The second volume in the autobiography of the actor, writer, and bon vivant takes him from his education as a thespian at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts to his adventures as a youth on the loose in London.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
Amazingly, this second volume of Peter O'Toole's memoirs (the first was Loitering with Intent: The Child, published in March 1995) covers only three years of the actor's life; even more amazingly, it's a wonderful read. If he hadn't been such a prodigiously gifted actor, O'Toole could have made it as a writer. His prose is discursive, freewheeling, multilayered, and fairly bursting with exuberant vitality. Loitering with Intent: The Apprentice covers O'Toole's years in the early 1950s at London's Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, where he studied his craft, hobnobbed with fellow students (including Albert Finney, with whom he formed a lifelong friendship), and made rakish, footloose excursions around London. It's hard to say whether he had more fun in the living of it or the retelling, but both are a pleasure for the reader to behold.
From Publishers Weekly
The second volume of O'Toole's autobiography (after The Child, 1993) begins in 1953 as O'Toole, 21, leaves the British Navy to begin his training at London's Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts. The prose is, as it was in the first volume, by turns enchanting and maddening, a mix of schoolboy high spirits and British theatrical slang, told in the rolling Irish rhythms of the practiced barroom storyteller. Just as his work in film and theater has varied from the brilliant to the histrionic, O'Toole the autobiographer is by turns charming, self-indulgent, hilarious, long-winded, obscure and witty. Readers looking for celebrities will find an anecdote or two about Richard Burton and Albert Finney, but for the most part O'Toole's method is that of Joyce by way of the pub raconteur, with the focus on the everyday details of a student's life in mid-1950s London. There are acknowledgments of his debt to his teachers at the academy, an affectionate account of his love affair with a Jewish girl from Chicago he called "the Hopi," instructions on how to wash a pair of socks without soap and on how to make a theatrical prompt book and such nutty digressions as a potted history of the English Civil War. Running throughout are O'Toole's invocations of the spirit of the 19th-century actor Edmund Kean, the symbol of O'Toole's passion for the tradition of the English stage. American readers are likely to be frustrated by the slang and the references to long-dead and obscure British theatrical figures, but they are also not likely to read a more passionate and entertaining evocation of the life of a young actor. Photos.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Peter (O'Toole) prescription for a life well lived!,
This review is from: Loitering With Intent: The Apprentice (Hardcover)
Who says a great actor has to be a self-absorbed boor with no life or thoughts of his own offstage or off-camera? This second installment of noted actor O'Toole's autobiography brims over with vitality, quirky charm, and loving reminiscences of fellow drama school students, teachers, and a host of other fascinating souls. O'Toole is clearly one of those people who makes his own fun, and naturally finds kindred spirits wherever he goes in life. He doesn't choose his friends based on their status or what they can do for him, he just enjoys their company. And how! The myriad, unorthodox ways O'Toole and his pals devise to obtain lodgings, food, semi-clean laundry and other of life's necessities will have you laughing out loud. One of many highlights concerns the delightful, party given to celebrate the final hours of leaky old houseboat, where guests take turns pumping the sea back out even as it sloshes at their ankles. A rip-roaring good time was had by the artist as a young apprentice, and his mates!
8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Brilliantly written and very funny,
By A Customer
This review is from: Loitering With Intent: The Apprentice (Hardcover)
O'Toole has a gift for the English language -- you just want to read whole chapters aloud, to enjoy the sound of the words. There are also scores of laugh-out-loud funny anecdotes sprinkled throughout, all told with wry joy. This isn't a typical actor's memoir -- this is way more fun.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
O'Toole Amazing life in His Own Delightful Words,
By
This review is from: Loitering With Intent: The Apprentice (Hardcover)
I want Peter O'Toole to scrible my life story. One of our grandest actors turns out to be a remarkable writer. If he was writing about any other person than himself, this would be a great book; a most enjoyable reading experience; and a primer in how to tell the story of a larger than life person. As it happens, Peter O'Toole, the exceptional writer, is writing about Peter O'Toole, the peerless actor.
And this is Volume Two! Do grab the first book, "Loitering With Intent: The Child." It is not only a fascinating story of the very early years of O'Toole's boyhood in Ireland, it is also a personal account of the world plunging into the chaos of the 1930s that became World War II. Read them both...preferasbly in order. And pray Mr O'Toole is with us long enough to craft volume three!
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