Buttering Me Up

On the acknowledgments page of Denise Hamilton's new book, The Last Embrace, she writes,

"Hurray for librarians everywhere, those wonderfully sly, subversive supporters of literacy who are the unsung heroes of American letters today."

I promise that this bit of flattery will not prevent me from writing a fair and impartial review of the book when I finish it.

Then again, it's a book set in 1940s Los Angeles, has a nice noirish grime about it, features wayward starlets and thuggish gangsters, and was inspired by the 1949 disappearance of Jean Spangler.

The chances of me not liking this book are practically zilch.

The Southern Girl's Guide to Gracious Living: Girls in Trucks by Katie Crouch

Girls in Trucks by Katie Crouch

I suppose I should count myself lucky that my mother wasn't a debutante, that I was never forced to go to Cotillion classes, and that when my freshman year roommate asked me if I was going to rush, I had no idea what she was talking about (after she told me how many dresses it involved, I decided against it).

Still, there's something about the southern debutante that I find myself powerless to resist, a certain trashy mystique. After all, it's not every woman who can smoke a Marlboro Light in white cotton gloves or puke up a liter of Jim Beam without messing up her lipstick.

Sarah Walters is a Charleston-born and bred deb, though she isn't very good at it. She's a little bit plain and shy, and though good manners and heavy drinking come easily to her, things like female friendship and husband-hunting are more elusive.

Girls in Trucks follows Sarah as she ditches Charleston for a lackluster career in publishing and journalism in New York, and as she embarks on one disastrous and wrong relationship after another. She keeps in touch with her fellow, former debs, Annie, Bitsy, and Charlotte, but don't let the names fool you - these are no Sex in the City-esque ladies who lunch and dish. Their lives and problems would have made Carrie Bradshaw trade in her Jimmy Choos for a rural nunnery.

Even though their lives aren't perfect, the other three still manage to have problems glamorous and interesting enough to match their successful lives. Sarah, on the other hand, is a floundering wreck, her problems the products of self-absorption and a frustrating inability to make good life choices.

And that's the biggest problem with Girls in Trucks. Because Sarah sees herself as mediocre, plain, and a failure, the reader will, too. And while I found myself rooting for every tertiary character in the book, I couldn't root for Sarah because I knew she'd find a way to defeat herself no matter how promising her prospects. There are lovable losers, and then, there are just losers.

Still, I read the book in a single sitting (or rather, during a long day of subway connections and doctor's office waiting rooms), and really enjoyed Crouch's descriptions of debutante culture and social class hierarchies in the South.

If you like...: books about southern life and love like Garden Spells by Sarah Addison Allen, or books about women who just can't seem to get it together like The Man of My Dreams by Curtis Sittenfeld, this book is for you.

Mad Men, Season 2, Episode 1: "For Those Who Think Young"

"I realized that watching Mad Men each week had become one of those rare delights, like watching The Simpsons from Season Two to Seven, or Lost in Season Four, where I approached each new episode the way I might approach a wrapped gift." - Noel Murray, The Onion's TV Club

Not only do I approach each new episode of Mad Men like a wrapped gift, I approach them like a book I've been looking forward to for a long time, and have finally laid hands on. It's like the way I feel when I find out there's a new Megan Abbott book coming out, except that it happens every week.

The end of summer has officially, and unthinkably, become the most wonderful time of the year.

Thoughts on the first episode of the new season:

1. If there isn't already one out there, some enterprising seamstress should start selling reproductions of anything Christina Hendricks wears on the show. They would make a killing, and I would be first in line.

2. Tonight, Brady bought a box of Junior Mints in honor of the Junior Account Executives on the show. I hope none of them are phased out in favor of hipper, younger fellows in fishermen's sweaters because I'd only just started to love Harry, Paul, and good ole Cosgrove.

3. And then, there's Pete Campbell, the Junior Account Executive who will never be loved by anyone except his wife, and even she's probably rethinking things. He is a low, nasty sort. Even before he told his wife to open the chocolates because he wanted one, I was, like, "You got your wife a box of chocolates for Valentine's Day? You incredible tool!"

4. That face Don Draper makes when Betty walks down the stairs of the Savoy for their Valentine's Day date: that is the face of a man who is doing penance, whether his wife knows it or not.

5. Oh, Miss Peggy Olson. You had a rough first year at Sterling Cooper, and I wish only good things for you now. And if you have to become a little bit of a monster to accomplish that, I absolve you completely.

6. Oh, Salvatore. That's not going to end well. Same goes for you, Joanie.

True Crime and the Smart Set

I've been reading Savage Grace by Natalie Robins and Steven M.L. Aronson, the 1985 true crime classic about the Baekeland family, heirs to the Bakelite fortune. For those unfamiliar with the story (or the 2007 film adaptation starring Julianne Moore), in 1972, Barbara Daly Baekeland was murdered by her son, Antony.

After the murder, all kinds of horrifying things came out about the family. Barbara had enlisted women to bed her son, who was gay, in an attempt to "fix" him, and there was some speculation that Barbara had seduced Antony herself. And then there was Barbara's husband, Brooks, who ran off with one of Antony's "girlfriends." That barely scratches the surface, but you can Wikipedia that business to learn more.

The surprising thing about the book is that Robins and Aronson got access to court proceedings, confidential medical records, Antony's letters written from prison and mental institutions, and pretty much the entire Baekeland family and their smart set friends for the book, which is edited as a compilation of these papers and interviews.

The interview subjects are like something right out of Cheever, bon vivants, idle rich jet-setters, wealthy artistic sorts, and the tossers-off of the well-placed beau geste. While talking about the crime, their stories are peppered with meals eaten, art purchased, places summered, parties thrown. As for the murder itself, it's spoken of as though it were an unfortunate, unpleasant thing, not a brutal, twisted crime. And Tony, that poor lamb.

Despite this tone, most of the subjects are rather keen to chat and make a good showing in the story. To read their accounts of the murder, you'd think that they'd personally been stabbed in the chest in a London kitchen, but that the whole thing had been rather a nuisance.

I haven't decided whether this is interesting or highly annoying yet, but I'll give it a few more chapters.

Punk, 1924-Style

From the Los Angeles Times, Feb. 27, 1924

Happy Birthday Poppa

Were he still alive, Ernest Hemingway would be 109 today.

Wrap your mind around that one.

Also, check out these photos from the 28th Annual Hemingway Look-Alike Contest, held at Sloppy Joe's Bar in Key West. Why my father-in-law has not ever entered this, I do not know. He'd walk away with the title.

I celebrated Hemingway's birthday by reading some Dawn Powell, his "favorite living writer," and going out for a cocktail after work with friends. The odd thing is, while I was doing these things, I had no idea that it was Hemingway's birthday.

Clearly, Poppa Hemingway commands me from beyond the grave.

Eatin' Crow, Staying Positive

Going to veer from the stated Purpose-of-Blog for a sec:

The new Hold Steady album is so good it makes me feel bad about snotty things I may have said about the previous ones.

It is like a Midwestern Decoration Day.

Like Cameron's dad's car, it is so choice.

In short, it is eight thirty in the morning and I've already listened to it all the way through.