So that’s the kind of family I have.
* * *
—
THERE’S A BUNCH I don’t know about my grandfather Isidore Strauss, the man you just read about. I could say I wrote the book you hold in your hand to suss out the truth. Fact is, I wrote the book in your hand because I had an innocent dream. Or what I thought was an innocent dream.
I woke one three A.M. with a start: An idea had materialized. On my nightstand (inherited from my grandmother), I jotted some words, then popped back to sleep. These would be the seeds of my next novel! By morning, I’d forgotten the idea; Lucille Ball and Poppa Izzy were scribbled next to the bed. Huh? That’s all. What book is that? I began doing research—yeah, what the hell, why not—and not only did I find Lucille Ball fascinating and intricate and a surprise, but there was a coincidence, too. The sort of coincidence that argued, as Norman Mailer put it, that coincidences are just omens magnetized into lines of force. (Look, I’m a guy who wrote about identical twins and, years later, had real-life identical twins. So I do kind of wonder if writing, in certain instances, calls up hidden energies.)
The coincidence here was a bit of family lore I had missed: that my grandfather had in fact attended a party with Lucille Ball—a party thrown, it turns out, by Donald Trump’s piggish father. A party where Trump Sr., in the name of modernization, destroyed a tiny piece of what was dignified and special about old-time America. And it emerged, too, that there had been rumors about my grandfather, rumors of infidelity. (Though not, in real life, with Lucille.) I started writing that day.
* * *
—
I LOVE MY grandfather and don’t know what’s true about him and what’s not. He was the head of the family and so a big recipient of the trite acclamations of patriarchy. Our family told ourselves that he needed to leave his wife, having landed in an impossible situation. She drank, he was a kind man, and so he ended up with her best friend—what are you gonna do?
The myth always seemed unfair to my grandmother.
By the time I popped into the world, Grandma Harriet was a recluse who wouldn’t quit referring to my grandfather as her husband, though by then he’d already taken up with the woman who’d become his wife in every sense but the legal one. She lived alone for the next three musty decades in the big Long Island house that my grandfather had built for her and then abandoned her to.
Grandma was a proud lady, even in her hermit years. She had fine china, a maid she couldn’t afford, and myth. She lost the china and the maid, but the myth she kept until her death.
She talked about her past with the glassy face of someone watching a favorite movie. The stickball games that neighborhood boys played; the schoolgirls watching and giggling, their long skirts flapping as they ran from the greasy boys who asked for kisses. And, of course, the night pilgrimages into Manhattan to see Sinatra, to see Benny Goodman. Bygone scenes, dissolve cuts, fade-outs. She died talking about her husband—who, eighteen months earlier, near his Manhattan apartment, had himself died in the arms of her erstwhile best friend Mona—his live-in girlfriend of almost thirty years.
* * *
—
SHAKESPEARE SAYS: BY indirections find directions out. The only way I could tell this story, could disentangle the mysteries, was to write it at a slant. This book is a hybrid: half memoir and half make-believe. The true story of this celebrity everyone adores, the true story of my own people, and the passionate and fictionalized sexual affair they reveled in and suffered from.
That isn’t to say I wrote a book involved only with private matters or that followed the story of my family at all its twists. I used the facts of the family only as the firm ground on which I could find my feet. The steps I took from there were my own.
This book is a novel, at bottom, because—for those of us who love literature—it’s fiction that best addresses difficult realities; it’s fiction where individual concerns can be made to feel universal. When you write nonfiction, especially about your family, sometimes you have to withdraw from the thorniest parts of a story. Maybe feelings need to be spared; maybe some of the truth can’t be known. But a novel can elbow the facts toward literature’s own idea of truth, which is something else entirely.
I have to admit I fell in love, a little, with Lucille Ball in writing this novel. The woman in these pages is my Lucille Ball, however—an imagined Lucille who makes no claims to the Lucille who thrived outside of these hard covers. Again, I do think fiction is the best way to write someone like her. You stand in the shadow on the low bench of your imagination, looking up at the towering and sun-dappled peaks of Mt. Lucille, just glad you can see up to the top. Still, as you return to your writing desk, you keep sneaking a glance over your shoulder at the heights of that soaring, real-life woman.
Lucille was so charismatic, she took over the novel.
Lucille Ball has become so ubiquitous, it’s hard to get a clear view of her—not to mention that our country is now so fragmented, you can’t imagine anyone ever again reaching from the screen and into each American living room. I hope the book will help remind people that Lucille Ball starred in America’s first big-time interracial love story; was the first powerful woman in Hollywood; that she owned more movie sets at one point than did any movie studio. It was an honor to be in her presence for a few years. A number of nonfiction books helped me build my version of her: I Loved Lucy: My Friendship with Lucille Ball by Lee Tannen; Lucy & Ricky & Fred & Ethel: The Story of I Love Lucy by Bart Andrews; Ball of Fire: The Tumultuous Life and Comic Art of Lucille Ball by Stefan Kanfer; Desilu: The Story of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz by Coyne Steven Sanders and Tom Gilbert; Lucille by Kathleen Brady, which provided the basis for the interaction among Lucille, Desi, Danny Kaye, and the fictional Kseniya Resnick; Laughs, Luck…and Lucy by Jess Oppenheimer; and Love, Lucy by Lucille Ball herself.
I am aware that there are some anomalies here. I know, for instance, that G.I. Joe dolls did not exist in 1951. But—as my mentor and eventual colleague E. L. Doctorow once told a woman who complained that one of his novels featured a genus of cactus thriving in Arizona, even though that particular genus couldn’t be found in Arizona—“And yet it is there in my Arizona, madam.” Similarly, I Love Lucy ran on Monday nights everywhere but my 1950s.
Oh, and Lucille never knew John Archer or Nanette Fabray, as far as I can tell.
Regarding my grandfather, I wanted to try to learn more about this man who was rich before I was born and who died with very little. Who radiated kindness and was a beloved figure in my family—even after having done some questionable things.
My first novel, though its subject matter was much less personal to me, had also been a fiction based—in some part—on truth. In talking with the descendants of the heroes of that book, I was reminded that the differences between biography and novel can seem esoteric, and while I hold them precious, a book is merely a book; a family is sacred. And so, some clarifications.
My uncle Arthur is not “duller” than my father. In fact, he’s charming and kind and a brilliant lawyer. Moreover, my grandparents, IRL, had two more children—my uncle Emanuel and aunt Fran. Both of them are wonderful people, but my editor thought they were superfluous to this narrative. Sorry, guys. I love you.
Still, I will likely piss off some relatives with this one, and maybe Lucille’s relatives, too. But though I changed a lot of facts—down to the year of Fred Trump’s Coney Island party, even the birth year for Desi Arnaz Jr.—it is my profound hope that I haven’t done the memory of any of these people anything that approaches dishonor.
For Susan Kamil
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
WRITING BOOKS IS hard; writing an acknowledgment page is easy. At least in theory it is. You know who helped you, and therefore whom to thank. What’s impossible is doing justice to those helping people. But here goes.
First, Susan Kamil—the late Susan Kamil, unbeara
ble as that is to say. Susan died, suddenly, as we were finishing up the final work on this book. She was a legendary editor and champion, and this novel is the last to bear her stamp. I’m very proud of this book, but that’s an honor of which I don’t feel worthy. Thanks, too, to the truly great Andrea Walker, who stepped into a difficult situation and was magnificent, advocative, and just plain cool. I really hope she and I work together for a long time, on a lot of books.
Thanks of course and forever to my wife, Susannah Meadows. For the multiple reads, the nights of enduring my bellyaching, for being my ambassador to the world outside our house, just for being yourself—thanks. Susannah both keeps our family running and is a brilliant writer/editor/journalist in her own right. This book—no joke—was originally twice as long, and had a second plotline, which now lives nowhere but my memory. That’s thanks to Susannah and Susan.
Thank you to my agent, Suzanne Gluck, who is the toughest tiny person you’ll ever meet, and is nice to boot. (And who nevertheless allowed me to write her into this novel.) Thank you, too, to her assistant, Andrea Blatt, who is very hands-on and probably won’t be assistant to anyone by the time you read this.
(Of note, perhaps, to coincidence buffs: the names of these women who helped the book so much: two Andreas, a Susan, a Suzanne, and a Susannah. There is a maxim: “Coincidences mean you’re on the right path.” Sounds cool, though I’m likelier to believe G. K. Chesterton: “Coincidences are just spiritual puns.” Either way: odd.)
I want to thank friends who have done one of the kindest things anyone can do for someone else—read the early drafts of a person you’re not related to, and not for money. Jeff Giles, Adam Dalva, Matt Thomas, Joshua Ferris, thank you very much. Thank you to the rest of the team at Random House, all of whom have been kind and smart and great: the hardworking and creative Rachel Rokicki, Avideh Bashirrad, Jessica Bonet, Claire Strickland (who was once my student, and is now a trusted colleague), and Emma Caruso. Thanks to Andy Ward for being a part of it as well—attending meetings, overseeing the endeavor, and acting as a benign presence over everything. Thanks to Deborah Landau, at NYU, for running the writing department in such a way that allowed me the time to work on this book.
Also, thanks to Hunter College’s Hertog program, and its administrator, Gabriel Packard, who pairs established writers with researchers, free of charge. Those wonderful helpers were Leilani Zee, Kim Lester, Jeannie Venasco, Christopher Fox, and Clare Needham. These are all not just researchers—each of them is a great young writer, and has my eternal gratitude.
Thanks of course to my family: my parents, Ellen and Bernie Strauss—my mom for reading and offering (surprisingly harsh) notes, and my dad for allowing me to write about his father, and for supplying me with stories to help me do it. Thank you to my grandparents, Isidore and Harriet Strauss, two complex and interesting and, in their own way, kind and superb people whose lives I tried to honor here. (I was also going to thank Lucille Ball, but that seems presumptuous—she doesn’t need my thanks, or anything, really.)
And to my sons, Beau and Shepherd, great people and friends, who say they don’t want to read this, but who, I have a feeling, will change their minds one day.
By Darin Strauss
NOVELS
The Queen of Tuesday
More Than It Hurts You
The Real McCoy
Chang & Eng
MEMOIR
Half a Life
GRAPHIC NOVEL (WITH ADAM DALVA)
Olivia Twist: Honor Among Thieves
COMIC BOOK SERIES (WITH ADAM DALVA)
Olivia Twist
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
DARIN STRAUSS is the bestselling author of the novels Chang & Eng, The Real McCoy, More Than It Hurts You, and The Queen of Tuesday, the memoir Half a Life, and (with Adam Dalva) a graphic novel and comic book series centered on the character Olivia Twist. He is the winner of numerous prizes, including most recently a National Book Critics Circle Award, and his work has appeared in fourteen languages and nineteen countries. He is a clinical professor at New York University.
Facebook.com/darin.strauss
Twitter: @darinstrauss
To inquire about booking Darin Strauss for a speaking engagement, please contact the Penguin Random House Speakers Bureau at [email protected].
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