Taking its inspiration from Sanders’s own autobiography Memoirs of a Professional Cad (1960), this book is part witty, bawdy, and irreverent memoir, part moving meditation on the price of fame; like most of David Slavitt’s work, it defies easy categorization. In George Sanders, Zsa Zsa, and Me , Slavitt looks back to his career as a film critic in the glamorous—at least superficially—world of 1950s Hollywood, when he traveled in circles that included the talented British actor George Sanders (1906–1972) and his then-wife, Zsa Zsa Gabor, who was talented at, well, being famous. Sanders, who seemed to maintain an ironic detachment from roles that were often beneath him, nonetheless couldn’t bear the decline of his later years and committed suicide at the age of sixty-five. Darkly humorous to the end, his note read, "Dear World, I am leaving because I am bored. I feel I have lived long enough. I am leaving you with your worries in this sweet cesspool. Good luck . " Zsa Zsa, on the other hand, remains in the headlines (with her dubiously named husband Frédéric Prinz von Anhalt) at age ninety-two. Although he punctuates his story with witty asides—the author’s encounter with Marilyn Monroe is particularly memorable—Slavitt turns a critic’s eye toward questions of talent and art, while also tackling the difficult and universal questions of aging, relationships, and mortality. Poet, translator, and critic Slavitt anonymously covered the movies for Newsweek, 1957–64—experience foundational for his speculation on the movie star’s life as exemplified by character actor George Sanders (1906–72). Tall, sophisticated looking, possessed of a cynical smirk and a style of line reading to match, Sanders was also the third and most famous husband of Zsa Zsa Gabor, with whom Slavitt once appeared on Johnny Carson’s show. Slavitt regards Sanders, whom he never met, as smarter than most movie stars, despite which he lost his intrinsic character and took up playing his image full time. After Zsa Zsa, he descended into depression and drink. Or was it because of Zsa Zsa? Even while the marriage persisted, Sanders failed to appreciate the best picture of his career, Rossellini’s Viaggio in Italia. Thereafter, it was one insipid role after another, from which he released himself by suicide. Slavitt’s contempt for Hollywood is near palpable, his memory in this deliberately unresearched piece serves him disastrously, but he is a real writer, neither flack nor fan, as every page attests. --Ray Olson David R. Slavitt is a poet, translator, novelist, critic, and journalist. He is the author of over seventy works of fiction, poetry, and poetry and drama in translation. His latest books are a translation of Boethius’s The Consolation of Philosophy and a reprint of his critical collection, Re Verse (Northwestern, 2009). He lives in Boston.