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Mark Bego: Bonnie Raitt: Still in the Nick of Time (Cooper Square Press) |
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Written by Bryan A. Hollerbach
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Thursday, 01 May 2003 |
Woe betide the biographer who identifies too closely with his subject,
as Mark Bego does in Bonnie Raitt: Still in the Nick of Time, an
updated edition of which just issued from Cooper Square Press. That way
lies disaster.
Translation: this biography of the uncategorizable musician behind such
releases as Nick of Time (1989) and Luck of the Draw (1991) makes
uneasy reading. Sloppy writing, frankly, mars the bio; in particular,
it brims with what grammarians and other fussbudgets would flag as
dangling modifiers-leading one to suspect the population of competent
editors is fast dwindling. Moreover, tonally, Bego fawns like a pup
rescued from the pound, and he exhibits a deadly affection for the
exclamation point. (Might a discerning reader find his prose effusive?
Assuredly not!!!)
Where Raitt's own voice comes to the fore, happily, things start to
swing, as one would expect from a woman who has distinguished herself
both in her music and in her activism for such causes as the
anti-nuclear movement, environmentalism, and the Rhythm and Blues
Foundation. By way of example, Bego retails the following Raitt
commentary, a 1988 quotation from Frets: "One of the reasons I like to
play slide guitar, what drew me to it in the first place, was the fact
that it sounded like a human voice crying-it was very evocative.
Especially when you're singing about something that's so intensely
personal that you have to stop singing and play instead. It takes over
for the voice." More such commentary would have strengthened the volume.
Still, as a reviewer, one perforce plays the hand dealt, not the hand
desired. Including more than two dozen black-and-white photographs, a
28-page discography, 19 pages of source notes, and an index, Bonnie
Raitt: Still in the Nick of Time tops 300 pages. For this edition, the
back matter has been updated, and Bego has added a 45-page thirteenth
chapter which carries his subject from 1995, the publication date of
the original, to last year and which, among other things, sketches the
mysterious end of her happily-ever-after marriage to actor Michael
O'Keefe. ("[B]y 2002," notes Bego, "neither Raitt's official Web site,
nor O'Keefe's own Web site, even mentioned the other one's name." Hmm.)
Serviceable but tedious, it's a flawed bio of an artist who deserves better.
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