Some Remarkable Men: Further Memoirs - Hardcover

Lord, James

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0374266557 ISBN 13: 9780374266554

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1996

Synopsis

With his critically acclaimed acute eye, James Lord has created another series of inimitably spirited, witty, profoundly moving portraits. Haunting, mesmerizing, and endlessly entertaining, Some Remarkable Men reverberates with Lord's unique gift for the intimate portrait.

About this title

Review

James Lord, an American who has lived in Paris for more than half a century, has been friends with some of the most influential and interesting artists and thinkers of our time. In a previous volume, Six Exceptional Women, he looked back on his friendships with Gertrude Stein, Alice B. Toklas, and four others. Some Remarkable Men provides a glimpse into the lives of Alberto Giacometti, Harold Acton, Jean Cocteau, and Balthus. Lord sits squarely in what is now a very unfashionable branch of the school of biography--he believes strongly in the idea of genius and eschews the notion that the history of an individual is somehow reducible to a set of pathologies that grow out of some character flaw or childhood trauma. The result is a series of portraits that are engaging, insightful, funny, and revealing.

From Kirkus Reviews

With his skill at polishing his enviable experiences and an apparently inexhaustible supply of illustriously populated journals, Lord (Picasso and Dora, 1993, etc.) remains a formidable memoirist in his latest book. Threading together Lord's intersections with Harold Acton, Jean Cocteau, Balthus, and Alberto and Diego Giacometti, these vibrant extended sketches bring together those who might otherwise be incompatible company. We get a witty but trenchant biographic summary of Acton's youthful promise and expatriation in China; he has at last settled down in middle age with his disapproving parents at their lavish villa in Florence when Lord enters the picture. Lord's description of Acton's waspish flights of conversation are matched with his Brideshead-like impressions of Acton's oppressive family life, with his parents regularly locking him out at night after his revels. The conversation of the ubiquitous, multi-talented Cocteau was likewise stimulating if superficial, as was everything about Cocteau, but their relationship dwindled after Lord declined the impossible task of translating Cocteau's Diary of an Unknown. With Balthus, Lord found himself bargaining for a portrait by the reclusive painter--the cost of which was an antique rug that belonged to Lord's grandmother and that the self-styled ``Count de Rola'' wanted for his chƒteau. In the longest section, Lord expands on his close relationship with Giacometti (Lord is too modest to claim friendship) to include his growing amity with Alberto's brother, Diego, and his vexatious dealings with his widow while trying to preserve Alberto's legacy in a biography. Of all these remarkable men, only Giacometti is unequivocally pronounced a genius. Underneath Lord's witty, dilettantish style, his recollections have a serious core about living the artistic life, with its hidden costs and uncertain legacies. (illustrations, not seen) -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Edition details

• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0374266557
• ISBN 13: 9780374266554
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 360