\n<\/p>\n
Rick Kot, an executive editor at Viking who oversaw production on the book, told me, \u201cPublishing books in two volumes is difficult just as a commercial venture. And nobody seems to have any issue with how long\u201d Streisand\u2019s is.<\/p>\n
The bigness of it makes literal the career it contains. Streisand is poring over, pouring out,<\/em> her life. She\u2019s feeling her way through it, remembering, sometimes Googling as she types. It\u2019s not a book you inhale, per se. (Unless, of course, you\u2019ve got a pressing lunch date with the author.) Nor does it inspire the \u201cfive takeaways\u201d treatment that juicy new memoirs by Britney Spears and Jada Pinkett Smith have. Not that there weren\u2019t requests for spicier material. Streisand said that Christine Pittel, her editor, told her \u201cthat I had to leave some blood on the page.\u201d So feelings are more deeply plumbed; names are named.<\/p>\n And she did do some hemming and hawing. \u201cI was very late in delivering the book,\u201d she said. \u201cI think I was supposed to deliver it in two years.\u201d It took her 10. And as she went, she thought about her legacy. \u201cIf you want to read about me in 20 years or 50 years, whatever it is \u2014 if there\u2019s still a world<\/em> \u2014 <\/em>these are my words. These are my thoughts.\u201d She also considered those other Streisand titles, the ones by other people. \u201cHopefully, you don\u2019t have to look at too many books written about me. You know, whenever I was told about what they said, certain things, I thought, like, who are they talking about?\u201d<\/p>\n There are<\/em> takeaways. But they\u2019re too chronic to qualify as \u201ccurrent.\u201d Mostly, they involve Streisand\u2019s hunger for work and her endless quest to maintain control over it. Singing and acting made her famous. This insistence on perfection made her notorious. Sexism and chauvinism are on display throughout the book. But what becomes apparent is that the woman who has a \u201cdirected by\u201d credit on just three films (\u201cYentl,\u201d \u201cThe Prince of Tides\u201d and \u201cThe Mirror Has Two Faces\u201d) had been a director from the very start of her career. Here is the book\u2019s grand revelation \u2014 for a reader but for the author, too. \u201cI didn\u2019t know about it,\u201d she said, of this proclivity for management, planning, vision, authority and obeying her instincts. \u201cBut writing the book, I discovered it. Basically, I was doing that, you know, when I was 19 years old \u2014 or even showing my mother how to smoke.\u201d<\/p>\n Streisand is unsparing about the treachery she faced at work, collaborating with men. Sydney Chaplin (one of Charlie\u2019s kids) played the original Nick Arnstein during her \u201cFunny Girl\u201d Broadway run; they shared a flirtation that Chaplin wanted to consummate and that Streisand wanted to keep professional. (For one thing, she was married to Elliott Gould.) So, she writes, Chaplin did a number on her. In front of live audiences, he\u2019d lean in to whisper put-downs and profanity. When it came time to shoot \u201cHello, Dolly!,\u201d Streisand couldn\u2019t understand why her co-star Walter Matthau and their director, Gene Kelly (yes, the<\/em> Gene Kelly) were so hostile toward her. She confronts Matthau, and he confesses: \u201cYou hurt my friend,\u201d meaning Chaplin, his poker buddy. Throughout her career, she\u2019s up against what one surly camera operator, on the set of \u201cThe Prince of Tides,\u201d boasts is a boys\u2019 club.<\/p>\n That\u2019s the sort of blood that gives this book its power \u2014 not the prospect of a bluntly louche Brando and a doting Pierre Trudeau being honest-to-God soul mates, not whatever her byzantine thing with Jon Peters was about. It\u2019s that Barbra Streisand endured a parade of harsh workplaces yet never stopped trying to make the best work. That experience with Chaplin left her with lifelong stage fright. But what if it also helped sharpen her volition to get things \u2014 in the studio, on a film set, before a show \u2014 exactly, possibly obsessively, right?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n