Knowing When to Stop: A Memoir [Hardcover]

Ned Rorem (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 1994

Ned Rorem is celebrated as one of America's greatest living composers. His diaries have won him great distinction in literary circles. Now, in a brilliant and triumphantly revealing memoir, Rorem offers candid insights into his astonishing life, career, art, friendships, and love.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Rorem is arguably this century's finest American composer of art songs--but better known to readers as the author of the remarkably candid, irresistibly readable The Paris and New York Diaries. Admitting he was a ravishing youth, he scandalized 1940s New York and Paris by his nonstop drinking and avid sex with any man who would share his sheets. He writes brilliantly, illuminating what could be dull moments with unknown people--as well as offering marvelously frank portraits of household names, among them Jean Cocteau, Aaron Copland, Jerome Robbins, Martha Graham, Truman Capote, Virgil Thomson, Igor Stravinsky, Billie Holliday and Paul Bowles. All this, and a constant flicker of outrageous opinions too. One reads on, paralyzed with pleasure by the flashing intelligence, the exact, colorful mot , the endless quotability. Why a memoir, and what does it add to the diaries--especially since it covers only Rorem's first 27 chock-a-block years? "A memoir is not a diary. Diaries are written in the heat of battle, memoirs in the repose of retrospect." So the reader enjoys not only a whirlwind picture of bohemian artistic life during and just after WWII, but a touching self-portrait of an elderly semi-recluse, happily "married" now for decades, utterly abstemious of booze, reliving a madcap youth with only occasional regrets. The reader also enjoys Rorem's quotability: "Minor artists borrow, great ones steal. All art is theft." "People seldom change as they age, they just get more as they always were.""I compose as I do because no one else is making quite the sound I need to hear." Rorem has marvelous fun classifying everything as either German (which he dislikes) or French (which he loves). "This book fails," he concludes, "because it is all Content without Style, and Content is German while Style is French." Wrong. His memoir overflows with both. Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Celebrated American composer Rorem has written a contemplative, touching, funny, occasionally shocking memoir covering the first 27 years of his life. The reader becomes an invited guest in legendary parlors as Rorem tells of his life and the circles of which he was a part. Billie Holiday, John Cage, Eugene Istomin, Leonard Bernstein, Aaron Copland, Virgil Thomson, Samuel Barber, Martha Graham, Alfred C. Kinsey, Truman Capote, and Jean Cocteau are among those Rorem discusses. Spiked with introspection, these reminiscences serve as his vehicle for exploring in print the questions that he has pondered all his life. The result is well written, though parts of this book plod as Rorem, by his own admission, attempts to include what he thinks should be in a memoir. Nonetheless, Rorem provides a clear window for those who wish to peer into the artistic period of time that he and his associates claimed. Recommended for public and academic libraries.
Kathleen Sparkman, Baylor Univ., Waco, Tex.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 608 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster; 1St Edition edition (September 1, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0671728725
• ISBN-13: 978-0671728724
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.4 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,822,456 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Slogging through the self-pity to find the diamonds, January 6, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Knowing When to Stop: A Memoir (Hardcover)

The beginning of this book is fantastic. Mr Rorem has decided that there are but two esthetics in this world, and that everything can be applied to either one or the other. When he writes, as he did there, in the present, speaking of himself in the present, Mr Rorem is at his best, but when he begins to delve into his youth the reader is forced to wade through a trough of self-pity and self-hatred. There is very little to like about the younger Ned Rorem, and had there not been the occasional spurt of wisdom and humor I doubt I would have finished this mammoth tome. The most enjoyable sections were Mr Rorem's recollections of his associations with other stars in the twentieth-century musical firmament, most especially Leonard Bernstein and Aaron Copland, as well as Martha Graham. I have the feeling that I would both like and enjoy Mr Rorem as he lives today, but I would have avoided him had he and I been young contemporaries.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Ned knew everybody who mattered and can't resist telling us, April 21, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: KNOWING WHEN TO STOP: A Memoir (Paperback)

Astonishing autobiography that also serves as a cultural history of the post-war literary and musical worlds of New York and Paris.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the great literary self-portraits., November 19, 2000

By 

Augustus Caesar, Ph.D. (Eugene, Oregon United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Knowing When to Stop: A Memoir (Hardcover)

Most people who would be interested in reading "Knowing When to Stop" are probably familiar with Rorem's diaries. His memoir ends the year he first started the journals contained in "The Paris Diaries," and "Knowing When to Stop" not only fills the autobiographical, pre-diary gap, but also stands as one of most extraordinary self-portraits ever written. Rorem recounts, in his graceful, inimitable style, his childhood, musical training, early sex life (of course), his first years in Europe and, most absorbingly, his friendships with some of the most famous artists, both musical and otherwise, of the century. Bernstein, Cage, Katchen, Thomson, Copland, Boulez, Capote, Paul and Jane Bowles--Rorem describes them with sympathy and insight. Rorem's own mortality hangs shadowlike over every page of "Knowing," and his assessments of his work and life are penetrating and brutally honest. All in all, one of the best books I've ever read and a poignant, profound meditation of life and art.