A jaunty, dishy memoir
October 14, 2011, Friday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
"YOU'D think that someone born in the thick of the Great Depression would have a sad story to tell," Bruce Jay Friedman writes, "but mine isn't one of them."
For the length of this jaunty, dishy memoir, Friedman makes good on this promise, spinning campfire tales from a career spent turning the written word into that uncelebrated but elusive commodity, a living. Some writers seek immortality and end up scarred and bitter. Friedman sought regular paychecks and occasional furtive embraces and ended up with a table at Elaine's. Boohoo. Whose memoir would you rather take away for the weekend?
"Lucky Bruce" is a "literary memoir" mainly for the persistence with which it reminds readers that Friedman, whose biggest successes include an early screenplay for "Splash" and the play "Steambath," also pursued bigger game, the biggest being the almighty novel.
Working both ends of the literary food chain, he edited a stable of swashbuckling men's magazines and also wrote novels like "Stern" (1962) and "The Lonely Guy's Book of Life" (1978) that got good reviews and won him fans among literary writers.
In such a career, the occasional dark night of the soul may seem tempting, but not compared with a high-paying screenplay or magazine assignment. As Friedman recalls the playwright Jack Richardson telling him at a literary conference: "I don't know anyone like you. You're a writer. And you actually write."
Insecurity runs through the volume. Friedman quotes from positive reviews of his work and - oh, the shamelessness of it - uses his own bons mots as chapter epigraphs.
Rarely does Friedman get caught up in the more formal stringencies of his art. When he meets the jazz clarinetist Artie Shaw over tongue sandwiches at the Carnegie Delicatessen, Friedman burns to ask about Shaw's wives and lovers, who included Ava Gardner and Lana Turner. But to his disappointment, Shaw waves such piffle aside. What does he want to talk about? Short-story construction.
This is a free-associative scrapbook of dropped names, gossipy anecdotes and comfy jokes. He has the right voice for the anecdotes collected here. Friedman gets in a fist fight with Norman Mailer, urinates next to Muhammad Ali, receives a blunt proposition from William Saroyan's daughter, has "a night of madness" with Jean Seberg, hangs out at Elaine's or on the patio of the Beverly Hills Hotel, hires Mario Puzo for one of his men's magazines, helps Warren Beatty manage a tryst, manages a few of his own, marries twice and, in later midlife, settles into a regular lunch routine on Long Island with Puzo, Joseph Heller and a few others.
In this highly readable memoir, he approaches both Hollywood and the literary world as an outsider, delighting in the scuttlebutt he picks up during his visits.
And Friedman's talents are not without admiration among the lit set. How many people know what it's like to have Kurt Vonnegut ask, "Can you teach me how to hang out?"
For the length of this jaunty, dishy memoir, Friedman makes good on this promise, spinning campfire tales from a career spent turning the written word into that uncelebrated but elusive commodity, a living. Some writers seek immortality and end up scarred and bitter. Friedman sought regular paychecks and occasional furtive embraces and ended up with a table at Elaine's. Boohoo. Whose memoir would you rather take away for the weekend?
"Lucky Bruce" is a "literary memoir" mainly for the persistence with which it reminds readers that Friedman, whose biggest successes include an early screenplay for "Splash" and the play "Steambath," also pursued bigger game, the biggest being the almighty novel.
Working both ends of the literary food chain, he edited a stable of swashbuckling men's magazines and also wrote novels like "Stern" (1962) and "The Lonely Guy's Book of Life" (1978) that got good reviews and won him fans among literary writers.
In such a career, the occasional dark night of the soul may seem tempting, but not compared with a high-paying screenplay or magazine assignment. As Friedman recalls the playwright Jack Richardson telling him at a literary conference: "I don't know anyone like you. You're a writer. And you actually write."
Insecurity runs through the volume. Friedman quotes from positive reviews of his work and - oh, the shamelessness of it - uses his own bons mots as chapter epigraphs.
Rarely does Friedman get caught up in the more formal stringencies of his art. When he meets the jazz clarinetist Artie Shaw over tongue sandwiches at the Carnegie Delicatessen, Friedman burns to ask about Shaw's wives and lovers, who included Ava Gardner and Lana Turner. But to his disappointment, Shaw waves such piffle aside. What does he want to talk about? Short-story construction.
This is a free-associative scrapbook of dropped names, gossipy anecdotes and comfy jokes. He has the right voice for the anecdotes collected here. Friedman gets in a fist fight with Norman Mailer, urinates next to Muhammad Ali, receives a blunt proposition from William Saroyan's daughter, has "a night of madness" with Jean Seberg, hangs out at Elaine's or on the patio of the Beverly Hills Hotel, hires Mario Puzo for one of his men's magazines, helps Warren Beatty manage a tryst, manages a few of his own, marries twice and, in later midlife, settles into a regular lunch routine on Long Island with Puzo, Joseph Heller and a few others.
In this highly readable memoir, he approaches both Hollywood and the literary world as an outsider, delighting in the scuttlebutt he picks up during his visits.
And Friedman's talents are not without admiration among the lit set. How many people know what it's like to have Kurt Vonnegut ask, "Can you teach me how to hang out?"
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