Elia Kazan: A Life

Great memoir that pulls no punches on himself, his friends, his enemies, or anyone in the film and theater realm, while at the same time giving due respect and admiration for the same people. Goes into great detail about how the HUAC impacted his life from the early 50's to time of writing the book, as well as the atmosphere of the Communist party in the US in the 30's and 40's. He doesn't shy away from mentioning his many infidelities and his complicated relationships with his wives and other women. His writing style is friendly and conversational. My only complaint is his tendency to repeat himself, which should have been fixed by his editor.

Great memoir that pulls no punches on himself, his friends, his enemies, or anyone in the film and theater realm, while at the same time giving due respect and admiration for the same people. Goes into great detail about how the HUAC impacted his life from the early 50's to time of writing the book, as well as the atmosphere of the Communist party in the US in the 30's and 40's. He doesn't shy away from mentioning his many infidelities and his complicated relationships with his wives and other women. His writing style is friendly and conversational. My only complaint is his tendency to repeat himself, which should have been fixed by his editor.

this is an amazingly honest and searching autobiography. Gadj knewthere's yone. it's not just instigating Brando's career and sleeping with Marilyn Monroe. there's also working with Lee Strasberg and The Actors Studio, producing plays with Williams, Miller, and more. His own self -absorption and success becomes destructive narcissism, which he seems close to realizing. toward the end, after failed plays and movies and before his first successful novel The Arrangement, Kazan can not drop the Strasberg thing for too many pages and too much of his energy at the time. Soldier through that. his confrontation with death through considering the winter of Steinbeck (Travels with Charley), the death of his penultimate partner Barbara and his own show more thoughts on his nearing demise is worth it. show less

I read this because Sol Stein mentioned it and The Arrangement multiple times in his Reference Book for Writers. Learned while reading this that Stein had edited The Arrangement, as well. The prose style is very similar between the two, which I enjoy, but only for a few hundred pages. There's only so much rationalization and dissimulation I can handle. By about page 500-600, I was seriously losing interest. The last section, though, dealing with death is amazing and bumped up the rating a star.

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