When I was young, my over-burdened mother arranged to send me to finishing school
at John Robert Powers http://www.johnrobertpowers.net/
in Pasadena. I was not a grateful girl. Although I wanted to go, I was a rebel and didn’t
want to be classified. To make matters worse, I was thrown out because I was
always late to class and when we put together a script, I failed the class on story
endings. We were given subjects and told to come up with one happy and one sad
ending; I simply could not come up with a happy one. To this day, I can picture
the former model and instructor, a tall Russian woman with bulging eyes,
saying, “Linda, can’t you think of one?” (I suspect it’s an especially bad sign
when a Russian tells you you’re depressed.)
A few years later, my mother chose to send me again; this time to Barbizon
charm school http://www.barbizonmodeling.com/
in Los Angeles. (The odd thing is after
her divorce, we had no money, so I don’t know why she was sending me at all,
though now that I think about it, she probably needed relief from my unladylike
ways.) At this charm school, I thrived. In fact, the summer was so
transformative that at the end of class I was awarded a prize for congeniality,
signed by all the girls, and proclaimed “Class Best Friend.” I still have it, and
consider it one of the happiest moments of my life.
Now that’s a happy ending, I think, unless you consider what happened the
following summer.
Even as I write this, I see that a new issue of Hemingway’s A Farewell
to Arms is coming out, with all 40 or so endings. I can’t wait for the
endings. Have you ever struggled with an
ending?
The Beatles:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7a_8F6gflxQ
I’ve spent the last year reading the Modernist literature http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modernist_literature
of Paris in the 1920s. This pared-down, often Cubist style of writing is
inviting and it’s easy to appreciate the works of Ernest Hemingway, John Dos
Passos, Djuna Barnes and Henry Miller; they affirm the connection between art
and writing and inspiration.
After reading the
Sun Also Rises again I followed it with The Paris Wife http://www.randomhouse.com/rhpg/features/paula_mclain/index.php
a recently published
novel set in the same time period. Being
visual I wondered why the cover depicts the 1950s when the time period is actually
the 1920s. But loving time period pieces, I dug in.
Writer Paula McLain follows Hemingway’s first wife,
Hadley Richardson’s life in its real dimensions, yet it is not an authentic biography. The characters or should I say people who
move through her pages are real and not fictional. Still there is much imagined in regard to
conversations, emotions, interrelationships and feelings. McLain herself
described the work as a novel “in conversation” with Hemingway.
However, its’ biggest flaw was our main character—she’s
a whiny pushover. Now that I think about it I don't know if she was just a
product of the times— old fashioned and hell bent on staying married even
though her husband was a complete louse — or was she really just pathetic?
Ernest was a little boy; self absorbed, vain, inept as a husband, so I didn't
get a warm feeling about either of them.
I kept waiting for Hadley to find her voice and stick up for herself or to
lose her temper. But she doesn’t and it
disappoints, particularly when she finds out her best friend is sleeping with
her husband. The betrayal is the crux of the story although it only occupies a
few pages. It was obvious that McLain
invented the dialogue and has never lived through the emotional experience.
Because it’s a wound and rage that doesn’t get forgotten.
So The Paris Wife
is actually a portrait of the rise and fall of a marriage but in my opinion, made
a flat read.
What it did offer were rich glimpses into the cacophony
of 1920s Paris—a city rife with ex-patriot notables such as F. Scott
Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, and Ezra Pound at a time filled with experimentation
in the arts and a sketch of the Lost Generation’s
dissonant world.
Sometimes it’s fun to think about the beginnings of stories, without
figuring out where they’ll end. Of course, if I can figure out where it will
end and who the characters will be, that’s all the better. But a lot of times I
only have a start, and I chew over that for a while, and then it disappears. So
I’m passing along this start to you and maybe you can make something out of it.
I was at the doggie park. It was
early evening and after my dog didn’t want to play fetch with me I purposely
sat down on a bench. I chose a seat in
front of a woman who stood along the fence who looked quiet. She wore a shabby
outfit, was hunched over, and looked like she had a hard life and a long day at
work. Just as I nestled in and began to look around me, another woman burst on
the scene, a loud, tall Soccer Mom type who lit a cigarette and stood next to
my quiet lady. I figured she would do what I would do, which was close my eyes
and hope she went away. Soccer Mom asked the quiet lady about her dog, and lo
and behold, they both had the same breed. The quiet lady began talking to her.
They were both involved in divorce and custody battles, they loved their
children, and were frustrated by various things. I was touched as I listened at
what a surprising turn the whole thing had taken. These were two women who
never in the world would have connected, and here they were.
A week later, I’m standing under a shady tree at the doggie park and three
big bruiser types come in. They’re smoking
and talking about some guy who was getting out from jail and I wasn’t sure if
they were felons or police officers. All of a sudden a voice pipes up, and I’m
darned if it isn’t my quiet lady wearing the same outfit. She begins talking to them about the last of
the great heavy-weights, Mike Tyson and various other boxers and they begin a
conversation.
John Cheever the short-story writer called the Chekhov of the Suburbs wrote a
story about a woman who keeps showing up to visit people who are dying, and I
began to get a spooky feeling about this lady. What if she was a figment of my
imagination? What if she was a killer purposely looking for loud smoking types?
What if she was just a really lonely woman who could only connect with people at
the doggie park? What if I should just read a book and stop listening to other
people’s chatter?
What do you think?
