All in Good Time: A Memoir

I loved this book. I loved this book SO much. I was a teenager in the 70s and listening to Jonathan Schwartz on WNEW-FM in New York was an incredible influence. I taped his last show when he bid farewell to his listeners there, and listened to it for years (alas, it is now lost). It never failed to move me. Later, I read his short story collection Almost Home and the stories have stayed with me for decades. I think he was one of the writers who inspired me to write fiction myself. Reading Jonathan Schwartz's work offered a glimpse into this magical voice that had both soothed and inspired and provoked so much in me thoughout my high school years. It was an enormous gift to receive this new memoir and to learn even more about this extraordinary life. It is sad in many ways, but compelling and ultimately inspiring and always moving.

Jonathan Scwartz's memoir reads like a novel, not surprising as he has put in much effort writing fiction (described in the book). The story is so American. We are taken through Hollywood of the 30s and 40s; the musical environment of New York in the 40s and 50s; the idyllic summer in Connecticut; the unsettling whir of the 60's; and into the 70s, featuring the Betty Ford clinic, a sad symbol of that decade. Near the end, the death of his famous father and the birth of his own children, finally, in the 80s. The book ends with his arrival on FM, where he broadcasts live 8 hours a weekend on WNYC 93.9.The is much richness along the way. And it's interesting to me what he chose to leave out, for example his relationship with Richard Rodgers. The Red Sox, his team, are not discussed as much as you'd might expect (for those interested in this aspect of his quirky life, I recommend his "A Day of Light and Shadows"). He does however describe his friendship with Ned Martin, the Red Sox radio broadcaster in the 1960s -- I particularly liked that part as I spent many a night listening to Martin as a child in Massachusetts.Finally, there is sadness in the book, along with the joy, but no self pity. And humor shines through regardless.

The steady voice of Jonathan Schwartz on AM and FM radio in New York and now on XM Satellite Radio everywhere in the continental USA has provided intelligence on music and almost every other subject since Jonathan's debut in 1958 (on WBAI). This extraordinary and literate memoir takes us back farther to WKCS, "The Voice of 94th Street", his teenage broadcasts on an Electronic Baby-Sitter to the family apartment and environs, and earlier to Beverly Hills with his parents Composer Arthur Schwartz ("Dancing in the Dark", "That's Entertainment") and Actress Katherine Carrington. This is a life worth knowing and "All in Good Time" provides us a unique look at everything. Want Frank Sinatra, Carly Simon, Harold Arlen, Jerome Kern, Jackie Robinson, Paris, New York, Boston, Beverly Hills, Radio, Baseball, Paine Whitney and the Betty Ford Center in 304 beautifully designed pages - Here it is to savor.

They are our imaginary friends, these radio people; voices that we grow up with, cling to, are entertained, enchanted and comforted by. We don't really want to meet them because we know they can never live up to the ideal we have crafted of their voices and our imagination. How extraordinary, then, to read a book by such a person and find out that Jonathan Schwartz is not only everything we imagined, but so much more.

I am a fan of memoirs, love to read the real instead of the fantasy side of life. This is a fantastic book, funny at times. Well worth your time to read this. You will thoroughly enjoy it.I want to also recommend a couple of other memoirs-Running With Scissors and Nightmares Echo-courageous books.