Rita Will: Memoir of a Literary Rabble-Rouser - Hardcover

Brown, Rita Mae

 
9780553099737: Rita Will: Memoir of a Literary Rabble-Rouser
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 0553099736 ISBN 13: 9780553099737
Verlag: Bantam USA, 1997

Inhaltsangabe

It is often said that the best comedy springs from hard times. And Rita Mae Brown has seen plenty of those. In this irresistibly readable memoir, she recounts the drama of her birth as the illegitimate daughter of a flighty blue blood who left her in an orphanage. The sickly baby was quickly rescued by relatives eager to adopt her but afraid she would not survive the long journey home. Her determination to live, and shock everyone by doing it, has become a metaphor for her entire life.
Though raised by these loving adoptive parents and a wacky host of other interfering kin, Rita Mae Brown learned early on to be tough and to speak her mind. It was her refusal to be anything but herself that often brought her the most trouble. Here she tells of her tempestuous relationship with her adoptive mother, the mythic Juts of the novels Six of One and Bingo, who called her "the ill," for illegitimate, whenever she lost her temper, and who swore she'd introduce Rita Mae to the social graces, including the dreaded cotillion, even if it killed them both.
Here, too, Rita Mae reveals how her headstrong support of social causes almost cost her a hard-earned education and her outspokenness in the early days of the women's movement got her drummed out of NOW, and how the release of her first novel, the scandalous classic Rubyfruit Jungle, made her an overnight phenomenon - the most famous openly gay person in America - and took her from the heights of the New York Times bestseller list to the surreal playhouse that is Hollywood.
Through it all, Rita Mae has drawn strength from her profound bond with animals, from her abiding affection for the South and its native tongue, and from the great passions of her life. She writes with close-to-the-bone honesty about woman-woman love...including her love-at-first-sight relationship with a popular actor and her headline-making romance with tennis great Martina Navratilova. With her trademark humor, she unflinchingly bares her own flaws, flouting public opinion yet displaying the unflappable good sense that shows through everything she writes.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Rita Mae Brown is the bestselling author of <i>Rubyfruit Jungle, In Her Day, Six of One, Southern Discomfort, Sudden Death, High Hearts, Bingo, Starting from Scratch: A Different Kind of Writers' Manual, Venus Envy, Dolley: A Novel of Dolley Madison in Love and War,</i> and <i>Riding Shotgun.</i>  With her tiger cat, Sneaky Pie, she also collaborates on the Mrs. Murphy mystery series, including <i>Wish You Were Here, Rest in Pieces, Murder at Monticello, Pay Dirt,</i> and <i>Murder, She Meowed.</i>  An Emmy-nominated screenwriter and a poet, she lives in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Aus dem Klappentext

e Brown writes, people often end up laughing out loud. So naturally, when the bestselling author of <i>Rubyfruit Jungle, Venus Envy,</i> and the Mrs. Murphy mystery series writes about her own life, it's a hoot, a rollicking ride with an independent, opinionated woman who changed literary history--the first openly lesbian writer to break into the mainstream. Now, in <i>Rita Will,</i> she tells all...and tells it hilariously.<br><br>It is often said that the best comedy springs from hard times. And Rita Mae Brown has seen plenty of those. In this irresistibly readable memoir, she recounts the drama of her birth as the illegitimate daughter of a flighty blue blood who left her in an orphanage. The sickly baby was quickly rescued by relatives eager to adopt her but afraid she would not survive the long journey home. Her determination to live, and shock everyone by doing it, has become a metaphor for her entire life.<br

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

When Caroline Brown said "Jump," she expected her three surviving sons to say "How high?"  Daddy, the eldest, looked exactly like his father, Rueben Brown, a dramatically handsome man.

Earl, the dark middle son, didn't resemble anybody.  We never knew where he came from, and he didn't act like a Brown.  He acted like a banty rooster.

Claude, the youngest, another handsome blond fellow, radiated goodwill and happiness.  He and Daddy were alike except that it's always easier to be the baby of the family than to be the eldest.

Dad was not the firstborn.  Carrie (Caroline's nickname) bore a son, John, before my dad's birth.  The death of a child is deeply painful, but in those days people knew better than to believe all their children would live to adulthood.

Carrie bore it in stride.  She was a strong woman.  The hopes of the Brown line now transferred to Ralph, a sunny, jovial, sweet-natured man who was willing to work hard and did.  However, he was not a man to carry the burden of the world on his shoulders or even the burden of the Browns.

You see, Carrie nursed ambitions.  In that respect she was a bit like Aunt Mimi.  These women were going to get ahead.  If they couldn't push you, they'd pull you.  Failing that, they'd put a stick of dynamite under your ass.

Fortunately, Reuben possessed vision.  The Browns had sprung out of the Pennsylvania soil.  They'd been here since the earth was cooling.  Graveyards throughout York County are filled with their ancestors.  Bold, they pushed over to the west bank of the Susquehanna River--when most white folks clung to the Atlantic shoreline.

Unlike Mother's family, the Browns were tradesmen.  They were greengrocers and butchers for generation after generation, with a merchant's keen eye for value.  They believed in service, not just customer service but community service.  Between Reuben and the three sons, they must have lent their support to every worthy cause in the town of York, Pennsylvania, to say nothing of joining organizations like the Rotary Club.  They were doers, people who worked with other people, whereas the Buckinghams were people who worked with animals.  It wasn't that the Buckinghams didn't get along with people; they were exceedingly popular and fun-loving.  It's just that their view of life contrasted sharply with that of the Browns.  The Buckinghams displayed all the characteristics of impoverished English dukes, barons or squires.

The Browns displayed the characteristics of organized, fanatically clean Swabians, the inhabitants of the German state from which they originally emigrated before the Revolutionary War.  And like the Swabians to this day, the Browns were tight with a buck.

The Buckinghams belonged to the "consider the lilies of the field" philosophy of finance.  They didn't give a rat's ass what you thought of them.  A Buckingham liked you, or didn't like you, based on you, your character.  Money couldn't sway them.

The Browns preferred that you be swaddled in the clothes of bourgeois abundance.  The Victorian age was their highest point.  All that overstuffed furniture, doilies, drapes, all that propriety and careful grooming of image suited them perfectly.

The Buckinghams could be happy in a bloody palace or in a simple Quaker farmhouse with a few chairs and beds.  Mother and Aunt Mimi deviated from this simplicity in that both adored color.

The dominant possession of Reuben and Carrie Brown was an imposing black clock from the 1840s that ticked away on a big mantelpiece.  It now ticks away on mine, and if Carrie Brown could  come back from the dead and see that I have her clock, she'd pitch a hissy.

Mamaw Brown did not like me.  Papaw accepted me but he wasn't a man to spend much time with children.  Neither one had an ounce of affection for me.  I don't remember ever being hugged or kissed by them.  Perhaps they did but I can't remember, which says something right there.

How could Ralph Brown, their golden boy, the beautiful, strapping son whom everyone adored, lower himself, first to marry that wild rat, Julia Ellen Buckingham, and then fifteen years later, when they both were old enough to know better, adopt Juliann Young's illegitimate baby?  No bastard could carry the unsullied Brown name.

Of course, the Buckingham name was far grander than the Brown name, if you wanted to be picky about it, and if you weighted English aristocracy over Swabian merchants.  Mother ignored her in-laws' sense of superiority.  Aunt Mimi didn't.  She'd sniff, lower her voice and say, "Carrie Brown, who does she think she is?"

Carrie and Reuben turned their backs on Dad when he married my mother, a worldly woman.  As members of the Church of the Brethren, their views of what constituted worldliness were quaint.  Mother smoked, drank, danced all night and, horrors, worked in a silk mill.

What good were exalted bloodlines when you worked next to common folk?

Dad rebelled and married her.  It was the smartest thing he ever did.  They were made for each other.

Carrie Brown all but huffed and puffed and blew the house down.  However, the Depression roared into everyone's life shortly after Mom and Dad married.  They lived in a tree house on Long Level on the Susquehanna River.  They worked like mad and saved as much as they could--never easy around Mother, since money burned a hole in her pocket.

Had Dad chosen a suitable wife, they would have been invited to live for free on the third floor over the store, Browns' Meat Market, on a corner on Market Street in West York, Pennsylvania.

Earl and Claude received favors and goodies from their mother and father.  Mom and Dad got a fat nothing, but they had each other.  That was enough.

I should add that both Earl and Claude married women who passed Carrie's test.  All the Brown men had emotional sense when it came to women.  They had the sense to know what they needed in a partner.  All three marriages endured and grew, as did Reuben and Carrie's marriage, for they too were a good team.

The Depression forced Papaw to lay off workers at the store.  He called back his oldest boy.  Mother, usually a font of information, clammed up on the details.

What I think happened, though I can't prove it, is that Reuben promised the three sons the store and probably finalized his will even though he was in the prime of life.  He may well have done this over Carrie's objections.  The Browns enjoyed robust health.  Built like Warmblood horses, they had solid, heavy bones and big muscles, yet a cleanness, even refinement of facial features.

So Dad came back to the store.  He and Mom moved into the third floor of the building after all, and if Carrie wasn't welcoming to Juts, she at least tolerated her.

Mother didn't give a fig.

However, by the time I appeared Mom and Dad lived in a small, adorable house on a hill in south York very close to the Maryland line.

Carrie couldn't abide what her son had done.  She froze him out again.  Mother never could understand how a grown person could be so cruel to an infant.  Carrie wouldn't let me in the house.

So Dad and Mom didn't go over.  Dad dutifully appeared at...

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Verlag
Bantam USA
Erscheinungsdatum
1997
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0553099736
ISBN 13 
9780553099737
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
479
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Verantwortliche Person
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