Dessert with Orson

My Lunches with Orson is essentially a series of transcripts of the table conversations between independent film-maker Henry Jaglom and that great genius of film, theater and abrasive commentary. Orson Welles had the fortune to be well-known but the misfortune to be known best for what he despised. By the time these lunches took place, mention of his name was more likely to inspire references to "We will sell no wine before its time" then Citizen Kane yet Welles remained passionately interested in film and even his most off-hand opinion is interesting.

Gossipy, opinionated Welles was a bitter man in the 1980s. He was not politically correct. He did not let little things like facts influence him. He mythologized his own past but could be brutally honest about his own behavior. Whether he's holding forth on his opinions of Hitchcock or Wolfgang Puck, Welles is thought provoking. The gentle-spirited Henry Jaglom was the perfect counterpoint to the brilliantly, entertainingly bitter Welles, checking his most outrageous statements. Some of their exchanges are truly laugh out loud funny.

This book will be pure ambrosia for the serious film fan.

 

 

Better living through skyjacking

A book that opens with dueling quotes from Virgil and Ghostface Killah is bound to have an expansive point of view. The Skies Belong to Us does not disappoint. Part history of The Golden Age of Hijacking (author Brendan Koerner’s term) and part story of two unlikely hijackers, all informative entertainment.

Koerner’s shows the evolution of hijacking in the United States during the 1960s from the use of threats and deception to secure a means of transport to Cuba to the use of threats and deception to secure unwieldy amounts of cash to the 1970s innovation of using threats and deception to secure unwieldy amounts of cash and transportation to Algeria. Occasionally someone will use a hijacking as a form of protest but aside from the rare instance of a mentally ill person acting out of delusion it’s all cash or Cuba.

The airlines priorities are clear: aircraft, passengers and future revenue. It’s not that the airlines would risk passenger safety to protect a 707, they’re just convinced that main concern of hijackers is, to quote Tattoo, de plane, de plane. Airlines see passenger priorities as convenience first, safety second. In their eyes, given a choice between having their carry on bags x-rayed and an unscheduled trip to Havana, passengers would rather have their inconvenience be of the unexpected nature. Koerner depicts the power struggles between the airlines and the FBI and the White House over how to stop the hijacking epidemic as reminiscent of a parent trying to get a teenager to clean his room: lots of excuses, promises and reasons why it just cannot be done.

The French government and for a surprisingly long time even the American people viewed hijacking as a form of social protest slightly more annoying than a sit-in. Only Fidel Castro, tired of having hijacked planes show up on short notice and suspicious of the hijackers, takes umbrage over the trend, setting up a “Hijacker House” to accommodate the determined tourists.

The other half of the book, that of would-be hijacking masterminds Roger Holder and Cathy Kerkow is by turns jaw-dropping, hilarious and pathetic. Holder was charismatic and damaged, Kerkow was a happy-go-lucky survivor. Together they did not make a dynamic duo yet they managed to succeed where so many others had failed. Unfortunately for them, that is their only success. Holder and Kerkow weren’t brimming with possibility before the hijacking. Holder’s father wearily admits to the press that the hijacking “sounds like something our crazy son would do” while Kerkow’s co-workers express surprise that “she could follow orders well enough to be a hijacker.” After the hijacking they were sentenced to a weird international limbo that leaves them at the mercy of the Algerian and French governments and the whims of Eldridge Cleaver. From one form of powerlessness to another.

For me, the sections about Black Panther Eldridge Cleaver alone make this book essential reading. Whether he’s complaining about the high cost of international telephone calls, taking up cooking (“I like the rational, systematic way that the Chinese move on cooking. And the results are so rewarding”) or entering the cut-throat world of high fashion by reintroducing the codpiece (“They’re all accentuating your boo-boo …That’s what I’m trying to get away from,”) Cleaver provides mind-bending entertainment.

The story, pacing and structure of the book (short chapters that alternate the two storylines) make this a perfect summer read. Highly recommended for any non-fiction reader.

Amid the confusion and bad vibes

 This is the book equivalent of a survey course, covering crime, politics, music, movies, literature, sports and major events of the year 1969. It is relentlessly US-Centric - you won’t hear a peep about any other country unless it’s Vietnam.  At it’s best, this survey approach introduces the reader to lesser known topics, like the Native American occupation of Alcatraz or the rise of MC5. At it’s worst, 1969 rehashes topics by quoting from deathless sources like Wikipedia or Salon magazine.

That was part of the fascination for me. 1969 is a triumph of secondary research. Kirkpatrick read many a book and magazine article, fearlessly watched DVDs of documentaries and most challenging of all, watched a few movies and listened to a few albums. It’s a shame he didn’t actually talk to anyone who was there. It’s not like he was writing about 1669.

The once-over-lightly feel means nothing really gets its due but in fairness this is a way to whet your appetite, not satisfy it. Still, events like My Lai and Chappaquiddick are no less horrific with the passage of time. Fortunately events like the moon landing, Earth Day and the Jets winning the Super Bowl retain their magic. As a readable introduction to a single year of American history, one could do much worse.

Oddly enough, 1969 isn’t the only year that everything changed. Apparently everything changed in 1959 too.  Maybe 1979 was the year that didn’t change much of anything.

Censor the narrator

David Bianculli's love for the Smothers' Brothers Comedy Hour fuels Dangerously Funny so it's no surprise that this a 400 page admiration of the 1960s variety show rather than a critical assessment or a dispassionate history of the show. You'll find a mini biography of Dick and Tom, details about specific shows, and play-by-plays of the shows battles with the CBS censors.

Tommy Smothers emerges as a canny businessman and spotter of talent, committed to his beliefs but also surprisingly driven to propel small disagreements with his bosses into scorched earth battles. Those battles have become part of TV lore. Bianculli's research shows that CBS's censors weren't part of a well-oiled machine trouncing any hint of expressed opinion contrary to the network's own. The censors come across as behind the times and behind the eight ball on most occasions, playing catch up to avoid angering the affiliates. Unfortunately Bianculli doesn't present any information directly from the affiliates, who seem to the be ones who had the biggest problems with what the Smothers' Brothers were putting on screen.

What was on screen combined old-fashioned showbiz stalwarts like George Burns and Bette Davis mixing with the likes of Joan Baez, Glen Campbell, Donovan and the Who. Some of it sounds hilarious  (the Honey House, dedicated to the dead wife from the Bobby Goldsboro hit), some of it ground (and guitar) breaking, some of it woefully dated (Tea with Goldie) and quite a bit involved the bane of my existence, folk music. But that's the challenge of variety shows, not everything scores. The mix of old and new was both the strength of the show and a source of discomfort - viewers who watched for Bette also saw Pete Seeger and were, or the network feared would be, offended.

This is an interesting story and Bianculli tells it well. I wished he'd spent more time exploring why Tom Smothers felt the need to fight CBS over the small stuff rather than save his chits for the bigger battles. It became clear, to me at least, that CBS ultimately fired the Smothers Brothers for being more trouble than their ratings were worth but why Smothers maneuvered himself into a corner where CBS felt it had to fire them to save face it still a mystery.

Prior to reading this book I'd never seen a full episode of the show for various reasons: it was before my time, variety shows frighten me and self-congratulatory Baby Boomerism makes me nauseas. I had heard about the show, mostly in the context of the censorship battles and it being canceled for allegedly nefarious reasons. It's a tribute to Bianculli's infectious enthusiasm for the show that after finishing this book I went in search of episodes to see it for myself. I still think Mason Williams' Classical Gas is more gaseous than "a gas!" and I'd still rather redo the grout in the guest bathroom than have to watch Harry Belafonte or Peter, Paul and Mary. Bianculli's a good writer, not a miracle worker.

I also take issue with Bianculli's contention that nothing on TV has tackled on since the Smothers' Brothers lost their gig, other than David Kelly's Boston Legal. Everything from Chappelle's Show to Law & Order have tackled tough topics in prime time; even Saturday Night Live manages something trenchant once in a while.

A word about the audiobook version. The narrator, Johnny Heller, and the producer of this production should be sentenced to hard time. Heller is fine reading the straight passages but for some reason known only to him, the producer and I presume, Satan, he felt the need to provide an imitation of every single quotation from anyone even the slightest degree of fame. And not a particularly good imitation. It's ok when Heller is imitating Tommy Smothers' halting stage delivery, I guess that helps the listener get the joke. A lame LBJ imitation doesn't help sell the meaning of "I will not seek my party's nomination" and there is absolutely no occasion that calls for an imitation of Harry Belafonte or David Steinberg's speaking voices. None. By chapter five, every time a quote seemed in the offing I cringed in  anticipation of another embarrassing impression by Mr. Heller.

Sundays with Louis

A Voice from Old New York is not an autobiography.It’s not exactly a memoir either, being generally low on gossip about the author or others.The chapters don’t quite flow into each other, instead each stands on its own. The book feels more like the reader is meeting Louis Auchincloss for coffee or drinks at a quiet hotel bar (upper East Side, please) and listening to him reminisce over over times.
Occasionally he repeats himself or lets drop tantalizing details without filling in the lines. At times you wish he’d dish the dirt a bit more or wonder at his rather set opinions but you can’t help admiring the clarity of his insight into the closed world he knew so intimately. There are not big revelations here. Auchincloss knew both the Bundy brothers (McGeorge and William) and the Dulles brothers (John Foster and Allen) but you’ll find nothing here you won’t find in their biographies. I did find yet another proof point for my personal theory that Nancy Mitford was born a bitter hag and got worse as she aged, not that I needed another.
If you want big statements on society (with and without a capital S), look to his novels and short stories. If you want to spend a few hours – this is a very short book at less then 210 pages – hearing the memories of the master chronicler of 20th Century New York Society.

A Whale of a Time

The English excel at the nurturing and cultivation of eccentrics. From ferret legging to innkeepers who charge extra to those "whose faces he didn't care for" there's an eccentric for every taste from the land of Shakespeare. I think Will S. would have enjoyed the subject of Kate Summerscale's ode to eccentricity - Marion Barbara "Joe" Carstairs - what with the tropical islands, cross-dressing, vague paternity and feats of derring-do, how could he not?

Joe, The Queen of Whale Cay, demonstrated that with enough money and limited interest in the opinions of others one could pretty much live as one wished back in the 1920s and 1930s, including living openly as a lesbian, obsessing over a stuff doll and owning your own kingdom. Refreshingly, our boy-girl Joe is happy eccentric; generous and loyal to friends and lovers, interested in the welfare of her subjects, and generally enjoying life. Despite being inexplicably nicknamed "Betty" by the press, she also earns her title of "the fastest woman on water" by racing powerboats in the early days of the sport.

Summerscale strikes just the right note for this slim biography - light without being lightweight. She doesn't over think what motivated Joe and certainly doesn't ask the read to feel sorry for her. If Joe was a bit more comfortable proclaiming her love for inanimate objects rather than people or if she was surprisingly vague about her mother's first name, none of it seems to have resulted in regrets.

Joe was who she was, and everybody just had to accept it. She appears to have earned no enemies but many friends. And she lived well and gave generously but still managed to die with sizable estate. We should all be so lucky.  A fun, quick read.

Must You Go On?

It's surprising that a dramatist known for his meaningful pauses inspired such a chatty memoir. Harold Pinter couldn't have asked for a more sympathetic biographer than his wife Antonia Fraser and this book, drawn from Fraser's journals, has a gentle intimacy reminiscent of a long, happy marriage.

Pinter emerges from these pages as a romantic (who knew?) devoted to his extended family. Fraser doesn't dish the dirt - even when it comes to their "scandalous" affair that broke up their respective marriages - nor does she present the couple as innocents. She does spend more time talking about the loss of beloved real estate than of discarded spouses but that is safer ground, I suppose.

I could have done with fewer pages about Harold's adventures with Vaclav Havel and other ventures into politics. Pinter's off-handed comment that Reagan and Gorbachev are "my boys" if their nuclear reduction treaty makes Fraser happy says far more about Pinter's devotion to his wife (and thus about him as a person) than a thousand rallies. But it is nice to learn that Pinter was a "house angel/street devil."

This isn't the definitive biography of Harold Pinter nor does it pretend to be. It is a warm remembrance of a man and a happy marriage.

Recent Acquisitions

Party Animals by Robert Hofler

(Kindle)

A biography of agent/producer/party maven Allan Carr. Trashy, flashy fun. I can’t believe that I didn’t know about this book sooner. Amazon should have called my house as soon as this was published. My only regret is that because this is a Kindle book the publishers have probably held back on the photos. And I need to see some of what is described here.

 

Easy Riders, Raging Bulls by Peter Biskind

I got tired of waiting for a Kindle edition of this. I read a few pages in Barnes & Noble a few months ago. The combination of bad behavior and intelligent discussion of movies was too tempting for me to resist for long. Mark Harris’s Pictures at a Revolution reignited my love of film analysis mixed with behind the scenes details.

 

 

 

Mellon: An American Life by David Cannadine

Another book I’ve been waiting to see in Kindle version. After the Lords of Finance and Last Call I’ve had enough glimpses of Andrew W. Mellon. I need the full picture now.

Get Yer Ya-Yas Out

The 70s are an unloved decade. Even while they were on there weren’t many who proclaimed them a golden age. Looking back the most common reaction of survivors seems to be “Dear God, I actually wore that?” There’s so much more to the 70s than gas shortages and discos. Surely no other decade had so many deeply disturbed individuals playing prominent roles in public life.

Francis Wheen's Strange Days Indeed tells the stories of several of these off-kilter individuals and tells them as they deserve to be told: deadpan and in detail. He offers us a veritable smorgasbord of loony tunes behavior and lets us savior every silly detail. Wheen starts off with a few stories familiar to American readers, such as Nixon’s famous late night trip to the Lincoln Memorial to chat with the protestors. Nixon may be one of the more famous examples of paranoia but for sheer insanity nothing beats the inhabitants of Number 10 Downing Street and their wacky band of cohorts. From the chief civil servant who circumvents imaginary listening devices by conducting meetings in the nude to Prime Minister Wilson, his political secretary Marcia and her all powerful handbag there’s plenty of side-splitting entertainment. The Wilson and Marcia saga may be the most horrifically funny political saga ever, what with Marcia’s fears of being lured unawares into orgies, Wilson’s bizarre acceptance of whatever abuse she threw his way and some staff members wondering if offing Marcia might not be the best for England. There’s are still more crazies – mentalists, Bobby Fischer, the Weather Underground and Red Army Faction, Madame Mao, Idi Amin and on and on.

Wheen has plenty of material and he uses it brilliantly. This isn’t history, however. This is Wheen’s impression of the 70s, his take on events. It is neither comprehensive nor unbiased. Wheen has tangled with the all powerful Marcia before and lost, for instance, so it would be silly to pretend that Wheen is dispassionately reporting events. He makes some assertions that I would prefer to see sourced (like his repeated references to Nixon being a drunk; I’m not disputing this, I’ve simply never read about it before). He also has a habit of referencing fictional works as if they offer unassailable authority. It’s easy for me to forgive these shortcomings because the book is so entertaining and because Wheen admits to knowing by heart all the words to two epically stupid songs. Anyone who can sing Gimme Dat Ding and quote Balzac is entitled to a few foibles.

This is a fun, fast read recommended for anyone who possesses a love of the absurd.

24 Hour Party People

This is the story of a group of privileged young people who captivate London press with their antics (read: bad behavior and total willingness to behave like idiots in public) and occasional brushes with the law. No, it's not the story of Lauren and Heidi or Paris and Lindsey. The subjects are upper class twenty-somethings in the 1920s London.

It starts out slow - Taylor actually spends a chapter pondering why they were called the "Bright Young People." Once it kicks into gear, around chapter 4, it's quite enjoyable as tales of people with pretensions to talent, pretensions in general, out-sized egos and a deep interest in clothes go. Evelyn Waugh (a major chronicler of this ilk), Cyril Connolly, and Cecil Beaton key players but the bulk of the story revolves around once revered but now forgotten bubble-heads like Elizabeth Ponsonby, Brian Howard, Brenda Dean Paul and Steven Tennent. Yes, they may not have been complete idiots but who really wants to defend the intellects of people whose major consuming interests were: parties, stunt parties, drinking, treasure hunts, costume parties, and more drinking.

The best parts are the extracts from the diaries and letters of the parents of one of the BYP. The Ponsonbys were horrified by their daughter's activities, her lack of ambition, and her profligate spending and their observations are both acute and frequently hilarious. When Dorothea Ponsonby writes, apropos of one of her daughter's friends "I can't look at him. He is like an obscure footman" she is forging new ground in put downs. In fact, I'm tempted to make this my go-to insult for the next month. Taylor is upfront about the fact that the majority of People in question aren't terribly impressive upon closer inspection. (Except in their networking and literary log-rolling, which is truly notable.) Yet several of them have already been the subject of biographies, (entitled "Portrait of a Failure" and "Serious Pleasures", no less) Taylor is interested in what made these people newsworthy, what inspired them and what impact they have left on society. The fascination with them seems almost perverse. It's not borne of respect or admiration. It's more like straining one's neck to see the remains of the car crash.

There's plenty of metaphorical and literal car crashes on display from Brenda Dean Paul's pioneering turn as a starlet drug addict, Elizabeth Ponsonby - generally and, best of all, the story of Gavin Henderson's wedding to a nice girl mummy approved of and the wedding night that the bride spent alone and he spent with a sailor he picked up. Somehow the marriage doesn't take. They natter on about becoming actresses, writing books or plays, painting pictures, but few of them ever actually create anything more permanent than a particularly inspired party invitation. It's easy to read these stories and snicker at the disproportion between the BYP's pretensions and their accomplishments. The sadder point that Taylor makes is that this really was the very best life they could imagine.

Once past their glory days a surprising number of the BYP move into fascism or communism. There's a joke to be made here about being addicted to parties but I'm going to skip it. Better jokes are made about this by Taylor himself and Cyril Connolly in "Where Engels Fears to Tread", a satire about a BYP who embraces communism and exhorts his fellow BYPs to join him with the words "Morning's at seven, and you've got a new matron."

Back to Heidi and Lauren etc., you could easily substitute their names (or any tabloid darlings de jour) for several characters here, switch "plays" for movies and "singer" for "writer" and you wouldn't notice the difference for several pages. Seeing how far back our fascination with pointless celebrity extends is interesting and thankfully this story is in the hands of writer who is sympathetic but not indulgent.

This is an enjoyable read for any fan of biography or early 20th century European history.

Random Thoughts

I'm reading Iain Pear's Stone's Fall and D.J. Taylor's Bright Young People. At nearly the halfway mark I've noticed a few thing, all of them random.

• Roughly 20 Kindle lines equal one printed page.
• A different "voice" isn't necessary to convey a change in narrator. Pears does it effectively but subtly almost entirely through the opinions and perceptions of the narrator.
• Although if asked I would swear that I hate slow paced books once I get into a well-written slower paced book, I like it. Stone's Fall can move glacially at times but is still entertaining.
• Those Brits do love creating "clubs".
• The press's fascination with reporting the doings of basically moronic people is not a new phenomenon.
• I'm becoming obsessed with LibraryThing.
• This obsession may not be a bad thing. So to speak.

Through a Glass, Darkly

Imagine you're watching a play. The play is similar to another play that you've seen before, several plays, in fact. This time there is a screen in front of the stage made of fine black gauze. You can see and here what it going on behind the gauze, when the light shines a certain way you could almost forget the gauze is there. Then the scene ends and when the curtain rises again the same scene is played again, this time without the gauze screen. The same words are spoken but in some by different characters than you thought the first time. In other cases you can see the actors' expressions completely now and the words, though the same, have an entirely different sensation.

This is what reading Dave Cullen's amazing book is like. I thought I knew the story of Columbine - after all I'd seen it play out on my TV screen - but I was watching the whole thing through the gauze of misconception and insta-reportage. Cullen rips the gauze away and tells the whole story. It's not enough to say he sets the record straight, that sounds like he fixed the punctuation; This isn't a merely book, it's a revelation.

When people asked me what I was reading and I answered "A book about Columbine"
the usual reaction was a visual and verbal mixture of puzzlement and dismay. "Why are you reading about that" they'd ask, "hasn't that been done to death?" The simple answer is that the truth of Columbine hasn't been told until know. And when I'd puncture a few of the myths that we'd all believed to be truth - it wasn't the Trench Coat Mafia, they weren't Goths, etc - the response was "No way" followed by "I need to read this book, too."

Yes, you do. This is the must-read nonfiction book of the year.

Cullen spent years talking to the everyone involved who would talk to him and the result is a story that is actually more horrifying that anything reported at the time. Far from being bullied teens who fought back - and wasn't that always a bit of wish-fulfillment on the part of reporters and viewers alike? - this is the story of a clinically depressed teenager in the hands of a teen-age psychopath. Eric Harris, the psychopath in question, is exponentially more terrifying than science fiction monster for the simple reason that you wouldn't invite "Alien" into your home but you'd give Eric the keys to your house to watch it while you were on vacation, all the while thinking what a nice, responsible young man he was. Meanwhile he'd be building napalm jet backpacks in your basement. Eric was misunderstood, all right, because he wanted it that way. Cullen presents one of the clearest explanations of psychopathy I've come across and the evidence for Harris being categorized as a psychopath is overwhelming.

Dylan Klebold, as Cullen notes several times, is more concerned with love than hate but the whole that depression leaves in his soul is filled by Eric Harris's hate for all humanity. It's easy to imagine Dylan Klebold taking a different path. By contrast, one can only see Eric Harris committing other more heinous crimes. Was it just bad luck that led Klebold into Harris's path? Who knows? That's the point that Cullen isn't afraid to make - that no one knows what created Eric Harris or what made Dylan Klebold so vulnerable to him. It wasn't being bullied or bad parenting or video games or Twinkies or music with hidden messages or any other stock, easy answer.

Cullen does find heroes and villains and mixtures of both. The families of the murdered react in different ways, from painful to witness hatred to self-destruction. The community reacts with compassion, understanding, exploitation, fatigue and finally ambivalence. I thought Cullen did an especially sensitive job of dealing with the role spirituality and faith played in the healing process. For some their faith allowed them to accept the tragedy with a peace reminiscent of the Amish school shooting. Others are moved by their faith to reach out the parents of Harris and Klebold only to find their actions denounced by others of the same faith. Yes, there are some who wittingly or not exploit the tragedy in the name of their religion and Cullen calls that out, too but this is a balanced portrait.

This is one of the best non-fiction books of the decade. The reporting is excellent and the writing is even better. Anyone who enjoys thoughtful non-fiction and/or wants to better understand the society we live in should make it a point to read this book.

Smart Beach Reading

After reading Robert Sabbag's superbly economical prose, some cutting to the chase seems in order. Down Around Midnight is one of the best books I've read this year and one of the very best memoirs I've ever read. In the avalanche of Woe-Is-Me memoirs that the publishing industry seems determined to foist upon us this book is a rarity - a tale of tragedy and introspection that actually has meaning. Sabbag asks us, simply, to consider what it means to be lucky.

I'm sure that many people like myself whose work requires an amount of airplane travel are fascinated by aviation accidents. Whether that fascination is purely morbid, a twisted hope that one can study up for the big event or just an outlet for fear I don't claim to know. I do know that after a two emergency landings and several unpleasant severe turbulence experiences I've wondered more than once what it would be like to be in a plane crash. What would it feel like? What would I do?

Robert Sabbag delivers the answers for his experience right up front. If he's going to tell a story about a plane crash he's not going to hide the main event for last. And that should give you a good idea of the kind of story teller he is: no nonsense, no tricks, and definitely no BS. This is a "slim volume" as the saying goes so it's difficult to talk about it without giving too much away. Sabbag's story is about talking to other survivors of the crash to sort out what happened from what he remembers happened. Along the way he tells us about NTSB investigations, g-force, life on Cape Cod and the mysteries of memory.

Not only does Sabbag never whine - whether he's talking about learning to walking again after a broken pelvis or grappling with "Survivor's Guilt" - he makes this story enjoyable. He balances the tragedy with a genuine enjoyment of life and the people in his life. He doesn't cut himself any slack either, when he says "I was a bigger jerk than usual", you believe it. Still, you wouldn't mind sitting down at a Cape Cod bar for a cold one with Sabbag, he's good company.

It's one thing to physically survive an airplane crash, it's quite another to be able to make sense of the events and emotions surrounding it all while telling a compelling and accessible story. Sabbag succeeds on all fronts. This is a book I know I'll be recommending as a smart beach read for this year and years to come.

Rambling isn't writing, it's rambling

Early in The Loveliest Woman in America, "The author requests the reader's patience." As well she should.

The story of Rosamond Pinchot Gaston is one I've caught glimpses of in other books, most recently in Nancy ... "A Very Private Woman" the biography of Rosamond's half-sister Mary Pinchot Meyer, so I was pleased to see a full biography had finally been written. Rosamond was "discovered" at 19. She went on to star in a Broadway hit and appear regularly in the society columns of the 20s and 30s before her seemingly sudden and inexplicable suicide in 1937. This is a story with definite possibilities.

Even after reading that patience was required for this book I wasn't too put off. I have a very limited tolerance for stories about the author's unconventional childhood. Rarely are these stories worth telling to a wide audience and even more rarely are they well told. But who would anyone spend endless pages on, let us say, what it was like to attend elementary school in Princeton, New Jersey in 1963 when material from the life of a woman who hobnobbed with the likes of George Cukor and Claire Boothe Luce was available? No one would be so foolish, right?

In a word: wrong.

My patience was tried mightily by this book. The chapters about Rosamond aren't bad but they do include some very questionable prose and what I can only describe as an addiction to metaphors. Very, very bad metaphors. Elizabeth Arden is described as "a walking empire of ingenuity, a siren of survival, a roving pink tornado." Another woman is described as "dispensing advice like a wheezing lesbian oracle." The champ, however, is the description of Clare Boothe Luce as "one of those women who attacked life with a sledgehammer."

If you can make sense of out that description, please let me know. I can't figure out if Clare is treating life like a tear-down that she plans to remodel or if she wants to reduce it to small pieces she can cart away to her local landfill. Neither of which strikes me as being particularly indicative of ambition. Still, that sentence is a model of clarity compared to "a woman who mucked around in the world of men whose love was about as murky as pond ooze."

Of course, while that is bad prose it isn't as pretentious and downright insufferable as what goes on in the sections when Gaston ruminates on the meaning of life. These sections are helpfully printed in italics so that the reader can fortify his/herself with liquor to face lines like "I suspect most Americans are lost." By the time I got to Gaston's big thesis, delivered to an ex-boyfriend (who she pointlessly lets us know was Canadian), I was wondering if I can soldier on to the end. Then I read the big idea of this book:

"Longing isn't love, it's longing."

I am very sorry to report that the Canadian boyfriend does not appear to have given this line the response it deserved, namely "Bitch, please." And so, unaware apparently that this is not profundity of the deepest sort, Gaston goes on to repeat this line three more times in the book so that we will all understand that when people we love go away we sometimes think we love them more than they would if they hung around and got on our nerves.

There's only one way to read the italics portions of this book. Out loud, with friends. Lines like "I was in a deep sleep when I chose the men in my life" are surprisingly entertaining in a group setting. Less entertaining, is Gaston's utter failure to grasp the complexity of mental illness in general and depression specifically. She never explores what Rosamond meant by "Cinderella feeling" although it was obviously a code for feelings of depression and anxiety. Instead she either implies that Rosamond was used and discarded by the star machine and men in her life - what a radical notion, or she declares Rosamond's suicide was just a middle finger aimed at the world. Because suicide is such a rational act.

Most of Rosamond's life gets this barely skin deep treatment. We never understand why Rosamond disliked her mother, why she was so resentful of her step-mother and her half-sisters well into her thirties, why she loved any of the men she loved or why she declared that she hated her own sons. Nor does Rosamond come across as particularly likable half the time although Gaston doesn't seem to notice. "Big Bill" Gaston, Rosamond's husband, comes across as a complete jerk which makes her attraction to him all the more inexplicable.

Oddly enough, the two women who do come out best are actress Kay Francis, who is smart enough to know when a man is a good date but would make a lousy husband, and Lady Diana Cooper, who's truly gracious and compassionate letter to one of Rosamond's sons is included. I get the feeling they'd know what to say if someone told them "longing isn't love, it's longing."

If you do choose to read this book, consider the Kindle edition. Not only does it have all the photographs included, the very interested formatting of this version makes hilarious lines like "Clare hatched the perfect plan to rent Big Bill's Crotch _________Island" possible.

Lack of proportion is barbarism

For anyone alive in the 1970s and 80s the phrase "Baader-Meinhof Gang" has a certain ring to it. The particular melody might be terrorism for some, activism for others. At the time I was too young to understand what Baader-Meinhof stood for or purported to stand for and the press, at the time and later, never succeeded in putting their actions in context. Possibly because the press was too busy either demonizing or glamorizing them as the whim struck. Over the years I've read a number of books on the radical groups of the Sixties and Seventies and most aren't much more illuminating.

Stefan Aust's newly update Baader-Meinhof (The Baader-Meinhof Complex), however, is that rare effort that brings the immediacy of journalism and the unbiased examination of academia to the subject. Aust tells the story of the group and its leaders in a step-by-step fashion that focuses on events rather than analysis. Its a tricky technique, especially when a lot of the events involve people hiding out in apartments for weeks on end, but in this case it was the right choice. Aust lets the reader see the events play out in all their claustrophobic inevitability; he also lets the reader judge the events and the actors on their own.

Successful journalist Ulrike Meinhof, minister's daughter Gudrun Ensslin, and all-around-jerk Andreas Baader formed the leadership of the self-christened Red Army Faction . It's noted early in the book that "You either loved or loathed" Andreas Baader. The loathing part I understand but then I've never had a soft spot for misogynist drug-addicted petty thieves. Either Andreas had loads of personal charisma or the rest of the "Gang" had serious masochism issues because it sure wasn't the clarity of Baader's political believes that drew people in. The most one can say for Baader is that he was willing to break the law for his beliefs - that must have seemed impressive to nice middle-class German youths looking for a way to change the world. What Baader wasn't willing to do was do any prison time for breaking the law. Nearly all of the violence and other crimes committed by the RAF revolve around either breaking Baader out of jail, keeping him out of jail, or otherwise getting him out of jail.

And that's the main problem for me. I've long been fascinated by extremist groups - from the ancient to modern times - by what motivates them to step outside of society to achieve their aims. The Baader-Meinhof aims are barely comprehensible. Yes, they wanted to end the war in Vietnam, eliminate poverty and do something for Palestine. I can't tell you much more about their believes because a lot of what they said and wrote was very much like this mind-bending sentence:

"It also means, that is, it is the premise of the decisions - that whatever the Government may decide no longer has the same meaning for us as that from which they proceed."

This is what prolonged isolation in a prison will do, it will make you write sentences that no one can decipher. The German prison system was a revelation to me. Apparently prisoners could self-prescribe any legal pharmaceutical of their choice - uppers, downers, cough medicine. Actual medical care, on the other hand, was a bit more ad hoc. And security can only be described as something special.

During their trial Meinhof, Ensslin and Baader all claim that the prison conditions were driving them crazy. Not likely, since these three were seriously crazy all on their own. When Gudrun wasn't coming up with code names for the group from Moby Dick and Ulrike wasn't penning RAF manifestos they were playing mind games with one another. Sometimes Andreas would join in the fun by declaring the two "grotesque madwomen." All the while Gudrun and Ulrike look up to Andreas as somehow the most politically pure of the group even as he declares hunger strikes that he himself will secretly break while costing the life of another group member. The sanest comment made is by a government agent who asks Baader "Don't you think these ideas of yours are out of touch with reality?"

Gudrun seems to have been hell on wheels but Ulrike Meinhof comes across as a sadder story. The most disturbing aspect of her story was her relationship with her twin daughters. After her plan to have them spirited away to an orphanage in Jordan to be trained as Palestinian freedom fighters is thwarted, Meinhof writes them motherly chatty letters from prison. She seems to take real joy in their visits to her until one day she abruptly ceases all communication with them. Her motives aren't explained and I was left with the image of her 10 year old daughters suffering yet another abandonment. Early in the book there's a vignette of Meinof jumping up and screaming "I won't let them do this to me" after seeing news footage of the war in Vietnam. On the one hand I was impressed by Meinhof's strong feelings for the suffering caused by war, on the other hand, "to me"? No one was dropping napalm on Ulrike's house. But Meinhof clearly felt that she was being put in a position of tacitly or passively supporting a war she was against. That feeling of being party to an atrocity not by action but by inaction had a deeper meaning for a German in 1965 than an American in 2009 can probably ever understand.

But that reaction, so out of proportion as to be downright bizarre, is emblematic of the entire group. As one former RAF member puts it, "The lack of proportion is barbarism. for years, everything revolved around the release of the prisoners." Twenty-eight people in one year (1977) lost their lives not to create a more just world or end poverty (and the Vietnam War was already over) but just trying to get Andreas Baader and his gang out of jail. That's one pathetic dialectic.

This is a very readable book that goes a long way to explaining what Aust calls the Baader-Meinhof complex. As Aust says in the preface, this is neither an indictment nor a plea for the defence. It is a record that requires readers to decide for themselves what the lessons are. Highly recommended for anyone interested in the specific subject or the times.

That's one off the list

Sometimes I'm embarrassed at how long it takes me to finish a book. I lose interest or get distracted. It took me over a year to finish a mystery set in 19th century New York, for instance, that was all of 300 paperback pages long. The fact that I only seemed to remember I was reading this book was when I was going to get my hair "done" and needed something to read didn't help matters. Once a month for 35 minutes isn't a recipe for reading success.

Great Tales from English History was one of the first books I bought for my Kindle. A year ago the selection of history books on Kindle that I hadn't already read was a bit thin so this seemed like just the ticket. Over a year later, I've finally finished it. It wasn't what I was expecting but it is entertaining on its own terms. This is not a continuous narrative but, as the title suggests, individual tales. Each one is relatively short - most clock it at around 5 pages - making it perfect for bite-size reading. The tales themselves draw heavily on original chronicles and sources and Lacey does an admirable job of providing context for the prejudices of the sources. Most of the stories do involve the great and mighty but Lacey also includes tales of "Cheddar Man", an early English physician and the Venerable Bede. Lacey's tales were the perfect company for the subway portion of my commute, easily digestible in 10 minutes each. They've also proven to be good bedtime stories for my 12 year old niece.

If I had to sum this book up in one word it would be this: charming. That's not faint praise. This is not a substantial work of history but it does provide an entertaining respite for history buff and history novice alike. I particularly enjoyed the way Lacey uses the original source material while still providing a commentary on the likeliness of events happening as written. He also delves into the deeper meaning of the tales whether it's Piers Ploughman and the bell on the cat or Alfred and the Cakes. Doing all of this in five page spurts while still entertaining is an accomplishment.

Random Reading Thoughts

Ulrike Meinhoff and Andreas Baader look alike in certain pictures, almost like brother and sister.

Why are most radical groups like cults? A charismatic leader who demands that adherents do his/her bidding in order to proof their worthiness - as true of Baader-Meinhoff as of Jonestown.

Marie Curie had a lousy life. Who knew?

A Boy and His Jewelries

I've learned many things reading The Fabulous Sylvester, among them the importance of looking one's best, of expressing oneself and never, ever to get between a 200 pound drag queen and his jewelries. You can mock his falsetto and diss his music but just try to steal his jewelries and the fabulous Sylvester will mess you up. And that is just one of the many reasons why after reading this book I wish Sylvester were still with us. We can always use more well-put-together dance music, for one thing, and we're perpetually in dire need of entertainers who don't take themselves too seriously. Also I'd like to just hang out with Sylvester for a day - because if this book is any indication, Sylvester WAS the party. I can't remember the last time I read a biography of an entertainer and ended up liking the subject even more.

There's nothing dismissive about calling this story of a boy from South Central who moved to San Francisco and became the First Lady of the Castro a true fairytale. Sylvester dreamed of a world where he could be who he was on his own terms and he sprinkled magic dust on himself and made it happen. Whether hanging out with the drugged out misfits known as the Cockettes or working it on the Merv Griffin Show, Sylvester didn't compromise and he didn't phone it in either.

Author Joshua Gamson uses Sylvester's life story to tell the broader story of gay liberation in the 1970s. If that sounds like a drag consider that Gamson at one point contends that San Francisco was to gays what Israel was to Jews "only with fewer wars and more parties." Gamson nearly always finds just the right balance between telling Sylvester's mostly joyous story and the realities of being gay in America in the 1970s. Even Sylvester's ultimate tragic death from AIDs ends up being a story of staying true to oneself.

This is a fun, smart book. If you read it, as I did, after reading the great punk history "Please Kill Me" you'll find yourself thinking that the Punks may have had all the best lines but the Disco Queens had all the fun.

Clearly John Gavin Shot His Puppy

Sam Staggs has created a franchise telling the stories of the making of classic motion pictures. Behind the Movie - complete with tragedy, triumph, sex-capades and substance abuse. I greatly enjoyed Stagg's first three offerings (on All About Eve, Sunset Boulevard and A Streetcar Named Desire) in part because he treated these fine movies as classics without becoming too precious or too snobby about the whole thing. He writes as an intelligent movie fan for other intelligent fans who aren't above sharing a juicy bit of gossip.

This latest outing - the story of the 1959 version of Imitation of Life - finds Mr Staggs having misplaced his sense of humor. Early on Staggs makes it clear that Imitation is a movie that changed his life and his analysis proceeds from there. Like his two earlier books Staggs provides plenty of backstage gossip about the stars and fascinating details about the making of the movie itself. When Staggs sticks to the story behind the story and writes like a fan telling another fan about their favorite movie of all time this is an entertaining book. But this outing just isn't as much fun for several reasons.

First, Staggs takes this movie way too seriously. I'm all for reclaiming popular art as art. I'm also not in the least snobby about the emotional impact even the lowest of art can have on the viewer. But making a case for Imitation as one of the best movies ever made? There you're on your own, Sam. Especially when he has to go through such contortions to explain away the "blonde half" of the movie starring Lana Turner and Sandra Dee. This would be the part of the movie so beloved by fans of camp - until you've seen Lana "acting" like someone "acting" you just haven't lived - and it's entertaining in its way. It is, however, melodrama, no matter how much Staggs dislikes the word. Melodrama is all about heightened emotions, and what's wrong with that? But whenever Stagg tries to convince the reader that Douglas Sirk was achieving something brilliant by having a weak actress playing another weak actress he lost me. No, Sirk was doing the best he could with the actress he had. This wasn't all part of some cunning plan.

Second, Staggs can't seem to keep his mind on the topic at hand. If Staggs goes easy on Lana, not that I mind, he's downright vicious to John Gavin. I'm not a big fan of John Gavin, I wouldn't even call him an actor if I could think of another word for someone who appears in movies and recites his lines accurately but he's far from the worst thing ever to hit the cinema. Staggs' enmity for Gavin goes beyond his limited thespian skills and seems to have something to do with the fact that Gavin didn't like to do shirtless scenes. Staggs attributes this reluctance to Gavin's political beliefs. Instead of the more believable idea that Gavin was insecure about his acting and didn't want to be sold as a slab of beefcake. Despite the fact that several interviewees declare John Gavin to be a nice man Staggs isn't having any of it. You'd think Staggs would have a little fun with the man who nearly replaced Sean Connery in Diamonds are Forever (the first American James Bond!) but, no.

The only things that piss Staggs off more than John Gavin are the Catholic Church, Condeleeza Rice and George W. Bush. Again, I have no quarrel with this beyond the fact that these three have nothing to do with the movie in question. I do not know the Catholic Church official opinion on Imitation of Life. Nor do I know whether Condie or George have ever seen this movie, whether they like it or not, or where they stand on who stabbed Johnny Stompanato. And since Staggs doesn't see fit to share any of this with the reader I don't know why any of them make appearances. He also doesn't bother to place the movie in the political context of its own time so these current asides are doubly weird. These venomous drive-by remarks only serve to jar the reader out of the narrative and, ultimately, to date this book.

Third, Staggs is so partisan that he fails to see the virtues of the 1934 film version of the 1959 version. In the earlier film, the main characters are business partners; in the remake, Annie Johnson doesn't help create a business, she's the maid to a self-absorbed actress. In 1934, an African-American actress plays a young woman who "passes for white." In the 1959 version, a white actresses passes for white. Which sounds more ground breaking to you?

Finally, Staggs is so convinced of the greatness of the 1959 version and Douglas Sirk in general that he doesn't bother to make a convincing case for either. They're both great, and if you don't get it Staggs doesn't want to know you. That and the endless, pointless axe grinding (what does he have against poor Celeste Holm and Claudette Colbert?) makes this a disappointment.

Kindle version: no photographs and some glitches in the linked Table of Contents.

The Vertigo Years

Part of the fun of finding a new book is anticipating it. First I browse the aisles of the giant Barnes and Noble near my work looking for interesting new non-fiction. When I find a book that looks interesting I usually check to see if it's available for Kindle - because I'm out of book space at home. Whether it is or not I usually consign it to my wish list (if it's not available for Kindle) or get a sample chapter (if it is) and then ... wait. With all the books I have around here, electronic and other, that I haven't read yet I'm trying to be a little more discriminating about what I purchase. Not that I got to the library either anymore, not with 100-plus unread books on the walls around my apartment.

Philipp Blom's The Vertigo Years is one of those books I've been anticipating for months. It was on my wish list for a while and as soon as it was available on Kindle I snapped it up. So far, it was worth the wait. A true history of ideas and personalities rather than a litany of dates and events. If Judt's The Postwar Years is as good I may be headed for a history binge.