Posted 5:30 PM by Gene

ANNOYING: Some wri-TER typed a re-vue of two bios of Gypsy Rose Lee. The first offense: Likening her to CherMadonnaBritney. The prime difference (other than that Gypsy Rose appears to have been a real woman, not merely technically female) is that, if this typist is true, she did it on her own, whereas that infernal triumvirate could not have done it without press agents, most of whom work out of newsrooms. The second offense (and not her fault): Most likely both books appeared because of -- let us clear the throat: BENJAMIN BRITTEN, W. H. AUDEN, PETER PEARS, ROLLLLLLLLL THE EYYYYYYYYYYYYES; when in fact the people lived at that famed Brooklyn boarding house not because of their damned SEXUALITY, but because it was a gathering ground for lively folk in the arts, and it insults the memory of Britten and others (especially he, a great composer) to reduce everything down to such microscopic trifles. We can be sure Gypsy and her cohorts would have had none of it.

One thing (as we'd expect) our au-THOR doesn't tell us: whether Gypsy wrote her own books. We know The G-String Murders was ghosted, and her epochal memoirs largely so. But we don't expect au-THORS to tell us such. Here is a demonstration why KAPLAN, INC. was thoroughly right in closing its Book Revue. (This typing appears under the "Book World" banner. Nuf said.)

And that we may not have the foggiest idea who Gypsy was (other than the title character of some MUSICAL) ties in all too well to the death of jazz. Once we had a grand urban culture. Gypsy was part of it. So was jazz. Now it's bus-'n'-truck companies and holes in the wall for budding MP3-inspired GENIUS.

P. S. Where is Jonathan Yardley?

P. P. S. at 7:20 p. m. A Google is hardly conclusive (and much of the evidence goes back to the hardly-definitive WIKIPEDIA), but Gypsy may not have ghosted her first novel after all; and evidently she wrote her memoirs on her own.