recently wrote "The Fifties?" Gelernter's book is more readable, and more profound.

David Gelernter takes you on a tour of that fair, including the various national and corporate exibits and pavilions, many were absolutely amazing, even by today's standards. Several are described in intricate detail, and being in the 1930's electro-mechanical control systems were the rule, some being very complex. Gelernter also portrays some typical hypothetical people visiting the fair and what they did. How people dressed back then, and also the underlying societal feelings, are covered, the war in Europe being on everyones mind.

This is a very well written and comprehensive account of this most famous of fairs, I immensely enjoyed it, and Gelernter covers that last few hours of the Fair with poignancy as it closed in 1940. This account makes me wish I could travel back in time and see it myself, a wistful longing not to be.