Product Description

In her exuberant new work, BOBBED HAIR AND BATHTUB GIN, Marion Meade presents a portrait of four extraordinary writers--Dorothy Parker, Zelda Fitzgerald, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and Edna Ferber--whose loves, lives, and literary endeavors embodied the spirit of the 1920s.

Capturing the jazz rhythms and desperate gaiety that defined the era, Meade gives us Parker, Fitzgerald, Millay, and Ferber, traces the intersections of their lives, and describes the men (F. Scott Fitzgerald, Edmund Wilson, Harold Ross, and Robert Benchley) who influenced them, loved them, and sometimes betrayed them. Here are the social and literary triumphs (Parker's Round Table witticisms appeared almost daily in the newspapers and Ferber and Millay won Pulitzer Prizes) and inevitably the penances each paid: crumbled love affairs, abortions, depression, lost beauty, nervous breakdowns, and finally, overdoses and even madness.

These literary heroines did what they wanted, said what they thought, living wholly in the moment. They kicked open the door for twentieth-century women writers and set a new model for every woman trying to juggle the serious issues of economic independence, political power, and sexual freedom. Meade recreates the excitement, romance, and promise of the 1920s, a decade celebrated for cultural innovation--the birth of jazz, the beginning of modernism--and social and sexual liberation, bringing to light, as well, the anxiety and despair that lurked beneath the nonstop partying and outrageous behavior.

A vibrant mixture of literary scholarship, social history, and scandal, BOBBED HAIR AND BATHTUB GIN is a rich evocation of a period that will forever intrigue and captivate us.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #584235 in Books
• Published on: 2004-05-18
• Released on: 2004-05-18
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 352 pages

From Publishers Weekly
This light, engaging book spends the years from 1920 to 1930 with Zelda Fitzgerald, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Dorothy Parker and Edna Ferber. Without directly tying them together by any theme (other than that they were all "blessed with the gift of laughter"), Meade moves easily among the women, bringing to life four very different individuals and the worlds they moved in, although Ferber suffers somewhat from being surrounded by more colorful contemporaries. Parker, appropriately enough, is introduced with the words "[I]t couldn't be worse" (she was being canned by Vanity Fair) while Millay is evoked with the offhand observation, "[S]leeping with the boy from Vanity Fair was probably a bad idea. But Vincent did it anyway." The emphasis is on the personalities and personal lives of the women, but Meade (Dorothy Parker: What Fresh Hell Is This?) fairly seamlessly weaves professional ambitions, successes and frustrations into their stories. (It's also fascinating to be reminded that both Ferber and Millay, who could not have been more different in writing style or personality, both enjoyed a good deal of commercial success.) Serious students of the Roaring '20s or of the writers may not learn anything new here; they may also find the interior monologue of the narrative ("Bunny, poor sweet Bunny, so naïve about the opposite sex") grating. And the story stops, rather than ends, in 1930. But for the curious nonexpert, the gossipy, personal tone makes for an enjoyable and informative read. 2 photo inserts not seen by PW.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
The four 1920s women writers Meade focuses on were legends in their own time--and what a time it was. Encapsulating the razzle-dazzle and optimism of the Jazz Age, Meade covers each year of the wild and woolly decade, beginning with Dorothy Parker's firing from Vanity Fair, and embracing Zelda Fitzgerald and her wild drinking and dancing in fountains alongside her husband, F. Scott. Across town on West Nineteenth Street, Edna St. Vincent Millay's fingers flew over the keyboard of a featherweight Corona No. 3 (a gift from her married lover, James Lawyer), turning out "Renascence," the poem that would make her famous. With fellow Pulitzer Prize winner Edna Ferber, those three inspired and intrepid women were free-spirited "celebrities" before the term was coined, in an era whose energy and tumult became legendary historically and literarily. Their unusual and indelible lives, and scintillating milieu, are vividly captured by Meade in this fast-paced and informative group biography. Whitney Scott
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review
"Marion Meade has done something dazzling. In a kaleidoscopic narrative, she has resurrected the literary heroines of the l920s so that they?re with us still, kicking and screaming and occasionally even writing. Fast living never felt like this on the page before."

--Stacy Schiff, Pulitzer Prize?winning author of Vera (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov)
-- Review

Customer Reviews

Utterly fabulous fresco of a fascinating era
I loved this book. I don't usually like biographies (they're all the same--someone is born, becomes famous, dies, etc) but this group bio of Edna Ferber, Zelda Fitzgerald, Dorothy Parker, and Edna St. Vincent Millay totally captured my imagination. It's organized by year, and the storytelling jumps from woman to woman in a way that creates much suspense and anticipation. Meade makes each woman seem so three-dimensional, they don't just leap off the page--I could swear I even smelled Dotty Parker's Chypre perfume and taste Zelda's gin blossoms and highballs. This book would make a great gift for any one who loves biography, the Roaring 20s, or any of the writers in question. The large number of cameo appearances by other writers, bohemians, and Round Tablers give the book a wider appeal. As a recovering English major, I feel strongly that anyone who lists "The Great Gatsby" or "The Sun Also Rises" as his favorite book should get a copy as well, if only for medicinal purposes!

Take a Trip Back to the Twenties
Marion Meade's new book Bobbed Hair and Bathtub Gin is like manna from heaven for aficionados of the Roaring Twenties.

Seventeen years ago Meade wrote What Fresh Hell is This? It remains the definitive Dorothy Parker biography; now she expands on the 10 most exciting years of Parker's life, along with Edna Ferber, Zelda Fitzgerald and Edna St. Vincent Millay.

The subtitle of Bobbed Hair and Bathtub Gin is "Writer's Running Wild in the Twenties" and it is an exciting read that zeroes in on one decade in the lives of the four women and those close to them. There are other, longer, and deeper biographies and autobiographies of the quartet, but this book digs beneath the surface about what made them so unique, powerful and passionate about what they did.

Meade had a real challenge before her. The reader knows how all four will end up post-1930. The task was to shine a spotlight on the crucial years when all four came into their own and were either on their way up, or down, professionally or personally. Some of the tale is humorous, often tragic, but always fascinating. Anyone who's read about these women before is sure to learn something new that bigger books might have overlooked.

If you're reading Bobbed Hair and happen to be a lover of writers, history, old books and the theatre, then you might know what's around the corner for all of these women. The stock market crash of 1929 is looming. The Depression is on its way. Prohibition will end. Adolph Hitler is coming to power. And yet the book brings these women and their cohorts so vividly to life, like it was only yesterday that they were creating new material and turning up in the gossip columns.

What an AMAZING era!!!
4 women, 4 lives, and about 4 million bottles of gin!
Author Meade does an amazing job of bringing the era of 1920-30 vibrantly to life, capturing the unique blend of post-war innocence and decadence that marked that time in history. It was a wild time when everyone seemed larger than life --- a time when egos, libidos, and liquor ran free and very wild! No where was this hypnotic chaos more pronounced than in the artistic community. By tracing and weaving her narrative around and about the lives and social circles of 4 amazing women (Zelda Fitzgerald, Dorothy Parker, Edna Ferber, and Edna St. Vincent Millay) Meade captures the artistic pulse of the era wonderfully. This is a very entertaining book of authors and the literary set behaving SO badly that it's surprising they still had the energy (much less the time) to write. You know you are in for some twisted fun when Dorothy Parker seems the sanest person in the crowd!! Extremely enjoyable!