Speak Low (When You Speak Love): The Letters of Kurt Weil and Lotte Lenya

Rating:
Summary: An old-fashioned love story
Review: Kurt Weill and Lotte Lenya's relationship was hair-raising by modern American standards. He was a workaholic whose music came first in his life (as he himself told Lenya), while she was a sex addict who openly sought the excitement and attention she couldn't get from Weill with other men. Yet rather than growing apart, they continually turned to one another for advice, reassurance, support, and a sense of continuity. Some reasons for why this apparently extraordinarily dysfunctional marriage survived infidelity, separation, and even a short-lived divorce can be found in these letters, in which the Weills exchange phony and real endearments, sexy come-ons, giggly in-jokes and arch witticisms as well as carrying on the day-to-day business of a working life together and apart. Read in sequence, their correspondence makes a funny, engrossing, and ultimately heartbreaking romance.

Rating:
Summary: An old-fashioned love story
Review: Kurt Weill and Lotte Lenya's relationship was hair-raising by modern American standards. He was a workaholic whose music came first in his life (as he himself told Lenya), while she was a sex addict who openly sought the excitement and attention she couldn't get from Weill with other men. Yet rather than growing apart, they continually turned to one another for advice, reassurance, support, and a sense of continuity. Some reasons for why this apparently extraordinarily dysfunctional marriage survived infidelity, separation, and even a short-lived divorce can be found in these letters, in which the Weills exchange phony and real endearments, sexy come-ons, giggly in-jokes and arch witticisms as well as carrying on the day-to-day business of a working life together and apart. Read in sequence, their correspondence makes a funny, engrossing, and ultimately heartbreaking romance.