Word: lax
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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WOODY ALLEN by Eric Lax (Knopf; $24). Seldom is heard an embarrassing word, but this biography gets its facts straight and -- in something of a literary coup -- reaps the benefits of its subject's cooperation. Now if Woody Allen would only consent to tell this story...
WOODY ALLEN by Eric Lax...
...Sullivan Farrow. He lives with, or across Central Park from, actress Mia Farrow. He was twice married and divorced, and kept significant company with another of his co-stars, Diane Keaton. You know this already, and you won't learn much more about his sleeping habits here. Eric Lax is no Kitty Kelley; he seems to believe, with Vladimir Nabokov, that "the best part of a writer's biography is not the record of his adventures but the story of his style." With Lax providing a sympathetic ear, Allen tells that story in piquant detail, from his early days writing...
...Lax gets all the anguish and accomplishments down, in semismooth prose. Yet the suspicion nags that his highest priority was not to embarrass his subject. Perhaps Woody Allen has lived an exemplary life, but nobility doesn't make the pages burn, or even turn. One can't help wishing that, Latvian prince or not, Allen had written his own life. It would have been as different from this reverent read as stand-up is from doze...
Life After Lax...