"George Gershwin, Kay Swift, and My Family's Legacy of Infidelities
May 23, 2011
Novelist Weber (Triangle) here paints a wry and engaging portrait of a powerful, talented, but troubled family. She relays memories of her father, Sidney Kaufman, a self-mythologizing filmmaker, and Andrea Swift, her self-absorbed mother, who retreated into photography and Angela Thirkell novels, and weaves them into her familial history: on her father's side, refugees from Russia and Eastern Europe; on her mother's, the German-Jewish Warburg banking dynasty. While the affair between her maternal grandmother, composer Kay Swift, and George Gershwin takes center stage (Weber's title derives from an Ira Gershwin lyric), Weber packs in other celebrated names related by blood or association. The most touching passages describe the impact of unavailable adults on Weber (she was left alone for five days on a film set) and Weber's relationship with Swift, who took her to Broadway shows, Central Park, and Schrafft's soda fountain.
June 1, 2011
In this debut memoir, novelist Weber (True Confections, 2009, etc.) tells the story of her colorful family and the scandalous—but monumentally transformative—love affair between her grandmother, Kay Swift and George Gershwin.
"Growing up, I missed George Gershwin without ever knowing him, because two people I loved, my mother and grandmother, loved him and missed him," writes the author. Swift was the Protestant wife of James Paul Warburg, scion of a distinguished Jewish family of bankers. A gifted musician, she knew brief success as the songwriter for the 1930 smash Broadway hit, "Fine and Dandy." But where she earned her greatest notoriety was as Gershwin's longtime lover and most ardent defender of the Gershwin musical legacy. The book often reads like a who's who of the New York high society that Andrea Swift Warburg, Swift's gentle, but tragically child-like daughter, eschewed through marriage. Warburg's husband, Sidney Kaufman, was a social-climbing womanizer whose primary allure was a passing resemblance to Gershwin. "Born in the back of a grocery store in Brooklyn to immigrant parents," his sole claim to fame was as the purveyor of Aromarama, a technique that wed film scenes to odors. As Weber acerbically remarks, "Most of my father's movie career took place at the intersection of making it and making it up." The book is strongest in its rich details of a dazzling but painful family past fraught with betrayals, infidelities and other assorted dysfunctions, including—in the figure of art historian Aby Warburg—mental illness. However, Weber is overly reliant on historical narrative to convey a very personal recollection, which creates an unintentionally brittle objectivity that makes it difficult for readers to connect with either Weber or her account, except at a distance.
Illuminating but often dry.
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February 15, 2011
Weber isn't just a novelist (e.g., Objects in the Mirror Are Closer); she's an interesting receptacle of American history. Her grandmother was Kay Swift, the first woman to compose music for a Broadway hit and George Gershwin's longtime lover, and her great-grandfather was Paul M. Warburg, creator of the Federal Reserve System and the model for Daddy Warbucks. Maybe not as huge as, say, Trynka's David Bowie, but it sounds fascinating, and Weber certainly can write.
Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
June 1, 2011
Novelist Weber (Triangle, 2006; True Confections, 2010) mines her rich family history, hitting the mother lode of pedigreed romances and remembrances. While it may be a stretch to call the infidelities of several generations love stories, many of the eccentric characters on Weber's family tree are more than a touch quixotic, imbuing their often sordid relationships with an intriguing aura of romance. With a novelist's light, sure touch, Weber propels this fascinating family memoir with stories and recollections of the prominent relatives who informed her life. Grandmother Kay Swift, the first female Broadway composer and George Gershwin's longtime lover; grandpa James Paul Walburg, FDR's economic advisor; and daddy Sidney Kaufman, serial womanizer, unconventional filmmaker, and producer of the first feature film that literally smelled, thanks to a process called Aromarama, literally walk off the pages of this captivating multigenerational saga.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)
June 15, 2011
Novelist Weber (True Confections) is the granddaughter of Broadway composer Kay Swift (1897-1993), who was married to banker James Warburg and had a romantic liaison with George Gershwin. Weber considers her family history to examine how the past affects the present. Much of the book concerns the author's dysfunctional relationships with her father, Sidney Kaufman, and mother, Andrea Warburg. Along the way, Weber describes a host of eccentric characters, from Zero Mostel to Ezra Pound, and her discovery of the past through FBI files on her father. Of special interest is Weber's account of Swift, whom she feels was unfairly accused (first by Warburg after their divorce) of an amoral Roaring Twenties sexual promiscuity. Gershwin, whose affair with Swift had repercussions in the author's life, looms over her memories. The lack of faithfulness in family relations, sexual and otherwise, was a source of pain that Weber strove for years to overcome--apparently successfully. VERDICT A thoroughly engaging family memoir. Readers interested in George Gershwin or Kay Swift (consider also Vicki Ohl's Fine and Dandy) will be particularly interested in this book. [See Prepub Alert, 1/17/11.]--Bruce R. Schueneman, Texas A&M Univ. Lib., Kingsville
Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.