Lord, James : Some remarkable men

James Lord, an American who has lived in Paris for more than half a century, has been friends with some of the most influential and interesting artists and thinkers of our time. In a previous volume, Six Exceptional Women, he looked back on his friendships with Gertrude Stein, Alice B. Toklas, and four others. Some Remarkable Men provides a glimpse into the lives of Alberto Giacometti, Harold Acton, Jean Cocteau, and Balthus. Lord sits squarely in what is now a very unfashionable branch of the school of biography--he believes strongly in the idea of genius and eschews the notion that the history of an individual is somehow reducible to a set of pathologies that grow out of some character flaw or childhood trauma. The result is a series of portraits that are engaging, insightful, funny, and revealing.