Sam Mendes: Revolutionary Road

Revolutionary Road is, off the bat, two things: a novel written by Richard Yates (1961) and a movie directed by Sam Mendes (2008). 

Mendes' film adaptation of the novel presents a bleak microcosm of isolation, alienation and peer pressure set mostly in the mid-1950s, in New York City and suburban Connecticut, five years prior to the beginning, in chronological setting, of the AMC series Mad Men. Think Sloan Wilson's The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit (1955), John Updike's Rabbit, Run (1960), Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique (1963), and anticipating Sue Kaufman's Diary of a Mad Housewife (1967). 

This brightly lit (almost washed out in its brightness) film is both grim and meticulously done in Sam Mendes style -- if you've seen American Beauty, Jarhead, or the latest James Bond film, they all bear his stamp. 

Here, a marriage is pressure-cooked. Kids, nice house and stability are of little consequence in the grand scheme of things. Follow your dreams or die a little inside, day after day. Think big, not small -- and God go with you. Once you've got food, shelter and clothing, you are free to choose your arc -- don't let yourself feel trapped, isolated and hopeless. Got it? In 2014, there should be more room to maneuver than there was in 1955. Do you think there is?   

Today's Rune: Harvest.  

Starring New York: Take One

Here's a thoughtfully groovy book that blends together movies and context, time and socio-economic setting. Stanley Corkin's Starring New York: Filming the Grime and the Glamour of the Long 1970s (Oxford University Press, 2011) looks at a slew of films from the late 1960s into the beginning of the 1980s, ranging from a detailed consideration of Midnight Cowboy to a glancing shot at Fort Apache, The Bronx. 

This tome also reminds readers that New York City went financially belly up in the 1970s much like Detroit is doing in early 2014. The former became a "successful" city again, but at the cost of driving most poor and working class people out of Manhattan as the housing core became more gentrified, yuppified, and high financialized.

Included in Starring New York are The Godfather and several other organized crime movies, Blaxploitation ("Harlem and the World"), undercover policing, vigilantism, and a final section on "Love, Marriage, and Fine City Living" that includes Woody Allen, An Unmarried Woman (1978) and Kramer vs. Kramer (1979). 

There were many sharp movies made in New York City in the 1970s, at the very extended moment when the metropolis disintegrated and was about to be "remade."

A couple of films that I thought might have been included were Diary of a Mad Housewife (1970) and Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977); however, as of this posting, neither are easily available on DVD, plus the setting of the latter was moved from the novel's location (New York City) to elsewhere.

Today's Rune: Signals.  

The Woodmans: Take Two

I. In The Woodmans, we see a family system, partly through artifacts and partly through remembrances of things past. Francesca Woodman jumped to her death in New York City in 1981, just as Diary of a Mad Housewife and Falling Bodies author Sue Kaufman had done in 1977. In The Woodmans, George, Betty and Charlie are interviewed decades later, while Francesca remains a ghostly figure throughout.

The Woodman family story reminds me a little of Franz Kafka's Die Verwandlung / The Metamorphosis (1915), which also revolves around a nuclear family composed of two parents and two siblings. In the Kafka tale, once Gregor Samsa is out of circulation, the rest of the Samsa family kicks into high gear. They live on without him. Likewise, once Francesca is gone, the other three Woodmans continue to lurch forward. Charlie continues with his electronic art projects, but the parents actually change up their approaches to art. Betty switches from functional ceramics into decorative mode. Even more strikingly, George, after reading all of Emily Dickinson's poetry, changes from abstract painting to form photography, often in a way strongly reminiscent of Francesca's work.   

II. The David Lang soundtrack, performed by Sō Percussion, is strange, cool and memorable. At first, it instantly reminded me of the soundtrack that accompanies Allan Mindel's film Milwaukee Minnesota (2003), which will make for another post on another day. 

Today's Rune: Wholeness.      

Sue Kaufman: Falling Bodies

Knowing that she died by jumping out a window in New York City in 1977, it's pretty eerie reading through Sue Kaufman's entire body of published work. Take this snippet from Diary of a Mad Housewife (1967), in the voice of Bettina (Tina) Balser, the protagonist:

. . . a couple of times I even thought of suicide. Yesterday morning I stood at the bedroom window, trying to get the nerve to open the window and jump, but Tina the Comedienne won out: I had this vision of myself soaring, like Mary Poppins, out over Central Park West, tweed skirt and Lady Lingerie from Best's belling out, and stayed inside. I also knew that, suicide failing, I had to talk to someone or really go stark foaming frothing mad. (p. 288)

And here's a snippet from Falling Bodies (1974), looking over protagonist Emma Sohier's shoulder:

A little over a year ago, in late November . . . some poor young woman had pitched herself and her two miniature poodles off the penthouse terrace of the building diagonally across the street . . . her mind finally made up, the girl had first tossed one furry bundle, then the other, high into the air like some queenly vaudeville juggler -- and as they came down past her (yowling?), had stood up on the low wall, spread her arms wide, and in a perfect Esther Williams swan dive, had taken off into space herself. (pp. 63-64)*

What's especially notable about these novels -- and much of Kaufman's work -- is the strange balancing of madness and comedy in her wry descriptions.  Her primary characters are often too clever for their own good, too acutely attuned to the echo chamber of their own observations: and so they come undone, unhinged. 

Today's Rune: Movement.  *Esther Williams is still alive, by the way, at 88. Here's a link to a Life photo showing her diving -- into a pool:  http://www.life.com/image/50485101

Sue Kaufman: The Happy Summer Days

This year is the fiftieth anniversary of Sue Kaufman's first novel, The Happy Summer Days (1959). The Detroit News proclaimed it "brilliant" at the time; I'd more accurately quip a half century later, "it's decent." Kaufman's main strength in this novel is her wry observation of social behavior among relatively affluent mid-twentieth century New Yorkers.

Almost like a comic horror story, The Happy Summer Days has a definite beginning, middle and end: city folk arrive at an island (Cape Cod?  Somewhere like Provincetown or Martha's Vinyard) for a summer away from the usual grind. Things happen with the characters, realizations come, changes occur. Some of them leave, but none as they once were. Open end of novel. Invasion of the Body Snatchers on the astral plane.

Kaufman's first book-length outing requires active engagement from the reader. It's told from multiple points of view, which causes confusion and forces one to sort out characters along the way. Each perspective is limited and unreliable, making one look at the same events from different angles. Kathy, who turns sixteen on the island, sees the adults as crazy (her parents are divorced and mostly off-stage); she refers to all of them by their last names. Two architects (Tom and George) have various issues, mirrored by a complicated and sometimes rivalrous friendship between Anne (Tom's wife) and Polly, an artist who has left behind a husband in France (will he return in time for the climax?). Throw in several other characters, and there's plenty of social conflict.

One of the more interesting things to note is that Polly and Anne seem to be the first people in their families to have attended college. Another is Kaufman's biting and often satirical descriptions of parties and conversations. Usually these still work; her poking fun at two gay dudes and a lesbian to the point of caricature is more dated, but spotlights the 1950s status quo.

The Happy Summer Days has the feel of Mad Men's first season. Kaufman matches its attention to detail, and captures a segment of American society on the slow verge of rapid social upheaval. 

Kathy, now sixteen, mulls over the older folks' existential musings: ". . . Life [was] a word they used over and over and over spelled with a capital 'l'. In fact all the supposed  adults she knew did this.   'Life is no bowl of cherries,' her own father would say sadly, peering off into some invisible distance with cloudy eyes. And 'Life is evil' was her mother's favorite phrase. 'Life's ironic,' said Mr. Duncan. 'Life can be a work of art,' Mr. Fry had lazily, happily said once. 'To me Life is work . . . or vice versa,' Mrs. Logan had confided to Mr. Duncan on the beach. And then Mrs. Russell, just a short while ago, softly saying that Life was not a conspiracy -- as though by saying what it wasn't she could avoid defining just what it really was . . ."

On the morning ritual (I can relate, though no more cigarettes):  "When he had finished his third cup of coffee and was lighting his first cigarette, Frederick felt capable of speaking."

Today's Rune: Wholeness.

Judith Krantz: Sex and Shopping

The closest thing to a romance novel I've read is probably work by Jane Austen and Edith Wharton, certainly nothing by Judith Krantz. Nonetheless, because of her friendship with Sue Kaufman, I plunged into her very interesting nonfiction work (probably her final book), Sex and Shopping: The Confessions of a Nice Jewish Girl -- An Autobiography (2000, 2001+).

Krantz (b. 1/28/1928) covers a lot of ground, including her then (at the time of writing) 45-year marriage to Steve Krantz (5/20/1923-1/4/2007), living in New York City, France and California, Jewish culture, and much more.

Most interestingly to me, she notes how Sue Kaufman (8/7/1926-6/25/1977) became so sensitive to criticism that she decided to stop writing novels after Falling Bodies (1974), citing a letter Kaufman wrote her to that effect. Kaufman's last work, The Master and Other Stories (1976) is an eclectic collection that includes earlier, formerly published stories. Krantz states explicitly on page 307 that Kaufman committed suicide by jumping from an 18th story window in Manhattan; elsewhere she notes that suicides among her generation were often covered up: with "an old-fashioned way of thinking, [Krantz's mother] thought suicide a scandal that should be concealed" (page 280). Judy and her sister Mimi thought quite the opposite.

After Sue Kaufman's death at fifty years old, Krantz launched her own spectacularly lucrative career as writer, starting in her fifties. She eventually wrote twelve novels, all of them published between 1978 and 1998 and half of them adapted into TV mini-series. My favorite Krantz novel title: I'll Take Manhattan (1986). Evidently, Judy Tarcher Krantz had the popular pulse of the 80s and 90s: we're talking tens of millions of copies sold, and many millions of dollars made -- quite a feat for any writer, as well as a boon for the publishing industry and for other writers.

Happy Black Friday, folks!

The Mystery of Sue Kaufman

Three new items pertaining to Sue Kaufman (8/7/1926-6/25/1977).

I. The 1970 movie version of Diary of a Mad Housewife is now accessible on YouTube. It's a PG edit by TLCarpenter divided into several approximately ten-minute segments. Part 2 below. This will have to do until a full-length version comes out.

II. I'm thoroughly enjoying Judith Krantz's memoir, Sex and Shopping: The Confessions of a Nice Jewish Girl (2000, 2001). Though I've never read any of her romance novels, this nonfiction work is very frank and seriously entertaining. There is a recurring thread involving Sue Kaufman; they met as Seven Sister undergraduates (Kaufman graduated from Vassar in 1947; Krantz, then Judy "Torchy" Tarcher, graduated from Wellesley College in 1948) while double-dating Harvard men.

Judith Krantz on Sue Kaufman: Sue was stunning, very dark, with magnificent eyes and delicately flaring nostrils that made her look fully as neurotic as she was. Whenever a conversation became too personal, she'd say, "Dearie, let's not talk about that," and "that," whatever it was, disappeared immediately. I was perhaps her closest friend, but in many ways I never really knew her. No one did. Her sensitivity was too great for true intimacy." (Sex and Shopping, page 155).

III. Finished rereading The Master and Other Stories (1976), a collection of Kaufman's stories ranging from the late 1940s through the 1960s and into the 1970s. "The Master" is Pablo Picasso. More on this eclectic and illuminating book soon, as well as more on Judith Krantz's memoir.

Today's Rune: Wholeness.

Choosing by Title: Remembered and Forgotten

I. A book's title is at least as important as its cover. Certainly that's the case with Sue Kaufman and her legacy. Many many people have at least heard of her Diary of a Mad Housewife (1967). How many can say the same of one of her earlier novels, Green Holly (1961)? First, Green Holly is good, a take on New York society in the tradition of Edith Wharton and Henry James, updated to the 1950s. But from its title, what the hell? To me, it's just a bad bad bad title, and says nothing.

Compare with Diary of a Mad Housewife. Three components: Diary (form) + Mad (state of mind) + Housewife (gender and social role). Instant and lasting appeal. Excellent title. Compare with another memorable title, possibly inspired by Kaufman's: Pedro Almodóvar's movie Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown / Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios (1988). Here we have similar components as in Kaufman's, though without giving away form or social roles.













II. In Green Holly, Kaufman details the early adult life of Jean Fell, her frenemy Phoebe Butler (plus husband Peter Butler), and her involvement with Walter Asch; Walter's wife Elise, whose parents died in the Holocaust, is "mentally distressed" and their daughter Belinda is also "troubled." Plenty of social conflict built in. Glimpses of social mores of the late 1940s and 1950s in New York City; also, flashbacks to Phoebe and Jean's college days, and their travels in Europe after the Second World War. Life at work, at home, and around the city; cocktail parties. The latter are Jean's "way of settling accounts after . . . being entertained by others. . . [T]he more sophisticated of her friends -- married, single, divorced -- only cynically regarded candlelight, flowers, little buffet suppers, as some enormous sort of joke . . ." (p. 99). Aside from period-place observations, Green Holly turns on Jean's changing relationships (both intense) with Phoebe and Walter.

As for the obscure and forgettable title, it derives from the novel's epigraph: "[U]nto the green holly: Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly." From Shakespeare, As You Like It (ca. 1600). Unto the Green Holly would certainly have worked better, like Catcher in the Rye.

Today's Rune: Growth.

The 70s: Bring Out Your Dead, Part II

More reverb, mid-1970s cut. Dig the old breed, Old School, nifty-fifty, 23 skidoo. Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead and Saturday Night Live is still aired. Anne Sexton still needs a biopic and Elvis still plays ping pong with Chairman Mao in the ethersphere between sightings throughout the cosmos. Sue Kaufman's Diary of a Mad Housewife's movie version needs re-release, and Alice Paul a renewed salute. Not quite the end of the 70s, the End of the Century, but it was The End for these folks. Let us now remember what we can of them, to the tune of Howlin' Wolf's "Moanin' at Midnight" and then, and then, and then, "Goin' Down Slow." Let's remember anything we can . . .

Anne Sexton (11/9/1928-10/4/1974). She's so cool, so nutty; I'd rather have a drink and shop poetry with her than with Sylvia Plath, in the realm of surreal dreams.

Here's a surreal nightmare: Stiff-armed Adolf Hitler with a jolly Francisco Franco. Things are much better in Germany and Spain these days. God, let's hope so. Francisco Franco (12/4/1892-11/10/1975).

Howlin' Wolf/Chester Arthur Burnett (6/10/1910-1/10/1976): How Many More Years, Evil, Forty-four, Smokestack Lightnin', I Asked for Water, Sitting on Top of the World, Wang Dang Doodle, Back Door Man, Little Red Rooster, I Ain't Superstitious, Three Hundred Pounds of Joy, Hidden Charms, Built for Comfort, Killing Floor, and more, and more and more.

Mao Zedong/Mao tse-tung (12/26/1893-9/9/1976). Or as Mrs. Cunningham/Dr. Ruth Bishop used to say in modern Chinese history class, Mousey-Tongue. She was joking. He was not. Scary dude. Andy Warhol, Don DeLillo, overrun by a Chinese line, Cultural Rev, you say you want a revolution . . .

Sue Kaufman (8/7/1926-6/25/1977). In "Summer Librarian" she notes the passing of time, the changing of the old ways into new that have since become old again and the pages keep on turning and she kept on seeing for miles and miles and miles until she couldn't take it anymore.

Alice Paul (1/11/1885-7/9/1977) Lives On with her crazy egalitarian notions about women and equal pay and a National Women's Party and Equal Rights Amendment that scared so many for no real reason save fear itself sort of like today's push for equal marriage rights, but ah -- so many things to change, so little time . . .

Elvis Presley (1/8/1935-8/16/1977), the King. In Tupelo, a Child was Born to outlive his Twin and the rest is History and Fable and Legend and Myth and Cult and Religion and Poetry and Hope and Glory and Archetypal Hero of the People of of the Realm of the World of the Earth of the Open Heavens, bound for The Promised Land Beyond Time . . .

Today's Rune: Flow.

Frost/Nixon: Threads to Infinity, Part I

Well, you've got Rebecca Hall playing Caroline Cushing, the open-minded, willing woman Frost picks up in transit by asking her if she wants to meet Nixon. Ms. Hall is none other than "Vicky" (as an American -- she is British) in Woody Allen's Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008).

Then you have Toby Jones, who took a riveting turn as Truman Capote in Infamous (2005) but seems overwrought as Nixon's literary agent, Swifty Lazar.

And there's Frank Langella (brilliant as Nixon), whose first screen test came as George Prager ("the writer!") in Frank Perry's 1970 adaptation of Sue Kaufman's Diary of A Mad Housewife. Man, talk about growing into a role! Here's a snippet from Diary:



Yet more to come on Frost/Nixon.

Today's Rune: Journey.

Revolutionary Road

Here's a film that ought to inspire adults to either 1) do something wildly existential, like a geographic move, or 2) consider suicide. Depends on your makeup, I guess. (I tilt in the life-affirming direction -- we're already mortal, so might as well go for something more interesting, whenever and wherever possible).

Based on the 1961 novel by Richard Yates, the Sam Mendes (American Beauty, Jarhead) version of Revolutionary Road stars Kate Winslet, Leonardo DiCaprio, Michael Shannon (Bug) and Kathy Bates, with a solid supporting cast, too.



















I'm sure the series Mad Men gets some of its inspiration from Richard Yates. If you like one, you'll probably like the other.



Michael Shannon is superb in Revolutionary Road as John Givings. He's edgy and even kind of scary; his character provides key insights into the human condition, rendered perfectly by Shannon.

If you want to be challenged, even shaken up, Revolutionary Road is a surely provocative book and movie for you. Compare with Sue Kaufman's Diary of a Mad Housewife and other novels/movies of the 1950s through 1970s. And good luck out there, every day!

Today's Rune: Growth.

The Life and Death of Sue Kaufman: An Update

Sue Kaufman's life story has been slow in emerging, but there are more developments to relate, thanks to helpful comments by readers of this blog. I appreciate these comments very much, and invite anyone with additional relevant information to add to this discussion, with the hopes of inspiring a fuller biographical study of this important American writer.

Erik's Choice seems to be the only gathering point on the entire internet -- at least from what I can tell, and as of this posting -- stating that Sue Kaufman (Barondess, 1926-1977), author of Diary of a Mad Housewife (1967) and several other books, committed suicide. I stand by this statement. Here are the new comments:

Sue Kaufman ha[d] a bitter marriage. She wanted to leave her husband for a lover, but she couldn't. She became very sick during 1965-66. She was having irregular menstral [menstrual] periods with heav[y] bleeding. I didn't know that she killed her self, but it makes sense.
November 25, 2008

Judith Krantz wrote in her autobiog "Sex and Shopping"* that Sue Kaufman jumped from the eig[h]teenth floor balcony of her (Kaufman[']s) apartment after a long struggle with depression. She was due to be re admitted to a psychiatric hospital the next day, according to Krantz, who had known her in college; Wellesley or Vassar I think [i.e., Vassar]

December 08, 2008

*[Judith Krantz, Sex And Shopping: the Confessions of a Nice Jewish Girl: An Autobiography (2001, 2008)].










For more, please check the "Sue Kaufman" subject link.

The original 2006 post is here:

www.eriklerouge.blogspot.com/2006/06/diary-of-mad-housewife-sue-kaufman.html
An update from earlier this year:

http://eriklerouge.blogspot.com/2008/08/diary-of-mad-houswife-sue-kaufman.html

Today's Rune: Protection.

Frost/Nixon

Art and life -- both versions converge next month. For an 88 minute edited version of the original 28.5 hour 1977 interview sessions with David Frost and Tricky Dick Nixon, check out Frost/Nixon ("The Original Watergate Interviews") on December 2, 2008.

Whenever I teach US history, there are always students who respond to the Watergate affair with fascination and amazement. It's inherently gripping stuff. Rediscovered by each new generation, the tale will not die on the vine.

Ron Howard's Frost/Nixon, based on Peter Morgan's play, is set for limited US release on December 5, 2008. Carried over from the London theatre production, it stars Frank Langella as Nixon and Michael Sheen as Frost.













Frank Langella is a groovy guy. He started out in Diary of a Mad Housewife (1970) as the awful playwright George Prager, so it's not a big stretch for him to play the awful American president Richard Nixon. Specializing in villainy, he's also portrayed Count Dracula.

P.S. Diary of a Mad Housewife should be released on DVD or some other digital format.

Finally: I had a Nixonian boss. He was terrible at small talk but obsessively good at micromanagement, petty scheming and hubris. While in power, he had sycophants who should now be hung upside down, like Mussolini, from meathooks. I was glad to be rid of him, and certainly shed no tears when Nixon died, either.

From the late great Hunter S. Thompson:

Richard Nixon has never been one of my favorite people anyway. For years I've regarded his existence as a monument to all the rancid genes and broken chromosomes that corrupt the possibilities of the American Dream; he was a foul caricature of himself, a man with no soul, no inner convictions, with the integrity of a hyena and the style of a poison toad. The Nixon I remembered was absolutely humorless; I couldn't imagine him laughing at anything except maybe a paraplegic who wanted to vote Democratic but couldn't quite reach the lever on the voting machine.

Today's Rune: Protection.

Diary of a Mad Housewife: Sue Kaufman (Barondess) Revisited

A post I wrote on June 1, 2006 about Sue Kaufman ("Diary of a Mad Housewife") has elicited in response a lot of fantastic and heartfelt comments and email. The most recent comment was left by Mark on August 17, 2008. Thank you, Mark -- very much appreciated!

From 1965 to 1968, my family and I lived two floors above Sue Kaufman and her family. I remember her in the elevator as a nervous, unpretentious person. Her husband was indeed a fastidious man but I have no idea if he was fussy much less the controlling, insensitive man he has sometimes been made out to be. I also remember James as an extremely well-mannered child with glasses and the same owlish face as his father's. I was about the same age as he.

My family lived on the 13th floor while the Barondess family lived on the 11th. In between was Robert McNeill later of the McNeil-Lehrer Newshour.

The goings-on in my household were so strange and at times, unhappy, that I was not too focused on others in the building but one day my fate was placed in Dr. Barondess's hands and his help was swift and sure.

After an argument with my brother, I slammed a B & M baked beans jar down on my desk that I had been using as a pencil holder. Part of the glass jar broke off and was sent into my wrist artery. Blood shot to the ceiling. I was hysterical and ran to my mother's room. Somehow, Dr, Barondess was made aware of the situation. He called ahead to NY Hospital and by the time I arrived, I was taken immediately to a room adjoining the emergency room where Dr. Barondess oversaw the stitching of my wrist and I went home in a cast.

He may be guilty of being an emotionally absent husband or not but he acted compassionately and quickly in my behalf.

I have always been under the impression that Sue Kaufman died by jumping out the window in the back of the building onto the courtyard where we played basketball. When you read the obituary closely, you can see that she could have had cancer AND committed suicide. God rest her. I wish my mother, who loved books and worked in publishing, had gotten to know her. In some ways, they were both trapped by the same constraints imposed by the success of their husbands whose careers far outpaced their marriages.

Today's Rune: Fertility.

The Sylvia Plath Effect

I have nothing against Sylvia Plath, but I'd much rather see an interesting biopic about Anne Sexton or Assia Wevill than yet another take on The Bell Jar. I suppose there's room for everything -- but who then will have the courage to take on Anne Sexton? Even a documentary would be worthwhile. It's how I feel about Shakespeare -- how many godforsaken new versions do we need of that dude's works? No joke, though -- a new movie version of The Bell Jar is in the works.

Plath, Wevill and Sexton all took their own lives, or "checked out early" as Alan Arkin might say a la Little Miss Sunshine. Wevill replicated Plath and both did it in response to Ted Hughes, whose birthday is today. As for me, I'm staying out of it in the department of blame games. It's just that as with Shakespeare's Ophelia, I've read or heard enough versions of Plath; show me something new about Assia Wevill, about Anne Sexton; do a new version of Anne Kaufman's Diary of a Mad Housewife or at least re-release the old version in digital format; or someone try a straight-up take on Diane Arbus without it being too weird for words -- something with a new slant on things with people that resemble the real deal.

Korean actress-singer-etc. Uhm Jung-hwa.

Today's Rune: Inititiation.

Birthdays: Davy Crockett, Samuel Goldwyn (b. Schmuel Gelbfisz), Marcus Garvey, Mae West, Maureen O'Hara (Fitzsimons), Ted Hughes, V. S. Naipaul, Robert De Niro, Belinda Carlisle, David Koresh (b. Vernon Wayne Howell), Jonathan Franzen, Sean Penn, Uhm Jung-hwa.

Sheila Levine is Dead and Living in New York

Gail Parent's Sheila Levine is dead and living in New York (2004; orginally published in 1972), is a sort of rough and tumble, more realistic and more depressing prototype version of HBO's Sex and the City (1998-2004).

Parent's novel is pithy, with an eye for telling detail. Sheila, the protaganist, is caught up in the confusion of being a single woman living at the onset of the sexual revolution, second wave feminism, and civil rights -- and the more traditional pressures of finding a well-set husband. This is made all the more conflicted and interesting thanks to her Jewish family background. Sheila Levine longs, or sometimes longs, to be a Tina Balser, her married-with-children contemporary from Sue Kaufman's Diary of a Mad Housewife (1967). Ah, irony. One wants to get in, the other wants to get out. Sheila's double helix tale could easily be called Diary of a Mad Singleton. The grass is always greener on the other side of Central Park, I suppose.

The structure for Sheila Levine, like Diary, is memorable: instead of Kaufman's diary form (in turn loosely inspired by Nikolai Gogol's 1835 "Diary of a Madman"), we have a long suicide note reflecting on Sheila's sometimes fun but mostly miserable experience living in Manhattan through the 1960s. She does not hang out with the hip Warhol crowd. Far from it. Instead, she is stuck with irritating roommates, cheap and lousy boyfriends, partying but not very hip gay friends, a lesbian stalker, and loads of guilty feelings. She plunges into all sorts of apartment and house parties and other social events, even teaching, to find a suitable husband, but all to little avail.

Though the novel is mostly comic and satirical, there is also a sadness to it, maybe best typified by Sheila's secret arrangements for her own funeral, in the process of which she discovers that even in death, it is considered socially preferable to be or have been married than single. Body image issues have even more currency.

Today's Rune: Fertility.

A couple of pertinent Albert Camus quips:

"There is only one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide."
"Ah, mon cher, for anyone who is alone, without God and without a master, the weight of days is dreadful."

Bon voyage!

Gina Frangello: My Sister's Continent

In the past two years, only a handful of newly published literary novels have grabbed my attention. The latest, My Sister's Continent: A Novel by Gina Frangello (Portland: Chiasmus Press, 2005), thoroughly enchanted me. Why?

First, here are some of the others I've enjoyed reading and pondering: Zoe Heller, What Was She Thinking? Notes on a Scandal: A Novel (2003); T. Coraghessan Boyle, The Inner Circle: A Novel (2004); Mary Gaitskill, Veronica (2005); and, as supplemental reading, Hitomi Kanehara, Snakes and Earrings / Hebi ni piasu, translated by David Karashima (2005) and Marcy Dermansky, Twins: A Novel (2005).

What do they all have in common? All are entertaining and well written; more interestingly, they all explore identity, social boundaries and existential choices with vigor and excitement. They uniformly tread where many fear to go -- into unconventional (and often taboo) social interactions and notions of self. Indeed, they all delve into edgy psycho-sexual relationships (i.e. mature readers preferred) that develop into something deeper.

To compare Frangello's narrative approach in My Sister's Continent with filmmakers, imagine a blend of Woody Allen drama, David Lynch imagery, and character development a la Audrey Wells' Guinevere (1999) and Ingmar Bergman's Persona (1966).

When exploring identity, what could be more intriguing than identical twins? Especially two "women in trouble" who are beautiful and identical in some ways, vastly different in others? Set them (Kirby and Kendra) in the interwined, completely enmeshed milieu of the Braun and Kelsey families, frame them with Freud's "Dora" (Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria, 1905), and set them (mostly) in Chicago, with flashbacks and other time shifts, give the father AIDS, follow several transgressions of the status quo, and there you have it, one gripping psychological journey. My Sister's Continent also reminds me of Sue Kaufman's Diary of a Mad Housewife (1967) -- but from the perspective of Bettina Balser's daughters Sylvie and Liz, in their twenties, and with more elaborated detail.

For more on Chiasmus Press, here's a link to their website.

Today's Rune: The Blank Rune.

Bon voyage!

Diary of a Mad Housewife

Sue Kaufman (8/7/1926-6/25/1977) saw seven of her books published before she committed suicide by plunging from a building in New York City at the age of fifty. Creepily, her last novel was titled Falling Bodies. Though I am fond of The Headshrinker's Test (1969), she'll probably be best remembered for Diary of a Mad Housewife (1967) which was also made into a movie starring Carrie Snodgrass in 1970. In it, a novel whose title was inspired by Nikolai Gogol's macabre and sad nineteenth century Russian tale, the protagonist, Bettina "Tina" Balser, is an educated and artsy smart woman who's nicely trapped in the Manhattan material world. Married to the well-named Jonathan Balser, a fussy, pretentious nimrod lawyer who is also anxious and unsatisfied, with two children attending local prep schools, she has a hard time getting through life. In fact, she is very unhappy with her station, and few in her circle sympathize, seeing only the material comforts. Frustrated, she begins asserting herself, trying to create an identity independent of her family by beginning a secret diary that provides the vehicle for the novel.

Diary of a Mad Housewife is funny, intelligent, sarcastic, and gleefully depressing. There are scary moments, too, such as when Tina finds herself facing a sinister male presence in Central Park; incidents such as this take her closer to the edge. As in the Rolling Stones' classic satirical songs "Mother's Little Helper" and "Nineteenth Nervous Breakdown," Tina resorts to pills, and therapy, and (not in the Stones' version) an affair with knavish playwright George Prager while trying to find her way. The novel works in an obvious feminist way, but it also works as broader social satire. Furthermore, it works effectively as an allegory for anyone caught in a similar situation: the typical work place, domestic situation, or even prison, where expectations are high and one's ability to break out and become autonomous, independent, and fully realized is seemingly non-existent. In that, Diary of a Mad Housewife is also a thoughtful existential exercise for all. In any situation, who wants to be controlled, bullied, or hamstrung?

Sue Kaufman has been praised by feminists, but why hasn't this novel in particular made it more into the mainstream? Why, until recently, were all of Kaufman's books out of print? Why hasn't the movie been released on DVD? If, like The Stepford Wives (1975) it is emblematic of its time, why hasn't it been remade? Here, I can only speculate and give what few facts I've been able to find.

Kaufman earned an undergraduate degree from Vassar in 1947, then worked as an editorial assistant for Mademoiselle's fiction editor for a couple years before devoting more time to her own writing. She married not a lawyer, like Tina, but a doctor, Jeremiah A. Barondess, in 1953 when she was about twenty-seven. Together they had one child, James, ca. 1957. Kaufman saw her first book, The Happy Summer Days, published in 1959 under the name Sue Kaufman, a name which she retained for all her publications. This is important, because it evidently allowed her to keep some distance from her married status. Even in the late 1960s, publishers seemed a bit confused, saying in the "About the Author" blurb for one version of Diary that she was "married to a doctor and they have . . . an eccentric dachsund, Poppy" on one hand, and that the novel was "Miss Kaufman's third. . ." We can see the need for Ms. here, at any rate, or nothing at all.

Given the detailed description in her fiction of the kind of lifestyle Kaufman actually lived, one wonders whether, after her suicide, Dr. Barondess has not either destroyed or withheld manuscripts, drafts, and correspondence, perhaps not liking the idea of additional public scrutiny. One may hope that some day her papers will be left to some special collection -- perhaps they have been, and are merely sealed until 2025 or so. One can hope.

In any case, Jeremiah A. Barondess is alive and living in New York City. I came across a March 19, 2001 article in The New York Observer that calls him "the patrician elder statesman of the New York medical community." Barondess is currently the President of the New York Academy of Medicine. He has connections with numerous institutions ranging from the University of Michigan to Cornell University, and has dozens of publications listed on the Academy's website. The list, however, only goes back to 1994. Given that Sue Kaufman leapt to her death in 1977, it's interesting to note some of the titles of his work: "Urban Health: A Look Out Our Windows" (2004); "Adolescent Suicide: Vigilance and Action to Reduce the Toll" (2004); "Danse Macabre: Poverty, Social Status and Health" (2002); and "Care of the Medical Ethos: Reflections on Social Darwinism, Racial Hygiene, and the Holocaust" (1998). Cheery stuff, to be sure. If you'd like to see his long Jonathan-like list of accomplishments, and actually see what the husband of Sue Kaufman looks like nearly thirty years after her death, go to www.nyam.org

As with most things, more will be revealed (although the FBI came up empty again in their recent search for Jimmy Hoffa). Meanwhile, I'd love to stir up interest for the release of Diary of a Mad Housewife in digital form, and hope that all of her books will be digitized and posted on the internet. Plus, how about a biography? Or a group study including Anne Sexton and Diane Arbus, among other artists of obvious comparison?

To my knowledge, there is at least one award given out in her honor, the $2500 Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction, by the American Academy of Arts and Letters, for short story collections and novels. (I actually met the first recipient, Kaye Gibbons, an Algonquin Books author who won in 1995. More on Ms. Gibbons and Algonquin in a later post.)

A Salute to Sue Kaufman! Adieu.

Many Things to Many People

Diane Arbus' birthday (1923-1971). When I think of her, I think of her persona first and then her photographs of people. What a wonder -- she had the courage of any combat photographer, and the wreckless spirit of an independent warrior. Beautiful and scary. When I see twins, her images come to mind. From Arbus' perspective, identical twins are unsettling, and they appear everywhere. They pop up in Stanley Kubrick's The Shining (1980). They appear in Double Mint gum ads, or with secret language and sometimes ferocious competitiveness. Marcy Dermansky's Twins: A Novel (2005) gets at these qualities. My friend Peaches has a twin brother, and when they get together they act as strange as can be. They love and fight one another. It's perplexing.

In Patricia Bosworth's excellent biography of Arbus (2005; first edition published in 1984) she quotes her as thinking of herself in terms of triplets. "Triplets remind me of myself when I was an adolescent . . . Lined up in three images: daughter, sister, bad girl, with secret lusting fantasies, each with a tiny difference." (p. 217) Arbus would have her chosen twins pose for a portrait and then take snapshots of them. In Bosworth's words, "the combination of styles seems to pinpoint the eerie visual quality twins project -- that of being both symmetrical and ambivalent. . . twins represented a paradox she longed to continue exploring and she did . . . each picture seemed to ask what is it like to live in a body that is virtually indistinguishable from your twin's? Diane suspected that the ultimate challenge was to try creating a separate identity." (p. 240)

The twins from Roselle, New Jersey represented "the crux of her vision -- the freakishness in normalcy, the normalcy in freakishness." (pp.248-249) Arbus: "Everyone suffers from the limitation of being only one person."

People who knew her well seemed to act as if Arbus was their very own twin, whether she was married or hooked up or not. One of them observed: "Come to to think of it, everyone who ever cared about Diane became very possessive of her." Another admitted: "I wanted to see her on any terms."

"Arbus was fragile as a person but strong as an artist and [Lisette] Model respected that because she, too, was a combination of delicacy and power. Model understood that many of Diane's photos had to be taken in order to relieve her mind of the faces and night worlds that were haunting it. Through some mysterious, unconscious force Diane was starting to create in her pictures a kind of art that would be both a release and a vindication of her life." (pp. 231-232)

Jim Hughes, editor of Camera Arts, in 1965: "Diane Arbus' pictures evoked powerful emotions . . . I can't think of a bigger compliment." (p. 235)

Bosworth's composite portrait is fascinating. And Diane Arbus Revelations (2003) is a superb book that deserves its own entry sometime in future.

Marvin Israel: "Diane was many things to many people." (p.205)

She had the "Helen of Troy effect," a psychic burden but also a powerful asset in gaining her access to a wide array of subjects. Like Anne Sexton, Janis Joplin, Sue Kaufman and others of that raucous era, Arbus was an extraordinary artist who burned strong for as long as she could bear. Happy birthday, Diane!