Books in the news; Do You Sleep In The Nude?

Robert or Oman books in the news. A quick look at newly published material and books of current interest. Your host Robert Orme director for public services at the University of Illinois Library when reading some interviews of Rex Reed which he has collected into a book called Do You Sleep in the nude. Published by The New American library I was very much aware that he was of the Lillian Ross School. Miss Ross you will remember wrote an interview with him just Hemingway which now stands as a model of all present day interviewing technique is a seemingly simple one. The interviewer comes into the room and hands the interviewee a rope whereupon he hangs himself by his own words. Mr Reed is probably much better at this approach than is contemporary Tom Wolfe who sounds less innocent. Reid lacks the buoyancy of wolves supercharge style Reed stays pretty much out of the way in these interviews with the stars of stage and screen the klieg light people as he calls them. Well they're one of two exceptions to the stage people and do you sleep in the nude. One of which was done in October 1997 with Governor Lester Maddox of Georgia. This interview was by far the longest and close to the best of the group which may mean that Rex Reed is a born political

writer it may mean the government acts as more clique like than even he knows. Rather indicates this quality in a note in which he says a man creates his own power of celebrity which follows him around like a stray dog after a hot biscuit. Actually that is a snappy phrase it is not read it is best. The now famous interview with Barbra Streisand brings I want a better one she begins. One thing about Barbra Streisand to know her is not necessarily to love her. And there's a line from the Warren Beatty article interviewing Warren is like actually asking a hemophiliac for a pint of blood or the one from the Maddox interview he has provided more conversational needlepoint for sophisticated laughter than canned peaches or Gone With The Wind. Well interviewing as you can see has its dangers. He does say some very nice things for many years the voice of the turtle in American poetry came from modest little house on a rundown street in Brooklyn. Marianne Moore lived there or on when there are some some performers rare as blue butterflies who carry around their own likeness. Well there are seeds of sentimentality in those sentences I would suspect from

his introduction that he would be the first to admit it. My biggest problem in writing about celebrities he says is that because I was once an actor I have empathy for their pain which often leads them to tell me more than they realize. Well there's empathy spread to FICKLING over the ones a lot of Lenya on Robert Anderson the playwright I'm gentle Lansberry moneymen McCurdy and not treating Marlene Dietrich. It must be admitted that he hands them the same rope that he hands the others with they merely hand it back to him with a knot unravelled and secure star doesn't really care what he says about them. Well perhaps this relaxation is partly because they feel the empathy which he speaks or maybe they're just nice people. One must admit the emotion sometimes stems from the interviewer. However the tone of the decreased article is different from the Streisand one and the interviewer lets us know it. We know what she said and we and he lets us know what his reaction is to her. Is the difference then in the questioning. Often is very hard to tell for he barely opens his mouth when the dam breaks. The stars apparently have just been waiting for Rex Reed to appear to open up their lives to

him. Peter Fonda for example Curie or Lynn Redgrave rattle on at great length and sometimes however he has to work for his interview. And then there's a splendid interplay such as the EVA Gardner interview where she runs it and him and almost gets him thrown out of a hotel restaurant because he had on his turtleneck sweater the one probably which he wears in the dust jacket of this book the one that makes him look like a hefty Elvis Presley. Well reading these pieces as a collection is interesting to notice of the writing tricks in which he indulges a favorite repeated phrase for example hotel rooms are usually honey beige and he too can dangle a modifier like the rest of us. Well still these pieces hold up better as a collection than one might suppose I enjoyed. Do you sleep in the nude by Rex read books in the news is prepared and presented by Robert or Aman sponsored by the Illinois State Library. This program was distributed by the national educational radio network.