The Black Russian by Vladimir Alexandrov

I’m going to throw a question out there… Would you want your life to be defined by history? In my mind, the question is accompanied by images of Ulysses S. Grant,  Mannerheim, and Makhno–men who happened to be born at a crucial time in history and whose lives were swept up in war. But cast these images aside, and let’s start looking at something a little less famous, a lot less stature, and this brings me to The Black Russian, a non-fiction book by Vladimir Alexandrov–an incredible tale of how one man’s life was ripped apart by history and the dominant, brutal attitudes to race and class.

This book tells the remarkable story of the life of Frederick Bruce Thomas who was born in 1872 to former slaves who were farmers in Mississippi. Just looking at the date of the date of Frederick’s birth tells us that he was born to a whole new Southern world, but a society that was still in a great deal of post-Civil War turmoil. Frederick’s parents must have been remarkable people as they managed to amass, at one point, 625 acres of land which they successfully farmed. But their very prosperity led to a powerful local, white landowner tricking them out of their land with a “multilayered trap” which included false threats and manufactured debts. Basically run off their land penniless, Frederick’s family fought back seeking legal redress, but after Frederick’s father was brutally murdered, the family sank into poverty once again.

Frederick set out in the world on his own and always seemed to make very concise intelligent decisions, and even though the choices he could make in his work world were very limited due to his race, nonetheless, a clear pattern emerges which “prefigures his future life and career.” Frederick quickly attached himself to those who could afford luxuries. He didn’t get stuck working in a back water dump of motel but always lived in large cities which attracted the wealthy who had money to spend.

he [had] entered an elegant service industry, one that existed for the benefit of people with money and social standing. No matter how lowly or demanding Frederick’s own labours might have been, he was nevertheless involved in providing adornments for those who could afford to pay for such luxuries.

Frederick worked as a waiter, but again, only in the most expensive restaurants and then after a successful career in Chicago and New York, in 1894, he sailed for London. Unfortunately, we don’t know what Frederick thought of England, but there are many quotes included from white Americans visiting London during the same time period who expressed a range of views–some outraged and some delighted–at the way “American negro[s]” “can go into the finest restaurants and be served just like a white man.” Frederick ran a boarding house in Leicester Square but it was a short lived endeavor, and then off to Paris where he worked for a few years and quickly learned French. But he was still restless and moved onto Brussels and the Riviera. It’s as though he auditioned countries to find his next home, and then, rather surprisingly, he finally settled in Moscow, married, started a family, and became one of the most successful variety theatre & restaurant owners in Russia. His theatres attracted the curious and those with money to throw away, and in one of his establishments, Maxim’s, he introduced the “theme space” which appears to foreshadow the outrageous hotels of Vegas.  With Frederick as an affluent millionaire, bribing local officials to look the other way for the risqué acts he searched the globe for, this should have ended as a happy story, but 1917 rolled around and a penniless 47-year-old Frederick, with his second wife and children found himself fleeing from the Bolsheviks and boarding a ship in 1919 full of American refugees. Good thing the American consul had no idea that Frederick had become a Russian citizen in 1915 under special dispensation from the Czar.

The Black Russian tells a tale of courage, ingenuity, dizzying success, flight, and then disaster. Frederick’s incredible life was bookended by racism and class-hatred, and what a tragic roller-coaster ride. He fled a country in which his class held him to the lowest, domestic positions, then, with his own unique talent and nose for business, he reinvented himself and was a phenomenal success in Russia, of all places, only to have it ripped from him by the Bolsheviks who saw him primarily as upper class and not as a black man who’d succeeded against the odds. This is one of those stories that if it were fiction, the average reader who toss aside after a few chapters thinking that the story was too implausible.  The Black Russian begins as  a gripping adventure story as Frederick’s family flees a panic-stricken Odessa, and then the book segues back into Frederick’s beginnings, his search for success, his dramatic failures in Constantinople and his ignominious end. The book also provides a backdrop of the society of the times, and while this is, at times, essential, the information is sometimes anticlimactic when compared to the main story.

At the peak of his success, Frederick was worth “about $10 million in today’s currency.”  While The Black Russian is the tale of one man’s rise and fall, the book also shows that Frederick, once liberated from the racial attitudes that held him to menial domestic positions in America, soared in a society in which his colour was no impediment. Intelligent, forward-thinking and unleashed in a country in which his colour was not an issue, Frederick showed just how successful he could be. It’s impossible not to read his story and consider how Frederick’s life would have been contained and limited if he’d stayed in America. Not only do we see  Frederick’s intelligence and strategic planning, we also see his sense of humor and how he loved to play with the American tourists who came his way, acting out–somewhat outrageously–their lowest expectations of a “semiliterate” subservient American black domestic–even though quite obviously diamond-flashing Frederick did not fit their stereotypical racist ideas and was, in fact, at the height of his success, a cosmopolitan figure, a successful, worldly millionaire who carved a fortune with his intelligence and adaptability.

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The Damnation of John Donellan by Elizabeth Cooke

Elizabeth Cooke’s non-fiction book, The Damnation of John Donellan, a who-dunnit of sorts, examines the intricacies of an 18th century case involving the mysterious, sudden death of the dissolute heir of the Warwickshire Boughton family.  In 1780, future baronet Theodosius Boughton was just twenty years old when he died, most violently, after taking a dose of medicine, a “purging draught” prescribed by the local apothecary for a case of venereal disease. The draught, which supposedly contained jalop, rhubarb, and lavender mixed with syrup and nutmeg water, smelled, according to Theodosius’s mother like “bitter almonds.” Within ten minutes, Theodosius was groaning in agony, frothing at the mouth and “heaving.” A few minutes later, he was dead.

What follows, with painstakingly careful detail, is the story of what happened after Theodosius’s death, the various versions of events, and how the death of this syphilitic young heir ended in one of the most notorious murder trials to take place in Georgian England. Was he murdered by his mother–a woman described as phenomenally stupid by some of the males in her social circle, and a woman whose emotional responses to the death of her son may seem a little odd, (and then there’s the issue of her husband meeting a similar end)?  Or was Theodosius murdered by his scheming brother-in-law, John Donellan–a man who already had three strikes against him (he was Irish, a bastard, and had a shady past). Then again was it possible that Theodosius was simply a victim of his own, often secret, attempts to cure his new case of venereal disease with mercury. He contracted his first case at age 15, and at the time of his death, was attempting to overcome a fresh infection.

The Damnation of John Donellan, a book which should appeal to the fans of The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher, not only examines the circumstances surrounding the death of Theodosius Boughton but also gives us a unique glimpse into Georgian life and values. There were a couple of points that emphasise that the medical field is one step ahead of medieval times. No one wants to open up the corpse because it’s thought that the odours escaping from the body could be harmful (the autopsy was finally conducted outdoors), and then slaughtered pigeons were put at the feet of the “invalid” in order to “draw the bad vapours from the body.” All this amidst John Donellan claiming to use a still with lime water in order to kill fleas in his children’s bedrooms. And there are also minute, fascinating details pertaining to Georgian law:, so we see the crime placed in its complex social context:

Despite the reforming politician William Eden arguing for fewer capital crimes in his principles of Penal Punishment in 1771, no less than 240 offences carried the death penalty. This had been enforced by the Waltham Black Act of 1723, which had added fifty new capital offences; and in 1781, a man, woman or child could be hanged for offences ranging from murder and highway robbery to the seemingly absurd ‘being in the company of gypsies for more than a month’, writing a threatening letter, or, in the cases of children aged seven to fourteen, simply having ‘evidence of malice’.

Elizabeth Cooke shows that the death of Theodosius Boughton was a case that, in a sense, was too big for its time–both forensically and legally.

But in 1780 neither a surgeon nor a doctor of medicine–no matter how lurid or famous their cases–were as we would recognise them today. The practice of medicine was largely uncontrolled by any official body–it was not until the Medical Act of 1858 that a register of qualified practitioners nationally and even of those named then, only 4 percent had a medical degree from an English university.

Author Elizabeth Cooke doesn’t try to provide the definitive answer to the death of Theodosius Boughton, the heir of Lawford Hall, but instead she provides the facts behind the death, the autopsy details, the problematic legal case, and the testimony of those involved. There are even some  early day-to-day hypothetical details added which flesh out the life of the Boughton family, and these worked surprisingly well. The book bogs down in the details surrounding the various versions of events, but this is inevitable with this sort of work. After concluding the novel, I chewed over the case, and came to my own conclusion about what happened, but of course, I can’t give that away.

There were a few elements to the case that were included but not examined, and I found myself going back over some of the statements made by major players and putting this into the context of what happened. Luckily the book is well indexed so it’s easy to go back over certain aspects of the case. There are also a couple of handy family trees that help keep track of who’s who. Above all there’s a strong sense of time and place–particularly when it comes to some of the more infamous courtesans and mistresses of the day–including the mysterious Mrs. H who granted her favours to John Donellan.

Into the Boughtons’ world stepped Captain John Donellan, Master of Ceremonies at the fashionable Pantheon Assembly Rooms in Oxford Street. He was a man of the world who had returned from soldiering in India with a reputation for both bravery and fortune-hunting. He was about to use both attributes to devastating effect.

For those who enjoy reading these historic crimes, there’s a lot of rich detail relating to Georgian society, attitudes and values. We sense Donellan’s desperation as the finger points in his direction, and his Defence makes for some interesting reading. Was Donellan an adventurer who simply messed with the wrong people or was he a suitable scapegoat?

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Shantytown Kid by Azouz Begag

Shantytown Kid (Le Gone du Chaâba) from Azouz Begag is the final selection Emma made for our virtual Xmas gift exchange. I’m going to begin by saying that this was not a book I would have bought without Emma’s nudge. In fact, I’d never heard of it, and even if I had, I doubt that I would have bought it as I do not usually enjoy books written through the eyes of a child. Lest I seem too inflexible, there are, of course, a few exceptions to that, but experience has taught me to generally avoid books with either a child protagonist or narrator. So that preamble brings me back to Shantytown Kid, an “autobiographical novel” that follows Azouz, who was born in 1957, picking up his story sometime in the early sixties and ending in 1968. So not many years in the life of a child, and of course the story is told by a now adult Begag. Azouz Begag’s parents were illiterate Algerian immigrants who came to France in 1949. They settled in Lyon, and Azouz was born in a Lyon shantytown. These days, the author, who has a doctorate in Economics,  is a politician and a writer.

The story begins, as the title suggests in Le Chaâba, a shantytown in Lyon, a place without electricity and no running water. That also means no toilets, but more of that later. While the shantytown lacks facilities, it doesn’t lack a strong sense of community, and we see this facet of Le Chaâba repeatedly through the book. One example is the way the women squabble over the water pump by day, but bury their arguments when the men come home, and in another instance (which is hilarious, by the way), the women and children combine forces–forming an ad hoc and combative neighbourhood watch assault team to discourage the lively prostitution trade that flourishes right outside of their territory.  

Begag relates the pivotal classroom incidents and friendships which shaped his life and his decision to “prove that I was capable of being like them.” ‘Them‘ in this case being the French schoolchildren who laugh at Azouz’s use of Arabic vocabulary. Of course, mixing with French children who live in houses and not shacks serves to highlight the differences between Azouz’s life and the expectations of French children.

I knew I lived in a shantytown of shacks made of planks of wood and corrugated iron roofs and that it was the poor who lived that way. I had gone several times to Alain’s home in the middle of the Avenue Monin, where his family lived in a real house. I could see it was much nicer than our shacks. And there was so much space. His house alone was as big as the whole of le Chaâba put together. He had his own room, with a desk and books and a wardrobe for his clothes. At each visit my eyes nearly came out of their sockets with astonishment. I was too ashamed to tell him where I lived. That is why Alain had never been to Le Chaâba. He was not the sort to enjoy rummaging in the garbage dumped on the embankment, or hanging onto the sides of the garbage truck, or getting involved in extorting money from the hookers and the homos. Besides, did he even know what homo meant?

On the down side, detailed here is a nighttime excursion to the outhouse and a genital exhibition between children. Minor asides, but what’s so interesting is the clear impact of education on Azouz. At times the lessons seem designed to illuminate differences between the French children and the Arab children–this isn’t true, of course, the lessons are culturally based in subjects such as manners, etiquette, and hygiene. But the result is that the Arabic children are effectively alienated even further–unless they’re like Azouz and set out to impress the teacher–even at the cost of alienating their fellow Arabic classmates.

Rather than a cohesive narrative, the book is basically a series of incidents that take place in the shantytown, in Azouz’s schools and in the home his family later moves to. One of the best scenes takes place when rubbish is dumped next to the shantytown and the residents go hunting for anything of value. Throughout these scenes runs a strong thread examining identity and solidarity, and the  inevitable tug-of-war that occurs between one culture’s values when confronted with an adopted country. Some parents who bring their children to another country (or whose children are born in an adopted country) seem horrified when the children begin to integrate, but isn’t that a healthy development? Ideally two cultures should be meshed equally, but when one  of those cultures is considered to be a so-called prestige culture, while another is not, just how does a child accept or filter out cultural values when subjected to peer pressure, family expectations and the desire to belong? Shantytown Kid sensitively illustrates all these difficulties faced by Azouz as he makes some irrevocable decisions at a crucial early age. In one scene, he’s even held up by the teacher as an example against his own race, and in another a pied-noir teacher condescendingly corrects  Azouz on all matters Algerian.

He was really modest, my teacher. There he was, explaining my origins to me demonstrating how little I knew of Arab culture, and he dared tell me that he spoke Arabic nearly as well as I did!

As crass as the teacher is at times, he still appreciates Algerian culture–a rare thing at the time with anti-Algerian sentiment boiling away and culminating in France in October 17, 1961. As Azouz tries to navigate both worlds, he inevitably and consciously makes a decision to be “french,” and that decision comes at a cost. For me, however, the most touching parts of the book are not the episodes of Azouz’s life, but the struggles of Azouz’s father who despairs when families leave the shantytown and move to flats. While he expresses this despair as disloyalty in the departing families, Azouz’s father distress is founded in the threat to culture and loss of community, and as the families disperse, his anguish seems based in doubt about the future and fear of lost values.

So thanks Emma for pointing me towards a book I’d never heard of and one I enjoyed. Strangely enough I related to it in some ways.

The Accidental Feminist by M. G. Lord

“The man is a husband and a father and something else, say a doctor. The woman is a wife and mother and … nothing. And it’s the nothing that kills her.” Elizabeth Taylor as Laura Reynolds in The Sandpiper.

I admit that I decided to read M. G.  Lord’s non-fiction book, The Accidental Feminist because I was curious to read the author’s argument that Elizabeth Taylor is a feminist icon. The book’s overly long, but self-explanatory secondary title is: How Elizabeth Taylor Raised Our Consciousness and We Were Too Distracted by Her Beauty to Notice, and this secondary title goes a long way in explaining the book’s direction. First the disclaimer: I like Elizabeth Taylor. I think she is a seriously underrated actress, and I tend to enjoy the films that are a little off-beat. The Driver’s Seat, for example. Butterfield 8 is another one, but in spite of my admiration, I couldn’t really see her as a feminist icon. There again I am fascinated by the idea that Taylor, who had many of the hallmarks for tragedy that destroyed other female stars (child stardom, tabloid sensationalism, multiple marriages, illness, and a noticeable appetite for gems), managed to live to a ripe old age and die fabulously wealthy. In other words, unlike let’s say Barbara Payton, Marilyn Monroe, and Linda Darnell (just to name a few from an endless list), Elizabeth Taylor managed to survive the demands of Hollywood and unlike many glamorous female stars before her, she didn’t die in oblivion. Apart from the fact that I like Elizabeth Taylor as an actress, I also admire her early stance of support for AIDS–especially when many other famous people, who might have brought attention to the issue in those critical early days, opted instead to hide from the topic.  

The Accidental Feminist is not a biography of Taylor. Instead it’s primarily film criticism with an emphasis on how her roles challenged censorship and social mores of the time. The author states that feminism is “a tricky thing to define,” and after quoting various definitions, argues that many of Taylor’s films had a definite “feminist context” – “accidental or deliberate–text or subtext.” Most of us have heard of the Hays Code with its explicit lists of dos and don’ts, and what’s so interesting here is Lord’s intense exploration of how the Hays Code not only censored many of Taylor’s films but tried to creatively shape the messages of several films. This sort of information is a valuable read for any film buffs. Films examined include:

National Velvet (“A sly critique of gender discrimination in sports.”)

A Place in the Sun

Giant (“The feminization of the American West.”)

Suddenly, Last Summer (“The callousness of the male medical establishment towards women patients.”)

Butterfield 8 (“A woman’s right to control her sexuality.”)

Cleopatra

The Sandpiper (“goddess-centered paganism against patriarchal monotheism.”)

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf (“What happens to a woman when the only way that society permits her to express herself is through her husband’s career and children.”)

Ash Wednesday

The Little Foxes

The slight biographical information in these pages is restricted to the bare outlines of Taylor’s life and how these details impacted her career. At one point the book unobtrusively lines up the tragedies Elizabeth Taylor dealt with effectively, including the death of James Dean, Montgomery Clift’s car accident, and the death of husband, Michael Todd in 1958 (they’d been married for just over a year).

The characters she played were women to be reckoned with. And many of her roles–the great and the not-so-great–surreptitiously brought feminist issues to American audiences held captive by those violet eyes and that epic beauty. While I know that writers and directors create movies, stars create a brand. And the Taylor brand deserves credit for its under-the-radar challenge to traditional attitudes: a woman may not control her sexuality; she may not have an abortion; she may not play with the boys; she may not choose to live without a man; she must obey her husband; and should she speak of unpleasantness, she will be silenced.

There were points at which I felt myself arguing with the premise of the book–after all these were roles that Taylor, the actress played, and that’s a separate thing from Elizabeth Taylor, the person. In spite of the risky film roles, Taylor played so well, her life, covered vividly by the tabloids also had a message. But at the same time, the author makes a powerful argument (depending on a person’s notion of what constitutes feminism), about Elizabeth Taylor’s bravery in allowing herself to be photographed bald prior to surgery to remove a benign brain tumor, her box-office power when it came to a female audience, and her early support for AIDS research. I’d also argue that the really risky role in A Place in the Sun went to Shelley Winters–not Taylor. And then there are those hilarious sexed-up ads for Taylor’s early films which de-emphasized her acting and instead accentuated her physical attributes. Giant, for example was sold to audiences as a “steamy love triangle.” Here’s a marvellously astute passage:

The ad then shows Dean, shirt unbuttoned to the waist, oozing intensity, and Taylor on her knees before him. Although they are technically chaste, their positions hint at an act that would violate the Production Code. The caption: “Jett Rink, the outsider–and Leslie, wealthy and beautiful.”

The last frame shows Dean leering at Taylor as if she were a hamburger and he had missed lunch. The caption: “Jett Rink’s shack. No one has ever set foot in it–and then suddenly, Leslie.” The last picture is the most distorted. Far from depicting a sweaty libidinous tryst, the actual scene is prim and tender. To show Leslie that he is not a brute, Jett struggles to get everything right as he makes her a cup of tea. His actions are a perfect metaphor for the feminization of the West.

 At the same time, I bristled at a few statements. Taylor and third husband, Michael Todd led a lavish lifestyle, and at one point, we’re told that after Todd’s premature death in a plane crash, he left a “mere 250,000 in the bank.” Taylor picked up and went back to work. What else could she do since there were bills to pay and three children to support, but there’s something grating about that “mere $250,000″ wording…I went to http://www.dollartimes.com/ to check the value of 1958 money compared to today, and according to that website, $250,000 in 1958 terms was worth around $1,929,392.61 in 2011. With those kind of numbers, it’s hard to put Taylor in the same boat with other single mothers  who live on state support or meagre child support payments. That’s not to say that Elizabeth Taylor didn’t suffer at the death of her spouse, but let’s face it, the woman had advantages…. Another point of disagreement with the author occurs over The Taming of the Shrew, a film I love btw, but whose final scene can be construed as the “shrew,” a very beautiful Elizabeth Taylor advocating blind obedience to one’s spouse–even if his demands are insane.

One of my favourite anecdotes in the book must be included:

As a young woman Taylor, too, played the duplicity game. But in 1962, after two men in sequence very publicly ditched their wives for her, she stopped hiding. And far from suffering at the box office, she became Hollywood’s highest-paid actress. Not even the vatican could hold her back. When its weekly newspaper, L’Osservatore della Domenica, accused her of “erotic vagrancy,” she blithely quipped, “Can I sue the pope?”

Love that  term “erotic vagrancy.” Ultimately this is a highly readable book that made me think–and while I didn’t agree with every statement, the book did bring a richer appreciation of Elizabeth Taylor. And isn’t that the point?

Review copy courtesy of the publisher via Netgalley. Read on the kindle.

Low Budget Hell: Making Underground Movies with John Waters by Robert Maier

Although film is an important part of my life, I’ve never nursed a secret desire to be involved in film-making at any level. I’ve always thought that while films are great to watch, making them would be hard work. That thought was recently endorsed by reading Robert Maier’s entertaining memoir, Low Budget Hell: Making Underground Movies with John Waters. The title is a slight misnomer as while the author did indeed work with John Waters, the so-called Pope of Trash for a number of years, he also worked on other low-budget films, and the book covers Maier’s long involvement with film-making both pre and post John Waters. Robert Maier currently teaches film at Gaston College in North Carolina so that should give a hint about the direction the book takes. 

Maier began working with John Waters in 1973 when he was 23 years old and this was the beginning of a “hair-raising eighteen-year ride through the world of low-budget, underground filmmaking.” He worked on Female Trouble, Desperate Living, Polyester, Hairspray and Crybaby “moving from soundman to line producer.” He also directed a 30 minute homage to Edith Massey (the egg-lady) called Love Letter to Edie. Maier has a long list of film credits to his name–too many to mention with the exception of the cult classic slasher film, The House on Sorority Row. Just reading the salient facts of Maier’s career was enough to convince me that I wanted to read the memoir.

Robert Maier began working with John Waters for the film Female Trouble (my second favourite John Waters film next to Polyester). Waters had just completed his infamous film Pink Flamingos, and Maier was working at the UMBC (University of Maryland, Baltimore County) film department. John Waters was “hungry to find people who would help make his next movie,” and Robert Maier worked in the department with all the equipment. But their relationship went beyond being in the right place at the right time. John Waters, Divine (Glenn Milstead) and Robert Maier all “grew up in the Towson, Maryland area” and ”even had a few friends in common.” So it was only natural that Waters and Maier developed both a personal and a working relationship.

The memoir gives the reader some brilliant behind-the-scenes glimpses of the making-of some of John Waters’ films. My personal favourites come from the filming of Female Trouble:

Dealing  with the public on Female Trouble was always exciting. There was no such thing as a film permit in Baltimore. Except for John’s films, no one could remember when a film had shot in Baltimore. Everyone thought it was way too ugly for glamorous movies. Being on the guerilla film crew, watching the shocked, bewildered bystanders was a hoot. One memorable shot was Divine “modeling” on a busy Baltimore street. He was in full drag wearing a shimmering blue sequined gown, with a big hairdo and Van Clarabelle make-up. We filmed him from the window of a slowly-moving car, so bystanders on the street were clueless. Their reactions were as if Divine had been dropped from a flying saucer and was having an epileptic fit. Not a soul would think it was a scene from a movie.

And if you’ve seen the film, that scene of Divine happily tripping along the streets of Baltimore, is one of my all-time favourite film sequences. It really has to be seen to be believed. Half the fun is Divine, and as Maier points out, the other half is watching the reactions of bystanders. 

In another section, Maier describes an earlier scene from Female Trouble:

The Christmas tree scene, where Divine beats up his parents, topples the tree, stomps on his presents, and then runs away because he didn’t get cha-cha heels, was a memorable location shot. The runaway setup required our small crew to perch behind a bush outside the house. We had a very small profile, so the neighbours had no idea a movie was being shot in their quiet neighbourhood on that cool Sunday morning.

When Divine burst out the front door, howling at the top of his lungs, in his sheer neon-green nightie, we saw neighbors peeking out their front windows, wondering what the hell was going on. The next set-up was even better when Dawn’s father flew out the door screaming, “Dawn Davenport come back here! You’re going straight to a home for girls. I’m calling the juvenile authorities right now!”

Well with those sorts of descriptions, it’s easy to imagine what happened on a formerly quiet Baltimore street in the wee morning hours.

Low Budget Hell is full of these sorts of hilarious memories and details, but there are some reminiscences that aren’t so funny. Maier describes John Waters unflatteringly as a harsh taskmaster, driving the non-union film crew all day long with no lunch break and with the mantra “dollar, dollar, dollar.” Maier comments on Waters’ film style and more than once compares him to Ed Wood while acknowledging that he was “fascinated with how John worked.” Maier recounts grueling schedules and the incredible personal sacrifices made along the way. As his career shifted from working with John Waters, he  shares rich memories of Jean-Michel Basquait and the Coen Brothers who slept on the floor of his editing offices while they made Blood Simple. 

I’ve read almost all of John Waters’ book (I have a few autographed copies) and I’ve also read two books about Divine: Not Simply Divine by Bernard Jay and My Son Divine by his mother Frances Milstead, so I wasn’t too surprised that while John Waters made bigger budget films (through New Line Cinema), Robert Maier didn’t make a smooth transition to the more lucrative big-time. A few sentences have a bitter edge, and that’s perhaps inevitable. After finishing the book, I stopped and asked myself how I’d feel if I’d had the same experiences and I concluded that I’d feel about the same.

This is a lively, unique memoir for fans of low-budget cinema or for those who want a behind-the scenes look. The memoir shows film-making as a hard, sometimes cut-throat field where those willing to step on others or shift the shit to someone else thrive, and while the book doesn’t directly ask: ‘just how much are you willing to sacrifice to join the ranks of the extremely wealthy and fabulously famous?’ the question is there, nonetheless, on every page.

Review copy read on the kindle.

Balzac’s Omelette by Anka Muhlstein

“Parties always end in pandemonium in houses where the valets have more style than the masters.”

As a Balzac fan, I was really interested to read Balzac’s Omelette from Anka Muhlstein (original title Garçon, un cent d’huîtres, Balzac er la Table). My copy came courtesy of the American publisher Other Press and is translated by Adriana Hunter. In this small volume, author Anka Muhlstein examines the way food, and all things related to food, appears in Balzac’s work. I’m going to admit that I never gave the subject a single thought before I read the book, but in the next Balzac novel, I know I’ll notice every mention of a bit of bread or a glass of wine. Clocking in at just over 200 pages, this is not a scholarly work, but if you are interested in 19th century French culture, Balzac or the history of restaurants in general, then this is an invaluable, fun romp and a very entertaining read. It probably helps if you know something about French literature of the period as there are frequent allusions to the novels of Balzac, Zola, Maupassant and Flaubert. To me, Balzac has always been about character, but in a marvellously fluid passage, Muhlstein argues that Balzac gives us another glimpse of his characters if we carefully examine how he implements the use of food in his novels: 

His preoccupation with all things gastronomic is first and foremost social, and this is endorsed by the fact that his characters spend hours on end in dining rooms, that his cooks’ habits are described in detail, and that he gives the addresses of his best suppliers. And yet he is not concerned with how things taste. If you want to imagine savouring an oyster as it melts on your tongue, read Maupassant; if you dream of jugs filled with yellow cream, try Flaubert; and if the thought of beef in aspic tickles you, turn to Proust. But if you are interested not so much in the taste of the oyster as in the way a young man orders it, less the cool sweetness of the cream than how much it costs, and less the melting quality of the aspic than what it reveals about how the household is run, then read Balzac.

 The author illustrates how Balzac, Zola, and Maupassant use food and drink to describe their characters–Balzac’s Duke of Hérouville is “a good wine, but so tightly corked up that you break your corkscrew.” Delphine de Nucingen is “such a washed-out creature with her white eyelashes [she's] compared to a Cox’s pippin, an apple with blotchy markings like a frog while the wicked Marquise d’Espard is a delicious little apple that warrants biting into.” With all these descriptions of food worming their way into Balzac’s characterisations, naturally the thought emerges that perhaps Balzac was obsessed with food. If you’ve ever seen drawings of Balzac, you notice that he’s a large man. Being portrayed by Depardieu in the film Balzac furthered that impression, so if you’d asked me off the cuff  how I imagined Balzac’s eating habits, I would have proffered a guess that he was a man of gargantuan appetites. Muhlstein set me straight:

Paradoxically, this man, who is so keenly aware of the importance of food, was not a great food lover but the most eccentric of eaters. He barely ate anything for weeks on end during periods of intensive writing, then celebrated sending off the manuscript by abandoning himself to vast excesses of wine, oysters, meat and poultry.

To address and “reconcile these contradictions,” the chapter Balzac at Mealtimes surveys Balzac’s personal life and eating habits.  While he slogged his heart out writing eighteen hours a day, he drank water, coffee (a true addict!) and “sustained himself on fruit.” But then came the monstrous excesses, the orgies of food once a book was finished:

Once the proofs were passed for press, he sped to a restaurant, downed a hundred oysters as a starter, washing them down with four bottles of white wine, then ordered the rest of the meal: twelve salt meadow lamb cutlets with no sauce, a duckling with turnips, a brace of roast partridge, a Normandy sole, not to mention extravagances like dessert and special fruit such as Cornice pears, which he ate by the dozen. Once sated, he usually sent the bill to the publishers.

There’s one great description of a prison banquet held when Balzac was arrested for evading a period in the National Guard. It’s 1836,  and armed with borrowed money courtesy of his publisher, Balzac ordered a sumptuous feast from one of the most expensive restaurants in Paris: Véfour. The food orgy continued during Balzac’s stay:

His work table, his bed, his only chair, the entire floor of his room, everything was covered, everything was piled high, groaning with patés, stuffed poultry, glazed game, jams, baskets of different wines and every sort of liqueur [from] Chevet.

One of the most intriguing areas of the book is an exploration of the development of restaurants, and there’s some astonishing information here. Tracing how “the Revolution transformed the gastronomic landscape of Paris,” the author argues that the armies of unemployed chefs and pastry cooks of the aristocracy sparked a surge in the restaurant business. There were only “four or five restaurants in Paris before 1789,” but that number exploded to 2,000 by 1802 and 3,000 by the Restoration. Given that this sort of public eating was then, a fairly new phenomenon, the variety and competitiveness of restaurants must have been fascinating, and fortunately the book devotes some considerable space to exploring some of the most famous restaurants of Balzac’s time.  

The author argues that an examination of restaurants in La Comédie Humaine is essential as Balzac uses “restaurants to move his plots forward.” The information on the various restaurants is not delivered in isolation, however, and the author traces some of the characters Balzac ‘sends’ to restaurants. Muhlstein tallies the number of restaurants mentioned in La Comédie Humaine:

Balzac takes us all over Paris, on the right bank as much as the left, sending his characters off into the most refined establishments and the most lowly, and through his succession of novels gives us a real social and gastronomic report on the capital. Some forty restaurants are referred to in The Human Comedy, because he is not satisfied with mentioning only the biggest names. Whether discussing the most spectacular or the most modest, Balzac lingers over the menu. As is always the case with him, he is also interested in the cost. His work, therefore, amounts to a guide, one that discerns the stars but does not neglect the bill.

Restaurants described, along with mention of which characters ate where, and often why specifically Balzac ‘sent’ his characters to that particular restaurant include: Véry, Le Rocher de Cancale, Frères- Provençaux (“where he sends unsympathetic characters“), the Café des Anglais and its private rooms (which come in handy), the Café Riche, the Cadran Bleu, and the Cheval Rouge.  Including information regarding various restaurants creates a backdrop for the stories and characters–for example, to our modern sensibilities, it makes a great deal of difference whether the characters have an assignation in a rotgut fast food take-out, a steak house, or a 5 star restaurant that boasts a cordon bleu chef. Restaurants are not the only ‘real’ element to appear in Balzac’s fiction, he also wasn’t shy about including the very real Monsieur Chevet in his pages, and Balzac made him the “incomparable purveyor of all celebratory occasions.” The author notes that Chevet “seems to have been very grateful for the publicity.”

With literary examples, the author also argues:

Another rule–which Flaubert, Maupassant, and Zola respected–dictate that any substantial function held in a house ‘where the traditions of grandeur had not descended through many generations’ should end in disarray.

On a final note, there’s mention of a restaurant with shit service where people “go to be insulted,” and while I read this I remembered many comedy skits involving the stock character of the snotty French waiter. According to Balzac and Muhlstein, that image is rooted in fact.  I don’t think I’d fancy the Katcomb where the food was basic and the ambience, well it left a lot to be desired:

The tablecloths were changed only once a day, but each table had a brush with which customers could clear away crumbs.

Wonder what the bathrooms were like…..

Death in the City of Light: The Serial Killer of Occupied Paris by David King

The soldier remembered one conversation about the morality of theft, Petiot arguing that it was perfectly natural:

 ”How do you think that the great fortunes and colonies have been made? By theft, war, and conquest.”

“Then morality does not exist?”

“No,” Petiot answered, “it is the law of the jungle, always. Morality has been created for those who possess so that you do not retake the things gained from their own rapines.”

A few years ago, I came across the French film Doctor Petiot. I’d never heard of this man before, but after watching the film, I knew I’d never forget him. I also vowed that one day I’d read a non-fiction account of Petiot and his crimes. Well ‘one day’ arrived recently with the publication of David King’s well-researched book, Death in the City of Light.

Death in the City of Light begins on March 11, 1944 with a fire at a house located at 21 Rue Le Soeur. To the numerous bystanders it appeared as though the house’s chimney was on fire. The fire department arrived on the scene, broke in and discovered a slaughter house with dismembered body parts strewn about the floor. But this was nothing compared to the contents of the basement: personal items which clearly belonged to dozens of people, jars filled with human genitals, a lime pit which contained even more body parts, and an ad-hoc surgery area for dismemberment, scalping, and the removal of internal organs. Obviously French police had a serial killer on their hands. Or did they?

Although it seems fairly clear-cut that the human remains found at the house at La Rue de Soeur were the result of a maniac, things immediately became murky. The house belonged to French physician, Marcel Petiot, a collector of fine art, a very wealthy man who also had a reputation for helping the poor and drug addicts. Commissaire Georges-Victor Massu of the Homicide Squad was in charge of the case (for Simenon fans, Massu served as inspiration for Inspector Maigret), and initially he suspected that the police had stumbled on a house used by the Gestapo. The La Soeur house was just around the corner from a Gestapo building and this combined with the flagrant brutality and sheer number of the victims made Gestapo involvement likely:

A swastika had flown over the building across from Petiot’s property. The garage at No. 22 had been appropriated by Albert Speer’s Organization Todt, a vast supply company that supervised German construction projects in Occupied Europe.

If the murders at Petiot’s house had indeed been committed by the Gestapo, this created a very delicate situation for Massu since “the French police, of course, had no authority over the Gestapo or any of its activities.” I’ve often thought that wartime creates a fertile opportunity to mask other crimes, and the possibilities expands exponentially with the idea of an occupation. The author takes the time to clarify both Massu’s uncertainty and the chaos of the times–people were disappearing daily. Some were swallowed up by prison, others were tortured and tossed out dead somewhere, and still others were shipped off to concentration camps. Massu’s initial feeling that Petiot’s building was a Gestapo torture house did not pan out, however, for a couple of reasons. Massu was not warned off of the investigation by the Gestapo, and there were no Gestapo personnel on site when the grisly discovery was made. Moreover, shortly after the fire began, a mystery man appeared on a bicycle. Grabbing the attention of the patrolmen, the mystery man said that the corpses inside the house “are the bodies of Germans and traitors to our country.” 

As Massu tries to capture Petiot and identify some of the remains in the La Soeur house, the question of whether or not Petiot was indeed an agent of the Gestapo or a member of the Resistance emerges repeatedly. Author David King takes both possible scenarios and deconstructs the myths which surround both stories. Tracing Petiot’s chequered career, a portrait of Petiot begins to emerge–a troubled childhood, “signs of imbalance,” various stays in mental asylums, a political career fraught with scandal, kleptomania and corruption, and also various charges that he supplied a legion of drug addicts with a steady supply. And then there are the many instances of people disappearing when they stood in Petiot’s way….

Author David King follows Massu’s investigation as he tries to discover just who Petiot really was, and the investigation, naturally, in the absence of the culprit, expands into the identity of the victims. Evidence mounts that Petiot claimed to run an underground railroad for wealthy Jews who were attempting to escape the Nazis, but the bones in the basement argue that these travellers arrived at Petiot’s home but did not leave. The case was further complicated by the fact that Petiot had been arrested and held by the Gestapo for a considerable number of months, and also by the fact that the Gestapo had tried to infiltrate the underground escape route by sending a young Jewish man, whose freedom had been bought by his family through bribes, into Petiot’s operation. Naturally he disappeared. King also throughly investigates Petiot’s possible ties to the Gestapo and also his relationship with the Carlingue. It’s quite a task to unravel all the possibilities here, but King does his job masterfully–tying in Petiot with the darkest segments of the Paris underworld.

While I throughly enjoyed the visually stunning film Dr. Petiot, the complexities of this case were largely absent, and the film portrayed Petiot as a maniac, who treated his patients for free, while luring wealthy Jews to their doom. Death in the City of Light makes it clear that Petiot, a dangerous chameleon, did not have a philanthropic bone in his sick little body, and that so-called free treatment was just a way of embezzling the state. Furthermore, the book explores the intricacies of Petiot’s relationship with Henri Lafont and the Carlingue, and this link certainly explains just why Petiot operated so freely for so long.  A large portion of the book concentrates on Petiot’s trial, and at this point, Petiot, who’d managed to hide some of his egomaniacal tendencies, went wild in the spotlight–even making anti-semitic slips at some points. The trial turned into a media and social event with many spectators enjoying Petiot’s performance, and the testimony was spiced up considerably by the appearance of Rudolphina Kahan who “looked like a spy on the Orient Express.” Petiot seemed to nurse a crush on this woman who served as one of his many scouts. Petiot’s show-off performance was reminiscent of the trial of Lacenaire, and there are indeed some similarities between the two men–although Petiot’s murderous rampage far exceeded Lacenaire’s.

The film portayed Petiot as a ghoulish figure who rode his bicycle through the streets of Paris at night, and physically the dark rings under Petiot’s eyes reminded me of Cesare from the film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. I was delighted to see this same connection made in the book by a journalist who attended the trial. Death in the City of Light includes many photographs, and Petiot really looks like a nut-job.

There are several names in the book: Adrian the Basque, Jo the Boxer, Henri Lafont, Pierre Bony, Francois the Corsican, Zé. I’m still looking for a book (in English) on the subject of the Carlingue, so if anyone knows a source, please let me know.

(my copy courtesy of the publisher via netgalley and read on my kindle)

Twelve Who Don’t Agree by Valery Panyuskin

“I and everyone who participates in the Dissenters’ Marches–and we’ve prepared for repression, we’ve often talked about it, but we imagined we’d be arrested for unsanctioned rallies, antigovernment articles, and public opposition. Why didn’t I think of this? The Bitsevsky maniac! Young Limonov supporters go to prison not because they’ve posted antigovernment flyers or organized Dissenters’ Marches. They go to prison for selling drugs, like good little children, even though the drugs were planted on them by operatives during the arrest. Even their parents believe their own children’s involvement in the drug trade. Mikhail Khodorkovsky is in prison for money laundering, not for going into politics. Manana Aslamazian came under investigation for contraband, not for running a free journalism school.

Idiot! You were hoping to be repressed for your little freedom-loving articles. Like hell! What are you going to do if you’re repressed for well-edited FSB videos of you assaulting minors?What will it be like when neither your friends, nor your own children, nor even your own mother believe that the proof of your guilt, quoted in the tabloids and on television on True Confessions, is bullshit from the first word to last?”

I’ve come across the name of Russian journalist Valery Panyuskin enough to know that I was interested in Twelve Who Don’t Agree (original title 12 Nesoglasnykh) which was published earlier this year by Europa Editions. After reading this non-fiction book, I can recommend it to anyone who wants to know about what is going on in modern Russia beyond the Putin-mania, and I can also say that Valery Panyuskin is a very brave man.

The book is divided into twelve chapters with each chapter telling the story of the various dissidents who–despite their varied professions and backgrounds–all participated in the 2007 March of the Dissidents. This series of protests which argued for a number of social changes–including greater accountability of ‘authorities’–took place the year before the presidential election scheduled in 2008. Although Russian law states that protests do not need to be ‘sanctioned’ there’s a technical requirement that notice of upcoming protests must be lodged with the ‘authorities.’ The 2007 protest marches sparked alarming behaviour on the part of those so-called authorities: Dozens were beaten by OMON (“the special purpose police”) officers, the numbers of those attending the marches was severely underestimated by the press, members of various other political parties were arrested before some of the demonstrations took place, and agent provocateurs mingled with the protesters in order to illustrate the poor behaviour of the demonstrators.

No room for smugness here. We can’t kid ourselves. This stuff is happening in America and Britain too. And here’s the thing, if you can’t even have a protest, then what’s the alternative?

But back to Panyuskin. The book begins the night before the demo scheduled for November 24, and Panyuskin is clearly in high spirits anticipating the rally, but the situation becomes increasingly more serious the next day: buses packed full of OMON personnel, blocks cordoned off by soldiers, and underground routes “closed on the pretext of emergency repairs.” It begins to look as though the protest is gearing up to be a mass suppression, but there are amusing moments when Panyuskin notes the Danish journalists who search amongst the high-end luxury foreign vehicles for a tatty old car with a cracked windshield to include in their footage:

Evidently they thought that in the film Moscow should look like a Havana descended upon by a glacier, the final touch of our totalitarian misfortune.

But that moment of humour gone, the protest begins to turn sour:

According to long tradition, the authorities drove a couple of hundred homeless to every opposition rally for the purpose of displaying the drunken riffraff who constituted Putin’s opponents. In exchange for participating in the country’s political life, the homeless demand vodka but not to be allowed to wash.

Panysukin also explains that there are “myths” circulating that the protestors “are extremists financed and directed by the American CIA.” And there are sobering anecdotes about the dangers of entering politics:

While I was standing in this crowd of intelligentsia, students, and bums, I told my friends a tale about how not long ago one opposititionist politician planning to run for president went to see a famous banker to ask for money for his campaign. The meeting took place in a restaurant. The banker was eating oysters. No sooner had the politician walked in that the banker said to him, as he scooped a fine de claire out of its shell, “So, I guess you want to run for president? Have you really thought this over? Have you thought about the fact that your wife, Tanya, and your son, Vadik, could be abducted tomorrow and you’d never find them?” The politician was taken aback. He broke out in red spots, muttered something and took his leave. And no sooner had he gone that the banker said to the intermediaries in the talks between the politician and businessmen who were still at the table, “So what? He’s asking for twenty million of my money, by the way. Don’t I have the right to know whether he’s going to piss his pants at the first attack?”

The protest begins with leaders of the Other Russia coalition present, including Garri Kasparov and Eduard Liminov (leader of the National Bolsheviks–Nazbols). The protestors are cordoned off, beaten and thrown into OMON vans. Panyuskin’s trials for the day don’t end there, however.

The other chapters are profiles of 11  individuals from various walks of life, and these chapters examine each person who found themselves disagreeing with some aspect of Russian policy. One man witnessed the Belsan attack, and yet another man was a member of a Special Ops group who understands the importance of creating a strategy of tension in order to further political objectives. One of the most fascinating chapters concerns Marina Litvinovich, an idealistic young woman whose career, while morally questionable, was certainly rising. Working within the FEB and reporting to FEP head Gleb Pavlovsky, she was soon attending high-level meetings with Voloshin, the president’s chief-of-staff. Her job was to analyse “Information Threats and Recommendations for Their Elimination.” What a job. Anyway, her career went into the toilet after she recommended that Putin return from his holiday and meet with the families of those doomed on the submarine, Kursk. After that incident, policy changed following the Moscow theatre massacre :

And the “information threats” were eliminated by the fact that NTV, the last VHF television channel to allow itself to speak freely, replaced its directors. At the time, President Putin reproached the channel’s chief, Boris Yordan, for “making ratings on blood.” The president was implying that there were so many victims  because NTV had broadcast live. The Kremlin’s information policy had completely given way to naked propaganda, and no one needed Marina Litvinovich anymore.

And finally here’s a quote I loved:

If you read the newspapers not the way normal people do, skimming the headlines and reading only the articles that interest you, if you read the newspaper straight through from cover to cover, your picture of the world changes. Articles by different authors on different topics line up in legions of information and go on the attack. In various newspapers and various headings Marina found seemingly totally unconnected articles. An article about the horrible state that the largest factory in the town of N was in, for instance. An article about how businessman K had met with the young people. An article about how state official M had taken shady money for consulting for some unknown person. Putting these texts together, and bearing in mind that businessman K wanted to privatize the factory in N, official M was preventing him, and so businessman K had started a PR campaign whose ultimate goal was acquiring the factory.

Anyway, for anyone interested in what’s going on in the New Russia, Twelve Who Don’t Agree is a must read. While I find politics boring, the stories of the levels of corruption, cover-ups, and the injustices submerged under the headlines offer a unique look at individuals who struggle within the larger, alien social context.

Translated by Marian Schwartz.

The Man in the Rockefeller Suit: The Astonishing Rise and Spectacular Fall of a Serial Imposter by Mark Seal

Somehow or another I missed all the headlines about the man who posed as a Rockefeller for over a decade, so when I came across a non-fiction book on the subject, I decided to read it. After all, it taps into my crime fetish, and I was curious to see just how a penniless German teenager managed to pretend he was a Rockefeller while he mingled with the upper-crusty set in America.

For those who know nothing about this case, Christian Kark Gerhartsreiter, a 17-year-old German came to America in 1978 on a tourist visa and stayed. How he morphed into Clark Rockefeller, and more importantly how he convinced everyone in his social orbit that he was one of the members of this famous family, is at the heart of this incredible tale.  As author Mark Seal notes, Gerhartsreiter’s story is “more bizarre that any gifted writer of fiction could possibly invent.”

Seal painstakingly tracked down people who knew ‘Rockefeller’ in all of his many manifestations and various personas, and he also actually went to the places that Gerhartsreiter lived. The book begins with the July 2008 parental kidnapping of Rockefeller’s daughter, and then tracks how the FBI got involved, and how the FBI discovered that Clark Rockefeller did not exist. From this point, the author goes back in time covering Gerhartsreiter’s life in Germany, his relocation to America in 1978, and just how his identities began shifting once he arrived. This really is an amazing story, and for anyone remotely interested in this particular story or shapeshifters in general, I can heartily recommend this well-researched, highly-readable book.

One of the points that the author makes repeatedly is that the fake ‘Rockefeller’ (and I’m going to refer to Gerhartsreiter as that) was like a “human sponge.” From the moment he arrived in America and started being obnoxious with his “host” family (he pretended to be a student), he soaked up everything he saw or watched on television. It wasn’t long before this shapeshifter moved onto California which makes perfect sense as he was thrilled with film. In California,  Gerhartsreiter developed what was to become his MO. Given Gerhartsreiter’s intelligence, it can’t be a coincidence that he picked San Marino for his hunting ground. It’s a wealthy community and here from 1981-1985 with the new name “Christopher Chichester” he hung out at the churches of the rich and lied, smarmed, and name-dropped his way into everyone’s homes:

It made sense that Chichester had chosen to live in a city with one of the foremost libraries in America, since libraries were a key part of his existence wherever he went. He spent much of his time in them, studying how to become someone else.

Seal painstakingly tracked Chichester/Gerhartsreiter/Rockefeller’s adventures in America and the various aliases and personas he adopted as “he tried on various names for size,” and there’s a very long list: Dr. Christopher Rider, Chris Crowe, Charles Smith, Chip Smith, Christopher Chichester, Christopher Chichester XIIIth baronet, Christopher Mountbatten Chichester (my personal favourite), and of course, the biggie–Clark Rockefeller. The fake names were accompanied by the most fantastic stories of his background; he was  “passing himself off as a computer expert, film producer and stockbroker,”  related to British Royalty, the son of a silent film star, blah, blah. These are just some of the creative and fictional details added to the tall tales he told. And the crazy thing is that some of his stories didn’t even make sense; at one point for example, he claimed to have inherited a medieval cathedral and that he wanted to relocate it to San Marino. The preposterousness of this plan didn’t even raise any eyebrows!

At one point, Gerhartsreiter/Crowe was bragging about the Ferraris, the Alfa Romeos, and the Lamborghinis he owned, but then he showed up with a ’65 chevy that was “belching more smoke than Mount St Helen’s.” He certainly wasn’t short on audacity. The author emphasizes Rockefeller’s “customary uniform,” the particular outfits he wore: “he dressed exclusively in the uniform  of the Wasp aristocracy,“ and the props he used that convinced the people he met that he was a stray yachtsman:

Well-worn khakis, a sky blue Lacoste shirt with the crocodile embroidered over the heart, Top-sider shoes (as always without socks), and a red baseball cap emblazoned with the word Yale. He adjusted his heavy black-framed glasses, which some people thought brought Nelson Rockefeller to mind.

Chichester/Gerhartsreiter moved on from San Marino rather suddenly, and as the book reveals, in 2011, he was charged with an 1985 murder that occurred in a house in which he lived. In 1985, leaving San Marino behind,  Gerhartsreiter headed back east, and then became Christopher Chichester Crowe who’d managed the mythical Battenberg-Crowe-von Wettin Family Foundation. Apparently just hanging out at the Indian Harbor Yacht Club in Greenwich, showing off photos of the fantastic houses he claimed he owned, our man pretended to be a bond trader/ TV producer and landed a $125,000 a year  job (not counting “perks and bonuses.”). Apparently no one checked to see if Christopher Chichester Crowe (also known as CCC) was who he claimed to be or if his credentials were legit. He was eventually fired BTW. And in 1988, CCC disappeared….

But no matter, because CCC now morphed into Clark Rockefeller, and what a succesful deception that turned out to be. As Clark Rockefeller he wooed and in 1993, he  married a talented, ambitious woman who was soon earning millions a year. My favourite part of the book takes place when the author travels to Cornish, New Hampshire where the “Rockefellers” settled. Big mistake–the Cornish natives didn’t exactly take to Rockefeller’s notion of being landed gentry. The people of Cornish seem to operate on the principal that it doesn’t matter how much money you have, or what your last name is, you still can’t go around acting like a dickhead.

In spite of all the tall tales Rockefeller eagerly told, NO ONE checked him out or tried to substantiate the wild fantasies that spewed forth regarding his background. He was invited into people’s lives, their homes, their businesses and was handed high-paying jobs, free meals, you name it.

Ultimately The Man in the Rockefeller Suit tells us a lot about America, and the attitudes and protections afforded to those who claim the so-called great names and/or wealth (Not that it’s much different anywhere else, but there’s this myth that America is supposed to be a classless society). As the author interviews those duped by Rockefeller while he operated under various aliases, he reinforces the idea that “Rockefeller had the kind of peculiarities” that were expected from the very rich, so people accepted Rockefeller’s at-times bizarre behaviour as the sort of normal eccentricity of the filthy rich. Here’s one example: Rockefeller invited people to lunch at expensive restaurants but then they had to pay as he didn’t carry cash!!!

In many ways, the story of this serial imposter reminds me very much of the man who impersonated Stanley Kubrick. There are some glaring similarities in the two cases when it comes the imposter’s ability to wedge himself in and exploit people, and also the fact that in both situations, people really wanted to believe that they were rubbing shoulders with Kubrick and Rockefeller. It’s important to keep in mind that the many, many people fooled by Rockefeller and then interviewed for this book operate in hindsight. A few people noted that his accent wasn’t quite right, but it’s rare that anyone interviewed says something along the lines of ‘I was an idiot,’ or ‘the clues were staring me in the face.’ Instead for the most part, those who knew this faker state that he was very credible, “brilliant” and carried himself like a blue-blooded New Englander.  Author Seal is very generous to those who granted him interviews, and he doesn’t ask some of the hard questions that I found myself asking.

The fake Rockefeller comes across as a terrible snob, and he deliberately mingled with the sort of people who went all gooey about the Rockefeller name. You can almost hear those he fooled falling over themselves, and if I had to carry away just one thing from this incredible story it’s that if you can convince people that you’re a Vanderbilt, a Getty, or a Rockefeller, doors will open wide for you, and you will be able to get away, quite literally, with murder.

Review copy courtesy of netgalley and read on my kindle.

Leigh Bowery: The Life and Times of an Icon by Sue Tilley

“If Leigh came to your house and saw something he didn’t like he would throw it out the window.”

I stumbled upon some photos of Leigh Bowery by pure accident, and I immediately knew that this Australian avant-garde performance artist/club promoter/costume designer was heavily influenced by Divine and John Waters. I then came across a bio of Bowery written by his long-time friend, Sue Tilley, so I decided to read it and discover whether or not the Divine-Leigh Bowery connection existed. And to break the suspense, yes, Bowery was influenced by Divine and John Waters, so for fans of Trash Cinema, or for those who appreciate Bad Taste, this book is an interesting read which further endorses Waters’ influence outside of Baltimore. Yes people, he’s polluting the whole planet!

But back to Leigh Bowery….

Bowery was diagnosed with HIV in 1988 and died of AIDS in 1994. This disease stripped the world of so many talented people. Freddie Mercury comes to mind, and Leigh Bowery was yet another immensely talented individual who could have accomplished so much more if he’d had the time.

This brutally honest, and sometimes raw, memoir is written by Leigh’s close friend, Sue Tilley. Tilley was on the scene when 19-year-old Leigh, armed with a portable sewing machine, moved from Melbourne, Australia to London in 1980. Leigh was seeking glamour, excitement, and a “career in design“  and he found all these things–although not instantly–in the London club scene by way of  a detour at Burger King. Tilley describes the influences on Leigh’s attitudes, including Divine: “the brilliant drag actor and singer, who was to be a great influence for the rest of his life.”

An exceptional aspect of the memoir is Tilley’s no-holds barred look at  Leigh Bowery. They were best friends, and clearly Sue has a strong attachment to this larger-than-life Australian, but at no point does Tilley sugar-coat her view. We see the positive: his creativity, his humour and his zest for life, and the negative: stealing from Burger King, shoplifting, and the treatment of his ‘slaves’.

Tilley describes the various fashion trends:New Romantics, Hard Times, & Glam as well as numerous notables from the 80s London club scene, including Scarlett Bordello and Steve Strange. The club scene at White Trash, ChaChas, Heaven and Asylum is detailed, and Leigh was such a natural presence at the clubs that he was approached by club entrepreneur Tony Gordon to be “the public face” of a club which opened in 1985. The club was named Taboo “because it epitomized everything Leigh loved.” The club doorman, Mark Vaultier, would hold a mirror in front of the faces of would–be club entrants and ask: “Would you let yourself in?”

To quote an article from Alix Sharkey, Taboo was :

London’s sleaziest, campest and bitchiest club of the moment which is stuffed with designers, stylists, models, students, dregs and the hopefully hip, lurching through the lasers and snarfing up amyl. The coolest geezer in here is wearing Bodymap tights and, yup, platform soles. A sudden rush for the toilets could only mean that a camera crew had arrived and were filming, nothing less would penetrate this narcissistic air of self-absorption.

The book is not strictly chronological, and some of it is organised thematically (Home, Dance, Art, Hospital), and the result is a well-considered blend of the personal and the professional–including Leigh’s cottaging exploits and his favourite public toilets. When it came to sex, he preferred toilets to homes:

Very occasionally Leigh would go back to men’s houses but he never really enjoyed it–it just confirmed the dreariness of most people’s lives and their complete lack of taste in home furnishings.

Leigh comes to life in anecdotes–one example is the way he told such outrageous lies that no one knew whether or not he was telling the truth:

Typically, Leigh would tell the most heinous lies. He once told me that Brad Branson, an American photographer who I knew in passing, had been on holiday in Ibiza, caught a terrible tropical disease and dropped dead. I was very shocked at this because it seemed such a strange thing to happen. A couple of weeks later, I was sitting in my little cashier’s booth at Industria and then suddenly Brad Branson came down the stairs. I nearly jumped out of my skin and screeched ‘I thought you were dead.’ I still don’t know why I believed the story because after ten years I should have realised what a liar Leigh was but I didn’t think that even he could make up stories that bad.

Leigh’s playfulness and transgressive sense of humour seep through the pages, and for this reader at least, reading the book, gave a clear sense of knowing this adventurous character:

When Leigh was asked by somebody on what occasions he lied, he replied, ‘On what occasions do I breathe!’ At least he was honest that once. Because Leigh told such terrible lies, sometimes people didn’t believe the truth. He once told Cerith that Les Child was working in the gay sauna in Covent Garden making sandwiches for the snack bar. Cerith couldn’t believe that as talented a dancer as Les would be doing such a job. So when he bumped into Les several months later and asked him how things were going he was completely gobsmacked when he replied ‘Fine, girl, I’m not making the sandwiches any more.’

So even when Leigh told the truth, the truth had a strangely comic result….Obviously for author Sue Tilley, the creator of this touching, tragic and funny memoir,  it’s impossible to forget Leigh Bowery. He was … simply … one of a kind.

For images of Leigh and his work, here’s a link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hASjFX7CVsQ

Review copy read on my kindle courtesy of Open Road media via Netgalley