Black Postcards by Dean Wareham

Black Postcards is written in an admirably clear-eyed, straightforward style. Wareham talks about many difficult situations without bitterness–the jealousy and hurt feelings among the members of his first band, Galaxie 500; his affair and divorce; the complex relationship between musicians and their fans–and that’s what makes this book remarkable.

Not only is it an honest account of just how difficult it is to be a mid-list musician in a business (and world) that lionizes a select superstar few, but it’s also a fascinating coming-of-age story of a  handsome, New Zealand-born, Harvard-educated singer/songwriter of self-admitted limited talents who nonetheless carves out a most impressive career, following and life.

Throughout, he sprinkles observations and opinions about various other acts: everyone from the Spin Doctors (horrible, horrible) to Nirvana (their success helped ruin the music business); Courtney Love (spellbinding as a live performer) to Natalie Merchant (he hates her music but would willingly boink her).

I wish that he’d indulge his writerly side a little more–there are ample opportunities for him to take a beautiful scene and run with it, but he maintains a reserve and restraint that you have to admire, one that he was famed for in his poetic but obtuse “Dr. Seuss on heroin” song lyrics.

It’s pretty amazing that despite being showered with critical acclaim, Wareham’s bands (first Galaxie 500, then Luna, then Dean & Britta) have never really broken through the mainstream, yet he’s recorded 16 albums. Sixteen!! (Plus, I really love the names of his songs, which I think is the best part of songwriting.)

Reading this book made me curious to find out more about Wareham and his projects, and sorry that I missed out on them the first time around. It’s a true pleasure to read about such an interesting life, so intelligently (and humorously) told. I couldn’t stop reading this book and I’m thrilled I got the chance.

 

Gypsy by Gypsy Rose Lee

Disclaimer: I’ve never seen the movie or play version of Gypsy.

I couldn’t put the book down, however, and spent a day trying to tear through it before I had to go out. Like the best showbiz stories, it was funny, dishy and glossed over the more complicated, unpleasant aspects of real life in favor of telling a better story.

The streamlined tale of how Gypsy Rose Lee went from backup vaudevillian to her more talented to sister to became a world-famous “ecdysiast” thanks to the iron will of her stage mother, the book is full of laugh out loud moments and scenes I had to read twice just to appreciate the droll throwaway lines Lee tosses in.

My two favorite scenes are:

1. When “Rose Louise And Her Hollywood Blondes” (the cut-rate act booked in a burlesque house after the death of vaudeville) work their first night at a burlesque house. The description of the bizarre musical numbers (an undersea song with mermaids and a sexy octopus; topless angels in a heavenly choir; sexy she-devils) and the sweet but trashy Tessie, The Tassel Twirler.

2. The bizarre schemes of F.E. Gorham, an unflappable con artist who briefly hooks up with the family and shows off her tricks (bringing your own cockroach to get a free dinner; walking face-first into a splintery board at a construction site, etc.) before trying to rob them.

It’s the indomitable spirit of the ultimate stage mother, “Madam Rose,” that carries through, and the last part of the book, about Gypsy after she’s achieved stardom and is living/working mostly on her own, doesn’t have quite the same sparkle and punch as the previous. But such is the case with autobiography (no matter how true or otherwise).

There’s a charm to Gypsy Rose Lee, however, that enabled her to become more than just a stripper: with a sense of humor and great intelligence, she took something sleazy and made it fun and palatable to everyone. What a life she lived, and it’s hard not to tear up a little at the end as she ends an era in her career, always mindful of her past.

I closed my eyes and along with the familiar noise of the train, Mother seemed to be telling me again how lucky I was. “What a wonderful life you’ve had—the music, lights, applause—everything in the world a girl could ask for…”

 

Live Alone And Like It by Marjorie Hillis

Living alone doesn’t always seem like “living,” does it? So often when we’re in that situation, we feel as if we’re waiting for life to begin once we meet somebody.

Obviously, that’s not the case, and one of the reasons I found Live Alone And Like It by Marjorie Hillis (besides the fact that her name is Marjorie. I love that name!) so charming was that it presents a different way of looking at something many people find negative.

Written in 1936 (!!) but completely applicable to today (well, not so much the one or two “colored maid” mentions), this wise, wry and warm book offers suggestions for “bachelor ladies” to make the most of their single status. Some of these are incredibly simple and some are creative, but best of all, it’s all very no-nonsense and cheerful, as evidenced by this line: “There may still be those in Alabama who look upon an unmarried state as an affliction, but in New York it is at most a very minor ailment.”

Some of Hillis’s suggestions are to pamper yourself, to plan ahead so you don’t wind up with long hours of lonely free time (unless that’s what you want) and to pull yourself (and your living space) together as nicely as possible.

Here she is on clothes: “But do have some really smart street costumes—surprisingly, they can cost as little as dowdy ones, and practically no one’s morale can overcome an outfit that’s all wrong. Do have some evening clothes with swish, and—very specially—do have at least one nice seductive tea-gown to wear when you’re alone (or when you’re not, if you feel like it).”

It’s enough to make me wish that I owned a tea-gown (seductive or otherwise). She also gives some awesome recipes for cocktails that I’d love to break out at my next party and offers some great advice for fun activities you probably haven’t thought of on your own.

Her sense of humor totally makes this book, too. Check out what she says about having a circle of acquaintances: “As we have already suggested, one of the great secrets of living alone successfully is not to live alone too constantly. A reasonably large circle of friends and enemies whom you can see when you want to, and will often see when you don’t want to, is an important asset.”

Having a circle that includes enemies is underrated, and I can think of a couple people who fit this description in my life.

Seriously, though, I found great comfort from reading this breezy and charmingly illustrated book—the quality of your life really is up to you, regardless of your situation or circumstance. That’s something I don’t always remember.

One of the great advantages of your way of living is that you can be alone when you want to. Lots of people never discover what a pleasure this can be. Perhaps it was because of its possibilities that the misused expression “enjoy yourself,” came into being.

The more you enjoy yourself, the more of a person you are.

 

Stop-Loss

I cried several times during Stop-Loss. I usually hate war movies, but something about this one really moved me. I’ve talked to a couple of friends who hated it—one even walked out—but it really got to me.

We’re introduced to a group of friends/soldiers, including:

• Brandon King (Ryan Phillippe) – the leader and All-American guy
• Steve Shriver (Channing Tatum) – goofy, sniper-caliber second-in-command who’s a little too impulsive
• Tommy Burgess (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) – the guys’ underdog-y friend
• Rico Rodriguez (Victor Rasuk) – a cocky, handsome big talker

Things go wrong during a really tense and horrific mission and several members of King’s squad are killed or injured, but luckily, they’re all being sent home soon. For Brandon and Steve, this is the end of their tours of duty, and they talk about what they’ll do back in “the real world.”

We see them readjusting to being home, including Steve’s strained relationship with fiancé Michele (Abbie Cornish, an outstanding performance) and the way they all seem to be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. Tommy gets drunker and drunker, picks a fight and gets thrown out by his wife (Mamie Gummer, Meryl Streep’s daughter. She doesn’t get to do much acting other than an okay crying scene and has a strange face.); Steve strips down to his underwear, hits Michele and digs a foxhole in her front yard.

Brandon’s able to hold them together, though, and they all go back to base where our two main heroes expect to get out. It all goes to hell when Brandon discovers he’s been stop-lossed, i.e. involuntarily forced to extend his tour of duty, which could be up to 11 more years.

He resists and escapes custody and has to decide if he’ll submit to what he considers an unfair policy or if he’ll live the rest of his life as a fugitive. His father wants him to return; his mother (the awesome Linda Emond) offers to drive him over the border herself. The rest of the film details his attempts, aided by Michele, to get someone to help him fight this.

Along the way, they stop at the house of one of the soldiers killed in the combat we witnessed at the beginning of the film and they learn, from the angry brother of the dead soldier, about a lawsuit some soldiers are bringing against the Army. Laurie Metcalf plays the grieving mother but I didn’t recognize her for a full five minutes after she first came onscreen—that’s how much she disappears into this role: no goofiness, no Jackie-ism.

As Brandon and Michele move towards Washington D.C. then New York, they encounter thieves, fellow fugitives and even sympathetic friends while Brandon deals with his own PTSD.

They stop at a veterans’ hospital where Rico, horribly injured in the opening combat, has been brought from overseas, courtesy of Brandon’s request. He’s missing his legs and an arm; his eyes have been damaged so that they’re silvery and unseeing. Still, he retains his spirit as he flirts with Michele and has a man-to-man talk with Brandon about the unfairness of the stop-loss policy. Rasuk handles his scenes amazingly, never lapsing into self-pity, but still managing to show that his cocky, jokey character is concealing enormous depths of pain.

Still, he says, if he were able, he would go back over to rejoin his brothers in arms—and if he were to be killed, at least his family would get green cards. That tension—the fact that these young men know they’re in harm’s way and could die at any time, but still love the feeling of brotherhood and purpose the Army gives them—gives the film its most powerful angle.

It’s definitely not an anti-war or anti-military movie—it’s very pro-soldier, as clichéd as that might sound. Kimberly Peirce knows that these soldiers all have different reasons for signing up and staying (Steve gives up his chance to marry Michele to have a career in the Army because he has more of a future there, for example), and it doesn’t judge them.

Everything ends on a powerful, ambivalent note, where Brandon faces the ultimate decision: give up his life and all his family and friends in exchange for freedom in Canada or Mexico, or return to his duty and possibly die under fire, or end up more emotionally, psychologically (and physically) damaged than he already is.

I won’t spoil the ending, but there’s a moment at the end where Brandon’s mother, faced with his decision, puts on a brave face, only to have it crumble at the last second as she turns away, devastated. A little moment like that, showing the emotional fallout suffered by the families of the soldiers, sticks with you long after the film’s over—these are real men and women with real lives facing the unthinkable.

The movie’s considerable power for me stemmed from its focus on the characters themselves. Most impressive of all was Abbie Cornish as Michele, the small-town girl who reaches the end of her patience for being a military “wife.” She regrets lacking the necessary strength to share her husband and life with the Army, but she faces her altered destiny with a clear-eyed bravery and courage that I found the most inspiring of all. Slow to speak, deep-voiced and unshakeable, Michele was the character I most admired of them all—a quintessential American who, although she never enlists herself, finds her life, friends, town and prospects shaped by the presence and the need for—good and bad—the armed services.

I read a comment online that claimed this movie glamorizes desertion. It doesn’t. It puts a human face on a handful of soldiers caught in a horrible situation.

Boys Don’t Cry was one of the most powerful movies I have ever seen. This one doesn’t have quite the same strength, but it’s in the same vein and I highly recommend this movie.

Visit the movie’s website and its website that shares soldiers’ (and their families’) real stories.

 

Georgiana: Duchess of Devonshire by Amanda Foreman

Keira Knightley determined my next reading choice, which is as it should be. In fact, I wish that she would call me every so often and tell me what to read in her fantastic British accent. Did I mention that she’s one of my favorite actresses?

Anyway, I heard that her next movie will be The Duchess, the film adaptation of Amanda Foreman’s Whitbread Prize-winning biography of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, the 18th century aristocrat who lived an extraordinary life and had more of an influence British politics than almost anyone else of her time, male or female. (Amazing, seeing how women had practically no political rights at the time.)

As the leader of the ton, the elite of society, she directed fashion (including bizarre ornaments to be worn in towering hairstyles and enormous ostrich feathers) and sold newspapers to a public hungry for tales—real or imagined—of anything she did. She wrote a novel and several pieces of music, was an accomplished harpist and left behind a record of letters and writings that is the greatest source historians have for the political climate of the time.

A passionate Whig, she pioneered a series of public relations campaigns to whip up support for her party that prefigured modern politics. She (along with her sister, Harriet) hit the streets, wearing herself to exhaustion going door-to-door to gain votes—an unprecedented role for women at the time. With her as the crafty hostess, Devonshire House became the Whig’s political power center of England, a salon where more meetings and deals came together at her tables than in actual Parliament. She wrote letters and used her influence with great men, including the Prince himself, to fight for the Whig cause.

She was a dear friend of Marie-Antoinette and visited the captive queen after the French Revolution had begun. She was a passionate student of botany, mineralogy and chemistry. She also lived an unconventional home life, allowing another woman, Lady Elizabeth “Bess” Foster, to become the third party in her marriage as it subtly shifted into a ménage-a-trois. She also racked up crippling gambling debts which she never completely escaped, had multiple love affairs and an illegitimate daughter.

For almost her entire life, Georgiana lived at the forefront of the social and political scenes of her time as one of its most famous, respected and (sometimes) reviled figures. I enjoyed reading this biography and its glimpse into the amazing lives the wealthy could lead in 18th century Europe: the travel, leisure and political opportunities they enjoyed boggle the mind today.

We all feel that our lives are so busy and full today, but to imagine how different things were back then—Georgiana, carrying her illegitimate child and having confessed a portion of her debts to the Duke, is sent away to roam through Europe and have her child secretly—it’s insane to think about.

Foreman writes gracefully and with a sense of humor, bringing Georgiana to life with her flaws and shining characteristics all intact. Readable and funny and tender and informative, this book was fantastic.

Although I didn’t know anything about “the Duchess” beforehand, I couldn’t stop reading and even teared up a little at the end with her death. This amazing woman who lived a life bigger and broader than almost any of her contemporaries, writes a letter to her deaf son, Hart, the night before her health starts to really fail, that touched me. Something about her words just struck me—one of her generation’s greatest members speaking to her child about a sort of immortality on the cusp of her own impending death:

I feel and fear that I give too much latitude to my pleasure in writing to you, but indeed no mother ever lov’d a son as I do you. I live in you again…I see in you still more perhaps than even in [your sisters] what my youth was.

 

Freaks and Geeks

I never watched Freaks and Geeks when it was on TV. My mom tried to get me to, trying (unsuccessfully) to relay a funny scene involving Bill Haverchuck, but I resisted. So I never watched it and as it was martyred on the pyre of “TV Too Good To Live,” I continued to refuse to jump on the bandwagon.

Years later, I was reading an interview on The Onion’s AV Club with Linda Cardellini, and she talked about a specific scene from the finale, where she gets on a bus, and what she wanted that moment to be. I was intrigued by what she said, and decided to give in and get the DVD box set.

I’m so happy that I did.

What’s strange about the cult popularity of Freaks and Geeks to me is that it’s not really as cult-y as you’d think–you don’t need to catch up on complicated relationships or plot events. Each episode, while sometimes specifically connected to the others (but more often not) is pretty self-contained.

Some thoughts: 

I was surprised by how unlikable Lindsay, the main character is–and this is not a bad thing. Standard TV and movie writing seems to be hinged on having a likable main character, but, like most of us during our teenage years, Lindsay is by turns cruel, confused and deceptive. She has moments of great compassion and heart but also makes decisions that will sabotage her future without listening to advice to the contrary. Incredibly smart, she hides her potential and turns towards her friends instead of her family and her future. Basically, she’s an extremely realistic depiction of what most of us were (and are) like, and I still think about her today and wonder where she’d be.

Busy Phillips as Kim Kelly. Wow. I’d say she’s the best thing about the whole series: her hair, her facial expressions, her voice and especially her blue puffy coat (how many dissertations could be written about that coat, how it singlehandedly evokes the 1980s; I hope she still has it). More than any other character, she seems the most like a real person. We see glimpses of her humanity through her tough facade, but never enough to feel fake.

It was cool, too, how a significant plot thread throughout the first (and only) season is the developing relationship between Lindsay and Kim, from their initial hatred (Kim pegs Lindsay as a poser, saying that while she likes to play dress-up with the freaks, Kim “shoplifts from [Lindsay's] dad’s store”) to the final episode, where Lindsay makes a sacrifice to help Kim escape her dead-end life.

The last image in the series is Lindsay getting off a bus that’s she’s supposed to take to an academic summit for gifted students (that she’s told her family and “straight” friends she’s going to), and getting off where some of her Grateful Dead-loving classmates are waiting. They’re going to follow the Dead around the country for the summer, and as Lindsay walks up to them, we see Kim joyfully welcome her–they climb into the van together.

At the beginning of the series, it looked as if it were going to be about Lindsay’s unrequited crush on James Franco (Kim’s boyfriend), but that element was quickly dropped and at the end, how refreshing and cool is it that the biggest love story is about the friendship of a middle class, ultrasmart girl and her poorer, tougher female friend?

More to come…

 

How I Write: The Secret Lives Of Authors edited by Dan Crowe with Philip Oltermann

I am an aspiring writer. This is no secret.

Over the last few years, when I’ve really started dedicating myself to writing every day (and coincidentally started actually finishing major projects), I’ve discovered little rituals I have that help me “get in the spirit.”

I have to be listening to music, preferably from my iPod while wearing headphones. Ideally, it’s dreamy and slow pop or country. A handful of my favorites are:

• “Just Like Honey” by The Jesus And Mary Chain
• “Float On” and “The World At Large” by Modest Mouse
• “Rainy Day” by 10,000 Maniacs
• “Betty” by Tiffany (yes, that Tiffany)
• “Space Age Love Song” by A Flock Of Seagulls

When I moved into my new apartment, I decided that I needed to have real desk space to be able to write, and I am still in the process of getting things where I want them to be. I’d like to have a beautiful poster or image to hang on the wall behind my desk to look at.

Very “Passionate Kisses”-aly (you know, “pens that won’t run out of ink and cool quiet and time to think…shouldn’t I have this? Shouldn’t I have this?), I have a plan to create a writing space for myself.

I was curious about How I Write: The Secret Lives Of Authors because I wanted to hear some of the little secrets other men and women use to help inspire them to write, which, we all know, can be a frustrating/rewarding/etc. proposition. Not the bigger things about “how” they actually perform the act, but the interesting “backstage” details”: what’s hanging on their wall? What do they need to look at when they can’t figure out how to end a sentence?

The good luck charms and photos and quotes may not really count for much outside of the writer’s mind, but I love the idea of balancing your real life with your fiction, and I enjoyed this glimpse into “the workshop” instead of just wondering from the finished project.

The testimonials collected in this book (lots, I’m too lazy to count) range from the delightful to the just “ehh.” Here are my favorites:

• Louisa Young, “Calaca” – A little skeleton typing on a typewriter, bought in a tourist shop in Tijuana
• Jane Smiley, Hot water – A shower, a bath, etc.
• Adam Thirlwell, Laurence Sterne – The portrait of the author on a postcard. I like this idea because I’ve often thought of getting a picture of Charlotte Bronte for the same purpose.
• Elif Shafak, A purple pen and Peter Hobbs, a red and blue notebook – My second-favorite sections of the book and the one to which I can most relate.
• Jill Dawson, seahorses – This is the best section right here. She talks about how she met another mother while waiting for her son’s schoolbus, who happens to be world-famous seahorse researcher Dr. Hetaher Masonjones. She later meets another scientist named Heather, the senior curator at the London Zoo, who  shows her their seahorse exhibit and gives her two dried ones, many years later, still stuck to her wall with Blu-Tack.

It was a nice read, but adding to my “I’ve got to read this book now” list is really the best part (besides the cool ribbon you can use as a bookmark).

 

In Which I Rip Off Bridget Jones

My day:

Wake up ridiculously early with body burning as hot as a star, but without the covers, am suddenly way too cold. Try to fall back asleep while achieving some sort of compromise and without lapsing into surprisingly frightening werewolf dream.

 Wake up again less ridiculously early but close enough not to be restful, decide to finish pizza from last night and watch the final three episodes of Freaks and Geeks.

Be moved waaaaaay too much by the final scene between main character Lindsay and her dumb-but-sweet ex-boyfriend Nick who’s spent most of the series trying to win her back. He’s got a new gf and she realizes how much happier he seems with new girl (Lizzy Caplan from Cloverfield), which he admits in a great knife-twisty way, but then she turns and his face crumbles–he was lying! He wants Lindsay back and is still broken-hearted over her! Lindsay, walking away, not seeing this, does a similar face-crumpling; Nick (my crush, Jason Segel) watches her walk away in slow motion. Knowing that it’s the final episode of the one-season-then-canceled series and where I am right now in life, I almost cannot take it: my heart feels as if it is being shredded as they show Nick’s face aching under the bowling alley colored disco lights.

Go to work to add some finishing touches to enormous and unwieldy comic book project, am surprisingly inspired to whip up a great closer to the guide. Feel great sense of accomplishment, validation of talent and general editorial rock star-itude.

Attempt to wrangle some PDFs down to a more manageable size for an e-mail project and fail miserably.

Call snarky friend C., whom I have seen in forever and make a lunch/dinner plan with him. On way to his house, am driving south on Highland and stuck at the Hollywood/Highland traffic light. Someone dressed as Jason Voorhees, holding a machete (plastic, I hope), runs across the street towards the Chinese Theater. No one bats an eye. Sometimes I feel very happy to live in LA.

Show up at C.’s apartment while he’s in the shower and have to wait outside the gate in the chilly air with only a short-sleeved shirt on. Banana trees out front have bunches of green fruit and really cool, hanging-bell/lamp-like “flowers.”

After letting me in, C. primps (I am so jealous of his full head of hair) and I watch the show he has on: Visions Of Ireland, a travel program that’s just beautiful shots of countryside: porn for the wanderlusty. Dream of running off to Ireland ruined by perky PBS (yet a different name for it though) hosts coming on and begging for money.

Lunch/dinner at Jerry’s Deli (C.’s pick, not mine) is typically horrible. Except for The Era Of The Yummy, I have never really ordered anything there I love. Love the Beverly Center-adjacent location the best though (hate Studio City, for example) and C. is his usual grumpy, hate-the-world self. I can appreciate him for the prickly pear he is though, and am suddenly struck by the thought of how long I’ve known him: more than two years. We talk about things we did back when we first knew each other and it seems like a lifetime ago. Feel very old and slow compared to the mad rush of time.

On way home, get text from M. at work, asking me if I’m going to the IN Los Angeles party for a mutual friend. Wasn’t going to but am game, so rush home to try and de-limp hair (failure) and pull myself together handsomely (failure). While driving all the way back to the part of time I just left, my friend B. from Kentucky calls to discuss the random Myrtle Beach vacation I pitched in a frenzy over the weekend. As usual, he talks my ear off and I have to step on his conversation to keep him on target. Verdict: he’ll see if he can round up some of our Kentucky friends to go.

Make it to La Cienega and park, thinking event is Beverly Center-adjacent. Instead, is five million miles away, and get a long walk in. Show up and see M. and his boyfriend, who are so sweet and excited to see me that I feel guilty somewhat. Do the rounds and see tons of people from work and work-related events, talk to the guest of honor and hear some really nice things from him. He looks great–he had liposuction even though he didn’t need it, and he’s looking really svelte and chiseled-face-handsome. I, on the other hand, feel fat and overly warm and flat-haired and duck out as soon as I can, walking the continent back to my car.

An episode of Deal Or No Deal my sister and I attended as audience members is on tonight, and I call my family to see if they spotted us on there. They taped it for me and apparently we are featured three or four times but none of our over-the-top “NO DEAL!!!!!” reaction shots. Sister and mother begin squabbling and suddenly I miss home so much it hurts. I wish I were laying on the carpet in their den watching the show with the dogs and my parents and sister and her fiance so bad that I almost start to cry. Instead, I drive up Sunset and maneuver through Laurel Canyon, part of me realizing how strange it is that I am familiar with Los Angeles geography, that I have no fear at all driving anywhere.

On way home stop at Ralph’s and get some cinnamon dulce de leche ice cream. Recently my craving for sweet things has been out of control and I find myself wanting to eat junk food at all hours, even when I’m not really hungry. Wonder what that’s all about and realize it’s simple: I’m depressed. The body reveals what the heart has hidden.

Come home and can’t believe it’s only 7:30. It feels like weeks have passed since I woke up. Do not want to think about elephant in room or include it in blog entry, so leave that part out.

Sit down in little car, buckle myself in, and wait for the roller coaster to start up the hill of another week all over again.

 

“The most magical and beautiful fairy”

I went to the park yesterday during lunch to write and to enjoy the feeling of escape, however evanescent. It was beautiful outside: warm enough to be comfortable, but with a slight breeze. The elementary school next door was having recess when I walked up to the picnic tables underneath some trees.

I sat down at one table with my satchel and started to take out my notebook and iPod, when I noticed three little girls seated at another picnic table across the path from me. One had a pink Trapper Keeper and they were discussing something intently.

“God is like the most magical and beautiful fairy,” the girl with the Trapper Keeper said intently, loudly enough for me to hear. I smiled–it was a lovely idea and it charmed me.

When they were called back in, I went and sat where she had been sitting, hoping for a similar inspiration.

 

The Women Of Brewster Place by Gloria Naylor

I’ve always loved African-American female writers (I went through a Terry McMillan phase, toting Waiting To Exhale around high school, a Zora Neale Hurston phase, but especially Tell My Horse, her book about Haitian voodoo, and so on), but I’d never gotten around to reading The Women Of Brewster Place (although I’m pretty sure I read Naylor’s Mama Day).

I first heard of it at 10, when the 1989 TV miniseries came out, starring Oprah Winfrey and (huzzah!) Jackee Harry. As a devotee of 227, anything with La Harry caught my eye, and I remember begging my mom to let me watch it.

I don’t remember being able to follow it, although the finale, where the women tear down the wall that’s turned Brewster Place into a dead-end, really moved me. It was then–and still is, in the book–a powerful image: a community of African-American women rising up together to pull down a symbol of oppression.

I couldn’t put this book down. It was a quick, accessible read with a lot of power behind it, but it lacked a certain element that would’ve truly made it exceptional: “soaring prose,” as my grad school friend Stefan always said. Gloria Naylor’s a talented writer (and won the National Book Award for First Fiction with this one), but her writing is a little flat: instead of lifting you up with poetry, she prefers to glide closer to earth with characters and action carrying the weight. Nothing wrong with that, but it does mean that I can’t fall in love with her writing. But, we can go out every so often for coffee, which is better in some ways!

The book’s fantastic, though, and is broken up into seven stories (with an opener “Dawn” and a closer “Dusk”).

• Mattie Michael – A farm girl who gets pregnant and is sent away to live in the city. Her son grows up sheltered and selfish…with tragic results for them both.
• Etta Mae Johnson – Mattie’s friend, a flashy, sexually self-confident woman who’s made a living off dating the right (and wrong) men. She makes one last attempt to nab a prestigious marriage, but meets her match.
• Kiswana Browne – A young radical from a wealthy family who’s working to organize a neighborhood association, and struggling to reconcile her beliefs with what she perceives as the selling-out of her black Republican parents.
• Lucielia Louise Turner – An abused wife whose husband’s cruelty forces her to seek an abortion…and who suffers another, even greater loss.
• Cora Lee – Obsessed with babies, she has an enormous amount of wild kids with rotten teeth and truancy issues, she is temporarily inspired to become a better mother and person by Kiswana, but can’t break the cycle.
• The Two – A lesbian couple–one shy, one bold–who draw the ire of a nosy neighbor, and (horrifically) the violence of some young thugs.
• The Block Party – The death knell for Brewster Place sounds when the neighborhood women, assembled for a fundraising party, break down during a freak rainstorm, unleashing their frustration and fury with the pain and unfairness of their lives by tearing down a wall.

The lives of these women is mirrored by Brewster Place itself: a once-prosperous apartment building, that with age, neglect and the efforts of the wealthy city council, is left to struggle with no resources other than its denizens. Their stories give the book its power: Mrs. Browne’s speech about why Kiswana was given her birth name, Melanie; Etta Mae realizing that her friendship with Mattie was a love that wouldn’t betray her; Cora Lee’s brief glimpse of salvation for herself and her children.

They were hard-edged, soft-centered, brutally demanding, and easily pleased, these women of Brewster Place. They came, they went, grew up, and grew old beyond their years. Like an ebony phoenix, each in her own time and with her own season had a story.