We get it, it’s a memoir…

So Augusten Burroughs had his day in court with the family he smeared in his obviously subjective memoir Running with Scissors.

On his blog, Burroughs issued the following statement:

“I consider this not only a personal victory but a victory for all memoirists. I still maintain that the book is an entirely accurate memoir, and that it was not fictionalized or sensationalized in any way. I did not embellish or invent elements. We had a very strong case because I had the truth on my side…

To clarify, Running With Scissors is still called a memoir. It always has been a memoir, and the family expressly agreed that it will continue to be called one. I was happy to substitute the one word “book” for “memoir” on the Author’s Note page, but it still says “A Memoir” on the cover, and will continue to be truthfully advertised as such. I was also happy to add an additional expression of gratitude to the family in the Acknowledgments, as well as to point out the fact that they remember things differently.

Not one word of the actual memoir itself has been changed or altered in any way. The text is exactly as I wrote it, intended it, and lived it. Running With Scissors was and continues to be the true story of my unusual and remarkable childhood.”

We get it: it’s a memoir.

Am I the only person who hated Running with Scissors?

When I read Running with Scissors, I kept waited for the part where all the critical acclaim would start to make sense. Where was the new David Sedaris? Where was the greatest memoir of our time? Halfway through, I began to sense the author’s disingenuousness. Not long after I started getting bored, and barely made it to the end, at which point I began to regret the time – all of one rainy weekend – I spent reading it.

Since that time, my interest has been piqued by the actual backstory: interviews with Burroughs’ mother and the like (the reason his mother didn’t sue was because he is her son and she loves him). I can imagine that the family that just settled their case with him must have felt shafted in their attempts to give him a better lifestyle / education than his mother could (she gave him up while suffering from mental illness, owning up to the fact that she wasn’t cut out for raising a kid).

Burroughs has been (unjustifiably in my book) compared to David Sedaris by many critics but the the two writers differ in at least one critical way. Sedaris‘s writing is both personal and universal; he includes himself in the situations he skewers. He employs a formidable and self-deprecating sense of humor, whereas Burroughs, who I sense takes himself very, very seriously, uses humor only as a weapon against his subjects.

There is no real spark to his writing – just snark.

I’m always amazed at how writers like this take off. Why can’t critics see through this stuff? It’s disheartening.

Next time I’ll tell you what I really think.

One final note about the settlement. Besides a financial settlement (confidential, natch, but I hope the family at least got compensated for the room and board they provided the budding memoir-tiste), the family won these little concessions:

Where the Acknowledgments page currently reads:

“Additionally, I would like to thank each and every member of a certain Massachusetts family for taking me into their home and accepting me as one of their own,”

the following will be substituted: ”

Additionally, I would like to thank the real-life members of the family portrayed in this book for taking me into their home and accepting me as one of their own. I recognize that their memories of the events described in this book are different than my own. They are each fine, decent, and hard-working people. The book was not intended to hurt the family. Both my publisher and I regret any unintentional harm resulting from the publishing and marketing of Running with Scissors.”

Unintentional harm, my ass. How did he think these people would feel once they found out about it? Maybe he thought they wouldn’t – he never told even them he was writing a book about his life with them.

In addition, on the Author’s Note page the word “book” will replace the word “memoir.” The book still will be described as a memoir on the cover and elsewhere. The family agreed to that, and “memoir” remains an entirely accurate description of the book.

Ok, we get it, its a memoir…

Somewhere in this rats’ nest there is probably a truly rich and interesting and perhaps even humorous story, but I doubt Burroughs has the kind of courage it would take to write it.

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“If you can’t run your own house, you can’t run the White House.”

Whether or not Michelle Obama meant this as a swipe at Hillary Clinton or not (it seems as though she didn’t), the statement itself doesn’t really make sense. It it were true, then every single one of our former presidents was incapable of running the White House. In this country, households are run by women; either wives or housekeepers or nannies or a combination of all three. And while househusbands are becoming more common , no U.S. president has ever been one.

If it was a swipe at Hillary’s inability to keep Bill from philandering – then Lord help us. If someone wants to philander they will, no matter how much Total Woman sex and fresh baked cookies you provide. Who knows, maybe Hillary philanders too, or maybe she’ll philander during her two terms of office. Would it have any impact on her ability to run the White House?

I don’t think so – but let’s all vote for her and find out.

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The dog days are upon us…

I’ve been away from my blog for a bit – as those of you, my silent readers who never comment – must have noticed. It’s been a challenging 10 days. The temperature has been in the triple digits since last weekend, and the humidity is relentless. The skies are brown from smog and a fire that has been burning north of Santa Barbara since July 4^th. People get on my nerves – they drive like idiots and remind me of the flies that seem to be everywhere all the time now. I take three showers a day and still feel unwashed. If kitchen trash sits for more than half a day, it takes on a lingering stench usually associated with 3 day old dead bodies – this you will be relieved to know, I understand more from instinct than from any actual experience.

As a result, I and my foul temper stay inside with the air conditioner and two fans going (Al, I’m sorry, but I will buy my wind power card at Whole Foods tomorrow, I promise). The shades are drawn and liquids full of electrolytes are at the ready. Every so often I register a change in the atmosphere as an intensification of the headache I’ve had for the past week. I don’t get allergies in Los Angeles, I get headaches; nasty ones that make me feel like my right eyeball is on fire, to be precise. It’s hard to write about my reluctant love of L.A. in such conditions.

In fact, it’s almost more than I can bear to lift an icy glass of Spanish rose to my lips, and nibble on the few organic lettuces that accompany my store bought pissaladerie for lunch / dinner. I can barely rally the strength to focus my good eye on the Fall fashion issues of my favorite glossies. Vogue, is so heavy I can’t even lift it, which is probably a good thing, since the thought of anything except for lightly chilled ocean salt water touching my skin makes me ill – let alone all those lovely tailored lightweight wools and leathers worn over tights and this season’s must have booties.

To be honest, I haven’t even made it past the cover of Details with Clive Owen on the cover – he’s not as moody as he looks – but note to the writer: I do not want to know how what he really wants to do is take his wife to a soccer match. I want to know how he’s pining away moodily after the amazing woman he saw when last he was in Los Angeles, the one that he can’t get out of his mind- with the lustrous pewter and platinum hair, the amazing eyes, and the –lets be honest – gorgeous breasts just recently relieved of 6 excess pounds and now floating perkily under the kinds of summer dresses they could only dream of supporting in years past…oh, oh, where is she?- cries Clive. Staring at a picture of you on the cover of Details, mate. I’ll be back as soon as I add just a smidgen of vodka to my strawberry lemonade…

I actually did leave the house twice this past week, once to go to the beach, which was worth the painful sunburn, and once to go on the oddest job interview of my life. Details follow.

This interview was with a media luminary who I actually admire quite a bit. I won’t name her, but her initials are A.H. and she’s written many books – most recently about being a woman and being bold – and she runs an online media empire. She used to represent hateful things; marriage to and rapacious campaigner for a rich, closeted queer neocon creep attempting to take over my beloved California. And then there was her biography of one of my favorite artists, Pablo Picasso, which focused almost exclusively on his dark personal life – not fair!! Note to all intelligent people: Personal lives of creative geniuses are almost always strange and often sordid –witness this month’s profile of Arthur Miller in Vanity Fair. But she had the courage (and nerve, some would say) to divorce the creep, grab his money and reinvent herself as “a compassionate and progressive populist,” something that appears heartfelt and admirable, or utterly calculated, which just seems like too much work.

Being interested, I arrived ahead of schedule, with sweat dripping down my back from the heat of the drive in an un- air-conditioned car, hoping that maybe this woman would pay enough that I could replace it –maybe with a Prius, like the one she drives. I waited a few minutes to let the Brentwood breezes cool me down a bit, and then I rang at the gate. The door opened, and I was admitted into one of those short front yards peculiar to Los Angeles mansions, after which I walked through an open door into a cool foyer to be guided by The Voice into a large airy office with twenty foot ceilings and floor to ceiling windows that framed her large desk. There were books and comfortable furnishing all around and I just wanted to plop down on the sofa, kick off my shoes, pick something up to read and say – hey, what have you been up to? Can you believe the f***in’ weather? But my Mother raised me, and I walked to my designated seat instead, and commented on the room’s handsome appointments. “Yes, isn’t it comfy?” she said in her luscious, honey soaked accent, and then she took a couple of phone calls. In between, she asked me the same question twice – so you are returning to writing?- and seemed to register my responses, but I can’t really be sure. She then sent me upstairs to meet her other assistant.

On the way up, I spotted a Modigliani. “This is real?” I asked reflexively- and she responded – “no, definitely not”- but you have to agree that a print of a Modigliani nude next to the spiral staircase leading up to the “team’s” office is a pretty interesting choice.

The assistant was a pleasant but humorless worker who gave me the task of cleaning out A’s contacts in Outlook for awhile. The air conditioning was broken in this airless atelier, and my hand kept sticking to the page of duplicate contacts I was supposed to weed out. I did that for about 30 minutes, fact-checking famous names as I went, and that was it. The worker told me that AH would be calling me that night or tomorrow, and escorted me to the door.

Of course it’s several days after tomorrow, and no phone call, but I’ve lived here long enough to know that in Hollywood, actually getting a phone call would be an exception to the rule. I guess I just didn’t realize just how Hollywood A is.

I still wish she had called because I sincerely want to know: what exactly was the point of that particular exercise? Was the Outlook task some kind of timed contact management exercise, perhaps? The worker assured me that it wasn’t a test when I asked her, but she also told me she liked her job, and I wasn’t convinced by her answer to that question either.

There are a number of possible scenarios that explain why I didn’t get a call back; you choose the one you like the best (or add one of your own):

• I’m older than she thought I’d be, and she likes young assistants because they are less expensive, and are also less likely to talk back,

• She’s gay and the sight of me and my previously described breasts distracted her to the point where she knew her life and work would be in ruins if she hired me,

• She was worried that the writer in me might do the same sort of hatchet job on her that she did on Picasso,

• She found my blog through my email address and hates it, and couldn’t possibly hire someone who would write such non-erudite mulch,

• She’s been busy covering the Utah Mining Disaster and Karl Rove and Hillary and she honestly thought the worker was going to call me,

• It was at the top of her list to call with a very attractive compensation package and a puff of fresh air into my otherwise stale life, until she read this post…

Whatever…

Now I’m back on my side of town, and noticing just how decidedly asymmetrical Clive Owen’s face is, and how it shouldn’t add to his allure but it does, and how, in Bourne Identity his face looks positively tidy and symmetrical, and how does he do that? Can he make himself look asymmetrical? If so, he’s even more incredible than I thought! Why does he display his wedding ring so much in his Details photos? Is it the equivalent of the sign of the cross against vampires? Why are all the male models in the rest of the magazine so young and so emaciated? They look like Oliver Twist -more soup please! It’s worse than in Vogue, where the girls at least sometimes try to look of age…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Are we now a nation of self obsessed pedophiles?

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I also read books…

In case you have the impression that I only watch episodic TV, herewith are my impressions of two books I’ve read recently. One is History of Love by Nicole Krauss (wife of post modern wunderkind Jonathan Safran Foer), which was much celebrated when it came out and which I recently read in paperback. The other is House of Meetings, by Martin Amis, which came out in January.

I liked Krauss’ book when I was reading it, propelled by her protagonists Leo, an aging New York Jew who escaped the Nazi occupation of Poland, and Alma, a lonely adolescent girl whose life intersects with Leo’s at the novel’s end. This book has been widely praised by the critics and exalted as a book club selection, but I have to say that after praising and defending it myself in my book circle, I’ve now come to the conclusion that I was hoodwinked. Have you ever read a book, or seen a movie, or married somebody and later realized that you’d ignored some fundamental, perhaps even unforgivable flaw because you were blinded by a veneer or greatness? This is what I think happened for me with this book. There are beguiling, quirky characters, both funny and heartbreaking scenes, and numerous instances of really, really good writing. But this is a book about a book that the reader is to believe changed lives, and the book within the book is just not very good. It’s almost like an afterthought. Or maybe like the author took a bunch of short pieces she’d workshopped in a writing class but didn’t know what to do with, and glued together the plot line of her novel with them. Speaking of plot lines, there are many of them that crop up and then evaporate, and at one point I created a chart to try to sort them out, just knowing that things would be resolved in the end. Which they are, but only for a couple of the characters, and the climax of the novel, the moment when you just know everything will be revealed, is ultimately precious, instead of profound.

Then I read House of Meetings, Martin Amis’s novel about a Russian expatriate and survivor of Stalin’s “social experiment” which is itself a sort of book within a book, and a love story with its own links to Nazi Germany (and some rich observations of why Germany has survived the legacy of WW2, while Russia is dying). While reading it, I realized how scarce really great contemporary novels are anymore. Maybe it is unfair to compare Krauss who has two novels under her belt while Amis has an entire oeuvre, and yes, this is probably the greatest book even he has written. But I can’t help but compare the two because I read them back to back, and because they do share some similarities, such as exploring facets of history, love, and the differences between the Eastern European and American psyche. The experience of reading House of Meetings is unlike anything I’ve had in a long, long time -not a word out of place, not a single wasted emotion, no game playing with technique or plot. Such a long time in fact, that I’d completely forgotten what it is like to reread paragraphs several times and then stare off into space contemplating them only to move onto the next paragraph and do the same. So different from the usual practice of reading voraciously to get to the next crescendo or moment of clarity, or bit of insight.

Now I want to find something else to read, but I will probably start rereading House of Meetings again, not only because its the kind of book that rewards you with a second reading, but because I’m not aware of anything else out there at the moment that will measure up.

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Rescue Me from Saving Grace, part 2

Ok, so I have to be fair and say that I only landed on the second episode of Saving Grace a few times while channel surfing, but each time I did, I was compelled to go back to the episode of Law & Order SVU that bored me the first 3 times around. (I’ve been sick and watching a lot of TV – OK?).

First click: The tobacco chawing angel Earl is fixing Grace breakfast. She challenges him to prove he is an angel. He spreads his beatific wings and Grace falls to the floor at his feet, bathed in his golden light, looking pure and sweet like a child witnessing her first Christmas tree. I’m sorry, I’ve been having enough trouble with nausea this week.

Second click: Here is Grace with her Christian cross wearing forensics pal, who tells her she’s just going to have to give into the notion that God loves her and there is nothing she can do about it. Grace has a present for her: a feather from one of the angel’s wings! Hie thee to the forensics lab! Does anyone remember the forensics chick from Homicide? I really miss her.

3rd click: Here is Grace kicking the angel’s ass.

Am I missing something here, or is this show just massively misconceived?

Meanwhile over at Rescue Me, Tommy’s wife battles postpartum depression and drugs her baby with Benadryl to stop his crying while Tommy mulls over his ex girlfriend’s offer to take the infant, with whom she has an obvious bond. Seven babies die in a fire. By episode’s end, Tommy is on the brink of dropping his own infant into the East River.

Over the top action sprinkled with ruminations on faith in crisis, free will and predetermination. And the show still manages to be a comedy. You could try to say the same thing about Saving Grace. Why does Rescue Me work, where Saving Grace doesn’t? Why is Denis Leary so much better at creating interesting women than is Saving Grace’s Nancy Miller, who actually is one?

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