Manchester-by-the-Sea Public Library

Famous father girl, a memoir of growing up Bernstein, Jamie Bernstein

eng

collective biography

illustrations

index present

non fiction

Famous father girl

1037176392

Jamie Bernstein

a memoir of growing up Bernstein

"In a deeply intimate and broadly evocative memoir, the eldest daughter of revered composer-conductor Leonard Bernstein offers a rare look at her father on the centennial of his birth. The composer of On the Town and West Side Story, chief conductor of the New York Philharmonic, television star, humanitarian, friend of the powerful and influential, and the life of every party, Leonard Bernstein was an enormous celebrity during one of the headiest periods of American cultural life, as well as the most protean musician in twentieth century America. But to his eldest daughter, Jamie, he was above all the man in the scratchy brown bathrobe who smelled of cigarettes; the jokester and compulsive teacher who enthused about Beethoven and the Beatles; the insomniac whose composing breaks at four a.m. involved spooning baby food out of the jar. He taught his daughter to love the world in all its beauty and complexity. In public and private, Lenny was larger than life. In Famous Father Girl, Bernstein mines the emotional depths of her childhood and invites us into her family's private world. A fantastic set of characters populates the Bernsteins' lives, including the Kennedys, Mike Nichols, John Lennon, Richard Avedon, Stephen Sondheim, Jerome Robbins, and Betty (Lauren) Bacall. An intoxicating tale, Famous Father Girl is an intimate meditation on a complex and sometimes troubled man, the family he raised, and the music he composed that became the soundtrack to their entwined lives. Deeply moving and often hilarious, Bernstein's beautifully written memoir is a great American story about one of the greatest Americans of the modern age."--Jacket

The Osborne -- The Vineyard and Redding -- Park Avenue and Fairfield -- The first shadows -- The Beatles portal -- Summer games -- A little teen in '60s New York -- School, family, and the world -- Stone teen -- One toe out of the nest -- Shifting grounds -- Not really grownup -- Here come the terrors -- Crawling from the wreckage -- The east-west shuffle -- Quiet-ish -- Redding, Wecord, and what was in between -- Forward motion -- An arrival -- A departure -- Life goes on -- A new millennium -- The Venezuela connection -- Lately