Customer Reviews

The Life and Death of Peter Sellers

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(10)

 

 

Whilst this book did not make me physically ill, it has come closer than anything I have ever read.
Firstly, the book is interminably long- 890 of the 1050 pages are devoted to the years up to 1963, effectively dealing with the first ten years of Sellers' significant work. The years from 1963 to 1980 (from marriage to Britt Ekland) are rushed through on the excuse that Sellers was basically repeating himself. I suspect that the real reason is that the long suffering publishers balked at the prospect of a further 1,000 pages.

The most infuriating thing is that having laboured through the author's endless deviations and detours (is anyone interested in 4 pages on Lewis' views of the non-Sellers Kubrick films), he explains finally that the style was deliberately artful, and that he had inserted a fallible narrator into the text.

Whilst this may be a thrilling joke for anyone reading for a degree in English, it is too glib and does not excuse Lewis' appalling writing style. Not since Will Self has an author so delighted in obscure words; the book is padded with endless footnotes and agents' letters (most of which are simply source material and not interested other than to an entertainment lawyer. Lewis' insertion of his own opinions and 'goonish' sense of humour grates more than I can describe.

Lewis's essential point is that Sellers was a mother-loving monster who was dreadful to his family and anyone he worked with. Repetition adds little, and the organisation of the book is so chaotic that I began to feel as if I had read the plot of 'Being There' over ten times by the end of this book.

Sheer bloody mindedness got me through this mess of a book. How it ever came to be published is beyond me. It is a testament to the arrogance of the author and the feebleness of the editor (was there one?) to control this beast.

Thankfully, I borrowed this garbage from the library and didn't purchase it.

The problem with this book is that the writer makes outrageous claims based on anecdotal evidence. He claims that because Peter Sellers enjoyed "Harold and Maude" he had an incestuous fantasy about his mother. He waits until the end of the book and asks, "Was he a homosexual?". Then, he doesn't answer this question at all. He just picks up on a common theme in the films Peter was in. (Well, was he homosexual or incestuous towards his mother?) But THIS is the real key to why this book is meaningless....

The author quotes Peter Sellers from an interview he did AFTER HE DIED through a medium. Twice.

He makes the argument that Peter was insane, and certainly SOME of his behaviour was strange, but he fails in his attempts. The author has the audacity to second-guess Kubrick's (wise) decision to remove the original ending of Dr. Strangelove. And he further illustrates his lack of insight concerning Being There. Peter commented how Chance's life is almost like Heaven. The author concludes that anyone who has an ounce of sanity would think Chance's life hell. Obviously, this man has no concept of Buddhism.

All in all, avoid this book at all costs. I recommend Ed Sikov's "Mr. Strangelove" instead.

Oh, and keep in mind that the photograph of Peter in a hospital in this book has since been established as a fraud.

There are interesting points and anecdotes related in this overly-long biography, but Lewis seems unable to distinguish between detail and repetition.

I have read other biographies of Peter Sellers - whichever way you look at him a fascinating man. How this bio differs in the greatest way from others is that the author seems to be absolutely determined to interpret everything Peter Sellers did or said, and everything anyone else says about him, in a negative way. I'm sure, as with any complex and highly gifted person, Sellers had his "issues".....and fame, as it seems to, certainly developed serious problems. But no balance between the good and bad seems to be drawn here. Lewis focuses almost solely on the negative and seems to have selected his material with the aim of portraying only the worst of Sellers, particularly regarding his personal character and relationships.

Lewis virtually ignores any good times - and there were many, if Graham Stark's "Remembering Peter Sellers" (highly recommended) is reliable - and good and lasting friendships, instead focusing on, it would seem, every dispute and source of conflict that ever arose in his life.

Overall this book succeeds only in giving a strongly negative slant to someone at least deserving respect.One has to ask: was the author's main aim here to actually portray "the real Peter Sellers" or to dishonour his memory?

If you look at the people who loved this man...those who he hurt but who still liked him...those who disliked him but ultimately respected him....if you look at what they have said about Sellers (without it being set in a biased context which makes even praise sound negative) you will find a truer version of the man than this book shows.

What Herbert Kretzmer said about him in Peter Evans' "The Mask Behind the Mask", which is echoed by his first wife in "Sellers on Sellers", says a lot to me about his nature:

"The great thing about Peter was that he was a loveable man. You loved him despite everything, you loved him in many ways because of his almost tragic shortcomings.

"To be a friend of Peter Sellers you had to be a very sophisticated man, because you had to understand why he did the things he did. Perhaps it didn't make him any more endearing, but the man was singularly free of malice in the ordinary sense; it was simply that he so easily forgot too many of yesterday's promises and yesterday's passions."

Lewis obviously lacks both the sophistication and insight to understand anything about Sellers as a man positively.

Peter Sellers was an amazing comic force, but also a flawed human being; often quite difficult to work with and given to bouts of childishness. Thus, one would not expect a biography of his life to paint a glowing portrait. However, nor should one have to wade through this rubbish, from an author who writes like he works for "Hard Copy" and who liberally fills in the blanks with his own imagination, drumming up entire conversations and thought processes. A lot of research went into this book, no doubt, but a lot of research was left out, as well. This is lazy and shoddy biographical writing, and it does an injustice to a gifted actor.

Like Fosse's ALL THAT JAZZ, THE LIFE AND DEATH OF PETER SELLERS takes its subject and portrays him as living, breathing monster.

Writing in a florid, stream of consciousness that evokes a long-winded Edwardian poet hopped on coke performing in a Llandudno musical hall, Lewis unleashes a barrage of verbal fireworks as he portrays one of filmdom's true acting geniuses as a cold, calculating, souless creature hell-bent on destroying all around him.

While wading through this difficult (frequently redundant) and morbidly obssesive biography, it becomes obvious that Lewis is (was?) an ardent Sellers fan who has had his illusions shattered.

Lewis takes great pains to praise Sellers' cinematic triumphs as well as expose him as a bloodthirsty monster who craved attention and power.

A hard and difficult read. But fascinating all the same. Ultimately worth taking the time.

I hated it. I hate the book because it doesn't do Peter's life justice at all. I found it both artless and sensationalistic. Check Amazon.com for better, earlier Sellers bios. I had read two other Seller's bios previous to reading this one. Lewis accentuates a negative, horrific slant of Peter's life, while the other bios I read did not. Note the ghastly, treated photo of Peter on the cover--that will give you a clue to the book's intent. I actually compared another Sellers bio against this one, side by side; I found that Lewis left out more than he contributed to what we know about the man. Yes, Peter's life might be considered tragic, but this book leaves out his search for peace, for God, for love. Lewis ignored the serendipitous and frolicksome sides of Peter's life. There were tantrums, but also many tender, human moments in his life. He loved his dysfunctional parents, he loved his kids, and he tried to love his wives. He did the best he could. It's a slash and burn book, using re-hashed information covered in previous works, but without that balanced viewpoint. I wanted to write the author and tell him so, and I hope he reads this review. Shakespeare was right: "The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones."

This biography is one of the most exhaustively researched and well written books about an actor that I have ever read. I've been a fan of Sellers for 30 years and have read every book I could find about the man, including the "authorised" (by Sellers' last wife, not Sellers himself) biography and 'P.S. I Love You' by Sellers son Michael, which was the best book about Peter Sellers I had read..until this one.

A lot of people have taken issue with the fact that Lewis writes of Sellers as an "evil" man, but Lewis has interviewed many people who were close enough to Sellers to back up many of the authors claims about the actors erratic and sometimes downright mean and vindictive behaviour towards others. Lewis recognises and celebrates the actors extraordinary talents, but his primary goal is to peel back the layers of his public persona and show us the man as he was seen by those who were close to him. The Peter Sellers revealed in this book is a man who was obviously mentally ill, a man who clearly suffered from manic depression and crippling anxiety. Lewis writes of a man who physically and emotionally lashed at those in his personal and professional lives rather than reaching out for help and support.

If you want to read a feelgood biography of Sellers, this is not the book for you. This is more like a cross between a biography and 'Hearts Of Darkness' as we accompany the writer through a journey where he uses every method at his disposal to locate the "real" Peter Sellers. It's a sometimes harrowing journey that is subjective by its nature, and it's not a trip to take if you want a typical showbiz biography. It's also worth noting that the original UK edition is even more hard hitting as it contains some material that has been excised from this US version (an interview with one of the Boulting brothers has been removed from this edition, for example).

This book is being adapted as a HBO movie starring Geoffrey Rush as Sellers. It is currently filming and should be released late 2003/early 2004.

When I read a biography I want to be transported into the life of the subject, and follow along as that life unfolds. I don't want the author's presence there at all, unless it's to sum up his or her thoughts towards the end of the book. But in this book Roger Lewis doesn't let you forget for one second that it is he (Roger Lewis) writing the book. He fills it with enormous amounts of unnecessary information, information on how he wrote the book, his inane interpretations of Peter Sellers behavior (on page 170: "Seller's predilection for signs and symbols directed at him from beyond the grave....imply his basic comtempt for human life and reason." on page 183: "(Sellers') telescope, topsy-turvily fixed on the inverted clockface of Big Ben, is symbolic, surely? Sellers always wanted to outwit time; to show himself indifferent to it's distructiveness."), all too frequent mentions of himself (on page 197: "Had you been leaning over the railings of the little footbridge .....you would have seen an interesting sight. Along the edge....two characters approach.....Kenneth Griffin is remembering his old colleague, Sellers; his companion on this occasion -namely, the present author - is doing his best, whilst clambering thorough bush and briar, to take mental notes on the speach."), and the annoying habit of often discribing in detail photographs that do not appear in the book, that would have been better simply reproduced without the long discriptions, which, of course, include Lewis' thoughts on what the people in them might have been feeling at the time the photos were taken. If the subject matter of this book weren't as interesting as Peter Sellers is, it would have proven almost unreadably irritating. Lewis' constant editorializing would be better suited to a short article, but is impossible over the length of a book.

Roger Lewis' controversial book The Life and Death of Peter Sellers is at best a massive essay on the negative aspects of the famed comedy star. While his achievements are questionable and even seem to dim in the paleness of time, the book itself isn't even interested in what those are. The book is primarily arranged to address Sellers' behavior (or alleged behavior, in some cases) to suit the needs of the writer. While not as vile as Goldman's Lennon book, its focus is revealed quite early in the introductory chapter, which rambles on and on, backward and forward through time, to tell us that, basically, Peter Sellers was a jerk. Though he does attempt to start each subsequent chapter in chronological order, he doesn't stick to it. Instead he uses the event as a springboard to once again ramble through the rubbish of Sellers career and life to prove to us that he was really nobody. Sellers himself admits this, but Lewis makes it graphic. Ugly. Whether its true or not is not for me to decide.

Ultimately, the problem I have with the book is the same one I had with the movie. Its not a proper biography, but rather a character essay of a man with no character at all.

It is interesting to note that Sellers, who I have always found only mildly amusing, did actually go on to achieve what he did considering his antics.

This book is one I'd recommend only to someone with real tolerance to the subject and the style.

"The Life and Death of Peter Sellers" (1994) excels in its critical overview of the comic actor's film career, but fails as an objective biography. When author Roger Lewis delves into the personal aspects of Sellers' brilliant madness, he drowns in a sea of unpleasant negativity. Like many human beings, it's no surprise that Sellers was a mixed bag. Unfortunately, Lewis cannot break free from his "evil monster" thesis, which undermines the fascinating analysis of Sellers' screen portrayals. It's a shame the biographer didn't put his detailed research to better use.