Shy: The Alarmingly Outspoken Memoirs of Mary Rodgers (co-written with Jesse Green) is finally coming out in August 2022!

[ErmengardeStopSniveling]

Posted: 1/21/22 at 6:54pm

It was quietly announced this week that Mary Rodgers Guettel's long-awaited tell-all is finally coming out on August 9, after reports that it had been killed after Rodgers' death. (Mentioned this in another thread but figured it deserves one of its own.) She lived a fascinating life and I'll be very interested to read the book.


Here's a description from the official website:

The memoirs of Mary Rodgers—writer, composer, Broadway royalty, and “a woman who tried everything.”

“What am I, bologna?” Mary Rodgers (1931–2014) often said. She was referring to being stuck in the middle: the daughter of one composer and the mother of another. And not just any composers. Her father was Richard Rodgers, perhaps the greatest American melodist; her son Adam Guettel, a worthy successor. What that leaves out is Mary herself, also a composer, whose musical Once Upon a Mattress remains one of the rare revivable Broadway hits written by a woman.

Shy is the story of how it all happened: how Mary grew from an angry child, constrained by privilege and a parent’s overwhelming talent, to become not just a theater star but also a renowned author of books for young people (including the classic Freaky Friday) and, in a final grand turn, a doyenne of philanthropy and the Chairman of the Juilliard School.

But in telling these stories—with copious annotations, contradictions, and interruptions from her coauthor, Jesse Green, the chief theater critic of The New York Times—Shy also tells another, about a woman liberating herself from disapproving parents and pervasive sexism to find art and romance on her own terms.

Both an eyewitness report from the Golden Age of American musical theater and a tale of a woman striving for a meaningful life, Shy is, above all, a chance to sit at the feet of the kind of woman they don’t make anymore—and never did. They make themselves.

480 pages

Updated On: 1/21/22 at 06:54 PM

[Dollypop]

Posted: 1/22/22 at 12:34am

ErmengardeStopSniveling said: "It was quietly announced this week thatMary Rodgers Guettel's long-awaited tell-all is finally coming out on August 9,after reports that it had been killed after Rodgers' death. (Mentioned this in another thread but figured it deserves one of its own.) She lived a fascinating life and I'll be very interested to read the book.

 

 

Mercy me. I hope she forgot how to spell my last name!


Here's a description from the official website:

The memoirs of Mary Rodgers—writer, composer, Broadway royalty, and “a woman who tried everything.”

“What am I, bologna?” Mary Rodgers (1931–2014) often said. She was referring to being stuck in the middle: the daughter of one composer and the mother of another. And not just any composers. Her father was Richard Rodgers, perhaps the greatest American melodist; her son Adam Guettel, a worthy successor. What that leaves out is Mary herself, also a composer, whose musicalOnce Upon a Mattressremains one of the rare revivable Broadway hits written by a woman.

Shyis the story of how it all happened: how Mary grew from an angry child, constrained by privilege and a parent’s overwhelming talent, to become not just a theater star but also a renowned author of books for young people (including the classicFreaky Friday) and, in a final grand turn, a doyenne of philanthropy and the Chairman of the Juilliard School.

But in telling these stories—with copious annotations, contradictions, and interruptions from her coauthor, Jesse Green, the chief theater critic ofThe New York Times—Shyalso tells another, about a woman liberating herself from disapproving parents and pervasive sexism to find art and romance on her own terms.

Both an eyewitness report from the Golden Age of American musical theater and a tale of a woman striving for a meaningful life,Shyis, above all, a chance to sit at the feet of the kind of woman they don’t make anymore—and never did. They make themselves.

480 pages"

 

[VintageSnarker]

Posted: 1/22/22 at 1:48am

ErmengardeStopSniveling said: "But in telling these stories—with copious annotations, contradictions, and interruptions from her coauthor, Jesse Green, the chief theater critic ofThe New York Times—Shyalso tells another, about a woman liberating herself from disapproving parents and pervasive sexism to find art and romance on her own terms.

Sounds great except for this part. Not sure how including a bunch of interjections from a man fits with a project about escaping pervasive sexism. I'll read it anyway but it might be slow-going at almost 500 pages.