Dolores McElroy in the Los Angeles Review of Books:
When I read that Barbra Streisand’s memoir, My Name Is Barbra (2023), would be 970 pages long, a devilish chuckle bubbled up from deep within me. There was something ecstatic about this moment—How pharaonic the ambition! What an absolute thrill that a woman famous for show business—and not, say, the Nobel Peace Prize—believes her life story worthy of such an expansive word count. I am grateful that someone, somewhere, isn’t endlessly struggling to feign correct attitudes, that someone believes there is time and space to read 970 pages about the life and times of Barbra Streisand, one of those someones being Barbra Streisand.
Streisand knows that there is something socially “tone deaf” about her. She talks about this at length in her book. Throughout her life, she just can’t seem to tell the public what they want to hear. Early on, the press would ask if she was thrilled with her success, implicitly demanding a “golly gee whiz, I sure am” response. She just couldn’t give it.
More here.