Hello Goodbye Hello: A Circle of 101 Remarkable Meetings

Hello Goodbye Hello is a daisy chain of 101 fascinating true encounters, a book that has been hailed by reviewers in London as “howlingly funny” (The Spectator), “original and a complete delight” (The Sunday Times), and “rich and hugely enjoyable” (The Guardian). Or, as the London Evening Standard put it, “the truth and nothing but the plain, bonkers, howling truth . . . It is partly a huge karmic parlour game, partly a dance to the music of chaos—and only the genius of Craig Brown could have produced it.” Who could imagine such unlikely—but true— encounters as these:

Martha Graham meets Madonna

Igor Stravinsky meets Walt Disney

Frank Lloyd Wright meets Marilyn Monroe

Marilyn Monroe meets Nikita Khrushchev

President Richard Nixon meets Elvis Presley

Harpo Marx meets George Bernard Shaw

Cecil Beaton meets Mick Jagger

Salvador Dali meets Sigmund Freud

Groucho Marx meets T.S. Eliot

Brilliant in conception, Hello Goodbye Hello shows how the celebrated and gifted—like the rest of us— got along famously or disastrously or indifferently with one another, but, thanks to Craig Brown, always to our amusement and entertainment.

From an opening story in which Adolf Hitler survives being knocked down by a careless English driver in 1931 to the Duchess of Windsor’s meeting with the FÜhrer over tea, and 99 others in between, Hello Goodbye Hello is the perfect example that truth is stranger than fiction (and infinitely more enjoyable).

"In this expansive game of 'six degrees,' British humorist Brown (The Lost Diaries) chronicles a loop of 101 remarkable celebrity meetings beginning and ending with Adolf Hitler. From the unexpected (Helen Keller and Martha Graham) to the legendary (Elvis Presley and Paul McCartney) or the strangely fitting (Groucho Marx and Charlie Chaplin), the stories unfold as succinct anecdotes, many notable for their bizarre context. Dozens of chance encounters, fast friendships, and dire rivalries are recounted in an informal yet informative manner, tying together oft-disparate threads of the 20th century through some of its most distinguished participants. With each story leading to the next (Leonard Cohen shares an elevator with Janis Joplin, who befriends Patti Smith, who had recently encountered Allen Ginsberg, and so on) it's easy to see this as popcorn reading, but it's impossible to stop with just one story. Brown also structures his gimmick by limiting each story to 1,001 words, though footnotes aplenty add more spice to the mix. Given the author's origins, it's not surprising there's a mild bias toward European notables — some of whom might not be familiar to American audiences — however, no character is too odd nor any encounter too trivial to be included. Entertaining, enlightening, shameless, and humorous: this collection sheds light on the life and times of some strange, wonderful, and notorious personalities. Agent: Zoë Pagnamenta, Zoe Pagnamenta Agency. (Aug)" Publishers Weekly Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Craig Brown writes the Private Eye celebrity diary as well as a twice-weekly column for the Daily Mail (London) and reviews books for Mail on Sunday. He was the host of This Is Craig Brown on BBC Radio 4. Mr. Brown lives in London.