allthepage

Another memoir, and here’s where that voyeurism I admitted to kicks into high gear. Not much like walking that walk than do it in the Manolos of a NYC escort before the fall. No, not a former president, nor even Ted Turner, but not the sort of humdrum life one gets a glimpse into everyday either.

The Price, is the story of Natalie McClennan’s very fast and furious rise from obscure Canadian ex-pat partygirl and wannabe actress to top paid Queen of the Call Girls at New York Confidential, and equally rapid and jarring descent to reality–all within about a year’s time. It isn’t a story of recovery or of self-pity, for that matter. Most of the space is devoted to who did what with whom and for how much (though Natalie maintains her integrity with regard to naming famous names–she doesn’t–which she maintained would unnecessarilt destroy families), and what everyone was wearing. The business dynamics, the recruiting, and the relationships withing the organization, which was in a constant state of flux, is also interesting, considering how much money flowed through it at any given time. And while the sex is not gratuitous–what’s a story about hookers without sex–what sex there is would be considered pretty explicit (fair warning). The story received a lot of coverage a year or two ago–Larry King, Paula Zahn, and so forth–none of which I tuned in to. If you followed the case, the book will be a no brainer, and it’s an interesting current events read on its own. If not, it might be fun to Google it afterward, and see what became of the rest of the menagerie–or where they’ve set up shop now!

Talk Radio, Reality TV, People Magazine, Google, YouTube, yes, even blogging–and I’m sure I’m leaving some out–we are, now, more than ever, as a society, at the apex of voyeurism. Perhaps the mildest evidence of this is the popularity of the memoir. I have always been an avid reader, and I can remember, when I was younger, that there were biographies and autobiographies on library and bookstore shelves. I remember this, because when we were kids, we had a tough time remembering which was which. At some point, the autobiography was replaced by the “memoir,” but, even then, it was people of note who were penning their life stories for public consumption–ex-presidents, religious leaders, really- famous-people-who-had-interesting-lives-we-were-curious-about. Not so today. Today the most mundane of lives are handed up for published posterity, which I find ironic in a time when the death knell of the book is also constantly being sounded. In just the past few months I have read a number of memoirs (I’m happy to cop to my love of peering into the lives of others, especially if it makes mine appear more functional) and, by and large, they have been nothing special–the lives or the writers–even the ones that I admit I somewhat enjoyed. We are not so desperate for reading material that we have to publish everyone’s story; I don’t have to work in publishing to know that, so what gives? These aren’t sensational books, so even that often used justification won’t fly. I don’t know the answer, but the question haunts me, mostly because I have to wonder what of merit isn’t getting published instead–and why.

I am off on this jag again after finishing John Grogan’s The Longest Trip Home. Grogan is the author of the incredibly popular Marley & Me, which has recently been made into a movie, opening at Christmas. I haven’t read Marley & Me, but I can almost guarantee–or at least hope–that this latest memoir would not have been picked up without the previous book, because there is nothing special about this guy’s life. Seriously. Do people now become memoir-worthy because they have had a best seller about their dog? Apparently they do! Don’t get me wrong, Grogan is a good writer, and it’s a sweet story; it just isn’t any sweeter than the story of the family I grew up next door to, and I think they’d be surprised to find that they were that interesting to the world at large. Because maybe they’re not!

A little about the book itself. Grogan grew up in a medium-sized Irish-Catholic family in an upper middle class suburb on a lake. He had three pals he hung around with until college, although they drifted a bit in high school. His parents were devout, becoming more fundamental as they aged, but none of the kids ended up being religious (as was the case in many Catholic families of that generation and the following in my experience). He went off to college. He struggled with lying to his parents about not being devout. He married. He watched them grow old. That’s about it. He had a great life and a close, loving family, albeit with religious differences. No lesson for us to learn. He did nothing of note in the world. But he can turn a phrase (and his last book was made into a movie).

The autobiography is dead. Long live the memoir. At least the bookstore shelves will never be empty. There are plenty of ordinary, unaccomplished people yet to tell their stories!

Adam Nimoy’s new book is My Incredibly Wonderful, Miserable Life– An Anti-Memoir. Adam’s father, Leonard Nimoy found his fame as Mr. Spock in the short-run (only 3 seasons, believe it or not), but long syndicated and wildly popular Star Trek series of the 1960s, but Adam’s childhood was shaped as much by his father’s hardscrabble upbringing as by his stardom.

“I’ve never had much luck arguing with him. Have you ever argued with a Pop Culture Icon? Have you ever argued with a guy who can cause a frenzy among thousands at a convention hall simply by performing a Vulcan hand salute?

Because when you’re dealing with a man who’s adored by millions of fans the world over, when you lock horns with a man from the tenement streets of Boston who clawed his way to the top of the Hollywood heap, good luck with the argument.”

Nimoy senior also struggled with alcohol and later became sober himself. Complicated as their relationship may have been, being the son of Leonard figures very little in the book, which focuses mainly on the year that Nimoy separated from his wife, moved out of the family home, and became active in AA. He writes honestly and extensively about the pain of being apart from his son and daughter, who both refused to stay at his new apartment and often cried and begged him to move back into the house. In one scene, the children were supposed to have dinner with him at the apartment, but daughter, Maddy, changes her mind at the last minute and asks to be taken home immediately. In the car, she unleashes a tirade:

“How can you do this to me? I’m through with you, Dad. How do you feel about never seeing me again? I will never, ever come back to your stupid apartment. How do you think it will feel to live alone for the rest of your life?”

And this toward the father who still picks her up and takes her to school every morning, helps with her homework every afternoon, and whom she will profess undying love for by the end of most days. The divorcing dad stuff is very powerful and spot-on.

Interwoven are anecdotes about hot women he meets at AA meetings, bright moments he experiences as a teacher, stupid things that derailed his directorial career, and the occasional story about life with Dad.

My Incredibly Wonderful, Miserable Life contains no revelation or inspiration of note, and reads like a cleaned up, neatened up two-year diary of a nice guy giving up pot and getting divorced, whose dad just happened to be a Vulcan.

It’s a question that has to come up fairly regularly in the publishing community, and certainly in the recovery world: how much of what I remember really happened the way I remember it? David Carr decided to use his skills as an investigative reporter to investigate his own life. Instead of just writing his memoir of addiction from memory, he took a video camera, pulled legal and medical records, and crisscrossed the country tracking down old sources, dealers, family and friends to gain a different perspective on what those coke snorting, crack smoking, hard-drinking years were like from the other side. The result is The Night of the Gun.

“A drunk or a junkie will end up finding fellow travelers in the course of things. If you are a drunk, the guy down the bar who falls off his stool and then gets up, sits down, and orders another is your friend. He may be a peckerwood whomakes speeches about the Twins or the Vikings or the mayor, but he is, after a fashion, your guy. In the same way, an addict will find his or her own level and his or her tribe to go with it. As in a lot of cities in the mid-to-late eighties, coke was ubiqutous in Minneapolis. But while vast swatches of people did a line here or there, there was a self-selected tribe who did little else.”

Unfortunately, reporting on one’s addiction seems to be a lot less interesting than remembering it firsthand. What the memoir gained in accuracy, it lost in intimacy and raw emotion. The most interesting tidbit for me turned out to be Carr’s high praise for his buddy Tom Arnold, whom he credits with being one of the most solid and supportive people in recovery he has known. His memoir I’d like to read!

Churched is a pleasant little mini memoir from Matthew Paul Turner about his experiences as a child growing up surrounded by Baptist fundamentalists, at home, at school, and three times a week for church services and Sunday school. He writes about the importance of Jesus and hell in his young life, very clear boundaries within which he could operate that, although he later rejected fundamentalism, seem to have provided a measure of safety and security at the time. His parents may have been extreme in their religious beliefs by many standards, but by Turner’s account were loving, supportive, and present in their children’s lives. The stories are sweet and quirky, easily read in a day. Those readers who are outraged at the very hint of fundamentalism will no doubt be appalled, but if one sets aside that general bias, there isn’t anything shocking or bizarre here. Despite the cover copy, I found no “holy mess,” nothing “bizarre” and laughed out loud when I saw the caption “He spent his childhood trapped within the confines of countless bizarre, strict rules. And lived to tell about it.” Seriously. The man moved to Nashville and made a career writing about Jesus–I think he’s recovered!

Again, scooping the Times Book Review (delusions of grandeur being half the fun of blogging), Michael Greenberg’s Hurry Down Sunshine is reviewed this week. The following is an excerpt:

“On July 5, 1996, my daughter was struck mad. She was fifteen and her crack-up marked a turning point in both our lives. ‘I feel like I’m traveling and traveling with nowhere to go back to,’ she said in a burst of lucidity while hurtling away toward some place I could not dream of or imagine. I wanted to grab her and bring her back, but there was no turning back.”  

For more of my take on the book, refer to the post called “Bipolar Mania Continues” in the July 2008 Archives at right.

I just read that a movie of The Secret Life of Bees (Sue Monk Kidd) has been made. I fell in love with that book when I read it, as did everyone I gave it to. I would have to read it again to begin to remember the story, but I don’t want to do that, and then see the film, which will no doubt pale in comparison. Nonetheless, it was a film project seven years in development and has what sounds like a tremendous cast, including Jennifer Hudson, Queen Latifah, and Dakota Fanning. There is already a paperback out with the cast on the cover. I found Kidd’s second novel, The Mermaid Chair, to be a huge disappointment, but she does a lot of spiritual writing, and I have yet to sample that aspect of her work. The movie hits theaters in October.

Walking Through Walls is Philip Smith’s memoir of his father, Lewis Smith, who, at first introduction, is a chic, in-demand interior designer in Miami in the 1950’s. His clients included celebrities, socialites and, if memory serves, a couple of foreign dictators, one of whom held him hostage until the work was completed.  This alone would have been sufficient fodder for an entertaining memoir, but there was much more to Lew Smith than met the eye. What began as an interest in macrobiotics, health food, and ancient religions, bloomed–to the great surprise of his family–into an ability to communicate with the universe. Lew Smith was a psychic healer. He began by laying on hands, and eventually communicated with spirits, performed exorcisms, and did all kinds of other stuff that frankly I have a reeeeally hard time believing. In fact, had the book not been so engaging, so heartfelt and funny, I would probably not have finished it. But it was, and so I basically just decided to suspend my disbelief and proceed as if Philip Smith’s father was no more incredible than an alcoholic or schizophrenic or any other dysfunctional dad of memoir material. With that qualification, I have to say, I enjoyed it a lot. It was described on the jacket as “Running with Scissors meets Bewitched.” The TV witch reference seems a little over the top, even for a skeptic like me, but the Augusten Burroughs comparison is pretty apt.

Here’s an excerpt:

“‘My, aren’t you a cutie!’ She leaned closer to me and took a drag off her cigarette. As she exhaled, her ample sunburnt breasts, spilling out of her black fishnet one-piece, bobbed up and down against my face. Dressed in my blue blazer, bow tie, khaki shorts, and freshly shined Buster Browns, I was, at six years old, an irresistible magnet for drunken middle-aged women looking for love. Mom always insisted that if I were going to sit at the bar and drink that I at least be well dressed.”

Philip Smith is an artist and writer who lives in New York and Miami.

“On July 5, 1996, my daughter was struck mad. She was fifteen and her crack-up marked a turning point in both our lives. ‘I feel like I’m traveling and traveling with nowhere to go back to,’ she said in a burst of lucidity while hurtling away toward some place I could not dream of or imagine. I wanted to grab her and bring her back, but there was no turning back.” 

So, I’m bi-polar, but I’m sooooo happy that I’m not Michael Greenberg’s daughter, Sally’s, bi-polar, which is to say, bouncing between psychotic and manic most of the time. In fact, the term “bi-polar” is only mentioned briefly, so maybe that’s not really what the dignosis ended up being, but my heart was in shreds–shreds–for these people, this girl, only 15 when she experienced a psychotic break. The experience is the subject of a new, possibly not-yet-released memoir called Hurry Down Sunshine by Greenberg, a freelance writer and columnist for the Times Literary Supplement (London). Where the novel I wrote about in my previous post seemed unfocused, this account stays the course, told from the father’s perspective. At the time, he was married to his second wife, the first living out of state in Vermont. He was barely making ends meet, had no health insurance, lived in a crappy, rotting apartment, and was totally unprepared for the sudden sharp turn in his daughter’s demeanor–not that anyone is prepared for that sort of thing. At first the assumption was drugs—bad drugs, too many drugs–but that would have been the easy answer, as it turned out. Sally would be hospitalized many times, medicated in many ways, and, sadly never really very effectively. We hear a lot about people who “go off their meds” or “refuse to take their meds” but there are a lot of people for whom the ”right” meds simply can’t be found, maybe don’t exist, or, for some unknown reason, stop working after a time. This is how I imagine hell on earth.

 The book shows in brief the sometimes entertaining array of patients and professionals that passed through the writer’s life, the different perspectives of family and friends, and is, at its best, a simple look at a simple family coping as best it can with the completely unknown.