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West of Eden

By Jean Stein (2016)

1

This is an oral history of

Hollywood based on transcripts

of interviews, not just with

big players like David Geffen,

Gore Vidal and Lauren Bacall, or

the children of big players like Jack

Warner Jr., but also with neighbors

and attendants, the people who

tended their gardens and cut their

hair. Here are the agents, producers,

mobsters and politicians who made

California glamorous, well-watered

and green. Jean Stein was the

daughter of Jules Stein, the founder

of the talent agency MCA. She grew

up in this tangled, interconnected

world where everyone got married

all the time and no one cared much

what happened to the children.

Along with the extravagances of the

famous and the cruelties that they

visit on each other, the book shows

consequences. It is full of shrinks—

some of them horrible—as well as

rich psychotics and suicides. Stein

died in 2017, leaving behind this

richly textured, beautifully tempered

mosaic of voices. Hollywood feels so

well known, but it is hard to find

writing that is not about the image

or the myth. This book manages

to be about people in the flesh,

not on the screen.

The Picture of Dorian Gray

By Oscar Wilde (1890)

2

The picture of the title,

readers will remember,

is the portrait of himself

that Dorian Gray keeps

in the attic and that decays and

deforms slowly over the years even

as he remains forever beautiful and

young. “The books that the world

calls immoral are books that show

the world its own shame,” says

Lord Henry Wotton, the heartless

aristocrat who influences the young

Dorian. It is possible that Oscar

Wilde wrote a book that is, in some

uneasy way, about sexual corruption.

It is also one of the great novels

about keeping up appearances.

Gray, like Lord Henry, is always

fabulously “on.” Every line is a

performance and every second line

is famous. Revisiting it is like

making your way through a book

of quotations. “The only way to get

rid of temptation is to yield to it.”

“Nowadays people know the price

of everything and the value of

nothing.” “I love acting,” says Henry.

“It is so much more real than life.”

Gray’s performance, however,

exacts too great a price. In the end,

the mask destroys the man.

Anne Enright

The author, most recently, of the novel ‘Actress’

Hardcover Nonfiction

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Untamed 1 New

Glennon Doyle/Dial

Get Out of Your Own Way 2 New

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Katherine Schwarzenegger Pratt/Pamela Dorman

Find Your Path 4 1

Carrie Underwood/Dey Street

The Splendid and the Vile 5 2

Erik Larson/Crown

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Stamped 6 New

Jason Reynolds & Ibram X. Kendi/Little, Brown Young Readers

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Dog Man: Fetch-22 4 10

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Chain of Gold 5 2

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Green Eggs and Ham 6 3

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Oh, the Places You’ll Go! 8 —

Dr. Seuss/Random House Books for Young Readers

The Numbers Game 9 6

Danielle Steel/Delacorte

Wrecking Ball 10 —

Jeff Kinney/Amulet

Methodology

NPDBookScangatherspoint-of-salebookdata

frommorethan16,000locationsacrosstheU.S.,

representingabout85%ofthenation’sbooksales.

Print-bookdataprovidersincludeallmajorbooksellers,

webretailersandfoodstores.E-bookdataproviders

includeallmajore-bookretailers.Freee-booksand

thosesellingforlessthan99centsareexcluded.

Thefictionandnonfictioncombinedlistsinclude

aggregatedsalesforallbookformats(exceptaudio

books,bundles,boxedsetsandforeign

languageeditions)andfeaturea

combinationofadult,youngadultand

juveniletitles.Thehardcoverfiction

andnonfictionlistsalsoencompassa

mixofadult,youngadultandjuveniletitleswhilethe

businesslistfeaturesonlyadulthardcovertitles.

[email protected].

Nonfiction E-Books

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End of Days 1 —

Sylvia Browne & Lindsay Harrison/New American Library

Untamed 2 New

Glennon Doyle/Dial

The Splendid and the Vile 3 1

Erik Larson/Crown

The New Money Mission 4 New

Beau Henderson/RichLife

Fear Is Fuel 5 —

Patrick J. Sweeney II/Rowman & Littlefield

Born a Crime 6 —

Trevor Noah/Spiegel & Grau

The Fifteen Percent 7 New

Terry Giles/Skyhorse

Deadliest Enemy 8 —

Michael T. Osterholm & Mark Olshaker/Little, Brown

Onions in the Stew 9 —

Betty MacDonald/Harper Perennial

Educated: A Memoir 10 8

Tara Westover/Random House

Nonfiction Combined

TITLE

AUTHOR/ PUBLISHER

THIS

WEEK

LAST

WEEK

Untamed 1 New

Glennon Doyle/Dial

The Splendid and the Vile 2 2

Erik Larson/Crown

Get Out Of Your Own Way 3 New

Dave Hollis/HarperCollins Leadership

Gift of Forgiveness 4 New

Katherine Schwarzenegger Pratt/Pamela Dorman

Find Your Path 5 1

Carrie Underwood/Dey Street

End of Days 6 —

Sylvia Browne & Lindsay Harrison/Berkley

Stamped 7 New

Jason Reynolds & Ibram X. Kendi/Little, Brown Young Readers

The Mamba Mentality 8 4

Kobe Bryant/MCD

Big Preschool 9 —

School Zone Publishing/School Zone

Open Book 10 8

Jessica Simpson/Dey Street

Fiction E-Books

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THIS

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LAST

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The Mirror & the Light 1 New

Hilary Mantel/Holt

Journey of the Pharaohs 2 New

Clive Cussler & Graham Brown/Putnam

Down and Dirty 3 New

Kendall Ryan/Kendall Ryan

American Dirt 4 7

Jeanine Cummins/Flatiron

U Is for Undertow 5 —

Sue Grafton/Berkley

Creole Kingpin 6 New

Meghan March/Meghan March

Maybe Swearing Will Help 7 New

Lani Lynn Vale/Lani Lynn Vale

Long Range 8 1

C.J. Box/Putnam

The Light We Lost 9 —

Jill Santopolo/Putnam

My Dark Vanessa 10 New

Kate Elizabeth Russell/Morrow

Fiction Combined

TITLE

AUTHOR /PUBLISHER

THIS

WEEK

LAST

WEEK

The Mirror & the Light 1 New

Hilary Mantel/Holt

Journey of the Pharaohs 2 New

Clive Cussler & Graham Brown/Putnam

Where the Crawdads Sing 3 —

Delia Owens/Putnam

American Dirt 4 8

Jeanine Cummins/Flatiron

Long Range 5 2

C.J. Box/Putnam

Little Fires Everywhere 6 —

Celeste Ng/Penguin

Blindside 7 —

James Patterson & James O. Born/Little, Brown

The Numbers Game 8 4

Danielle Steel/Delacorte

My Dark Vanessa 9 New

Kate Elizabeth Russell/Morrow

Dog Man: Fetch-22 10 —

Dav Pilkey/Graphix

Hardcover Business

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AUTHOR /PUBLISHER

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LAST

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Capital and Ideology 1 New

Thomas Piketty/Belknap/Harvard

StrengthsFinder 2.0 2 2

Tom Rath/Gallup

Ultimate Retirement Guide for 50+ 3 1

Suze Orman/Hay House

The Blueprint 4 10

Douglas R. Conant & Amy Federman/Wiley

Atomic Habits 5 4

James Clear/Avery

Leading With Gratitude 6 New

Adrian Gostick & Chester Elton/Harper Business

The Total Money Makeover 7 6

Dave Ramsey/Thomas Nelson

Dare to Lead: 8 9

Brené Brown/Random House

Emotional Intelligence 2.0 9 7

Travis Bradberry & Jean Greaves/TalentSmart

The Five Dysfunctions of a Team 10 5

Patrick M. Lencioni/Jossey-Bass

Bestselling Books|Week Ended March 14

With data from NPD BookScan

FIVE BESTABOUT LIFE ONSTAGE

BYPETERTONGUETTE

P

ERHAPSbecause of the
man-behind-the-curtain
mystique of their trade,
movie directors have
never been eager writers
of memoirs or autobiographies. Alfred
Hitchcock never wrote a book about his
life and work; neither did Howard
Hawks or John Ford. There are notable
exceptions—Frank Capra, for in-
stance—but, more often, directors need
to be coaxed, goaded or kissed-up-to
before they talk about themselves, pre-
ferring, as did Hitchcock, Hawks and
Ford, to participate in interview books.
There’s something about writing in
the first-person singular that is anath-
ema to many moviemakers—though,
happily, not to Barry Sonnenfeld. In
“Barry Sonnenfeld,
Call Your Mother,”
the director of
such mainstream
comedies as “The
Addams Family”
and the “Men in
Black” series, has
written a wild ac-
count of his life
and times. Mr.
Sonnenfeld, whose
past experience as
an Esquire colum-
nist gave him a
head start in writ-
ing a book this
sharp, punctures
the myth of the
Director as God
and instead offers
the Director as
Nervous Wreck; he
says he had some 18 vomiting spells
while serving as the cinematographer
on the Coen brothers’ “Blood Simple”
(1984).
In evoking his youth in 1950s and
’60s New York, Mr. Sonnenfeld has
crafted a biting family portrait. His
parents come across, at best, as
hapless pie-in-the-sky dreamers: His
mother, Irene (nicknamed “Kelly”), is
described as a schoolteacher with a
healthy ego: “Mom’s grandiose view of
how the entire United Federation of
Teachers (UFT) would collapse without
her, to saying nothing of PS 173M,
where she taught art, could have gone
without saying,” Mr. Sonnenfeld writes,
“although Kelly made sure it was said.”
His father, Sonny, was a lighting sales-
man whose own high self-image led
him to form his own business. “Over
twenty-eight years (you can go bank-
rupt every seven years),” we are told,
“Dad filed for bankruptcy four times.”
Mr. Sonnenfeld does not gloss over
troubling episodes, including abuse at
the hands of a relative Mr. Sonnenfeld

BOOKS

‘You were a perfect success: the audience was a dismal failure.’—GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

Barry Sonnenfeld,
Call Your Mother

By Barry Sonnenfeld

Hachette, 346 pages, $29

calls “Cousin Mike the Child Molester.”

The author also offers many relatively

benign, humorous anecdotes, including

his family’s annual on-the-cheap so-

journ to Miami Beach. Mr. Sonnenfeld

fondly recalls the odor of the solution

his father used to ward off baldness:

“It was a perfect combination of citrus,

tar, and lamb chops—my favorite food.”

An episode in which Mr. Sonnen-

feld’s mother tries to track down her

16-year-old son, who was attending a

Jimi Hendrix concert at Madison

Square Garden, prompted the book’s

title: “The following announcement

echoed over the Garden’s public ad-

dress system: Barry Sonnenfeld. Call

your mother.”

Mr. Sonnenfeld seamlessly transi-

tions from his acidic coming-of-age tale

to equally frank discussions of his

career, at one point comparing the pro-

ducer Scott Rudin to his mother. “Both

had a very fluid relationship with the

truth, and both were secret eaters,”

writes Mr. Sonnenfeld, whose gift for

describing the in-

dignities of movie-

making remains

constant whether

he is discussing,

in agonizing detail,

early gigs shoot-

ing pornographic

films or coming

to creative logger-

heads with direc-

tors while working

as a cinematogra-

pher, including, on

the comedy “Big”

(1988), Penny Mar-

shall.

On the chal-

lenges of making

what became one

of his best films,

the Elmore Leon-

ard-based “Get

Shorty” (1995), he tells us that before

casting John Travolta in the lead role

of Chili Palmer—a mobster who re-

makes himself as a producer—Mr. Son-

nenfeld endured fruitless meetings

with Dustin Hoffman, who was merely

curious whether he was the inspiration

for the character, and Warren Beatty,

who insisted he was all wrong for the

part. “Why would someone who looks

like me be so far down the mob peck-

ing order at the beginning of the

movie?” Mr. Beatty asked Mr. Sonnen-

feld, who was unable to furnish a sat-

isfactory answer.

Here we have not only a new en-

trant in the movie-director memoir

genre but an even rarer beast: a book

by someone in the entertainment

industry who is neither self-aggrandiz-

ing nor self-important but uniquely,

and painfully, candid.

Mr. Tonguette is the author of the

forthcoming “Picturing Peter

Bogdanovich: My Conversations

With the New Hollywood Director.”

The Director

As Nervous Wreck

PARAMOUNT/EVERETT COLLECTION

FAMILY VALUESSonnenfeld and

Anjelica Huston on set in 1993.

Year of

the King

By Antony Sher

(1985)

3

Back in the

early 1980s,

if you had

any money,

you traveled by

boat and train to

see groundbreaking

productions by the

Royal Shakespeare

Co. in London or

Stratford-upon-

Avon. But there

was one ticket you

could only dream

of securing:

Antony Sher playing

Richard III. He chose

to play the evil king

on crutches: “The

range of movement

is endless: backward

dancing movements

like a spider,

sideways like a

crab.” Mr. Sher

illustrates his diary of the production

with sketches that show what a

remarkable eye he has. “I do hope

my face turns into his as I age,”

he says of his own father. “It’s a

marvellous face for an actor; a cross

between Anthony Quinn, José Ferrer

and Onassis”—then he proceeds to

draw exactly that. The book is a

tremendous insight into the way

the actor’s mind works. It is also

anecdotal and great fun. The name-

dropping is, properly speaking,

awesome. “Evening. Caryl Churchill’s

party. Another party?!” A book to

be closed with a sigh: It all now

reads like nostalgia for a lost age.

Wishful Drinking

By Carrie Fisher (2008)

4

This short, snappy,

outrageously truthful book

is the best of Carrie Fisher’s

written works. Here is a

woman whose mother had a closet

with both an entrance and an exit:

“It was subject to its own laws like

the phone booth where Clark Kent

was transformed into Superman.”

Her mother, Debbie Reynolds, was

a Hollywood star. Going out with

her was complicated by fans and

admirers. “I really didn’t like sharing

her. It seemed almost unsanitary.”

Fisher became a different kind of

star—one who wrote her own script.

Reclaiming herself from the industry

was not easy. Her likeness as

Princess Leia was owned, for a time,

by George Lucas, and has been

marketed as a Pez dispenser and an

$800 blow-up doll. “So you see,

George Lucas is a sadist. But like any

abused child, wearing a metal bikini,

chained to a giant slug about to die,

I keep coming back for more.” The

book is powered by that voice—wise-

cracking, damaged and triumphantly

human. Fisher became an addict and

bipolar, but she didn’t blame fame for

that. She knew in her bones that you

don’t have to be glamorous to be sad.

Nights at the Circus

By Angela Carter (1984)

5

Angela Carter’s “Nights at

the Circus” captures the

world of performance for me

in all its vertiginous, tawdry

glory. The heroine, Fevvers, is an

Edwardian trapeze artist who seems

to sport a pair of real wings. This

sparks the fascination of the Ameri-

can journalist Jack Walser, who finds

himself drawn into a picaresque

adventure that brings him to the

decadence of czarist St. Petersburg

and on into the shamanic Siberian

wastelands. The novel glories in the

misrule and mayhem of the circus,

revels in the links between per-

formance and sexual display, and is

unafraid of burlesque and the brothel.

Is it the magic of flight or of the

stage that lifts Fevvers off the

ground? She is not about to say.

After she is done, Fevvers “folds up

her quivering wings with a number of

shivers, moues and grimaces as if she

were putting away a naughty book.”

DISCONTENTAntony Sher as Richard III in 1985.

DONALD COOPER/PHOTOSTAGE