“Over 20 films. Over 40 years. What collaboration in any medium has lasted so long, been so successful, so personal, so happy? James Ivory met Ismail Merchant (in 1961) and Ruth Prawer Jhabvala (in 1962), and one of the earliest, most durable, most independent of independent film families came to life. The widest varieties of stories (neorealist memoirs, literary adaptations, avant garde experiments) and settings (England, France, Italy, India, the Americas North and South); the broadest collection of superb actors and artists (Vanessa Redgrave, Paul Newman, Anthony Hopkins, Shashi Kapoor, Maggie Smith, Subrata Mitra!). Read this wonderfully entertaining book: a unique story of a unique life in the world of world cinema.”
—Wes Anderson, Academy Award-winning filmmaker
In Solid Ivory, which FSG is very excited to publish on November 2, the Academy Award–winning filmmaker James Ivory, a partner in the legendary Merchant Ivory Productions and director of A Room with a View, Howards End, Maurice, and The Remains of the Day, tells stories from the remarkable life and career of one of the most influential directors of his time in a carefully crafted mosaic of memories, portraits, and reflections. At times, they touch on his love affairs as he looks back with unexpected frankness.
From first meeting his longtime collaborator and life partner Ismail Merchant at the Indian Consulate in New York to winning an Academy Award at eighty-nine for Call Me by Your Name; from seeing his first film at five in Klamath Falls, Oregon, to memories of Satyajit Ray, Federico Fellini, Vanessa Redgrave, George Cukor, Kenneth Clark, Bruce Chatwin, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, and Ismail 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.
James Ivory is an Academy Award–winning director, producer, and screenwriter. His directorial work includes A Room with a View, Howards End, and The Remains of the Day, for each of which he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director. In 2017, he won an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for Call Me by Your Name. He has also won three BAFTA Awards, a Directors Guild of America Lifetime Achievement Award, and a Writers Guild of America Award, among many other honors.
Peter Cameron’s novels include What Happens at Night, Coral Glynn, Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You, and The City of Your Final Destination. He is also the author of three collections of short fiction, and more than ten of his stories have been published in The New Yorker. He has taught writing at Sarah Lawrence College, Yale University, and Columbia University.