Dear Pussycat : Mash Notes and Missives from the Desk of Cosmopolitan's Legendary Editor
- Book Review,
by Helen Gurley Brown
From Publishers Weekly
Brown is still, at 82, exuberantly stringing words together in her trademark style of emphasis through ellipses, italics, capitals and underlines. In this, her ninth book, she bares more of her irreverent self through letters written over the years to friends, family, celebrities, advertisers, doctors, lovers and Cosmo staffers. Brown gathered almost 300 letters—some from Cosmo archives, many borrowed from the original recipients—and annotates each with a brief caption. Divided into 20 chapters ("Dear Doctor, Please Get Me Fixed [and Thank You for What You Already Did!]"; "I'm Pissed!"; "Dear Staff"; "Deepest Sympathy"; etc.), the book begins with a letter Brown wrote to Franklin D. Roosevelt when she was 15; she asked him to please write to her hospitalized sister, who "has polio just like you do." (He did.) Brown's missives to her Cosmo colleagues provide a peek into the magazine's history, and many of her letters rail against conservatism, as in her diplomatic yet no-nonsense letter to an "ultra-conservative" advertiser clarifying Cosmo's mission. Most poignant is a lengthy 1978 letter to Brown's mother on her 85th birthday; it's filled with daughterly reminiscences and appreciation ("I was so busy TAKING everything I never had time to think how ANYTHING was for you") and candidly muses on "what would you have been if you had had the same chances and encouragement from YOUR mother." While this isn't intended as a how-to-write-letters book, readers will, by osmosis, glean something from Brown, whose grace, style and candor will always be a template for polishing one's art of communication. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
Brown, the longtime editor in chief of Cosmopolitan magazine and author of the groundbreaking (for its time, 1962) Sex and the Single Girl, has compiled a book consisting of letters that she has written to friends and acquaintances. Brown, now in her 80s, gurgles enthusiastically in the introduction about her lifelong passion for writing letters and about how she has been told her letters have a "special" quality. The subjects of the letters range from "sorry we didn't have more of a chance to visit on the Forbes yacht"-type notes, to rolling ecstasies about the great job her interior designer has done, to taking Kathie Lee Gifford to task for criticizing a movie Brown's husband produced, to thanking an airline executive for the free tickets and complimenting his airline's first-class service for passing the beluga twice. Although largely inconsequential, the book is fascinating, mostly for Brown's unmitigated, exaggerated sense of self-importance, and many readers (especially those who enjoy a dose of weirdness with their Lovey Howell) will have a tough time putting it down. Kathleen Hughes
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Book Description
Dear Pussycat:
Some of us find it easier to say in a letter whatever it is we want to express -- love, rage, outrage, affection, resentment, enthusiasm, a request to do a chore -- than we do person to person or even phone to phone. I've been writing letters, somewhat successfully I think, since I was eight years old. I got President Franklin Roosevelt to write to my wheelchair-bound (from polio) sister by dropping him a line at the White House. Some of my letters don't quite make it, of course -- trying to get New York Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger to fire his vicious play reviewer Frank Rich who tore apart my husband's perfectly fine play, A Few Good Men. He wouldn't do it -- no recourse but to write the reviewer himself, "Dear Frank, you bastard! etc." I've thanked designer Emilio Pucci for turning small bust and big hips into goddess stature with whammo fabric and genius engineering, kept a few beloved employees from jumping ship or into the river with careful flattery, consoled the grieving. Wouldn't you like to see a little collection of my best, meanest and happiest notes that reflect a pretty fascinating New York life, a career they don't make many like, love and friendship with junior high school buddies and a few razzle-dazzle celebrities? Okay...if you like good old-fashioned staying-in-touch by correspondence, here they are!
Helen Gurley Brown
About the Author
Helen Gurley Brown is a style and publishing legend who was the editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan magazine for thirty-two years, and the author of TK books, including Sex and the Single Girl and The Writer's Rules. She lives in New York, NY with her husband, David Brown.
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