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Rating: 
Summary: What an AMAZING era!!!
Review: 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!
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Summary: A great book for the summer
Review: Fun and light, this is a perfect beach read. Marion Meade is a terrific writer and brings the four women back to life. Learn all about the parties, the gossip, and their outlandish lifestyles...
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Summary: The underrated Edna Ferber
Review: I disagree with the PW reviewer who said that Edna Ferber was slighted by appearing among more colorful writers.
In fact for the first time Edna Ferber has been given parity with the other writers, and reading about her life and her absolute devotion to her craft made me toy with the idea of picking up SHOW BOAT, CIMARRON or SO BIG.
The movies they made from these novels are great at any rate. I like the way Marion Meade outlines Ferber's life as a series of occasions surrounding the writing of a novel. Plain and dumpy, Ferber was not the sort to inspire passion in men (or women I guess), except for the one ambiguous relationship with newspaperman William Allen White, old enough to be her father and who might have nourished more-than-fatherly feelings for young Edna when she became his protege. Meade hints at this but admits the evidence is scarce on the ground.
Yes, Parker, Millay and Zelda Fitzgerald had a lot more sex in their lives, but after reading about the way they each seemed to burn themselves out in the 1920s, I wound up with a bit more respect for the woman who stayed the course and kept on writing her novels right into the 1960s. Yes, the underrated Edna Ferber.
An issue of the NEW YORKER last month had some nasty things to say about Edna Ferber under the guise of reviewing the new Library of America volume of George S. Kaufman plays. It's almost as though the reviewer was thinking, "It's open season on Edna Ferber and I can say whatever lousy things I want, because no one will call him on it." That's one clown should have his ass kicked but good.
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Summary: Thoroughly entertaining
Review: 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.
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Summary: Intelligent, Juicy and Thoroughly Entertaining
Review: Sex. Drugs. Booze. Wild parties. No, it's not another rock-and-roll band tell-all. It's Marion Meade's intelligent, juicy and thoroughly entertaining BOBBED HAIR AND BATHTUB GIN. Meade's latest effort recounts in luscious detail the lives, loves, closeted skeletons and tormented souls of Zelda Fitzgerald, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Dorothy Parker and Edna Ferber --- literary figures whose stars burned brightly and whose legends took form in the period in American history bracketed by the end of World War One and the beginning of the Great Depression. BOBBED HAIR AND BATHTUB GIN is divided into eleven chapters, each covering a single year from 1920 to 1930. The four women form the core of the narrative, which spirals outward as it advances through the decade of the Roaring Twenties to include a host of figures that swarmed around New York City's journalism, theater and publishing hives. Variously entwined and entangled with the women at the center of the giddy gin- and hormone-fueled maelstrom are dozens of familiar names, including Robert Benchley, Alexander Woollcott, and other members of the notorious Algonquin Roundtable; H. L. Mencken; and of course, F. Scott Fitzgerald. Meade's exhaustive research and crisp writing have produced a work that is at once a fascinating history of the American literary scene in the Twenties and a sensational beach read, a thinking-person's soap opera. A welcome antidote to the assorted dullards and contrived situations of reality television, BOBBED HAIR AND BATHTUB GIN delivers smart, extraordinarily talented real people, human beings with the obsessions, neurosis and psychological baggage that are part of the requisite chemistry of artistic genius, literary or otherwise. In their twenties during the Twenties, Zelda Fitzgerald, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Dorothy Parker and Edna Ferber were, like their contemporaries, people who gleefully ignored inconvenient laws and problematic social conventions. They were at various times heartbreakers and heartbroken. The men in their lives acted either as the hero/protector, or like navigationally challenged birds that fly into windowpanes. As a kind of who's who of American writers of the era, BOBBED HAIR AND BATHTUB GIN offers a compelling portrait of a unique period in American cultural history. While many of the real-life characters in this wonderful book ultimately found something less than happy endings, one feels perhaps a greater sense of loss for the passing of an era when print was king and writers were revered as stars in their own right. (It must also be observed, however, that they were also the subjects of a level of public interest and scrutiny that made Scott and Zelda the Ben and J-Lo of their day.) H. G. Wells, who makes a brief appearance at a party in BOBBED HAIR AND BATHTUB GIN, was, of course, the author of THE TIME MACHINE. In a profound and thoroughly engaging way, author Marion Meade has provided readers with the means to travel back to 1920 and witness the lives of four women whose voices, vices and literary virtues added to the roar. It is a journey well worth the effort. --- (...)
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Summary: Ms. Meade leaves out one important quality...
Review: the TRUTH. This is the third book of Ms. Meades I have read and again stockpiled with errors. She tried to be scandalous, but comes of as a gossip. There is only one word of advice I have for Ms. Meade: RESEARCH. I know you'll have to look that one up!
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Summary: Trashy Life Styles of the Rich and Famous
Review: This book relates incidents from the lives of 4 famous women during the 1920s: Edna St. Vincent Millay, Dorothy Parker, Edna Ferber, and Zelda Fitzgerald. However, that is strictly what it does: relates incidents. It does not attempt to share any insight, make any connections between their behavior and their writings, nor between the writers. There is no theme. "eat, drink and be merry" .. without the conclusion "for tomorrow we ..."
Even the subtitle is misleading: "writers running wild ..."is not accurate in terms of "writers" nor in terms of "running wild". While Zelda Fitzgerald did indeed have a natural talent, and did indeed later publish a novel, during the 1920s she did not consider herself a professional writer. As to "running wild", one incident in the life of Edna Ferber does not meet most people's definition of "running wild", especially when every other description indicates a disciplined workaholic.
Those looking for some insight into literary lives, hoping that will transfer to greater understanding of their works, will be disappointed. Those familiar with the lives of these authors will not find anything new. Those wishing to be titillated may enjoy it.
Rating:
Summary: Thoroughly entertaining
Review: This is a delightful read to be sure. With prose that sparkles and mirrors the era, the four talented and eccentric ladies are brought into full relief.
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