Customer Reviews

A Smattering of Ignorance

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This is much more cohesive and better developed, though less biographically comprehensive, than "Memoirs of an Amnesiac". Its witticisms are woven into its text; unlike "Memoirs of an Amnesiac", it doesn't resort to and-then-I-said's. "The Unimportance of Being Oscar" resorts to and-then-HE-said's. It reports events (Benny Goodman meeting Ringo Starr of the Beatles, for example) the author was not even a witness to. Oscar Levant was at the height of his powers in 1940 when he published "A Smattering of Ignorance", and it shows. He wrote his other two books in the mid-to-late sixties and died in 1972.

This is a fabulous & funny read from the early forties, by one of the great wits of the modern age. If you're unfamiliar with Levant, dive right in. If you're familiar with him but haven't read this book, you are in for quite a treat. Side Note: It is referred to and featured in Israel Horovitz's play "The Chopin Playoffs", the third play in a trilogy about Jews in Canada in the thirties & forties.

"The books he wrote in the sixties were pretty much the same way, but by that time, Levant had developed into a good writer, and didn't write so many boring dissertations on the great composers and conductors of the 19th and 20th centuries."

In fact, "A Smattering of Ignorance" is a particularly well written book. (To be perfectly fair, a lot of the credit for that should go to Levant's editor, whose name escapes me -- sorry.) Of course there are those who find musical culture boring, but the measure of good writing is not actually the degree to which it indulges in gossip about movie stars. Oscar Levant was first and foremost a musician. If you are not yourself interested in music, don't read his memoirs, especially not this one. If you do nevertheless read it, please don't call it badly written because its subject doesn't interest you. That isn't what badly written means.

Oscar Levant wrote two great books. This isn't one of them. Written around 1940, the book is just stream-of-conscious writing better left to real writers. The books he wrote in the sixties were pretty much the same way, but by that time, Levant had developed into a good writer, and didn't write so many boring dissertations on the great composers and conductors of the 19th and 20th centuries.

Skip this book and read "Memoirs of an Amnesiac", "The Unimportance of Being Oscar", and his biography "A Talent for Genius", written in 1992, and available on Amazon.