Stephen Sondheim by Daniel Okrent review – a superb biography of the musical master

The literary world has been abuzz with Daniel Okrent’s biography of Stephen Sondheim. This book is a rich and detailed account of Sondheim’s life, revealing as much about the milieu of mid-20th-century New York as it does about its subject. What resonates most in this biography, however, is not just the story of Sondheim’s life but the corrosive environment in which he created his art.

This environment was marked by a toxic mix of ego, competitiveness, and cruelty. The letters exchanged between Arthur Laurents and Sondheim during their feud are a particularly stark reminder of this atmosphere. Sondheim delivers a vicious blow to Laurents’ fragile ego, a scene that echoes through the book as a reminder that genius often comes at a steep price.

Sondheim’s mother, Foxy, is a fascinating case study in how his environment shaped not just his art but himself. According to Okrent, Sondheim publicly disavowed her throughout his life, only to reveal through various biographers and memoirs that she was actually a deeply loving and supportive figure. This pattern repeats itself with Sondheim: the public persona is one of aloofness, even hostility; in private, he’s often surprisingly vulnerable.

This dichotomy raises questions about the nature of creativity itself. Does it require a certain level of cruelty – towards oneself or others? And if so, at what point does this become a liability rather than an asset? Sondheim’s body of work is marked by its complexity and nuance but also by a sense of detachment that can sometimes feel almost sadistic.

One possible interpretation of this dynamic is that it reflects the larger cultural context in which Sondheim was working. The 1950s and ’60s were a time of great upheaval in America, with the rise of Abstract Expressionism and the Beats representing two poles of artistic expression. Sondheim’s music often occupies a liminal space between these two – as both a product of high-cultural mainstream (in its use of complex harmonies and lyrical sophistication) and yet also a rejection of it (in its willingness to confront darker aspects of human nature).

The film industry, with its grueling production schedules and cutthroat competition for prestige projects, is a prime example of how this dynamic plays out in other artistic fields. So too is the world of professional sports, where pressure to perform can be almost overwhelming.

And yet it’s precisely this kind of environment that often yields some of our most innovative art – music, literature, or otherwise. Sondheim himself was acutely aware of the role that competition and ego played in his own creative process. “You’re just good enough to know you’re mediocre,” he wrote to Arthur Laurents during their feud – a line that’s both devastating and strangely liberating.

Okrent’s biography raises more questions than it answers about Sondheim’s life and work, but it’s this very complexity – this messy, humanizing quality – that makes his story so compelling in the first place.