The biography blends lively social detail with careful interpretation of Stephen Sondheim’s creative output. It places Sondheim amid mid-20th-century New York figures who trade harsh opinions, including Leonard Bernstein, Barbra Streisand, and Arthur Laurents. During a bitter correspondence, Laurents and Sondheim exchange insults, with Sondheim delivering a cutting assessment of Laurents’ mediocrity. The book traces Sondheim’s development through key relationships, including his mother “Foxy,” portrayed as a central emotional force. Oscar Hammerstein mentors Sondheim, criticizing early imitation and urging him to write what he believes. Sondheim’s early genius is shown forming through education and formative experiences, including his shift from mathematics to music.
"You come for the biography and stay for the world of mid-20th-century New York, in which Leonard Bernstein says terrible things about Sweeney Todd (disgusting), Sondheim says terrible things about Barbra Streisand (doesn't have one sincere moment left inside her), and Arthur Laurents says terrible things about everyone. In the early 2000s, during a particularly poisonous exchange of letters between Laurents and Sondheim, the latter told his old collaborator, you're just good enough to know you're mediocre."
"We meet Sondheim's mother, known as Foxy, whom the writer and composer made an elaborate play of hating his entire life and who Okrent brings to life in order to get behind that particular performance. We see the young Sondheim taken under the wing of Oscar Hammerstein, the great man of musical theatre, who called out the young Stevie, as he knew him, for early missteps: You're writing like me, said Hammerstein. You're imitating me, you're talking about nature and things like that. You don't believe in those things."
"He then gave Sondheim a piece of advice the younger man would carry close to his chest throughout his career: Write what you believe, and you'll be 99% ahead of the game. For many years, Sondheim tried his hardest to date women, before throwing in the towel in the late 1960s The early chapters are a fascinating study in the gestation of genius."
"Sondheim attended Williams College, Massachusetts, where he switched from studying maths to music once he understood the latter could have the s"
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