Daniel’s Reviews > Baldwin: A Love Story > Status Update

dude is kinda overly excited about the possibility Baldwin and Brando slept together

it's comforting to me to see all the ways Baldwin really did not have his shit together, and still he managed to be absolutely amazing

good bit about Another Country in that last chunk. much more interesting than travel details. please give me a 700 page book of Baldwin explaining his intent and thinking re his own novels.

2 problems with this book:
a.) length, both overall and the way it's structured
b.) it's not Nolan's Ross Macdonald bio, which I've been dying to read since I reread The Underground Man. Not going to start a second big bio while I've got this one in progress though. (Tho honestly this would go on hold if I did.)

The stuff in this section is largely unfamiliar, so yay. But very wtf about Elia Kazan still hanging around The Actor's Studio with everybody after he traitor'd up Strasberg's wife Paula a few years earlier in the HUAC/McCarthy bullshit era.

why are the chapters in this book sooooooo long? it's exhausting. i just have to keep stopping at random spots.

there's no way i could have read this in 2 weeks as a library loan

I'm not sure this structure is doing the book any favors, and so far my most memorable takeaway is Sol Stein was a CIA propagandist, a tidbit which I don't remember coming across before.