Otto Friedrich
Description
Otto Friedrich (born 1929 Boston, Massachusetts; died April 26, 1995 Manhasset, New York), was an American journalist, writer and historian. The son of the political theorist, and Harvard professor Carl Joachim Friedrich, Otto Friedrich graduated from Harvard University in 1948 with a degree in History. Upon graduation, he became a journalist, eventually becoming the managing editor of The Saturday Evening Post in 1965. After the Post closed down, he spent the remainder of his career at TIME magazine where he wrote over 40 cover stories. During this time, he also authored over 14 books on diverse subjects ranging from the rise of Hollywood to the rise of the Third Reich. In 1970, he won the George Polk Award for his book Decline and Fall. Otto Friedrich was married to Priscilla Boughton, with whom he had five children. He died of lung cancer at the North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset, New York in 1995.
Books
Kingdom of Auschwitz
Essay about Auschwitz, the largest, busiest and most horrifying of the death camps.
The Grave of Alice B. Toklas
Historian and journalist Friedrich excels in developing social portraits of an age that are either very grand in scale, like Before the Deluge (1972), about Berlin in the 1920's, and City of Nets, about Hollywood in the 1940's, or, oppositely, scaled-down to eye-level intimacy, like the 13 essays collected here. These eclectic ""reports from the past,"" written over a period of 30 years, cover such topics as a literary friendship with Alice B. Toklas; a love of classical music, especially that of Mozart and Scarlatti; a fascination with the durability of Monte Cassino; a well-earned suspicion about the way news magazines gather their facts (Friedrich was editor for both Time and Newsweek); and a valedictory piece about James Baldwin's Paris. What informs them all is a shared sense of self-exile, the psychological inheritance from a father who fled his native Germany out of loathing for Hitler. One of the touching and amusing stories in the collection tells of the son's attempt to overcome deep feelings of guilt because of his German heritage, by taking his young daughter to see Wagner's Parsifal. Molly, freed from the link of the past that kept her father in thrall, simply sat, absorbed in rapture. History, both personal and cultural, has also made Friedrich intensely aware of the need to atone for past injustices. The title piece is a tender portrait of Toklas, who, a few years before her death, befriended the shy, ambitious young author. However, when it was time to repay her kindness with friendship, he ""felt an irresistible need to escape."" Too self-absorbed to realize how the old need the young for sustenance, for ""a hand for someone to hold on to,"" the young Friedrich returned to America, haunted by guilt and the desire to set things right. In the engaging tribute, he does exactly that. A collection of essays gracefully reasoned and expressed.
City of Nets
Close to being the last word of the golden age of the flicks. All the stars are here and more, but it is the author's perspective that makes this so interesting and captivating. Hollywood's power lay in its ability to create potent images that defined a nation's awareness of itself. But often the creators were unaware of how well they succeeded. The author here gives us the dream machine's layers of power, warts and all, and we are subsequently overwhelmed by this business that could produce assembly-line fantasies at such a frenetic pace. Of course, there is plenty of good gossip about the stars and shakers. Those who can never get enough of the vulgar, crass, vicious, larger-than-life people who too often made up the celluloid empire, who eat up scandal and outrageous idiocy, will have a field day. There's union organizing and union busting, gangsters and nearly illiterate moguls of immense clout, lackeys and press-agent madness in this engrossing survey. Some heroes emerge and there are surprises galore: What did Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Brecht, Fitzgerald, Faulkner, Dorothy Parker and Ronald Reagan have in common? Tinseltown, of course. Movie mavens will love this. Even the familiar stories delight on the retelling. Can there be someone who knows zilch about Hollywood's golden age? Well, here's the perfect remedy for such a lamentable deficiency. What's more, it's intelligent, superbly written and thoroughly enjoyable
Going Crazy
One might wish for a little method to this particular madness--a large, confusing book on a large, inchoate subject: not just ""the madness in our time"" (which should be material enough for anyone) but ""the madness [that] is part of all of us, all the time. . . ."" Friedrich omits hardly anyone or anything. He shifts abruptly from present to past, from real people to characters out of literature, detailing at length their bizarre tales. In a series of disconnected mini-biographies, he touches on all the facets, all the possible interpretations, of the bona fide or apparent crazies. To name a few: Oedipus, Hamlet, Lear, George III, Zelda Fitzgerald, Robert Schumann, Bobby Fischer, Eldridge Cleaver, Norman Mailer, Mark Vonnegut, Harvard graduates, a woman lawyer, opera heroines, a ""man called Harry,"" himself, his friends, friends of friends. . . . He writes well, but the mass of detail simply blurs the real issue at hand; one loses the focus and then begins to wonder if there is one. Friedrich himself admits he doesn't have the answers. Not only is he ""not a psychiatrist [with] all-encompassing theories,"" but he distrusts those who do have them--the traditional psychiatrists as well as controversial figures such as Laing. Interviews are combined with personal impressions, quotations from psychiatrists, many anecdotes, and Friedrich's own ruminations on modern tensions and anxieties. Friedrich himself anticipates his critics and realizes the book's inherent weaknesses. It's assuredly an energetic, ambitious work, but one of those overextended books where more is definitely less than one might have hoped.
Olympia
The Easter bunny that overslept
Having slept past Easter, the Easter bunny tries to distribute his eggs on Mother's Day, the Fourth of July, and Halloween, but no one is interested. At Christmas time it is Santa who gets him back on track.
Clover
Clover is the fourth book in the popular What Katy Did series. After Katy's wedding, the focus shifts to her little sister Clover. Their brother Phil encounters serious illness in the winter, and Dr. Carr sends him with Clover to the mountains of Colorado. Clarence Page, their naughty cousin from the other books, lives nearby. He is a rancher now with an attractive English partner, Geoff Templestowe, whom Clover falls for.