This was so great. I loved this. It took me 6 weeks to read because I only felt like reading it 10-15 pages at a time, but it was so fun to read, for This was so great. I loved this. It took me 6 weeks to read because I only felt like reading it 10-15 pages at a time, but it was so fun to read, for lots of reasons. One is that it starts in 1976 and goes right up to Andy's unexpected and sudden death in 1987, and of course those were probably the funnest 12 years of my life, so it's such a fun trip down memory lane ... just the various news events he mentions in passing in his entries, and the songs and bands and celebrities. And Manhattan was really different in 1976 than it is now, and it changed a lot from 1976 to 1987, and you can really feel that here, and remember how it used to be. And Andy's studio (and the offices of his magazine, Interview) were at 860 B'way, just right around the corner from my high school (16th St. bet. 5th and 6th), so the diary starts right off right in my old stomping grounds and while I was still stomping there. Also, the entries are really funny. There's almost no entry where you don't laugh at least once. He's funniest when describing his closest companions, like Bridget Berlin, Bianca Jagger, Halston, Steve Rubell, and a bunch of other people that he ran around with, a lot of whom worked for him in some way or another. ...more
Powerful, heartbreaking? I don't really have the words to review this.
You would think that 67 years later or whatever, you couldn't be all that shockPowerful, heartbreaking? I don't really have the words to review this.
You would think that 67 years later or whatever, you couldn't be all that shocked by this. But you'd be wrong. And "shocked" doesn't even begin to describe it. ...more
This was excellent. It's told in a series of interview answers from maybe 30 or 40 or 50 people who were close to Farley during his life, including hiThis was excellent. It's told in a series of interview answers from maybe 30 or 40 or 50 people who were close to Farley during his life, including his three brothers and his childhood friends, old high school teachers and coaches, and show biz friends including many of the SNL players from 1975-1995. You might think that format would be disjointed and lack flow (that's what I thought would be the case when I first picked it up), but in fact all of these passages from different people are woven together brilliantly by the editors into a very tight and compelling page-turner. ...more
Magnificent. Gripping and compelling all the way through, but not only that ... this is one of those stories where you don't realize how masterfully tMagnificent. Gripping and compelling all the way through, but not only that ... this is one of those stories where you don't realize how masterfully the story is being woven together until you're just about finishing it. ...more
I stole this from my brother John about 17 years ago, but only now got around to reading it. These were magnificent. 64 masterfully recorded and recouI stole this from my brother John about 17 years ago, but only now got around to reading it. These were magnificent. 64 masterfully recorded and recounted interviews set down in 1985 and 1986 about the lives of mainland Chinese people from all over China, all ages, all walks of life. Not exactly contemporary anymore in 2008 (cf. the subtitle), but very fascinating nonetheless (and almost exactly coinciding with the China I knew from the 4 mos. I spent traveling around there in 1987 and 1988, which might explain partly why I liked it so much).
Sometimes in collections like these I'll take the liberty of assigning ratings to each of the pieces ... but not here, because they're so uniformly good, just about every one of them I would give either 4 or 5 stars. Overall, 5 stars easily. ...more
Loading...
