As Stein’s people rummage through their faulty memories, they talk the way human beings actually talk — heavy on score-settling, gossip and hearsay. It’s at times almost unbelievable what they are willing to say ... Perhaps the most surprising thing that emerges from this riveting book is a glimpse of what seems like deep truth.
Stein's method is to construct a narrative entirely from oral interviews, an approach that lends the book a kind of Rashomon quality: The subjects are viewed from various angles by those who either knew them intimately or are well equipped to comment on their lives. It's like being at an insider's cocktail party where the most delicious gossip about the rich and powerful is being dished by smart people, such as Gore Vidal, Joan Didion, Arthur Miller and Dennis Hopper. The result is a mesmerizing book.
Despite its provenance, West of Eden is strangely unfocused, especially when compared with Ms. Stein’s indelible Edie ... [it] includes only a terse set of biographical notes, which is an extreme annoyance; it needed the full biographies, genealogical charts and abundant illustrations that were so necessary to Edie.”
...[a] hellaciously entertaining, merciless, and vividly executed oral history of four of Los Angeles’s wealthy, demented, and world-changing families, and one simply wealthy and demented one.
...the brief notes often give only scant information, and we want to know more about the speaker. Also, dating the quotes would have put them in historical context. Missing, too, is the elegant hand of the late George Plimpton, who artfully edited Stein’s books about Edie Sedgwick and Robert Kennedy.
It is hard to overstate the pleasure of reading West of Eden, which has all the best qualities of a Hollywood memoir. I kept the book in my bag and snuck away with it during breaks from jury duty; it was my constant companion and the source of most of my conversation during the week that I read it.
[Stein's] childhood memories lend the book’s more personal passages their wryly addictive flavor. The resulting cumulative portrait is that of a lost, glittering never-never land of day hats, 'afternoon jewels,' and all-night parties, set in Beverly Hills mansions straight out of a studio set designer’s fever dream...
Descendants and friends, along with famous folks like Joan Didion, Lauren Bacall, and Frank Gehry, reminisce about the Dohenys—a stupendously rich oil clan—and the famous Warner family, giving the book a deliciously gossipy feel. It’s less clear why Stein included the final three chapters on Jane Garland, Jennifer Jones, and her own family, the Steins, none of whom had the same cultural impact. Still, there’s nothing like delighting in others’ misery.
