Publishers Weekly
★ 04/29/2024
Journalist Courogen (Go All the Way) delivers a vibrant biography of filmmaker Elaine May. Born in 1932, May rose to prominence with the improv comedy act she developed with Mike Nichols. The duo became an overnight sensation after a 1958 television appearance, but May quit three years later, fearing the act had grown stale. She hadn’t planned on becoming a director, but was effectively forced to by Paramount after the studio only agreed to finance her first film, A New Leaf, which she wrote and was set to star in, on the condition that she direct so the studio could save money by paying her less than a male director. Depicting May as an auteur obsessed with creative control, Courogen describes how she allegedly hid film reels of the in-progress Mikey and Nicky to prevent studio interference. Courogen traces this tension between commercial concerns and May’s uncompromising artistry through her major successes (she received acclaim for writing Heaven Can Wait and The Birdcage), as well as her infamous directorial bomb, Ishtar, and captures her larger-than-life spirit in lithe prose: “Elaine was a world-wise woman among children, with a mind that seemed to run only at high speed, a cruel wit that could be weaponized at a moment’s notice, and an intimidating raw and unbalanced intelligence.” This is a gem. Agent: Nicki Richesin, Dunow, Carlson & Lerner Literary. (June)
From the Publisher
"A deeply researched, psychologically astute new biography of May by Carrie Courogen...The book is written with a brash literary verve that feels authentic to its subject, and it does justice both to May’s mighty artistry and to the complex fabric of her life, linking them persuasively while resisting facile correlations between her personal concerns and her blazing inspirations." — Richard Brody, The New Yorker
"Casual, sympathetic and compulsively readable." — The New York Times Book Review
"A minor miracle...a fascinating, three-dimensional portrait of a brilliant, complicated artist" — The Los Angeles Times
"Miss May Does Not Exist, like its subject, contains multitudes, and it captures the complexities and contradictions of the fiendishly funny and fiercely independent artist who once said, 'The only safe thing is to take a chance.'" — The Washington Post
"Courogen delivers a vibrant biography of filmmaker Elaine May...This is a gem." — Publisher's Weekly (starred review)
“Carrie Courogen has written the biography Elaine May deserves. Shimmering with insight and grounded in deep research, this book is as iconoclastic, engaging, and challenging as Miss May herself.” — Claire Dederer, author of Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma
“In Miss May Does Not Exist, Carrie Courogen pulls off quite the feat; she manages to capture, with nuance and wit, the life of a woman who is as hilarious as she is complex, as sparkling as she is serious, as ambitious as she is aloof. Courogen makes an undeniable case for May's permanent place in the cinematic canon as a major director and singular comedic talent; after reading this book, I will be saying ‘justice for Ishtar!’ to anyone who will listen.” — Rachel Syme, Staff Writer, The New Yorker
"Carrie Courogen has achieved the impossible: she has written the first (and very likely last) full-scale biography of Elaine May, the most beguiling, infuriating, thrilling, comedy genius — and let’s not use that word casually — of the twentieth century, and she has done it splendidly, with admiration, welcome outrage, and scrupulous attention to detail. We all of us who have loved and wondered at this creature Elaine May owe Courogen our thanks, money, food — whatever she wants — for having written this book." — Sam Wasson, NYT Bestselling Author of The Big Goodbye: Chinatown and the Last Years of Hollywood and Fosse
“What an upbeat, positive and perceptive take Carrie Courogen has given us on one of our funniest and most interesting film artists, the extraordinarily elusive and talented Elaine May! Her research has followed her subject’s “factual fiction” crumb-trails to hell and back with great love to elucidate on May’s truth, even if it means she’s going to get an excoriating tongue-lashing for giving a younger generation a story it needs to know if they want to be half as smart as May. We get the feeling that Carrie Courogen understands Elaine May really well. Their intelligence has no gender.” — Tina Weymouth, Tom Tom Club and Talking Heads
"Elaine May is simply one the funniest people to ever live on this planet." — Phil Rosenthal, creator of Everybody Loves Raymond and star of the Netflix hit Somebody Feed Phil
“I have loved Elaine May ever since I fortuitously saw A New Leaf at age eleven, just as I was discovering my own sense of humor. But I revere her even more now, after reading Carrie Courogen’s essential biography Miss May Does Not Exist. I already knew May was a force, but Courogen’s no-stone-left-unturned account enlightened me as to just how much her vision and inimitable voice have pervaded the culture for decades. And learning about May’s process and trajectory has galvanized me to dive back into my own creative self. Just as Nichols and May brought each other to life on the stage, Courogen and May bring each other to light on the page. And this book might just inspire you as well.” — Wendy Liebman, stand-up comedian, star of Showtime’s Wendy Liebman: Taller on TV
“Don’t miss Miss May Does Not Exist by Carrie Courogen, a brilliant mix of stalker-thriller, quest-saga, and awe-inspiring biography. Drop-dead talented, funny, singular, gorgeous, and imperious, Elaine May is a figure both elusive yet professionally impossible to overlook for women interested in standup, in humor, in comedy, in film, in theatre, in writing—and in the world. Spotlighting the grueling, finally triumphant trajectory of May’s inimitable career and strewn with new insights and commentaries from May’s friends and colleagues, Courogen’s well-researched book is at once hilarious and very, very important. In Miss May Does Not Exist, Elaine May is finally, wonderfully, and delightfully captured by Carrie Courogen.” — Gina Barreca, PhD , Board of Trustees and Distinguished Professor of English Literature at The University of Connecticut, author of They Used to Call Me Snow White, But I Drifted and It’s Not That I’m Bitter
Library Journal
★ 04/01/2024
Known for being highly intelligent and often prickly, Elaine May proved herself a multifaceted talent as she transitioned from comedian to writer/director/actor and sought-after script doctor. Working tirelessly for most of the last 70 years, May (born in 1932) has remained an enigmatic figure whose work has often gone uncredited. She has always valued her privacy and reportedly has a penchant for half-truths and humorous exaggerations, but writer/editor/director Courogen skillfully takes on the challenge of discovering the woman behind the legend. She found that May, a single mother at 18, asked her own character-inspiring mother to raise May's daughter while May partnered with Mike Nichols to revolutionize stand-up comedy and improvisation. She dabbled in acting and directing, most notably helming The Heartbreak Kid and Ishtar, which received advance reviews that sunk the film and created May's lifelong distrust of the press. On the other hand, her work saved numerous films, including Tootsie and Primary Colors, and her role in the Broadway revival of The Waverly Gallery led to a Best Actress Tony win in 2019 when she was in her late eighties. VERDICT The writing in this book is whip-smart and funny. It produces a fully realized portrait of a mysterious film genius.—Lisa Henry
Kirkus Reviews
2024-04-15
A biography of an iconic entertainer.
Courogen makes an engaging book debut with an appreciative biography of comedian, director, playwright, and actor Elaine May (b. 1932), as famous for her prickly personality as for her brilliant, sardonic wit. Drawing on abundant published material and interviews, the author chronicles May’s roller-coaster career. The daughter of peripatetic entertainers, by the time she was 10, she had been enrolled in more than 50 schools. She left school for good when she was 14, married when she was 16, and by the next year had a baby. Leaving her daughter with her mother, in 1952, she hitchhiked to Chicago, where she met Mike Nichols. “Mike and Elaine,” Courogen writes, “found their possibilities in a shared interest in people’s pretentious natures (including their own), a mutual fascination with betrayal, and above all else, an unending love for language.” The two created a nightclub act that catapulted them to fame on TV and Broadway, as well as “a blur of nonstop gigs.” But in 1961, Elaine, bored and restless, quit. While Nichols went on to become an award-winning director, May’s career sank for years before it revived. Courogen recounts in detail her reincarnation as a director, actor, and, notably, script doctor, “someone who could make your project better, often at the eleventh hour.” By the mid-1980s, “she had gone from someone who was practically unhireable to someone who was not only constantly booked and busy, but able to turn down work left and right, agreeing only to scripts she found truly interesting or exciting.” Though Courogen thoroughly documents May’s career, her inner life remains elusive; as someone who knew May commented, she’s “wickedly smart, wickedly funny, wickedly clever. But you could never get to the center of her.”
A sympathetic yet somewhat incomplete portrayal of a unique talent.
