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A review by georgia9
Madeline Kahn: Being the Music, a Life by William V. Madison
emotional
funny
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
5.0
The purpose of celebrity biographies is often to provide a fresh or deeper understanding of the subject, but this idea feels particularly pertinent with Madeline Kahn: understanding. The prevailing theme throughout the book is how muddled Kahn's perception of herself was, how she did not understand why, or even if, her performances were funny. The book begins with her father leaving, and Kahn asking whether it's because she's 'ugly'. Throughout her life, it seems this distressing form of magical thinking never fully left her. The joy of this book comes with feeling Kahn is finally being understood, not simply as a funny performer, but as someone more sensitive, determined and thoughtful.
This is to say nothing of William V. Madison's prose, which I feel is often disregarded in nonfiction. Here it is unintrusive but always incisive, such as his assertion that Kahn's mother 'wrapped herself in a cloak of personal mythology'. My most heavily annotated pages are when Kahn met the director Eric Mendelsohn. He seemed to understand something about her that, despite Madison's meticulous research and interviews of Kahn's peers, no one else seemed to notice: 'a misapprehension, or the subtleties of human interaction seemed to almost pain her.' Despite trying always to maintain what Madison beautifully describes as a 'serene detachment', Mendelsohn felt as if she had 'her nervous system mistakenly put on the outside of her body.'
Before reading this, I only knew Kahn as Mrs White and thought I would only really be interested in the Clue chapter; now I know her for Trixie, Eunice, Lili, Victoria, and Alice. I've also discovered a trove of recorded theatre performances on YouTube, like her '68 performance of Glitter and Be Gay. Mostly though, I know her as Madeline. I read this biography while editing a novel about a young actress going through an increasingly fraught and destabilising rehearsal for a play, and was struck by some of the similarities between her and Kahn, even asking in one chapter, as Madeline often asked to her peers, 'why are you all laughing?' This biography provided me a piece of, sort of, retroactive inspiration, for which I'm extremely grateful.
I've loved Madeline ever since I saw Clue at a young enough age that I believed the actors playing the murder victims actually died in the film, and I love her even more now.
This is to say nothing of William V. Madison's prose, which I feel is often disregarded in nonfiction. Here it is unintrusive but always incisive, such as his assertion that Kahn's mother 'wrapped herself in a cloak of personal mythology'. My most heavily annotated pages are when Kahn met the director Eric Mendelsohn. He seemed to understand something about her that, despite Madison's meticulous research and interviews of Kahn's peers, no one else seemed to notice: 'a misapprehension, or the subtleties of human interaction seemed to almost pain her.' Despite trying always to maintain what Madison beautifully describes as a 'serene detachment', Mendelsohn felt as if she had 'her nervous system mistakenly put on the outside of her body.'
Before reading this, I only knew Kahn as Mrs White and thought I would only really be interested in the Clue chapter; now I know her for Trixie, Eunice, Lili, Victoria, and Alice. I've also discovered a trove of recorded theatre performances on YouTube, like her '68 performance of Glitter and Be Gay. Mostly though, I know her as Madeline. I read this biography while editing a novel about a young actress going through an increasingly fraught and destabilising rehearsal for a play, and was struck by some of the similarities between her and Kahn, even asking in one chapter, as Madeline often asked to her peers, 'why are you all laughing?' This biography provided me a piece of, sort of, retroactive inspiration, for which I'm extremely grateful.
I've loved Madeline ever since I saw Clue at a young enough age that I believed the actors playing the murder victims actually died in the film, and I love her even more now.