Bobbed Hair and Bathtub Gin: Writers Running Wild in the Twenties

by Marion Meade

Book Overview

In her exuberant new work, Marion Meade presents a portrait of four extraordinary writers-Dorothy Parker, Zelda Fitzgerald, Edna St.Vincent Millay, and Edna Ferber- whose loves, lives, and literary endeavors embodied the spirit of the 1920s. These literary heroines did what they wanted and said what they thought, living wholly in the moment. They kicked open the door for twentieth-century women writers and set a new model for every woman trying to...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0156030594
• ISBN13: 9780156030595
• Release Date: June 2005
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
• Length: 368 Pages
• Weight: 0.88 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.2" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Utterly fabulous fresco of a fascinating era

I loved this book. I don't usually like biographies (they're all the same--someone is born, becomes famous, dies, etc) but this group bio of Edna Ferber, Zelda Fitzgerald, Dorothy Parker, and Edna St. Vincent Millay totally captured my imagination. It's organized by year, and the storytelling jumps from woman to woman in a way that creates much suspense and anticipation. Meade makes each woman seem so three-dimensional, they don't just leap off the page--I could swear I even smelled Dotty Parker's Chypre perfume and taste Zelda's gin blossoms and highballs. This book would make a great gift for any one who loves biography, the Roaring 20s, or any of the writers in question. The large number of cameo appearances by other writers, bohemians, and Round Tablers give the book a wider appeal. As a recovering English major, I feel strongly that anyone who lists "The Great Gatsby" or "The Sun Also Rises" as his favorite book should get a copy as well, if only for medicinal purposes!

A Satisfying Read

This book was a valued companion during my commutes to and from work late this summer,and I enjoyed it immensely. Meade's Dorothy Parker biography, "What Fresh Hell Is This" is one of my all-time favorites, and while "Bobbed Hair..." is not nearly as indepth (and is not meant to be), it provides a very satisfying taste of each woman's life in the 1920's. The only flaw, for me, is that I found Edna St. Vincent Millay's behavior tremendously annoying and so did not enjoy sections of the book devoted to her as much as the rest.

What an AMAZING era!!!

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!

Intelligent, Juicy and Thoroughly Entertaining

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 li

Take a Trip Back to the Twenties

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.