Solid Ivory

Memoirs

By: James Ivory, Peter Cameron - editor

Narrated by: James Ivory

In Solid Ivory, a carefully crafted mosaic of memories, portraits, and reflections, the Academy Award-winning filmmaker James Ivory, a partner in the legendary Merchant Ivory Productions and the director of A Room with a View, Howards End, Maurice, and The Remains of the Day, tells stories from his remarkable life and career as one of the most influential directors of his time. At times, he touches on his love affairs, looking back coolly and with unexpected frankness.

From first meeting his collaborator and life partner, Ismail Merchant, at the Indian Consulate in New York to winning an Academy Award at age 89 for Call Me by Your Name; from seeing his first film at age five in Klamath Falls, Oregon, to memories of Satyajit Ray, Jean Renoir, the New Yorker magazine's film critic Pauline Kael (his longtime enemy), Vanessa Redgrave, J. D. Salinger, George Cukor, Kenneth Clark, Bruce Chatwin, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, and Merchant - Ivory writes with invariable fluency, wit, and perception about what made him who he is and how he made the movies for which he is known and loved.

Solid Ivory, edited by Peter Cameron, is an utterly winning portrait of an extraordinary life told by an unmatched storyteller.

©2021 James Ivory (P)2021 Tantor

Wonderful!

Love hearing Mr. Ivory tell his own story! So relaxing on my daily commute! Thanks.

A director’s eye gives us too much detail

Because James Ivory is the director of some wonderful movies like "A Room With a View", "Maurice", "Howard’s End" and more, I was hoping to learn about the making of these films. Or at least some fun stories about the famous people he and his partner Ismail Merchant knew over their forty four year relationship. Instead we get for about half the memoir, Ivory's early life growing up in a small town in Oregon. We hear about his parents, family, friends, classes at school and teachers along with the parties he was was invited to and those he wasn’t. Lots about boys he liked and might have liked him back. As he moves on to university we hear more about boys he likes and how some of them he was almost having sex with. Finally after Ivory goes into the army and to Europe do we get descriptions of men he does have sex with. He also decides to become a film maker. So we kinda learn how he started making movies along with the guys he has having sex with. After a while, between the penises, parties and premiers I was tuning out perking up when he talked about making certain films like "The Bostonians" starring Vanessa Redgrave. That was few and far apart.
In this book, Ivory has the ability to make even the most interesting people sound mundane. A story about JD Salinger goes nowhere along with eccentrics like Maria St. Just the hated literary executive of Tennessee Williams estate.
Part of the problem is also Mr Ivory was 93 when he recorded this book and he has an old man's voice. I know that this sounds callous but our voices do change as we age (I’m 71) so it’s very disconcerting to hear someone that old talking about his youthful adventures in such raspy monotone voice. Others might disagree but that’s how this came across to me.

What a bore, thought it would be about movies

Awful , it was about people no one knows. Very judgemental . I thought it would be about the wonderful movies that he and Mr. Merchant created.

A bit dull

I was disappointed in this book. I thought it would be more interesting but it was a bit boring. His narration didn’t help.