Marcel Proust – Edmund White

This is one of those short Penguin Lives, and the author is somebody who’s an appropriate fit for the subject. Edmund White writes pretty much exclusively about homosexual relations. But if Proust were around to read this book (which abounds in references to his homosexuality) he might challenge White to a duel. Everyone in Paris knew Proust was a homosexual, but Proust himself denied it, and on occasions duels did take place (shots were fired into the air, then both parties went home). And in his novels Proust makes the love interest between the narrator and women (though these women were thinly disguised men who Proust, in real life, was involved with – unhappily). Why Proust didn’t “come out” isn’t clear – in France homosexuality wasn’t a crime (as it was in England at the time). The picture I get of him in this book is a compilation of character traits I find distasteful. He was a toady and fashion plate who loved to be around the wealthy. He was self-absorbed – all his work is about himself. His prose was exceedingly flowery. No, I won’t be reading Remembrance of Things Past, which comes in seven volumes and totals some 4300 pages. White, of course, is a fan, and he goes on about the virtues of Proust’s work. But he hasn’t sold me – none of those virtues he cites are to my taste. I prefer the style and approach of Flaubert.

Marlon Brando – Patricia Bosworth

I found the man to be reprehensible. What a mess of a life. And what a mess he made of other people’s lives if they were unwise enough to get involved with him (though his eleven confirmed children had no choice). But I’m not going into the many reasons why I disapprove of him. You can read this Penguin Lives book and decide what you think. It’s a readable job because Bosworth has a lot of sleazy material to keep one’s interest up. What surprised me is how Brando disliked acting, that it wasn’t something he took pride in. That’s why he made so many lousy films – merely for the money. He couldn’t even be bothered to learn his lines – all sorts of props had to be used to cue him in. So his talent was largely wasted. And he did have talent – I’ll always be grateful for his performance in On the Waterfront (a performance that, in his autobiography, he claimed to have “hated”). Bosworth wrote this book in 2001, three years before Brando died. Her prose is sometimes sloppy, but maybe that’s fitting for her subject: A selfish, self-indulgent man whose weight sometimes ballooned to over three hundred pounds. Rita Moreno has made a cottage industry out of her relationship with Brando, but her name only appears in a list of women. She was merely one of many who suffered at his hands.

Virginia Woolf – Nigel Nicolson

This is the fourth Penguin Lives book I’ve reviewed (including a previous one on Elvis, which I’ve included below), and it’s the best. The best written, the most intelligent, the wisest. Partly this is due to the fact that Nicolson knew Woolf from boyhood. He was the son of Vita Sackville-West, with whom Virginia was in love for a time (Woolf wrote a novel about their relationship – Orlando). He also edited the six volumes of her letters and read the five volumes of her diaries (he quotes from them). So he had an intimate perspective. That said, he offers no explanations concerning the emotional problems she suffered from periodically all her life, and which culminated in her suicide at age fifty-nine. At that point in her life she was not ill, not infirm, and she left a loving letter to her husband of many years, ending with the words “I don’t think two people could have been happier than we have been.” For all his knowledge of the woman, Nicolson wasn’t privy to the innermost working of her mind, so he doesn’t engage in psychoanalyzing. He also doesn’t dramatize events that other biographers have. He doesn’t believe that she was subjected to sexual abuse by her half brother; he thinks some crude horseplay had taken place. Why else would she write letters in which she address him affectionately (“My dearest George” and “My dear old Bar”)? And why would her sister Vanessa, who purportedly also suffered abuse, go on trips to Venice and Rome with him? If truly damaged, neither woman would forgive. Virginia’s sex life is shadowy. As a married woman she states in her letters and diaries that she doesn’t get why there’s such a hullabaloo regarding intercourse (so she must have experienced it). She gets strong “crushes” on women, but whether they involved actual sexual relations isn’t known (probably some did). The most vital aspect of Woolf’s life revolved around intellectual matters, of which her writing was foremost. Nicolson notes how she expresses fear of a decline in her ability to write well, and that could have led to her suicide: What did life matter if the most important thing in it was being taken from her? I couldn’t read her novels (with the exception of Orlando). She was trying to do something different, but I’m stuck on the traditional way of presenting narrative and character. At any rate – the woman. She comes across as a strong presence – very strong. Opinionated, blunt, funny, even raucous. I liked her. And I felt that she led a good, full life. Besides her writing, she and her husband were at the center of the Bloomsbury group, in which intellectuals and artists met to exchange and develop ideas. The Woolfs also founded the Hogarth Press, which first published such writers as T. S. Eliot and E. M. Forster. They kept the business going despite many years of unprofitability. And Virginia set type.

Elvis Presley – Bobbie Ann Mason

Maybe he should have married his Tupelo girlfriend and stayed a truck driver all his life. He well might have led a happier existence. And, surely, a far less confused one. But then we wouldn’t have the breakthrough he made in music. In the famous Sun Records recording of “That’s All Right” something new was unleashed. And then he became the King, a cultural phenomenon. Mason (a southern novelist/short story writer) covers his life pretty thoroughly, though it’s material that’s been well-documented. Who doesn’t know of Elvis’s self-destructive act? Does she add insights into his character? Well, sort of, but I found her psychoanalyzing the weakest aspect of the book, partly because she’s so repetitive. In fact, repetitiousness is the book’s major flaw. This Elvis bio is part of the Penguin Lives series, which includes such diverse subjects as Crazy Horse, Proust and Joan of Arc; their aim is to present a compact, accessible coverage. And we do get that from Mason. Once again, it’s interesting to see how ruinous fame can be. One has to know how to handle it, and Elvis, with his background, was uniquely unprepared for the task. Possibly, if he had wise and compassionate guidance, things would have worked out differently. For one thing, he needed to have been steered to making music – not movies. The guidance he got from the avaricious Colonel Parker was harmful, but I don’t believe that he’s the villain of the piece. Elvis was headstrong, and prone to wacky ideas, and was his own worst enemy. He was a lonely man, even though he surrounded himself with people. As for his relationship with Priscilla – a pretty fourteen-year-old he met when he was stationed in Germany – she was a human equivalent to the Mercedes and jewelry he bought indiscriminately. Their marriage was a bad joke, and was motivated out of a sense of obligation (and maybe an element of blackmail). Anyway, as the song goes, Elvis was headed on down Lonely Street to Heartbreak Hotel, a place where people “are so lonely they could die.” He died of cardiac arrest at age forty-two; fourteen drugs were found in his body.