Word: levant
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...Memoirs of an Amnesiac, Levant...
...MEMOIRS OF AN AMNESIAC by Oscar Levant. 320 pages. Putnam...
...Oscar Levant's public image, if he still has one, is a blend of an exhibitionistic hypochondriac, an acerb wit, and a concert pianist who knows far more about music than he ever applied to the keys. All these Levantine facets faithfully reflect the man; or, to put it another way, he reflects them. The distinction is academic. After a lifetime largely devoted to his own self-construction, Levant himself probably cannot draw the line between the real Oscar and the one he invented. This book comes as close to defining it as its author will ever...
...memoirs of show-business people, unless ghosted, frequently read as if they were dashed off in a day, and Levant's is no exception. Whatever popped into his mind apparently was set down forthwith, without regard to organization or even grammar, and when the whole had achieved book length, he sent it along to the publisher with orders to alter not a single line...
...Levant the wit hurls poisoned shafts. Proposing a movie based on his own life, he casts Rosalind Russell in the title role, then decides she is too masculine. Leonard Bernstein "uses music as an accompaniment to his conducting." Oscar also punctures himself. "I'm a neurotic basket case," he says early in the book. "My health is so bad that I may well be the next Premier of India." With the approach of old age-Levant will be 59 this year-the wit yields to the neurotic basket case. The reader is endlessly treated to clinical accounts, some written...