Book review | ‘My Name Is Barbra’ is most candid, honest, and unputdownable of all memoirs

To be candid, I am an odd ball in a family of six. an ardent lover of everything that Bollywood represents, its movies, stars, music, and songs. Anything about Hollywood and Broadway is not my cup of tea. Contrarily, my wife, sons and daughters-in-law are connoisseurs of Hollywood movies, its stars and American musical theatre. My love-hate relationship with Hollywood notwithstanding, for the last five decades, I have been a connoisseur of the autobiographies and memoirs of all genres and in recent years, I have turned an independent reviewer of books of all types. It was natural then, when in the wee hours one night, a month ago, a 1000 page (992 to be precise), hardcover, memoir My Name Is Barbra by one Barbra Streisand popped up in my Amazon account, impulsively I decided to know more about the protagonist and the book, and impromptu took to Google search and Wikipedia to learn more about Barbra Streisand, an unknown entity to me. Decoding Barbra Streisand A Google search ‘Barbra Streisand’ that night returned an astounding 4, 07,00, 000 results in 0.37 seconds. And the Wikipedia had the following to say about Barbra Streisand: “With sales exceeding 150 million records worldwide, Barbra Streisand is one of the best-selling recording artists of all time. According to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), she is the second-highest certified female artist in the United States, with 68.5 million certified album units. Billboard ranked Streisand as the greatest solo artist on the Billboard 200 chart and the top Adult Contemporary female artist of all time. Her accolades include two Oscars (Academy Awards); 10 Grammy Awards, including the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award and the Grammy Legend Award; five Emmy Awards; four Peabody Awards; the Presidential Medal of Freedom conferred by American President Barack Obama) and nine Golden Globes Awards.” [caption id=“attachment_13586702” align=“alignnone” width=“197”] Book: ‘My Name Is Barbra,’ by Barbra Streisand[/caption] Mother of All Memoirs Thus hit the realisation, Eighty-One-Year-old Barbra Streisand is an icon, a living legend of “Hollywood” and “Broadway” an institution and not an individual, who always was not that. My newfound knowledge was enough to compulsively preorder on Amazon My Name Is Barbra despite its hefty price tag (Rs 3500), heavy weight (more than three pounds) and long waiting period (forty-five-days). The moment the book hit my hands, despite being an ultra-fast reader, it took 10 days to finish reading this riveting, honest and candid, unputdownable memoir. I have no compunction in concurring with The New Yorker that My Name Is Barbra is the ‘Mother of All Memoirs’, an iconic piece where Barbra takes a maximalist approach to her own life, studying every trial, triumph, and snack food of a six-decade career. She is Barbra but She Always was Not That To cut a long story short, Born Barbara Joan Streisand on April 24, 1942, Barbra Streisand, originally Barabara, when she was 17 years old and living away from home for the first time, loathing to make her bed daily in the morning after she got up, she gave a goal: “I have to become famous,” she told, “just so I can get someone else to make my bed.” But she admits candidly, “It was more exciting to dream about being famous than the reality. I’m a very private person. I don’t enjoy stardom." There is a reason why she does not enjoy stardom. The hurt heaped on her in early days simply refused to go away. She says early in her memoir: “Sometimes it felt that my nose got more press than I did. In the cover story in the Time magazine, the writer said, ‘This nose is a shrine (Sounds good!). Then he went on, ‘The face it divides is long and sad, and the look in repose is the essence of hound’ (Not so good). So, which is it? I am a Babylonian queen or a basset hound? Probably both (depending upon the angle).” A Newsweek reviewer calls Streisand’s portrayal of Brice in her first movie “Funny Girl” (for which she got the Oscar for the best Actress) the most accomplished, original and enjoyable musical comedy performance ever put on film. But when the same Barbra visited United Kingdom in 1966, the Newsweek on March 23, 1966, wrote: “Barbra Streisand represents a triumph of aura over appearance. Her nose is too long, her bosom too small, her hips too wide. Yet when she steps in front of a microphone, she transcends generations and cultures, appealing equally to the expense-account set and to kinetic teenagers whose horizons were previously limited to the Beatles. As soon as she became a superstar two years ago, her exotic, thrift-shop clothes became the thing to wear. Within months the full- throated Streisand singing style, ‘Streisand hair,’ ‘Streisand hands,’ and generally the ‘Streisand look’ were emulated. It became ‘in’ to look Jewish.” Too much body shaming, too much praise, and too much accolade in one paragraph. Barbra accepts whenever she felt fulfilled in her personal life, she had no desire to act. Besides, she acknowledges she needed to feel passionate about a film, but sometimes even when she did feel passionate, she could be lazy. And both qualities – the passion and the laziness – are equally present in her, she adds. What a Life From growing up in Brooklyn in an impoverished Jewish home to her first star making an appearance in the nightclubs of New York and Detroit, to Broadway Musicals to her breakout performance Funny Girls, music and to the stardom and cult following with the long string of successes in every medium in the decades that followed, Barbra is not yet done. Life has just begun for this 81-year-old legend. Not yet Over Barbra Streisand has not yet hung up her boots, And with all the achievements and accolades behind her, though neither the world of music nor the movies have seen the last of Barbra Streisand, she feels as if she could not fulfil her potential. And now she says it’s too late – she says although Sarah Bernhardt dared to play Juliet when she was seventy-four! And Sarah had just taken on the title role in a motion picture, the new medium, when she died at the age of seventy-nine, still attracting lovers till the end). Signing Off Before I sign off on Barbra Streisand, I am reminded of two famous sayings on her. First is of Omar Sharif, he said “Barbra Streisand is somebody that I shall never forget in my life . . . I don’t think I will ever love anyone more than Barbra Streisand, in the film business.” And the second is former US President Bill Clinton, who said famously, “I am grateful that she made those three magnificent movies that she produced, directed, and starred in. I’m grateful that she was a magnificent Funny Girl. I am grateful that I still get choked up when I watch The Way We Were.” The author is a multi-disciplinary thought leader with Action Bias and an India based impact consultant. He is an avid reader and independent book reviewer Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.