Francis M. Nevins Jr.

"First You Dream, Then You Die" defeated my attempts to read it as a straight biography, because I simply couldn't slog through detailed plot summaries of 24 novels and about 230 short stories - the verbiage expended on those far outweighs the pure biographical matter. Of course a literary biography will discuss the highlights of an author's publishing career, and examine thematic strands of the work. But Mr. Nevins is much less a literary critic than a simple paraphraser, and his judgments show more seem arbitrary - as an Amazon commenter put it, he damns Woolrich for certain writing tendencies on one page, then, confusingly, praises him for exactly the same tendencies on another. So: a fail as a biography, a fail as criticism - in this format.

However, the information contained in the massive 613-page volume, including its long Checklist combining bibliography, filmography, and other information, is essential for any serious Woolrich reader (although it could probably stand a little updating now). The plot summaries certainly have their value when you want to know what a given story is about. I just wish the entire book had been arranged quite differently, as a sort of Woolrich handbook containing a tight 150-page biography, the Checklist as it stands, an alphabetically arranged section of the summaries, and maybe a separate critical essay (or several of those by diverse hands). show less

This had a lot of information in it but could have been organized better. First, why wasn't the photo of the director posted with the chapter on that director. I would have liked the biographical info to include things as to info about their children. The films should have been presented as a filmography instead of in paragraph form in the text. I just think it would have made the book easier to read.

Bought from Scott Cupp at ArmadilloCon46