Nathalie Léger

This book is really something. So many great things happen in this book, but I felt almost lightheaded with surprise and delight when Frederick Wiseman suddenly appears to tell the author she should talk to Mickey Mantle, who knew Barabra Loden when she was a dancer at the Copacabana. Leger meets Mantle at the Houdini museum in Scranton, where he is a regular visitor, and he talks about, among other unexpected subjects, Houdini's spiritualism, Melville and Proust. Also, this quote by Celine to illuminate Wanda's final shot: "When you've reached the very end of all things and sorrow itself no longer offers an answer, then you must return to the company of others, no matter who they are."… (more)

I was reading Michael Chabon’s Moonglow, marvelling but drowning in its Jewish American grandiloquence, wondering where the plot, to the extent that it might be said to have a plot, was going. So I decided to take a detour reading a short book, translated from French, about an actress I had never heard of, Barbara Loden, who was married to Elia Kazan (I had heard of him), had directed one full length film, Wanda (which is apparently a cult classic), and who had died of cancer in 1980.
The book tells this story, but is unsettling, in a good way, as it alternates between auto fiction of Nathalie Léger, biography of Barbara Loden, description of Wanda and the true story upon which the film is based.
I am at a loss to comment further on the impression this short book made on me, other than to recommend that you read it yourself, and say that I am going to read Léger’s other two books which form a loose trilogy.… (more)