Short Takes
The Essays of Leonard Michaels
By Leonard Michaels
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 224 pp. $26
These wonderful, surprising essays are divided into two groups: Critical and autobiographical, but they all feel personal. The separate categories collapse. Considering Blake’s poetry, Chekhov’s stories, Hopper’s paintings, Kubrik’s films, Rita Hayworth’s body, Hollywood screenwriting, his mother’s Yiddish, he writes with the same self in the same voice - sharp, funny, opinionated, observant, concise.
Writing critically about Edward Hopper, he describes repeatedly visiting the museum to gaze in ecstasy at “New York Movie,’’ absorbing a “desire for what isn’t there.’’ In the autobiographical “My Yiddish,’’ he describes with many hilarious examples the “residual subliminal Yiddish’’ in his telling of a story. While watching Rita Hayworth in “Gilda,’’ “Unspeakable apprehensions - pleasure - were aroused in me, in my head or heart, that secret, interior, moral theater (as opposed to the public showplace, the Loews Canal) where movies dreamily transpire.’’
Michaels, writing about Michaels is a great pleasure.
Much To Your Chagrin: A Memoir of Embarrassment
By Suzanne Guillette
Atria, 432 pp. $25
This is Suzanne’s romantic life: She became engaged to a man she didn’t intend to marry, cheated on him with a Czech boxer, became obsessed with her literary agent, and finally fell for a man who turned out to be a cocaine addict. This is Suzanne’s professional life: She was writing a book, a collection of mortifying stories. The research required that she ask all her friends, family, acquaintances, and strangers to describe their most embarrassing moments.
Almost 30 years old, taking antidepressants, drinking and smoking too much, eating too little, she was going through a bad patch. Nonetheless, she could still be fast and funny describing her graceless moves, thoughtless words, poor choices, wrong turns. But eventually, her energy ebbs, her pace slows, and she begins to recognize that by collecting other people’s mortifying stories she has avoided focusing on her own. Finally, she locates not only the problem but the solution. “It’s okay to have been wrong. . . . to have been needy . . . and to finally, actually, fully feel something, even if that feeling is shame.’’ While this is a revelation to Suzanne, it’s not a wow to the reader.
Obsession: An Erotic Tale
By Gloria Vanderbilt
Ecco, 160 pp. $16.99
The “Story of O’’ meets “The Devil Wears Prada’’ would be a flattering capsule description of this brief bit of erotica concocted by socialite Gloria Vanderbilt. The sex is not as hot as “O,’’ the luxurious fashion, travel, and real estate details not as spot-on as “Prada,’’ and the plot not as interesting or original as either. Still, that Vanderbilt, 85, has the energy, guts, and gumption to imagine, write, and publish this bit of sexy fluff is impressive.
Priscilla, married to the fabulously wealthy architectural genius Talbot Bingham, imagines herself to be a contented if sexually cool wife. But she discovers (after his unexpected death) that Talbot’s contentment with her proper public persona was balanced by his exotic private sexual drama. While Pris presided over an elegant New York City apartment built for entertaining dignitaries and divas, her erotic double, known as Queen Bee, gloried in a Texas mansion, designed for sexual experimentation and ecstasy. The erotic fantasy depends as heavily on clichés as the luxury fantasy. Pornography’s dependence on cliché and the familiar doesn’t necessarily detract from its enjoyment, and “Obsession,’’ while not a very good novel, is nicely refined smut.
Barbara Fisher is a freelance writer who lives in New York. 