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A Memoir of Lust Without Reason
Nan A. Talese
March 2011
On Sale: March 15, 2011
240 pages
ISBN: 0385531648
EAN: 9780385531641
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction Memoir
Luminous and intensely personal, Art and Madness recounts
the lost years of Anne Roiphe’s twenties, when the
soon-to-be-critically-acclaimed author put her dreams of
becoming a writer on hold to devote herself to the magnetic
but coercive male artists of the period.
Coming of age in the 1950s, Roiphe, the granddaughter of
Jewish immigrants, grew up on Park Avenue and had an
adolescence defined by privilege, petticoats, and social
rules. At Smith College her classmates wore fraternity pins
on their cashmere sweaters and knit argyle socks for their
boyfriends during lectures. Young women were expected to
give up personal freedom for devotion to home and children.
Instead, Roiphe chose Beckett, Proust, Sartre, and Mann as
her heroes and sought out the chaos of New York’s White
Horse Tavern and West End Bar.
She was unmoored and uncertain, “waiting for a wisp of
truth, a feather’s brush of beauty, a moment of insight.”
Salvation came in the form of a brilliant playwright whom
she married and worked to support, even after he left her
alone on their honeymoon and later pawned her family silver,
china, and pearls. Her near-religious belief in the power of
art induced her to overlook his infidelity and alcoholism,
and to dutifully type his manuscripts in place of writing
her own.
During an era that idolized its male writers, she became,
sometimes with her young child in tow, one of the girls
draped across the sofa at parties with George Plimpton,
Terry Southern, Doc Humes, Norman Mailer, Peter Matthiessen,
and William Styron. In the Hamptons she socialized with
Larry Rivers, Jack Gelber and other painters and sculptors.
“Moderation for most of us is a most unnatural condition . .
. . I preferred to burn out like a brilliant firecracker.”
But while she was playing the muse reality beckoned, forcing
her to confront the notion that any sacrifice was worth
making for art.
Art and Madness recounts the fascinating evolution of a time
when art and alcohol and rebellion caused collateral damage
and sometimes produced extraordinary work. In clear-sighted,
perceptive, and unabashed prose, Roiphe shares with
astonishing honesty the tumultuous adventure of
self-discovery that finally led to her redemption.
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