A Life by Elia Kazan

This autobiography recounts Kazan's life, in detail until the end of his film career, and then in sketches (mostly focusing on the death of his second wife and friends) until the late nineteen eighties. The tone of the book suggests that Kazan isn't holding anything back (not always true, as he himself admits), although he tends to speak forthrightly about most subjects (it seems the people he wants to impress, or at least not to scandalize, are his children, despite their relatively small parts in the book itself). There's a bit of back and forth--the story doesn't always go strictly chronologically, especially where Kazan's Congressional testimony in 1952 is concerned. It does give Kazan's take on that testimony in fairly straightforward rehearsal of his side of those events. Overall, the book is enjoyable--definitely an entertaining read. It explains a lot about Kazan's behavior, his choices, and his methods of directing, even if its subject is not always sympathetic (the womanizing without apology, in particular, struck me as egregious).