Farewell, My Lovely: The Long Embrace by Judith Freeman

The Long Embrace: Raymond Chandler and the Woman He Loved by Judith Freeman

A few months ago, I went to visit the duplex on Highland Avenue where Raymond and Cissy Chandler lived in 1929 (though I called her Pearl, her given name). After reading Judith Freeman's The Long Embrace, a highly intimate biography of Ray and Cissy, I learned that, of the approximately two dozen homes they shared in Los Angeles and Southern California, this one may have marked the lowest point in their marriage.

During the years this was listed as their address in the Los Angeles city directories, Ray rarely lived there. Instead, he was in the process of drinking himself out of a job, dividing his time between a room at the Mayfair Hotel, and an apartment he'd rented for a secretary at Dabney Oil, with whom he was having an affair.

Finally, the affair and the job came to a nasty end, and Ray returned home. He would spend the next few years learning how to be a writer, and trying to make it all up to Cissy.

Before Freeman's book, little was known about Cissy, other than the fact that she was 18 years older than her third husband. And only a few tangible scraps remain of her -- Chandler insisted that all their letters be destroyed (Ray hinted that a few of them were "rather hot"). However, Freeman embarked on the book hoping to piece together what little remained, and to discover something about what Cissy was like.

The result is as much an account of Freeman's literary sleuthing as it is a biography of the Chandlers. At first, I bristled at Freeman's insertion of herself into the story, her accounts of the places in Los Angeles where she'd lived, the apartment buildings and bungalows she visited while tracking down the elusive Cissy through the homes around the city where the Chandlers lived.

However, it was in a passage about an evening Freeman spends at the HMS Bounty, my favorite bar in Los Angeles, that I realized what she was up to.

Not only was her description of an elderly waitress who worked at the bar when I began going there (and who was rumored to have once roomed with Jane Russell) entirely accurate, it was also reminiscent of Chandler in one of his careful, incisive character studies, given to even incidental characters. And suddenly, I realized that Freeman's trips back and forth across the city, and her descriptions of them, mirrored Philip Marlowe's own.

Of course, this is the only way the book could have been written. And of course, it works beautifully -- it just took me a little time to see it.

And Freeman does find Cissy, in a manner of speaking. She was beautiful, sensual, charming, and gracious. She read Ray's books and stories, and made notes on them, but wasn't really a fan. After a happy and relatively sober decade with her husband in the 30s, her health began to decline; however, shortly before her death in 1954, she mustered the strength for a trip with Ray to England. She may have enabled his drinking to a certain degree, but in this trip, she also enabled him to leave California after she died -- which I suspect is what allowed him to live as long as he did without her (even so, less than five years).

But more than anything, what comes across is that the Chandlers' marriage was a complex one. It was like nothing out of a storybook, the couple had their troubles -- the age difference between them, their reclusive habits, the moves from one furnished apartment to another, Ray's drinking and Cissy's health problems, and Ray's movie work, which probably took a steeper toll on the marriage than even his days with the Dabney Oil Syndicate.

Still, through Freeman's research, we also see a portrait of a couple who loved, understood, and nurtured one another very deeply throughout their 30-year marriage. Their need for one another is both touching and terrifying.

Of Cissy's last year, which he spent mostly caring for her in their La Jolla home, Ray wrote,

I watched my wife die by half-inches and I wrote my best book in the agony of that knowledge, and yet I wrote it... And late at night I would lie on the eight-foot couch reading because I knew that around midnight she would come quietly in and that she would want a cup of tea, but would never ask for it. I always had to talk her into it. But I had to be there, since if I had been asleep, she wouldn't have wakened me, and wouldn't have had her tea.

Do you think I regret any of this? I'm proud of it. It was the supreme time of my life.

Judith Freeman recently spoke with Denise Hamilton as part of the ALOUD series at the Los Angeles Central Library. Although it's not up as a podcast yet, it should be soon, so keep checking.

Joe Strummer Knows Somethin'. Joe Strummer Knows EVERYTHING!!!*

When Joe Strummer passed away in 2002, I felt the weird mass-mediated punch in the gut that members of my generation were supposed to have felt when a certain resident of Seattle punched his own ticket eight years prior.** Joe Strummer made great music, fought the good fight, and seemed to be a genuinely decent human being. He's one of my (very few) heroes and - to borrow a line from Opus the penguin - "Joe Strummer isn't supposed to end."

Anyways, Popmatters has a series of excerpts from the new Strummer bio by Chris Salewicz.

You can check out part one here.

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* In case you were wondering, the title of this post refers to the final rhetorical flourish of a rather one-sided shouting match (re: the function of criticism) I once witnessed between Robbie Fulks and John Murry. It's become a phrase that we use here at the home office when someone is losing an argument, but is nevertheless right about whatever it was that they are arguing about.
** I had just discovered the first two Big Star records when Nevermind came out, which probably explains why I never much cared for grunge. Also, Mobile is too damn hot for flannel.

Who knew?

I recently...ah..."procured" a copy of the new Arcade Fire album, Neon Bible.* Imagine my surprise when, searching for reviews online, I happened upon this, the novel of the same name by John Kennedy Toole.

Seeing as how A Confederacy of Dunces is on my all time list of "Books I'd Grab From a Burning Building Before I Would a Great Many People", I'll be procuring (and reviewing) it shortly.

Until then I'll recommend Ignatius Rising: the Life of John Kennedy Toole by Rene Pol Nevils. It's the first major - and as far as I know, the only - biography of Toole, whose life parallels that of his most well known character in ways that are alternately intriguing and disheartening.

It's a compassionate and unflinching portrait of Toole, whose ambition as a writer and sense of self were so deeply entwined that his sad end seems almost inevitable. By Nevil's account, Toole's efforts to get Dunces published were hobbled as much by his inability to let go of his manuscript and his refusal to entertain sympathetic criticism, as they were by cautious or indifferent publishers.

Finally, Ignatius Rising is also a fine elegy for Toole's New Orleans which, lest we forget, is currently moldering in a stew of neglect and national indifference.

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*Yes, it's good. Yes, I will buy a copy when it comes out on March 5.

The Real Lady Lazarus

Anne Sexton: A Biography by Diane Wood Middlebrook*

Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath once took a poetry class together, and were paired up at some point for a class exercise. In Plath's journals, she writes about this as "an honor," then proceeds to fret about needing a better haircut and to "get fixed up."

I love that Sexton could unleash Sylvia Plath's inner girly-girl.

The two are often compared, but for my money, Anne Sexton is the quintessential lady poet of the 20th century (with all the baggage, good and bad, that goes along with that). For starters, she was a chain-smoking, hard-drinking knock-out who gave sultry readings in a tight red dress. She was the poster child for The Feminine Mystique. And of course, she was suicidally crazy, carrying around a purseful of what she called her "kill me pills" (so I guess Courtney Love is a fan).

Middlebrook is an ideal biographer because she somehow managed to get all the relevant parties onboard for the project. Linda Gray Sexton, Anne's daughter and executor of her literary estate gave Middlebrook full access to everything. And when I say everything, I mean everything right down to her taped therapy sessions. On top of that, Middlebrook does a good job of balancing a thoughtful analysis of Sexton's deceptively accessible poetry with the more salacious aspects of her life. And despite the fact that Sexton was a self-absorbed, child-abusing, philandering confessional poet (shudders), she was also a sympathetic charmer, passionately devoted to her craft.

If I could choose any person, living or dead, with whom to get trashed in a hotel bar in the middle of the afternoon, it would totally be Anne Sexton.

If you ever went through a confessional poetry stage in college, if you're interested in the plight of pill-popping middle-class women in the 50s, or if you appreciate psychoanalysis in a retro-kitschy kind of way, this book is for you.
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* I've seen many photographs of Anne Sexton wearing this halter dress. I covet this dress.

If They Don't Win It's a Shame

The Ticket Out: Darryl Strawberry and the Boys of Crenshaw by Michael Sokolove

This may be the second book about L.A. baseball that I've written about in less than three months, but it's that time of year, and I adore baseball despite the fact that my ignorance on the subject is staggering. I used to fancy myself something of a baseball nut. I played baseball as a kid, I played softball as an adult, I attend at least one major or minor league game a year. I have watched a few episodes of that Ken Burns documentary. But you know what they say about a little bit of knowledge...

Anyway, one night I was at a party and the topic turned to Hank Aaron. Thinking that I remembered a fun fact from ole Ken Burns, and wanting to weigh in on the subject, I said quite innocently, "Wasn't he in the Klan or something?"

A stunned silence filled the room for a moment, then someone leaned over and whispered a clarifying fact in my ear. And then everyone pointed and laughed.

Turns out, I'd been thinking of Ty Cobb. Who was also not in the Klan (although he was, by most accounts, a racist and a terrific asshole).

But I digress.

The Ticket Out starts off with the 1979 Crenshaw High School baseball team, one of the most talented in the history of the LAUSD, and then picks up more than 20 years later to find out what happened to them.

Nearly every starting player on the 1979 team was being checked out by agents and scouts. Several were drafted right out of high school, including Darryl Strawberry. Strawberry was by far the most successful member of the original team (although, based on the memories of his former Crenshaw teammates and coach, not the most talented), but even he left baseball a man broken by drug addiction, financial problems, and cancer. As for the others, some adjusted to life after baseball. One player became a high-profile kosher chef, another joined the Navy and writes hooks for rappers in his spare time.

But other players never got over the anguish of having their baseball dreams taken away. Things turned out particularly tragically for one man, who becomes a casualty of California's ludicrous 'three strikes' law.

This is not your typical story of 'the redemptive power of baseball to bring people together and correct the wrongs of the world if only for an afternoon.' Still, through Sokolove's interviews, the love that that players of Crenshaw have for the game and for the high school glory days it gave them are evident. Baseball may have betrayed them, but they haven't turned their backs on it. What's interesting is that the only men who don't seem to feel this way are Darryl Strawberry and Chris Brown, both of whom had careers in the majors.

If you like...: There's a certain formula in fiction and non-fiction wherein a group of people are drawn together by certain events, split up, and then are brought back together years later to resolve unfinished business. It's been used in everything from Stephen King's It to Chris Colin's What Really Happened To the Class of '93 to The Big Chill, and it is an eminently appealing device. If you like books like this, this one is for you.

Muse On This

The Lives of the Muses: Nine Women and the Artists They Inspired by Francine Prose

The Goods: Nine mini-biographies from four centuries, and all kinds of variations on the idea of woman as muse - from women who worked as partners with artists to women who were artists and thinkers in their own right to the poor souls who were seduced, sapped and discarded.

The Women:

Hester Thrale: kept Samuel Johnson sane

Alice Liddell: received an honorary doctorate from Columbia University for inspiring Charles Dodson to write Alice in Wonderland

Elizabeth Siddal: husband and pre-Raphaelite asshole extraordinaire dug up her corpse to retrieve a book of poems he'd buried with her in the hopes that it might revive his career

Lou Andreas-Salome: serial muse; recipient of Nietszche's hottest pick-up line; convinced Rilke to change his name; called 'the great understander' by Freud

Gala Dali: inspired much of Salvador's work; masterminded his PR and marketing campaign, then encouraged him to sign hundreds of blank canvases to be lithographed (the Surrealist sell-out)

Lee Miller: by the age of 30 had modeled for Vogue, apprenticed with Man Ray and modeled for his best-known works, invented solarization, become an established photographer with her own studio; later became a war photographer

Charis Weston: went from model to muse to cast-off art wife

Suzanne Farrell: her dancing inspired choreographer George Balanchine to compose his best work

Yoko Ono: inspired John, and vice versa

Thoughts: In most ways, the idea of the muse is outdated and a little bit insulting. Prose writes early on, "Certainly, feminism has made us rethink musedom as a career choice." At the same time, the lives of the muses (and the muses themselves) are typically regarded as glamorous, dramatic, enviable. It is probably not a coincidence that biographers of muses spend endless amounts of time speculating about their sex lives.

Prose doesn't really offer much more in the way of a thesis than this: muses are as different as the women who become them, and then go on to be and do other things. Yet, what they do is quite interesting - and the quality that makes a woman fascinating to an artist makes her fascinating to others, too.

In another writer's hands, this book could have been disjointed and clunky. However, Prose writes like gangbusters and is snarky as hell. It's not every biographer who would describe the moanings of Dante Gabriel Rossetti as "the language of the gifted teenage contributor to the high school literary magazine."

It's a fun book, filled with juicy little tidbits that may not provide comprehensive biography, but serve as a good springboard to further reading. I picked up Lee Miller: A Life because of Lives of the Muses and totally love it even if the accomplishments and daring of Lee Miller do fill me with jealousy and the vague sense that I should, like, do more stuff.

That said, I guess I'm a muse. If inspiring your husband to finish his Ph.D. out of fear of what you'll do to him if he doesn't qualifies one for musedom.

He Did It All*

In Black and White: The Life of Sammy Davis, Jr. by Wil Haygood

Tonight at the 78th Academy Awards, Hollywood got defensive. Although they cut off the producer of the Best Picture winner in the middle of her speech, time was set aside for a montage of epic films, the purpose of which was, I guess, to convince viewers at home that Netflix is a poor substitute for paying $10 to sit in uncomfortable chairs and eat cold popcorn with strangers.

After saluting his fellow nominees, George Clooney went on to get defensive about Hollywood's politics in his acceptance speech. And I was right on board until he lauded the Academy for giving Hattie McDaniel an Oscar in 1939 "when blacks were still sitting in the back of theatres." Apparently, Hattie McDaniel was initially seated in the back of the room the year she won the award (the producer of Gone With the Wind eventually arranged for her to be moved to a better table). I appreciate the sentiment behind Clooney's speech, but let's not kid ourselves and say that Hollywood is a great place to be a black actor.

Take a look at Sammy Davis, Jr., arguably the greatest performer and entertainer of the 20th century. His talents were limitless - actor, singer, comedian, impersonator, drummer, and dancer. He was the most literate member of the Rat Pack by a long shot, yet he never attended a day of school in his life. And Hollywood was not exactly sweet to him.

Haywood's biography doesn't spend much time on Davis's years with the Rat Pack, but treats extensively his lost childhood (he began performing in vaudeville shows when he was about 6), his Broadway career, and his struggles for acceptance in both the white and black community.

And Haywood's portrait (constructed out of exhaustive research and over 250 interviews) is not entirely flattering - Davis was immature, emotionally needy, insecure, a womanizer, an absent father, a spendthrift, a reluctant latecomer to the civil rights movement. But he was also generous, disciplined, and by all accounts, not a person who met him didn't instantly adore him. The best parts of the book detail Davis's stage performances. While it's no substitute for being in the audience at the Copacabana, the writing still leaves you breathless at the capacity of Davis's talent.

If you liked...: Rat Pack Confidential by Shawn Levy, Dorothy Dandridge by Donald Bogle, or books about the rise and fall of vaudeville, soft-shoe, and great nightclub performers, this book is for you.
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* Inscription on Davis's gravestone