My Guy Larry

Like Holden Caulfield, I always fancy sitting down and talking with the writer of any work I love. Right now (actually for the last 33 years), I've imagined conversing at length with Pulitzer prizewinner Larry McMurtry, whose LONESOME DOVE, BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN (screenplay adapted from story by Annie Proulx)and TERMS OF ENDEARMENT were huge commercial successes that most of the planet could identify with.

However, for me, McMurtry became my guy for two much smaller pieces: an essay he wrote for Atlantic magazine's "Texas" issue in spring 1975(?), and a long essay (short autobiography) called WALTER BENJAMIN AT THE DAIRY QUEEN, published in 1999 following McMurtry's heart surgery a year or two before that.

I don't recall all of Atlantic's focus on Texas in spring 1975, but I specifically remember discovering Larry McMurtry and Molly Ivins in pieces they wrote for that issue.

Larry, then living up East, wrote of his experiences as an expatriate Texan coming home for a big event--a bbq, maybe, and a cocktail party with it. His descriptions were hilarious--not the least for his comparisons to what he figured it must be to be an expatriate Mississippian coming home to even crazier people and crazier experiences. Ironically, I read his essay on a Delta Airlines flight between Dallas, TX and Jackson, MS; I was flying from my adopted Montana to a family reunion in Mississippi.

Putting it mildly, Larry "spoke" to me in that piece, helping me to laugh at, enjoy and appreciate rather than resist, resent or explain away my origins and identity. He became My Guy right then. But here's why I've continued to love him:

First, he loves used books--not only for their arrestingly written, voraciously consumed contents but also for their looks, the way they feel and the fun it is to find them whether searching for a particular title or merely lucking onto a treasure to hold dear until the love wears thin--which, more than likely, it will. I know those passions.

Second, Larry unselfconsciously admits ambiguous ties to "home." Yet when all is said, read and written, he's learned enough about himself, his family, his friends, his books and the world he lives in to know who he is, how and why he came to be that way and why it's folly to deny or pretend otherwise. He accepts "it," makes it his, and moves on to the next phase of selfhood. He's Larry for good. Good for Larry!

What's more, his solid self-identity has helped create a successful, commercial self-identity for his dusty West Texas hometown of Archer City. There he's put his vast collection of books on display and/or for sale in shops he's opened for tourists. I want to visit there someday--if, that is, I can scrape together the gold to pay for the gasoline. Blame THAT on another expatriate Texan--one who occupies the White House, is married to a librarian, yet famously is NOT a lover of books!

Open Season in Bush World

Duck and cover, America. The U.S. Supreme Court is gunning for us.

In a 5-4 ruling this week, the Court held that the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution conveys rights to individual citizens to arm themseves.

Do you feel safer now? I don't. In fact, it scares me ragged to think of millions of us out there packin' heat and suspiciously eyeing our friends, families, neighbors, rank strangers, or fresh acquaintances at the mall, on the bus, in the taxi, the airplane, the supermarket, or the subway. It's enough to make a person want to close the doors, pull the curtains and stay home forever.

But wait...there's also the recent home invasion a few miles from here to worry about. An elderly couple (he 91, she 76) were taken hostage at home at 7:15 a.m. when the gentleman stepped into the driveway to get the morning paper. Three men, all adults w/no claim at all to "young punks", demanded the couple's car keys and combo to the safe before tying up the couple and hauling off whichever loot they were after. Unless I missed it, no one displayed or fired a weapon. With the new Court ruling, however, it will be a lot easier for all of us to keep a rod handy to handle whichever further horrors await us in Bush World.

Please...can we get this crowd out of here fast enough? Unfortunately, Election Year 2000 was our first, last and best SHOT at it. Tragically, we missed.

"Hump"

I'll never watch a Bogart movie the same way again. Why? I'm reading his biography. A splendid one at that.

"Bogart," by A.M. Sperber and Eric Lax, combines the research of two writers whose documentation is almost unimaginable, it's so thorough. Notes say the source documents of just one of the writers weighed nearly half a ton.

HALF A TON, mind you. What's more, many of those items deftly make their way into this compelling narrative.

So what has skewed my view of Bogart--or "Hump" as he was known to friends? It's his history as a privileged but thoroughly abused child. Here are glimpses based on the biographers' interviews with Grace Lambert and other childhood friends, most of whom were summer companions at Canandaigua in the finger lakes district of western New York. In some ways, Humphrey had an idyllic childhood; in other ways, it was horrendous.

Firsthand sources say Bogart's parents were consumed by social pretenses and lucrative careers: father a New York City physician, mother a commercially successful, nationally renowned painter of angelic children's pictures. Her work made it into Butterick's Pattern books and many early 20th century women's magazines.

Yet the elder Bogarts were morphine addicts who left the rearing of their kids to--according to Lambert--"the most awful servants....Common people, with loud voices, ignorant...Oh, they were rough! They used to beat them and shout at them (at Humphrey and two younger sisters)...they (the servants)were HORRIBLE....And the mother and father didn't seem to notice."

Worse, when friends tried to report the violence, "Maud," Humphrey's tall, lean, beautiful mother (size 2 1/2 shoes to complement her mauve Victorian silks), threw things at them and refused to believe it. Humphrey, about 12 and present at the telling, began pounding his fists at his mother and screaming, "It's true, Mother; it's true!"

Possibly to escape, "Hump" was stagestruck as a teen. He would hang blankets across wires to serve as curtains for summer, lakeside performances starring him and his friends. He was close to the son of a prominent Broadway producer who also summered there (Humphrey LOVED hearing stories of what went on out front and behind the stages of NY City). Perhaps a vain act to preserve his 5'8" masculinity, he forever denied any true acting interest--claimed merely to have fallen into movies (a less respected career back then).

So what I'm eager for now is how he gets to Hollywood, how easily he marries and divorces his starlet friends, how he deals with industry allies and enemies, and what happens when all that chemistry gets stirred between him and Lauren Bacall (half his age when they meet, court, marry and have two kids).

No longer, though, shall I wonder at Bogart's edgy, dark, remote and angry countenance. From now on, I'll think of all he experienced as a child of parental negligence and addiction--and the fact that he died from cancer in his 58th year. Residuals of the wrong kind for a Hollywood great like this one!

Life Without Tim

I join millions of Americans this weekend in grieving the untimely death of Tim Russert, longtime host of MEET THE PRESS on NBC. With the exception of the retired Tom Brokaw, I know of no one employed at NBC or MSNBC who can possibly match Tim's interviewing skills or his grasp of American politics. That said, I feel for the person who is asked to be the new MTP host. He or she will have to work unduly hard just to be appealing, much less convincing.

As a father and a son, Tim was as or even more compelling as a national figure. His book about his dad--BIG RUSS--is one of the most popular ever on the subject of father-son relationships. With Tim's tragic death this Father's Day weekend, his book is in more demand than ever.

Today the owner at my favorite used book shop said she's been flooded with requests for Tim's book this weekend. More telling yet, that same owner said she had cried when she learned of the newsmaker's sudden end. "How will we get through to November without him?" she said. I knew what she meant.

Condolences to his wife, son and father, as well as to the whole American family. We are all less and less informed without Tim.

Rest in Peace, Earl Leggett

When I was a teen-ager, I had a summer job that required cooking and serving burgers at a small diner adjacent to a popular Texaco station in my hometown of Raymond, Mississippi. Both facilities were co-owned by the local community college football coach, Frank Young, and one of his favorite ex-players, Earl Leggett. By then, Earl was a major player in the National Football League--a Chicago Bear en extremis.

Coach and Earl were gentlemen of the kind we expect in the South. Either or both would stay after the gas station closed to make sure I was never alone nights, which were the busiest or the loneliest hours, depending on the volume of customers. I looked forward to the owners' company, as they always managed to teach me something of value about life, love or for that matter, cooking pesky burgers to the right temperature.

Of all they taught me--tips on health, family ties, friendships--the lesson I remember best and followed least came from Earl Leggett, that big galoot of a guy who was as sweet and as gentle in some ways and as tough and as bruising as they come
in others.

"When it's time to choose a man, Nancy, and the choice is Love or Money," advised Earl, "choose Money. You can always learn to love the sonofabitch!!"

Earl Leggett died recently during surgery--related, one guesses, to old and numerous football injuries. Earl was 75. He was beloved by those who knew and saw him in his daily haunts around Raymond. I am sorry I did not visit or see him after I retired here. I would have enjoyed telling him how dearly I've kept his words over the years if not the fruits I might've earned from following the advice he gave me.

In memorializing him, the local weekly ran a wonderful front-page photo of Earl in his football gear--circa 1954 when he led his team to victory at the Rose Bowl, site of the national junior college title game that year. The article also carried the eulogy presented at the funeral by TV sportscaster Howie Long. Leggett had mentored Long at the Oakland Raiders, where Earl had eventually coached and Howie had come into his own professionally as a defensive lineman. Earl clearly had gained Howie's love and loyalty over the years.

So now I'm wondering: what personal advice did Earl give Howie along the way? Not sure, but I imagine if it was about love, it probably was about faithfulness. Earl and his college sweetheart married young, had several kids and enjoyed a long life together. May this devoted husband, loving father and memorable mentor rest in peace. This great Bear of a man is missed by many.

Hillary and History

Today Hillary Clinton made history.

The speech she gave suspending her presidential campaign and endorsing Barack Obama as the Demo nominee was remarkable not only on those two fronts, but more important, on the fronts involving race and gender in American politics. From now on, it will be harder for all of us to think of women and persons of color as Lesser Than's in any competition, any pursuit, any personal or professional agenda involving character, intelligence and leadership.

I am grateful to Senator Clinton and to Senator Obama for their vigor in proving to America once and for all that anyone, everyone, all of us have a right and an opportunity to say "Yes, we can!" and to mean it. This is a great day for America--and I'm glad I was here to see it.

Gertrude Stein, Gertrude Stein, Gertrude Stein

The Arch Repeater, was Gertrude.

Spared the worst of it in "The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas," I'm now being inundated with repeated lines of thought and dialogue in "Each One as She May," Stein's account of a fictional "negress" (sic) named "Melanctha." It's based on the ex-patriate writer's sympathetic exposures to black culture in early 1900's America and France. Here's an example, an example, an example:

(Melanctha's reluctant lover Jeff is speaking.)
"Why, Melanctha dear, I certainly don't now see what it is you mean by what you was just saying to me...you certainly never did believe I ever knew I was giving you real suffering."

(Melanctha replies:)
"I certainly never did know just what it was you wanted to be doing with me, but I certainly wanted you should do anything you liked, you wanted, to make me more understanding for you."

Back to Stein.

The word "certainly" appears nearly a dozen times on that page, which page is a single paragraph. "Can't stand it," "couldn't stand it," and "certainly did stand it" appear almost as often. Yes, yes, yes, I tell you; on the same, same, same page.

It's too easy, isn't it--this poking fun, I mean. The fact is the writing is effective; it lasts and lasts. Critics and analysts--including Stein--say it was her way of showing what actually happens when human beings are communicating silently OR aloud. I'm not sure I buy it, but I am sure I won't forget the thoughts and feelings of Jeff and Melanctha.

Even more, I'll keep the opinion of the late, great American poet Richard Wright, who said (in essence) that Gertrude Stein understood more about black culture than any other white person of her time. Wright was an ex-patriate black American living in Paris--a Mississippian from Natchez. I figure he certainly did, certainly should have, certainly was certain that he certainly knew what he was talking about!

Eureka!

I've just found 19 handsome, wonderfully preserved copies of HORIZON, that hardbound culture and arts magazine from the 1950's and beyond. I bought them at $2.50 each in a local antique shop last weekend. All are 1970's vintage and are a joy to peruse, read in earnest or earmark for later study. The range of topics and quality of writing are stunning. Some glimpses from the Spring 1971 issue:

Cover Notes (about the classic reprint pasted on front): "A demure Eve presents the fateful apple to an innocent Adam and ushers in the fall of man in a painting by Lucas Cranach the Elder. Today another kind of fall of man is being proposed by the Women's Liberation Movement with its vigorous attack on male domination. The controversial subject is discussed in an article beginning on page 4."

Granted, the topic is dated, but the article presents a valuable overview of men, women, marriage and social history of the sexes. Worth 21st century eyeing.

As is the item labeled "The Canterbury Tales," a review by renowned British novelist Anthony Burgess, whose contempt for a (then) new London musical based on Chaucer's masterpiece is clear in passages like this one: "It is, on the whole, a pretty bad adaptation: the songs are tuneless, the lines lack the medieval gusto of Chaucer's original, and there is an air of sniggering lubricity about the production...this enstaged and watered-down Chaucer is...sanctioned naughtiness." Burgess then more seriously explores Chaucer and some of his characters from the ageless classic.

Following that article is "A Canterbury Album" written and illustrated by French architect Zevi Blum. Monsieur B. verbally and visually captures the "Byzantine melodrama" of five of Chaucer's most famous characters: the Wife of Bath, the Man of Law, the Miller, the Merchant and the Friar. Delightful, witty work by artist Blum.

Other articles from that spring include "The Scoundrel Who Invented Credit" (about Scottish libertine John Law), "The Tempesta Puzzle" (about Georgione's mysterious world famous painting), "The Ashanti" (re: rain forest tribe in Africa), "The Rise and Fall and Rise of Leon Trotsky" ("Rise" is twice part of the title; text has huge b/w photo of Trotsky, his wife, pal Diego Rivera and armed guards at the Trotsky compound in Mexico City), "Everything You Always Wanted to Know about the Dodo" (yes, the extinct bird), "Loser" (about a disastrous Roman general) and other esoterica that only HORIZON could claim with head unbowed and intelligence intact.

How I love these treasures. They've already taken a commanding place in my heart and on my bookshelves. Reeling and gleeful, I remain the hunter in search of "new" HORIZONs.