• Complain

Barbara Walters - Audition: a memoir

Here you can read online Barbara Walters - Audition: a memoir full text of the book (entire story) in english for free. Download pdf and epub, get meaning, cover and reviews about this ebook. year: 2008, publisher: A.A. Knopf, genre: Non-fiction. Description of the work, (preface) as well as reviews are available. Best literature library LitArk.com created for fans of good reading and offers a wide selection of genres:

Romance novel Science fiction Adventure Detective Science History Home and family Prose Art Politics Computer Non-fiction Religion Business Children Humor

Choose a favorite category and find really read worthwhile books. Enjoy immersion in the world of imagination, feel the emotions of the characters or learn something new for yourself, make an fascinating discovery.

No cover
  • Book:
    Audition: a memoir
  • Author:
  • Publisher:
    A.A. Knopf
  • Genre:
  • Year:
    2008
  • Rating:
    4 / 5
  • Favourites:
    Add to favourites
  • Your mark:
    • 80
    • 1
    • 2
    • 3
    • 4
    • 5

Audition: a memoir: summary, description and annotation

We offer to read an annotation, description, summary or preface (depends on what the author of the book "Audition: a memoir" wrote himself). If you haven't found the necessary information about the book — write in the comments, we will try to find it.

Young people starting out in television sometimes say to me: I want to be you. My stock reply is always: Then you have to take the whole package.And now, at last, the most important woman in the history of television journalism gives us that whole package, in her inspiring and riveting memoir. After more than forty years of interviewing heads of state, world leaders, movie stars, criminals, murderers, inspirational figures, and celebrities of all kinds, Barbara Walters has turned her gift for examination onto herself to reveal the forces that shaped her extraordinary life.Barbara Walterss perception of the world was formed at a very early age. Her father, Lou Walters, was the owner and creative mind behind the legendary Latin Quarter nightclub, and it was his risk-taking lifestyle that gave Barbara her first taste of glamour. It also made her aware of the ups and downs, the insecurities, and even the tragedies that can occur when someone is willing to take great risks, for Lou Walters didnt just make several fortuneshe also lost them. Barbara learned early about the damage that such an existence can do to relationshipsbetween husband and wife as well as between parent and child. Through her roller-coaster ride of a childhood, Barbara had a close companion, her mentally challenged sister, Jackie. True, Jackie taught her younger sister much about patience and compassion, but Barbara also writes honestly about the resentment she often felt having a sister who was so different and the guilt that still haunts her.All of thisthe financial responsibility for her family, the fear, the loveplayed a large part in the choices she made as she grew up: the friendships she developed, the relationships she had, the marriages she tried to make work. Ultimately, thanks to her drive, combined with a decent amount of luck, she began a career in television. And what a career it has been! Against great odds, Barbara has made it to the top of a male-dominated industry. She was the first woman cohost of the Today show, the first female network news coanchor, the host and producer of countless top-rated Specials, the star of 20/20, and the creator and cohost of The View. She has not just interviewed the worlds most fascinating figures, she has become a part of their world. These are just a few of the names that play a key role in Barbaras life, career, and book: Yasir Arafat, Warren Beatty, Menachem Begin, George H. W. Bush, George W. Bush, Jimmy Carter, Fidel Castro, Hugo Ch?vez, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Roy Cohn, the Dalai Lama, Princess Diana, Katharine Hepburn, King Hussein, Angelina Jolie, Henry Kissinger, Monica Lewinsky, Richard Nixon, Rosie ODonnell, Christopher Reeve, Anwar Sadat, John Wayne . . . the list goes on and on.Barbara Walters has spent a lifetime auditioning: for her bosses at the TV networks, for millions of viewers, for the most famous people in the world, and even for her own daughter, with whom she has had a difficult but ultimately quite wonderful and moving relationship. This book, in some ways, is her final audition, as she fully opens up both her private and public lives. In doing so, she has given us a story that is heartbreaking and honest, surprising and fun, sometimes startling, and always fascinating.

Barbara Walters: author's other books


Who wrote Audition: a memoir? Find out the surname, the name of the author of the book and a list of all author's works by series.

Audition: a memoir — read online for free the complete book (whole text) full work

Below is the text of the book, divided by pages. System saving the place of the last page read, allows you to conveniently read the book "Audition: a memoir" online for free, without having to search again every time where you left off. Put a bookmark, and you can go to the page where you finished reading at any time.

Light

Font size:

Reset

Interval:

Bookmark:

Make

Contents To the memory of my sister Jacqueline Walters and to my amazing - photo 1

Contents To the memory of my sister Jacqueline Walters and to my amazing - photo 2

Contents

To the memory of my sister, Jacqueline Walters,
and to my amazing daughter, Jacqueline Walters Danforth,
both of whom changed my life

Prologue

SISTER.

I thought for a while that is what the title of this memoir should be because it was my older and only sister, Jacqueline, who was unwittingly the strongest influence in my life. Jackie was three years older than I, but all our lives she appeared younger. My sister was mentally retarded, as the condition was called then, though only mildly so. Just enough to prevent her from attending regular school, from having friends, from getting a job, from marrying. Just enough to stop her from having a real life.

Her condition also altered my life. I think I knew from a very early age that at some point Jackie would become my responsibility. That awareness was one of the main reasons I was driven to work so hard. But my feelings went beyond financial responsibility.

For so many years I was embarrassed by her, ashamed of her, guilty that I had so much and she had so little. Very little was understood about retardation almost eighty years ago when Jackie was born. There were few schools that dealt with what we now call the intellectually impaired, few workshops where they could go and learn a trade, few employers who could figure out how to use their talents and their loyalty.

Today Jackie could probably get a job, something simple but productive. She might even have met and married a nice man. But back then Jackies life was essentially one of isolation, except for the relationships she had with me and my mother and father.

My parents protected her. They never discussed her outside the family or explained her condition to anyone. People wouldnt understand, they felt, and Jackie would be shunned and humiliated.

Jackies isolation also contributed to my own sense of isolation. As a child I didnt have birthday parties because Jackie didnt. I didnt join the Girl Scouts because Jackie couldnt join. I rarely had friends over to the house because they didnt know what to make of my sister and I would hear the whispersreal or imagined.

When I was older, my mother, heartsick at Jackies loneliness, would often ask me, when I was going out with a girlfriend or on a date with a boy, to take her along. I loved my sister. She was sweet and affectionate and she was, after all, my sister. But there were times I hated her, too. For being different. For making me feel different. For the restraints she put on my life. I didnt like that hatred, but theres no denying that I felt it. Perhaps youll be horrified at my admission. Or perhaps youre guilty of some of the same emotions and will feel relief that you are not alone. I imagine, as I write this, that almost anyone who has a sibling who is chronically ill or mentally or physically impaired will understand what I mean.

I recently came across a book that helped explain a lot about the impact Jackie had on my life. Its called The Normal One: Life with a Difficult or Damaged Sibling, written by Jeanne Safer, a psychotherapist who grew up with a very difficult brother. I recognized myself on almost every page: the prematurely mature child; the looming responsibility for a siblings care and well-being; the compulsion to be an over-achiever; the fear of failure. I wish I had read the book earlier in my life, but Im not sure it would really have made a difference. Jackie would still have been Jackie. And the same set of circumstances would have driven my life.

Much of the need I had to prove myself, to achieve, to provide, to protect, can be traced to my feelings about Jackie. But there must be something more, the something that makes one need to excel. Some may call it ambition. I can live with that. Some may call it insecurity, although that is such a boring, common label, like being called shy, that means little. But as I look back, it feels to me that my life has been one long auditionan attempt to make a difference and to be accepted.

My sister was a very pretty child. Her mental condition had nothing to do with her physical appearance. She was fair haired, fair skinned, with a sweet smile, shorter than I, curvier than I. I had dark hair, a sallow complexion, I was often told, and was skinny. Skinnymalinkydink was what my parents lovingly called me. (Yes, it was meant lovingly.) You wouldnt have known by looking at Jackie that there was anything different about her, until she opened her mouth to talk. Jackie was the worst stutterer I have ever known. She stuttered so badly that sometimes when she was trying to get a word out, her tongue protruded from her mouth. My parents tried almost every technique available to help her as she was growing up, but nothing seemed to make a difference. At one point they even took her to see the man who supposedly helped Britains King George VI get over his speech impediment. He couldnt do anything for my sister. It was frustrating to listen to her. It was hard to be patient and easy to mock her. My first memory of my sister is when I was about three and Jackie six; the boys in the neighborhood were pulling at her skirt and making fun of her because theyd heard her talk. We both ran crying into the house.

Until Jackie died from ovarian cancer in 1985, I worried about her, supported her, made decisions for her that my parents couldnt make, and agonized over the fact that although I couldnt always love her, she always loved me. She taught me compassion and understanding. (In later years these feelings would be important to me in interviewing.) Often frustrated herself, often cranky and prone to tantrums, she never expressed resentment or jealousy of me.

When my daughter was born, I named her JacquelineJackie. I wanted the grown Jackie to feel that she, too, had a child, because I knew by this time she never would. So yes, though I had mixed feelings about my sister, I do believe the love was stronger than the resentment, and the sympathy for her was overwhelming.

I tell you all this because young people starting out in television sometimes say to me: I want to be you. My stock reply is always: Then you have to take the whole package. They laugh politely, not knowing what Im talking about, and I dont elaborate. Ive guarded my sisters privacy for years. And though she was the central force in my life, she was part of the package that Im about to unwrap on these pages.

That package also includes my brilliant and mercurial impresario of a father, my loving but frustrated and conflicted mother, the amazing and celebrated people I met from childhood on, and my professional career in television. Oh, that! But mostly this memoir is a personal story of how and why I got from there to here.

Before I end this prologue, let me tell you a story. Back in the sixties, when I was appearing daily on NBCs Today show, I was living on Seventh Avenue and Fifty-seventh Street. My apartment was across from Carnegie Hall and on the corner of a very busy street. It was also near several large hotels that catered to businessmen. Perhaps because of this, the corner was the gathering place for some of the most attractive ladies of the evening. Each morning at five oclock I would emerge from my building wearing dark glasses, as I hadnt yet had my makeup done, and I was usually carrying a garment bag. It seemed obvious to the ladies that there was some big number I had just left. Now, bear in mind that, even then, I wasnt exactly a spring chicken. But I would emerge and look at the young ladies, some of whom were still teenagers. Good morning, I would say. Good morning, they would answer. And then I would get into this long black limousine with its uniformed driver, and we would glide off into the early morning light. And you know what effect all this had on the ladies?

Next page
Light

Font size:

Reset

Interval:

Bookmark:

Make

Similar books «Audition: a memoir»

Look at similar books to Audition: a memoir. We have selected literature similar in name and meaning in the hope of providing readers with more options to find new, interesting, not yet read works.


Reviews about «Audition: a memoir»

Discussion, reviews of the book Audition: a memoir and just readers' own opinions. Leave your comments, write what you think about the work, its meaning or the main characters. Specify what exactly you liked and what you didn't like, and why you think so.