“Sharp and engaging… Talbot père comes across as a sort
of Zelig-with-personality, a life-embracing man whose career spans, and
illuminates, the first 60 years of the 20th century.” Read more here...
Praising Junot Diaz's This Is How You Lose Her as "heartbreaking" and "funny," Masha Gessen's The Man Without a Face as "fascinating, illuminating, and above all brave," and Margaret Talbot's The Entertainer as "warm, funny, and rigorous," Slate has chosen three Riverhead books as among their Best Books of 2012.
Margaret Talbot stopped by Weekend Edition this past Saturday to discuss her father and how his story is tied up in the rise of popular entertainment, the subject of her new book The Entertainer. Listen here.
“Margaret Talbot’s wry,
wonderful new book . . . That Talbot is a writer gifted enough to evoke not just
images but their attendant music through her words will come as no surprise to
anyone who’s read her in The New Yorker or elsewhere. One of the
things The Entertainer makes abundantly clear, though, is
that she comes by her aesthetic sense naturally. . . . Talbot has woven a tale
as romantic and vivid as any film could hope to be, while still seeing every bit
of it plain. She is as clear-eyed about her father as she is about history—no
easy feat. . . . [Lyle] never had even a starring role as dazzling as the one
his youngest child, with history as her guide, has now written for
him.” Read more here.
