Book Spotlight: Down the Rabbit Hole by Holly Madison

As part of my memoir writing diet, I have been reading memoirs about medical and mental illness. However, I saw that Holly Madison had written a memoir about her time living at the Playboy Mansion with Hugh Hefner. I figured it would be a fascinating read, even though not strictly related to the type of memoir I was writing. When my library request came in, I ran to get it and devoured it in two days, staying up past my bedtime to finish it.

I found Down the Rabbit Hole: Curious Adventures and Cautionary Tales of a Former Playboy Bunny by Holly Madison to be fascinating and boring. Part of the reasons why it was fascinated me are inextricably linked to the reasons why I simultaneously found it boring until it became fascinating again, but for altogether entirely different reasons. Let me explain. As I have never been interested in either fame or being a Playboy bunny, I felt a deep interest in wanting to know what would make a person want those things that are foreign to my way of thinking. What would drive a person to want those things? I was hoping that I would find out, but I was disappointed.

What makes a story gripping is getting to know how a person’s life drives them to do what they do. Holly glosses over her childhood and fails to explain why her need for fame is so deep. She wants fame because she wants it, as if that is enough a compelling enough basis for a story. I don’t think it’s too much to ask of a writer, even when that writer is a former Playboy bunny. If you want me as a reader to care about your story, then I need to know how life has shaped you into needing fame to the degree that you do, especially when faced with adversity in the pursuit of that goal/need. I’m not sure that I got that. I think the phrase “lack of depth in the main character” applies here. As a result, I kept feeling bored even as I had to keep reading it. Even though it’s two days later, I am still annoyed by this. I also did a bit of eye rolling near the end when she exclaimed, more than once, about how they wanted “me!” for a show or a part. I mean, that’s all great for Holly as it is personally meaningful for her, but not necessarily for me, the reader.

Initially, the fascinating parts of the story are what you might expect in a tell-all biography and memoir: the he said, she said; the gossip; the name dropping; the partying; the inter-girlfriend fighting; the backstabbing; the inside peek to life at the Playboy Mansion as one of Hugh Hefner’s girlfriends; the clothing; the clubbing; the alliances made, then broken, and remade; the jockeying among girlfriends for status; the publicity and the fame. Even so, I kept yearning for more. Eventually, I do get it.

One piece of feedback I have heard as a writer is that your heroine must take action. She can’t just sit back and do nothing. Holly repeatedly describes herself as timid and meek and, throughout, seems to take a lot of verbal and emotional abuse from Hefner as well as the other girls, abuse that I am not sure I could have taken on the way to my dreams. In one jaw-dropping scene, Holly describes Hefner screams that at her that she is a cunt. She lets it slide, but my anger would have gotten the best of me. I could not imagine myself giving any other response, but to tell him “Fuck you, Hugh”, to pack my things, and to walk out the door. I have too much a sense of pride, a quick temper, and an arrogance of belief that I deserve to be treated well by others, just as I ought to treat others.

To me, the most exhilarating part (and the real story) of the memoir begins when Holly begins to say NO. She finally says NO to staying on as Hugh Hefner’s girlfriend; NO to attempts by others to capitalize on her fame as Hefner’s ex-girlfriend after she leaves the mansion; NO to letting her boyfriends’ attempts to control her; and NO to turning over Peepshow to another Playboy ex-girlfriend simply because of their shared past. She also says YES to being treated with respect, YES to a boyfriend who is shares her goals and dreams,  and YES to motherhood. Her daughter Rainbow is adorable.

If you’re a lover of entertainment and gossip and Hollywood, then you will likely find Holly Madison’s memoir less boring than I did, notwithstanding the writing itself, which is quite good. If you want a memoir where you need the heroine’s internal life and character to be a meaningful driving force in the unfolding of her life, then maybe you should put this one down and pick up another one.

Why I Read The Help by Kathryn Stockett

I tend to read a lot of YA fantasy and not a lot of mainstream books. Although I read a lot of fiction as a child, I found a fiction I read as an adult to be disappointing. As a result, I eschewed a lot of books that have been hawked by Oprah and/or made their way onto the New York Times bestsellers lists. I’d made a couple of attempts to read David Foster Wallace and Neal Stephens, but I simply couldn’t get into their writing style.

Now that I’m digging into writing as a field, I decided that I wanted to try and read more widely. Since I’m writing a memoir, I started with reading a few memoirs. I had bought two books earlier in the year by Larry Brooks, author of many books and owner of Storyfix.com, Story Physics and Story Engineering. I haven’t a degree in creative writing, and, after going back two times, I think I’m pretty much done with that. But I need to learn and I want to learn, so I’m trying to learn from those who have gone before.

After reading The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins (twice), I began to read Story Engineering. One section is dedicated to breaking down The Hunger Games; the other, to brekaing down The Help by Kathryn Stocktett. I decided to read The Help before I got to the section on it so that I could understand better why Brooks says it works. I had picked it up, along with The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare and Watership Down by Richard Adams. I knew I wanted to read The Help last so I could then pick up Story Engineering  and learn from it better.

Yesterday, I started reading The Help. I could not put it down. I mean, I did put it down so I could do things like eat dinner, write in my journal, and get ready for bed. I continued reading in bed until it was done. The pacing was phenomenal and continuous level of tension kept that story moving right along. The racial tensions were nail biting, as you know the consequences of breaking racial barriers and speaking against the bigoted norm, especially in the South, against the backdrop of the Civil Rights Era, the murder of NAACP Secretary Medgar Evars, and Martin Luther King Jr.’s March on Washington, were murderous. Those kinds of racial tensions continue to exist between the police and the African American communities todays, even if the social community has tampered down some of its racism. I will leave it to African Americans to determine how and to what degree it has gotten any better.

I particularly liked how, instead of a third person viewpoint, we it from the first person perspective of three characters: Aibileen and Minny, two of the African American help, and Eugenia “Skeeter” Phelan, a white writer who wants to write more than she want to appease the bigoted society circles through which she runs. Skeeter’s own nanny, Constantine, disappeared while she was in college, and no one will tell her why she’s gone. Each woman’s chapters have a unique voice. You feel kindly towards Aibileen, the peacemaker, riled up and rooting for Minny, the back-talker, and biting your nails over Skeeter’s to cross over the racial lines, meeting with Aibileen and Minny secretly in Minny’s kitchen. Skeeter risks her own life to meet and gather the maids’ stories, along with the stories of about 10 other maids who have worked for white families all their lives and the struggles that resulted. The root of Skeeter’s desire to write is not simply a desire to write, but a way to heal the hurt that has come with her maid’s disappearance, whom she loved and missed deeply. For me, this is the emotional pin that makes the white woman’s story believable. All the women put their lives at risk to get the stories onto paper, edited, and out the door in time to meet the New York editor’s pre-Christmas holiday deadline and so that maybe it will go into print and change the lives of them and everyone in Jackson, Mississippi.

I loved all these characters, and I highly recommend The Help by Kathryn Stockett to anyone who hasn’t read it yet. I may just go reread it again myself.

Jong and Winterson

This weekend, I finished Fear of Flying by Erica Jong and began Why Be Happy When You Can Be Normal? by Jeanette Winterson. I borrowed Jong’s book, but bought Winterson’s. How could I not with a title like that?

For some reason, I had imagined Jong’s book to be a work from a purely psychological perspective, much like Eric Fromm’s works (The Art of Loving, To Have or To Be). I was surprised that Jong’s Fear of Flying was a fiction novel. I flipped through the book: 336 pages. I wasn’t sure I even wanted to read it.

I have long since been disappointed with many fiction novels. I actively stopped reading contemporary ones, unless I had heard of their value. Even then, it was no guarantee I would like them. Take Oprah’s book club, for example. I picked up Wally Lamb’s She’s Come Undone after watching Oprah’s book club episode about it. Although I finished reading it, I could not identify in any way with the main character. I was able to understand the feelings, but her actions? No. I found Doris’ actions utterly disbelieving. By the end, I was angry and glad it was over. It’s a sad state of affairs for a book lover and avid reader to put down a book and think: I’m never going to get those hours of my life back. 

I have tried several times to read and enjoy books by David Foster Wallace, notably Infinite Jest and The Pale King. His rambling style exhausted me. I felt like I’d been lead around the backyard on a leash going in circles and circles, often hoping that this turn would bring me out of the rut and into a new direction. But Wallace just kept on going. I put both books down feeling dizzy and unfulfilled.

I read the cover to Jong’s book and thought, Why not?  I had to admit that I was curious to find out what new sex term Ms. Jong had coined in the year of my birth, and so I read. Its appearance at the beginning of the book had me thinking, This is it? I debated stopping a few times during the first half of the book. The lines are dense. Action everywhere. Verbs, adjectives, adverbs. Rich, detailed descriptions. So many of them! It’s a bad sign when I wonder if I want to spend the time reading the book. The main character thinks about sex. A lot. I probably would not have finished it if the story were written by a man about a man’s sexual thoughts for over 300 pages. I would probably have thought him vain and shallow and full of himself. And I did roll my eyes at Isadora. But I kept reading. After a while, I realized I was hooked, even when the thought provoking thoughts entertained by Isadora where thoughts I’d considered in my own 20’s. But those have been gone going on 15 years soon.

Then, half way through, I gasped! Rare are events in books not in the thriller, fantasy, or sci-fi genre that have me gasping. I was in for the long haul. Towards the end, I kind of got the moral that Jong was aiming for. I mean, I understood it but only so far as my understanding could go. But the main character switched just a little too quickly into understanding it all and moving past the rage of being used by another human being, even thought the using was mutually done. The novel was nearing its close. I get that. But it seemed like a cheap move. I guess that goes to show you where I am stuck in my own development. Now, if I only had picked this up 15 years ago, I might have felt differently about Jong’s book. Make no mistake, her writing is an excellent, engaging read.

No sooner had I put down Jong’s book than I picked up Jeanette Winterson’s. I picked up Why Be Happy When You Can Be Normal? when M and I dropped by the Three Lives & Co. bookstore in the West Village of NYC. I liked the title, and the carefree-looking child in her bathing suit with a beach ball on a beach hooked me. I was hopeful where I should not have been.

Winterson’s book is autobiographical. She was adopted by Pentecostal evangelical parents in a northern England town called Accrington. I am enjoying Winterson’s style, and with writing that covers deep topics in stark contrast to the seemingly all-sexually driven nature of Jong’s. Winterson reveals her true, deep self in many ways. Isadora talks about her body and desires and needs, but not so much the psychological, spiritual aspects of herself as a human being (a fear of independence from men notwithstanding). I am awed how any sixteen year old person could be strong as Winterson is, whereas I have long felt weak, needy, and unable to live without others, so much so that I have been willing to sacrifice my own thoughts, dreams, and desires to do so.

Not Winterson. I could not have lived out of a car and supported myself by work at sixteen. Winterson did. She was determined to go to Oxford and nowhere else but Oxford. I would have been driven crazy with anxiety and fear and depression over being rejected. I would not have been able to stand alone, not like that. Maybe I would have found the way. Maybe I didn’t because I had so much support that I knew it was there when I needed it. Winterson did not.

When Jeanette was discovered to be in a relationship with another teenager, she was outed in church, assaulted and beaten by her pastor, and her mother tried to get her to renounce her sexuality. At the end of one conversation where Jeannette tries to explain to her mother that she is happy being who she is, her mother asks, Why be happy when you can be normal? I almost burst out into tears. I had somehow imagined the question being asked in jest. But it was much, much worse when Jeanette’s mother asked her in all seriousness.

I’m not done reading yet, but I can tell you that Winterson’s book will stay on my shelves for years to come.