Image courtesy W. W. Norton
Adrianne Geffel: A Fiction
David Hajdu’s Lush Life is an empathetic biography of jazz composer Billy Strayhorn. His Positively Fourth Street is an admirable account of the personalities leading the ‘60s folk revival including young Bob Dylan and Joan Baez. With Adrianne Geffel, Hajdu moonlights as a cultural satirist, sending up celebrity worship (mindless or otherwise) in the fine arts, pop culture and academy. Geffel is the mock oral history of a make-believe concert pianist famous for her exuberance. The rhapsodic introduction sends-up the hype-modelled overkill of biographers too much in love with their subjects.
