"At the center of the circle is a woman ahead of her time," it says on the DVD cover. (I often wonder who wrote the back covers of DVD's and my guess is some promo person who never saw the movie.)
I once got a book out of the library that consisted of Dorothy Parker's witticisms. I read it and thought "You had to be there." I just couldn't get into it. I just didn't find anything she said that witty.
I knew that Mrs. Dorothy Parker and her round table in New York consisted of some of the brightest literary talents of the time so I wanted to know more about her. So, when I saw the DVD at my local library, I borrowed.
This film (which I watched twice) depicted Dorothy Parker as droll - very! Yes, Dorothy Parker, as acted by Jennifer Jason Leigh, was droll, and in context, funny. I actually agree with the term "biting wit," also used on the DVD cover.
The mostly male writers she was surrounded by included playboys and playwrites, poets and screenwriters, in Hollywood and in New York City. She was there at VANITY FAIR magazine, and in the planning for THE NEW YORKER magazine but how? Was she a muse? An inspiration? One more alcoholic?
Rather, I think Dorothy Parker was "a depressive," as they used to call people who were always depressed - very! She had some things to be depressed about too. Raised without a mother,having a husband who abused her back in the day when few women could go without a husband, unrequieted love, an abortion, all these were in her experience.
Somehow she was an inspiration anyway, respected anyway, invited anyway.
Perhaps what impressed me most about Mrs. Dorothy Parker, who appears to have not been able to write in her elder years after so much of a life, was that she left her estate to the civil rights leader Martin Luther King. Her poetry for the film was used with the permission of the NAACP. The film neglected to explain this important fact. It did not reveal what had gone on in her life or her mind that moved her to do so. I think it would have been a better film if it had been explored or even used as the trajectory.
The movie attempted to recreate a scene of friendship in which a great many people who became important and known for their work interacted. None of these characters could really be fleshed out in the time and space of a film.
C Christine Trzyna 2012 All Rights Reserved including Internet and International Rights
6/23/12
TAISHA'S BOOK STILL NOT OUT : WILL IT EVER BE?
Guess what? If you go to April 1 2023 and see the post TAISHA ABELAR'S LOST BOOK - STALKING WITH THE DOUBLE (RESTORED VERSION) you will be able to read a manuscript copy of the book.
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A little background.
Many years ago when I was a regular at an independently owned coffee house on Ventura Boulevard and taking night classes at the local community college, one of the servers there, who I really liked, showed me her copy of Taisha Abelar's first and only book, and encouraged me to read it. This coffee house friend had recently gone on a vision quest which she believed had oriented her purpose in life and future career.
I read the book and was utterly mystified and intregued. Since then I've read the book twice more, each time years enough apart to not have remembered everything I read before, and each time having a different pov on it in the end, as my understanding or mystification of my own life changes me.
Since then I've also read around the whole Carlos Castaneda controversy; was Taisha one of his cult members? Did the various "witches," or devotees, or whatever they really were, who published books around the subject, all pass fiction off as nonfiction? Or did they really experience what some of them wrote about?
Castandeda died a human death of cancer, and soon after several of these people, including Taisha, disappeared. There was talk of a possible ritual suicide, maybe in an abandoned mine or cave in the desert. Taisha's family filed a missing person report but many people felt that these people had just staged a disappearance and gone off to Mexico or wherever, to continue their esoteric pursuits. Tellingly, money inherited was left behind as well.
One of the Castaneda "witches," who inherited the bulk of his fortune, continues to live and remains silent and protected by an attorney. She has not written anything.
Then, a couple years ago, it was reported that Taisha had a new book that would soon be published. Some people said this meant that all along she had been hiding out and writing and would soon reappear, possibly to take over leadership of the group. A few years have gone by and speculation is that she left behind an unfinished manuscript which, by now, has seen a number of ghost writers.
The publishing house has announced publication a number of times, and so the book became almost ready to order on Amazon. So far, no Taisha, no book.
C 2012 Christine Trzyna / Christine Trzyna Writerly Life All Rights Including Internet and International Rights Reserved.
6/14/12
RAMONES : BABY I LOVE YOU
Thinking of Carlos
UPDATE SEPT 7, 2012 : Reading Johnny Ramone's new book and he says this is the song he/they just hate, a Phil Spector production. But I love it because I think it is IRONIC that the Ramone's recorded it.
UPDATE SEPT 7, 2012 : Reading Johnny Ramone's new book and he says this is the song he/they just hate, a Phil Spector production. But I love it because I think it is IRONIC that the Ramone's recorded it.
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