Audition (Walters)

Audition
Barbara Walters, 2008
Knopf Doubleday
448 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780307269546


Summary
Young people starting out in television sometimes say to me: “I want to be you.” My stock reply is always: “Then you have to take the whole package.”

And now, at last, the most important woman in the history of television journalism gives us that “whole package,” in her inspiring and riveting memoir. After more than forty years of interviewing heads of state, world leaders, movie stars, criminals, murderers, inspirational figures, and celebrities of all kinds, Barbara Walters has turned her gift for examination onto herself to reveal the forces that shaped her extraordinary life.

Barbara Walters’s perception of the world was formed at a very early age. Her father, Lou Walters, was the owner and creative mind behind the legendary Latin Quarter nightclub, and it was his risk-taking lifestyle that made Barbara aware of the ups and downs that can occur when someone is willing to take great risks.

The financial responsibility for her family, the fear, the love all played a large part in the choices she made as she grew up: the friendships she developed, the relationships she had, the marriages she tried to make work. Ultimately, thanks to her drive, combined with a decent amount of luck, she began a career in television. And what a career it has been! Against great odds, Barbara has made it to the top of a male-dominated industry.

She has spent a lifetime auditioning, and this book, in some ways, is her final audition, as she fully opens up both her private and public lives. In doing so, she has given us a story that is heartbreaking and honest, surprising and fun, sometimes startling, and always fascinatings. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—September 25, 1929
• Where—Brookline, Massachesetts, USA
• Education—B.A., Sarah Lawrence College
• Currently—lives in New York City


Barbara Jill Walters is an American journalist, writer, and media personality who was first known as a popular TV morning news anchor for over 10 years on NBC's Today, where she worked with Hugh Downs and later hosts Frank McGee and Jim Hartz. Walters later spent 25 years as co-host of ABC's newsmagazine 20/20. She was the first female co-anchor of network evening news, working with Harry Reasoner on the ABC Evening News and was later a correspondent for ABC World News Tonight (From Wikipedia.)

Book Reviews
A woman with an impeccable sense of timing…There will never be another television news career like this one.
Janet Maslin - New York Times


Breaking news: Barbara Walters wears fake eyelashes, is afraid to drive, gave up her black married lover to save her career (while his went down the tubes). These and other true confessions provide the tabloid interest through 600 pages of the network diva's new memoir, Audition. But it's her heartfelt candor that lifts this book above mere titillation. Finally we learn why Walters is so relentless. It's a question I've often pondered watching her on television after beginning my own TV news career 30 years ago. In this engaging and chatty look back at a life largely lived in public view, Walters provides the answer.
Kathleen Matthews - Washington Post


An unusually ambitious and successful book.... suffused with an emotional intensity…it belongs to a part of American culture that Walters helped invent.
The New Yorker


Audition is brutally honest, both about Walters and those she's worked with. Readers won't be left wondering what she thinks of anything, or anyone, for that matter.... It's a fascinating look at a woman who has lived a fascinating life.
Laura L. Hutchinson - Free Lance-Star


Although Walters writes, "It was not in my nature to be courageous, to be the first," her compulsively readable memoir proves otherwise. No one lasts on TV for more than 45 years without the ability to make viewers feel comfortable, and Walters's amiable persona perfectly translates to the page. She gives us an entertaining panorama of a full life lived and recounted with humor and bracing honesty. Walters is surprisingly candid: about her older sister's retardation, her father's suicide attempt, her midlife affairs (including ones with John Warner—before and after his marriage to Elizabeth Taylor—and a very married Edward Brooke, the first African-American elected to the U.S. Senate since Reconstruction), her daughter's troubled teen years and her acrimonious relationships with coanchors Frank McGee and Harry Reasoner. She vividly recounts her decision to leave NBC's Today Show after 14 years to become the first female nightly news coanchor, and tells of the firestorm of criticism she endured for accepting that pioneering position and its million-dollar salary. Alternating between tales of her personal struggles, professional achievements and insider anecdotes about the celebrities and world leaders she's interviewed, this mammoth memoir's energy never flags.
Publishers Weekly


(Audio version.) Listeners have two recordings of Walters's 580-page tell-all from which to choose. The abridged version is read by the media personality herself, and other than affording listeners her authentic voice, complete with her trademark lisp, this version is not worthwhile—lasting just six hours, it omits massive amounts of information; notably, Walters's affair with former senator Edward Brooke.In the unabridged version, Bernadette Dunne does a fine job as a surrogate for Walters. The quality of both versions is excellent, and both are appropriate for audio and biography collections in all types of libraries.
Library Journal


and regret are as much the subjects here as religious controversy. Ruefully humorous and tenderly understanding.
Kirkus Reviews

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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