Shouts from a Third Act

Who wouldn’t want to read some never-before-told story about Ernest Hemingway’s love life? When I opened this month’s Smithsonian Magazine and saw the handsome passport photo of a young Hemingway staring out at me, next to the come-hither caption: “After a long silence, a close friend of Hemingway reveals what the famed writer confided about the affair that changed his life,” I couldn’t turn the pages fast enough to get to the big reveal. What big reveal? I’d already read The Paris Wife, the 2011 best-selling novel by Paula McLain. A respected magazine scooped by a work of fiction?

My point here isn’t to knock the magazine. (Or writer A.E. Hotchner. As far as I can tell, he deserves a standing ovation for the 95 years he’s lived so far: biographer, playwright and the businessman-philanthropist who co-founded Newman’s Own with his pal Paul Newman. His piece about his friend Hemingway offers some details you won’t find in the novel.) Today I’m here to give a big shout-out to the current crop of novelists who are raising the dead, putting words in their mouths and making them strut the stage. A larger-than-life character like Hemingway is well-suited for the role of protagonist. So are figures like Frank Lloyd Wright, Beryl Markham, Robert Louis Stevenson, Thomas Cromwell and Henry VIII.* Author Hilary Mantel (Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies) is like a new age Dr. Frankenstein: in her hands, Cromwell and King Henry are shocked back to life and electrify. Mantel is so good she’s twice won the Booker Prize and Queen Elizabeth anointed her a “Dame”. Oh, and Wolf Hall inspired the hit BBC miniseries and stage plays on Broadway and in England.

I see dead people. Most critics don’t have a problem with seeing them at a distance, but some worry that conjured scenes and dialogue are steps in the wrong direction. I think we need to give readers more credit for an ability to sort fact from fiction. Besides, there’s great precedent. Shakespeare put words into the mouths of many famous dead people: Julius Caesar, Anthony & Cleopatra, Joan of Arc, a few kings with the first names Richard and Henry. Where did he do his research? Think back to that long-ago era: no internet, no public libraries. Scholars surmise Will’s go-to sources were a history book or two available at the time and the poems and plays of writers who came before him.

For those of you who haven’t read The Paris Wife, it’s told mostly in the first person by Hemingway’s first wife, Hadley Richardson. She and Hem fall madly in love before he’s famous, and she uses a small inheritance to help bankroll their move to Paris. About six years later, Hem’s first novel The Sun Also Rises is finished and Scribner wants to publish it. Slight problem on the home front. Hem’s in love with two women. Athletic Hadley (supportive, fun and mother of their infant son) and chic Pauline (a one-time friend to Hadley and unabashedly set on becoming Wife #2). Choose, Hadley says finally and gives him 100 days to decide. Hem goes off by himself to think. About day 70, Hadley writes to him. They divorce. Hem marries Pauline. Most everyone knows the rest of the story: Hem divorces again and remarries twice more (wife count: 4) and, at 61, blows his brains out. But according to both sources (Hotchner, McLain), Hem loved Hadley until the day he died. Love ain’t always grand, but a well-crafted story sure is. “Bravo!” I say. “Encore, please.”

*For a list of some books in this genre, see the page Novels of Interest.

The dinner guests who prompted this week’s musings were Claire Danes, star of the TV series Homeland, and real-life Secretary of Homeland Security, Mr. Jeh Johnson. The New York Times chose the restaurant and sat down with them to record their conversation, which I read about in last Sunday’s Styles section. At one point Secretary Johnson asks Claire if she’d ever seen the movie Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? (1967) She was embarrassed she hadn’t, but no worries, Claire. (Who among us can’t forgive the brilliant CIA agent Carrie Mathison her flaws?) Besides, Claire wasn’t born until twelve years after the film was made.

So this is the plot, as Secretary Johnson tells it. “Sidney Poitier goes to this white family in San Francisco, Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy. He wants to marry their daughter, whom he met in Hawaii. This is 1967, when interracial marriage is still illegal in many states. The daughter wants their blessing. . . and Spencer Tracy says: ‘Have you thought about the children? They’ll be mixed race. That will be hard for them.’ And Sidney Poitier responds: ‘Your daughter thinks that one of them is going to grow up to be president of the United States, and he’s going to have a colorful cabinet.’ And that’s just what happened: At that moment, living then, was a biracial 6-year-old born in Hawaii, who would grow up to be president. And he has a colorful cabinet.”

Wow. Forget politics for a second. Whether or not you voted for President Obama shouldn’t matter here. This insight, courtesy of the African-American head of Homeland Security, matters. Art matters. I’m older than Claire Danes and loved the movie enough to see it twice, years apart, and each time my take-away was something different. Did I remember that particular line of dialogue spoken by the Poitier character (Dr. John Prentice, Jr.)? I’m embarrassed to admit no. But Secretary Johnson remembered it. And a few other people, no doubt. Hepburn, Tracy and Poitier were magnificent. The movie was a surprise hit, even in southern states, which were among the last to hold onto laws forbidding interracial marriage and where, it was assumed, white filmgoers wouldn’t turn out in numbers to see a black lead. (The U.S. Supreme Court had ruled against those type of laws in 1967, just a few months before the movie was released.) Hepburn won an Oscar as did the Original Screenplay Writer (William Rose). Even more noteworthy: Spencer Tracy was in failing health when filming began and died 17 days after shooting ended. Hepburn and director Stanley Kramer felt so strongly about the film that they’d agreed to put their salaries in escrow in case Tracy died before finishing his scenes and the studio was forced to replace him with another actor. Yes, the U.S. needs to nurture Math and Science students, but The Arts (film, literature, music, dance, painting, sculpture, etc.) have their importance, too. Isn’t it unfair–not to mention short-sighted–to think of our Art Muses as second-class students?

Imagination can be a wonderful thing. Einstein famously said: “Imagination is more important than knowledge.” I write mysteries and think my own imagination is pretty darn good. Not compared to some people who toil in the Real World. Take Volkswagen. The news recently broke that they’ve been fooling everybody for years about their emission standards for cars with diesel engines. Everybody includes our very own EPA. To do that, VW admits to installing software (inside the cars) designed to greatly reduce the emissions during testing. The EPA, we’re told in the press, had their doubts. The exhaust on the road seems much worse than what the testing shows–what’s up? Well, we know how VW responded. They lied and said you’re wrong and kept on doing what they were doing.

Why would a successful company think it made sense to do that? Correction. It was people working inside the company who took the illegal actions. How many we don’t know. The motive for the crime seems to be that VW was worried their diesel engines wouldn’t perform as well if they played by the rules. Excuse me? In 1969 we put a man on the moon. In 1974 the Frenchman Philippe Petit strung a wire between the twin towers of the World Trade Center and walked/danced across it several times–this without a safety net while police yelled at him to get down and a helicopter hovered overhead (IMHO the new movie The Walk is a work of genius.) We’ve got robotic rovers wandering Mars and collecting data. In 2008 Tesla started selling electric cars. I guess some people at VW didn’t want to use their imagination to find a solution. They wanted the short-term fix. (Cheating.) Guess where it got them? Recent estimates (now deemed too low by the new VW CEO) are that it will cost them $7.3 billion. They’ve got to recall and fix all the affected cars and pay lots of fines. Don’t forget the lawsuits. The company admitted the scandal/crime could put them out of business. In which case workers would lose their jobs (workers who had nothing to do with the illegal software idea). This could affect the German economy and VW dealerships in other countries. Then there’s the unknown damage to the environment, in an age where most thinking people are worried about staggering health care costs and Global Warming.

There’s more to Einstein’s quote: “For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.” The people at VW who thought up the fraudulent software were imaginative. What I don’t get is this: where did their imaginations stop? At least one of the people involved must have asked themselves what’s the worst-case scenario if we’re caught? (Or not caught?) And still they went ahead with their plan. It kind of reminds me of the 2008 financial crisis, a perfect storm of greedy mortgage lenders, big banks and rating agencies that led to the Great Recession. Yes, imagination can be a terrible thing. Or it can be as wondrous as Thomas Edison perfecting the light bulb.