MISS MAY DOES NOT EXIST: The Life and Work of Elaine May, Hollywood’s Hidden Genius, an unjustly underknown and underappreciated woman

MISS MAY DOES NOT EXIST: The Life and Work of Elaine May, Hollywood’s Hidden Genius
CARRIE COUROGEN
St. Martin' s Press
$30.00 hardcover, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Miss May Does Not Exist, by Carrie Courogen, is the riveting biography of comedian, director, actor and writer Elaine May, one of America’s greatest comic geniuses. May began her career as one-half of the legendary comedy team known as Nichols and May, the duo that revolutionized the comedy sketch.

After performing their Broadway smash An Evening with Mike Nichols and Elaine May, Elaine set out on her own. She toiled unsuccessfully on Broadway for a while, but then headed to Hollywood where she became the director of A New Leaf, The Heartbreak Kid, Mikey and Nicky, and the legendary Ishtar. She was hired as a script doctor on countless films like Heaven Can Wait, Reds, Tootsie, and The Birdcage. In 2019, she returned to Broadway where she won the Tony Award for Best Leading Actress in The Waverly Gallery. Besides her considerable talent, May is well known for her reclusiveness. On one of the albums she made with Mike Nichols, her bio is “Miss May does not exist.” Until now.

Carrie Courogen has uncovered the Elaine May who does exist. Conducting countless interviews, she has filled in the blanks May has forcibly kept blank for years, creating a fascinating portrait of the way women were mistreated and held back in Hollywood. Miss May Does Not Exist is a remarkable love story about a prickly genius who was never easy to work with, not always easy to love and frequently often punished for those things, despite revolutionizing the way we think about comedy, acting, and what a film or play can be.

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My Review: A biography of a living person, one famously Private and Reclusive, faces an uphill battle when that person declines to participate in the project. The issues become apparent early. I felt put off by one tic the author has: Referring to her subject as "Elaine" seemingly in an attempt to give a spurious sense of her own intimacy with the steadfastly unavailable Miss May.

This is really a minor stylistic issue in most cases of biography. When Miss May simply won't show up...apparently a habit of hers, as the author rather disconcertingly learns via stalking the woman...it looms large because there is nothing of a personal connection in the biographer's tale. This is a very well-researched and capably written dissection of a classic parasocial relationship. Miss May is a public figure as an actress of stage and screen fame. The ways in which the author collects information about her subject are available to other members of the public. Miss May therefore maintains control of the master narrative available to the author, as to the rest of the world. The amount of research required to write this book is, as it must be to make any kind of a story, deep. The border between that depth and stalking is blurry in all cases. I was, however, pushed into "really? Ew!" territory when the author used her own artist connections to find out when and where her subject would be attending public events and getting herself invited to them.

My own personal line was crossed when I read that. I saw the project in a very different light afterwards.

How the heck do you tell The Truth about someone who so values her privacy that she will invent stuff for public dissemination, decline to interact with people in any unmediated fashion, and simply not show up at invitation-only public events? This is someone who doesn't want people rummaging in her drawers. I expect that, like those Victorian folks who directed that their records be burned after their deaths, we will discover that this level of erasure is Miss May's wish as well. So the public record as ably collated and presumptiously contextualized (possibly inaccurately and unfairly, I doubt we will ever be allowed to know) by the author might very well be the only formal record of the long and excellent career of an unfairly overlooked and undervalued creative force.

That will, I expect, have to do. The work she did will speak for itself in the long run; absent a change of heart or a sudden betrayal of Miss May, here is a record of the truth she wanted the audience to know. Fellow pedants please note the citation style is inconsistent and incompletely explanatory.

COMPLETELY KAFKA: A Comic Biography, centenary of his death honored in fun-to-read format

COMPLETELY KAFKA: A Comic Biography
NICOLAS MAHLER (tr. Alexander Booth)
Pushkin Press
$19.95 trade paper, available now

Rating: 5* of five

The Publisher Says: A delightfully witty and original graphic biography of Kafka, published to coincide with the centenary of the author’s death

This bold and sharply funny new look at Kafka is told through Nicolas Mahler's distinctive graphic novel style and minimalist illustrations. Full of fascinating details and witty, absurdist illustrations, it’s a delightful tribute to one of the world’s great writers.

Franz Kafka not only wrote prose, he was also passionate about drawing: at one time, he even said it satisfied him more than anything else. In this graphic biography, acclaimed artist Nicolas Mahler echoes Kafka’s own minimalist drawing style in a unique and surprising approach to the great writer’s life and work.

Drawing extensively on Kafka’s fiction, letters, and diaries, Completely Kafka illustrates the major and minor details that formed his life, from struggles with self-doubt and writer’s block to a failed plan for a series of cheap travel guides.

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My Review: When people want to say "this stinks and I don't know what the hell is going on" in one word, they reach for "Kafkaesque" to do the job. This is, as all eponymizations must of necessity be, a gross oversimplification and misrepresentation of an extremely complex and, in my never-remotely humble opinion, beautiful body of work. Nicolas Mahler's selections from Kafka's fiction and his letters are very cannily chosen to be effectively illustrated in his minimalist style:

The lines, the volumes they define, the handmade feel of the brushstrokes, all echo the effect of Kafka's prose in my reader's ear. They are bold, they delineate spaces and fill them with interesting images; they are clear, unambiguous in themselves and still make the gestalt ambiguous; they do not use vivid colors but rely on contrasts, shapes, edges to convey their sense.

Offered as a corrective to the sloppily used eponym and an expansion of real understanding of Kafka and his intentions in a short, unpretentious, enioyable package on the centenary of his death.

Very highly recommended for those whose idea of Kafka pretty much ends at using "Kafkaesque" when at the DMV or the county tax office.