Rating: 
Summary: Right Book, Wrong Title
Review: After pages and pages devoted to explaining that Tanner/Dennis had ambivalent feelings to the Mame machine AND that Mame's nephew was not the author himself AND that he came to loathe being buttonholed about her, why name the book UNCLE MAME? Tanner's life was not one of non-stop fabulousness and madcap antics. Tanner railed against his homosexuality for years and suffered a "nervous breakdown" because of his inability to accept himself. He spent like a drunken sailor and drank even more. Hardly an Uncle Mame.
Rating: 
Summary: Life's a Banquet....This Book is a Diet
Review: After reading all the great reviews for this book, I rushed out and bought a copy. Please don't make the same mistake! This is a pedestrian effort, written in prose that rarely rises above the level of an advice to the love lorn column. It lacks a point of view about Dennis's life and settles, instead, for a dull recitation of "the facts," supported by long-winded (and quite BORING) quotes from a stream of friends and accquaintances. A good editor could have cut this down to the size of magazine article. In fact, there WAS an article on Patrick Dennis in a recent Vanity Fair. That piece was witty, insightful and helped one understand why Dennis is still important. If you want to know about the man who wrote "Auntie Mame," read the VF article and skip this stinker. "Uncle Mame" is the work of an infatuated fan with minimal writing skills and scant insight into the creative process of a talented comic writer. I hate to be so negative, since this book is clearly a labor of love, but it's astounding that this got published. And as for all those good reviews: who says biograpers don't have friends?
Rating: 
Summary: Great little bio
Review: As a past fan of Patrick Dennis, and many of his lesser known novels, it was a pleasure to read this book and get a look into the less public side of his life. Very poignant and at times sad, I would reccomend it to anyone interested in lighter literary bios-esp., but not exclusively those with a gay angle.
Rating: 
Summary: A Perfect Page-Turner !
Review: At long last, a biography of the brilliantly comic writer Patrick Dennis, and a spendidly enjoyable and merry read it is. Ever since an enlightened high school drama teacher introduced me to the wonderful romps in Dennis's novels, I've wanted to know what made this gifted, funny, observant and dead-on writer tick. The biography "Uncle Mame" is that insight. It shines a light on Dennis--as a private person, as a public figure, as an artist and for me, best of all, as a social observer. The biography makes sense of this surprisingly undocumented writer. "Uncle Mame" evokes all the frothy fun of a Patrick Dennis novel and also, poignantly conveys the personal journeyed travelled by a public person. Normally in biographies, I skip the boring childhood/adolescent and young adulthood chapters, because too often, the biographer doesn't make the leap from who the child was, to who the child became. In "Uncle Mame", I found all of this background information not only interesting (and often screamingly funny) but relevant to what would become Patrick Dennis's take on life and his approach to observing the social customs and practices of his era. The book gives not only keen insight into Dennis as a writer, but also, to the underly social context of the times. The book also fills in many, many blanks, focusing on the unsung heros and heroines, friends and colleagues who contributed in various ways to Dennis' novels and it was hugely satisfying to at last find how their lives had intersected with Dennis' and the collaborative process underlying a novel. "Uncle Mame" thankfully does not shy away from stepping up to the plate to paint a candid and thoroughly three-dimensional portrait of a complex, brilliant man who whilst entertaining millions, faced personal troubles and doubts, had some battles, and through whom, left a wonderful chronicle of a by-gone era and his take on it. I can only hope the author will take on some other unheralded but hugely deserving subjects and give those of us who have been waiting, the overdue biographies of perhaps Kay Thompson, Roz Russell, Kay Kendall or Eleanor Parker.
Rating:
Summary: A well-crafted short biography of a comic master
Review: Eric Myers did an excellent job in crafting this book. It's a good weekend read, and never drags. Myers was able to enlist Dennis's (now deceased) wife Louis Tanner, as well as his children, a niece who is a nun, and a whole party-crowd of old comrades and favorites, and they all provide sparkling quotes. None sparkle more than Patrick Dennis's own letters, some of which are quoted at length, particularly in the latter chapters which cover the subject's more obscure years as an expat in Mexico, a gallery owner in Texas, and as a butler in the grand homes of rich buffoons in Chicago and Palm Springs. Myers treats Dennis's three or four mental breakdowns with tact and frankness. He tells all that needs to be told, or can be told, without getting maudlin or indulging in amateur psychoanalysis. My only reservation on this score is his treatment of Dennis's homosexual life. Perhaps for merchandising reasons, Myers is far too eager to give a modern-gay-history spin to the narrative. He seems blinded by the (to me) obvious fact that Dennis became a self-declared homosexual because that seemed a cool and hip thing to be, and because he was persuaded that anyone with a camp sensibility had to live in the homosexual world. After a dozen years in that life, Dennis seemed to be changing his mind about the whole idea. He settled back in with his wife, and if he hadn't died prematurely of pancreatic cancer he probably would have spent many more happy years with Louise. In style and taste he bears close comparison with Evelyn Waugh, and I suspect that he would have wound up very much like Waugh in his final years--self-parodying, dogmatic, cranky, but always bitterly funny. Patrick Dennis was a very different order of man from the giddy queens whose company he enjoyed. Eric Myers does him a disservice by trying to enlist him among their number. I think Myers might have been better served by his copy editors, too. He tends to repeat himself (twice on the same page we are told that the Council of Foreign Relations was a "relatively small organization", or something like that), and his excerpts from Patrick Dennis letters are longer than they need be.
Rating:
Summary: An astonishing man, a wonderful read
Review: Eric Myers does a terrific job of capturing the soul and spirit of Edward Tanner (aka Virginia Rowans, aka Patrick Dennis). Myers' deft biographical skills show how Tanner saved his venom for the page and, alas, for himself, leaving behind family and friends who clearly loved him and love him still, nearly a quarter of a century after his death. The author also encapsulates the best parts of Tanner's sixteen novels and makes a strong case for Tanner's skill as a chronicler of mid-twentieth-century America, as he skewered the pompous and championed the unique. There's much more to Patrick Dennis than his most popular book, Auntie Mame, and I hope that this first biography will bring at least the best of his other novels--The Joyous Season, Genius, Little Me--back into print.
Rating:
Summary: Life is a banquet...
Review: Fabulous. This book is wonderful for true Patrick Dennis fans. I went through this bio and could pick events from Edward Tanner's life that made it into the books. I'm glad to find "Lochby Court" has been torn down, have been looking for it for years...This is a bittersweet tale as the life of Edward Tanner had many "Upson Downs" to it. Made me wish I knew the guy as a real person. The only reason I didn't give it 5 stars is the author is trying to create a genre of fiction called "camp" and goes abit overboard on this...and gets abit tiresome in the process. Much of the action takes place where I live and have lived makes it all the more fun. Like Tanner's books, the bio is a "slice of life" to be enjoyed.
Rating:
Summary: This much-needed biography is a gem!
Review: Finally, the long-overlooked genius of author Patrick Dennis (Edward Tanner) has been resuscitated and documented in this highly entertaining, expertly researched, and very rewarding biography by Eric Myers. Through interviews with those who knew him, family photographs, and vintage press articles, among other sources, Myers has beautifully pieced together Tanner's delicate personal history and offbeat professional career. UNCLE MAME is a must-read for anyone who loves Dennis's books as well as those interested in New York society of the 1940s, and 1950s and in the American comedic novel.
Rating:
Summary: The real Mame revealed
Review: For anyone who adores the quintessential pied-piper/mentor/guardian-of-all-eccentric, Mame Dennis, this biography of her creator is a joy. Edward Tanner (aka Patrick Dennis, among other pseudonyms) was a lively, witty, sad and self-destructive "character." Like so many writers (Wilde comes to mind here) he put most of his genius in living. What he could spare for his readers seems nothing in comparison to his life. But under all of that bubble and hauteur was a homosexual man who was deeply unhappy with his lot and his need to masquerade. Eric Myers has done a fine job in trying to unravel the complexities of a man who, in the words of young Patrick's nanny, Nora Muldoon, "was odd, a loving man, but odd."
Rating: 
Summary: Good Subject, horrible writing~
Review: I am SO disappointed in this 'biography'! I can't believe the publisher actually published it! The subject is great, but the writing leaves MUCH to be desired. In fact, I felt as though I were reading a high school report on Tanner, instead of a professional writer. Myers tends to jump around in time periods, repeat things, use overtly obtuse language at times and the flow is... nonexistant. An editor had to have been fired after this one. As fascinating as the subject may be, this book reads like a text. Check it out of the Library before the Amazon line. It's a snoozer.
|
