George Gershwin: His Life and Work

by Howard Pollack. University of California Press, 884 Pages (!!!)

Howard Pollack's enormous biography of American composer George Gershwin and his work might be better termed an encyclopedia: it not only dives into the composer's life, but also lists the history of his numerous songs, compositions and shows, complete with synopses, cast lists and four whole chapters (nearly 100 pages) devoted to the monumental Porgy and Bess. Having read almost every Gershwin biography to date, I can attest that Mr. Pollack's is both the most exhaustive and the least readable. It's a work of great significance and yet I would hardly recommend it to anyone but the most devoted Gershwin fan. Someone with a smattering of musicology would also be a plus, since Mr. Pollack isn't afraid to dive into the technical aspects of Gershwin's music, comparing individual pieces to other works in the Gershwin canon and Gershwin's contemporaries.


A more accurate title for the book would have been "George Gershwin: His Life, His Work and His Times", since part of Mr. Pollack's impressive research includes biographies of ragtime, Tin Pan Alley, W.C.Handy, Joseph Schellinger and pretty much anyone Gershwin ever breathed on. This means that he's unearthed more then a few treasures, including plotlines to some obscure Gershwin musicals, like Tip Toes or Tell Me More; on the other hand, he isn't shy about taking up a page listing the names of all the people who ever recorded Porgy and Bess. Make no mistake, this book was a labor of the most intense sort of love. Mr. Pollack has hunted down everything and anything even remotely Gershwin related, bringing to light intriguing facts like how the Lufttwafte petitioned Hitler to be allowed to listen to Rhapsody in Blue or the fact that Joseph McCarthy labelled Gershwin's music "subversive".

As a biography of the work, Mr, Pollack's tome is unparalleled; but as a biography of the man himself, he falls rather flat. Dividing the book between Gershwin's "life" and "work", Mr. Pollack spends only 200 pages on Gershwin himself and another 500 on Gershwin's musical output. Many biographers have a vague "thesis" about their subject (like Goff's Robert Todd Lincoln: A Man in his Own Right), but Mr. Pollack seems happy to summarize other people's opinions. He makes opinions about those opinions but few about Gershwin himself, at least until the Conclusion, where it becomes clear he hopes to disparage those who say Gershwin was "unschooled".

Perhaps Mr. Pollack knew that when it comes to Gershwin's life, he was going where so many others have gone before; yet he had such definitive opinions about some of those biographers (he definitely didn't care for Joan Peyser's gossipy bio which, among other things, championed the rumors of Gershwin's illigitimate son). It's disappointing, then, that Mr. Pollack didn't spend more time trying on Gershwin's biographical details: he might have shown insight unseen elsewhere. Equally disappointing is his structure: his biography is thematic rather then chronological, with chapters divided as "Gershwin the Man", "Gershwin Among his Friends" etc. This destroys any chance of there being a narrative thread; if anything, the book feels like a series of essays rather then a completed whole.

Mr. Pollack's book is a spectacular achievement; but as mentioned, I think it's future will be either as a reference book for Gershwin scholars or a coda for Gershwin fans who have read everything else (like me). I should confess a slight bias: Gershwin's personal history has always been just as interesting to me as his professional one and given Mr. Pollack's focus, I was probably fated to disappointment from Page One. Not everyone likes to mix the art with the artist, after all, and I can't really fault Mr. Pollack for the sheer excitement he brings to discussing the technical brilliance of Rhapsody in Blue. Given how excited I get talking about George Gershwin, it's nice to know there are others equally obsessed.

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The Memory of all That by Katharine Weber