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MY NAME IS BARBRA,<\/strong> by Barbra Streisand<\/p>\n Hello, enormous.<\/p>\n Of course <\/em>Barbra Streisand\u2019s memoir, 10 years in the making if you don\u2019t count the chapter she scribbled in longhand in the 1990s and then lost, was going to approach \u201cPower Broker<\/a>\u201d proportions.<\/p>\n For one thing, she is \u2014 fits of insecurity notwithstanding \u2014 a bona fide power broker: tearing down barriers to and between Broadway, Hollywood, the recording industry and Washington, D.C., like Robert Moses on a demolition bender.<\/p>\n For another, as Streisand writes in \u201cMy Name Is Barbra,\u201d a 970-page victory lap past all who ever doubted, diminished or dissed her, with lingering high fives for the many supporters, she does tend to agonize over the editing process.<\/p>\n After adding back<\/a> material to her version of \u201cA Star Is Born<\/a>\u201d for Netflix in 2018 \u2014 \u201cI think I made it better. But did I? I\u2019m never quite sure\u201d\u2014 she fantasized about new, fuller cuts of both \u201cFunny Girl<\/a>,\u201d which made her a movie star on arrival, and \u201cYentl<\/a>,\u201d her debut as director. Planning her wedding to the actor James Brolin in 1998, she tried to winnow down a long list of desserts before deciding \u201cWe\u2019ll just have them all \u2026 why not?<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n It doesn\u2019t take a psychiatrist \u2014 though Streisand, 81, has consulted many, played one in \u201cThe Prince of Tides<\/a>\u201d and even incorporated the therapeutic framework into one concert tour<\/a> \u2014 to figure out why she has taken such a big bite out of life. As recounted before in a flotilla<\/a> of<\/a> biographies<\/a>, none authorized (and at least one tell-all by an early roommate,<\/a> who was promptly ghosted), she grew up deprived both economically and emotionally in a <\/span>housing project in Flatbush, Brooklyn. Instead of a doll she carried a hot-water bottle \u2014 \u201cI swear it felt more like a real baby than some cold doll\u201d \u2014 for which a sympathetic neighbor knitted a pink hat and sweater.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Such details may be familiar to fans, but for the most part they ring out more resoundingly in Streisand\u2019s chatty, ellipses-strewn telling. She may possess megawatt fame \u2014 \u201ca hollow trophy,\u201d she assures us \u2014 but between these covers she\u2019s just Bubbe Barbra at a kitchen table, talking about fabrics and fellows who got fresh and \u201cmy first fur coat, sold to me as \u2018Zorina,\u2019 a.k.a. \u2018Alaskan sable,\u2019 but in reality \u2026 skunk.\u201d<\/p>\n Her father, an educator from an Orthodox Jewish background, died at 35 after a head injury when Barbara, as they spelled it then, was 15 months old and her brother was 9. (She still has her father\u2019s copy of \u201cTales From Shakespeare\u201d for children on her bedside table: \u201cWho knows? Maybe he had bought it to read to me.\u201d)<\/p>\n Her mother remarried a man named Kind who was anything but, gave birth to another little girl, and had distinct Madame Rose<\/a> undertones, crooning into a broomstick microphone and so forth. \u201cWhere are my<\/em> presents?\u201d she screamed at a Christmas gathering in 1964, by which time her older daughter had released the Top 40 hit \u201cPeople<\/a>\u201d and appeared thrice in Vogue. \u201cI\u2019m the mother! She\u2019s nothing without me!\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n That the film rights to \u201cGypsy\u201d have slipped from Streisand\u2019s grasp after a prolonged tease seems one of showbiz\u2019s prosecutable crimes. (She even gobbles egg rolls, Mr. Goldstone<\/a>!) Another: This book, which is adorned with more boldface names than there were sequins on the Arnold Scaasi pantsuit<\/a> she wore to the Oscars in 1969, has no index. You kind of want to resurrect Spy magazine to make one, as it did<\/a> for \u201cThe Andy Warhol Diaries<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Little Barbara suffered from undiagnosed tinnitus, possibly a bug God planted in her ear urging her to run the hell away from her family\u2019s dysfunction. She vowed to become a performer after seeing Susan Strasberg, the Method guru Lee\u2019s daughter, in \u201cThe Diary of Anne Frank\u201d at the Cort Theater, later contriving a meeting with Strasberg Sr., who didn\u2019t intimidate her in the slightest. (\u201cHe reminded me of my uncle Irving.\u201d)<\/p>\n She also was swooning at the movies near Erasmus Hall High, where she was an honors student; her schoolmate Bobby Fischer,<\/a> the future chess prodigy, \u201clooked like some sort of deranged pilot from a 1940s movie,\u201d she presciently noted.<\/p>\n Streisand collected mentors who introduced her to books and records, and scratched up the money for classes in acting, pantomiming a chocolate chip and reading from Jean Anouilh\u2019s \u201cMedea\u201d<\/a>: \u201cWhy have you made me a girl?\u201d Though she hates to fly, she longed to escape, and would become an expert criss-crosser of centuries<\/a> and cultures<\/a> onscreen.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n But it was her shimmery, almost wholly intuitive singing, first at a gay bar and then at the Bon Soir supper club in Greenwich Village, that would first dazzle the public. She found the spotlight \u201cwarm and comforting,\u201d quickly lopped off that second \u201ca\u201d from her first name, and reminds us now that the second \u201cs\u201d in Streisand is soft, telephoning Tim Cook to get the pronunciation corrected on Siri.<\/p>\n The author salts \u201cMy Name Is Barbra,\u201d the title recycled from her 1965 TV special<\/a> that itself cribbed the name of a Leonard Bernstein song, with Yiddishisms: tchotchkes <\/em>(she likes pig ones); gonif<\/em>, or thief (her ex-boyfriend Jon Peters<\/a>); fakakta<\/em> (what her then-agent David Begelman called the Isaac Bashevis Singer short story that was the basis for \u201cYentl\u201d).<\/p>\n Then there are the generous dollops of chutzpah<\/em>. Besides sassing Strasberg, she somehow managed to resist all the advisers who told her to bob her long nose, ditch the thrift-store clothes and choose more standard numbers than, say, Harold Arlen\u2019s \u201cA Sleepin\u2019 Bee<\/a>,\u201d with lyrics by Truman Capote.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Nobody put Barbra in a corner. She clashed early with the prickly playwright and director Arthur Laurents, insisting she perform the secretary Miss Marmelstein\u2019s eponymous solo in \u201cI Can Get It for You Wholesale\u201d from a swivel chair.\u201cYou\u2019re never going to make it, you know,\u201d he snarled at her, though the audience went wild for the sequence. \u201cNever!\u201d (They\u2019d reunite later, on the massively successful picture \u201cThe Way We Were<\/a>.\u201d)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n A lot of men seemed to resent her drive. \u201cI have more talent in my farts than you have in your whole body!\u201d Walter Matthau told her on the set of \u201cHello, Dolly.\u201d Mike Wallace called her \u201ctotally self-absorbed\u201d and made her cry on \u201c60 Minutes.\u201d<\/p>\n But many more fell at her feet, including Marlon Brando, who rubbed them. The king of England has sipped Constant Comment from her cup. Pat Conroy, the \u201cPrince of Tides\u201d author, compared her to the goddess Athena. (Athena on Conroy\u2019s dancing: \u201cBoy, he could really fling that tush around!\u201d) Stephen Sondheim rewrote lyrics for her.<\/p>\n Tabulating all the boyfriends and admirers \u2014 \u201cI thought we were going to have an affair,\u201d the married Mandy Patinkin tearily implored her during \u201cYentl,\u201d she writes \u2014 might require a second<\/em> index.<\/p>\n Though she has a reputation for being controlling (basically the definition of being a director), Streisand here stresses, convincingly if somewhat exhaustively, her spontaneity. Contra Ethel Merman, who famously declared herself Miss Bird\u2019s Eye<\/a> when presented with new lyrics in rehearsals of \u201cCall Me Madam,\u201d she believes \u201cto freeze something is to kill it.\u201d <\/p>\n She wanted to print the words \u201cthis is a work in progress\u201d on the back of her 1976 lieder album \u2014 Glenn Gould loved it<\/a>! \u2014 an example of her dogged refusal to stay in one lane. \u201cCome to think of it, I should put it on this book, too\u2026.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Future editions, then, might excise some <\/em>of the long block quotes of praise from her peers, like the one purportedly from Tennessee Williams collected by an<\/a> interviewer whose veracity was questioned<\/a> by Helen Shaw in The New Yorker. Not to get too Laurents about it, but Streisand maybe could have used a trusted collaborator, a J.R. Moehringer or even a J.J. Hunsecker, to rein in some indulgences, like long lists of boldface friends at later-career concerts.<\/p>\n There\u2019s something exuberant and glorious, though, about Streisand\u2019s photo dump of self-portraits and party pics. Indeed about this whole dragged-out banquet of a book. You might not have the appetite to linger for the whole thing, but you\u2019ll find something worth a nosh.<\/p>\n There are just so many scintillating Streisands to contemplate over so many years: singer, actress, director, producer, philanthropist, activist, lover, mother, wife, friend, autobiographer. \u201cI would make a very good critic,\u201d she suggests at one point, and as I struggle to put a button on this, all I can reply is: Barbra, be my guest.<\/p>\n MY NAME IS BARBRA<\/strong> | By Barbra Streisand | Viking | 970 pp. | $47<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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