So I got this as a present (last Christmas or this year’s birthday, not entirely sure which) and it was on my wish list because of a fascinating series of programmes about the 1920s which was shown on BBC4; one of the programmes had an interview with the writer of Anything Goes, Lucy Moore.
This interest in the 1920s faded slightly until recently when, following a mixture of inter-war-Mitford-madness and watching the film Bright Young Things I decided to pull this off the TBR stack and give it a go. I hadn’t fully appreciated that this was a biography of the Roaring Twenties i.e. the American rather than the British experience, but that doesn’t matter because it was a thoroughly enjoyable read.
The author covers a wide range of topics and in most of the chapters, which are thematic rather than chronological, she picks key character(s) or event(s) which are emblematic of the topic she’s considering at that point. As a technique that worked very well for me, illuminating the general from the particular.
So for example we have:
- Prohibition through Al Capone;
- Flappers and women in Hollywood through Zelda Fitzgerald and Mary Pickford;
- Americans in Paris through Harry and Caresse Crosby
- Hollywood through Chaplin and a variety of scandals
- The New Yorker through Harold Ross, and so on.
It’s such an interesting and well-written book with lots of asides and nuggets and anecdotes that I just wanted to go off and read more on each of the topics. And it made me glad in many respects that I wasn’t around in the 1920s, although if I had been I would probably have been working in a thread mill in my home town like my great-aunts did rather than swilling illegal cocktails.
Cocktails being very important now as then because as they say
you cannot make your shimmy shake on tea.
A mission statement that I can certainly get behind!
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December 7, 2010 at 12:33 am
Jenny
I absolutely cannot make my shimmy shake on tea. That is a correct observation. :p
This sounds brilliant! The Roaring Twenties are one of ever so few periods of American history in which I am genuinely interested. I am rather fond of Harold Ross — I remember one of his peers described him as a sort of scrawny Atlas who God decided was going to damn well hold the world up anyway.
December 7, 2010 at 8:23 am
brideofthebookgod
Love the quote about Harold Ross! Dorothy Parker was always one my favourites.
December 7, 2010 at 2:09 pm
Michelle B
I was just going to mention Dorothy Parker! Any coverage on the Roaring Twenties would be incomplete without her:
“In 1925, Harold Ross was struggling to keep The New Yorker magazine alive with a tiny, inexperienced staff and an office with one typewriter.Running into Dorothy, Ross said, ‘I thought you were coming into the office to write a piece last week. What happened?’
Dorothy replied, ‘Somebody was using the pencil’.”
December 7, 2010 at 5:58 pm
brideofthebookgod
Oh she’s in here too, but Ross is the main focus of that chapter. Always loved that quote!
December 8, 2010 at 8:17 pm
daphne
This totally sounds like fun!! I love the cover, too. The 20s are a terrific period to delve into…
December 18, 2010 at 4:20 am
Darlyn
LOL. I love your mission statement. 🙂 The 20s is my favorite decade, and I want to get my hands on a copy of this book. I’m particularly interested in the part about Zelda Fitzgerald.
December 18, 2010 at 8:47 am
brideofthebookgod
Thank you! I wish I had come up with the mission statement myself but it was a work colleague who said it about me and I took it as a huge compliment. I hope you get a copy of the book, it made me want to know more about Zelda. And to finally read Tender is the Night.