Footnote to my Touch of Evil, Interlude Part 1, entry, just previous on
this blog
[Edits 11/13/15. Edit 11/20/15.]
Here are a few things to supplement your understanding of the Rosemary Mahoney memoir, which I discussed in the previous entry in relation to a certain quality of Chris Welles Feder’s memoir of her relationship with her father, Orson Welles.
Here are a few things to supplement your understanding of the Rosemary Mahoney memoir, which I discussed in the previous entry in relation to a certain quality of Chris Welles Feder’s memoir of her relationship with her father, Orson Welles.
As I had said, I had drafted
much of a review of the Mahoney memoir in 2013, then set it aside. I considered
finishing it in 2014, and didn’t. When (or if) I will finish it, isn’t clear.
But I must emphasize that the review has more subtleties and heartfelt comments
(some in line with Mahoney’s aims, and some not quite) than my recent remarks
here might suggest to some.
I figured that if some of my
readers might be swayed about what I had to say about this memoir, then I would
add some helpful things to add perspective.
First, Mahoney’s involvement
with me in the 1986 Johns Hopkins University summer writer’s conference did not
ruin my time there. In fact, it was quite atypical of the experience. The
conference—with the larger mass of attendees broken into writing-type groups—included
little seminars (mine focused on fiction) with writers’ critiquing each other’s
work that they had been given to read the night before. In this format, the
vast majority of people liked, and had helpful little criticisms to make of,
the material I presented, which was mainly from my novel that later became
titled A Transient. In fact, I seem
to recall I changed a few things in the material people commented on, i.e., particular
stuff that was included in the final novel, in accordance with what they said.
All in all, attendees—fellow up-and-coming writers who critiqued each other’s
work, or “teachers”—Mary Robison was the
one leading the seminars I attended—understood that the point there was to be
helpful, even when making a criticism that rather strongly questioned something.
There were a number of writers
(or M.F.A. students/graduates) there who acted as teachers/mentors, and Mahoney
was among them. At the time, I don’t think I knew where she stood with her
education (she apparently did not yet have her M.F.A.), and I’m pretty sure I
was aware she hadn’t published any book (though I don’t recall what the deal
was with whether she had published stories; by the way, the vast majority of us
were all writing in a literary [if not serious nonfiction] mode—many aimed to
get stories in The New Yorker—not in
the genre mode that is popular today).
We attendees who had seminars
with certain assigned people like Robison (Richard Bausch was also there, on Robison’s esteemed level [with
multiple published books, or such]; I remember him pretty well), also went to
individual conferences with (as assigned, not specifically arranged by us
attendees) some of the other teacher/mentors. And I had a conference with
Mahoney, with the material of mine that had gone to her being less refined than my other material from A Transient.
Her reactions to my work, for
the first half or so of our meeting, was off-putting, to say the least. Two
statements she made are the type of thing that sticks in your mind virtually
forever, given the untoward nature of it on an ethical-situation level: “Is the
whole novel like this?” and “What does this mean?,” she said, pointing out a
specific sentence. (I mean, if I was accepted to the conference as I was, never
mind how fellow writers were responding to my work, were these suitable things
to say? Could she be any more condescending?) She also had previously written a
lengthy set of typewritten comments that I still have, which I won’t quote from
here. (Keep in mind that A Transient,
which in the main wasn’t much changed from how I wrote it in 1986, got
appreciative comments from editors—including Teresa Scala at Doubleday, Gordon
Lish at Knopf, and Ann Kjellberg at Farrar, Straus & Giroux—starting in
fall 1986, and intermittently for about
a decade after that, with my repeated tries to get a publisher interested in
it.) [Added 11/20/15: I do recall RM acceded to my explanation of the novel's premises, but this was as if (a little) she was giving me the benefit of the doubt, and as if I had to explain them before she would have expected them. She wasn't downright grudging with this.]
I remember having to explain to
Mahoney a number of the premises (esthetic; narrative-style…) of the novel,
which no one among the seminar fellow-readers had the type of problem with that
Mahoney seemed to have (regarding a level of understanding you as an attendee
should have expected). She seemed to be quite ignorant of certain psychological
things (which is all the more remarkable in what I found of her family
background from a 1998 New York Times
article I saw over a decade later—see below). I recall her as being rather
obdurately opinionated and having a bit of a snarky or coolly critical/bemused
expression about her eyes.
After our “huddle” was over, I
was offended. (I recall seeing her walking across a campus quad at one point,
with a sort of hunched posture that cohered with what is described of her
posture in the 1998 Times interview
piece; relatedly, she had a certain “lack of charisma,” as I would put it,
about how she carried herself.) I didn’t say anything to anyone else among the
people I was familiar with, about Mahoney—until, in a seminar, Mary Robison
asked if anyone had had problems with Rosemary Mahoney.
I volunteered some account of my
own experience. It turned out, from what Robison said, that numerous other
conference attendees had had problems with Mahoney. The problem generally
seemed to be her inability to be good readers of other young writers. Robison
seemed to imply that Mahoney might not be back as a conference mentor the next
year.
When in early 1987 I got
promotional material from the JHU writers’ conference people about the June
1987 program, I saw that just about all the other mentors from 1986 would be
there again, and not Mahoney. (I did not go in 1987 because of money, and other
priorities.)
Mahoney’s 1998 memoir suggests
she finished working on her master’s degree to get it by 1987, or such, so it’s
quite possible her plans did not include (in 1986-87) trying to be a mentor at
the JHU conference again.
##
When I found from a newspaper
book review section that Mahoney’s first book was published in 1990—I think it
was Whoredom in Kimmage—I was
surprised. I thought, of all the young people I met at the conference in 1986, I
didn’t think she would be the first to hit the likes of The New York Times Book Review with a reviewed book. Other
attendees of the 1986 conference were Ann Darby (with whom I corresponded until about early 1992), whose first novel (The Orphan Game) was published in 1999,
and Lolly Winston, whose first novel (Good Grief) was published in 2004.
All this goes to show that you never know how your career will
unfold when you work in high-stakes publishing.
Anyway, some outside indications
of reaction to Mahoney’s 1998 memoir:
#
New York Times feedback. From
an interview article in probably the Sunday Arts section, ___ 1998 (sorry I
don’t have the date; I misplaced the first page of the interview), pp. E1 and
E5. Head on p. E5: “Reverberations From a Devastated Dream: Remembering Lillian
Hellman.” On p. E5: “As the youngest of Nona and John Mahoney’s seven children,
she [Rosemary] was raised in Milton, Mass. Her mother, a graduate of the
Columbia School of Journalism and a former women’s editor of The Boston Post
[romans in original], contracted polio after having her first two children and
never walked without crutches again. Her husband, a doctor, suffered from
depression, and following hospitalizations that included shock therapy, committed
suicide when Rosemary was 8.”
[Surprisingly, this parallels my own immediate-family situation in some
key respects, except most notably for the number of children.]
[…]
“[Mahoney says,] ‘Though most of
the response to the book [A Likely Story]
has been good, there are some people who think I’m too hard on poor Lillian
Hellman. They don’t get what the story is really about, which is my
relationship with my mother. Lillian Hellman is the catalyst for the story, the
hook it’s hung on. But it’s about being a teen-ager and trying to grow up.’
Part of being a teen-ager, of course, is cruelty, especially about physical
shortcomings[,] and Ms. Mahoney stints on none that she observed. …”
[…]
“Couldn’t Ms. Mahoney have woven
a bit of hindsight through the harsher threads of the book, not only to give a
more balanced picture of the woman she worked for, but to save her 17-year-old
self from looking like the solipsistic brat most 17-year-olds are?
“She [Mahoney] shakes her head
impatiently. ‘Yes, the book is dark in places,’ she says. ‘It’s not all nice.
But I’m not doing this to be polite. This is reality. Life isn’t all pretty, it
has an ugly side. I actually embrace that. Our flaws and failings make us
interesting, I think. And it wasn’t just about her. I made it clear what a big
ego I had. [By the way, this general set of writing-project precepts I
understand fully, and have used myself. It has its pros and cons.] I wasn’t all
interested in working. I was a bad housekeeper, hasty with everything.[’]
“ ‘But your job as a writer is
to have the emotional truth come out. I know some people say I’m nasty and a
brat [in the book], but this is much more than a revenge book. My feeling in
general is “Let’s stop pretending.” We’re just desperate for idols,
desperate.’”
##
In a biography of Hellman.
In Deborah Martinson, Lillian Hellman: A
Life with Foxes and Scoundrels (New York: Counterpoint, 2005):
“[Hellman] hired a series of
college girls to assist her in [Martha’s] Vineyard, the horrors of which
Rosemary Mahoney recorded in A Likely
Story. Why Hellman insisted on college girls as helpers, particularly from
the excellent Wells College [in New York], to assist her in cooking, cleaning,
and driving is inexplicable. She would quiz them about their education and then
offer to help them sue the college for their poor showing. Her remarks were
joking but nevertheless insulting. She liked to hire English majors, though she
made it quite clear in hiring them that she would not read anything they had
written, nor were they to write about her. She had housekeepers as well and
might have been better off with an older, more experienced person with little intellectual
interest in her. These young women had to be strong to endure. As one of them
recalled, ‘Hellman pushed everyone to the limits of their endurance.’ Not all
of these young women were as cowed or as insensitive as Mahoney, but they
recognized the experience for what it was.
“…Linda Lightner was a young
student just graduated from Wells College … when she went to work for Hellman
in the spring of 1981. She extended the summer hiring period and stayed until
just before Christmas. Lightner remembers the atmosphere as inevitably tense.
Hellman never kept a relaxed house. ‘She really had her hands into everything
from how many cases of beer she had on hand to the grocer’s wrong delivery[,]”
[she said]. (pp. 330-331)
##
