Art and culture critic Barnet recounts the exploits of the free- spirited bohemian women of New York City during the period 1913-1930. Coverage includes (for example) salon hostess Louise Arensberg, modern dance pioneer Isadora Duncan, birth control advocate Margaret Sanger, and blues singer Bessie Smith. The material in this volume was originally published in 2001 in German translation under the title Crazy New York: Die Frauen von Harlem und Greenwich Village by Edition Ebersbach, Berlin. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc.,...
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Art and culture critic Barnet recounts the exploits of the free- spirited bohemian women of New York City during the period 1913-1930. Coverage includes (for example) salon hostess Louise Arensberg, modern dance pioneer Isadora Duncan, birth control advocate Margaret Sanger, and blues singer Bessie Smith. The material in this volume was originally published in 2001 in German translation under the title Crazy New York: Die Frauen von Harlem und Greenwich Village by Edition Ebersbach, Berlin. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
The New Yorker We all know that Edna St. Vincent Millay burned her candle at both ends, but not necessarily that she spoke baby talk to her husband. This series of short biographies is a case-history candy box. The poet Mina Loy is shown in all her beauty and reckless flamboyance, abandoning two children in Italy, having a third in England and then parking it with the earlier two, and ending up on the Bowery, making sculptures out of egg crates and clothespins. This eclectic assortment of the daring, the devastating, and the derelict includes hostesses like Mabel Dodge and A’Lelia Walker, singers like Ethel Waters, and the editors of the Little Review. Barnet paints her subjects as pioneering feminists in revolt against established mores, though, arguably, money was almost as important as a spur to eccentricity; it is instructive that the collective good times came to an end with the crash of 1929.
