Gypsy Rose Lee (1911-1970) was America’s most infamous womana shrewd, intelligent, sexually provocative Madonna of her day. It’s hard to come to grips with exactly why that was the case in Karen Abbott’s biography, a well-written re-creation of Lee’s life employing the novelist’s tools of inventing dialogue and crisscrossing through time and place. This much is clear: A striptease artist who learned her moves in burlesque, Lee was more of a teaser than a stripper. Abbott puts it well when she writes that Lee knew “that what she hides is as much of a reward as what she deigns to reveal.”
Karen Abbott will discuss American Rose at 7 p.m. Jan. 10 at Boswell Book Co.
