Too strong for fantasy

I have always admired the works of Marcia Davenport. I purchased these two books for a friend who has just become involved with opera.

I have read this book several times over the last two decades. And still find it engrossing, both for the glimpses it provides of life in an earlier age and among talented people, and for the model of self-examination it provides. Marcia Davenport comes close to living up to the maxim we all imbibed in school, "An unexamined life is not worth living." Additionally, she was an intelligent, strong, independent woman during an era when that was not usual: her story should be sustaining to young girls who have been labeled by our schools as "gifted" but have few role models.Marcia Davenport lived among and knew well many people we would now call "celebrities" -- although their contributions to the arts and to freedom go deeper than that. She is well known as the first writer in English to do a biography of Mozart; additionally, she has written several novels. Among her family and friends are included: her mother, the opera singer Alma Gluck; her step-father, the violinist Efrem Zimbalist; her husband, writer & publisher Russell Davenport; the conductor, Arturo Toscanini; the editor Max Perkins; and the Czech politician Jan Masaryk. It is a testament to her strong personality that she does not get "lost" among these luminaries.Davenport's writing is always more cerebral than emotional. Because of that, I have found her memoirs and biographies more satisfying than her novels. This autobiography is honestly written and totally absorbing.

I first read this book in 1967 when it was published and was enthralled by it then and was equally so when I recently reread it to review for a book club. Odd that one would review such an old book, but it has always been one of my favorites. Davenport's intense relationships with her mother, Alma Gluck, a sensationally popular opera singer; her husband, Russell Davenport; Arturo Toscanini, the famed conductor; her editor, Max Perkins; and especially, Jan Masaryk, the foreign minister of Czechoslovakia, and the great love of her life, are described compellingly and with unusual perception. She writes, also, of some of her novels, such as The Valley of Decision, and Mozart. She was particularly attached to places, such as Czechoslakia, especially Prague, and Italy, and she gives you a real sense of what they were like pre- and post World War II. Like her novels, her autobiography is moving and totally engrossing.

This book, written over many years and published in 1967, is one of my favorite books, read and reread many times. It is a picture of the first part of the 20th century, seen though the eyes of a perceptive writer. Through her eyes we meet her remarkable mother, Alma Gluck, one of the great opera singers of the century; Arturo Toscanini, one of the century's great conductors; Max Perkins, her editor, who was also the editor, for Scribners, of, among others, Hemingway, Wolfe and Rawlings; and Jan Masaryk, one of the political heroes of the Czech people in this century. An amazing book, vividly and honestly written..