Author Description

"Kenneth Tynan was a much-admired enfant terrible at Oxford in the mid-1940s, became the chief drama critic of the London Observer when he was only twenty-seven, wrote dazzling and provocative reviews for The New Yorker, was the literary manager of Britain's National Theatre under Laurence Olivier, devised the world's first frontally nude musical, campaigned to abolish censorship in the theater, and was a full participant in the Swinging London of the 1960s. A party at the Tynans' house in Thurloe Square was the inspiration for Antonioni's movie Blow-Up." "Tynan was an enthusiastic correspondent. The first letter in this collection was written when he was ten years old. He points out that Humphrey Bogart's career is being mismanaged. (The course was subsequently corrected.) The last letter was written to his son on his tenth birthday, a few weeks before Tynan died of emphysema in Santa Monica. In between is a record of a complicated, often profound, truly engaged life. Tynan's letters are heady performances: gossipy, irreverent, and always thoughtful. He wrote to Marlene Dietrich, Louise Brooks, Tennessee Williams, Vaclav Havel, John Lennon, Mary McCarthy, and a host of other friends, lovers, and colleagues. The letters cover a range of subjects and plunge the reader into a cultural stew."--BOOK JACKET.