The only thing that could have been better than Sam Wasson's
page-turning, comprehensively rendered biography of
choreographer-director Bob Fosse would have been Fosse's own
memoir.  And one imagines that Fosse, had he not died suddenly
of a heart attack at age 60 in 1987, would have loved the chance
to unfurl his storytelling chops given how much he coveted and
envied literary talent.  But then, even close friends of Fosse's
such as screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky and novelist E.L. Doctorow
would have found it challenging to create a character as vivid,
complex, charming, magnetic and exasperating as this lithe,
limber fellow with big ideas and bigger dreams.  At nearly 600
pages, Fosse is certainly big, if not lithe. And Wasson's own
narrative style has a jazzy, discursive and relentless energy
well aligned with its subject.  Born in Chicago, Robert Louis
Fosse grew up during the Depression suffering from both asthma
and epilepsy, yet was nonetheless a dance prodigy who started
taking hoofing lessons at age 9