In His Brother's Shadow: The Life of Thomas Ward Custer Book

Profoundly boring autobiography. While dedicating more than half of the book's space to flattering pictures of himself, Liberace does write about all kinds of personal things: his many extravagant performances, his love for food and cooking, his glitzy rhinestone-studded costumes, his many kitschy and artsy possessions, his dogs, his maids, his famous friends and acquainted fellow celebrities, his expensive collection of real estate.

But as he chitchats a blue streak about all his circumstantial and materialistic pomp and splendor, he almost altogether leaves unaddressed who he really is: the man giving rise to the entertainer and the existential forces and events that came to shape his offstage unfeigned character. Sharply contrasting his devotion to extensively describe the polished-up external crowd-pleasing shell that is expressly meant to provoke ooh!'s and aah!'s, he all but neglects delving into the man he is on the inside.

Although he promises to reveal the truth as to his person, there is, for example, not even a remote hint of his painfully obvious homosexuality and his string of gay lovers. In fact, he implicitly denies his sexual preference out of shame by covering it up with a sham story on how he lost his cherry to a woman named Miss Bea Haven (!).

In short, Liberace tells you all about how he wants people to see him; the book is one big self-image promotion, one big celebration of self-idolatry. To find out who the real Liberace is, one has to consult the much more revealing unauthorized biography by Scott Thorson. Liberace's book--his last, before AIDS got the better of him--is all but existentially sterile.