Memoirs of an Amnesiac Hardcover – 1965 by Oscar Levant. Witty, acerbic, and often self-deprecating, the book casually drops scores of famous names such as Levant's good friend George Gershwin, Arturo Toscanini, Otto Klemperer, William Faulkner, Harpo Marx, Irving Berlin, and Joseph P. Kennedy. It serves as both a Who's Who of Hollywood over three decades—skewering fellow musicians, actors, conductors, politicians, and gangsters--and a harrowing personal tale of neuroses and obsessions. Levant details in particular his harrowing time in psychiatric wards, his addictions to Demerol and paraldehyde; his experiences with electroconvulsive therapy, well-meaning but useless psychiatrists, and unscrupulous quacks; and how his long-suffering wife June and his three daughters endured his numerous eccentricities, superstitions, and hangups.
2.15/2.16*