|
Wilfrid John Joseph Sheed (born December 27, 1930) is an English-born American novelist and essayist. He was born in London to Francis "Frank" Sheed and Mary "Maisie" Ward, prominent Catholic publishers (Sheed & Ward) in Britain and America in the mid-20th century. He spent his childhood in both England and the United States before attending Oxford University. His first novel, A Middle Class Education (1961), was based on his experiences at Oxford. His biography Frank and Maisie was about his parents' literary establishment and intellectual world. He has written satirical novels about journalism and in recent years memoirs. He recently published a remarkable book about American music called The House that George Built with a little help from Irving, Cole and a Crew of about Fifty. About this book Garrison Keillor said: 'Golden Age of American Song has been saluted and high-faluted in books and wept over repeatedly, but “The House That George Built” is a big rich stew of an homage that makes you want to listen to Gershwin and Berlin and Porter and Arlen all over again. Wilfrid Sheed’s jazzy prose is a joy to read. It goes catapulting along, digressing like mad, never pedantic, a little frantic, which is just right: the jazz song, like all true art, is a flight from depression, indifference, the cold blank stare, the earnest clammy touch. Sheed lopes along through decades of pop, bowing to Berlin (whose lyrics seem “not so much brilliant as inevitable”) and upholding some neglected masters (Richard Whiting and Harry Warren), throwing some cold water (Richard Rodgers had a “fatal taste for comfort music”), naming classics — Kern’s “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes” and of course “Stardust” and “Here’s That Rainy Day” and Ellington’s “Prelude to a Kiss” (“I would instantly vote this the most beautiful song ever written, except for this one problem of the words ... grandiose piffle”)<ref>By GARRISON KEILLOR Published: July 22, 2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/22/books/review/Keillor-t.html?ref=books </ref>.
|
