Julie Salamon is the author of Hospital, about Maimonides Hospital, as well as The New York Times bestseller The Christmas Tree; the true-crime book Facing the Wind; the novel White Lies; the film classic The Devil’s Candy; a family memoir, The Net of Dreams; and Rambam’s Ladder. Previously a reporter and critic with The Wall Street Journal, she has also written for The New York Times, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Vogue, and The New Republic.
Wendy and the Lost Boys: The Uncommon Life of Wendy Wasserstein
eBook
-
ISBN-13:
9781101517765
- Publisher: Temple Publications International, Inc.
- Publication date: 08/18/2011
- Sold by: Penguin Group
- Format: eBook
- Pages: 480
- Sales rank: 411,499
- File size: 2 MB
- Age Range: 18 Years
Available on NOOK devices and apps
Want a NOOK? Explore Now
The authorized biography of Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Wendy Wasserstein.
In Wendy and the Lost Boys bestselling author Julie Salamon explores the life of playwright Wendy Wasserstein's most expertly crafted character: herself. The first woman playwright to win a Tony Award, Wendy Wasserstein was a Broadway titan. But with her high- pitched giggle and unkempt curls, she projected an image of warmth and familiarity. Everyone knew Wendy Wasserstein. Or thought they did.
Born on October 18, 1950, in Brooklyn, New York, to Polish Jewish immigrant parents, Wendy was the youngest of Lola and Morris Wasserstein's five children. Lola had big dreams for her children. They didn't disappoint: Sandra, Wendy's glamorous sister, became a high- ranking corporate executive at a time when Fortune 500 companies were an impenetrable boys club. Their brother Bruce became a billionaire superstar of the investment banking world. Yet behind the family's remarkable success was a fiercely guarded world of private tragedies.
Wendy perfected the family art of secrecy while cultivating a densely populated inner circle. Her friends included theater elite such as playwright Christopher Durang, Lincoln Center Artistic Director André Bishop, former New York Times theater critic Frank Rich, and countless others.
And still almost no one knew that Wendy was pregnant when, at age forty-eight, she was rushed to Mount Sinai Hospital to deliver Lucy Jane three months premature. The paternity of her daughter remains a mystery. At the time of Wendy's tragically early death less than six years later, very few were aware that she was gravely ill. The cherished confidante to so many, Wendy privately endured her greatest heartbreaks alone.
In Wendy and the Lost Boys, Salamon assembles the fractured pieces, revealing Wendy in full. Though she lived an uncommon life, she spoke to a generation of women during an era of vast change. Revisiting Wendy's works-The Heidi Chronicles and others-we see Wendy in the free space of the theater, where her many selves all found voice. Here Wendy spoke in the most intimate of terms about everything that matters most: family and love, dreams and devastation. And that is the Wendy of Neverland, the Wendy who will never grow old.
Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought
-
- Romantic Outlaws: The…
- by Charlotte Gordon
-
- A Life of Barbara Stanwyck:…
- by Victoria Wilson
-
- Master of Ceremonies: A Memoir
- by Joel Grey
-
- Part Swan, Part Goose: An…
- by Swoosie KurtzJoni Rodgers
-
- A Book of Secrets:…
- by Michael Holroyd
-
- At Home in the World: A Memoir
- by Joyce Maynard
-
- Finding It: And Satisfying My…
- by Valerie Bertinelli
-
- Sisters of Fortune:…
- by Jehanne Wake
-
- The Arrogant Years: One…
- by Lucette Lagnado
-
- Every Love Story Is a Ghost…
- by D. T. Max
-
- Constance: The Tragic and…
- by Franny Moyle
-
- Beautiful: The Life of Hedy…
- by Stephen Michael ShearerRobert Osborne
-
- Hellraisers: The Life and…
- by Robert Sellers
Recently Viewed
The New York Times Book Review
Washington Post
Los Angeles Times
New York Times
The Associated Press
— THE NEW YORK TIMES
“Excellent…Salamon’s voice is like that of a Wasserstein character, a late-night girlfriend who tells you the truth, but confidentially, and sideways.” — THE NEW YORKER
“Top-notch…a penetrating biography. The book, less a literary reckoning with Wasserstein’s legacy than a frank character study, is superbly paced. [T]he work unfolds with an alacrity that had me fearing the end not just because it was such a tartly compelling read but because it's still so hard to accept a theatrical world without Wasserstein around to make it seem so much more magical.” — THE LOS ANGELES TIMES
“Intriguing” — PEOPLE Magazine
“Engaging new biography” — THE ECONOMIST
“Julie Salamon is a helluva journalist and her Wendy and the Lost Boys: The Uncommon Life of Wendy Wasserstein is a helluva story.” — NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
“Perceptive and empathetic, but also gently unsparing—a superbly nuanced portrait” — KIRKUS (starred review)
From veteran nonfiction author Salamon (Hospital: Man, Woman, Birth, Death, Infinity, Plus Red Tape, Bad Behavior, Money, God and Diversity on Steroids,2008, etc.), the authorized biography of the playwright who brought the dreams and disappointments of her generation of women to the American stage.
Though she was the first female playwright to win a Tony Award and a Pulitzer Prize (forThe Heidi Chroniclesin 1989), Wendy Wasserstein (1950–2006) never entirely escaped the judgment of her overbearing mother Lola, whose comment about the Pulitzer was, "I'd be just as happy if she'd marry a lawyer." That wasn't going to happen: Wasserstein's most intimate relationships were with gay men such as playwrights Christopher Durang and Terrence McNally, nonprofit theatrical impresario André Bishop and costume designer William Ivey Long. She jokingly referred to them as her "husbands" and enlisted McNally and Long in her attempts to conceive a child, but it was characteristic of Wasserstein's seemingly open but profoundly private nature that when she did finally give birth to daughter Lucy in 1999, no one knew precisely how she had arranged it. She was similarly secretive about the leukemia that killed her at age 55. Her conflicts and contradictions were as extraordinary as she was, yet plays likeUncommon Women and Others, Isn't It Romantic, The Sisters Rosensweig,and most of allThe Heidi Chroniclesvoiced the experiences of her peers, women who expected to have careers as well as families and painfully discovered that having it all wasn't going to be easy—or maybe even possible. Salamon does a capable job of covering Wasserstein's professional life, including her grad-student days among the legendary mid-'70s Yale Drama crowd that also featured Meryl Streep and Sigourney Weaver. The author's real interest, however—and where the book excels—is in elucidating Wasserstein's complex personality and the creative, unconventional life she fashioned for herself, balancing fraught but committed family ties with a busy social life teeming with devoted friends who in the end shared drama critic Frank Rich's assessment that they "had somehow failed to see Wendy whole." That was, Salamon suggests, because she didn't want them to.
Perceptive and empathetic, but also gently unsparing—a superbly nuanced portrait.