Tag Archives: Memoir

TRUST No One – Except Billionaires. You Can TRUST Them

For economic reasons, you should buy Hernan Diaz’s TRUST. It’s four stories for the price of one. For enjoyment reasons, you should also read it.

The novel, which won Diaz the 2023 Pulitzer Prize, asks one question: Who is Mildred Bevel? Four related stories offer answers, but Mildred is different in each. So which one do you trust?

Bonds, the first story, is written by Harold Vanner, a novelist who may have been a friend with benefits. But Vanner obfuscates, because Bonds is about Benjamin and Helen Rask – fictional characters based upon Andrew and Mildred Bevel. In Vanner’s account, Benjamin Rask is a brilliant, amoral Wall Street financier in the early 1900s, and Helen is a kind and generous arts patron who has serious psychological issues.

The second story, My Life, is dictated by Andrew Bevel. He wants to tell his story because a “vicious circle has taken hold of our able-bodied men: they increasingly rely on the government to alleviate the misery created by that same government, not realizing that this dependency only perpetuates their sorry state of affairs.” Mind you, this is during the Great Depression and Andrew is stupendously rich, but the only person he pities is himself. If you have confused him with Andy Rand, Ayn Rand’s dickhead brother, you are forgiven.

Andrew is also offended by Vanner’s portrait of Mildred (disguised as Helen). But mostly, Andrew is outraged by Vanner’s description of him (disguised as Benjamin). He wants to correct the record in an outrageously self-serving and mean-spirited way. To Andrew, Mildred is a saintly woman who dabbled in music and philanthropy. She is no master of the financial universe like him.

The third story is A Memoir, Remembered by Ida Partenza. Ida writes this in 1981 after the Bevels are dead. She’d been hired decades earlier by Andrew to transcribe his memoir (the rebuttal to Vanner) and improve upon it – a euphemism for make shit up.

She sees through Andrew’s self-aggrandizement and makes some informed judgments about Mildred. Her goal is to turn Mildred’s “tenuous ghost into a tangible human being”, but all she has to work with is Mildred’s mostly empty notebooks, Andrew’s self-absorbed account from 50 years earlier, and Vanner’s novel. To Ida, Mildred was a “thoughtful, disciplined philanthropist.”

Finally, in the last installment, Futures, we hear Mildred’s voice. She sees herself quite differently. It’s a refreshing perspective, but is it true?

TRUST succeeds on several levels. It’s absorbing historical fiction. It’s also a brutal examination of how immense wealth enables the super-rich and powerful to “align and distort” reality to their liking. In that sense, it’s not historical at all.

So, considering all the competing narratives, who was Mildred Bevel really? It all depends on who you trust. Me? I always trust the billionaires.

Gladiola Overdrive, Chief Editor

Annie Ernaux’s Exteriors: The Most Honest Review Ever

Don’t read this book. It’s a fraud.

I don’t normally give book reviews, because I don’t normally read books. They’re a waste of time, and this one sure was.

First, it bills itself as a memoir. Now, when I think of memoir, I think of great men, like myself, doing great things, like own hotels. To my surprise, this memoir was written by a woman. I was immediately suspicious. What has she ever done? The answer is nothing. She rides trains all day and makes observations. I could do that, but I have better things to do. And for this kind of crap someone decided this Annie Ernaux woman should be awarded the 2022 Nobel Prize in Literature. It just confirms why I never had any respect for that award.

Second, Annie Ernaux has no friends. Nor should she. She’s a voyeur who is obsessed with eavesdropping on strangers – as if strangers can tell us anything about ourselves or our world. Yet, she seems to think so. Here’s something stupid she said. “It is other people – anonymous figures glimpsed in the subway or in waiting rooms – who revive our memory and reveal our true selves through the interest, the anger or the shame that they send rippling through us.”

The only time a stranger ripples me is when she’s sexy. Then the hunt is on, and she won’t be a stranger for long.

Knowgood Carp, Owner of all the Hotels on Block Island and some in Connecticut

A Brilliant and Funny Priestdaddy

In her memoir, Priestdaddy, Patricia (Tricia) Lockwood’s father is a walking “exception to the rules.” He is, in fact, a priestdaddy. He was a Lutheran minister when he married Tricia’s mother, who is Catholic. Subsequently he converted to Catholicism, and the Vatican allowed him to become a priest. So he is not just a father, who wears nothing but worn out boxers around the house, he is also a Father, who wears nothing but worn out boxers around the house. “All fathers believe they are God, and I took it for granted that my father especially believed it.” Her view of motherhood is more earthly. “A mother, as I understood it, was someone who was always trying to give you sixty dollars.” Her father believes in clear rules and boundaries – for other people. Her mother has never seen a boundary – not even on a map.

When 19 year old Tricia meets Jason online, they become fast friends. So fast that Jason soon shows up to take her away. As is typical, her father disappears “upstairs to fondle his guns and drink cream liqueurs.” Her mother is convinced Tricia will be found murdered on the roadside. But Tricia is unconcerned, because it turns out Jason is tall. And she has always trusted tall men.

Surprisingly, the relationship does not end with murder (maybe there is something to this tall man thing). They eventually are married by her father; however, health issues and a lack of money mean Tricia and Jason must move back in with her parents after leaving 12 years earlier. That is where this raucous and hilarious story starts.

And while there is much humor, there is trauma too. When she was in her teens, Tricia was raped by a family friend. Years later, she wrote an incredible poem, Rape Joke, about this horrific event. The poem went viral and contributed mightily to establishing her as a successful and respected (not always the same) writer. However, that is in the future. The rape, and everything that happens immediately thereafter, is soul crushing.

When she is examined by a pro-life doctor (the only kind her parents would allow), he tells her in a voice without charity or sympathy: “well, now you’ve learned that you can’t trust everyone, can you?” So that’s less than helpful. Plus, is it necessary to be raped to learn that lesson? Couldn’t we just learn it when (inevitably) a friend borrows $5.00 and never pays it back?

Her personal trauma aligns with the global trauma of the Catholic Church’s child sex abuse scandal. As with Tricia, the abusive treatment continues well after the children are raped by priests. Her father is moved from church to church to “heal” the community after a priest accused of sexual misconduct is transferred to a different parish. Her father is either unaware or refuses to see that he is being used to help the church cover-up of the scandal. When Tricia meets the bishop, who will later go to prison for shielding pedophile priests, she sees “[t]he compassion in [his] face, that flowed toward the sinner and never the sinned-against, that forgave before justice had even been meted out.” This is a recurring theme. Where is the empathy for the victims? Why is it reserved only for the powerful and/or corrupt? Why is the reporter revealing the rot discredited as if “publication of the facts is the real crime?” Would we sue a building inspector for telling the residents that the foundation is crumbling and the building about to collapse? Actually, yeah, we probably would.

As with any good memoir (and this is an excellent one), the narration of specific life events (no matter how interesting) is secondary to the search for meaning. “Part of what you have to figure out in life is, who would I be if I hadn’t been frightened? What hurt me, and what would I be if it hadn’t?” Would Tricia be so intellectually curious and honest? Perhaps. Would she be as irreverent and funny? Maybe. Would she be such an insightful and powerful writer? Would she know exactly where to punch us so that all the air runs out of our lungs screaming “what just happened?” We suspect the answer is . . . . Well, fortunately, our suspicions don’t matter here.

This book is a delight. Where Tricia could have been bitter and cynical, she is loving and kind. But most of all she is honest. It is quite a feat. Despite being raped. Despite trying to commit suicide. Despite being unable to get pregnant. Despite having a narcissistic, remote, and strange father, this strong, sarcastic, independent, thoughtful, and deeply-funny person is able to simply and wonderfully conclude “I understand that what I have is enough.” We wish the same for ourselves and for you.

Gladiola Overdrive, Chief Editor