Rick Kot, editor-in-chief at Viking, who oversaw the book’s production, told me: “Publishing books in two volumes is difficult in itself as a commercial endeavor. And no one seems to have a problem with how long Streisand’s takes.
Its size literally makes the career it entails. Streisand broods over her life and pours it out. She feels her way through, remembering and sometimes Googling as she types. It’s not a book that you inhale, per se. (Unless, of course, you have an urgent lunch date with the author.) Nor does it inspire the “five takeaways” treatment that juicy new memoirs from Britney Spears and Jada Pinkett Smith are getting. Not that there haven’t been requests for sharper material. Streisand said that Christine Pittel, her editor, told her “that I had to leave some blood on the page.” So feelings are more deeply anchored; Names are mentioned.
And she did some hemming and hawing. “I delivered the book very late,” she said. “I think I should have done it in two years.” It took her 10. And as she walked, she thought about her legacy. “If you want to read about me in 20 or 50 years, whatever it is – when there is still a world – these are my words. These are my thoughts.” She also thought about the other Streisand titles, those by other people. “Hopefully you don’t have to look at too many books written about me. You know, whenever I was told what they said, certain things I thought, like, who are they talking about?”
There are snack bars. But they are too chronic to be considered “current.” Mostly it’s about Streisand’s hunger for work and her endless quest to maintain control over it. Her singing and acting made her famous. This insistence on perfection made her notorious. Sexism and chauvinism are omnipresent throughout the book. What becomes obvious, however, is that the woman who serves as “director” on only three films (“Yentl”, “The Prince of Tides” and “The Mirror Has Two Faces”) was a director from the beginning of her career. This is the great revelation of the book – for the reader, but also for the author. “I didn’t know about it,” she said, about this penchant for management, planning, vision, authority and obedience to her instincts. “But when I wrote the book, I discovered it. Basically, I did that, you know, when I was 19 years old – or even showed my mom how to smoke.”
Streisand is unsparing about the betrayals she faced while working and working with men. Sydney Chaplin (one of Charlie’s children) played the original Nick Arnstein during her Broadway run of Funny Girl; 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 with her. In front of a live audience, he leaned in and whispered slurs and obscenities. When it came time to film Hello, Dolly!, Streisand couldn’t understand why her co-star Walter Matthau and her director Gene Kelly (yes, that Gene Kelly) were so hostile toward her. She confronts Matthau and he admits: “You hurt my friend,” says Chaplin, his poker buddy. Over the course of her career, she battles what a grumpy cameraman on the set of The Prince of Tides describes as a boys’ club.
That’s the kind of blood that gives this book its power – not the prospect that a blunt, brash Brando and a doting Pierre Trudeau will be honest soulmates, not what her byzantine affair with Jon Peters was all about. It is that Barbra Streisand has had to endure a series of tough jobs but has never stopped doing the best work. This experience with Chaplin gave her lifelong stage fright. But what if it also helped sharpen their will to do things—in the studio, on a movie set, before a show—precisely, possibly compulsively, right?