Audition (Walters)

Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:

• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)

Also, consider these LitLovers talking points to get your discussion started for Audition:

1. Talk about Walters' youth, especially her father's career in show business and its effect on Barbara's own career—her unflagging drive and energy.

2. Walters openly shares the knocks and insults that came her way, both while building her career and even when she reached the top: from Newsweek's "dumdum bullets swaddled in angora" to Saturday Night Live and Gilda Radner's "Baba Wawa." Why such relentless mockery? How well does she seem to handle it?

3. Even as she attained fame, Walter's career continued to stumble—when paired with NBC's Frank McGee or during her stint as co-host with Harry Reasoner on ABC. To what do you attribute this—to Walter's overreaching, to others' professional envy, to the fact that she was a pioneering woman in a male profession...or to something else?

4. Did reading her memoir, change your attitudes about Walters? How did you view her before you read Auditions ... and after? Overall, how does Barbara Walters come across, what kind of an individual is she, what kind of personal character traits does she possess? Do you admire her more...or like her less?

5. Do you feel Walter's self-assessment is frank and on-the-mark? Do you find it honest...or self-serving...or... defensive...or refreshing...or what?

6. Discuss the way Walters deals with her failed marriages and the difficulties she shares with readers in raising her daughter Jackie. How does she treat these painful episodes in her life? Does she accept responsibility for her failures and difficulties, or accept that they are part of the life she has chosen?

7. Which celebrity episode did you enjoy reading about most and why? Which interviewee did you like the most? Admire the most? Dislike the most?

8. When aspiring young newscasters tell Walters they want a career just like hers, what does she mean when she says, "Then you have to take the whole package"?

9. Walters rejects the notion that women can't have it all—"a great marriage, successful career, and well-adjusted children, at least not at the same time." What are your thoughts?

10. In your opinion, to what extent are female TV news personalities, such as Katie Couric and Christiane Amanpour, responsible to Walters for their careers?

11. A fascinating corollary to Walters' book is the question of whether or not women are selected as TV news personalities based on their looks or their talent. Which is more important? When women age, what happens to their careers? Are older women ever allowed to attain the status of a great "grey eminence," like Walter Cronkite or Harry Reasoner or Bob Schieffer? Are they allowed to gain weight like Bill O'Reilly—or even be homely like Dan Rather (well, unless you consider him good-looking.)

(Questions from LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)

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