Comments on: Ambition 10, Fame 3 — Nancy Balbirer’s ‘Take Your Shirt Off and Cry,’ a Memoir of Near-Misses as an Actor in Hollywood and New York http://oneminutebookreviews.wordpress.com/2009/05/20/ambition-10-fame-3-nancy-balbirer%e2%80%99s-take-your-shirt-off-and-cry-a-memoir-of-near-misses-as-an-actor-in-hollywood-and-new-york/ Janice Harayda Reviews Fiction, Nonfiction and Poetry for Adults and Children Mon, 20 May 2013 13:35:15 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ By: 1minutebookreviewswordpresscom http://oneminutebookreviews.wordpress.com/2009/05/20/ambition-10-fame-3-nancy-balbirer%e2%80%99s-take-your-shirt-off-and-cry-a-memoir-of-near-misses-as-an-actor-in-hollywood-and-new-york/#comment-7444 Thu, 21 May 2009 16:52:49 +0000 http://oneminutebookreviews.wordpress.com/?p=11279#comment-7444 This book has a slight roman-a-clef aspect in that Nancy Balbirer was once close to an unnamed female superstar who, she says, later betrayed her by getting her fired from a TV show. The incident has inspired talk in print and on big gossip sites (whose writers seem to think they’ve figured out who the star is).

That episode is a relatively small part of the book and, from my perspective, one of the least interesting. (Is it news that a superstar might try to get a cast member fired?) I didn’t deal with the incident partly because Balbirer’s assertions are unverifiable and not fully convincing: You wonder if she’s trying to save face after losing a part. But the incident may interest those “everyday readers” more than it does me and you …
Jan

]]> By: knightofswords http://oneminutebookreviews.wordpress.com/2009/05/20/ambition-10-fame-3-nancy-balbirer%e2%80%99s-take-your-shirt-off-and-cry-a-memoir-of-near-misses-as-an-actor-in-hollywood-and-new-york/#comment-7442 Thu, 21 May 2009 13:33:08 +0000 http://oneminutebookreviews.wordpress.com/?p=11279#comment-7442 Interesting book. I wonder how it resonates with “everyday readers.” That is, what does it mean and/or what do I take away from it other than X hours of interesting reading? The reporters I know have an odd ability to construct the rather lengthy quotes from sources from (what appear to me) as a few scribbles in a spiral notebook. I doubt anyone else can do that, especially out of casual conversations when nobody was taking notes. The as-remembered dialogue in this book must be somewhat fictional. And, presuming that it is, why not make it sound more realistic? Ah well…

Malcolm

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