Keith Richards Gets His Moment
Behind every great frontman is an even greater guitarist, and now the Rolling Stones’ chameleon-like band member is stepping into the spotlight and owning this month. A new exhibit featuring photos of Keith Richards from 1963 to 1972 opens this Saturday at the San Francisco Art Exchange. The portraits of those early glory days show the wild-haired and introspective rock star shirtless, swilling Jack and Coke, reluctant even to crack a smile. There he is smoking at Joshua Tree, milling around onstage, and palling around with his kid and dog named Ratbag. (View a fantastic selection of the photos here.) The exhibit, Before They Make Me Run, coincides with his long-awaited autobiography, Life, in stores this Tuesday. With a “disarming honesty” about fights with Mick Jagger, his relationships and marriage, and addictions that plagued his wild ride to the top of the charts, Richards is finally giving his fans one of those ever-elusive backstage passes to his life.
Chekhov Meets Alec Baldwin
Ben Greenman likes to do things differently. In his new book, Celebrity Chekhov, the New Yorker editor and author conjures up an unlikely marriage between modern stars (Paris Hilton, Kim Kardashian, Larry King, and their ilk) and the short stories of Russian master Anton Chekhov. And somehow, mercifully, it works. On The Daily Beast, Greenman confesses he finds the book an “homage and a travesty” to the author—one created to prove the 19th-century stories known more for their plots work equally well with modern-day characters. Oprah Winfrey, Alec Baldwin, and Conan O’Brien make appearances and warp Chekhov’s deceptively simple and psychologically acute tales as they unapologetically force them into the present. The result? Like sneaking an Us Weekly into your Russian lit class. Confusing, yet thoroughly enjoyable.
What Made Marilyn Tick?
To filmgoers, she was a breathy-voiced, impeccably coiffed blond sex symbol. To her third husband, Arthur Miller, she was “the saddest girl he’d ever seen.” The enigma of Marilyn Monroe has persisted for decades, but now a collection of her most intimate writing and thoughts is shedding some light on the actress. Fragments is pieced together from hundreds of diary entries, letters, and writing on scraps of paper that contain a “capacity for introspection undoubtedly fed by years of psychoanalysis,” writes Daphne Merkin. A 17-year-old Marilyn describes her first husband as “one of the few young men I had no sexual repulsion for” and themes of loneliness, sadness, and disappointment run throughout. “One comes away from this book with a sense of profound loss,” writes Merkin, “as well as great admiration for the many ways in which Monroe succeeded in warding off her demons.”