Boozy But Beautiful

Veronica Lake made a splash in Hollywood in her breakthrough role in the 1941 war drama “I Wanted Wings.” During filming, her trademark blonde hair slipped over her eyes, creating her signature peekaboo look.

She struggled mightily with stardom, however, and fame was a fickle friend. Alcoholism and mental illness dogged her career and marred her legacy, and she faded into ignominy later in life.

I worked at E! Entertainment television between 1997 and 1999 on a little known show called Mysteries and Scandals, and we used to do profiles of all the old Hollywood legends, covering, of course, all the greats, such as James Dean, Marilyn Monroe, Spencer Tracy and Lana Turner, but we also focused on lesser known figures like dancer Isadora Duncan, comedian Fatty Arbuckle, actor John Barrymore and, naturally, Veronica Lake.

Veronica Lake made several films with the five-foot five stature-challenged actor Alan Ladd, including the memorable “This Gun For Hire,” and the lessor known film noir classic, “The Blue Dahlia.” Ladd was known for his height, or lack thereof, and Lake was known for her hair and smoldering eyes. She later became a pin-up girl for soldiers during WWII and sold more than her fair share of war bonds.

Unfortunately, alcoholism, and later, mental illness, took its toll. The two in combination proved deadly, and she died of hepatitis and acute kidney injury at age 50. In reality, Lake ran through her money, and was forced to stay in a series of low rent motels, barely able to pay her bills or put food on the table. When fans tried to send her money, though, she turned down their offers of assistance, insisting that she was still able to make ends meet, and that she was doing just fine on her own, thank you very much.

In our Mysteries and Scandals TV feature at E! Entertainment television, we hinted through a bizarre interview clip that Veronica Lake may have had a lobotomy, but this idea was never substantiated, and in fact, her behavior, strange though it was, could probably have been chalked up to tipping back one too many drinks, one too many days in a row.

I’m reminded of the Marlon Brando quote from the film, “On the Waterfront,” where he shouts out, “I coulda been a contender.” Veronica Lake coulda been a big star, but her career careened off-course, and she never really dealt with the personal demons that haunted her.

The Idea Machine

Andy Rooney said it best: “I sit down at my typewriter, or my computer now, and I damn well decide to have an idea. That’s how you get an idea. They do not strike you very often in the middle of the night or when you’re doing something else. . .Ideas are amorphous, but you have to work on having one. The don’t just come out of the blue.”

Today I celebrate six years sober, six years since I last fell down drunk. It’s hard for me to take in that six years ago I traded Budweiser and gin and tonics for a life lived deliberately.

The reason this is relevant to Andy Rooney is that a little over six years ago I had this dream of becoming a writer, this vision of putting one word after another on paper until I had produced a novel, but nothing was getting done. I worried that if I quit drinking, I would no longer be creative, but the hard facts bore out a different truth. Many people out there can have one or two drinks, then sit down at their computer and write. That wasn’t my reality. I had big dreams, but nothing was being done to achieve them.

I’m not saying that everything has been easy since I quit drinking. I still haven’t finished that novel yet, but I have made significant progress. I have also started a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing program at Northwestern University a little over a year ago. It’s been baby steps, but to me baby steps are better than no steps at all.

None of this would have been possible had I been drinking, of that I am sure. For that reason, if for no other, today is an important day for me. There’s that old saying: Do the footwork and leave the results up to God. And Julia Cameron, author of The Artist’s Way, says it a different way: “Leap, and the net will appear.” So now, even though it isn’t New Year’s Eve, I renew my commitment to my creativity, and renew my commitment to finishing my novel this coming year.

Wish me luck, if you’re so inclined.

McLibrary Science

I live in a small town in the midwest, a village, really. It’s the kind of place that still elects village trustees and a village president rather than a mayor. This quaint Agatha Christie village just recently installed its first fast food franchise, a twenty-four hour McDonald’s.

This evidence of “progress” in our Thornton Wilder-esque town is not only bad for my waistline, it’s Mcgreasy ease and convenience stands in marked contrast to the other sign of progress in our village, our newly built, slowly expanding library. The community passed a referendum to build the library, but still, after numerous, numerous (and I mean, numerous) attempts, has failed to pass a second referendum to stock and run it, and the librarians have been forced to be highly creative to figure out how to fill the shelves and offer relevant, interesting programming that appeals to its citizens.

In my mind, a library reflects a community’s values, is emblematic of a sense of a burgeoning intellectual curiosity among these small-town midwesterners. It is the real sign of progress in our little world, in contrast to the open-all-night fast food joint. The success in even getting this library built proudly demonstrates that my little village values knowledge and intellectual pursuits.

I myself am in a fortunate position to have some discretionary income, and the bulk of that income goes toward purchasing and filling bookshelves in virtually every room of my home. I stalk library sales, and add to my collection. I don’t get around to reading even half the books I own, but for a wannabe writer, I only feel comfortable and truly at home when I am surrounded by novels, poetry, and works of nonfiction.

There’s a saying, the more bad books I finish, the less good books I have time to start so I try to utilize my reading time to best effect. I follow the advice of the so-called experts, and try to “read actively,” underlining passages and making notes in the margin, writing down words on the first few pages to look up later. This kind of behavior is generally frowned upon by those dedicated librarians who work in what is definitely an underpaid profession. Playwright Joe Orton, famous for writing both “Loot” and “Entertaining Mr. Sloan,” went to jail for this very anti-social behavior, underlining and defacing library books, and I have no interest in following in his footsteps so I keep to marking up my own books rather than the library’s. Nevertheless, I do check out books occasionally, especially audio books to listen to on my way into the city for my classes.

Whether or not I check out as many books, CDs, or DVDs as my fellow villagers, I like having the option of going somewhere where “Everyone Knows My Name,” a place where I can hang out, bring a coffee and my laptop, and write or just listen for the echo of the voices of those writers who cry out for me to scour the shelves and find that one story that needs to be read or reread, listen for the voice of those long dead authors who seeks to speak again through the pages of their work.

We live in a hyper-convenient McSociety, but it’s reassuring in this small midwest town to have successfully built a library as a representation of those crucial values in a cultured, relevant society, the values of intellectual curiosity and a search for knowledge.

Ruminations on Gatsby

I just ran across this quote from the Great Gatsby, written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, and thought it was especially appropriate during this holiday season:

“Let us show our friendship for a man when he is alive and not after he is dead”

Something Wicked This Way Comes

Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

One of my most personally influential books ever, I first read “Something Wicked This Way Comes” in fifth grade in our ad-hoc honors English program taught by Mrs. Clark. This is the same Mrs. Clark who encouraged me to audition for the local playmakers production of “Oliver,” and when I said I didn’t know any of the songs in the musical, said to me, “Well, just sing Happy Birthday, then.” I did, and got the much coveted role of Orphan and Fagin’s boy. This is the same Mrs. Clark who staged a small-time production of a play called, “The Miss Witch Contest.” After I noticed that there were virtually no good male roles, I asked whether I could audition for the Queen Witch? She thought a moment, then said, “Why not?” The rest is history, and though I may have made myself somewhat of a fifth grade outcast, I nevertheless shone in her eyes, and that meant ever so much to me, then and now.

Ray Bradbury is a masterful storyteller, and in “Something Wicked This Way Comes” teaches us about the nature of evil, and our need to come to terms with mortality, all while situating his story within the fantasy realm of a wicked carnival which has come to town. Two boys, Will Halloway and Jim Nightshade, are best friends, virtually the same age, and are inexorably drawn to the spectacle and the lure of darkness, the strange scent evil sends off which alternately attracts and repels. This story, without ever moralizing, teaches us how to confront darkness, both the darkness outside and within us, and also shows us the temptation to take the easy way out, especially if we’re given the opportunity to make a deal with the dark side of human nature to extend our lives to an unnatural length, all at the cost of our soul.

I had avoided rereading this book for many years now because I feared it would not live up to the way it impacted my fifth grade mind. I never looked at a carnival the same way, and have always been fascinated by their here-today, gone-tomorrow nature. Something that breezes into town on a stiff wind to tempt us with its many lurid technicolor and cotton candy sweet offerings. Rereading this book didn’t disappoint in the slightest, and I was amazed, as someone who’s attempting to be a writer myself, at the complexity of what is conveyed in a deceptively simple tale.

I rarely say this: rush out and read this! You will appreciate the simplicity and intricacies of your life all that much more.

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The Great Escape

Who hasn’t ever escaped into a good read, relishing and savoring books we come to love? I often find myself slowing down toward the end of a novel that has moved me, trying to wring all the pleasure out of the tale as I can, before I’m forced to put it down. Then again, many of us return to our favorite books year after year.

For me, my top two favorite reads are Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen, and A Prayer for Owen Meany, by John Irving. I just finished Irving’s most well-known novel, The World According to Garp, and I definitely enjoyed the writing, even though A Prayer for Owen Meany remains my all-time favorite work of contemporary fiction. Garp made him into a literary superstar, someone who consistently hits home runs with his bestsellers so that definitely brings more readers to his other works of fiction.

Jane Austen, of course, is timeless, and her six works of fiction have enticed readers for generations. I have always been a voracious reader, and I have sympathy for those who were never introduced to the joy of reading a new book, a great escape from the trials and tribulations of our daily life.

In Brazil, in four federal prisons, a new policy has been instituted, saying that for every work of fiction, philosophy, science, or classic novels, prisoners shave four days off their sentence. Some of Brazil’s most hardened criminals can read and respond to as many as twelve works of literature, reducing their sentence by forty-eight days a year.

These prisoners have up to four weeks to read each pre-approved selection and write about the work in a cohesive essay. A panel decides which inmates will be eligible for the program, dubbed, “Redemption Through Reading.”

Sao Paulo lawyer Andre Kehdi, who heads up the book donation project for the prisoners, commented, “Without a doubt they will leave a better person.” This true story of the effort prison inmates in Brazil may make to ameliorate their circumstances reminds me a bit of the film Shawshank Redemption where the main character, Andy Dufresne, stirs up prison officials by demanding a library for the inmates. Despite his bleak circumstances and wrongful conviction, Andy lobbies on behalf of the voiceless and anonymous prison community, even for those who will never know another life.

I once read that one way prison officials determine how much space to allot for prisoners can be determined by the illiteracy rates in the community. That’s not to say that individuals are unable to rise above the circumstances of their lives, but it is indubitably harder when they can’t even reach the bottom rung of the ladder of success.