WALKING WITH GARBO: Conversations and Recollections ...

WALKING WITH GARBO: Conversations and Recollections by Raymond Daum, edited and annotated by Vance Muse (HarperPerennial: $13; 224 pp . , illustrated). Daum befriended the reclusive film star during the last years of her life, and spent hours walking the streets of Manhattan with her. He combines his notes from their conversations with an adoring show-biz biography that praises her beauty, talent, stardom, etc. But despite the veritable blizzard of superlatives, Garbo emerges as a shallow, cold, self-absorbed woman of no particular intellect or interests. Ironically, Daum’s dithyrambic prose suggests that even ardent fans would have been happy to grant Garbo’s wish “to be alone.”