Greta Garbo, as Seen Through Family Eyes
The Swedish film legend’s great-nephew scotches many myths surrounding her, chief among them that she was a recluse; she simply wanted to be left alone.
By CARL ROLLYSON
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Mr. Rollyson is the author of The Life of William Faulkner and The Last Days of Sylvia Plath. He has published fourteen biographies and has written about biography for the Wall Street Journal, the Washington, Post, the San Francisco Chronicle, the New Criterion, and other publications.
The Swedish film legend’s great-nephew scotches many myths surrounding her, chief among them that she was a recluse; she simply wanted to be left alone.
By CARL ROLLYSON
||Culture
Jill Craigie has been written out of most histories of cinema, yet a new book shows how she ushered in a new form of documentary storytelling.
By CARL ROLLYSON
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A wistful, suitably Faulknerian picaresque reminiscence of a literary couple’s coast-to-coast travel writing, published between 1980 and 2000.
By CARL ROLLYSON
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Fiona Sampson’s biography of the French Romantic writer is beautifully written and innovative, but offers little insight into her subject’s novelistic technique.
By CARL ROLLYSON
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Drew Pisarra imagines an acting legend who specialized in playing out-of-control characters consigned to purgatory.
By CARL ROLLYSON
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Walter Brennan won the last of his three Oscars before President Trump was born, yet he would have been the ultimate celebrity MAGA supporter.
By CARL ROLLYSON
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Contrary to the legend of ‘I Claudius,’ the wife of Augustus and mother of Tiberius, was not a serial plotter or murderer, but a public benefactor.
By CARL ROLLYSON
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Daniel Ogden’s study of the Spartan-betraying traitor only comes alive in the appendix.
By CARL ROLLYSON
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Diane Diekman patiently establishes the facts of Graham’s life, verifying the story of a veteran who doggedly pursued what was owed to him.
By CARL ROLLYSON
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Paul Matthew Kaplan’s biography of Cole Porter reinforces that the composer could get away with almost anything if it rhymed right.
By CARL ROLLYSON
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New books argue the ‘empire of liberty’ built by the Founding Fathers depended chiefly on territorial expansion for a nascent nation.
By CARL ROLLYSON
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Andrew Durbin impressively renders the personal and artistic bond between resolute secularist Peter Hujar and religious painter Paul Thek.
By CARL ROLLYSON
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