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Product Details
Hardcover: 624 pages
Publisher: Knopf; First Edition edition (May 6, 2008)
At nine o'clock this morning, I arrived at Barnes and Noble, picked up Audition and sat down to read with a cup of coffee. I read for hours, bought the book and continued reading at home.
At over 600 pages, this book cannot be read in a day. However, I have read enough to report that the book is magnificent; extremely well- written, very pleasurable to read and absolutely fascinating.
Thankfully, there is also a detailed index. I found myself eying the index and flipping through to certain sections. I enjoyed reading about Walters' experience with the application form and other details at my alma mater, Sarah Lawrence College.
Open this book and on the inside jacket is a listing of the hundreds (thousands?) of people who Barbara Walters has interviewed and knows. It's pretty staggering, actually.
Born September 25, 1929, Barbara Walters has led an extraordinary life. Walters was first known as a TV morning news anchor and became the first female evening news anchor and many of us know her as the interviewer who can make anyone cry. Walters has spent decades reporting the news and interviewing, extracting juicy details and information out of world leaders, celebrities, heads of state and other VIP's.
In Audition, we get to learn about Walter's personal and professional life and her relationships with many of the most famous people in the world.
In the prologue, Walters states: "It feels to me that my life has been one long audition--an attempt to make a difference and to be accepted."
I was quite moved by her introduction and her feelings about her mentally challenged older sister, Jackie.Read more ›
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I always wondered why Barbara Walters had a slightly unfocused look at the beginning of some of her broadcasts. She confesses that when she is nervous, she takes one puff of a cigarette just offstage, and (being a non-smoker) immediately feels slightly dizzy but relaxed. This is exactly the look I am thinking of -- eager but slightly unfocused for a moment, batting her eyelashes exactly twice.
It's the nicotine!
Miss Walters has produced a long and satisfying memoir which will become the beach read of the Summer. Early on, she boasts slightly of her skills as an editor. It's clear she has applied them to this book as well. Barbara Walters has produced a finely-lubricated engine of a narrative that keeps us moving rather swiftly through her early years and subsequent superstar status.
I imagine the book could easily have topped 1,000 pages had she not applied her skilled eye in chopping it down. Still, when Miss Walters writes about some of her more interesting interviews, Truman Capote for example, you almost wish she would go into more detail. There is a sense she is holding back for brevity.
However, there are so many incredible anecdotes -- one featuring Robert F. Kennedy and a Mynah bird had me howling -- and they are from such impressive individuals, you admire her even more for taking out what must have been some humdingers.
I don't want to give any of them away because they're too good. I bought this book on the day of its release and I am not disappointed.
I like Barbara Walters' tenacity and ambition, even if she feels her rise to the top was fueled somewhat by an anxious insecurity, a neverending audition. In fact, she's auditioning for us here.Read more ›
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I had very mixed reactions after reading this book. The personal sections, the ones dealing with her daughter, father and other aspects of life OFF screen were very engaging.
I can remember Barbara Walters from the days when she was a very young reporter or television journalist, the distinctive speech that was parodied on Saturday Night Live, the Barbara "Wah Wah" jokes and all the rest.
As a young female watching all that occur in a time when women's roles were changing, I often cringed when I saw her on television. It was like watching and FEELING a cultural paradigm - and I think this book reflects that as well.
Although Walters maintained a fairly professional facade throughout her career, I'm sure plenty of what happened to her, on air and off, stung. So to judge her too harshly would be wrong.
However, I DO think there are parts of this book which are too braggy, perhaps unintentionally so, perhaps even defensively so. The woman is used to attention, to a certain degree of power and to having fought her way from being scorned by male co-anchors to winning respect. That deserves note.
Still, it wasn't all the list of Firsts and Great Interviews that Walters writes about that actually touched and engaged me. Instead, it was her honesty about her personal, behind the scenes life. I recall seeing a show she did on adoptive parents and her own interview and the revelations of her adopted daughter. There were struggles between the two and even estrangement for a time. Also, Barbara had a sister with mental challenges and there was that as well as times when she had to put her career first and marriage and even her daughter second. There was a cost for that and I didn't feel Walter shied away from being honest about the realities.Read more ›
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