I received this as a eGalley from NetGalley.

After reading Mark Harris' biography of Mike Nichols I was eager to know more about Elaine May. She is a rascal of a subject for a biography but Courogen does an admirable effort of it.

I absolutely adore Elaine May but this didn't do her justice in my opinion. It appeared almost clijnical and dry. Had to put it down.

I'm really torn about this book. As a big Elaine May fan, I believe she deserves to be better known and her place in Hollywood and comedy history celebrated. It's for this reason also that I only grew more ambivalent while reading MISS MAY DOES NOT EXIST. This is very well-researched (though I found some of the citations inconsistent in style), but the access issues permeate the text like it's being haunted. It's not exactly a fair comparison, but I couldn't help comparing this to the recent, very well-written (and oft-cited here) biography of Mike Nichols by Mark Harris. Harris had advantages with his subject that Courogen does not: Nichols is deceased, met the author several times before said passing, led a very public life with a lot of documentation to prove it. May, by contrast, is still alive, deeply private, and opted not to participate in this project multiple times. The resulting project is a book-long write-around profile that successfully puts together a complete CV of May's career in comedy, film, and theater. It's when Courogen dips into psychobiography to form a Grand Unifying Theory of Elaine that she loses me. The frequent shifts into second person - "You can hear the words too" "You could tell them instead" - are deployed to get the reader to fill in the gaps left by May with the reader's own feelings. Second person, to me, is a crutch that writers lean on when they want the reader to feel something but cannot actually provide evidence of that feeling in other, direct ways. The writing generally is a little too conversational and casual for my taste, especially a project drawing on this much research.

A good biography does absolutely not require the participation of its subject (and many great biographies are all the better for lacking it), but MISS MAY DOES NOT EXIST is home to one of the strangest relationships between author and subject that I've read in years. The introduction sets a worrying tone, where the author describes several borderline and textbook instances of stalking her subject over the course of three years. It opens on the author wearing a wig on a park bench across from May's apartment building, hoping for a glimpse of her subject. Later, she evidences: "I spent $200 printing and mailing her 341 pages of museum scans of old family documents she hadn't known existed, [...] walked by her building hoping I'd happen to see her coming out of it, attended events she RSVP'd to, then ghosted at the last possible moment." But a blessing ultimately doesn't matter to Courogen, because she asserts that May can't be trusted to be truthful:

"With Elaine's penchant for elusive privacy, the facts she personally presents as true must always be taken with a grain of salt. We are all, to varying degrees, unreliable narrators of our own lives [...] Elaine, though, wants you to know that you're being set up, wants you to question what is a fact and what is a good story. It's the mark of someone both acutely aware of the mind's ability to present alternate versions of reality--and of someone so distrustful of others that she expects the feeling to be mutual."


Well, here it is mutual. The rest of the book is centered around a thesis of circular logic: May's truth has never been told, and I, her biographer, am the only one you can trust to tell it because May herself will tell you lies. The reader comes away with the impression that Courogen has cast herself as the Charles Kinbote to May's John Shade, the lone scholar-poet working to enlighten the most minor details of another life while also bending every piece of the text to fit her own, twisted theory. This reader, who was not at all uninformed about May's career going into this, came away wondering if I could trust the author any more than I could trust May herself.

Review copy provided by NetGalley.

This was a great biography of Elaine May, I never heard of her before and thought this was everything that I was hoping for and thought the writing was really well done. I was engaged with what was going on and thought everything worked. Carrie Courogen has a great writing style and can’t wait to read more from the author.

My thanks to NetGalley and the publisher St. Martin's Press for an advance copy of this biography on one of the most creative people to ever work in the arts or entertainment, and yet is little known for her achievements, which is exactly the way she wants it.

Elaine May should be famous, and not just known to people in the know. Many of the things we use to distract ourselves from the world, plays, television, comedy, and especially movies have either been influenced, or even created by Ms. May. Working early with Mike Nichols she brought improv comedy, and the idea of women in comedy to the masses. May was a writer of films, credited and script doctor of many, uncredited. May wrote plays, skits, worked with famed directors to bring their vision to life, directed three movies, two classics and one infamous. Yet May has tried to avoid the spotlight, the fame and everything that goes with it. And even today May is still hard at work, and finally getting some recognition for all her achievements. Miss May Does Not Exist: The Life and Work of Elaine May, Hollywood’s Hidden Genius by Carrie Courogen is a look at the person, what she created, and how the world was changed by her creations, all without losing what made her, for better or worse.

Elaine Berlin was born in Philadelphia but with a family in entertainment, moved all over the country, attending different schools, which didn't give Elaine much interest in school, but a love of reading gave her an education. Elaine's father died before she was a teen, and her mother moved them to California, where Elaine gave up on school for good, taking a job and getting married and having a daughter. The marriage did not last and Elaine now May decided to go to Chicago, for colleges there would let her attend even without a high school diploma. May never enrolled, attending classes that interested her, and finding like minded people in the drama department, which led her to joining an acting troupe where she met Mike Nichols. The two were made for each other, creative muses who shared a soul, and a talent to entertain. Within a short period they worked as a duo, cut albums, made money, and broke up. That's when May really started to shine, well shine from the shadows where she was comfortable. Slowly she wrote, directed a movie, that was rough, began to script doctor in Hollywood for no credit, directed a second movie that had over 260 hours of film. Worked with Warren Beatty on Heaven Can Wait, and Reds. And also Ishtar, which sidelined May for a time. But, never stopped her.

An fascinating biography about a woman who knew everyone, scared many, was used as muse, collaborator, friend, and yet still was haunted by a childhood that one could only describe as very rough. What Courogen does best is show how good May is. The little things, about looking at a scene and knowing things are too short. A sound editor saying May's ears were the best he ever worked with. The list of movies that May helped create, or helped make better, some expected, some completely unexpected. Ghostbusters, Labyrinth, movies that still are being made, remade, in many cases badly, all had a bit of May in them. Courogen is a very good writer, getting people to tell their tales of May, even if May didn't want to. To think of all that May did, with the handicap of being a woman in comedy, in Hollywood is just amazing. And for May to do it on her terms, stealing film reels, ignoring players, making sure to credit other writers, is astonishing. May deserves every accolade, as does Courogen for writing a interesting biography that really gets to the soul of the person.

Recommended for people who enjoy reading about Hollywood, the arts, and woman who don't let anything get in the way of their art. A great Mother's Day gift, heck a great gift in general. Also a great book to give to a young artist and show them the work is important, don't let them bring you down. One might fail, one might succeed, one might do both. But one won't know unless you do it. Just like Elaine May does.

If I've learned one thing about comedy legend Elaine May from reading Carrie Courogen's "Miss May Does Not Exist: The Life and Work of Elaine May, Hollywood's Hidden Genius," it's that the hidden icon doesn't want to talk to me.

Or you.

Or, for that matter, Carrie Courogen.

An icon who has never really acted like one, Elaine May was a successful female in Hollywood before Hollywood was ready to accept the idea of a successful female. May wasn't just talented. Hollywood could deal with it. May was someone who demanded control of her craft and her creativity, a control not given easily by Hollywood and given even less easily to a female who would prove wondrously talented at acting, directing, writing, and pretty much everything else she tried.

In the first few pages of "Miss May Does Not Exist," we're rather humorously informed that Miss May wasn't so much opposed to this biography as she just plain didn't cooperate with it. Courogen would have stops and starts, scheduled interviews and no shows along the way to creating what is undeniably the most comprehensive account of May's life.

May began her career as one-half of the legendary comedy team Nichols and May. Nichols, esteemed director Mike Nichols, and May would revolutionize comedy before initially parting ways after their Broadway smash 'An Evening with Mike Nichols and Elaine May." It was grand, of course, and May would remain loyal to Nichols throughout her career.

After toiling around Broadway for a bit, May would have a breakthrough in Hollywood directing such films as "A New Leaf," "The Heartbreak Kid," and the criminally underappreciated "Mikey and Nicky." It might be fair to say that "Ishtar" is her most remembered film for reasons not quite as pleasant. It was a largely unsupported film by the studio that was misunderstood by audiences and critics. Years later, the critical and box-office bomb has gained new fans, myself included, and is starting to get the respect it long deserved.

On one of the albums she made with Nichols, her bio reads "Miss May does not exist." Indeed, this seems to be largely how she's lived even her professional life. She's been hired as a script doctor on such films as "Heaven Can Wait," "Reds," "Tootsie," and "The Birdcage." Yet, she often shuns credit for her writing. Well respected as a script doctor in Hollywood, it's likely safe to say that a good majority of America has no clue just how present May's writing is in some of our best films in recent decades.

Now 91-years-old, May won a Tony Award as recently as 2019 for Best Leading Actress in The Waverly Gallery. She's also won a BAFTA, a Grammy, an honorary Oscar, and numerous other awards.

It's unlikely that May will ever tell us whether or not Courogen has accurately captured her life, though it's most certainly clear that Courogen has researched relentlessly. At right around 400 pages, a good 1/3 of "Miss May Does Not Exist" consists of Courogen's source material and over 1,500 footnotes.

Yikes.

While May herself may have never cooperated with "Miss May Does Not Exist," I chuckle at the idea that somewhere in the weeks to come she'll be hovering over the book wishing she could have edited it.

An absolute must-read for fans of Elaine May and those who want to gain insights into the ways that women were mistreated and held back in Hollywood, "Miss May Does Not Exist" is an engaging, extensively researched, and revealing biography that proves once and for all that Elaine May does exist and she's made all of our lives so much better.

Elaine May receives the detailed biography she so richly deserves. Carrie Courogen scrupulously researches the life and career of one of America’s true comic geniuses. Courogen interviews everyone connected with Elaine May except for May herself. It wasn’t for lack of trying, as Courogen makes clear in an amusing history of her efforts to get May to speak on the record. The author diligently chronicles every fascinating facet of May’s life: her turbulent upbringing; her years essentially inventing improvisational comedy; her storied partnership with Mike Nichols; her vexed career as a screenwriter and director (for many years the only woman directing feature films in Hollywood), and her astonishing late triumph on the Broadway stage. Courogen regularly circles back to her powerful central point that May was branded as “difficult” while her male collaborators like Nichols and Warren Beatty engaged in the same behavior and were able to play the “genius” card. Yet May’s work holds up with theirs. Courogen is honest, calling out disappointments and missteps made by May, but always compassionate. She even squeezes humor into the footnotes. Mark Harris’s titanic Nichols biography now has company on the shelf, Nichols and May continuing to keep each other company. A treat to read.