Also this issue:

Anniversary Party
The Museum of American Glass at Wheaton Village celebrates 20 years of artistic wonders.
-Robin Rice

artquicks
More stuff going on this week...

Cities Without Citizens
-Lori Hill

An Artist's Workshop staged reading
-Juliet Fletcher

10-Minute Play Festival
-Andrew Parks

Blue Man Group

Looking Over The President's Shoulder
-David Anthony Fox

Songs For A New World
-David Anthony Fox

July 24-30, 2003

book quicks

The Mercury 13: The Untold Story of Thirteen American Women and the Dream of Space Flight

By Martha Ackmann Random House, 256 pp., $24.95

The true story is simple: In 1961, NASA’s golden age, a group of women were chosen and trained in the name of God and the goal of beating the Russkies to space travel. That this same time in history was occupied by Gus Grissom and Scott Carpenter makes Ackmann’s work a Right Stuff in flats, a sturdy sociological record of the time and America’s views about soaring into the wild blue yonder. Ackmann’s nearly forgotten female pilots were meant to go where no woman had before. But before you delve deeply into Ackmann’s chatty prose and tales of women like Janey Hart and Jerrie Cobb (the latter the Chuck Yeager of female astronauts), you’re struck by a level of disappointment in the face of what could’ve been -- that any government would blow its opportunity with destiny due to its fear of femininity. Beyond the obvious discrimination of the pipe-smoking blowhards (the bureaucrats here seem so much more sniveling than usual), NASA purposely sunk these women into oblivion while raising the lesser lights of its male astronauts into an iconography worthy of sainthood. John Glenn got his G.I. Joe in a silver space capsule. What did Irene Leverton, "supersonic schoolmarm" Jean Hixon or spunky Wally Funk get other than quaint nicknames and forgotten issues of Photoplay? Each woman describes her scenario to Ackmann with personal sadness and detail, but also with a collective yearning for all that could still be achieved. But rather than soak in their sorrow, Ackmann presents a group who celebrates achievement (its start and finish see the 13 marveling at Sally Ride and Eileen Collins) rather than defeat; she’s along for the giddy ride, which makes Mercury an emotional biography without tears. While Ackmann’s prose is hardly the wry hyper-scribing of Tom Wolfe’s (in its time, mind you), hers is a fast, in-depth character study and historical artifact worthy of a white suit any day. — A.D. Amorosi

A.L.T.: A Memoir

By André Leon Talley Villard, 256 pp., $24.95

Even armchair fashionistas should be able to recognize André Leon Talley in an instant. The 6-foot-7 African American has been a fashion fixture since the 1970s, when he became Diana Vreeland’s assistant. Now he’s the editor-at-large of Vogue magazine and still an important figure among the orchestrated chaos of runway shows.

Talley shows his large heart often in his memoir. It’s never just about him, but about the people who have helped and supported him along the way. He constantly recalls memories of his grandmother, to whom the book is dedicated. Talley even takes a moment while at Karl Lagerfeld’s house in Biarritz, after filing his Paris fashion report, to wonder what his father would have thought of all this.

His friends and icons aren’t just the expected models or high-society types, but yoga teachers and other non-celebrities (though the celebs who do pop up are too many to mention). Amid the name-dropping is the sense that he treasures his upbringing (he still has a home in Durham, N.C.) and the good values that were instilled in him very early on. One gets that he works hard and is grateful for all the opportunities that have come his way, and that he loves every minute of his wonderful life.

This memoir is not linear at all. In the same way fashion often refers to or draws from other periods or times, with a few personal additions by the designer, Talley’s book is also a pastiche of memories and present-day events. Talley’s story hops from growing up on a farm in the South, to Vreeland’s hospital-clean, barely used kitchen, to a dinner he shared with designer Halston (baked potato with sour cream and caviar, chilled vodka and a huge pile of cocaine). He maintains this narrative seamlessly, despite the shock of following farm life to deviled eggs to excessive drug consumption, all in the course of a few pages. A.L.T. moves as quickly as fashion does, and is a gripping history of an amazing man. — Alex Richmond