Certain individuals often, though not always, of course, artists lead lives of such jaw dropping intensity that their autobiographies would read like works of fiction, except that few fiction writers would dare create such unlikely sequences of events.
Such a one, if she didn't make up everything in this book, was Isadora Duncan. A childhood poverty so miserable it almost defies description "for a week we lived on those tomatoes, without bread or salt"
was followed in short order by her conquest of the highest society, including that of the Grand Duke Ferdinand in Vienna perhaps he was a bit different from other people, but what really sympathetic person is not a little mad?" She had two children by different men, neither of whom she would marry the children having subsequently drowned in the Seine she got herself pregnant by a young Italian sculptor, only to lose the baby at birth and then there was the dancing, for which iconoclastic is probably too small a word. But then most words are too small for Isadora Duncan. Autobiographies often fall into a pattern this one, like its subject, defies every pattern you can think of.
