Paul Newman has left us. Larry Gelbart, one of our great writer-wits said recently that we were getting out just in time, which might be the truth about Newman, great gentleman, true American, and caring, alive activist that he was, doubtless wracked not just by his illness, but what was happening to this country. I spoke to Hotch, A.E. Hotchner to put it formally, his great friend and partner in Newman’s Own, the organic foods that benefit children with cancer, and my first semi-weighty literary friend when I was embarking on my writing career. Hotch said that it had been coming for a long time which was known, and also that he had left his mark, which he certainly did. “While you’re here, do something,” Hotch quoted his saying. Mimi needed a treat yesterday and I bought her a packet of Newman’s Own for dogs, and even as I did felt some kind of shadow, so am glad I got to make a small contribution to one of his beneficences, while he was still on the planet, though about to leave it.
I’d met Hotch the first time I spoke as an author, at an event in Richmond, when he had just published Papa Hemingway, attached as he’d been to old Ernest, and we became friends enough so when there was a party for Newman on Coldwater Canyon during the time of Nixon’s decline, Don and I were invited. I was in the throes of my Watergate spying—that is to say I had friends who were Republicans that I cherished in spite of all that was going on, so I was in their houses during the fall of that president, spending most of my time in Washington. I stayed first with a loved friend from Bryn Mawr, then through her became a friend and guest of the wife of the Chairman of the City Council, then eventually ended up staying regularly with the Gerald Warrens. He, at the time, was the assistant press secretary to Ron Ziegler, so every morning when the phone would ring at 4 AM with yet another revelation from the Washingon Post, I was right there to observe.
When I went to that party in LA, I remember clearly Newman’s standing behind the bar as I told him about the friends I had who were good guys, and his saying grimly “There are no good guys in that bunch.” My friend Hal Dresner had written on ‘Cool Hand Luke’ and he had told me how every time Newman drove by a billboard for one of his movies, he would say belittlingly, “There he is: old blue eyes.” But the blue eyes served him well, as besides giving women something to sigh over, they also perceived.
The main wit in that screenplay of Luke I would have to guess came from Hal, the most memorable line “What we have here is a failure of communication.” I’m afraid that that has become what could be the anthem for the world the way it is today, for all the blogging and Internet and Youtube and Iphones and now today I learned there are something called Kendalls, where you can download books onto a hand-held instrument from Amazon, God Help us. Nobody is really communicating clearly or we wouldn’t be in the trouble we are. Where I learned about Kendalls was at a brunch at the Waldorf-Astoria—I went because I believe in Serendipity and last weekend I walked to the Book Fair in Central Park with Mimi, and was saddened to see that of all the booths, and for all the writers living and dead, the only two old ones that seemed to have made their mark, as opposed to Paul Newman, were L. Ron Hubbard, who gave us Dianetics and thus Scientology, and Ayn Rand, egoist, both of whom have spawned cults, and businesses. Or maybe you don’t need the ‘and.’ Cults are businesses.
The real writers from previous eras have more or less vanished, a sadly neglected pile, unexamined, being an unfinished novel by Lionel Trilling whom I remember from my long ago college education as one of the great critics, so it gave me a sense of sorrow that no one cared or was moved to examine this work he had doubtless suffered through writing, as it’s easier to shoot other people down than plumb your own soul,now discovered at Columbia and nobody gives a shit. Who discovered it was Geraldine Murphy and I half-hoped she might be the spawn of Gerald and Sara Murphy, the colorful duo who played the Riviera with Scott and Zelda, and wrote ‘Living Well is the Best Revenge’ but their children would probably be dead. Anyway, I dropped my card into a cup that said there would be a raffle to go to this brunch today, and I won, but apparently so did everyone who dropped their card in, because it was the book version of a theater’s being ‘papered,’ with non-paying customers rather than having an empty house. Several hundred people, good eats, and a couple of genuinely witty writers on the dais, Larry Block and Harlan Coben, in addition to the celeb writers, Dionne Warwick(who now lives in Brazil, which my old editor Jim says will be one of the power countries along with Russia and China) and Marlo Thomas who still looks good and is still married to Phil Donahue. A number of librarians were there who had obviously dropped their cards in the cup, and of course the news is the libraries are hanging on by a very slender thread which I guess will be there till Sarah Palin cuts it.
I am in a state of genuine dread over this election, as my worst case scenario, which is of course the one I always have, is that McCain drops dead election night from the shock of winning, and leaves us with her as our ‘president.’ This would be good news only because it would give Tina Fey something to do every Saturday night as she did again last night at the beginning of Saturday Night Live, where she was brilliant, but Oh God, if You’re there, please help us. I remember when Bush won, Jamie Lee Curtis, trying to find the bright side, comforted me or tried to with the fact that “Saturday Night Live will be funny again.” I don’t think it’s a fair exchange. I am going with a bunch of concerned women to Bristol, Pa. next Sunday to electioneer, and this Thursday there’s a Bryn Mawr group getting together at my classmate Evie’s, the first black student to have been accepted to the college and when she showed up they sent her to the maid’s quarters. Supposedly we’ve come a long way since then, but Evie still thinks the country, or at least white working men are not ready to vote for a black man, so she’s working on Seniors.
There was a white haired woman sitting in the corner where the concerned women were meeting the other night, and she will be in charge of the ‘Boobys’, the old Florida ladies the group is trying to pull over the line in this terrible tug-of-war, their reward being a big party that the white-haired Booby will throw. There is some sweetness in this campaign for all the bitterness and rancor, and I am hoping that the Jewish New Year, which I never really celebrate, will bring blessings to the Boobys, -- certainly the one who sat in the corner.
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
AS THE WORLD PIVOTS
As I don’t have to tell you, there is great darkness in the world, and as you already know, I have been remonstrated against by a former reader who asked to be dropped from this beloved list, for reasons that remain obvious but puzzling, as all he had to do was delete me if my passion was too passionate. At the same time, I have been heartened and chastised by one of my favorite writer-readers who yelled at me on the e-mail for caving at this time when what we have to do is rage rage against the dying of the light and this country in particular. Anyway I hope it will all be all right, but then I have always been an optimist except when I have been Cassandra as I was a year and a half ago when I told my broker the market was on its way downhill and he didn’t listen to me when if he had I would have been rich. But that is only the material world, and as we know in some of our loftier moments, that is but an illusion, convincing though it seems, especially now.
So trying to take my counsel from the wise who tell you to present-moment it, I took Mimi to the groomer Monday—she is much more beautiful in New York where her groomer is as gifted as the man who cuts my hair in LA, and just as expensive, so these moves eastward are very much to her benefit, as she becomes a cloud of white, admired by all, at fifty-one bucks a pop, so I may never cut her which would be 80 something. But while she was being washed only, I went around the corner to a food shop where I was lifted by the lunchtime sight of the sophomores from Dwight, a private school in the neighborhood, I would venture, who have a dress code(button down collar shirts for the boys, any tie they want, same kind of shirt for the girls or polos or sweaters and any pants but jeans, and any shoes but sneakers,) and they all looked very clean and upbeat and one was a gorgeously fresh-faced girl who had no idea how beautiful she is and would have been signed by Fox when they still were looking for the next Tuesday Weld. Then I went to the baby shop to buy a gift for my longtime great pal and editor who remains the smartest man I know and just became a grandfather, which made me want to go back and put the fresh-faced girl on alert to live her life fully and as smartly as she is beautiful. The night before I had run into Sirio Maccioni the great restaurateur, and he was sad about the country, and sad about being old, as he said you never appreciate what life is until it is almost time to leave it. I would title my new book Seize the Day but Saul Bellow already did, so I am hereby opening a contest(all are invited to join and the rewards will be Infinite) to title my new novel something like that. Active. Upbeat. The titles so far discarded are The Age of Experience, but few remain alive and certainly none in the publishing business who think or read Edith Wharton, and it does sound a bit over-weighty, which it ain’t, and then LIFE FORCE which my agent says sounds like a Self-Help book. Come one come all. I have mileage that will take you to Bali.
Then I met a bright-faced, bright-eyed young woman who has been playing Phantom on the road, so sweet and bright that it overcame my loathing for Andrew Lloyd Webber, and two of her friends, young men who had started booking musicals on the road and have made it a success which is always an up thing to hear at these times. Then I made the mistake of watching the news, so I turned out the light and asked for sweet dreams, and got one. A new baby was born and I was asked to write it a lullaby, and so liberal was my license in the dream that I was allowed to be joined in the writing by my mentor when I was a young songwriter, really what I wanted and intended to be, Yip Harburg, the gentle genius who gave us the lyrics from Wizard of Oz, Finian’s Rainbow, songs full of heart. So Yip, though long gone from the real world, as it is called, was available in my dream, and here is what we wrote.
There will be summer and there will be wintertime
There will be many a bright, sunny day
But when clouds over take you
And thunderclaps shake you
I wish you a Unicorn to carry you away.
There will be some who say there are no unicorns
There will be many who tell you ‘Don’t dream’
But life’s great consolation
Is imagination
To show you that things are not just as they seem.
For the wonder of life is the Great Unexpected
The light that disperses the dark
The sound, like a song
When your love comes along
Or sometimes a walk in the park
There will be heartaches and there will be Valentines
And that’s as far as we got in the dream, so I will take Mimi for a walk in the park and see if Yipper is there, hiding behind a tree.
My friend Ann just got back from a cruise she took her dad on to Alaska, and tells me she researched Sarah and it isn’t as bad as it seems. That she’s just a complete pol who wanted to win, so she’s taken on all these protective colorations to get the Republicans. Yeah, sure. But we agree that McCain may not even make it through the election. Which leaves us where? NO NO. Don’t go there. A walk in the park. A walk in the park.
So trying to take my counsel from the wise who tell you to present-moment it, I took Mimi to the groomer Monday—she is much more beautiful in New York where her groomer is as gifted as the man who cuts my hair in LA, and just as expensive, so these moves eastward are very much to her benefit, as she becomes a cloud of white, admired by all, at fifty-one bucks a pop, so I may never cut her which would be 80 something. But while she was being washed only, I went around the corner to a food shop where I was lifted by the lunchtime sight of the sophomores from Dwight, a private school in the neighborhood, I would venture, who have a dress code(button down collar shirts for the boys, any tie they want, same kind of shirt for the girls or polos or sweaters and any pants but jeans, and any shoes but sneakers,) and they all looked very clean and upbeat and one was a gorgeously fresh-faced girl who had no idea how beautiful she is and would have been signed by Fox when they still were looking for the next Tuesday Weld. Then I went to the baby shop to buy a gift for my longtime great pal and editor who remains the smartest man I know and just became a grandfather, which made me want to go back and put the fresh-faced girl on alert to live her life fully and as smartly as she is beautiful. The night before I had run into Sirio Maccioni the great restaurateur, and he was sad about the country, and sad about being old, as he said you never appreciate what life is until it is almost time to leave it. I would title my new book Seize the Day but Saul Bellow already did, so I am hereby opening a contest(all are invited to join and the rewards will be Infinite) to title my new novel something like that. Active. Upbeat. The titles so far discarded are The Age of Experience, but few remain alive and certainly none in the publishing business who think or read Edith Wharton, and it does sound a bit over-weighty, which it ain’t, and then LIFE FORCE which my agent says sounds like a Self-Help book. Come one come all. I have mileage that will take you to Bali.
Then I met a bright-faced, bright-eyed young woman who has been playing Phantom on the road, so sweet and bright that it overcame my loathing for Andrew Lloyd Webber, and two of her friends, young men who had started booking musicals on the road and have made it a success which is always an up thing to hear at these times. Then I made the mistake of watching the news, so I turned out the light and asked for sweet dreams, and got one. A new baby was born and I was asked to write it a lullaby, and so liberal was my license in the dream that I was allowed to be joined in the writing by my mentor when I was a young songwriter, really what I wanted and intended to be, Yip Harburg, the gentle genius who gave us the lyrics from Wizard of Oz, Finian’s Rainbow, songs full of heart. So Yip, though long gone from the real world, as it is called, was available in my dream, and here is what we wrote.
There will be summer and there will be wintertime
There will be many a bright, sunny day
But when clouds over take you
And thunderclaps shake you
I wish you a Unicorn to carry you away.
There will be some who say there are no unicorns
There will be many who tell you ‘Don’t dream’
But life’s great consolation
Is imagination
To show you that things are not just as they seem.
For the wonder of life is the Great Unexpected
The light that disperses the dark
The sound, like a song
When your love comes along
Or sometimes a walk in the park
There will be heartaches and there will be Valentines
And that’s as far as we got in the dream, so I will take Mimi for a walk in the park and see if Yipper is there, hiding behind a tree.
My friend Ann just got back from a cruise she took her dad on to Alaska, and tells me she researched Sarah and it isn’t as bad as it seems. That she’s just a complete pol who wanted to win, so she’s taken on all these protective colorations to get the Republicans. Yeah, sure. But we agree that McCain may not even make it through the election. Which leaves us where? NO NO. Don’t go there. A walk in the park. A walk in the park.
Friday, September 05, 2008
SEPTEMBER SONG
So, as the West sinks slowly in the West, we bid farewell to the still surprisingly appealing Southern California, and make our way (we hope, what with Hurricane Hanna) to New York. This has been a very unsettling time in which a great many personal things were settled, but I have great fears for the future of our country.
Anyway, I love you all, but find my brain pan empty of thought, so angered and saddened am I by the level of venality of the Republican convention. I am also saddened by the truth that I am not as evolved as I thought, as I really would have been happy to have a bomb fall on it.
I have to pack up the computer now, as I fly out early in the morning, so I will bid you all a fond Au Revoir(I hope.) But the new novel is finished and good, I have a funny idea for a movie, have made peace with my children, joy with my two little grand-boys(I actually made Lukas(8) laugh, and Silas(almost 5) told me today I was funny,) so all’s right with the world except for the world. And up the street, around the corner, is Napoleon, 15 months, with whom I have fallen very much in love, and he with me, so there is much to come back to, if it’s still here.
God Bless You all, as they said constantly, and God Bless America(ditto.) Oh, God. Help us.
Anyway, I love you all, but find my brain pan empty of thought, so angered and saddened am I by the level of venality of the Republican convention. I am also saddened by the truth that I am not as evolved as I thought, as I really would have been happy to have a bomb fall on it.
I have to pack up the computer now, as I fly out early in the morning, so I will bid you all a fond Au Revoir(I hope.) But the new novel is finished and good, I have a funny idea for a movie, have made peace with my children, joy with my two little grand-boys(I actually made Lukas(8) laugh, and Silas(almost 5) told me today I was funny,) so all’s right with the world except for the world. And up the street, around the corner, is Napoleon, 15 months, with whom I have fallen very much in love, and he with me, so there is much to come back to, if it’s still here.
God Bless You all, as they said constantly, and God Bless America(ditto.) Oh, God. Help us.
Thursday, August 07, 2008
BELLE OF BRENTWOOD
I am having great and little second thoughts about leaving LA permanently, although my funny friend Sandy said: "Say aloud: Central Park South; Montana Avenue." There is no question New York is livelier and will probably offer me more diversions, but I wonder what I am diverting from. Here, besides a few good buddies, all I do is write, and then wait for someone to read which is the true challenge, as there isn't a lot of that going around in today's publishing world.
But I read in today's New Yorker yet another tale of Emily Dickinson, this one an almost romance, and am reminded that her seclusion left a lot of good poems, not to mention a house that they are trying to raise money to keep going, the same real estate fate that is befalling Edith Wharton's abode, and Mark Twain's, and there is no question, if, as my lawyer suggested yesterday, my "body of work,"which he was kind enough to call it, were to catch on 'posthumously' nobody would have to try and raise money to keep up this condo. But I confess being attached to painting on my little terrace, and being able to walk Mimi in little more than pajamas, and the lack of sleet and humidity that flesh is heir to in New York, except for the best seasons(Spring and Fall.) So I am ambivalent about giving up this apartment, as I imagine I would suffer about giving up my place in the South of France if I had ever managed to get one.
Pondering this yesterday, of course, I was slightly helped by a little earthquake, which does seem to urge one to flight, but I have been through two Biggies, San Francisco in'89 and LA whenever that was, so have learned to rock on. That I have no real life here, other than my love affair with Silas, to whom I do not have easy access, friends at lunch, and the boys at the Sushi bar, is something I think I can live with if the great work emerges.
Still, I am reminded of a terrible camp I went to the year I first struck out as an independent, forswearing the usual West End Avenue kiddies' summer in the Poconos, for a work camp in the Black Hills of Massachussetts which perhaps exist only in the distortion of memory, but I do believe they were there, and the work camp certainly was, run by one Nathan Arnold, a name that would do service to Stephen Vincent Benet. He whipped us with a leather belt if we got twelve demerits in a week(two for being on the wrong floor at bedtime, five for failing to do chicken duty-- almost literally-- you had to wade through pullet droppings to get to the birds and reach underneath them for the eggs, at which point lice would run up your arm.) I think I was twelve. I had enlisted my friend Emanuela Fine to go there with me, and as she was a bit more upmarket than I, as I remember she freaked out fairly early. When my mother came to visit, reluctantly, as there were no potential estranged fathers waiting in the wings(not chicken's) I told her everyone was committing mutual rape, since I understood little of sex at the time, and had not yet learned to say or even think 'fucking.' But there had been many shocking incidents, threatening letters found,(UNLESS YOU MEET ME TONIGHT) tales of guns, all in all the reason why I remember it as The Black Hills, which I really think they were.
Anyway, my mother sprung me, and even as I left, freed at last, I suffered separation anxiety, pangs of wanting to stay. I imagine I would have felt bad about leaving Auschwitz.
Anyway, you're all free to offer comments and suggestions. Maybe we could be like Entertainment Tonight and you could text your opinion: Should Gwen give up her LA apartment where she could hold fabulous salons except that there's no parking? Should Gwen return full time to New York? Will anyone ever read her work? Does it matter?
I would tell you where to text it, except I don't really understand or use or like or condone texting, and anyway, you probably don't give a mutual rape.
But I read in today's New Yorker yet another tale of Emily Dickinson, this one an almost romance, and am reminded that her seclusion left a lot of good poems, not to mention a house that they are trying to raise money to keep going, the same real estate fate that is befalling Edith Wharton's abode, and Mark Twain's, and there is no question, if, as my lawyer suggested yesterday, my "body of work,"which he was kind enough to call it, were to catch on 'posthumously' nobody would have to try and raise money to keep up this condo. But I confess being attached to painting on my little terrace, and being able to walk Mimi in little more than pajamas, and the lack of sleet and humidity that flesh is heir to in New York, except for the best seasons(Spring and Fall.) So I am ambivalent about giving up this apartment, as I imagine I would suffer about giving up my place in the South of France if I had ever managed to get one.
Pondering this yesterday, of course, I was slightly helped by a little earthquake, which does seem to urge one to flight, but I have been through two Biggies, San Francisco in'89 and LA whenever that was, so have learned to rock on. That I have no real life here, other than my love affair with Silas, to whom I do not have easy access, friends at lunch, and the boys at the Sushi bar, is something I think I can live with if the great work emerges.
Still, I am reminded of a terrible camp I went to the year I first struck out as an independent, forswearing the usual West End Avenue kiddies' summer in the Poconos, for a work camp in the Black Hills of Massachussetts which perhaps exist only in the distortion of memory, but I do believe they were there, and the work camp certainly was, run by one Nathan Arnold, a name that would do service to Stephen Vincent Benet. He whipped us with a leather belt if we got twelve demerits in a week(two for being on the wrong floor at bedtime, five for failing to do chicken duty-- almost literally-- you had to wade through pullet droppings to get to the birds and reach underneath them for the eggs, at which point lice would run up your arm.) I think I was twelve. I had enlisted my friend Emanuela Fine to go there with me, and as she was a bit more upmarket than I, as I remember she freaked out fairly early. When my mother came to visit, reluctantly, as there were no potential estranged fathers waiting in the wings(not chicken's) I told her everyone was committing mutual rape, since I understood little of sex at the time, and had not yet learned to say or even think 'fucking.' But there had been many shocking incidents, threatening letters found,(UNLESS YOU MEET ME TONIGHT) tales of guns, all in all the reason why I remember it as The Black Hills, which I really think they were.
Anyway, my mother sprung me, and even as I left, freed at last, I suffered separation anxiety, pangs of wanting to stay. I imagine I would have felt bad about leaving Auschwitz.
Anyway, you're all free to offer comments and suggestions. Maybe we could be like Entertainment Tonight and you could text your opinion: Should Gwen give up her LA apartment where she could hold fabulous salons except that there's no parking? Should Gwen return full time to New York? Will anyone ever read her work? Does it matter?
I would tell you where to text it, except I don't really understand or use or like or condone texting, and anyway, you probably don't give a mutual rape.
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
BELLE OF MONTANA AVENUE
I am having great and little second thoughts about leaving LA permanently, although my funny friend Sandy said: "Say aloud: Central Park South; Montana Avenue." There is no question New York is livelier and will probably offer me more diversions, but I wonder what I am diverting from. Here, besides a few good buddies, all I do is write, and then wait for someone to read which is the true challenge, as there isn't a lot of that going around in today's publishing world.
But I read in today's New Yorker yet another tale of Emily Dickinson, this one an almost romance, and am reminded that her seclusion left a lot of good poems, not to mention a house that they are trying to raise money to keep going, the same real estate fate that is befalling Edith Wharton's abode, and Mark Twain's, and there is no question, if, as my lawyer suggested yesterday, my "body of work,"which he was kind enough to call it, were to catch on 'posthumously' nobody would have to try and raise money to keep up this condo. But I confess being attached to painting on my little terrace, and being able to walk Mimi in little more than pajamas, and the lack of sleet and humidity that flesh is heir to in New York, except for the best seasons(Spring and Fall.) So I am ambivalent about giving up this apartment, as I imagine I would suffer about giving up my place in the South of France if I had ever managed to get one.
Pondering this yesterday, of course, I was slightly helped by a little earthquake, which does seem to urge one to flight, but I have been through two Biggies, San Francisco in'89 and LA whenever that was, so have learned to rock on. That I have no real life here, other than my love affair with Silas, to whom I do not have easy access, friends at lunch, and the boys at the Sushi bar, is something I think I can live with if the great work emerges.
Still, I am reminded of a terrible camp I went to the year I first struck out as an independent, forswearing the usual West End Avenue kiddies' summer in the Poconos, for a work camp in the Black Hills of Massachussetts which perhaps exist only in the distortion of memory, but I do believe they were there, and the work camp certainly was, run by one Nathan Arnold, a name that would do service to Stephen Vincent Benet. He whipped us with a leather belt if we got twelve demerits in a week(two for being on the wrong floor at bedtime, five for failing to do chicken duty-- almost literally-- you had to wade through pullet droppings to get to the birds and reach underneath them for the eggs, at which point lice would run up your arm.) I think I was twelve. I had enlisted my friend Emanuela Fine to go there with me, and as she was a bit more upmarket than I, as I remember she freaked out fairly early. When my mother came to visit, reluctantly, as there were no potential estranged fathers waiting in the wings(not chicken's) I told her everyone was committing mutual rape, since I understood little of sex at the time, and had not yet learned to say or even think 'fucking.' But there had been many shocking incidents, threatening letters found,(UNLESS YOU MEET ME TONIGHT) tales of guns, all in all the reason why I remember it as The Black Hills, which I really think they were.
Anyway, my mother sprung me, and even as I left, freed at last, I suffered separation anxiety, pangs of wanting to stay. I imagine I would have felt bad about leaving Auschwitz.
Anyway, you're all free to offer comments and suggestions. Maybe we could be like Entertainment Tonight and you could text your opinion: Should Gwen give up her LA apartment where she could hold fabulous salons except that there's no parking? Should Gwen return full time to New York? Will anyone ever read her work? Does it matter?
I would tell you where to text it, except I don't really understand or use or like or condone texting, and anyway, you probably don't give a mutual rape.
But I read in today's New Yorker yet another tale of Emily Dickinson, this one an almost romance, and am reminded that her seclusion left a lot of good poems, not to mention a house that they are trying to raise money to keep going, the same real estate fate that is befalling Edith Wharton's abode, and Mark Twain's, and there is no question, if, as my lawyer suggested yesterday, my "body of work,"which he was kind enough to call it, were to catch on 'posthumously' nobody would have to try and raise money to keep up this condo. But I confess being attached to painting on my little terrace, and being able to walk Mimi in little more than pajamas, and the lack of sleet and humidity that flesh is heir to in New York, except for the best seasons(Spring and Fall.) So I am ambivalent about giving up this apartment, as I imagine I would suffer about giving up my place in the South of France if I had ever managed to get one.
Pondering this yesterday, of course, I was slightly helped by a little earthquake, which does seem to urge one to flight, but I have been through two Biggies, San Francisco in'89 and LA whenever that was, so have learned to rock on. That I have no real life here, other than my love affair with Silas, to whom I do not have easy access, friends at lunch, and the boys at the Sushi bar, is something I think I can live with if the great work emerges.
Still, I am reminded of a terrible camp I went to the year I first struck out as an independent, forswearing the usual West End Avenue kiddies' summer in the Poconos, for a work camp in the Black Hills of Massachussetts which perhaps exist only in the distortion of memory, but I do believe they were there, and the work camp certainly was, run by one Nathan Arnold, a name that would do service to Stephen Vincent Benet. He whipped us with a leather belt if we got twelve demerits in a week(two for being on the wrong floor at bedtime, five for failing to do chicken duty-- almost literally-- you had to wade through pullet droppings to get to the birds and reach underneath them for the eggs, at which point lice would run up your arm.) I think I was twelve. I had enlisted my friend Emanuela Fine to go there with me, and as she was a bit more upmarket than I, as I remember she freaked out fairly early. When my mother came to visit, reluctantly, as there were no potential estranged fathers waiting in the wings(not chicken's) I told her everyone was committing mutual rape, since I understood little of sex at the time, and had not yet learned to say or even think 'fucking.' But there had been many shocking incidents, threatening letters found,(UNLESS YOU MEET ME TONIGHT) tales of guns, all in all the reason why I remember it as The Black Hills, which I really think they were.
Anyway, my mother sprung me, and even as I left, freed at last, I suffered separation anxiety, pangs of wanting to stay. I imagine I would have felt bad about leaving Auschwitz.
Anyway, you're all free to offer comments and suggestions. Maybe we could be like Entertainment Tonight and you could text your opinion: Should Gwen give up her LA apartment where she could hold fabulous salons except that there's no parking? Should Gwen return full time to New York? Will anyone ever read her work? Does it matter?
I would tell you where to text it, except I don't really understand or use or like or condone texting, and anyway, you probably don't give a mutual rape.
Monday, July 07, 2008
Hollywood Cemetery Forever
So as the sun sinks slowly on the West, I make my plans to leave L.A. st summer's end, regretting even as I do that I have not made full use of its mythology(though God knows, along with a number of publishers and agents) that I tried. Thus it was that, with a heavy heart, as dentists write their patients on retiring, that I heard from one of the few people in this condo to whom I have ever spoken-- you don't bump into many people here-- that she was going to the Hollywood Forever Cemetery for the Saturday night screening they have on those unhallowed grounds, which last night was Easy Rider.
I have been to the Hollywood Forever Cemetery only once, for the funerral of my girlfriend Cass Elliot, who, unkind gossip had it, died in London of a ham sandwich. She was 33, and grossly overweight, the measure of her loneliness, which I had tried to assuage with a heart full of love and assurances that her voice(which she characterized as one of "the three great set of pipes in the business: Barbra, Edye(Gorme) and me") still mattered, ("I am not indrependently wealthy" she had bleated out to me, unsolicited, at the outset of our friendship. "Joni Mitchell just shipped Gold and I can't get a record contract.") She'd had her leg set when she broke it falling on herself, and I told her that was a blessing, a warning, so she'd stop eating which she never could. When a writer (Bob Klane, a cute comedy writer,) refused to sleep with her, she'd pulled her big Cadillac over to the side of the road on the way to Palm Springs and bought several max-sized Hershey Bars.
But I really loved her, and grieved, and found some metaphysical pleasure in believing that her sentence was less severe than that of John Dean who'd gone to jail the same day she was buried, and always take pleasure from her voice on the radio, where she California Dreams quite often or says that it never rains in, etc. So it was with some sense of having missed the Saturday night boat that I listened to my neighbor, Betsy, a bright-eyed blonde who makes and wears clever T-shirts (Today's: There's No Place Like OM) tell me how it was at the cemetery screening. Karen Black, who was in the movie, was in attendance, and told everybody at the outset to "light up," as I informed young Betsy that most of the cast (including or perhaps especially the producers) were stoned the whole time they made the Film, which apparently it is categorized as now. We then spoke of Dennis Hopper, who was a buddy when we both were babies and started in this burg ("I crashed this party," he said, coming out of the bushes at Elaine Aiken's house at seventeen, his first entrance into my life, mortalized in my debut novel Naked in Babylon, "Fuck Everyone." Nobody spoke like that then, at least not yet, and I found him funny and would-be Hemingwayesque and supremely untalented, which perception has never been altered by his performances, his voice mechanical and metallic. His success as an actor makes me believe that there may be a God, at least for him. I have seen him at various jump-cut intervals in our lives, and he has, as far as I can tell, never softened or deepened except for a remorseless sense of self-pity when he wasn't working.
Anyway, Betsy had a really good time but was not impressed with the movie and couldn't understand what all the fuss was about. I did, perhaps, though, enhance her understanding of how monumental its success was in terms of Jack Nicholson's career which up until then had been no more than B-movie horror starrers for Roger Corman. But he was cute, though not as cute as Betsy, whose first perceived T-shirt was 'SHIFT HAPPENS," which, when I asked her what it meant, she said "After the shit, there can be a shift. Things can change."
Oh God, I hope so. I am so dispirited by Obama's apparent caving(see today's Frank Rich column in the NY Times) and the earthquakey truth that the people of this country I so loved are not really very bright, and the worst, whatever that is, could in fact happen. He offers 'Wall-E' as a signpost of hope. If we could all only view the world like children If only a little child could lead them. Does anyone have a little child they could run?
Oh, well, a tad more trivia-- where I was Saturday night, a bit livelier than the cemetery,or maybe not, was a penthouse in Borderline Beverly Hills, filled with beautiful women of all nationalities who were probably illegal immigrants, all of them quietly hustling something: a clothing line, a nutrition program, maybe themselves though there didn't look to be any straight buyers- a less than handsome couple had been the first men to marry in West Hollywood when the new law went into effect, an Iranian chiropractor who promises he will change my whole life with the right adjustment, and Jose Eber. the hairstylist, who was there with his CFO( that's Chief Financial Officer.) Only in Hollywood, this side of the cemetery. The CFO had previously handled a hedge fund for Michael Milken.
I have been to the Hollywood Forever Cemetery only once, for the funerral of my girlfriend Cass Elliot, who, unkind gossip had it, died in London of a ham sandwich. She was 33, and grossly overweight, the measure of her loneliness, which I had tried to assuage with a heart full of love and assurances that her voice(which she characterized as one of "the three great set of pipes in the business: Barbra, Edye(Gorme) and me") still mattered, ("I am not indrependently wealthy" she had bleated out to me, unsolicited, at the outset of our friendship. "Joni Mitchell just shipped Gold and I can't get a record contract.") She'd had her leg set when she broke it falling on herself, and I told her that was a blessing, a warning, so she'd stop eating which she never could. When a writer (Bob Klane, a cute comedy writer,) refused to sleep with her, she'd pulled her big Cadillac over to the side of the road on the way to Palm Springs and bought several max-sized Hershey Bars.
But I really loved her, and grieved, and found some metaphysical pleasure in believing that her sentence was less severe than that of John Dean who'd gone to jail the same day she was buried, and always take pleasure from her voice on the radio, where she California Dreams quite often or says that it never rains in, etc. So it was with some sense of having missed the Saturday night boat that I listened to my neighbor, Betsy, a bright-eyed blonde who makes and wears clever T-shirts (Today's: There's No Place Like OM) tell me how it was at the cemetery screening. Karen Black, who was in the movie, was in attendance, and told everybody at the outset to "light up," as I informed young Betsy that most of the cast (including or perhaps especially the producers) were stoned the whole time they made the Film, which apparently it is categorized as now. We then spoke of Dennis Hopper, who was a buddy when we both were babies and started in this burg ("I crashed this party," he said, coming out of the bushes at Elaine Aiken's house at seventeen, his first entrance into my life, mortalized in my debut novel Naked in Babylon, "Fuck Everyone." Nobody spoke like that then, at least not yet, and I found him funny and would-be Hemingwayesque and supremely untalented, which perception has never been altered by his performances, his voice mechanical and metallic. His success as an actor makes me believe that there may be a God, at least for him. I have seen him at various jump-cut intervals in our lives, and he has, as far as I can tell, never softened or deepened except for a remorseless sense of self-pity when he wasn't working.
Anyway, Betsy had a really good time but was not impressed with the movie and couldn't understand what all the fuss was about. I did, perhaps, though, enhance her understanding of how monumental its success was in terms of Jack Nicholson's career which up until then had been no more than B-movie horror starrers for Roger Corman. But he was cute, though not as cute as Betsy, whose first perceived T-shirt was 'SHIFT HAPPENS," which, when I asked her what it meant, she said "After the shit, there can be a shift. Things can change."
Oh God, I hope so. I am so dispirited by Obama's apparent caving(see today's Frank Rich column in the NY Times) and the earthquakey truth that the people of this country I so loved are not really very bright, and the worst, whatever that is, could in fact happen. He offers 'Wall-E' as a signpost of hope. If we could all only view the world like children If only a little child could lead them. Does anyone have a little child they could run?
Oh, well, a tad more trivia-- where I was Saturday night, a bit livelier than the cemetery,or maybe not, was a penthouse in Borderline Beverly Hills, filled with beautiful women of all nationalities who were probably illegal immigrants, all of them quietly hustling something: a clothing line, a nutrition program, maybe themselves though there didn't look to be any straight buyers- a less than handsome couple had been the first men to marry in West Hollywood when the new law went into effect, an Iranian chiropractor who promises he will change my whole life with the right adjustment, and Jose Eber. the hairstylist, who was there with his CFO( that's Chief Financial Officer.) Only in Hollywood, this side of the cemetery. The CFO had previously handled a hedge fund for Michael Milken.
Saturday, June 14, 2008
APPRISE
To cheer myself, as an antidote to the news, I find on my computer every morning a little spirit lifter from Dr. Dictionary, who daily sends me a word; as if I did not already have too many of them. But as there is so little left to believe in, I have decided to worship words. I look to them for Guidance. Today's word is apprise.
Apprise. Look around you. For all the shadows in the world, you are alive. And life is light.
So I am apprising. Because I am trying to ascribe to the philosophy I think I have expressed in my new novel:if you will reach out to help somebody, to interact, you can forget about yourself, and so lose the pain. I have enlisted in GAB, an association called Grandparents and Books, where retirees and even sometimes young vital people, go through a training so they will be fit to read to children in libraries. Really.
There were about twenty in my training group, It started off, in a library in Baldwin Hills, just as elegantly and generously--more so, as it turns out-- than those breakfast meetings at the high end condos of socially ambitious women in Century Woods;. Same menu. Bagels and nutbreads and coffee and grapes and Danish. Sweetly lavish.
The women (no men) were of different shapes, sizes, colors, tongues-- one in my sub-group when we went in to practice reading aloud was a Hispanic, English still a little hard for her, making the woman who trained us say how inspirational that would be to the children, with so many of them being Latinos in this region. We will wear aprons so they know it's safe to talk to us, so many of them being latchkey kids told not to talk to strangers. Big job: to pull them away from the computers so they will love books.
I put my first day's training into practice with Silas, 4, whom I had for the afternoon yesterday, and took to the Santa Monica Library which is pretty paradisical(sp?) Lots of light, spiffy, newly redone, loaded with books and a computer games section which I pulled him past, though he wanted to go there because he said the games go on forever. I told him what also goes on foreveer is the imagination, especially his, so he can think more things while we're reading, and he'll have a whole lifetime of thought to play with. Then I tried to read him The Elephant's Child, the story of how the elephant got his trunk, Kipling, from his Jungle Book which was actually the first children's book-- but the 'O Best Beloved' diction threw him and lost his interest so I seized on the Judith Viorst book about Alexander having a horrible terrible very bad no good day that gives the kids a chance to join in and repeat her magically downtrodden phrase, and also brings up Australia, where Silas has a Grandma and goes to visit as he will in August. It was better than fun. So my own spirits are lifted, and I look forward to being fingerprinted which I will be in the second training session, I assume so they can check I'm not a child molester.
But in spite of all this spiritual enhancement and upliftment, I did read the papers today and see that all the Taliban have escaped from a prison in Afghanistan which seems more than a little sloppy and unfortunate. Then, reading that the Irish were opposed to joining the European Union, I called my good friend the foremer Lord Mayor of Belfast, who disagrees with their refusal to sign the Lisbon treaty. The the Irish believe they've worked too hard to become independent to throw it all away by joining the European Union, and I must admit I rather like that, find it very Irish stubborn and twee. Maybe that will affect the Euro and one day we can go to Europe again. Then I spoke to my daughter the nail technician whose best customer, now on tour, used to be Cindy McCain. Madeleine told me Cindy not only was in Rehab for Oxycodin but actually stole it from a clinic she served on the board of. Oh, I do hope someone is on that for when they attack Michelle Obama.
What a world what a world as the witch said in The Wizard of Oz, though the evil dealt with in those days seems by today's standards, a mere bagatelle, the word from Dr. Dictionary last Tuesday.
Apprise. Look around you. For all the shadows in the world, you are alive. And life is light.
So I am apprising. Because I am trying to ascribe to the philosophy I think I have expressed in my new novel:if you will reach out to help somebody, to interact, you can forget about yourself, and so lose the pain. I have enlisted in GAB, an association called Grandparents and Books, where retirees and even sometimes young vital people, go through a training so they will be fit to read to children in libraries. Really.
There were about twenty in my training group, It started off, in a library in Baldwin Hills, just as elegantly and generously--more so, as it turns out-- than those breakfast meetings at the high end condos of socially ambitious women in Century Woods;. Same menu. Bagels and nutbreads and coffee and grapes and Danish. Sweetly lavish.
The women (no men) were of different shapes, sizes, colors, tongues-- one in my sub-group when we went in to practice reading aloud was a Hispanic, English still a little hard for her, making the woman who trained us say how inspirational that would be to the children, with so many of them being Latinos in this region. We will wear aprons so they know it's safe to talk to us, so many of them being latchkey kids told not to talk to strangers. Big job: to pull them away from the computers so they will love books.
I put my first day's training into practice with Silas, 4, whom I had for the afternoon yesterday, and took to the Santa Monica Library which is pretty paradisical(sp?) Lots of light, spiffy, newly redone, loaded with books and a computer games section which I pulled him past, though he wanted to go there because he said the games go on forever. I told him what also goes on foreveer is the imagination, especially his, so he can think more things while we're reading, and he'll have a whole lifetime of thought to play with. Then I tried to read him The Elephant's Child, the story of how the elephant got his trunk, Kipling, from his Jungle Book which was actually the first children's book-- but the 'O Best Beloved' diction threw him and lost his interest so I seized on the Judith Viorst book about Alexander having a horrible terrible very bad no good day that gives the kids a chance to join in and repeat her magically downtrodden phrase, and also brings up Australia, where Silas has a Grandma and goes to visit as he will in August. It was better than fun. So my own spirits are lifted, and I look forward to being fingerprinted which I will be in the second training session, I assume so they can check I'm not a child molester.
But in spite of all this spiritual enhancement and upliftment, I did read the papers today and see that all the Taliban have escaped from a prison in Afghanistan which seems more than a little sloppy and unfortunate. Then, reading that the Irish were opposed to joining the European Union, I called my good friend the foremer Lord Mayor of Belfast, who disagrees with their refusal to sign the Lisbon treaty. The the Irish believe they've worked too hard to become independent to throw it all away by joining the European Union, and I must admit I rather like that, find it very Irish stubborn and twee. Maybe that will affect the Euro and one day we can go to Europe again. Then I spoke to my daughter the nail technician whose best customer, now on tour, used to be Cindy McCain. Madeleine told me Cindy not only was in Rehab for Oxycodin but actually stole it from a clinic she served on the board of. Oh, I do hope someone is on that for when they attack Michelle Obama.
What a world what a world as the witch said in The Wizard of Oz, though the evil dealt with in those days seems by today's standards, a mere bagatelle, the word from Dr. Dictionary last Tuesday.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)