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Art And Madness: A Memoir Of Lust Without Reason (2011)

by Anne Roiphe(Favorite Author)

3.59 of 5 Votes: 3

ISBN

0385531648 (ISBN13: 9780385531641)

languge

English

genre

Memoir & Autobiography

publisher

Nan A. Talese

review 1: It is rare for me to finish a book that I do not like, but I managed to finish this one primarily because it is only 220 pages long. The title of this book is entirely appropriate: it is a memoir of lust without reason and also without morals. The author was so busy hopping into bed with this or that writer all the while bemoaning the fact that her husband drank too much and never came home, plus neglecting her child in the process, that I was mostly disgusted throughout the book. This is the ONLY book of the many I have rated on Goodreads that has warranted only one star. Don't waste your time on this book.
review 2: This is the latest book by Anne Roiphe- the last one I read was “Epilogue”- in this one she takes us back to the 60’s in NYC where she was ... morea student at Smith and then Sarah Lawrence where she was fixated on writers and literature. She is remarkably candid in showing us who she was in her 20’s. She was a well-read, well-educated, intelligent, gutsy girl ready to sacrifice herself as muse to any brilliant writer who needed her...and she eventually found a doozy of a tortured soul in an aspiring playwright whom she regarded as a genius and eventually married. Her description of this marriage will leave you shaking your head. How many ways can you say dysfunctional, twisted, bizarre? Coming from a Park Avenue address, she knew people who knew people and partied her way through the 60’s at the homes of drinking artists and writers (lots of names you will recognize), while at the same time she had a child with serious problems in large part because of the negligent father, the constant partying life, and her inattention to providing a stable life for the little girl- “the child” is how she referred to her throughout the book. It was painful to read of the many times she would leave for the party of the evening with her child’s screams for her following her down the elevator. At the same time, this is a woman who professed to love children and wanted more.Early on, Anne Roiphe should have been writing herself instead of looking for some male genius to use and abuse her for his art...she eventually learns this and gets her life more in balance with her second marriage which lasts 40 years, but the damage to her firstborn daughter sadly has longlasting, detrimental effects even to this day. One gets the feeling that Anne Roiphe repents much of the folly of her misguided adoration of tortured genius writers... and somewhere in one of the reviews that led me to this book, I read that this particular piece of writing may be a kind of “I’m sorry” to her daughter....Ms. Roiphe is an excellent writer, she can write astonishingly perfect sentences with the most inventive similes. She is a pleasure to read if only because she writes so well. But believe me, she has plenty to say. And what an apt title....”art and madness: a memoir of lust without reason”. No doubt. less

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