Marion Meade
Encyclopedia
Marion Meade is an American biographer and novelist, whose subjects stretch from 12th century French royalty to 20th century stand-up comedians. She is best known for her portraits of literary figures and iconic filmmakers.
immigrant from Amritsar, India
, taught physics at the University of Pittsburgh
. Her mother Mary, a Hungarian-American, was a homemaker whose hobbies included writing song lyrics and raising orchids. Meade first became interested in journalism while attending Bethel Township High School where she edited the school paper and worked summers on a local
newspaper.
She studied journalism at Northwestern University
, graduating in 1955. The following year she moved to New York, earned a master’s degree from Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, and found her first reporting job as an assistant to Earl Wilson
, the popular Broadway columnist for the New York Post
. She subsequently worked for publications in New York and Washington, before becoming a free lancer and publishing articles in the New York Times, The Nation
, The New Republic
and McCall's
.
Meade’s first book, published in 1973, was a direct result of her involvement in the women’s liberation movement
of the Sixties. Inspired by her participation in feminist consciousness-raising groups, she questioned women of all ages to reveal how they secretly regard the males in their lives and wrote Bitching, a less than favorable review of the opposite sex.
Following Bitching, Meade wrote a trilogy of feminist-conscious works set in medieval France and featuring intelligent, headstrong heroines. Eleanor of Aquitaine
chronicles the life of the powerful 12th century queen of France and England. Stealing Heaven: The Love Story of Heloise and Abelard retells one of the most famous love stories of European history (a film adaptation of the novel was released in 1988). A second novel, Sybille, is about the death of literature during Europe’s first great holocaust, the Albigensian Crusade
, and a 13th century troubadour grappling with her verse as her homeland collapses.
From a fictional poet of the Middle Ages
, Meade moved forward to a very different time and place and a real-life 20th century poet and short story writer, Dorothy Parker
, who had been one of her favorites since adolescence. In 1988 she published a biography (Dorothy Parker: What Fresh Hell Is This?) that revived Parker’s reputation as the wittiest woman of her generation and years later remains the definitive source of her life and work. New interest in Parker led to the making of a big-budget Hollywood film, Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle
, starring Jennifer Jason Leigh
(1994). Meade’s connection with Dorothy Parker has continued because the poet turned up as one of four subjects in Meade’s 2004 book Bobbed Hair and Bathtub Gin.
In 2006 she went on to revise and edit Parker’s collected works, The Portable Dorothy Parker, updating the 60-year-old anthology with fresh material and a cache of personal letters. A bold new look for the Portable was added when Penguin Books
commissioned a jacket from the well known illustrator Seth
. Two years later Meade presided over a new edition of The Ladies of the Corridor, an admirable play written by Parker and Arnaud D’Usseau in 1953.
For most of the 1990s, Meade worked on recreating the lives—private and professional—of two important American filmmakers, both of whom happened also to be comics. Buster Keaton
: Cut to the Chase recorded the journey of Joseph Frank Keaton
(his given name) from a Kansas medicine show to vaudeville headliner to pioneer of cinema’s most treasured classic films. Her 2000 biography, The Unruly Life of Woody Allen
, undertook to recapture the life of a living subject whose ups and downs had brought him both accolades and derision.
Next, she returned to literary biography with the story of four women—Edna St. Vincent Millay
, Dorothy Parker, Zelda Fitzgerald
, and Edna Ferber
—struggling to become significant writers in the Jazz Age
. Bobbed Hair and Bathtub Gin: Writers Running Wild in the Twenties was named among the best books of 2004 by the San Francisco Chronicle
and the Washington Post. Describing her intentions in an interview, she called it "a book about writers and the business of writing, about the people who follow writing as a profession and what it costs them. And the costs are plenty, especially for these women."
Lonelyhearts: The Screwball World of Nathanael West
and Eileen McKenney
was published in 2010 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. The joint biography recounts the couple’s brief lives against a panoramic background of the Jazz Age and the Great Depression
, with a supporting cast that includes many of the literary, theatrical, and movie notables of the era. One of the most imaginative novelists of the last century, West is heralded for such classics as Miss Lonelyhearts
and The Day of the Locust
. His wife Eileen McKenney
was the heroine of her sister Ruth’s humorous stories My Sister Eileen
, which became the basis for a Broadway comedy, two movies, and the Leonard Bernstein
musical Wonderful Town
.
Meade lives in New York City
, in a pre-World War One apartment house on the Upper West Side
. She has one child, Alison Sprague, and two granddaughters, Ashley Elizabeth Sprague and Katharine Rose Sprague.
As Meade pointed out in a 2006 interview:
While various themes have emerged in her work, the most prominent is superior women’s lives, whether the backdrops of their stories are the shadows of Notre Dame
cathedral in 12th century Paris, or the speakeasies of neon Manhattan in the Roaring Twenties
. (Other female subjects were ambitious Victoria Woodhull
, the first woman to run for U.S. President, and Madame Helena Blavatsky, the colorful Russian founder of Theosophy
.) Another recurring theme is humor, and most of her subjects were natural comics. Apart from the artistic genius of filmmakers Buster Keaton and Woody Allen, they were also hilarious performers, while Dorothy Parker’s verses and sayings continue to make people laugh. Although Nathanael West is not considered a humorist, he called himself a particular kind of comic writer. His dark irreverent humor seems to be a forerunner of work produced in the Sixties by Terry Southern
and the writers of Monty Python’s Flying Circus.
, of Salon.com
, called Meade's readings of Nathanael West's works in Lonelyhearts "a bit crude" while a New York Times review stated:
Novels
Narrative nonfiction
Editor/forewords
Selected articles
Films and documentaries
Biography
Born in Pittsburgh, the eldest of three children, Meade grew up in an academic environment. Her father, Surain Singh Sidhu, a SikhSikh
A Sikh is a follower of Sikhism. It primarily originated in the 15th century in the Punjab region of South Asia. The term "Sikh" has its origin in Sanskrit term शिष्य , meaning "disciple, student" or शिक्ष , meaning "instruction"...
immigrant from Amritsar, India
Amritsar
Amritsar is a city in the northern part of India and is the administrative headquarters of Amritsar district in the state of Punjab, India. The 2001 Indian census reported the population of the city to be over 1,500,000, with that of the entire district numbering 3,695,077...
, taught physics at the University of Pittsburgh
University of Pittsburgh
The University of Pittsburgh, commonly referred to as Pitt, is a state-related research university located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. Founded as Pittsburgh Academy in 1787 on what was then the American frontier, Pitt is one of the oldest continuously chartered institutions of...
. Her mother Mary, a Hungarian-American, was a homemaker whose hobbies included writing song lyrics and raising orchids. Meade first became interested in journalism while attending Bethel Township High School where she edited the school paper and worked summers on a local
newspaper.
She studied journalism at Northwestern University
Northwestern University
Northwestern University is a private research university in Evanston and Chicago, Illinois, USA. Northwestern has eleven undergraduate, graduate, and professional schools offering 124 undergraduate degrees and 145 graduate and professional degrees....
, graduating in 1955. The following year she moved to New York, earned a master’s degree from Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, and found her first reporting job as an assistant to Earl Wilson
Earl Wilson (columnist)
Earl Wilson , born Harvey Earl Wilson, was an American journalist, gossip columnist and author, perhaps best known for his nationally syndicated column, It Happened Last Night....
, the popular Broadway columnist for the New York Post
New York Post
The New York Post is the 13th-oldest newspaper published in the United States and is generally acknowledged as the oldest to have been published continuously as a daily, although – as is the case with most other papers – its publication has been periodically interrupted by labor actions...
. She subsequently worked for publications in New York and Washington, before becoming a free lancer and publishing articles in the New York Times, The Nation
The Nation
The Nation is the oldest continuously published weekly magazine in the United States. The periodical, devoted to politics and culture, is self-described as "the flagship of the left." Founded on July 6, 1865, It is published by The Nation Company, L.P., at 33 Irving Place, New York City.The Nation...
, The New Republic
The New Republic
The magazine has also published two articles concerning income inequality, largely criticizing conservative economists for their attempts to deny the existence or negative effect increasing income inequality is having on the United States...
and McCall's
McCall's
McCall's was a monthly American women's magazine that enjoyed great popularity through much of the 20th century, peaking at a readership of 8.4 million in the early 1960s. It was established as a small-format magazine called The Queen in 1873...
.
Meade’s first book, published in 1973, was a direct result of her involvement in the women’s liberation movement
Feminist movement
The feminist movement refers to a series of campaigns for reforms on issues such as reproductive rights, domestic violence, maternity leave, equal pay, women's suffrage, sexual harassment and sexual violence...
of the Sixties. Inspired by her participation in feminist consciousness-raising groups, she questioned women of all ages to reveal how they secretly regard the males in their lives and wrote Bitching, a less than favorable review of the opposite sex.
Following Bitching, Meade wrote a trilogy of feminist-conscious works set in medieval France and featuring intelligent, headstrong heroines. Eleanor of Aquitaine
Eleanor of Aquitaine
Eleanor of Aquitaine was one of the wealthiest and most powerful women in Western Europe during the High Middle Ages. As well as being Duchess of Aquitaine in her own right, she was queen consort of France and of England...
chronicles the life of the powerful 12th century queen of France and England. Stealing Heaven: The Love Story of Heloise and Abelard retells one of the most famous love stories of European history (a film adaptation of the novel was released in 1988). A second novel, Sybille, is about the death of literature during Europe’s first great holocaust, the Albigensian Crusade
Albigensian Crusade
The Albigensian Crusade or Cathar Crusade was a 20-year military campaign initiated by the Catholic Church to eliminate Catharism in Languedoc...
, and a 13th century troubadour grappling with her verse as her homeland collapses.
From a fictional poet of the Middle Ages
Middle Ages
The Middle Ages is a periodization of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The Middle Ages follows the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and precedes the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period of a three-period division of Western history: Classic, Medieval and Modern...
, Meade moved forward to a very different time and place and a real-life 20th century poet and short story writer, Dorothy Parker
Dorothy Parker
Dorothy Parker was an American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist, best known for her wit, wisecracks, and eye for 20th century urban foibles....
, who had been one of her favorites since adolescence. In 1988 she published a biography (Dorothy Parker: What Fresh Hell Is This?) that revived Parker’s reputation as the wittiest woman of her generation and years later remains the definitive source of her life and work. New interest in Parker led to the making of a big-budget Hollywood film, Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle
Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle
Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle is a 1994 film scripted by writer/director Alan Rudolph and former Washington Star reporter Randy Sue Coburn...
, starring Jennifer Jason Leigh
Jennifer Jason Leigh
Jennifer Jason Leigh is an American film and stage actress, best known for her roles in Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Single White Female, Last Exit to Brooklyn, Georgia and Short Cuts...
(1994). Meade’s connection with Dorothy Parker has continued because the poet turned up as one of four subjects in Meade’s 2004 book Bobbed Hair and Bathtub Gin.
In 2006 she went on to revise and edit Parker’s collected works, The Portable Dorothy Parker, updating the 60-year-old anthology with fresh material and a cache of personal letters. A bold new look for the Portable was added when Penguin Books
Penguin Books
Penguin Books is a publisher founded in 1935 by Sir Allen Lane and V.K. Krishna Menon. Penguin revolutionised publishing in the 1930s through its high quality, inexpensive paperbacks, sold through Woolworths and other high street stores for sixpence. Penguin's success demonstrated that large...
commissioned a jacket from the well known illustrator Seth
Seth (cartoonist)
Seth is the pen name of Gregory Gallant , a Canadian comic book artist and writer. He is best known for comics such as Palookaville.Born in Clinton, Ontario, Seth attended the Ontario College of Art in Toronto...
. Two years later Meade presided over a new edition of The Ladies of the Corridor, an admirable play written by Parker and Arnaud D’Usseau in 1953.
For most of the 1990s, Meade worked on recreating the lives—private and professional—of two important American filmmakers, both of whom happened also to be comics. Buster Keaton
Buster Keaton
Joseph Frank "Buster" Keaton was an American comic actor, filmmaker, producer and writer. He was best known for his silent films, in which his trademark was physical comedy with a consistently stoic, deadpan expression, earning him the nickname "The Great Stone Face".Keaton was recognized as the...
: Cut to the Chase recorded the journey of Joseph Frank Keaton
Buster Keaton
Joseph Frank "Buster" Keaton was an American comic actor, filmmaker, producer and writer. He was best known for his silent films, in which his trademark was physical comedy with a consistently stoic, deadpan expression, earning him the nickname "The Great Stone Face".Keaton was recognized as the...
(his given name) from a Kansas medicine show to vaudeville headliner to pioneer of cinema’s most treasured classic films. Her 2000 biography, The Unruly Life of Woody Allen
Woody Allen
Woody Allen is an American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, jazz musician, author, and playwright. Allen's films draw heavily on literature, sexuality, philosophy, psychology, Jewish identity, and the history of cinema...
, undertook to recapture the life of a living subject whose ups and downs had brought him both accolades and derision.
Next, she returned to literary biography with the story of four women—Edna St. Vincent Millay
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Edna St. Vincent Millay was an American lyrical poet, playwright and feminist. She received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, and was known for her activism and her many love affairs. She used the pseudonym Nancy Boyd for her prose work...
, Dorothy Parker, Zelda Fitzgerald
Zelda Fitzgerald
Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald , born Zelda Sayre in Montgomery, Alabama, was an American novelist and the wife of writer F. Scott Fitzgerald. She was an icon of the 1920s—dubbed by her husband "the first American Flapper"...
, and Edna Ferber
Edna Ferber
Edna Ferber was an American novelist, short story writer and playwright. Her novels were especially popular and included the Pulitzer Prize-winning So Big , Show Boat , and Giant .-Early years:Ferber was born August 15, 1885, in Kalamazoo, Michigan,...
—struggling to become significant writers in the Jazz Age
Jazz Age
The Jazz Age was a movement that took place during the 1920s or the Roaring Twenties from which jazz music and dance emerged. The movement came about with the introduction of mainstream radio and the end of the war. This era ended in the 1930s with the beginning of The Great Depression but has...
. Bobbed Hair and Bathtub Gin: Writers Running Wild in the Twenties was named among the best books of 2004 by the San Francisco Chronicle
San Francisco Chronicle
thumb|right|upright|The Chronicle Building following the [[1906 San Francisco earthquake|1906 earthquake]] and fireThe San Francisco Chronicle is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of the U.S. state of California, but distributed throughout Northern and Central California,...
and the Washington Post. Describing her intentions in an interview, she called it "a book about writers and the business of writing, about the people who follow writing as a profession and what it costs them. And the costs are plenty, especially for these women."
Lonelyhearts: The Screwball World of Nathanael West
Nathanael West
Nathanael West was a US author, screenwriter and satirist.- Early life :...
and Eileen McKenney
Eileen McKenney
Eileen McKenney was the sister of the writer Ruth McKenney and the inspiration for Ruth's book My Sister Eileen . It was adapted as a Broadway play in 1940, filmed in 1942 and 1955 by Columbia Pictures, and adapted into the Broadway musical Wonderful Town...
was published in 2010 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. The joint biography recounts the couple’s brief lives against a panoramic background of the Jazz Age and the Great Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
, with a supporting cast that includes many of the literary, theatrical, and movie notables of the era. One of the most imaginative novelists of the last century, West is heralded for such classics as Miss Lonelyhearts
Miss Lonelyhearts
Miss Lonelyhearts, published in 1933, is Nathanael West's second novel. It is an Expressionist black comedy set in New York City during the Great Depression.-Plot summary:...
and The Day of the Locust
The Day of the Locust
The Day of the Locust is a 1939 novel by American author Nathanael West, set in Hollywood, California during the Great Depression, its overarching themes deal with the alienation and desperation of a broad group of odd individuals who exist at the fringes of the Hollywood movie industry.In 1998,...
. His wife Eileen McKenney
Eileen McKenney
Eileen McKenney was the sister of the writer Ruth McKenney and the inspiration for Ruth's book My Sister Eileen . It was adapted as a Broadway play in 1940, filmed in 1942 and 1955 by Columbia Pictures, and adapted into the Broadway musical Wonderful Town...
was the heroine of her sister Ruth’s humorous stories My Sister Eileen
My Sister Eileen
My Sister Eileen originated as a series of short stories by Ruth McKenney that eventually evolved into a book, a play, a musical, a radio play , two films, and a CBS television series in the 1960-1961 season....
, which became the basis for a Broadway comedy, two movies, and the Leonard Bernstein
Leonard Bernstein
Leonard Bernstein August 25, 1918 – October 14, 1990) was an American conductor, composer, author, music lecturer and pianist. He was among the first conductors born and educated in the United States of America to receive worldwide acclaim...
musical Wonderful Town
Wonderful Town
Wonderful Town is a musical with a book written by Joseph A. Fields and Jerome Chodorov, lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green and music by Leonard Bernstein...
.
Meade lives in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, in a pre-World War One apartment house on the Upper West Side
Upper West Side
The Upper West Side is a neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan, New York City, that lies between Central Park and the Hudson River and between West 59th Street and West 125th Street...
. She has one child, Alison Sprague, and two granddaughters, Ashley Elizabeth Sprague and Katharine Rose Sprague.
Themes
Meade’s approach to the practice of life writing springs from her journalistic training, in which success depends for the most part on meticulous investigation, regardless of where the trail may lead. She does not believe there is anything to be gained by tiptoeing around a subject’s personal life. Only a long comprehensive gaze at a human being’s life—inner as well as outer, the messy and the glorious—can account for the person’s accomplishments.As Meade pointed out in a 2006 interview:
Biography was traditionally written by people who had lots of money and didn’t have to do anything. Or—when I first started out—by academics. Most of these people had very strict rules for what they thought was appropriate for a biography. They thought you had to be very circumspect. You couldn’t really pry into a subject’s life, which to me sounds insane, because that is what I do: pry into people’s lives. So I am perfect for what biography has become today because there is nothing I wouldn’t investigate. That is the way biography has changed in the last 20 years. It was a kind of white glove type of writing, now it’s anything goes.
While various themes have emerged in her work, the most prominent is superior women’s lives, whether the backdrops of their stories are the shadows of Notre Dame
Notre Dame de Paris
Notre Dame de Paris , also known as Notre Dame Cathedral, is a Gothic, Roman Catholic cathedral on the eastern half of the Île de la Cité in the fourth arrondissement of Paris, France. It is the cathedral of the Catholic Archdiocese of Paris: that is, it is the church that contains the cathedra of...
cathedral in 12th century Paris, or the speakeasies of neon Manhattan in the Roaring Twenties
Roaring Twenties
The Roaring Twenties is a phrase used to describe the 1920s, principally in North America, but also in London, Berlin and Paris for a period of sustained economic prosperity. The phrase was meant to emphasize the period's social, artistic, and cultural dynamism...
. (Other female subjects were ambitious Victoria Woodhull
Victoria Woodhull
Victoria Claflin Woodhull was an American leader of the woman's suffrage movement, an advocate of free love; together with her sister, the first women to operate a brokerage in Wall Street; the first women to start a weekly newspaper; an activist for women's rights and labor reforms and, in 1872,...
, the first woman to run for U.S. President, and Madame Helena Blavatsky, the colorful Russian founder of Theosophy
Theosophy
Theosophy, in its modern presentation, is a spiritual philosophy developed since the late 19th century. Its major themes were originally described mainly by Helena Blavatsky , co-founder of the Theosophical Society...
.) Another recurring theme is humor, and most of her subjects were natural comics. Apart from the artistic genius of filmmakers Buster Keaton and Woody Allen, they were also hilarious performers, while Dorothy Parker’s verses and sayings continue to make people laugh. Although Nathanael West is not considered a humorist, he called himself a particular kind of comic writer. His dark irreverent humor seems to be a forerunner of work produced in the Sixties by Terry Southern
Terry Southern
Terry Southern was an American author, essayist, screenwriter and university lecturer, noted for his distinctive satirical style...
and the writers of Monty Python’s Flying Circus.
Criticism
Meade has been criticized for her poor understanding of the works created by the people whose biographies she wrote. Laura MillerLaura Miller
Laura Miller served as mayor of Dallas, Texas from 2002 through 2007. She did not run for re-election in the 2007 mayoral race. She was the third woman to serve as mayor of Dallas.- Education and career :...
, of Salon.com
Salon.com
Salon.com, part of Salon Media Group , often just called Salon, is an online liberal magazine, with content updated each weekday. Salon was founded by David Talbot and launched on November 20, 1995. It was the internet's first online-only commercial publication. The magazine focuses on U.S...
, called Meade's readings of Nathanael West's works in Lonelyhearts "a bit crude" while a New York Times review stated:
"The bad news about Lonelyhearts is that Ms. Meade’s own unsubtle voice will make you wince on almost every page... Worse by far are Ms. Meade’s dismal readings of West’s novels."Similar assertions had been made against her biography of Woody Allen, which "cast ugly light on Woody and his work." and for her basic lack of sympathy for Buster Keaton in her biography of him. Certain readers have also noted some factual errors in Meade's biographies, such as her claim that Buster Keaton was illiterate.
Works
Biographies- Free Woman: The Life and Times of Victoria Woodhull (1976)
- Eleanor of Aquitaine (1977)
- Madame Blavatsky: The Woman Behind the Myth (1980)
- Dorothy Parker: What Fresh Hell Is This? (1988)
- Buster Keaton: Cut to the Chase (1995)
- The Unruly Life of Woody Allen (2000)
- Bobbed Hair and Bathtub Gin: Writers Running Wild in the Twenties (2004)
- Lonelyhearts: The Screwball World of Nathanael West and Eileen McKenney (2010)
Novels
- Stealing Heaven: The Love Story of Heloise and Abelard (1979), filmed as Stealing HeavenStealing HeavenStealing Heaven is a 1988 film, a costume drama based on the French 12th century medieval romance of Peter Abelard and Héloïse and on a historical novel by Marion Meade...
(1988) - Sybille (1983)
Narrative nonfiction
- Bitching (1973)
Editor/forewords
- A Journey into Dorothy Parker’s New York by Kevin C. FitzpatrickKevin C. FitzpatrickKevin C. Fitzpatrick , is a non-fiction writer best known for his research of Dorothy Parker and the Algonquin Round Table.- Biography :...
(foreword) (2005) - The Portable Dorothy Parker (editor, foreword) (2006)
- The Ladies of the Corridor by Dorothy Parker and Arnaud D’Usseau (editor, foreword) (2008)
- Complete Poems by Dorothy Parker (foreword) (2010)
Selected articles
- "Estate of Mind: Dorothy Parker willed her copyright to the NAACP—an organization her executor, Lillian Hellman, detested," BookforumBookforumBookforum is a New York-based magazine devoted to books and the discussion of literature. It is edited by Albert Mobilio, Chris Lehmann, , and Michael Miller.-History: Bookforum was launched in 1994 as a literary supplement to Artforum...
, (April/May 2006) - "Close to Home," American Theatre (April 2008)
Films and documentaries
- Stealing HeavenStealing HeavenStealing Heaven is a 1988 film, a costume drama based on the French 12th century medieval romance of Peter Abelard and Héloïse and on a historical novel by Marion Meade...
(adapted from novel) (1988) - Would You Kindly Direct Me to Hell? The Infamous Dorothy Parker (1994)
External links
- Lonelyhearts: The Screwball World of Nathanael West and Eileen McKenney (Book Site)
- Bobbed Hair and Bathtub Gin (Book Site)
- Marion Meade/Buster Keaton Research Files (University of Iowa Libraries, Special Collections)
- Marion Meade/Woody Allen Research Files (University of Iowa Libraries, Special Collections)
- Interview with Marion Meade in Madame Blavatsky: Spiritual Traveller documentary (Reel Time Images, 2008)