Martin Rubin on Anne Roiphe's 'Art and Madness'

THE WASHINGTON TIMES. MONDAY APRIL 4 2011

Anne Roiphe, “Art and Madness: A Memoir of Lust Without Reason.” New York: Doubleday. 220pp. $24.95.

By Martin Rubin.

Once upon a time, there was a young girl who lived in a series of privileged cocoons: the Upper East Side of Manhattan, private school, elite women’s colleges. Yet she was never at home there, partly because she was acutely aware of the fragility of fortune which had placed her so fortuitously, when across an ocean other Jewish girls of her age met a fate almost too horrible to comprehend. But mostly it was because she saw the rottenness of her golden apple from the inside, the mother who smoked and drank too much, the successful father she heard bribing a judge and then rationalizing it to her. And Roy Cohn was her real-life cousin! So no wonder this young girl, who would eventually metamorphose into the writer we know as Anne Roiphe, was disillusioned. . . .

For Martin’s full review, visit www.washingtontimes.com.