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Finished Carly Simon’s trashy memoir.
Never had the slightest use for Carly Simon’s music, but I quite liked her book, Boys in the Trees: Simon has no boundaries whatsoever – a trait I admire, by the way – and thus gushes on, in the most indiscreet, unrestrained manner imaginable, all about her nutty father (the Simon in Simon & Schuster), her early sexcapades on the Connecticut farm, her relationship with the brooding, depressive James Taylor, and why she decided to breastfeed her son until he was practically old enough to borrow the car.
Carly Simon was the “It Girl” of the 70s, and there’s this huge part of me that still thinks it’s the 70s. Or should be the 70s. (Insert wheezing geezer rant – Things were better back then! Better music, better drugs, better writers, just generally more fun.)
You have to get old before you realize that that kind of perception is cyclical, that the cycle first began with whatever “It Girl” became the prototype of Helen of Troy. Or maybe even before that with whatever Neanderthal beauty first set the trend for flattened brow ridges.
Humans just have this deep sociological need to worship heroes. There’s always some magical cadre whose lives we’re programmed to covet and imitate, irrespective of the actual details of those lives.
It’s worse in a society where we’re programmed to be consumers first and human beings merely as an afterthought, since the science of marketing is predicated around making people believe they’re inadequate but can become adequate – even fulfilled! – through the ritual acquisition of totem objects.
After I finished Boys in the Trees, I immediately ploughed straight into Jay Parini’s Gore Vidal bio, Empire of Self, which B gave me as a holiday gift.
Finished it around three in the morning. For some reason, I haven't been able to sleep the last couple of nights.
Gore Vidal is a literary hero of mine. Yeah, sure, a vain, petulant man who wouldn’t have had any use for me if he’d happened to encounter me at any stage of his life. But I taught myself to write by reading UNITED STATES: Essays 1952 – 1992; used to tote the book around, in fact – all 1271 pages of it – on the outside chance that I might have five untenanted minutes in the course of a crowded day where I might dip into it.
After the early 1990s, Vidal’s essays became the literary equivalent of lip-synching, and, of course, his fiction was never much good. Books like Julian and Burr are serviceable, interesting to read because crammed so full with historical details that sparkle like curios in a dusty library, and Myra Breckinridge almost makes Vidal look like the Delphic oracle because – my Gawd! – isn’t that Caitlyn Jenner prancing on its front cover?
But Gore Vidal lacked any kind of empathy, and empathy is a prerequisite for all good fiction.
I share one trait with Gore Vidal: He had a really amazing capacity to stand outside his own time and take the long view of events happening around him. To some extent, that’s also a trait of mine. Since history is cyclical to a great extent, people with this trait are prone to delusions of grandeur. View themselves as seers. This can be annoying to be around.
Vidal’s trajectory was not a happy one. He couldn’t tell Howard Austen, the man he loved, how much he loved him; maintained the fiction all throughout Austen’s life that Austen was somehow an elevated factotum. And then completely fell apart after Austen died.
And he had just about the most horrible old age you can possibly imagine. Descended into alcoholism, incontinence, and Wernicke-Koraskoff Syndrome. Just very, very sad. A hundred years from now, I doubt that anyone will read him. Of course, a hundred years from now, I doubt that anyone will be reading anything that's over 140 characters.
In the 1960s, Gore Vidal owned a house that was maybe 15 miles away from where I’m living now. In Barrytown. Immortalized in a Steely Dan lyric: Over there in Barrytown they do things very strange. (Pretzel Logic.)
Last spring, while I was exploring Grasmere – the Livingston farmstead that for some reason is not called a plantation, even though they used slave labor there till 1840 or so – I drove past Vidal’s old house. Edgewater, it’s called. The photo of Vidal above was taken in his living room at Edgewater.
It’s incredibly lovely, more like a Southern plantation than one of those ugly, Gothic, Livingston brick piles, and I can’t help thinking that everything started going wrong for Vidal after he left it.
Else?
Can’t seem to get Mr. Carly Simon’s lyrics out of my head:
… the plans they made put an end to you.
I’ve seen fire and I’ve seen rain.
I’ve seen sunny days that I thought would never end.
I’ve seen lonely times when I could not find a friend.
But I always thought that I’d see you again.
Very close to tears. Not sure why. Fortunately, I don't have to leave the house today if I don't want to.
Never had the slightest use for Carly Simon’s music, but I quite liked her book, Boys in the Trees: Simon has no boundaries whatsoever – a trait I admire, by the way – and thus gushes on, in the most indiscreet, unrestrained manner imaginable, all about her nutty father (the Simon in Simon & Schuster), her early sexcapades on the Connecticut farm, her relationship with the brooding, depressive James Taylor, and why she decided to breastfeed her son until he was practically old enough to borrow the car.
Carly Simon was the “It Girl” of the 70s, and there’s this huge part of me that still thinks it’s the 70s. Or should be the 70s. (Insert wheezing geezer rant – Things were better back then! Better music, better drugs, better writers, just generally more fun.)
You have to get old before you realize that that kind of perception is cyclical, that the cycle first began with whatever “It Girl” became the prototype of Helen of Troy. Or maybe even before that with whatever Neanderthal beauty first set the trend for flattened brow ridges.
Humans just have this deep sociological need to worship heroes. There’s always some magical cadre whose lives we’re programmed to covet and imitate, irrespective of the actual details of those lives.
It’s worse in a society where we’re programmed to be consumers first and human beings merely as an afterthought, since the science of marketing is predicated around making people believe they’re inadequate but can become adequate – even fulfilled! – through the ritual acquisition of totem objects.
After I finished Boys in the Trees, I immediately ploughed straight into Jay Parini’s Gore Vidal bio, Empire of Self, which B gave me as a holiday gift.
Finished it around three in the morning. For some reason, I haven't been able to sleep the last couple of nights.
Gore Vidal is a literary hero of mine. Yeah, sure, a vain, petulant man who wouldn’t have had any use for me if he’d happened to encounter me at any stage of his life. But I taught myself to write by reading UNITED STATES: Essays 1952 – 1992; used to tote the book around, in fact – all 1271 pages of it – on the outside chance that I might have five untenanted minutes in the course of a crowded day where I might dip into it.
After the early 1990s, Vidal’s essays became the literary equivalent of lip-synching, and, of course, his fiction was never much good. Books like Julian and Burr are serviceable, interesting to read because crammed so full with historical details that sparkle like curios in a dusty library, and Myra Breckinridge almost makes Vidal look like the Delphic oracle because – my Gawd! – isn’t that Caitlyn Jenner prancing on its front cover?
But Gore Vidal lacked any kind of empathy, and empathy is a prerequisite for all good fiction.
I share one trait with Gore Vidal: He had a really amazing capacity to stand outside his own time and take the long view of events happening around him. To some extent, that’s also a trait of mine. Since history is cyclical to a great extent, people with this trait are prone to delusions of grandeur. View themselves as seers. This can be annoying to be around.
Vidal’s trajectory was not a happy one. He couldn’t tell Howard Austen, the man he loved, how much he loved him; maintained the fiction all throughout Austen’s life that Austen was somehow an elevated factotum. And then completely fell apart after Austen died.
And he had just about the most horrible old age you can possibly imagine. Descended into alcoholism, incontinence, and Wernicke-Koraskoff Syndrome. Just very, very sad. A hundred years from now, I doubt that anyone will read him. Of course, a hundred years from now, I doubt that anyone will be reading anything that's over 140 characters.
In the 1960s, Gore Vidal owned a house that was maybe 15 miles away from where I’m living now. In Barrytown. Immortalized in a Steely Dan lyric: Over there in Barrytown they do things very strange. (Pretzel Logic.)
Last spring, while I was exploring Grasmere – the Livingston farmstead that for some reason is not called a plantation, even though they used slave labor there till 1840 or so – I drove past Vidal’s old house. Edgewater, it’s called. The photo of Vidal above was taken in his living room at Edgewater.
It’s incredibly lovely, more like a Southern plantation than one of those ugly, Gothic, Livingston brick piles, and I can’t help thinking that everything started going wrong for Vidal after he left it.
Else?
Can’t seem to get Mr. Carly Simon’s lyrics out of my head:
… the plans they made put an end to you.
I’ve seen fire and I’ve seen rain.
I’ve seen sunny days that I thought would never end.
I’ve seen lonely times when I could not find a friend.
But I always thought that I’d see you again.
Very close to tears. Not sure why. Fortunately, I don't have to leave the house today if I don't want to.
