Flannery O’Connor
With one day before it was due, PG finished reading Flannery: A Life of Flannery O’Connor , by Brad Gooch. The author is a professor of English at William Patterson University in New Jersey. He spares no citations. You can see where he gets his information. This is a repost.
Chamblee54 has written before about Miss O’Connor , and repeated the post a year later. There is a radio broadcast of a Flannery O’Connor lecture. (The Georgia accent of Miss O’Connor is much commented on in the book. To PG, it is just another lady speaking.)
Mary Flannery O’Connor was born March 25, 1925 in Savannah GA. The local legend is that she was conceived in the shadow of St. John the Baptist Cathedral, a massive facility on Lafayette Square. Her family did leave nearby, and her first school was just a few steps away. This is also a metaphor for the role of the Catholic Church in her life. Mary Flannery was intensely Catholic, and immersed in the scholarship of the church. This learning was a large part of her life. How she got from daily mass, to writing stories about Southern Grotesque, is one mystery at the heart of Flannery O’Connor.
Ed O’Connor doted on his daughter, but had to take a job in Atlanta to earn a living. His wife Regina and daughter Mary Flannery moved with him, to a house behind Christ The King Cathedral. Mr. O’Connor’s health was already fading, and Mother and Daughter moved in with family in Milledgeville. Ed O’Connor died, of Lupus Erythematosus, on February 1, 1941.
Mary Flannery went to college in Milledgeville, and on to the Iowa Writer’s Workshop. She dealt with cold weather, went to Mass every day, and wrote. She was invited to live at an artists colony called Yaddo, in upstate New York. She lived for a while with Robert and Sally Fitzgerald in Connecticut, all while working on her first novel, “Wise Blood”. In 1950, she was going home to Milledgeville for Christmas, and had been feeling poorly. She went to the hometown doctor, who thought at first that the problem was rheumatoid arthritis. The illness of Flannery O’Connor was Lupus Erythematosus.
Miss O’Connor spent much of that winter in hospitals, until drugs were found that could help. She moved, with her mother, to a family farm outside Milledgeville, which she renamed Andalusia. She entered a phase of her life, with the Lupus in relative remission, and the drugs firing her creative fires, where she wrote the short stories that made her famous.
Another thing happened when she was recuperating. Flannery was reading the Florida “Market Bulletin”, and saw an ad for “peafowl”, at sixty five dollars a pair. She ordered a pair, and they soon arrived via Railway Express. This was the start of the peacocks at Andalusia, a part of the legend.
During this period of farm life and writing, Flannery had several friends and correspondents. There was the “Bible Salesmen”, Erik Langkjaer, who was probably the closest thing Flannery had to a boyfriend. Another was Betty Hester, who exchanged hundreds of letters with Miss O’Connor. This took place under the stern eye of Regina O’Connor, the no nonsense mother-caregiver of Flannery. (Mr. Gooch says that Betty Hester committed suicide in 1998. That would be consistent with PG stumbling onto an estate sale of Miss Hester in that time frame.)
The book of short stories came out, and Flannery O’Connor became famous. She was also dependent on crutches, and living with a stern mother. There were lectures out of town, and a few diverse personalities who became her friends. She went to Mass every day, and collected books by Catholic scholars. Flannery was excited by the changes in the church started by Pope John XXIII, and in some ways could be considered a liberal. (She supported Civil Rights, in severe contrast to her mother.)
In 1958, Flannery O’Connor went to Europe, including a trip to the Springs at Lourdes. Her cousin Katie Semmes (the daughter of Captain John Flannery, CSA) pushed Flannery hard to go to the springs, to see if it would help the Lupus. Flannery was reluctant…” I am one of those people who could die for his religion sooner than take a bath for it“. When the day for the visit came, Flannery took a token dip in the waters. Her condition did improve, briefly. (It is worth speculating here about the nature of Flannery’s belief, which was apparently more intellectual than emotional. Could it be that, if she was more persuaded by the mystical, emotional side of the church, and taken the healing waters more seriously, that she might have been cured?)
At some point in this story, her second novel came out, and the illness blossomed. Much of 1964 was spent in hospitals, and she got worse and worse. On August 3, 1964, Mary Flannery O’Connor died.
PG remembers the first time the name Flannery O’Connor sank in. He was visiting some friends, in a little house across from the federal prison.
Rick(?) was the buddy of a character known as Harry Bowers. PG was never sure what Harry’s real name was. One night, Rick was talking about Southern Gothic writers, and he said that Flannery O’Connor was just plain weird. ”Who else would have a bible salesman show up at a farm, take the girl up into a hayloft, unscrew her wooden leg and leave her there? Weird.”
Flannery O’Connor was recently the subject of a biography written by Brad Gooch. The book is getting a bit of publicity. Apparently, the Milledgeville resident was a piece of work.
PG read some reviews of this biography, and found a collection of short stories at the library. The book included ” Good Country People”, the tale about the bible salesman. Apparently, this story was inspired by a real life incident. (Miss O’Connor had lupus the last fifteen years of her life. She used crutches.) And yes, it is weird. Not like hollywood , but in the way of rural Georgia.
Some of the reviews try to deal with her attitudes about Black people. On a certain level, she is a racist. She uses the n word freely, and her black characters are not inspiring people. The thing is, the white characters are hardly any better, and in some cases much worse. In one story, “Everything That Rises Must Converge,” a black lady is the hero.
The stories are well crafted, with vivid descriptions of people and places. The reader floats along with the flow of the story, until he realizes that Grandma has made a mistake on a road trip. The house she got her son to look for is in Tennessee, not Georgia. She makes him drive the family car into a ditch. Some drifting killers come by. Grandma asks one if he prays, while his partner is shooting her grandchildren. Weird.
In another story, a drifter happens upon a pair of women in the country. The daughter is thirty years old, is deaf, and has never spoken a word. The drifter teaches her to say bird and sugarpie. The mother gives him fifteen dollars for a honeymoon, if he will marry her. He takes the fifteen dollars and leaves her asleep in a roadside diner.
There was a yard sale one Saturday afternoon. It was in a house off Lavista Road, between Briarcliff and Cheshire Bridge. The house had apparently not been painted in the last forty years. Thousands and thousands of paperback books were on the shelves. The lady taking the money said that the lady who lived there was the friend, and correspondent of, the “Milledgeville writer” Flannery O’Connor. This is apparently Betty Hester, who is mentioned in many of the biography reviews.
PG told the estate sale lady that she should be careful how she said that. There used to be a large mental hospital in Milledgeville, and the name is synonymous in Georgia with mental illness. The estate sale lady had never heard that.
UPDATE: PG sometimes reads poems at an open mic event. His stage name is Manly Pointer. This is the bible salesman in “Good Country People.” This is a repost. Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library.” It was written like James Joyce. An earlier edition of this post had comments.
Fr. J. December 10, 2009 at 3:00 pm I am glad you take an interest in Flannery, but to say baldly that she is a racist is to very much misunderstand her. For another view on Flannery and race, you might want to read her short story, “Everything that Rises Must Converge.”
chamblee54 December 10, 2009 at 3:17 pm “On a certain level, she is a racist.” That is not the same as “baldly” labeling her a racist. (And I have a full head of hair, thank you). As a native Georgian, I am aware of the many layers of nuance in race relations. I feel that the paragraph on race in the above feature is accurate.
I Slept With Joey Ramone
I Slept with Joey Ramone is the story of a six foot five geek, who was only good for singing gabba gabba hey. Jeffrey Ross Hyman had issues. Aside from his goofy appearance, Jeff had severe OCD. He would injure his foot bad enough to require several hospitalizations. Somehow, Jeff got to play in some bands, going glitter as Jeff Starship. Eventually, Jeff Hyman, John Cummins, Douglas Colvin, and Tommy Erdelyi becam Joey, Johnny, Dee Dee, and Tommy Ramone.
ISWJR was written by Mitchel Lee Hyman, Jeff’s younger brother. His stage name was Mickey Leigh. Mickey was the first roadie for the Ramones, and will always be in his brother’s shadow. The two had an intense relationship. Jeff and Mitch went from being best friends to mortal enemies. This sibling rivalry is a key part of the story. The book, despite the commercial title, is about Mickey as much as Joey. The subtitle is “A punk rock family memoir.”
The co-author is Legs McNeil, who assembled Please Kill Me. ISWJR is told through Mickey’s eyes. It is uncertain what role Mr. McNeil played. Some say that Mickey Leigh could not type a page of text if his life depended on it.
Please Kill Me was an “oral history of punk rock,” meaning they taped a bunch of people talking. Mickey was one of the talkers, and Joey was not happy with what Mickey said. Another voice tells about Dee Dee Ramone falling on the sidewalk outside CBGB. Dee Dee said it was not a good idea to get hit in the head when you were drinking… it might cause brain damage. That is not an exact quote. Dee Dee Ramone did not “just say no.”
The Ramones had their fifteen minutes last for twenty years. They went down to the Bowery, and found this bar called CBGB’s. The owner kept his dog inside, and dog shit was everywhere. The Ramones got a following, a record contract, did tours, recorded albums, became sort of famous, started a movement (other than the bar dog’s bowels,) but never had a hit record. This lack of commercial success was highly annoying.
The first taste of big money was Budweiser using “Blitzkrieg Bop” in a commercial. Mickey played an uncredited part in the song. When the Budweiser money started to roll in, Mickey was struggling to pay the rent. Mickey tried to get some money out of the band, which refused. This caused many years of Joey and Mickey not speaking.
For a while the boys in the band (pun intended, at least for Dee Dee) were pals. Then Joey had a girlfriend, Linda. Johnny stole Linda from Joey. Johnny and Joey hated each other from then on. Johnny was always a bit of an asshole, as was Joey. At some point, Tommy had enough, and was replaced by Marky. He drank his way out of the job, and was replaced by Richie.
In 1983, The Ramones played at the Agora Ballroom in Atlanta. PG was in the audience. By this time, the Ramones had been going on for nine years. They was not the next big thing anymore. Somebody played a tape of cheezy Coney Island music, and the band came on stage. Joey hunched over the microphone, tapped himself on the head with a baseball bat, and the band did “Beat on the brat.” The band went through the motions, playing another show, probably identical to every other Ramones show ever played. Punk rock just was not trendy anymore.
It was an all ages show. If you wanted to drink, you had to go up to the balcony. You were on your own going down the stairs. Downstairs was full of young people, many is costume, having a hot time. The balcony was the same rock and roll drunks that were at every show ever produced.
ISWJR does not have a happy ending. Joey had health problems throughout his life. Being a drunken-coke-freak rock star did not help. He came down with Lymphoma, and was starting to do ok. Then, Joey fell and broke his hip, and they had to adjust his medication. Soon, the cancer was back with a vengeance. Joey and Mickey called a truce to their squabbling before Joey died April 15, 2001. Dee Dee and Johnny quickly followed. The Ramones would have been a great oldies band, if only.
Pictures today are from The Library of Congress.
Post Office: A Novel
Post Office, a novel allegedly based on the life of Charles Bukowski, was on sale at a “Friends of the Chamblee Library” book sale. The author would not like this. You cannot complain when you died 24 years ago. PG paid a dollar, and read the story. Hank Chinaski, the stand in for the author, got a lousy job at the post office in Los Angeles. For 196 pages, Hank drinks, works, screws, admires women’s bodies, drinks, bets on horses, fights with supervisors, has hangovers, and drinks more. The story is easy to read, suggesting the helping hand of an editor.
PO stands for both post office and pissed off. The two concepts are not mutually exclusive. When PG was 8 years old, a mail man ran over Pongo, his dog. To hear Hank tell the story, life at the PO was an endless cycle of sadistic bosses, and brain damaged co-workers. Administrative wanks rule over everyone. Somehow Hank made it through 11 years as a clerk. The institution survived. Mr. Bukowski perished in 1994. The headstone reads “Don’t Try.”
‘I Never Saw Him Drunk’: An Interview with Bukowski’s Longtime Publisher is an interview with John Martin, the owner of Black Sparrow press. Mr. Martin thought Hank was the next Whitman, and started Black Sparrow (initials are not always convenient) to distribute Hank’s product. When Hank quit the post office in 1969, Mr. Martin agreed to give him $100 a month. This later became $10,000 every two weeks, with more at the end of the year.
“How did his first novel, Post Office, come about? This is a good story. So we made that deal in December for $100 a month—early December, as I recall—and so he gave notice to the post office, and his last day there was going to be December 31. He said, “OK, I’m going to work for you on January 2, because January 1 is New Year’s Day and I’m going to take that as a holiday. We thought that was really funny. About three or four weeks went by, I think it was still in January, or at worst the first week in February, and he called me—oh, and I had told him earlier, “If you ever think of writing a novel, that’s easier to sell than poetry; it would help if you could write a novel”—so he called me up at the very end of January or the first week of February, out of the blue, and said, “I got it; come and get it.” I said, “What?” And he said, “My novel.” I said, “You’ve written a novel since I saw you last?” And he said, “Yes.” I asked how that was possible, and he said, “Fear can accomplish a lot.” And that novel was Post Office.” The novel includes a near fatal party in that month.
Mr. Martin has a take on Hank which differs from his image. “Hank was not comfortable among people, in a crowd, even at a small gathering; he was a real loner. He wanted to get up in the morning, have a quick breakfast with his wife, read the paper, leave the house about noon, go to the track, come home at 6:00, have dinner about 7:00, go upstairs at 8:00, and write until two in the morning, and he wanted nothing to interfere with that routine. … he was the most polite man I’ve ever known, and the most honest man I’ve ever known. He was so deferential and polite and so concerned for your comfort, and whether you were happy or not, when you were with him.”
“I went to the bathroom and threw some water on my face, combed my hair. If I could only comb that face, I thought, but I can’t.” This may be the best line in PO. There are a lot to choose from. PO is a guilty pleasure. It is sexist and misogynistic to the max. The writing is basic, and easy to consume. It is tough to believe that Hank wrote this in a month by himself, but it is also tough to believe that someone that ugly got laid all the time. If only Hank could have combed that face.
PG has written about Hank one, two, three, four, five, six, seven times, with some reruns thrown in for efficient blogging. PG has written two pomes about Hank. (A B) B is basically A in sonnet form. Never mind that Hank hated rhyming poems, to say nothing of posting the lines over pictures of dogs. Hank was a cat person, as if rhyme scheme blasphemy was not enough.
@bukowski_quote is a twitter facility dedicated to distributing 240 character bits of Buk. These tweets/quotes (twoats) have been packaged as two more sonnets, published in two parts each. (C D E F) Sometimes, PG feels this is a bit of post mortem cultural appropriation. The Hank of Tales of Ordinary Madness would have hated seeing his work used this way. How the millionaire, wine sipping Hank feels is a good question. Then, PG found a quote that made him feel better.
“I got into Bukowski about five years ago on a trip to New York from North Carolina. I swallowed Ham on Rye in a single sitting while riding in the back of some clunker-type Honda thing racing north on I-95 in what I think was June of 2005. Since then I’ve read all of his novels and much of his poetry (which is a lot, do you know how much poetry he wrote?) and don’t give a shit about the literary ball bags at the Vice office who say he’s a boring, repetitive, pompous, fake-macho, southern-California-weather-system-addled boozehole, partly because I agree, and partly because I don’t read him for some sort of illumination on the haggard life of the proletariat. I just see his writing as a quick source of thrills, spills, and funny things to call women that you’re angry at but also still want to fuck.”
A book report about Post Office would not be complete without one star reviews. patricia neumannon August 8, 2014 “One star for the fact that this was even published. I was offended by Mr. Bukowski’s low regard for women. Pehaps his target audience is adolescent boys, who might twitter at Bukkowski’s vulger attempt at humor.” Auntie Mon September 1, 2014 “A book about a pathetic, selfish White man? No thanks.” gammyrayeon February 8, 2013 ” … The narrator Henry Chenaski is a low-life alcoholic who spends his life getting drunk, having sex with girlfriends and chance acquaintances, and betting at the race track, all while working at the post office. Finally he resigns from the post office. End of story. All this is written in an arrogant tone, as if the narrator feels himself to be superior to all the other characters, especially to his fellow workers. Bukowski has stated that the novel is autobiographical, and he seemed to take pride in the tumble-down life that he led. I have known guys like this–he is every drunk or drug addict who ever excused his addiction as an indication that he is too intelligent and sensitive to deal with the angst of living among the clods and drudges. Alcoholism is not hilarious and entertaining, even to the alcoholic, eventually. And it is not hilarious and entertaining to read about.”
Pictures today are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”. These images are from “… a collection of images of downtown Atlanta streets that were taken before the viaduct construction of 1927 – 1929. Later, some of the covered streets became part of Underground Atlanta.” The renovation at Underground never stops.
Citizen: An American Lyric
Citizen: An American Lyric is a book of prose poetry by Claudia Rankine. It has 169 pages, and was sponsored by The College of St. Benedict. PG accepted a copy of the book, on the condition that he create a work of art based on it. This blog post is the start of this commitment.
PG is up to page 11. So far, it is a series of paragraphs, that do not seem to connect to each other. PG generally favors stories, and biographies, to books of prose poetry sponsored by a university. The first couple of pages are about a student who asks another student to lean over during a test, so the non leaning student can copy answers off her page.
At the bottom of the page was a picture. Two recently built houses are on a road. The road sign in front says “Jim Crow Road.” This is eye catching. There really is a Jim Crow Road, in zipcode 30542, Flowery Branch GA. “Family says ‘Jim Crow Road’ doesn’t represent what you think” A man named Jim Crow lived there when he was alive, and is buried there now. His family, and neighbors, speak highly of the late Mr. Crow.
Page 7 is about a friend, who used to call someone, presumably Ms. Rankine, by the name of her black housekeeper. Pages 10 and 11 are about some incident at a school. Claudia talks about “John Henryism,” or the medical effects of dealing with racism. PG has experienced the fight or flight feelings when angry people, both black and white, go off on him for whatever reason. Is this “John Henryism,” or is that reserved for black people in their unpleasant dealings with white people? This is the first day of reading here. PG will return to this text later.
CAAL is divided into sections. So far, PG has got through the first three. One and three are brief prose poems, mostly about times when the author got her feelings hurt. Almost all of the incidents are what you might call microaggressions. Someone calls her by the name of someone else. A real estate agent says that she is comfortable with the friend of the author. It is not certain how the white reader is supposed to react to this. Since you were not a witness, you don’t know all the facts.
Part two is about Hennessy Youngman and Serena Williams. PG had never heard of Mr. Youngman, aka Jayson Musson, made youtube videos about being a black artist. The plan is to be angry. “White people want to consume your artwork, but they don’t want to understand you, because then you would be just like them, and the white audience don’t want the _____ artist to be like them, you know what I’m saying, it’s pretty simple.” Mr. Youngman says simple at 2:37 in the video. This speech was made in 2010. Mr. Youngman has not posted a video in six years.
The following language came in at 0:52 of the video mentioned in CAAL. “as a _____ artist, you can exploit the shit out of white people. and a lot of the guilt that white people have over shit that you don’t have no control over, burn my toast the other day, if I told some cracker on the street that I burned my toast and if I said it to him in a certain tone assert my anger I know he’ed apologize and most likely buy me some more toast.” PG has been the cracker on the street a few times.
Most of part two is about Serena Williams. PG does not follow tennis, and, until recently, was barely aware of who Ms. Williams was. In part two, the struggles of Ms. Williams are detailed. It is mostly questionable calls by tennis officials, sometimes followed by Serena Williams outbursts. CAAL does not paint a flattering picture of the tennis player.
In the last week, Ms. Williams was featured in the Colin Kaepernick Nike Commercial. Yesterday, Ms. Williams was in the news, after another incident involving an official. As noted earlier, PG does not follow tennis, and has no interest in this latest controversy involving Serena Williams. There is a limited amount of mental energy to use on controversies that involve a boring sport.
This is part one of the agreed upon art statement. PG might not be a good fit for this project. PG aknowledges the struggles of African America. PG also knows that he has a life, with its own privileges and struggles. Hennessy Youngman says that the way for an _____ artist to get ahead is to make white people feel guilty. At least that is what Mr. Youngman said in the first 2:37 of that video. PG did not listen to the rest. PG has seen the white guilt game in many forms. Maybe the answer is to go off on an authority figure. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. Part two and part three of this series are now available at an internet near you.
Armistead Maupin At DBF
When PG heard that Armistead Maupin was coming to the Dick Hater Book Festival, not going was out of the question. There were rumors of a film showing/Q&A on saturday, and PG scoured the DBF website, looking for information. When the film showing was finally put on the website, tickets were no longer available.
On the morning of the talk, PG fussed over which shirt to wear, settling on a purple t-shirt with no adornment. Next, PG called his friend “P” to make arrangements to meet at the First Baptist Church, site of Mr. Maupin’s appearance. The ring tone for PG calls on “P”‘s phone is “Tutti Frutti.” “P” had agreed to let a friend do laundry at his house, and had to jiggle the schedule a bit. “P” wore a tie dyed t-shirt, with a chest hair display hole below the collar. This all blends in nicely with the lavender shirt, pink suspenders, and Levis that Mr. Maupin wore.
The talk started at 1:15. PG arrived at 12:30, and snagged a prime parking spot. The talk was in the sanctuary, and PG found seats in the fifth row pew. The church house setting gave Mr. Maupin pause. He said something about using profanity, and the pastor said “Its all good.” Mr. Maupin then told the story of getting lubricated on maitais, and coming out to his neighbor. She said “big fucking deal.”
When PG arrived at the church, Mr. Maupin was standing in front of the auditorium. PG went down and shook his hand. “My blog is Chamblee54, and I am writing about this, so I am going to watch what you say.” Mr. Maupin looked sideways, as if to say “who does this guy think he is.” Later, while discussing gender transition, Mr. Maupin paused for a second, and said he manted to say this properly. He was watching what he said.
The talk was a delight, as everyone knew it would be. The *southern-ness* of his parents, moving to San Francisco, the Tales of the City series, and Rock Hudson all were discussed. The pbs lady who hosted the event said that Mr. Maupin was like the Forrest Gump of our generation. This went over about as well as PG telling Mr. Maupin to watch what he said.
At some point, the racial values of 1950s North Carolina came up again. It occurred to PG that this was a very white audience. He looked in the rows ahead of him, and to the side, and did not see any p.o.c. When the talk ended, PG was one of the first to stand up, and did a quick survey of the rest of the room. There may have been p.o.c. at this event, but PG did not see them. For painfully woke Decatur, this is an interesting development. You can welcome people all you want, but if nobody shows up, then nobody shows up.
PG spoke to Mr. Maupin one more time. While discussing the techno-gentrification of San Francisco, Mr. Maupin said that “Decatur is starting to look pretty good.” He then said that maybe you say Deck-a-tur. After the show was over, PG approached the stage, and told Mr. Maupin that the correct pronunciation was Dick Hater…. the town had been renamed Dick Hater in honor of the lesbian population. Mr. Maupin laughed, and acted like he had never heard that. A man with a DBF badge told PG “You’re making that up.”
Chamblee54 has featured Mr. Maupin one, two, three, four, five, six times. Pictures, for the text to go between, are from The Library of Congress.
Wonderful Tonight
Wonderful Tonight: George Harrison, Eric Clapton, and Me is the book for Pattie Boyd. Ms. Boyd has the copyright to herself, with presumed ghostwriter Penny Junor given *with* credit. The former Patricia Anne Boyd has had quite a life.
Ms. Boyd was born at a young age. Her family moved to Kenya, where they had many cool adventures. Her parents split up, her mother remarried, and her stepfather was a horrible man. The Boyds, who by now included several more children, moved back to England. Pattie went to convent school, then went to live in London. She got a job in a beauty salon, when one day someone suggested she try modelling. At times, this story sounds like a movie.
Pattie was working as a model, including some TV commercials. Richard Lester noticed her, and hired her as a school girl in “A Hard Days Night.” George Harrison noticed her, and they were soon an item. Meanwhile, swinging sixties London was in fast forward mode. Pattie Boyd plugged herself into the sex, drugs, and rock and roll lifestyle, and had her share of good times.
George wrote “Something” about his glamorous young bride. His pal Eric Clapton took note, and wrote “Layla.” Eric was in pursuit for many years, writing many beautiful love letters. Finally, as her marriage to George was winding down, Pattie took up with Eric. It was great fun for a while, until Eric’s alcoholism spoiled things. Pattie left Eric, came back, got married to him, and stuck around until Eric got another lady pregnant. (Conor Clapton died tragically in 1991.) The story goes on, and on, until the book was written in 2008. According to wikipedia, Pattie is going strong in 2018. She married Rod Weston, husband number three, in 2015.
Wonderful Tonight is a fun book to read. Penny Junor knows how to tell a story. The life of Pattie Boyd is full of struggle, as well as glamour. Many of the people, including Pattie’s sisters, struggle with addiction. One gets the sense that this, like many autobiographies, puts the subject in the most flattering light possible. There is probably another side to many of these stories. If they can be told as skillfully as this one is, these stories would be worth reading.
Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. “Winter bathing, Smiths Casino, Miami, Feb. 6, 1921″ W. A. (William A.) Fishbaugh, copyright claimant … No renewal found in Copyright Office.
Reckless Daughter: A Portrait of Joni Mitchell
A few weeks ago, PG was at the library. He had a story to take home, before going over to the biography section. There he found Reckless Daughter: A Portrait of Joni Mitchell. At least with fiction, you know you are dealing with a made up story. With biography, you have to use judgment.
It is a familiar story. Joni was born in the frozen north, was a rebellious girl, and got pregnant. She gave up the daughter for adoption, only to be reunited many years later. Joan Anderson gets married to, and divorces, Chuck Mitchell. Joni sings, writes, tunes her guitar funny, becomes a star, gets too weird to be popular, makes and loses money, smokes millions of cigarettes, and becomes an angry old lady. There is a bit more to the story than that. Reckless Daughter fills in a few of the blank spots.
Millions of cigarettes might be an exaggeration. Joni started smoking when she was nine. When she was a star, she was almost as well known for her constant puffing as her pretty songs. When Joni was in a Reagan era slump, she was going through four packs a day. Just for the sake of statistics, lets call it two packs, or forty fags, a day. Multiply forty by 365 and you get 14,600. If she started at 9, and had her aneurysm at 72, that gives you 63 years of nicotine abuse. If you assume that there were forty fags a day for 63 years, that gives you 919,800 smokes. IOW, while seven figures is not out of reach, it is rather unlikely that Joni smoked more than 2,000,000 cancer sticks.
The author of Reckless Daughter, David Yaffe, is a problem. He talks about the mood of America in 1969, four years before he was born. Mr. Yaffe goes to great lengths to show us that he knows about making music. Some readers will be impressed. There are mini-essays on Joni songs from her golden years, the time between “Ladies of the Canyon” and “Hejira.” And gossip, gossip, and more gossip. Joni is well known for her celebrity lovers.
We should make the point that PG enjoyed Reckless Daughter. The inside stories are fun, and pages turn over without too much head scratching. Maybe this is a statement about the career of Joni Mitchell. You enjoy the music for many years, and then complain about the details. Reckless Daughter follows the trajectory of other celebrity biographies. The star is born, takes up a craft, gets a break, becomes successful, goes over the mountaintop into a long decline. With Joni, nothing after “Mingus” was well received. The chanteuse was broker, and angrier, by the minute.
On page 13, Joni hears Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini by Sergei Rachmaninoff. This is the piece that makes her want to be a musician. One page 129, we learn the story of A&M studios in Hollywood. At one time, The Carpenters were in studio A, while Carole King was recording “Tapestry” in studio B. Joni was recording “Blue” in studio C, which had a magic piano. One time, Carole King learned of a break in the studio C booking, and ran in. Three hours later, “I feel the earth move” was recorded.
A few years later, Joni was on the Rolling Thunder tour with Bob Dylan. One of the concepts was support for Rubin “Hurricane” Carter, whose story can be found elsewhere. Joni became disillusioned with Mr. Carter. When Joan Baez asked Joni to speak at a benefit concert, Joni said she would say that Mr. Carter was a jive ass N-person, who never would have been champion of the world. Joni later got in SJW trouble for posing in blackface, for the cover to “Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter.”
On page 251, we learn that Bob Dylan does not dance. Other items include “Free man in Paris” being written about David Geffen, and Jackson Browne writing “Fountain of Sorrow” about Joni. Mr. Brown is a not-well-thought-of ex of Joni. As for Mr. Geffen…. Joni stayed at his house for a while, at a time when Mr. Geffen was in, and out, of the closet. Did they make sweet music together?
So this book report comes to an end. Joni is recovering from a brain aneurysm, and will probably not produce anything else. The book is going back to the library, and PG will move on to something else. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress.
Page 99
PG woke up one Sunday morning, and started to look in his archive. He found a post from July 2009, Genius And Heroin Part One. The G&H book had been mentioned in a couple of blogs, The Page 69 Test and The Page 99 Test. Both of these blogs are still publishing nine years later. The idea is to critique a book by what is on page 69, or page 99.
Reckless Daughter: A Portrait of Joni Mitchell is a book PG adopted from the Chamblee library. A journalist had a series of interviews with Joni, and morphed a book out of it. Maybe a look at pages 69 and 99 will give us some text to go between the pictures.
On page 69, Joni is a young lady, performing in Miami Beach. She has had a baby, left her husband, and is trying to make it as a musician. One night in a club, David Crosby saw her, and saw the future. The two became a couple, which did not last very long. Joni and David went to California, where David introduced her to some buddies in the music business. David produced Joni’s first album, and apparently did not know what he was doing. Both of them moved on.
On page 99, Joni has put out her second album, and is gaining momentum. It is 1969, and America is in turmoil over Vietnam. The author, David Yaffe, goes into some detail about the mood of America in 1969. Mr. Yaffe was born in 1973. Why does he discuss the mood of 1969?.
Pictures, for this Sunday morning space filler, are from The Library of Congress. The Montana photographs were taken by Marion Post Wolcott in August, 1941.
The Corrections
It started with a yard sale. The man had a box of books available for free. PG looked through it. A hardback copy of The Corrections, by Jonathan Franzen, caught his eye. Wasn’t that David Foster Wallace’s buddy? Literary types drop the name, and talk behind his back on twitter. . PG picked up the book, and took it home. It sat on a shelf for a few years, along with the other free, or cheap, books that PG had adopted. Eventually, PG decided to try a few pages. 567 pages, and countless dinners later, The Corrections is finished.
It is time to write a book report for the blog, but PG does not know where to start. There are amazon one star reviews, which don’t have enough entertaining snark to bother with. Wikipedia suggests an 2006 interview with Brett Easton Ellis, where you wade through endless chatter to learn that BEE thinks that TC is “one of the three great books of your generation.” This is after the interviewer asks BEE is he has a dog, or a girlfriend.
This is not going to be easy, either to write or to read. PG has been slack about writing lately … being ignored by a billion internet users will do that. TC is just barely interesting enough to write about. Oh, it has its moments. Mr. Franzen is a clever writer, and if you don’t believe him, read a few more pages. Mr. Franzen likes to show off his literary chops. TC is like Infinite Jest lite. Which means the normal reader can finish it, without chemical assistance.
Mr. Franzen is well known for being a pal of David Foster Wallace. If you google “Jonathan Franzen and,” the top three suggestions are David Foster Wallace, Oprah, and birds. You have to wonder what Mr. Franzen really thought of Mr. Wallace. “Wallace’s friend (and friendly rival) Jonathan Franzen declared in The New Yorker in 2011, “he wasn’t Saint Dave.” Franzen upset people further when he casually suggested to New Yorker editor David Remnick that Wallace exaggerated facts and embellished quotes in his non-fiction.”
Maybe the best thing to do is listen to Mr. Franzen on the Charlie Rose show. While this is playing, PG can work on a graphic poem, or stare out the window. The youtube comments are amusing. Nikolaos Mylonas “The interviewer is a famous journalist called charlie rose. Now he is discredited due to accusations of sexual abuse made by his employees” Drew “Interesting that he seems to find reading books so tremendously useless in his utilitarian, food-in-stomach type of way. Yet he writes … from this pleasure of uselessness? …”
At some point Mr. Rose says “We’ve gone this far without mentioning Oprah,” to which Mr. Franzen replies, “And what a pleasant twenty minutes it has been.” Apparently, Mr. Franzen and Miss Winfrey had a well documented disagreement. This dispute focused a lot of attention on TC, and may have helped Mr. Franzen more than it hurt. It should be noted that PG had not heard of the Oprah problem while he was reading TC.
A Million Little Pieces is another book with an Oprah problem. PG paid twenty cents for his copy of AMLP. In the chamblee54 book report, there is a book meme: ““Open your nearest book to page 82. Take the third full sentence on the page, and work it into a post somehow.” For TC, this would be: “When he punted the box from Gary it exploded in a cloud of white styrofoam saucers.” Chip, the number two child in the story, is spending Christmas at home of his older brother, Gary. For some reason, Chip takes his gifts and tries to kick them up the stairs. This Christmas … much of the plot in TC involves another dysfunctional family Christmas … is in the middle of Chip ruining his academic career. Maybe kicking the gift, and having it explode in a shower of styrofoam, is a metaphor.
The third sentence on page 82 is typical of Mr. Franzen’s style. He writes lots of great quotes. Goodreads and schmoop have pages devoted to them.“And meanwhile the sad truth was that not everyone could be extraordinary, not everyone could be extremely cool; because whom would this leave to be ordinary?” “Fiction is a solution, the best solution, to the problem of existential solitude.” “Without privacy there was no point in being an individual.” “He couldn’t figure out if she was immensely well adjusted or seriously messed up.” tags: inspirational-quotes, writing-philosophy.
TC is plot challenged. The schmoop summary can help. TC is about the Lambert Family. They are so mid-western that it hurts, which may be why two children escape to Filthadelphia. Alfred and Enid are the parents, living in a place called St. Jude … it is tough to say what St. Jude is a stand in for, except that it is in the mid-west. Gary, the eldest, married with three sons, is an asshole. Chip, the package kicker, is fired from a tenure track job. He had an affair with a student. Denise, the youngest, a chef, is fired after having an affair with the restaurant owner’s wife. The details of those four sentences takes up about four hundred pages of TC. The macguffin is to get all three kids together for one last christmas. None of the five Lamberts mentioned above is a likable person. The closest thing to a likable Lambert is Jonah, the youngest son of Gary.
One of the side plots involves Lithuania. Chip takes a job there, as a computer geek, working for a post-communist criminal. It turns out this Lithuania exists only in Mr. Franzen’s mind. “In a loopy section of his novel that forms a kind of fantasy-ballet diversion from the main events, Chip, failed academic and failing screenwriter, becomes involved with an internet-based financial scam based in Vilnius. The Vilnius of The Corrections is a gangster’s paradise of teenage prostitutes, fraud, corruption and armed robbery. Although very funny, it is an account unburdened by research. Recently, looking up his own book on Amazon.com, he noticed that Lithuanian readers have begun posting snarly e-mails, in protest at his depiction of their homeland. “I’ve not been to Lithuania, although the ambassador has now invited me to come and see for myself that they don’t eat horse meat. The horse meat has really touched a nerve.””
TC rambles on for 567 pages, with lots of flashbacks and sub plots. Most of the detours are described in excruciating detail. And yet, PG finished the damn thing. TC did not change his life. It was doing good to change Alfred’s diapers. Pictures today are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
History From The Stable
The following is a repost. Pictures are from The Library of Congress.
PG read “Churchill, Hitler, and the unnecessary war” by Patrick Buchanan. It makes interesting points, and is luxuriously footnoted. This is not to say that PG believes all of it.
Part of the problem is Pat Buchanan. He is a former speechwriter for Richard Nixon, and a public nuisance since. He gave a hateful speech at the Republican Convention in 1992 which is known as the “Culture War” speech. This speech alienated many people, and helped elect Bill Clinton.
The book starts with the deal making before World War I. Germany was ruled by Kaiser Wilhelm, the grandson of Queen Victoria. He tried to arrange an alliance with Great Britain. Instead, Britain entered into a secret alliance with France. In 1914, Europe blundered into war. The conflict turned into a ghastly stalemate, which continued until 1918. The victorious French forced a vengeful peace on the Germans, setting the stage for the second world war.
Great Britain made many mistakes. They severed an alliance with Japan. They allowed Hitler to advance, then gave a guarantee to Poland that they would defend her in a war. This guarantee to Poland is the biggest blunder of all, according to Buchanan. It made war all but certain.
Eventually, Nazi Germany was defeated, but at a frightful cost. The millions of dead in the war produced an East Europe under Communist Rule for 50 years. The British Empire was a shadow of its former self. The United States came out of the war looking good, but much of Europe was destroyed, and ruled by Communists.
Winston Churchill does not look good. He is seen cheering the start of war in 1914. He makes numerous blunders, especially when encouraging the invasion of Gallipoli. Churchill was an inspiring leader in the second war, with an actor making speeches for him on the radio. Mr. Hitler, who read his own speeches, was also a charismatic leader.
As with all history, this book needs to be taken with a bit of skepticism. Tom Robbins makes a comparison of history to animal husbandry. A herd manager mixes bloodlines to create an improved breed. A historian takes “facts”, and mixes them to support an agenda. Both are usually up to their ankles in s**t.
After PG finished the Buchanan book, he started one by Deepak Chopra. The title was “Why is G-d Laughing?“. The first chapter tells the story of a famous comedian. He goes to the hospital when his father drops dead of a heart attack. The comedian cannot help but think of jokes. PG is going to return this to the library without reading any more.
A Man Without a Country
A meme turned up on facebook the other day. Here is what it said: “For some reason, the most vocal Christians among us never mention the Beatitudes (Matthew 5). But, often with tears in their eyes, the demand that the Ten Commandments be posted in public buildings. And of course, that’s Moses, not Jesus. I haven’t heard one of them demand that the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, be posted anywhere. “Blessed are the merciful” in a courtroom? “Blessed are the peacemakers” in the Pentagon? Give me a break!”
This bit of commodity wisdom is blamed on Kurt Vonnegut. It does sound like something he would say. The copy-friendly version of the quote gives a source, A Man Without a Country. This is a memoir, which is like a meme with an oir glued on.
PG ordered AMWAC from the library, and read it. It would be fun to say that AMWAC is great, but it isn’t. It is the same stuff you heard KV saying for years. AMWAC was published in 2005, two years before KV took his dirt nap. ANWAC might have been a good idea, but just doesn’t work. Not that the humanist talk isn’t true, or inspiring. The novels had humanism, but they were window dressing for a story, with plots and characters. The novels were fun to read.
One item stands out, which is not to say that it is outstanding. “Jazz historian Albert Murray claimed that the suicide rate among American slave owners was higher than that of their slaves.” This is on page 68 of AMWAC. The source thinks that this is because the slaves could sing the blues, and slave owners could do nothing but count money.
Reddit had 22 comments devoted to this factoid. The truth is, nobody knows. It may be true. It may have been true in the Mississippi Delta, but not true in Virginia. Maybe seeing snow in the winter was the factor. There is a problem with asking why, before you are sure that the statement is true.
Classics Illustrated: The Man Without A Country #63 is a comic book version of another book titled AMWAC. (all pages are there, this is meant for reading, not collecting) In this epic, a man says that he wishes to never hear of the United States again. A judge sentences him to go on a ship, where people are forbidden to speak of America in his presence. Talk about specialty punishment! In the end, the man is so patriotic nobody can stand him. It is highly unlikely that there will be a comic book version of the Kurt Vonnegut AMWAC.
Pictures are from The Library of Congress. Dorothea Lange took the pictures in June 1937, in Texas The spell check suggestion for AMWAC is AMWAY.
Lady Sings The Blues
Lady Sings The Blues is the autobiography of Billie Holiday. PG read it in 1978, and pulled it off the shelf recently. The copy he has is was a 1972 paperback, issued in conjunction with the movie. A picture of Diana Ross is on the cover, as well as a price sticker from Woolco. The book sold for $1.25. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. The spell check suggestion for Woolco is Cool.
William Dufty was the ghost writer. His prose is easy to read, with the story flowing out like a Lester Young solo. The 1956 copyright is assigned to “Eleanora Fagan and William Dufty,” using the birth name of the singer. Mr. Dufty was a newspaper writer. “Dufty had one son, Bevan Dufty, with first wife Maely Bartholomew, who had arrived in New York City during World War II after losing most of her family in the Nazi concentration camps. She settled near Harlem where she met her best friend and Bevan’s godmother, Billie Holiday.”
“Bevan Dufty would agree. He’s one of the childless singer’s two godchildren. … “Holiday said motherf — all the time, in her gravelly elegant way,” recalled Dufty, sitting in his City Hall office. His mother, a Czech Jewish immigrant who loved jazz, was close to many musicians and even managed the unmanageable Charlie Parker for a spell, learned to curse from Holiday. But with a European accent. Much of what Dufty knows of Holiday comes from his late mother, who was married to actor Freddie Bartholomew before her brief marriage to William Dufty, one of her seven husbands. Maely, who took her infant son by train to Philadelphia every day to attend yet another of Holiday’s drug trials, was so distraught by the singer’s death that she dedicated herself to helping recovering addicts. A number of musicians lived at the Duftys’ place while kicking the habit (William and Maely Dufty divorced not long after Holiday’s death, and he later married actress Gloria Swanson, who inspired him to write the book “Sugar Blues” about the dangers of processed sugar).”
Billie Holiday’s bio, ‘Lady Sings the Blues,’ may be full of lies, but it gets at jazz great’s core Autobiographies are, by their nature, self serving. This one has a great opening line… ” “Mom and Pop were just a couple of kids when they got married. He was eighteen, she was sixteen, and I was three.” (“Her parents were never married. When she was born, her mother was 19, her father was 17 and they never lived under the same roof.”) Another source adds: “Some of the material in the book, however, must be taken with a grain of salt. Holiday was in rough shape when she worked with Dufty on the project, and she claimed to have never read the book after it was finished. Around this time, Holiday became involved with Louis McKay. The two were arrested for narcotics in 1956, and they married in Mexico the following year. (March 28, 1957) Like many other men in her life, McKay used Holiday’s name and money to advance himself.”
Louis McKay is at the center of another misunderstanding of facts. The Hunting of Billie Holiday claimed that Mr. McKay narked out Miss Holiday in 1947, and set up her first drug bust. LSTB tells a different story. Here, Miss Holiday meets Mr. McKay very briefly in 1931. Someone was trying to rob Mr. McKay. Miss Holiday said “He’s my old man,” and chased off the robber.
Fast forward twenty five years, and Miss Holiday connects with Mr. McKay. “I hadn’t seen him since I was sixteen and he wasn’t much older and I was singing at the Hotcha in Harlem.” The two were married in 1957. They got busted as LSTB ends. Either Politico is wrong about the 1947 bust, or Miss Holiday did not tell the whole story. Either way, Harry Anslinger is not mentioned in LSTB.
Tallulah Bankhead is another missing piece of the puzzle. Reportedly, Miss Bankhead and Miss Holiday were close friends, and possibly lovers. That was over by the time LSTB was written. “When “Lady Sings the Blues” was being prepared, Miss Bankhead got an advance copy, and was horrified by what she saw. A fierce note was sent to the book’s publisher, and scenes were edited out. Miss Holiday was outraged. The letter that resulted is a poison pen classic. “My maid who was with me at the Strand isn’t dead either. There are plenty of others around who remember how you carried on so you almost got me fired out of the place. And if you want to get shitty, we can make it a big shitty party. We can all get funky together!”
Miss Bankhead does make an appearance in LSTB. On page 117, Miss Holiday is describing playing a maid, in a movie. She was not pleased at the typecasting. “Don’t get me wrong. I’ve got nothing against maids – or whores – whether they’re black or white. My mother was a maid, a good one, one of the greatest. My stepmother is Tallulah Bankhead’s maid right now, and that’s a part I’d even consider when they do her life story.” (Miss Bankhead had her own domestic help problems. In 1951, Evyleen Cronin, Tallulah’s maid and secretary, was accused of stealing $10,000-30,000 from Tallulah during her employment. … The case went to trial (much to Tallulah’s embarrassment) and Cronin was convicted.” Many embarrassing details about Miss Bankhead’s life came to light during this trial. Fanny Holiday, the stepmother, is probably a different person than Evyleen Cronin.)
Whatever it’s factual challenges, Lady Sings the Blues is a powerful book. Miss Holiday had a tough life, to say the least. As the singer for Artie Shaw’s big band, Miss Holiday was an integration pioneer, and every two bit cracker wanted to make trouble. Later, she was addicted to heroin, got busted, served time in prison, only to get out and suffer some more.
Three years after LSTB came out, things went from bad to horrible. “In early 1959 she found out that she had cirrhosis of the liver. The doctor told her to stop drinking, which she did for a short time, but soon returned to heavy drinking. … On May 31, 1959, Holiday was taken to Metropolitan Hospital in New York suffering from liver and heart disease. She was arrested for drug possession as she lay dying, and her hospital room was raided by authorities. Police officers were stationed at the door to her room. Holiday remained under police guard at the hospital until she died from pulmonary edema and heart failure caused by cirrhosis of the liver on July 17, 1959.”
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