The inimitable Pearl is in rare form in TALKING TO MYSELF. This is a free-swinging book that follows literally its title though it will be an unusual reader who doesn't decide pretty soon that Miss Bailey is talking to him too. Crammed with anecdotes and with highly independent opinions about contemporary life, this book at first seems, however lively, to have little unity. But the further one reads, the clearer it becomes that there is a hidden order to the whole work. Miss Bailey discusses with obvious delight, sometimes with passion and sometimes with humor, the state of the nation, the American family, the conflict between the generations, the entertainment world and the perils of fame,and the perennial themes of birth and love and hate and death. She is often uproariously funny, she is full of compassion, and at times strikes profoundly into the human soul....
