The Grave of Alice B. Toklas: And Other Reports from the Past - Hardcover

Friedrich, Otto

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0805009035 ISBN 13: 9780805009033

Publisher: Henry Holt & Co, 1989

Synopsis

Very good in very good dust jacket. Hardcover first edition - New York:: Henry Holt and Company, , (1989). Hardcover first edition -. Very good in very good dust jacket.. First printing. A collection of thirteen essays - five never before published. Topics range from re-creating the life and times of the last empress of Rome, the remaining days of Mozart's life, to his childhood in New England. Index of names. xiii, 384 pp.

About this title

Reviews

A journalist for most of his working life, Friedrich ( Glenn Gould: A Life and Variations ) has collected in the process so many facts and anecdotes that each of the 13 essays here (some previously published in Esquire and Harper's ) is entertainingly packed with witty digression and opinion. In the title piece, he describes his attempt to find Toklas's grave in Pere-Lachaise cemetery in Paris, and detours into a touching memoir of his relationship with the elderly Californian, who had encouraged Friedrich as a neophyte novelist. Three articles are about music (on Mozart, on Scarlatti and "On Watching Parsifal with Molly"), about which Friedrich denies he knows much--and proceeds to prove very informative. "The Trial of Sergeant Walker" gives the shocking background to the Hilton Head mutiny--which leaves the reader wondering why Abraham Lincoln is revered as the emancipator of slaves, given the craven treatment of black volunteers in the Union army. Most intriguing perhaps is the final essay, called simply "Jimmy," a memoir of Friedrich's Paris acquaintanceship with the late James Baldwin.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

These essays oscillate between Friedrich's historical interests and his varied life experience: in a Massachusetts high school; in postwar Paris; in the news media as a foreign reporter; in the world of opera and classical music. The journalistic background helps to define his style, as bright and detailed as a passing parade. What comes through above all is Friedrich's sociability and love of a good story. The world, past and present, is an entertaining spectacle from which, finally, he gleans more anecdote than insight. Anyone with a taste for European music, history, and travel would find enjoyment in these essays, but the best of the general magazines would serve just as well.
- Donald Ray, Mercy Coll. Lib., Dobbs Ferry, N.Y.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Henry Holt & Co
• Publication date: 1989
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0805009035
• ISBN 13: 9780805009033
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 384