Famous Father Girl
A Memoir of Growing Up Bernstein
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- 279,00 Kč
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- 279,00 Kč
Publisher Description
The intimate memoir of Leonard Bernstein and his family, that helped inspire the new movie Maestro
The oldest daughter of revered composer/conductor Leonard Bernstein offers a rare look at her father on the centennial of his birth in a deeply intimate and broadly evocative memoir
The composer of On the Town and West Side Story, chief conductor of the New York Philharmonic, television star, humanitarian, friend of the powerful and influential, and the life of every party, Leonard Bernstein was an enormous celebrity during one of the headiest periods of American cultural life, as well as the most protean musician in twentieth century America.
But to his eldest daughter, Jamie, he was above all the man in the scratchy brown bathrobe who smelled of cigarettes; the jokester and compulsive teacher who enthused about Beethoven and the Beatles; the insomniac whose 4 a.m. composing breaks involved spooning baby food out of the jar. He taught his daughter to love the world in all its beauty and complexity. In public and private, Lenny was larger than life.
In Famous Father Girl, Bernstein mines the emotional depths of her childhood and invites us into her family’s private world. A fantastic set of characters populates the Bernsteins’ lives, including: the Kennedys, Mike Nichols, John Lennon, Richard Avedon, Stephen Sondheim, Jerome Robbins, and Betty (Lauren) Bacall.
An intoxicating tale, Famous Father Girl is an intimate meditation on a complex and sometimes troubled man, the family he raised, and the music he composed that became the soundtrack to their entwined lives. Deeply moving and often hilarious, Bernstein’s beautifully written memoir is a great American story about one of the greatest Americans of the modern age.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Film documentarian Bernstein (Crescendo! The Power of Music), the oldest of three children of conductor and composer Leonard Bernstein, presents an in-depth, intimate view of her father, juxtaposed with her own upbringing in his shadow. Her memories can be jarringly candid at times: she recalls the superstar conductor on the toilet while smoking, perusing a score, and promising to be with her as soon as he finishes "this movement." Bernstein brings readers from her father's early conducting days at the New York Philharmonic to the creation of such hit musicals as West Side Story and Candide, as well as his failures, such as the legendary flop 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. She depicts the family's various homes (a country house in Fairfield, Conn.; a Park Avenue penthouse; an apartment in the Dakota building), as well as the famous people she met (Lauren Bacall, Jackie Kennedy, Stephen Sondheim, Lillian Hellman). Although the star-studded environment was stimulating, Bernstein longed for one-on-one time with a "normal" father. As a young adult, she grappled with the realization that her father was bisexual, unfaithful to her mother, and addicted to amphetamines. The larger-than-life maestro looms energetically over the family even after his death in 1990: all three children continued to work toward forwarding his legacy, either by organizing his archives or starting a newsletter for his fans. Bernstein paints a fascinating picture of the dizzying magic that Leonard Bernstein brought to his music and the complexity to his home life. Photos.
