So besides Mimi getting obedience training("That's a smart dog you've got there," said Howard,who has settled down the dogs of Sylvester Stallone and Gloria Vanderbilt, to name drop but a few) I have started a new novel and gotten new eyes. That is to say I had Lasik surgery, which, except for some hairy moments that felt like'A Clockwork Orange' without their playing Beethoven, seems to have gone well. So I can sit here in the kitchen where I work, and, without my glasses, see to shining sea, except that it is obscured by low-lying smog, these people in this most beautiful part of America if you like weather,continuing to foul their own nest, in addition to electing Arnold. To give you some idea of what it is like in Beverly Hills, the opthamologist who performed the surgery has his office in a building where as you waited for an elevator a TV above the elevator doors had running along the bottom of its screen news of Disney's merger with Pixar, besides stock quotations.
To begin on the unraveling of the mystery which cornerstones the novel, I must have some input from a real detective as to how they would proceed,so I tried the LAPD who said I would have to audition, send an outline of the plot and see if anyone would be interested. But it is too good a plot to give to the LAPD, all of whom doubtless have screenplays or series in their sock drawer waiting only for the right arrest to negotiate a deal with a producer/director/actor/murderer. So instead, I called the Beverly Hills police, and connected with Detective Tad Nelson("Is that his screen name?" my darling friend Lisa asked) who said he would be delighted to meet with me but needed the okay of his lieutenant. I left a very long voicemail on the Lieutenant's line, explaining the difference between a "book,' as Tad told him it was, and a "novel," which is FICTION I said several times very clearly, knowing how the lines are blurred in the minds of the public even after Lasik surgery, confused even further by the beloathed James Frey, and assured the Lieutentant. I would reveal nothing of Beverly Hills police secrets, or, in fact, reality, that the crime doesn't even take place in Beverly Hills. So I am waiting to hear from him, and, while waiting, went for a check with my eye doctor and rode in the elevator with policeman Ross Sharp(his screen name?) who said that Tad was a great guy. We called him then on the cop's cell, had a very pleasant chat, and i am still waiting.
Meanwhile various buddies in Paris are helping me with my research there, as one of my characters was born in Paris. Walter Wells, my most esteemed and lovely editor friend who recently headed the Herald Tribune has done me the service of fictionally hiring her and telling me what her job would be but has cautioned me against making her too nubile lest she be cut off at the pass by an incredibly competetive bitch who works there in reallife. Oh, I do love it when my favorite pals are not only helpful but funny, which is why, no doubt, they are my favorite pals.
So Mimi can Sit, Stay, Come, Back off(that's not one of his regular commands but i have incorporated it into our lives together.) And I can see! I can see! So I am hopeful that starting tomorrow I will be working full time on my book, so don't worry if you don't hear from me.
The doctor who performed the surgery drove me home in my temporary fuzz last night, as his son goes to Beverly High, which is directly opposite the apartment building where i'm staying. He was picking up his son, so was glad to do it, at no inconvenience, and said to me today "What are the odds on that, that you would be living exactly where I pick up my son?"and suggested I buy a raffle ticket. I'd rather just write a book and go for a jackpot. BUT!!!! Saturday night at midnight is the Chinese Lunar New Year, so turn on all your lights and open all your windows and doors so Luck can find you this year of the Dog,which I am, what are you? And maybe the lights will be out where Karl Rove lives, and it'll end for these jokers,finally.
Thursday, January 26, 2006
Thursday, January 12, 2006
A Million Little Feces
(Author's Note: I am turning over this space, and my usual website, www.reportfromthefront.com, to Mimi, my Bichon Frise, who has a confession to make.)
James Frey was my lover. For those of you who live in Outer Mongolia, and so have never seen Oprah, and so don'tknow who he is, or Larry King(though he is probably available via CNN Outer Mongolia, there being few real hiding places left in this world) you may have missed the brouhaha over Frey's so-called memoir, which having sold three million copies and rising because of the esteemed Oprah's oohing and aahing over its brutal honesty, was revealed in the past few days to be in large part fabricated. Well, let me start by saying he is a true son-of-a-bitch, which in some parts of the doggy-run we call life, might be construed as a tough-guy compliment. But now that he is allegedly telling some of what was allegedly tell-all, let me tell you about the all about the part that he isn't telling, that they didn't even know about on The Smoking Gun. The tragic crack-addicted blonde who suicided before he could get there in time to save her was in fact, me. And I am neither blonde nor crack-addicted nor dead. I am,in fact, white as the driven snow when you're not snorting it. It was my intention never to reveal the truth, but having sat through Frey's Alito-like, composed fielding of questions last night with the Suspendered One, something rose up in me past Rage, that I will refer to as The Growl.
I will begin,as memoirs of abuse must, with what I suffered in Puppyhood.
Happy dogs are all alike. Every unhappy hound has a much more interesting tail to tell. Though it would doubtless be more saleable to say I came from a deprived beginning, I did, in fact, come from a high-line puppy mill that sold to a pet store on New York's fashionable East Side, where I was purchased by a self-absorbed writer, or at least she seemed self-absorbed to me until I met James Frey. He was sitting on a bench in Central Park donated by Leona Helmsley, pretending to be homeless, and trying to figure out how he could get on Oprah. Though it was early in the morning, he had a half-drunk beer in the hand he wasn't writing with, which was later to appear in his book as absinthe. Seeing that my owner was distracted, as she usually is by Nature, her own and that which is around her, he slipped me what remained of his beer, unloosed my leash, slid me into the zippered front of his jogging suit, and sped away in his Nikes, which were later to be depicted as bare feet.
Then he took me back to his loft in the Meat-Packing district, and packed his own meat. The cur. That was the first time I felt The Growl. Right about then, for the first time facing up to his own bestiality, he called his upper-middle class parents and told them he was committing suicide by slashing his wrists in a warm bath. They called 911 but when the police and the ambulance got there he had been unable to find a razor, so they came upon him in the tub playing filthy games with me. They urged him to go to a shrink, but he kicked them in the balls according to that chapter of his book. What he really did was ask them for a towel, with which he dried me before committing another lewd act. The Growl. By then it was afternoon, so he watched Oprah.
I will not dirty up your day or sully mine own hairy memories since I am still in recovery by telling you what else he did to me in the time before my Rightful(or as she has just come back from The Nation Cruise, Leftful) owner found me, but let me assure you it was not pleasant unless you are a masochist and sick as a dog. Maybe if he had given the sordid details of that to Nan Talese she would have given him a contract right away(He could have called it The Story of 'M') instead of making him go away and come back with a supposed memoir. Although probably it would have gone down better with Judith Regan. Surely he would not have dared tell that Truth to Oprah, since she is allegedly a dog-lover, though God knows, and I do believe in God having read both St. Augustine and Maya Angelou, what that phrase would mean exactly today.
But as for me, I am a Survivor, coming from a breed that survived the French-- Marie Antoinette fashioned her wig after her Bichon's hairdo, so when the French offed with her head they didn't want to be reminded and so started offing with their heads all the Bichons, which were rescued by the Italians who taught us how to dance on our hind legs-- something Frey also made me do during The Act(Growl) but I don't want to think about that anymore. Fortunately I had one of those metal discs implanted between my shoulder blades so my owner was able to find me, and I was rescued while the Queen(Frey was also bi, no longer a sin of course, or even a crime though a passing reference to it did cause a new shade of pale to cross the alleged complexion of Alito) was in the parlor eating bread and honey and Frey was in the counting house counting all his money, and so was not paying attention, except to the bestseller list.
This is a true story, I swear by Cerberus. The movingly picaresque saga of my predecessor, a Yorkie named Happy, appeared in a limited edition called Happy at the Bel-Air. Happy himself, without ever having gone to rehab, actually appeared on Oprah, and the volume would have sold in the millions and he would have been immortal, except Oprah didn't show the book. The bitch.
James Frey was my lover. For those of you who live in Outer Mongolia, and so have never seen Oprah, and so don'tknow who he is, or Larry King(though he is probably available via CNN Outer Mongolia, there being few real hiding places left in this world) you may have missed the brouhaha over Frey's so-called memoir, which having sold three million copies and rising because of the esteemed Oprah's oohing and aahing over its brutal honesty, was revealed in the past few days to be in large part fabricated. Well, let me start by saying he is a true son-of-a-bitch, which in some parts of the doggy-run we call life, might be construed as a tough-guy compliment. But now that he is allegedly telling some of what was allegedly tell-all, let me tell you about the all about the part that he isn't telling, that they didn't even know about on The Smoking Gun. The tragic crack-addicted blonde who suicided before he could get there in time to save her was in fact, me. And I am neither blonde nor crack-addicted nor dead. I am,in fact, white as the driven snow when you're not snorting it. It was my intention never to reveal the truth, but having sat through Frey's Alito-like, composed fielding of questions last night with the Suspendered One, something rose up in me past Rage, that I will refer to as The Growl.
I will begin,as memoirs of abuse must, with what I suffered in Puppyhood.
Happy dogs are all alike. Every unhappy hound has a much more interesting tail to tell. Though it would doubtless be more saleable to say I came from a deprived beginning, I did, in fact, come from a high-line puppy mill that sold to a pet store on New York's fashionable East Side, where I was purchased by a self-absorbed writer, or at least she seemed self-absorbed to me until I met James Frey. He was sitting on a bench in Central Park donated by Leona Helmsley, pretending to be homeless, and trying to figure out how he could get on Oprah. Though it was early in the morning, he had a half-drunk beer in the hand he wasn't writing with, which was later to appear in his book as absinthe. Seeing that my owner was distracted, as she usually is by Nature, her own and that which is around her, he slipped me what remained of his beer, unloosed my leash, slid me into the zippered front of his jogging suit, and sped away in his Nikes, which were later to be depicted as bare feet.
Then he took me back to his loft in the Meat-Packing district, and packed his own meat. The cur. That was the first time I felt The Growl. Right about then, for the first time facing up to his own bestiality, he called his upper-middle class parents and told them he was committing suicide by slashing his wrists in a warm bath. They called 911 but when the police and the ambulance got there he had been unable to find a razor, so they came upon him in the tub playing filthy games with me. They urged him to go to a shrink, but he kicked them in the balls according to that chapter of his book. What he really did was ask them for a towel, with which he dried me before committing another lewd act. The Growl. By then it was afternoon, so he watched Oprah.
I will not dirty up your day or sully mine own hairy memories since I am still in recovery by telling you what else he did to me in the time before my Rightful(or as she has just come back from The Nation Cruise, Leftful) owner found me, but let me assure you it was not pleasant unless you are a masochist and sick as a dog. Maybe if he had given the sordid details of that to Nan Talese she would have given him a contract right away(He could have called it The Story of 'M') instead of making him go away and come back with a supposed memoir. Although probably it would have gone down better with Judith Regan. Surely he would not have dared tell that Truth to Oprah, since she is allegedly a dog-lover, though God knows, and I do believe in God having read both St. Augustine and Maya Angelou, what that phrase would mean exactly today.
But as for me, I am a Survivor, coming from a breed that survived the French-- Marie Antoinette fashioned her wig after her Bichon's hairdo, so when the French offed with her head they didn't want to be reminded and so started offing with their heads all the Bichons, which were rescued by the Italians who taught us how to dance on our hind legs-- something Frey also made me do during The Act(Growl) but I don't want to think about that anymore. Fortunately I had one of those metal discs implanted between my shoulder blades so my owner was able to find me, and I was rescued while the Queen(Frey was also bi, no longer a sin of course, or even a crime though a passing reference to it did cause a new shade of pale to cross the alleged complexion of Alito) was in the parlor eating bread and honey and Frey was in the counting house counting all his money, and so was not paying attention, except to the bestseller list.
This is a true story, I swear by Cerberus. The movingly picaresque saga of my predecessor, a Yorkie named Happy, appeared in a limited edition called Happy at the Bel-Air. Happy himself, without ever having gone to rehab, actually appeared on Oprah, and the volume would have sold in the millions and he would have been immortal, except Oprah didn't show the book. The bitch.
Saturday, January 07, 2006
Appointment in Samarra
So being geared up, nearly, to become absorbed in my shallowest, least profound work, a friend having advised me that he was tired of my not being a hit, as I had to admit I was, too, I left the chill of New York winter to return to Hollywood, as it will always be known no matter how many interestingly provincial names they try to give various parts(Beverly Hills, Westwood, and for the arch set, San Marino.) My plan: a program of swimming each morning at dawn as I had done in Bali, then to absorb myself in a day's work well done no matter how commercially shoddy the outcome. But as with the ancient story and John O'Hara, aft ganging aglee, I was felled with a terrible cold I might never have caught in NY, the pool is unheated, and I am, for the first time in recent memory, creatively paralyzed.
My wheezing is exacerbated by the realization that one cannot go on forever beginning. Ah but the aforesaid was writ yesterday, before the miracle inhalant that costs about $20 a pop so I have no choice but to get my breath and innocence back.
Said medication was bought at my home away from home the Beverly Glen Pharmacy, atop the center near the place I once had my abode, next to the Delicatessen where, this being star-studded even when stars fade or are dark, Mort Sahl was lunching with Bobby Blake. Mort is an old pal, and we have the same birthday. All the same I did not go inside to say hello as I was saddened to note that Blake looks better than Mort does, proof that being a murderer sits easier on the spirit in this town than having a career go awry.
I am staying at the apartment of a friend just across from Beverly Hills High School,so all yesterday I could hear band practice, a lot of drums, and last night they had a soccer game. Waiting at the curb in the darkness was a little van, not a third the size of the ones that sell coffee and burritos to constrcution workers on the constantly being redone mansions in Bel-Air in the early mornings. Mimi and I,on our peregrinations, went over to explore, and inside was a little man named Abbi, who said he was from New York and before that Persia, emphasizing that that had never been Iraq. His mere presence in his van was something of a charming miracle, as I am surprised that the current crop at the high school play that kind of night game as they are in large part of Iranian descent, the fall of the Shah having resulted in a real estate boom to Beverly Hills, as his entire entourage seemed to have relocated in the flats. The graffitti on the outside wall of the gym still reads 'Beverly Hills Normans,' the team's moniker,though I doubt those were the original invaders of Persia. But the rather tall and well-built boys all came to the truck afterwards to buy ice cream-- they don't care about low calorie, Abbi says. Abbi also works the temple on Friday nights, where they like what he has in the truck because it is kosher, which he defines as 'no pork in the Good Humours'. Abbie owns two high rises in Westwood but as he has no children and is divorced he enjoys the company, so has the truck.
I am still sort of waiting for my mental ship to come in, as I had been well so long i'd forgotten how debilitating it is to be sick. But I am ever more conscious of time. Rona Jaffe died, more or less a contemporary. She had the first big hit of the New York women of whom I was never really one but my mother wanted me to be. My mother, whom those of you who knew her or knew her story, was a party crasher, had a sense of cosmic mischief, and was somewhat light-fingered. She went to the Harwyn, I think it was,in the days when people still danced, and retrieved a charm bracelet with a flat round disc that had fallen to the dance floor off the wrist of Rona Jaffe's mother. She had it inscribed 'Ladies-in-Waiting', my novel that was coming out at the time, and gave it to me as a publication gift, imagining it had the properties of some kind of naughty magic amulet, that would give the book the success of 'The Best of Everything,' and make her a bigger mother than Rona's. Many years later when I moved back to New York the first time in my quest for camaraderie I met and became part of a group organized by Karen Sperling of bright(we still were) career women who continued to believe there was the hope of connecting with a man, and among them was Rona. Some of these women had altars in their apartments, but the more industrious among us met regularly in smart little boites in untapped locales, a sort of early, Hamisch version of Sex and the City. Coming back in a cab from one of those forays with Rona, whom I now considered a pal,I told her the story about my mother, who, like hers, had died. Two days later it appeared in The New York Observer. I never spoke to her again and was pleased to see,on a later occasion, that her hair was thinning. But I am sorry she died.
Bob Gottlieb, who is usually described as the best editor around though I think it was Bob Gutwillig said, in her obituary, that her best book was 'Mr.Right is Dead.' Well, maybe now she'll find him.
My wheezing is exacerbated by the realization that one cannot go on forever beginning. Ah but the aforesaid was writ yesterday, before the miracle inhalant that costs about $20 a pop so I have no choice but to get my breath and innocence back.
Said medication was bought at my home away from home the Beverly Glen Pharmacy, atop the center near the place I once had my abode, next to the Delicatessen where, this being star-studded even when stars fade or are dark, Mort Sahl was lunching with Bobby Blake. Mort is an old pal, and we have the same birthday. All the same I did not go inside to say hello as I was saddened to note that Blake looks better than Mort does, proof that being a murderer sits easier on the spirit in this town than having a career go awry.
I am staying at the apartment of a friend just across from Beverly Hills High School,so all yesterday I could hear band practice, a lot of drums, and last night they had a soccer game. Waiting at the curb in the darkness was a little van, not a third the size of the ones that sell coffee and burritos to constrcution workers on the constantly being redone mansions in Bel-Air in the early mornings. Mimi and I,on our peregrinations, went over to explore, and inside was a little man named Abbi, who said he was from New York and before that Persia, emphasizing that that had never been Iraq. His mere presence in his van was something of a charming miracle, as I am surprised that the current crop at the high school play that kind of night game as they are in large part of Iranian descent, the fall of the Shah having resulted in a real estate boom to Beverly Hills, as his entire entourage seemed to have relocated in the flats. The graffitti on the outside wall of the gym still reads 'Beverly Hills Normans,' the team's moniker,though I doubt those were the original invaders of Persia. But the rather tall and well-built boys all came to the truck afterwards to buy ice cream-- they don't care about low calorie, Abbi says. Abbi also works the temple on Friday nights, where they like what he has in the truck because it is kosher, which he defines as 'no pork in the Good Humours'. Abbie owns two high rises in Westwood but as he has no children and is divorced he enjoys the company, so has the truck.
I am still sort of waiting for my mental ship to come in, as I had been well so long i'd forgotten how debilitating it is to be sick. But I am ever more conscious of time. Rona Jaffe died, more or less a contemporary. She had the first big hit of the New York women of whom I was never really one but my mother wanted me to be. My mother, whom those of you who knew her or knew her story, was a party crasher, had a sense of cosmic mischief, and was somewhat light-fingered. She went to the Harwyn, I think it was,in the days when people still danced, and retrieved a charm bracelet with a flat round disc that had fallen to the dance floor off the wrist of Rona Jaffe's mother. She had it inscribed 'Ladies-in-Waiting', my novel that was coming out at the time, and gave it to me as a publication gift, imagining it had the properties of some kind of naughty magic amulet, that would give the book the success of 'The Best of Everything,' and make her a bigger mother than Rona's. Many years later when I moved back to New York the first time in my quest for camaraderie I met and became part of a group organized by Karen Sperling of bright(we still were) career women who continued to believe there was the hope of connecting with a man, and among them was Rona. Some of these women had altars in their apartments, but the more industrious among us met regularly in smart little boites in untapped locales, a sort of early, Hamisch version of Sex and the City. Coming back in a cab from one of those forays with Rona, whom I now considered a pal,I told her the story about my mother, who, like hers, had died. Two days later it appeared in The New York Observer. I never spoke to her again and was pleased to see,on a later occasion, that her hair was thinning. But I am sorry she died.
Bob Gottlieb, who is usually described as the best editor around though I think it was Bob Gutwillig said, in her obituary, that her best book was 'Mr.Right is Dead.' Well, maybe now she'll find him.
Tuesday, December 27, 2005
Wherever You Go, There You Are
So I have left the cold, weatherwise and personal,of New York to return for a while to LA, where I know to expect emptiness. On the way out I flew Jet Blue and tuned to the Fox Movie Channel which back-to-back showed first Carousel, and then The King and I. So I had a coast-to-coast weep, for the beauty of the songs, for the death of the American musical as we knew it, including mine own, which I understand now I must give up on, seeing what's happened on Broadway. Landing in a fog, the weather's, not mine, I drove North with a quiet ferocity, since my assignment for Christmas dinner with friends was Cranuberry Much, something I learned to make in a cooking course in DC during the Carter administration, which included a Thanksgiving dinner with grits. But the stores were all closed, so I couldn't buy cranberries, and Ralph's, which was open, closed its doors just as I pulled up. I pleaded, but they said their cash register was broken, so so was that bubble.
Christmas Day I joined my wonderful friends who had exiled me last summer because of the Reports, Republicans who wrote me they were inflamatory with one 'm' and I didn't correct the spelling. But life is short and growing shorter, and the woman, my best friend at Bryn Mawr, had a health crisis so we healed it, and I went to their daughter's Christmas as I had last year, when the husband, Rummy's good right arm, raised his glass to the Republic and to those who had fallen in her defense and I gagged visibly and asked some searing questions, but this year kept my mouth shut. That discretion did not extend to the gift I received from their beautiful child, whom I love, but gave me a poetry book by Maya Angelou with whom I have a great deal of history and know how full of merde she is, although no longer in Paris. God Bless America, truly the land of opportunity especially if you are revered by Oprah.
Mimi was wearing her fur collar from her godmother who espouses simplicity but apparently not in dogs, and was loved by all.We returned to the apartment rented from a friend I will not name as the joint is out of joint, as Shakespeare might have put it if he was a little less clear. I had planned to clear my own head/soul via a daily morning swim as I did last year in Bali, but of course the pool is not heated and it's cold here, though nowhere as cold as New York. I have to get a parking permit daily, as there's no room in her garage. The TV doesn't work, but last night my friend Joie came for dinner bought at Whole Foods which charged me $5.99 apiece for papayas that were supposed to be 2 for $2.99 but I caught them, (Whole in LA apparently doesn't mean what it does in the spiritual realm.) Joie figured out how to work the VCR and we found tapes of the great old series The Prisoner, with Patrick McGoohan, so after she left I watched the first episode. And I was young again, and Don was still alive, and the two of us enjoyed what was without question the most innovative and commanding show on TV. It was all shot in the village of Port Merrion, an actual place built by an inspired, apparently very rich lunatic in Wales, that I visited during my Oxford summer, after Don had died. I don't know how anyone can really live there.
Then the VCR stopped working, and there was nothing for it but to be with my own thoughts which boiled down to this, that i wrote on the top of The New York Times because I couldn't find a piece of paper: 'A Life well lived, with all its pain, loneliness, silences when you would have noise, and noise when you would have silence.'
Then I wrote "Life at base is a..." and then a word i cannot read. I have studied it for many an hour, but cannot make it out. I think it begins with a p, but cannot be sure because I scrawled it in the dark. Perhaps it will haunt me the rest of my life. Perhaps I had the answer to everything, the riddle of the Sphinx, the reason for it all. But if I did, it has eluded me, as, I suppose, all great answers to everything are meant to,
But I did manage to write in the book I finally found, a gift from Mimi's indulgent friend, something I can read:
The test here is to love life with all its difficulties, its irritations, its disappointments and challenges, its rude awakenings, and to feel absolute ecstasy in those rare moments when things go right.
Much love to all of you, and a better year to come.
Christmas Day I joined my wonderful friends who had exiled me last summer because of the Reports, Republicans who wrote me they were inflamatory with one 'm' and I didn't correct the spelling. But life is short and growing shorter, and the woman, my best friend at Bryn Mawr, had a health crisis so we healed it, and I went to their daughter's Christmas as I had last year, when the husband, Rummy's good right arm, raised his glass to the Republic and to those who had fallen in her defense and I gagged visibly and asked some searing questions, but this year kept my mouth shut. That discretion did not extend to the gift I received from their beautiful child, whom I love, but gave me a poetry book by Maya Angelou with whom I have a great deal of history and know how full of merde she is, although no longer in Paris. God Bless America, truly the land of opportunity especially if you are revered by Oprah.
Mimi was wearing her fur collar from her godmother who espouses simplicity but apparently not in dogs, and was loved by all.We returned to the apartment rented from a friend I will not name as the joint is out of joint, as Shakespeare might have put it if he was a little less clear. I had planned to clear my own head/soul via a daily morning swim as I did last year in Bali, but of course the pool is not heated and it's cold here, though nowhere as cold as New York. I have to get a parking permit daily, as there's no room in her garage. The TV doesn't work, but last night my friend Joie came for dinner bought at Whole Foods which charged me $5.99 apiece for papayas that were supposed to be 2 for $2.99 but I caught them, (Whole in LA apparently doesn't mean what it does in the spiritual realm.) Joie figured out how to work the VCR and we found tapes of the great old series The Prisoner, with Patrick McGoohan, so after she left I watched the first episode. And I was young again, and Don was still alive, and the two of us enjoyed what was without question the most innovative and commanding show on TV. It was all shot in the village of Port Merrion, an actual place built by an inspired, apparently very rich lunatic in Wales, that I visited during my Oxford summer, after Don had died. I don't know how anyone can really live there.
Then the VCR stopped working, and there was nothing for it but to be with my own thoughts which boiled down to this, that i wrote on the top of The New York Times because I couldn't find a piece of paper: 'A Life well lived, with all its pain, loneliness, silences when you would have noise, and noise when you would have silence.'
Then I wrote "Life at base is a..." and then a word i cannot read. I have studied it for many an hour, but cannot make it out. I think it begins with a p, but cannot be sure because I scrawled it in the dark. Perhaps it will haunt me the rest of my life. Perhaps I had the answer to everything, the riddle of the Sphinx, the reason for it all. But if I did, it has eluded me, as, I suppose, all great answers to everything are meant to,
But I did manage to write in the book I finally found, a gift from Mimi's indulgent friend, something I can read:
The test here is to love life with all its difficulties, its irritations, its disappointments and challenges, its rude awakenings, and to feel absolute ecstasy in those rare moments when things go right.
Much love to all of you, and a better year to come.
Monday, December 19, 2005
A Chip off the old Aunt
Unaccustomed as I am to public name-dropping, filled with loathing for the celebrity culture we have become, with Nick and Jessica on every newstand and who the fuck are they anyway and what have they done, by the way? the moment does come once in a while, where, in my serendiptious fashion, I cross paths with someone noted who is worth paying attention to. Thus it was that I went with my beloved friends, Joe and Shirley Wershba, great journalists and arguably even greater human beings who worked with EdwardR.Murrow and thus became characters in and consultants to Goodnight and Good Luck, to a screening of that remarkable movie at the Writer's Guild, with George Clooney and crew doing Q & A afterwards.
For those of you who have been victimized by these reports for many a year, you will remember that at the height of my frustration at not being able to get anyone to listen to my musical;('What are you doing writing music?' gravelled Jimmy Nederlander, 'You're a bookwriter!) I wandered into a grocery store in Beverly Hills during this selfsame season, my hissy fit intensified by the fact that there were no Christmas Carols anywhere, and heard them at last. Someone was singing along with the Muzak. Turning the corner I saw Rosemary Clooney, pushing her cart and singing 'Hark the Herald Angels Sing.' I went over and introduced myself to her, and said I wanted to talk to her about something. She said "Good." Then I said "I think God sent me in here," and she replied "I believe in that." So I told her about my musical,and a few days later she came to my house and I played the score for her. She laughed and she cried and said all the right things: "Usually when you have lyrics this good, you have to make musical sacrifices; but that isn't the case here," she soothed on. "This would be a great singing experience."
A while afterwards,I wrote her a letter asking if she would consider recording some of the songs for me. My lawyer negotiated with her manager, and she did them IN EXCHANGE FOR SANDWICHES FOR THE MUSICIANS. I capitalize that info for you to emphasize and make clear what an amazing soul she was, and what a generous heart. When she did a concert in San Francisco I went backstage, and she introduced me to her friends as :"One of the great songwriters of all time." There are certain phrases coming from certain people that should put your spirit to rest. I ought to think of that once in a while, when I grind my teeth.
Anyway, in the Q & A, wherein George was as quick and funny as he is great-looking and seeking to do more with his gifts than just be pretty, though that doesn't hurt,someone asked him if he was being audited, and he said "Not yet, but I did do Syriana so I may get an anal probe." Then someone asked why the jazz punctuating the music, and he said, smiling sweetly, "I had an aunt who sang a little jazz."
Cue. Shirley introduced me to him afterwards, and I gave him the CD of Rosie singing my songs, and said "This was a gift to me from your aunt who sang a little jazz, so I'm giving it as a gift to you." He was Adorable+, genuine and smart, and said to me at one point "You're lovely." Rest, rest, per-tur-bed spirit. I shall remember these things and add them all up and try to stop being an assholette about not being able to break into the light, since light comes sometimes in unexpected ways, and in his case pretty darling.
Yesterday I went to an off off off performance of a show by my one-time collaborator when I wrote my first musical, that was supposed to be produced by Kermit Bloomgarden, the great producer of his day which was in my true youth, except that he put all the money he had raised for our show into Mel Brooks' 'Nowhere to Go but Up,' which tanked, taking all our capital with it. Phil's show was especially sad because he was incredibly gifted and wrote many fine songs, especially the ones in our show, an adaptation of Mark Twain's 'Million Pound Note,' and had a couple of big hits, missing from yesterday's dirge-y salute to the Brill Building, where songwriters used to go to flog their tunes. Worst was the last before the intermission, The Highway of Life, about when you see someone with their thumb out pick them up because they may be your chum, with lyrics by my mentor and father-figure when I was a baby,Yip Harburg, who wrote the lyrics for Wizard of Oz, and what remains the #1 song in the history of American songs, 'Over the Rainbow.' There was never a better, wittier poet in songdom than Yip: "As coroner, I Vocifer,I thoroughly examined her,and she is not just merely dead, she's really most sincerely dead." But Yip had a heaviness in him (Brother, Can You Spare a Dime? the best depressed example) so someone needed to be around to feather him up, and poor Phil was clearly not the one to do it, at least not on that highway of life, to which a cast of grateful to be working performers did a step-crosstheankle-step, step crosstheankle step in funereal tempo as if, said my sister-in-law, Arline,'they were serious.' I hope if I live long enough to lose my sense of humor, someone kills me.
But on the way out I introduced Arline to Joe Franklin who was on local TV forever, and he remembered her brother, my husband, from when Don worked at WOR, and even knew how to spell his name,which thrilled her. So no experience is wasted except the one you waste.
And news of a different coin, Joel Iskowitz, the gifted artist who designed the new cover for The Motherland, my best novel which will shortly be re-issued and available on Amazon.com please God, has just had his coin design chosen for the platinum one to be released by the treasury in 2006, that depicts the legislative branch of government. His coin for 2008, depicting the judicial branch, will also be issued. He did not design one for 2007, the executive branch, "for reasons",he said, "that will be obvious."
For those of you who have been victimized by these reports for many a year, you will remember that at the height of my frustration at not being able to get anyone to listen to my musical;('What are you doing writing music?' gravelled Jimmy Nederlander, 'You're a bookwriter!) I wandered into a grocery store in Beverly Hills during this selfsame season, my hissy fit intensified by the fact that there were no Christmas Carols anywhere, and heard them at last. Someone was singing along with the Muzak. Turning the corner I saw Rosemary Clooney, pushing her cart and singing 'Hark the Herald Angels Sing.' I went over and introduced myself to her, and said I wanted to talk to her about something. She said "Good." Then I said "I think God sent me in here," and she replied "I believe in that." So I told her about my musical,and a few days later she came to my house and I played the score for her. She laughed and she cried and said all the right things: "Usually when you have lyrics this good, you have to make musical sacrifices; but that isn't the case here," she soothed on. "This would be a great singing experience."
A while afterwards,I wrote her a letter asking if she would consider recording some of the songs for me. My lawyer negotiated with her manager, and she did them IN EXCHANGE FOR SANDWICHES FOR THE MUSICIANS. I capitalize that info for you to emphasize and make clear what an amazing soul she was, and what a generous heart. When she did a concert in San Francisco I went backstage, and she introduced me to her friends as :"One of the great songwriters of all time." There are certain phrases coming from certain people that should put your spirit to rest. I ought to think of that once in a while, when I grind my teeth.
Anyway, in the Q & A, wherein George was as quick and funny as he is great-looking and seeking to do more with his gifts than just be pretty, though that doesn't hurt,someone asked him if he was being audited, and he said "Not yet, but I did do Syriana so I may get an anal probe." Then someone asked why the jazz punctuating the music, and he said, smiling sweetly, "I had an aunt who sang a little jazz."
Cue. Shirley introduced me to him afterwards, and I gave him the CD of Rosie singing my songs, and said "This was a gift to me from your aunt who sang a little jazz, so I'm giving it as a gift to you." He was Adorable+, genuine and smart, and said to me at one point "You're lovely." Rest, rest, per-tur-bed spirit. I shall remember these things and add them all up and try to stop being an assholette about not being able to break into the light, since light comes sometimes in unexpected ways, and in his case pretty darling.
Yesterday I went to an off off off performance of a show by my one-time collaborator when I wrote my first musical, that was supposed to be produced by Kermit Bloomgarden, the great producer of his day which was in my true youth, except that he put all the money he had raised for our show into Mel Brooks' 'Nowhere to Go but Up,' which tanked, taking all our capital with it. Phil's show was especially sad because he was incredibly gifted and wrote many fine songs, especially the ones in our show, an adaptation of Mark Twain's 'Million Pound Note,' and had a couple of big hits, missing from yesterday's dirge-y salute to the Brill Building, where songwriters used to go to flog their tunes. Worst was the last before the intermission, The Highway of Life, about when you see someone with their thumb out pick them up because they may be your chum, with lyrics by my mentor and father-figure when I was a baby,Yip Harburg, who wrote the lyrics for Wizard of Oz, and what remains the #1 song in the history of American songs, 'Over the Rainbow.' There was never a better, wittier poet in songdom than Yip: "As coroner, I Vocifer,I thoroughly examined her,and she is not just merely dead, she's really most sincerely dead." But Yip had a heaviness in him (Brother, Can You Spare a Dime? the best depressed example) so someone needed to be around to feather him up, and poor Phil was clearly not the one to do it, at least not on that highway of life, to which a cast of grateful to be working performers did a step-crosstheankle-step, step crosstheankle step in funereal tempo as if, said my sister-in-law, Arline,'they were serious.' I hope if I live long enough to lose my sense of humor, someone kills me.
But on the way out I introduced Arline to Joe Franklin who was on local TV forever, and he remembered her brother, my husband, from when Don worked at WOR, and even knew how to spell his name,which thrilled her. So no experience is wasted except the one you waste.
And news of a different coin, Joel Iskowitz, the gifted artist who designed the new cover for The Motherland, my best novel which will shortly be re-issued and available on Amazon.com please God, has just had his coin design chosen for the platinum one to be released by the treasury in 2006, that depicts the legislative branch of government. His coin for 2008, depicting the judicial branch, will also be issued. He did not design one for 2007, the executive branch, "for reasons",he said, "that will be obvious."
Thursday, December 08, 2005
New York on a Strange Anniversary
So the air being much less bitter than yesterday, I decided to be the same. It was a walking day, and walking is one of the finest things New York has to offer, there being hardly a block you can go by without discovering something interesting or evocative, provided you can lift your face against a less than Arctic wind. I began my walk at Columbus Circle, finally finished, with a statue saluting Christopher, adding all the scorn and danger he had to face to discover this country, and how belittled he was in spite of giving the world a new world. They have put benches in an arrangement I would know how to describe exactly had I been more attentive during Geometry, with greater gifts for that terrible subject than I possessed. But they are not quite semi-circles, and very welcoming i would imagine when the weather gets better and people want to rest halfway across the street, before tackling the multi-placed white-lined alleged pedestrian crossings to the Time-Warner building which I worry about as it is a new, tall, sparklingly capitalistic target, but no matter. I stopped in to FACE, a dazzling make-up boutique inside the splendiferous mall, to buy Annie Navasky, Victor's wife, some lip gloss called Gracious,since she is, but they were all out of it. Oh well.
Then I started up Central Park West, passed the Century, a building where lived Dorothy Loudon, a greatly talented musical comedy performer who was kind of shelved by the show business crowd when Ballroom failed to be the success it might have been if lofted to the level of her gifts. She told me once that she thought maybe there was something wrong with her answering machine, that there were never any messages on it. I understand the feeling. As writ in these-- what are they? Not exactly pages-- Jules Feiffer said to me "Do your work and your community will find you." Annie Navasky said "He forgot to add:'if you're wildly successful.'" I mentioned once to a friend when passing that building that Dorothy was lonely, and my friend said "Not anymore.". Oh well.
Then I passed Ethical Culture, with its planned sermon for Sunday:' Embracing the Infidel.' Sure.
There were TV cameras and trucks on 72nd Street, helicopters hovering, a line of people gathered outside the Dakota, and I realized that today is the 25th anniversary of John Lennon's being killed. I knew John Lennon for a brief moment, when he was separated from Yoko, hanging out for that evening at the weekend pool-table party of Jack Haley, Jr. He was visibly depressed and drinking heavily, and I thought to ease his anguish by telling him how wonderful he was, how important he was to so many people, how great were his gifts. He finally rose from beneath my barrage of attempted uplift, and said "Gwen... if you really love me, you'll stop talking."
I remember on this day all those years ago, I was on the phone early in the morning with Bethie, a friend from Bryn Mawr, when she told me John had just been shot. Somehow these things are softened when you hear them relayed by someone kind. But it remains to this day very shocking, stupid and pointless. I met the psychologist for the prison where Mark David Chapman was incarcerated, and he told me Chapman got love letters from many women, married one of them, and would get all buffed up when she was coming to visit, but when she left visibly deflated, down to the bone. You wonder sometimes if you believe in a benign universe, which I try to, why it is the murderers who are left alive.
Then I arrived at my true destination, The Museum of Natural History, on the inner walls of which are written many fine things said by Teddy Roosevelt, who rides a metal horse in front of the museum. Character, he said, is what ultimately determines the fate of a nation as well as a person. It would be good if they could lasso the entire congress and walk them by those messages, including the ones Teddy, the great conservationist, gave about our owing future generations. I went upstairs to the dinosaur floor and bought a backpack with scales on it for Lukas, who is six now, and a dinosaur book for Silas, who is two, and can say 'Hello' and 'Goodbye'in exactly that same basso profoundo that his father had at hismost adorable. My wonderful friend Bill McGivern, a mystery writer, long gone,once said he wanted to invent something called 'Staybaby'that you sprayed on them at the perfect time.
Then I told a little boy who was crying that everything would be all right, that he would find the world a very nice place and there was nothing to cry about. He was so stunned that he stopped immediately, and his mother suggested I begin a service,to which she would subscribe.
I took the subway then, that I need to be in a courageous mood to do, but having been counseled by Teddy that that was an aspect of my humanity that I would do well to cultivate, I had it. Went to Lee's Art Store on 57th St and bought some silver spray paint, took it out on my little iron balcony and sprayed all my Thanksgiving leaves that no one had seen and made them Christmas to which you are all invited. Also inadvertently spray-painted my boots. Silver Boots. Silver Boots. It's Christmas time in the city. Well, it almost makes it.
Then I started up Central Park West, passed the Century, a building where lived Dorothy Loudon, a greatly talented musical comedy performer who was kind of shelved by the show business crowd when Ballroom failed to be the success it might have been if lofted to the level of her gifts. She told me once that she thought maybe there was something wrong with her answering machine, that there were never any messages on it. I understand the feeling. As writ in these-- what are they? Not exactly pages-- Jules Feiffer said to me "Do your work and your community will find you." Annie Navasky said "He forgot to add:'if you're wildly successful.'" I mentioned once to a friend when passing that building that Dorothy was lonely, and my friend said "Not anymore.". Oh well.
Then I passed Ethical Culture, with its planned sermon for Sunday:' Embracing the Infidel.' Sure.
There were TV cameras and trucks on 72nd Street, helicopters hovering, a line of people gathered outside the Dakota, and I realized that today is the 25th anniversary of John Lennon's being killed. I knew John Lennon for a brief moment, when he was separated from Yoko, hanging out for that evening at the weekend pool-table party of Jack Haley, Jr. He was visibly depressed and drinking heavily, and I thought to ease his anguish by telling him how wonderful he was, how important he was to so many people, how great were his gifts. He finally rose from beneath my barrage of attempted uplift, and said "Gwen... if you really love me, you'll stop talking."
I remember on this day all those years ago, I was on the phone early in the morning with Bethie, a friend from Bryn Mawr, when she told me John had just been shot. Somehow these things are softened when you hear them relayed by someone kind. But it remains to this day very shocking, stupid and pointless. I met the psychologist for the prison where Mark David Chapman was incarcerated, and he told me Chapman got love letters from many women, married one of them, and would get all buffed up when she was coming to visit, but when she left visibly deflated, down to the bone. You wonder sometimes if you believe in a benign universe, which I try to, why it is the murderers who are left alive.
Then I arrived at my true destination, The Museum of Natural History, on the inner walls of which are written many fine things said by Teddy Roosevelt, who rides a metal horse in front of the museum. Character, he said, is what ultimately determines the fate of a nation as well as a person. It would be good if they could lasso the entire congress and walk them by those messages, including the ones Teddy, the great conservationist, gave about our owing future generations. I went upstairs to the dinosaur floor and bought a backpack with scales on it for Lukas, who is six now, and a dinosaur book for Silas, who is two, and can say 'Hello' and 'Goodbye'in exactly that same basso profoundo that his father had at hismost adorable. My wonderful friend Bill McGivern, a mystery writer, long gone,once said he wanted to invent something called 'Staybaby'that you sprayed on them at the perfect time.
Then I told a little boy who was crying that everything would be all right, that he would find the world a very nice place and there was nothing to cry about. He was so stunned that he stopped immediately, and his mother suggested I begin a service,to which she would subscribe.
I took the subway then, that I need to be in a courageous mood to do, but having been counseled by Teddy that that was an aspect of my humanity that I would do well to cultivate, I had it. Went to Lee's Art Store on 57th St and bought some silver spray paint, took it out on my little iron balcony and sprayed all my Thanksgiving leaves that no one had seen and made them Christmas to which you are all invited. Also inadvertently spray-painted my boots. Silver Boots. Silver Boots. It's Christmas time in the city. Well, it almost makes it.
Wednesday, December 07, 2005
Tis The Season
to be jolly,or depressed, depending on how things have been going,and what prospects there are of their going anywhere else. But tis also the time when the studios glut the writers with movie invitations, so they can get in there in time for nominations. Thus it is that I have been to almost everything, and will herewith give my reviews. Good Night and Good Luck is my top pick, not because George Clooney is not just another pretty face, and is trying really hard to lift the level out there, and maybe even make an important political point, but because it is riveting, smokily on target, and my darling friends Shirley and Joe Wershba, who worked with Murrow and are portrayed in the film by Robert Downey, Jr. and Patricia Carlson, which has given them a new lease on life, especially Shirley, who has probably always wanted to be a blonde. The movie is as intense as that period we lived through as concerned baby girls, which, when contrasted with the present horrors in government seems kind of like a bicycle ride.
Next, I would recommend King Kong, with someone next to you to hide your eyes on, as the violence is excessive--after the dinosaur stampede and fa;lling through chasms there's a cave full of worm things that eat off people's heads while they can still be heard screaming inside the worm,something I could devoutly have done without and children everywhere will be nightmared by. But Naomi Watts is lovely, Peter Jackson is clearly brilliant,though someone should have said 'Enough,' and the guy who played the ape, who was present at the Q&A, and honored by all, especially Naomi who had to do everything against a blue screen but could see his eyes, which gave her ballast, according to her testimonial. Jack Black, too, is surprisingly good, having made the transition from clown to a man of greed quite niftily. Having gone alone,so having no one to be terrified with, I bonded with the SAG member next to me, a black actress named Pat Dixon, so we will be going together to the Sarah Bernhardt exhibition at the Jewish Museum, the exchange being I have to go to the Slavery exhibition at the NY Historical Museum which will probably be wrenching.
Syriana is so intense that even if you watch every single frame as if you were an editor you will still be confused. But an interesting effort. Avert your eyes during the torture scene.
Friday night I'm invited to a big fund raiser for Memoirs of a Geisha, which is both a nice and a very sad thing, as that is the same time as the WGAE party at the Friars, where I wish I could go, but my arrested spiritual development precludes my being in two places at once. Those are the only two invitations I have for the holidays, which makes me feel very sorry for myself, especially when played against a minus 2 centigrade day. I don't know what the fuck I'm doing in New York. I was looking forward to entertaining a friend I made on the Nation cruise, but he opted for a political lecture when I was impelled to go to the screening of Brokeback Mountain. I had to go to that because afterwards there was to be a Q & A with Larry McMurtry, the Pulitzer Prize winning author I have always admired and wanted to meet.
Some years ago, when I was still a hit, I got a fan letter from a woman saying that her favorite authors were Larry McMurtry and me, so I wanted to say hello and tell him that. But as I introduced myself and started to explain who I was, he stopped me and said he knew who I was, that Ken Kesey had given him the novel I wrote about him. This came as an incredible shock for two reasons: first, I hate that book, Someone's in the Kitchen with Dinah, since it is, among all my work the one I would erase,and second because Kesey was so angry when I wrote it that he threatened to sue me.
Back story:Kesey and I were at Stanford in the Creative Writing Program together. He was adorable, funny and wrestler stocky, with tightly curled kinky yellow hair, young Paul Newmanish. He was obviously gifted and boisterous, and lived on Perry Lane, peopled with bright and rebellious cohorts, whom he had organized into what fell just short of being an official association of wife-swappers. He assured me that his wife would welcome me into the club, but I saw the sad look in her eyes when he went off with someone else. Besides I was very young and a bit of a prig. So I resisted his obvious charms until the night he taught me to smoke dope,an event that took place at my house. I had lost my Standard Oil charge card and reported the loss.After Ken and I had done the naughty, both of us stoned, there was a banging on my front door. When I asked who it was,a resonant, deep voice said "Sergeant Riley." I remember the comic spectacle of Kesey bolting out my patio door, bobbing like a jackrabbit over neighborhood fences, burying the stash in someone's brick barbecue. I could barely speak as I opened the front door, steadying myself by leaning against the wall, shaking, the scent of our mischief still hanging in the air. Besides that grass made you paranoid to begin with, I was sure that I was being punished, busted for my first official stray off the straight and narrow. "I just wanted to check," Sergeant Riley said,"if you found your charge card." Exhale.
Then, while I was waiting for my professor to read the first draft of The Motherland (a really good book,) I dashed off a little comic novel about wife-swapping in the suburbs, once more ahead of her time. The book sold at once. Doubleday, who was to be the publisher, received a letter from Kesey. I still have it. "We are the wife-swappers," it said. "If you publish this book you will have a liable(sic) suit, in fact several liable suits. My wife is seven months pregnate(sic) It will jeepardize(sic) our position in the community, and I am a graduate student in the English department at Stanford University." That, in spite of the spelling, was a crystal truth. Kesey told me once that if it hadn't been for the Honor system, he never would have gotten through graduate school(we had to sign our bluebooks that we hadn't cheated.) Anyway,Doubleday bought the letter and cancelled the book,publishing it reluctantly after I'd bowdlerized it completely, changing the locale from Northern California to Long Island, making the nearby Veteran's hospital(the one that Ken and worked at that was the inspiration for Cuckoo's Nest, where I'd volunteered, too, but didn't partake of the mind-altering drugs,-- missed it again!) into a spa. What was funny in it was lost, but what really pissed him off, I think,was that I opined that the character, for all his apparent sexuality, hadn't been that good in bed. I mean, nothing to write home about, unless it was a novel.
So over the years he continued being mad at me, making me a character in the first printing of Cuckoo ("A Red CrossLady named Gwendolyn... taking notes on the pain and hell around her, plans to write a funny novel about it later on")-- out of the rest of the printings thanks to Obnoxious Mel, a lawyer who was courting me and spoke to Viking. I wanted many times to make it all right with Ken, to heal it, but when I finally saw him in the collapsed flesh, I was too sad at what he had become to go up and speak to him. And then he died.
My question,doctor: If it made him so mad,why did he give a copy to Larry McMurtry? Interesting, yes? Why would you give a book in which you insisted you'd been libeled to another writer you admired. Could it be he was actually pleased I wrote about him? No way to know now. Oh,well.
No review of Brokeback Mountain here. Beautiful picture, beautiful men. But I was strangely unmoved. Maybe I identified too much with the women. See the Tab Hunter biography, re Tony Perkins.
Happy Holidays.
Next, I would recommend King Kong, with someone next to you to hide your eyes on, as the violence is excessive--after the dinosaur stampede and fa;lling through chasms there's a cave full of worm things that eat off people's heads while they can still be heard screaming inside the worm,something I could devoutly have done without and children everywhere will be nightmared by. But Naomi Watts is lovely, Peter Jackson is clearly brilliant,though someone should have said 'Enough,' and the guy who played the ape, who was present at the Q&A, and honored by all, especially Naomi who had to do everything against a blue screen but could see his eyes, which gave her ballast, according to her testimonial. Jack Black, too, is surprisingly good, having made the transition from clown to a man of greed quite niftily. Having gone alone,so having no one to be terrified with, I bonded with the SAG member next to me, a black actress named Pat Dixon, so we will be going together to the Sarah Bernhardt exhibition at the Jewish Museum, the exchange being I have to go to the Slavery exhibition at the NY Historical Museum which will probably be wrenching.
Syriana is so intense that even if you watch every single frame as if you were an editor you will still be confused. But an interesting effort. Avert your eyes during the torture scene.
Friday night I'm invited to a big fund raiser for Memoirs of a Geisha, which is both a nice and a very sad thing, as that is the same time as the WGAE party at the Friars, where I wish I could go, but my arrested spiritual development precludes my being in two places at once. Those are the only two invitations I have for the holidays, which makes me feel very sorry for myself, especially when played against a minus 2 centigrade day. I don't know what the fuck I'm doing in New York. I was looking forward to entertaining a friend I made on the Nation cruise, but he opted for a political lecture when I was impelled to go to the screening of Brokeback Mountain. I had to go to that because afterwards there was to be a Q & A with Larry McMurtry, the Pulitzer Prize winning author I have always admired and wanted to meet.
Some years ago, when I was still a hit, I got a fan letter from a woman saying that her favorite authors were Larry McMurtry and me, so I wanted to say hello and tell him that. But as I introduced myself and started to explain who I was, he stopped me and said he knew who I was, that Ken Kesey had given him the novel I wrote about him. This came as an incredible shock for two reasons: first, I hate that book, Someone's in the Kitchen with Dinah, since it is, among all my work the one I would erase,and second because Kesey was so angry when I wrote it that he threatened to sue me.
Back story:Kesey and I were at Stanford in the Creative Writing Program together. He was adorable, funny and wrestler stocky, with tightly curled kinky yellow hair, young Paul Newmanish. He was obviously gifted and boisterous, and lived on Perry Lane, peopled with bright and rebellious cohorts, whom he had organized into what fell just short of being an official association of wife-swappers. He assured me that his wife would welcome me into the club, but I saw the sad look in her eyes when he went off with someone else. Besides I was very young and a bit of a prig. So I resisted his obvious charms until the night he taught me to smoke dope,an event that took place at my house. I had lost my Standard Oil charge card and reported the loss.After Ken and I had done the naughty, both of us stoned, there was a banging on my front door. When I asked who it was,a resonant, deep voice said "Sergeant Riley." I remember the comic spectacle of Kesey bolting out my patio door, bobbing like a jackrabbit over neighborhood fences, burying the stash in someone's brick barbecue. I could barely speak as I opened the front door, steadying myself by leaning against the wall, shaking, the scent of our mischief still hanging in the air. Besides that grass made you paranoid to begin with, I was sure that I was being punished, busted for my first official stray off the straight and narrow. "I just wanted to check," Sergeant Riley said,"if you found your charge card." Exhale.
Then, while I was waiting for my professor to read the first draft of The Motherland (a really good book,) I dashed off a little comic novel about wife-swapping in the suburbs, once more ahead of her time. The book sold at once. Doubleday, who was to be the publisher, received a letter from Kesey. I still have it. "We are the wife-swappers," it said. "If you publish this book you will have a liable(sic) suit, in fact several liable suits. My wife is seven months pregnate(sic) It will jeepardize(sic) our position in the community, and I am a graduate student in the English department at Stanford University." That, in spite of the spelling, was a crystal truth. Kesey told me once that if it hadn't been for the Honor system, he never would have gotten through graduate school(we had to sign our bluebooks that we hadn't cheated.) Anyway,Doubleday bought the letter and cancelled the book,publishing it reluctantly after I'd bowdlerized it completely, changing the locale from Northern California to Long Island, making the nearby Veteran's hospital(the one that Ken and worked at that was the inspiration for Cuckoo's Nest, where I'd volunteered, too, but didn't partake of the mind-altering drugs,-- missed it again!) into a spa. What was funny in it was lost, but what really pissed him off, I think,was that I opined that the character, for all his apparent sexuality, hadn't been that good in bed. I mean, nothing to write home about, unless it was a novel.
So over the years he continued being mad at me, making me a character in the first printing of Cuckoo ("A Red CrossLady named Gwendolyn... taking notes on the pain and hell around her, plans to write a funny novel about it later on")-- out of the rest of the printings thanks to Obnoxious Mel, a lawyer who was courting me and spoke to Viking. I wanted many times to make it all right with Ken, to heal it, but when I finally saw him in the collapsed flesh, I was too sad at what he had become to go up and speak to him. And then he died.
My question,doctor: If it made him so mad,why did he give a copy to Larry McMurtry? Interesting, yes? Why would you give a book in which you insisted you'd been libeled to another writer you admired. Could it be he was actually pleased I wrote about him? No way to know now. Oh,well.
No review of Brokeback Mountain here. Beautiful picture, beautiful men. But I was strangely unmoved. Maybe I identified too much with the women. See the Tab Hunter biography, re Tony Perkins.
Happy Holidays.
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