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MS MAGAZINE
Tag: Renegade Author
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LA REVIEW OF BOOKS
Interview: I Spy Louise Fitzhugh: A Conversation with Leslie Brody
KELLY BLEWETT: Why did you want to write about Louise Fitzhugh?
LESLIE BRODY: I am exactly the same age as Harriet the Spy — that is to say, in 1963, when Harriet was 11 years old, so was I. I was born in the Bronx, and although Harriet lived in an elite quarter of Manhattan, we still shared lots of the same cultural references around New York City in the ’50s and ’60s. When the book was published in 1964, I really wasn’t reading kids’ books anymore and missed the wave. I wouldn’t even hear about Harriet and Louise until I was working as a playwright in Minneapolis 20 years later, when I was hired to write an adaptation of Harriet the Spy for the Minneapolis Children’s Theatre company. I remember reading it through several times, stunned at how lucky I was — after all this time, and the many ways our rendezvous might have gone awry — to find her.
Read the full interview HERE.
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BUSTLE
Book Roundup: The Most Anticipated Books of Winter
Much of Louise Fitzhugh’s life remains a mystery, but one author is determined to shed some light on the beloved author of Harriet the Spy. In Sometimes You Have to Lie, Leslie Brody uncovers the details of Fitzhugh’s Tennessee childhood, her relationships with modernist and postmodern literary greats in New York City, and how she navigated life in the mid-century United States as a lesbian.
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Christian Science Monitor
Book Roundup: 10 Best Books of December 2020
Just in time for the holidays, it’s the Monitor’s selections for the top books of December 2020 all wrapped up and tied with a bow.
Sometimes You Have to Lie by Leslie Brody: In this lively, compassionate biography of Louise Fitzhugh, author of the children’s instant-classic “Harriet the Spy” series from the 1960s, Leslie Brody sheds light on the remarkable woman behind the books.
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NEW REPUBLIC
Book review: Why Harriet the Spy had to lie
“In Sometimes You Have to Lie, Brody explores these hidden corners of the celebrated author’s life, crafting a personal and political biography of Fitzhugh that situates her popular children’s novel in the context of the homophobia and conformity of the postwar era. The result is a study that reveals the quiet subversiveness of Harriet the Spy and adds sharp political potency to the book’s seemingly innocent play with questions of secrecy and surveillance.” Read more…
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WASHINGTON POST
Book Review: Inside the mind, life and friendships that created Harriet the Spy
“In her new biography of Fitzhugh, “Sometimes You Have to Lie,” Leslie Brody identifies parallels between the author’s life and art, delightful details for fans of Fitzhugh’s creations. Ole Golly, the beloved nanny whose departure from the Welsches’ Manhattan home is the organizing trauma of “Harriet the Spy,” is probably an amalgamation of the nannies Fitzhugh knew growing up in a Memphis mansion during the Great Depression, pampered in isolation. The therapist who helps Harriet through that loss may draw from Bertram Slaff, a psychiatrist whom Fitzhugh saw during her years living in New York City, where she pursued love and ambition as a gay artist enmeshed in a network of “successful, creative, pleasure loving, ambitious, knowledgeable lesbians,” as one friend described her circle. And Harrison Withers, the bird cage designer with a skylight big enough for Harriet to spy through, cares for 26 cats whose names include not just Fitzhugh’s preferred literary luminaries (Thomas Wolfe, Dostoevsky, Faulkner) but also some of her close friends (Alex, Sandra, Marijane).” Read more…
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NEW YORK TIMES
“in an expansive and revealing new biography, “Sometimes You Have to Lie,” Leslie Brody assembles the clues to the personal history that shaped Fitzhugh’s conscience and creative convictions. Brody, a biographer and playwright who adapted “Harriet the Spy” for the stage in 1988, has pored through correspondence, memoirs and court documents, and conducted dozens of interviews to reveal the trail that Fitzhugh left unmarked.” Read more…
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PARIS REVIEW
Article: The Politics of Louise Fitzhugh
In the autumn of 1974, one month shy of the publication of her new novel, Nobody’s Family Is Going to Change, Louise Fitzhugh pulled the emergency brake. Authors rarely invoke such a costly and disruptive eleventh-hour freeze, but Fitzhugh persuaded her publishers at Farrar, Straus and Giroux that her book about a Black family in New York City was incomplete. Read more…
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VOX
Book Roundup: The 15 best books our book critic read this year, including SOMETIMES YOU HAVE TO LIE.
“In Sometimes You Have to Lie, Leslie Brody paints a portrait of Fitzhugh that’s almost as indelible as Harriet herself. Fitzhugh apparently lived a life of whirlwind glamour, beginning from her birth as the daughter of a Southern aristocrat and a jazz dancer; continuing through her days traveling Europe to learn how to paint Italian frescoes and smoke in Parisian gay bars; and into her time as an out lesbian artist living in New York’s West Village, learning how to write from a pulp novelist who was also Patricia Highsmith’s lover. In Brody’s hands, even Fitzhugh’s clothes (Brooks Brothers menswear, combat boots, and a cape) are over-the-top marvelous. Sometimes You Have to Lie is a deeply endearing introduction to the woman who gave the American canon one of its icons.” Read more…
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WASHINGTON BLADE
Book Review: Harriet the Spy creator was fabulously queer
“I love reading biographies – especially, of queer artists and writers. But some bios put you to sleep.
Happily, “Sometimes You Have to Lie” by Leslie Brody, the new, intriguing biography of queer artist and writer Louise Fitzhugh, author and illustrator of the beloved children’s book “Harriet the Spy,” won’t give you any shut-eye.” Read more…