Jottings: Flights of Fancy from Our Betty

by Liz Smith

JOTTINGS is a collection of the stories that Liz Smith has written over the years. Sometimes they explore the darker side of life and what may occur out of the public a rich and lonely housewife neglects her child and the nanny subjects her charge to unpleasant and adult scenes; a man's wish for fame catapults him into prison and mistaken notoriety; an unhappy wife loses her only friend and is haunted by her. Other stories are more the sexy, man-eating woman who runs the mobile moving through the fog of 1950's London with the help of a blind man; a scheming daughter who plans to take her mother's money has a surprising comeuppance. Liz's stories are unexpected, original and revealing of a writer who is fascinated by relationships and the barriers we erect between our public and private selves.

304 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 4, 2008

About the author

Mary Elizabeth "Liz" Smith is an American gossip columnist, nicknamed "The Grand Dame of Dish."

On February 16, 1976, Smith began a self-titled gossip column for the New York Daily News. During a 1979 newspaper strike, her Daily News editors asked her to appear daily on WNBC-TV's Live at Five, and she stayed with the program for eleven years. Her exposure on television made Smith a popular figure on the Manhattan social scene and provided fodder for her column which had, by then, been syndicated to nearly seventy newspapers. She won an Emmy for her reporting on the hot hit Live at Five for WNBC in 1955.

In 1991 Smith, hot off her exclusive interviews with Ivana Trump during her divorce from real estate tycoon Donald Trump, moved to Newsday, where she stayed until 1995. Smith then signed on to the Murdoch-owned New York Post. She worked for Fox News for 7 years and is today on Fox and Friends.

In April 2005, Smith left Newsday, over a contract dispute. The official discontinuation of her column came after several months of dispute among Smith, her lawyer David Blasband, and Newsday management. Lawyers for Newsday focused on a misstep and refused to renew her contract, the highest-paid in newspaper history. Blasband says, "Yes, Liz missed the date, but Newsday still had four months before the contract ran out." The matter was settled out of court and Smith continued at the New York Post where her column still appears. It also appears two days a week in Variety and in many other newspapers.

Reviews

[Hilary · Rating 1 out of 5]

I thought this would be about Liz Smith's life, but it was a very odd collection of stories/writing inspired by some of the characters she has played. I found them depressing and one disturbing.

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

This woman seems on reading her jottings an absolute crackpot but yet again she has that same silly sense of humour that I get and find funny and interesting. I think I may just be a secret crackpot myself...

[Emma Coates · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved it!