Julie Gilbert

Writers at Work

My guest on this episode of Writers at Work is Julie Gilbert, author of GIANT LOVE: EDNA FERBER, HER BEST-SELLING NOVEL OF TEXAS, AND THE MAKING OF A CLASSIC AMERICAN FILM. Julie brings a special insight into her latest work. She is the great niece of Edna Ferber, author of the novel that was the Source for the 1956 George Stevens film starring James Dean, Rock Hudson and Elizabeth Taylor.

She is also the author of the biography of FERBER: EDNA FERBER AND HER CIRCLE published in 1976. That book was nominated for National Book Critics Circle Award and her OPPOSITE ATTRACTION: THE LIVES OF ERICH MARIA REMARQUE AND PAULETTE GODDARD was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. The New York Times praised GIANT LOVE as a tender and patient homage to a titan of American letters who has fallen most grievously out of fashion.

That's so, but there's more. I found it a delight. Dishy, deeply affectionate, yet instructive, as Julie tells us tales of the film stars and how the picture came to be made. But more so how Ferber came to write a sprawling novel that entertained while it revealed the schisms in Texas society.

Julie quotes Ferber's assessment of Texas as she did her initial research in and out of Texas towns, talking to scores of Texas people, amazed by their viewpoint, their braggadocio, their seeming unawareness of the world outside their own vast commonwealth, beguiled by their easy charm, grateful for their spontaneous hospitality, touched by their lavish giving of time, energy, thought to a tourist stranger. All that majesty of Texas was captured by Ferber in GIANT and by Stevens in his film version. Julie Gilbert tells us how in a beautifully crafted book that's part biography, part memoir and a full pleasure.