Callas Kissed Me...lenny Too!: A Memoir

Description

From fantastical beginnings - his mother went into labour while gambling at a French casino - to escaping Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy and ultimately conquering New York City, John Gruen's life has been anything but ordinary. As a boy unable to speak a single word of English, Gruen was determined to make it in America. Anxious to learn about his adopted country, Gruen ventured to the midwest to attend Iowa University, emerging five years later as a fully Americanised graduate student on his way to a PhD. Here is a subtly revealing self-portrait of a truly remarkable man.

John Gruen has written for The New York Herald Tribune and The New York Times. He was the chief art critic for New York magazine, an arts columnist for Vogue, contributing editor to ArtNews, writer for Architectural Digest, and senior editor at Dance Magazine. He has previously written 15 books, including biographies on conductor/composer Leonard Bernstein, composer Gian Carlo Menotti, dancer Erik Bruhn, and artist Keith Haring. He is also a published photographer who has exhibited widely and authored two photography books, Facing the Artist (Prestel, 1999) and The Sixties: Young in the Hamptons (Charta, 2006). Three hundred of his artist portraits are in the permanent collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art. Gruen and wife Jane Wilson live in New York City and Water Mill, NY. Their daughter, Julia Gruen, is the Executive Director of the Keith Haring Foundation.