Splendid . . . [A] sophisticated, droll and astute triple biography. [Cohen] had me underlining ideas and facts on the majority of its quick-moving pages . . . The photographs are strikingly integrated with the text, the times and topics are riveting , and Cohen is exceedingly well-matched to her subjects —sly, comfortable with contradiction, confident that these flawed figures were important, not mere accents to the company they kept . . . Part of the joy of All We Know is the sharpness of the subjects ; they write wittily of themselves, each other and innumerable compatriots in the cultural centers of Europe and the United States, often in dazzling style.” —Karen R. Long, The Plain Dealer (Cleveland) Enchanting . . . Eloquent . . . Marvelous . . . Grand and thrilling . . . [A] strikingly elegant and assured biographical study of three now almost forgotten lesbian women . . . [All We Know ]'s strength lies in the extraordinary , exfoliating, anatomy-like mass of detail [Cohen] has uncovered about her subjects: her tender , erudite , weirdly jubilant , often microscopic work of historical and biographical recovery . . . You are stunned by its depths ; and you hope its excellence and pertinence and originality will not lead, doomfully, to its sinking without a trace, as fine things connected with the subject of lesbianism have had a way of doing for so long. It's a major work of scholarship and interpretation .” —Terry Castle, London Review of Books [A] tour de force examination of the intersecting roles of gender, sexuality, class, literature, art, fashion, and modernism . . . Throughout this brilliant and gorgeously written book runs an undercurrent of deep sympathy and an acute eye for revealing details.” —Kate Tuttle, The Boston Globe Provocative and beautifully paced . . . [A] superbly satisfying book . . . By bringing these three footnotes into the spotlight, Ms. Cohen allows us to look deeper into our definitions of failure, identity and modernity, while also reappraising the stature of artfulness as opposed to art.” —Laura Jacobs, The Wall Street Journal magisterial book . . . All We Know is really much more about reflecting on lives (especially in the case of de Acosta) than about chronicling them. Experimental biography, if such a genre can be said to exist, is a high-wire act. Cohen never loses her balance . . . There's no hint of mess in this almost perfect book .” —Craig Seligman, Bloomberg News [A] seductive, brilliant new book . . . Meticulously researched and compulsively readable . . . [Cohen's] treatment of these larger-than-life and, often, destructive figures is coolly appreciative; though unflinching in her analysis of their failings, she is never judgmental . . . Cohen's account of the paradoxes of history and temporality is as notable for its light touch as it is for its subtlety and depth . A monument to great achievement as well as to incompleteness, All We Know does justice to both the distortions and the truths of these three lives . . . To say that All We Know is a biography does not really capture its complexity, surprise, or sheer interest . . . In her attention to the multiple connections between her major figures and to the shaping influence of informal social worlds, Cohen has written something larger and more ambitious [than a biography] : All We Know is the story of a milieu as much as it is an account of individual lives, and a remarkably subtle and thoughtful treatment of sexual desire, identity, and the cruelty of history.” —Heather Love, Los Angeles Review of Books Fascinating . . . Vivid . . . A gossipy yet deeply intellectual account of the first generation of women who considered themselves ‘modern' . . . All We Know is a revolutionary take on the genre of biography , aiming not so much at each of its three subjects but at their generation and how it struggled to invent female personhood for the 20th century.” —Bethany Schneider, Newsday Fascinating . . . a boldface name—stuffed triptych of undeservedly little-known modernists: the intellectual and would-be biographer Esther Murphy, the arts enthusiast Mercedes de Acosta, and the feminist and British Vogue fashion editor Madge Garland, whose observations—‘fashion is both personal and ephemeral, it cannot be preserved'—hint at a fleeting beauty that defined all three.” —Megan O'Grady, Vogue Reading All We Know is like taking to a well-sprung dance floor in the arms of someone who can't put a foot wrong .” —Hilary Spurling, author of Matisse the Master All We Know is a remarkable book about three extraordinary women . These serious and eccentric women have been rescued from oblivion by Lisa Cohen's absorbing book. She turns conventional biography upside down and inside out. This is a deeply researched, skillful, and entertaining trilogy of overlapping stories .” —Michael Holroyd, author of A Book of Secrets [A] remarkable, sui generis study . . . [Cohen is] a brilliant biographer, one who marries scholarship to literature in a totally unprecedented way .” —Hilton Als, The New Yorker deeply researched, incisive, and scintillating first book, Cohen presents a triptych of brief lives portraying now forgotten but nonetheless singular women whose intelligence, passion, creativity, daring, and charisma were shaping forces in modern culture . . . Cohen's astute, graceful, and far-reaching profiles not only acquaint us with three extraordinary, innovative, and influential women who rejected gender expectations but also illuminate the essential visions and voices twentieth-century lesbians and gays brought to evolving modernity .” —Donna Seaman, Booklist (starred review) an unfathomable feat of research and storytelling , Lisa Cohen recovers three of those lives and suggests that the ephemeral nature of their legacies is central to their importance in their own time—and in ours.” —Honor Moore, author of The Bishop's Daughter An astonishingly original, scholarly, sensitive, and above all beautifully written work .” —Selina Hastings, author of The Secret Lives of Somerset Maugham Staggering . . . Astounding . . . Lush . . . Cohen writes with an outstanding amount of research and knowledge . . . Cohen has such a masterful command of information that the story never stops fascinating the reader .” —Courtney Gillette, Lambda Literary a stunning, sophisticated account of three unconventional lives . Following in the noble tradition of Gertrude Stein's Three Lives , David Plante's Difficult Women , and Hilton Als's The Women , Cohen's triumvirate narrative illuminates mysteries of taste, innuendo, fashion, fandom, conversation, and sexuality. Heroically researched and deliciously readable, All We Know is a tender homage to archives, to ephemera, to fruitless quests, and to a spent life's haunting nuances .” —Wayne Koestenbaum, author of Jackie Under My Skin Ambitious . . . Erudite . . . [A] meticulously researched biography .” —Kirkus Reviews well-researched, gossipy, informative, and entertaining biographical triptych is also a thoughtful, three-part inquiry into the meaning of failure, style, and sexual identity . . . Cohen secures a definitive place for [Esther Murphy, Mercedes de Acosta, and Madge Garland] in the socio-cultural history of the period.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review) All We Know is a remarkable achievement . Cohen's sensitivity to the nuances of personality is matched by a keen analytic intelligence. She has a strong narrative gift, a superb way with words, and an appreciation for oddity that expands the horizon. All We Know is an utterly fascinating, brilliantly executed book—a splendid act of historical reclamation .” —Martin Duberman, author of Stonewall All We Know , Lisa Cohen sets out to resurrect three almost-forgotten women who, especially in the 1920s and '30s, were boldface names in the literary, art, and fashion whirl of London, Paris, and New York. And she succeeds beautifully.” —Annalyn Swan, author of de Kooning Lisa Cohen is a biographer's biographer . In her riveting and highly original All We Know , she tells a vivid tale of the interlocking lives of three women of the past century—a brilliant talker, an intimate of both Garbo and Dietrich, a fashion editor—and of the soigné bisexual world they inhabited.” —Brad Gooch, author of Flannery Cohen brings deserved attention to these women who lived often in conflict with themselves and their age . Strongly recommended.” —Margaret Heilbrun, Library Journal
"Every biography," Cohen reflects…"is a disappointment of some kind, premised on unbearable impasses and opacities, on the impossibility of bringing someone back to life, and on the paradoxes of representing, inhabiting and balancing the past and the present." But Cohen's own idiosyncratic hybrid doesn't disappoint. She builds a rich picture of a lost world—and three women who dared to inhabit it on their own terms.
The New York Times Book Review
Esther Murphy (1897–1962) was a talker, but a brilliant one; Mercedes de Acosta (1893–1968), was a “seductress” who saved every scrap of memorabilia; witty aesthete, style icon, and feminist Madge Garland (1898–1990) was an editor at British Vogue. They knew each other well from social circles, and none of them had simple lives. Cohen, GQ’s fashion editor for nearly three decades, fully delineates the conventional biographical matters of ancestry, parents, schooling, marriages, affairs, friendships, breakups, work, and death. Lovers of both sexes, the three mingled at varying depths with the Bloomsbury coterie, the Paris cohort, and the Hollywood crowd, but this well-researched, gossipy, informative, and entertaining biographical triptych is also a thoughtful, three-part inquiry into the meaning of failure, style, and sexual identity. Murphy, whose major claim to our attention is ephemeral—reading voraciously and never completing her biography of Madame de Maintenon—gets nearly half of the book. De Acosta gets the brief middle, a “fantasia on a theme” that focuses on her collection of personal mementos, while Garland shapes the way British fashion lovers think about couture. All are engaged in making and remaking themselves as the “emergence of women of generation into public life one of the major shifts of the twentieth century.” Cohen secures a definitive place for them in the socio-cultural history of the period. Agency: Sterling Lord, Sterling Lord Literistic. (July)
Cohen (English, Wesleyan Univ.) presents three prominent yet marginalized women who were in their prime amid the flourishing social and cultural elite of America and Europe between the world wars. Esther Murphy (1898–1962), from a wealthy Irish Catholic family accepted by WASP New York, was sister to Gerald Murphy, famous expatriate who mingled with F. Scott Fitzgerald in France. Voracious reader, brilliant talker, she was long expected to produce books of towering intellect on her special subjects in French history—but she never did. As a woman, a lesbian (who married), and an unpublished intellectual, hers became a marginalized life. Madge Garland (1896–1990), Australian-born fashion editor of English Vogue in the 1930s was, like Murphy, a lesbian who married, who functioned both as insider and outsider. Mercedes de Acosta (1893–1968), largely known today for her relationships with Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich (and covered here in a much shorter section) garnered both attention and disdain. VERDICT Readers will not necessarily be equally intrigued by Murphy and Garland (this reviewer stands in the Murphy camp). In spite of the underlying themes, it's not entirely clear why Cohen posed these women alongside one another. They traveled in the same crowds (with Janet Flanner, Edmund Wilson, etc.), but were not close friends. Yet, with an accessible prose style free of academic jargon, Cohen brings deserved attention to these women who lived often in conflict with themselves and their age. Strongly recommended for readers in LGBT history, Lost Generation literature, women's studies, and biography.—Margaret Heilbrun, Library Journal
Meticulously researched biography about three extraordinary but underappreciated women who, as they memorialized themselves, also "colluded in [creating their] own invisibility." The subjects of the book are the complicated, interconnected lives of New York intellectual Esther Murphy, playwright and celebrity admirer Mercedes de Acosta and fashion editor Madge Garland. Murphy was a brilliant, charismatic woman who dazzled everyone with her "extravagant verbal style." Despite the minor successes she experienced with her essays and reviews, she was unable to finish any of the books she was contracted to write. Cohen (English/Wesleyan Univ.) hypothesizes that Murphy was a performer whose "need for an audience was so great that she could not isolate herself to write" the texts that would have earned her greater recognition. By contrast, de Acosta actively attached herself emotionally, and sometimes sexually, to some of the greatest performers of her time, including Isadora Duncan, Marlene Dietrich and Greta Garbo. But in the process of obsessively collecting memorabilia related to these women, she effectively erased her own life. Like de Acosta, Garland, an editor at British Vogue , also immersed herself in the world of women. A closeted lesbian who led a double sexual life to protect her social position, Garland "played a defining role in almost every aspect of the fashion industry in England in the interwar and postwar years." Yet because she took interest in the ephemeral (fashion) and because she never trumpeted her achievements, she left no lasting memorial to her accomplishments. Murphy's life was an apparent monument to failure, de Acosta's to the irrational and Garland's to the trivial. As Cohen shows, however, each woman succeeded in problematizing the concept of modern celebrity. Ambitious, erudite and only occasionally pedantic.
