Ghost Light: A Memoir

by Frank Rich

Book Overview

The New York Times drama critic describes growing up in Washington, D.C., during the 1950s and 1960s and explains how he found refuge from the turmoil of childhood and his own parents' divorce in the... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0375758240
• Release Date: October 2001
• Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
• Length: 352 Pages
• Weight: 0.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 7.9" x 0.8" x 5.2"

Customer Reviews

Life begins in the theatre

This is a beautifully written, sensitive memoir of a painful childhood and coming of age. Anyone who has ever listened to the original cast album of a Broadway show and been transported in their mind to a theatre will find a kindred spirit in Frank Rich. Rich grew up in a home which had an abundance of material goods but also contained an abundance of pain. His love of the theatre and some lovely people he met along the way helped him to endure until he went away to college and his adult life. Mr. Rich was for many years the very astute theatre critic for the New York Times. He now writes incisive OpEd pieces for the Times. This memoir is very courageous in light of the private pain that it reveals which helped to mold this public man.

A thoroughly engrossing memoir

I heard this book on audio tape in my car and found myself longing to go to work or do an errand so that I could get to the next chapter of Frank Rich's fabulous memoir.He remembered so many details of his life and presented them in such a candid way, that he endeared himelf to me. We listen to his feelings intenetly because he doesn't hide a thing. His joys and fears are all there and we experience them with him. I felt like I really got to watch him grow up, and I could feel his passion for the theatre grow along the way. I greatly identified with Mr. Rich because I also came from a divorced family with a very difficult stepfather. My only regret with this book is that it ended! I can't wait for the sequel.

Magic Nights, Magic Lights

GHOST LIGHT was so moving that my mother, who read my copy after me, became almost hysterical about the treatment that Frank Rich, his sister and step-siblings, received at the hands of their parents and step-parents. Since all of this happened a long time ago, in the dark ages before child abuse was frowned upon, it is a credit to author Rich's writing skills that he made his report so real that it could elicit such a reaction forty years after the events described. Of course, all of us who are New Yorkers, all of us who have spent the last twenty or so years reading Mr. Rich in the NEW YORK TIMES, hardly can be surprised by his exquisite prose.Still, this book was fascinating in revealing the evolution of genius, a child who took refuge from the trauma of a broken home (both physically and emotionally) in an obsession with the legitimate theatre. The childish obsession ended with Rich's becoming the chief drama critic of the TIMES for the better part of two decades. Tolstoy is credited with saying that happy families are all alike, but each unhappy family is different. GHOST LIGHT proves that theory; it is a story unlike any other. Lovers of both theatre and fine writing will be well-served by this memoir.

A theater memoir for theater lovers

This marvelous childhood memoir paints a loving and lush picture of the role that theater played in the childhood and adolescence of America's pre-eminent theater critic. The story is deeply personal and, simultaneously accessible. A wonderful book for those who love the theater.

Ghost Light Shimmers!

Fifty years ago, legendary playwright and director Moss Hart published an authobiography entitled Act One that instantly became a classic and held its place among the greatest theatrical memoirs ever written. This month, former New York Times Chief Drama Critic Frank Rich published his own story, full of passion, literacy, and wonder, that at once pays homage to Act One and transcends it. Rich has crafted the definitive stagestruck story, and there is no more significant book on growing up in the theatre. Rich's boyhood becomes a spellbinding play, a story that is joyous, crushing, funny, moving, and indelible. Anyone who cares for the American theatre, who has ever been shaken by the pulse of an orchestra begining an overture, who can find in himself even a glimmer of the passion bursting from Rich on every page, must read this book.