Customer Reviews

Bobbed Hair and Bathtub Gin: Writers Running Wild in the Twenties

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I loved this book. I don't usually like biographies (they're all the same--someone is born, becomes famous, dies, etc) but this group bio of Edna Ferber, Zelda Fitzgerald, Dorothy Parker, and Edna St. Vincent Millay totally captured my imagination. It's organized by year, and the storytelling jumps from woman to woman in a way that creates much suspense and anticipation. Meade makes each woman seem so three-dimensional, they don't just leap off the page--I could swear I even smelled Dotty Parker's Chypre perfume and taste Zelda's gin blossoms and highballs. This book would make a great gift for any one who loves biography, the Roaring 20s, or any of the writers in question. The large number of cameo appearances by other writers, bohemians, and Round Tablers give the book a wider appeal. As a recovering English major, I feel strongly that anyone who lists "The Great Gatsby" or "The Sun Also Rises" as his favorite book should get a copy as well, if only for medicinal purposes!

Marion Meade's new book Bobbed Hair and Bathtub Gin is like manna from heaven for aficionados of the Roaring Twenties.

Seventeen years ago Meade wrote What Fresh Hell is This? It remains the definitive Dorothy Parker biography; now she expands on the 10 most exciting years of Parker's life, along with Edna Ferber, Zelda Fitzgerald and Edna St. Vincent Millay.

The subtitle of Bobbed Hair and Bathtub Gin is "Writer's Running Wild in the Twenties" and it is an exciting read that zeroes in on one decade in the lives of the four women and those close to them. There are other, longer, and deeper biographies and autobiographies of the quartet, but this book digs beneath the surface about what made them so unique, powerful and passionate about what they did.

Meade had a real challenge before her. The reader knows how all four will end up post-1930. The task was to shine a spotlight on the crucial years when all four came into their own and were either on their way up, or down, professionally or personally. Some of the tale is humorous, often tragic, but always fascinating. Anyone who's read about these women before is sure to learn something new that bigger books might have overlooked.

If you're reading Bobbed Hair and happen to be a lover of writers, history, old books and the theatre, then you might know what's around the corner for all of these women. The stock market crash of 1929 is looming. The Depression is on its way. Prohibition will end. Adolph Hitler is coming to power. And yet the book brings these women and their cohorts so vividly to life, like it was only yesterday that they were creating new material and turning up in the gossip columns.

An engaging, entertaining read by a skillful writer. . .but if you want a thorough, complex picture of these four women (Parker, Ferber, Z. Fitzgerald, Millay) and their circles, you'll be better off reading a full-scale biography of each, one that places them in historical and literary context. This book's final paragraph sums up both its strengths and its shortcomings -- the ending is crisp and breezy, but it offers no thoughtful conclusions. Instead, it basically says (and I'm paraphrasing), "and so the 1920s ended and passed into history and the people described here went on and lived the rest of their lives." What we have overall is a well-phrased and smoothly-organized collection of largely unanalyzed details.

If you knew nothing about these writers beyond what you read here, you'd conclude that most of leading artistic lights of 1920s New York were shallow, self-centered, silly sots, and you'd wonder how on earth they managed to write anything at all, let alone stuff that is held up decades later as examples of significant art. (The only person who doesn't seem to have been an exasperating wastrel is Ferber, and you could easily come away from "Bobbed Hair" believing that her work is the least worth reading.) If it's really true that these largely despicable, aimless people are nonetheless artists worth our continued time and attention, then I wish "Bobbed Hair" had spent more time examining and explicating this paradox. As it is, we end up with details, details everywhere and not a point to make.

But then again, perhaps I'm trying to turn this book into something it's not: it's not a scholarly biography, never claimed to be, and doesn't have to be. On its own terms, it's quite fun. So if you want a dishy tiptoe through the 1920s tulips, buy this book. If you want context and in-depth analysis, buy something else.

Edna St. Vincent Millay, Dorothy Parker, Zelda Fitzergerald, and Edna Ferber are perfect exemplars of New York in 1920s and Marion Meade's book, Bobbed Hair and Bathtub Gin, captures that time in a somewhat arbitraryly episodic fashion. This is not the place to come to get a good biography of any one of these women (Marion Meade's book on Dorothy Parker is a delightful place to begin for that) nor does it capture its time period as well as some other similar books (To Be Young Was Very Heaven about women in New York before the First World War) but there is still great delight to be found in these pages as one skims through the lives of these rather amazing women. If there is not always much bobbed hair as promised, it is made up for by great heaping quantites of bathtub gin, among many other libations. As well as many romances, a few abortions, great literary successful, and some professional failures. It was a time and it still makes for a wonderful read.

With BOBBED HAIR AND BATHTUB GIN writer Marion Meade takes the reader on a decade-long tour of the lives of four women who helped make the 1920s roar: Edna Ferber (1895-1968); Zelda Sayer Fitzgerald (1900-1948); Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950); and Dorothy Parker (1893-1967.) Although all four were distinctly different, all four shared certain traits. They were of a generation of women who considered themselves "emancipated." Generally based in New York City, all four proved globetrotters to at least some extent. And all four were writers, and their work was shaped by the decade just as it shaped the decade in turn.

The 1920s saw Edna Ferber rise from the status of a commercial hack to the critically lauded author of such novels as SO BIG and SHOW BOAT and co-author of such plays as THE ROYAL FAMILY. Determinedly independent, Ferber's character would cast an even longer shadow than her works, setting a pattern for single, hard-working, career women that would last decades. Zelda Sayer Fitzgerald, wife of F. Scott Fitzgerald, was Ferber's polar opposite: a woman whose career was marriage but who didn't feel it should crimp her style. Along with husband Scott, she would party her way into self-destruction--and provide significant inspiration to Fitzgerald's novels as well. As the 1920s passed, Zelda would discover a gift for prose and publish several short works, but mental illness began to claim her as the decade came to a close.

Edna St. Vincent Millay was a critic's darling who--when she wasn't writing poetry--spent much of the decade sleeping with any one, male or female, who appealed to her. As well known for her personal charm and eccentricity as for her work, Millay endured numerous difficulties in the decade before emerging as America's most highly regarded poet and then, rather perversely, find critical reaction began to turn against her in the face of works by the likes of T.S. Eliot. And then, of course, there is the truly legendary Dorothy Parker, who began the decade as a drama critic and slowly rose to fame through her remarkably funny and acid poetry. A truly dark figure, like Zelda Fitzgerald and Millay she too would struggle with a host of inner demons ranging from alcohol to drugs to bad relationships.

These four women, their lovers, husbands, publishers, and associates crisscross throughout the book in an interesting counterpoint. The result is always readable, always entertaining, but it does contain certain flaws. Although Meade does provide background and does give notes as to what became of them in later years, her story begins with 1920 and stops with 1930; there is little context. That said, the portraits involved are somewhat superficial; all four of these women are worthy of stand-alone biographies, and indeed all but Ferber have received major, widely available, and well-received biographies.

That said, however, BOBBED HAIR AND BATHTUB GIN is an enjoyable book that does indeed seem to capture a feel for the 1920s, a decade in which the sky seemed the limit for women, the arts, society, and indeed the entire nation. Although they were hardly the only noted women of the era, Edna Ferber, Zelda Fitzgerald, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and Dorothy Parker were in many ways indicative of the decade--and this is a wild and very entertaining romp through their early successes and failures. Recommended.

GFT, Amazon Reviewer

This book was a valued companion during my commutes to and from work late this summer,and I enjoyed it immensely. Meade's Dorothy Parker biography, "What Fresh Hell Is This" is one of my all-time favorites, and while "Bobbed Hair..." is not nearly as indepth (and is not meant to be), it provides a very satisfying taste of each woman's life in the 1920's. The only flaw, for me, is that I found Edna St. Vincent Millay's behavior tremendously annoying and so did not enjoy sections of the book devoted to her as much as the rest.

4 women, 4 lives, and about 4 million bottles of gin!
Author Meade does an amazing job of bringing the era of 1920-30 vibrantly to life, capturing the unique blend of post-war innocence and decadence that marked that time in history. It was a wild time when everyone seemed larger than life --- a time when egos, libidos, and liquor ran free and very wild! No where was this hypnotic chaos more pronounced than in the artistic community. By tracing and weaving her narrative around and about the lives and social circles of 4 amazing women (Zelda Fitzgerald, Dorothy Parker, Edna Ferber, and Edna St. Vincent Millay) Meade captures the artistic pulse of the era wonderfully. This is a very entertaining book of authors and the literary set behaving SO badly that it's surprising they still had the energy (much less the time) to write. You know you are in for some twisted fun when Dorothy Parker seems the sanest person in the crowd!! Extremely enjoyable!

Sex. Drugs. Booze. Wild parties. No, it's not another rock-and-roll band tell-all. It's Marion Meade's intelligent, juicy and thoroughly entertaining BOBBED HAIR AND BATHTUB GIN.

Meade's latest effort recounts in luscious detail the lives, loves, closeted skeletons and tormented souls of Zelda Fitzgerald, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Dorothy Parker and Edna Ferber --- literary figures whose stars burned brightly and whose legends took form in the period in American history bracketed by the end of World War One and the beginning of the Great Depression.

BOBBED HAIR AND BATHTUB GIN is divided into eleven chapters, each covering a single year from 1920 to 1930. The four women form the core of the narrative, which spirals outward as it advances through the decade of the Roaring Twenties to include a host of figures that swarmed around New York City's journalism, theater and publishing hives. Variously entwined and entangled with the women at the center of the giddy gin- and hormone-fueled maelstrom are dozens of familiar names, including Robert Benchley, Alexander Woollcott, and other members of the notorious Algonquin Roundtable; H. L. Mencken; and of course, F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Meade's exhaustive research and crisp writing have produced a work that is at once a fascinating history of the American literary scene in the Twenties and a sensational beach read, a thinking-person's soap opera. A welcome antidote to the assorted dullards and contrived situations of reality television, BOBBED HAIR AND BATHTUB GIN delivers smart, extraordinarily talented real people, human beings with the obsessions, neurosis and psychological baggage that are part of the requisite chemistry of artistic genius, literary or otherwise.

In their twenties during the Twenties, Zelda Fitzgerald, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Dorothy Parker and Edna Ferber were, like their contemporaries, people who gleefully ignored inconvenient laws and problematic social conventions. They were at various times heartbreakers and heartbroken. The men in their lives acted either as the hero/protector, or like navigationally challenged birds that fly into windowpanes.

As a kind of who's who of American writers of the era, BOBBED HAIR AND BATHTUB GIN offers a compelling portrait of a unique period in American cultural history. While many of the real-life characters in this wonderful book ultimately found something less than happy endings, one feels perhaps a greater sense of loss for the passing of an era when print was king and writers were revered as stars in their own right. (It must also be observed, however, that they were also the subjects of a level of public interest and scrutiny that made Scott and Zelda the Ben and J-Lo of their day.)

H. G. Wells, who makes a brief appearance at a party in BOBBED HAIR AND BATHTUB GIN, was, of course, the author of THE TIME MACHINE. In a profound and thoroughly engaging way, author Marion Meade has provided readers with the means to travel back to 1920 and witness the lives of four women whose voices, vices and literary virtues added to the roar. It is a journey well worth the effort.

--- (...)

I disagree with the PW reviewer who said that Edna Ferber was slighted by appearing among more colorful writers.

In fact for the first time Edna Ferber has been given parity with the other writers, and reading about her life and her absolute devotion to her craft made me toy with the idea of picking up SHOW BOAT, CIMARRON or SO BIG.

The movies they made from these novels are great at any rate. I like the way Marion Meade outlines Ferber's life as a series of occasions surrounding the writing of a novel. Plain and dumpy, Ferber was not the sort to inspire passion in men (or women I guess), except for the one ambiguous relationship with newspaperman William Allen White, old enough to be her father and who might have nourished more-than-fatherly feelings for young Edna when she became his protege. Meade hints at this but admits the evidence is scarce on the ground.

Yes, Parker, Millay and Zelda Fitzgerald had a lot more sex in their lives, but after reading about the way they each seemed to burn themselves out in the 1920s, I wound up with a bit more respect for the woman who stayed the course and kept on writing her novels right into the 1960s. Yes, the underrated Edna Ferber.

An issue of the NEW YORKER last month had some nasty things to say about Edna Ferber under the guise of reviewing the new Library of America volume of George S. Kaufman plays. It's almost as though the reviewer was thinking, "It's open season on Edna Ferber and I can say whatever lousy things I want, because no one will call him on it." That's one clown should have his ass kicked but good.

Told through the tangled lives of four free-spirited but very different women in the same forward thinking, hard drinking New York literary circle, Bobbed Hair and Bathtub Gin is a brisk social history of the 1920's. There's the surprisingly fragile Dorothy Parker, a scathingly clever but not especially insightful wit, and the sparkling but ultimately tragic Zelda Fitzgerald, whose talent for art and life is overshadowed by her more famous husband and her own eventual madness. Rounding out the group is Edna St. Vincent Millay, a self involved but obsessive and talented poet in spite of relentless health problems, and Edna Ferber, an independent loner by comparison with the other three and the author of highly successful novels and plays including Showboat, Giant, Cimarron and Ice Palace. Each year from 1920 to 1930 has its own chapter and the story weaves back and forth among the sometimes overlapping lives of the four women. Bobbed Hair and Bathtub Gin is lively and well told, and since it's about four published authors it's added a long list of books to my "want to read as soon as possible" list.