They'll Never Make a Movie Starring Me, by Alice Bach: An Appreciation by Miss Edith, 1930s Movie Star Manque

There was a fair amount of silliness in the media this past weekend because it would have been Katharine Hepburn’s 100th birthday on May 12. All well and good; I’m a huge fan of some of Hepburn’s flicks, but I don’t idolize her. Frankly, I’m wondering if the media will make a big deal about the fact that this June 4th will be the 100th anniversary of Rosalind Russell’s birthday. I think this is REALLY important, not only because she and Miss Edith share a birthday, but because Miss Russell’s roles in His Girl Friday and Auntie Mame have flavored and influenced the lives of countless cranky, well-hatted women the world over. Hildy Johnson in His Girl Friday is the fastest talker ever, the sharpest dame to ever set foot in an office. And Mame Dennis is also a fast talker, and more manipulative (I used the word as a compliment here), with even better clothes and hats than Hildy. These women are my heroines.
Miss Edith intends to have a cocktail party this year in honor of Rosalind Russell, and when she does, you will be invited.

But in the meantime: Katharine Hepburn. Well, ok: The Philadelphia Story; Bringing Up Baby; Desk Set. I think of these as Hepburn’s “Bathrobe Movies”; there’s always a big scene involving bathrobes. There are other classics, of course, but these three are my favorites. And I will raise a drink in the direction of Old Saybrook, Connecticut, whenever I have occasion to watch any of these flicks: thank you, Miss Hepburn.

Since I’ve been thinking lately about young adult fiction (see all that nonsense about V.C. Andrews I’ve posted recently) and Katharine Hepburn, last night when I was scanning the shelves desperately looking for something to read, I was delighted when my eye fell on a young adult novel I hadn’t looked at in perhaps ten years. I’d kept it, mind you, all these years (I think I acquired my copy around 1980), but I don’t think about it all that often. Still, I re-read it last night while Notarius and I ate our evening meal. Notarius watched the baseball game and I read They’ll Never Make a Movie Starring Me by Alice Bach.
I don’t know how many times I read this book when I was young. My copy of the book is quite worn. I noted with some surprise that it was the only book by Bach I’d ever read – why did I not seek out her other titles? Quite unlike me, to be honest – but had to admit that what I lacked in breadth I made up for in depth when it came to this book.
They’ll Never Make a Movie Starring Me is a short, craftily crafted novel about a young Manhattanite who goes away to boarding school. Think of it as an earlier form of Curtis Sittenfeld’s Prep. It’s more that Prep is a variant of Bach’s book; Sittenfeld’s heroine, Lee, is not anything like Bach’s lead. Bach's heroine, named Alice, is going to Brearley – for those of you who don’t know, this is a posh New York City private school -- who suddenly realizes she doesn’t want to live under her parents’ watchful gazes anymore. She convinces them, in August, to send her off to boarding school. She is thrust into a room at Southeby Hall, which is supposed to be in Massachusetts, I think, and is thrilled to go. Alice’s heroine, her idol, is Katharine Hepburn, and Alice believes fully that going to boarding school will be a completely Hepburn experience that will then allow her to go to Bryn Mawr college and become even more Hepburn (Bryn Mawr, of course, being Hepburn’s alma mater).
Of course, boarding school isn’t exactly what Alice had expected – the kids are not really up to her standards: she’s looking for sharp, clever conversation and gets a roommate who plays golf a little too seriously and is generally lacking a sense of humor. Alice eventually makes friends, and develops a crush on one senior girl, Wendy, who proves to be not much of a friend. The novel is essentially a compare-and-contrast study between the girls in Alice’s circle in Manhattan, who are (one might say) far too sophisticated for their own good (Miss Edith would not make that call, herself), and her circle at Southeby, which is considerably more prim, less honorable in word and deed, and – perhaps worst of all – most boring. (Ok, you can sort of see where Miss Edith stands on certain matters. So I’m not objective: sue me.)
I always liked how Alice Bach wrote this book; I liked the voice of the narrator, young Alice. I liked that she would admit to liking her family even when they were driving her batshit. I liked that she admitted her good and bad qualities. Alice, like so many young narrators in books like this, is trying to come of age, but recognizes that she’s not yet prepared for it. She’s too awed by a neighbor down the hall, who is only a few years older than Alice but already has an extremely active social life, for us to forget that Alice is just a kid in most ways. But she’s a smart kid. She’s likeable.
This book isn’t going to appeal to everyone. There are a lot of people who would look at this and just find it too unrealistic for them; not everyone can relate to obviously well-off Manhattan kids complaining about traveling to boarding school with their horses. They’ll Never Make a Movie Starring Me does touch oh-so-lightly on class conflicts, and matters of money, but it’s not dwelled on at all (this is the biggest difference between this book and Prep, which really about nothing but class discomfort. These standards are given in Alice’s world: You go away to school. You date a guy who goes to an Ivy League school (no other colleges seem to exist: there’s only the Ivy League and the Seven Sisters). End of story. So, all right, the book isn’t for everyone. But I do think it’s a great book of its type. I was sorry to learn that it’s out of print, but not surprised; I was, however, surprised and charmed to learn that the author, Alice Bach, is now a professor of religious studies at Case Western Reserve. Ms. Bach: thank you for your efforts, then and now. Miss Edith would doff her hat to you jauntily, but she might spill her gimlet…

This Past Weekend

Friday night is, according to the Jewish faith, meant to be a night of prayer, of quiet, of simple pleasures. A nicely roasted chicken eaten by the light of Shabbat candles. The lead-in to a calm, work-less Saturday, the beginning of a day of rest. It wasn’t like that here; it almost never is.

Edith and The Most Ethical Man in the World, Notarius, spent Friday evening at home, which sounds about right, but other than that nothing we did bore any resemblance to a good Friday night Shabbat observance. We ate bowls of leftover chili over rice, served with some very nice guacamole, while we sat in our comfortable living room. Notarius watched the Red Sox play Baltimore. I sat on the couch and read Hal Niedzviecki’s Hello, I’m Special. What got me to contemplating the fact that we hadn’t lit Shabbat candles or anything like that was the fact that the first chapter of Hello, I’m Special is about religious observance these days.
Hello, I’m Special, published last year by City Lights, looked rather promising. The subtitle, How Individuality Became the New Conformity, captures a social phenomenon I’ve been observing since I was in college. I saw this book and was reminded of a little book I picked up about ten years ago, a little jokey gift item titled How To Be A Nonconformist. How To Be a Nonconformist was published in 1967 by a small press in Norwalk, Connecticut, and it’s chockablock with sage advice, most of which still applies today. Niedzviecki doesn’t cite Karg’s book, which genuinely surprises me, but it ought to. Basically, I read all of Niedsviecki’s book when I didn’t have to; I could have just paged through Karg’s book again, and Karg’s is much faster. Not only is it a fraction of the length of Hello, I’m Special, but it’s illustrated. With roughly ten words every two pages. You do the math (I can’t do it myself).
I’m going to cut to the chase here. Hello, I’m Special is mostly unnecessary text, but I found it genuinely interesting when he discusses religious observance, in part because he focuses on Jewish observance in America these days, which is a subject I know a little about. Rather, I know a little about Jewish non-observance. But you get the idea. The first chapter addresses this subject, and he returns to the matter again toward the end of the book; most of the middle of the book I could, frankly, live without, though someone else might find it gripping. The point of the first chapter is this: everyone wants to be special, unique, and acknowledged as such. We all want to be recognized as being different from everyone else. But the methods most of us use to achieve this end up being the same methods as everyone else. So in the end, generally speaking, it’s a load of crap. (As I began to observe in college, when getting tattoos became a normal thing to do, what’s so shocking about a tattoo if everyone else has them too? I always thought it was incredibly dumb to get tattoos, and to this day Miss Edith is tattooless (don’t even own a copy of the Stones' Tattoo You), which I view as being an eminently wise position. I’ve missed out on experiencing pain (yes!); I’ve not wasted money on something I am pretty sure I’d come to regret (fuck yeah!); and I’ve not marked my body in such a way as to make myself utterly unemployable. (I may be unemployable for other reasons, but no one could blame my cranial tattoos for my job situation.) This will be the end of a rather long parenthetical aside.)
So, getting back on subject here: our pal Hal discusses how he’s always been a rock n’ roll rebel type, and his brother was the normal one, but now that his brother has become an Orthodox Jew, his brother is the “weirdo” and the rebel. And this turns Niedzviecki’s head inside out. How is this possible? he asks himself and the reader. Well, this reader said, “It’s extremely possible. These days, admitting to religious belief based on a system founded thousands of years ago really does make you seem batty to most Americans. Funny, huh?” I found the narrative here mildly interesting to read, but it really didn’t say anything to me that Notarius and I hadn’t discussed a thousand times already, sitting around with bowls of chili, with baseball games playing in the background.
It’s not that I don’t recommend Hello, I’m Special; I do, for a certain kind of reader. If you’re a youngish hipster type who maybe isn’t the most contemplative person in the world, and you’re wondering why you feel vaguely stupid all the time, this book might help you figure out why you feel that way. So go check it out. If you’re past that stage, and you’ve realized that your tattoos were a mistake, and you’re now investing large sums of money to have them removed or to have your wardrobe re-designed so as to cover up mistakes made in your callow youth, then you don’t need this book. You would, however, find Karg’s How To Be a Nonconformist amusing, and I just learned that it’s recently been reprinted. It’s available here.

Saturday was not a day of rest here. We cleaned house like nobody’s business all morning. We did have an afternoon of rest, however, which I spent lying on the couch reading: very enjoyable. Finishing Hello, I’m Special, I turned to another recent title that I enjoyed quite thoroughly. It’s a collection of personals ads originally published in the London Review of Books, titled They Call Me Naughty Lola. Assembled by David Rose, this is a perfect gift book for probably eighty-six people you know. If you missed it when it came out last November, I’d urge you to pick it up. I won’t say anything else because I don’t want to spoil it for you, save to say, this is a very special book.