Friday, August 1, 2014

From the Bookshelf: Me - Stories of My Life

I've finished reading Katharine Hepburn's autobiography, Me: Stories of My Life.



I've found the actress to be a vibrant and interesting personality, and most of the tidbits within the book also bear witness to the fact that she was definitely her own independent woman.  The anecdotes and stories follow her from her childhood in Connecticut, through her early years in the New York theater, and eventually to Hollywood.  Her relationship with Spencer Tracy is, of course, included in the book, but it's really a small part of her memories and stories of her life as she has written them.  (I think more because she didn't care to share much of her life with him with the public, rather than him being a small or less important part of her life.)

I had a bit of a difficult time with her writing style.  First off, the stories are really just little memory blips - the book is not exactly organized chronologically, so if she's talking about her days in the theater, they might be referring to the 1930s, or 1960s.  She has a sort of stream of consciousness style of writing where the memories of conversations are only one-sided or half-sided - all about Kate, as she says.  Sometimes it's a little hard to puzzle out her syntax.

The book is a brief peek into the personality and memories of one of the more interesting, independent and trail-blazing female actors of the 20th century.  Buffs of history and movie trivia will probably enjoy this read, although it is a bit meandering and heavily anecdotal.

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