Alice probably was a sucky mother, but if I was gonna write an essay on how bad she was, I’d best make sure it contained some real Jerry Springer juice. “Mum went away to Greece one summer and left me with some relatives” does not meet the criteria, sorry. If she were the daughter of a non-celeb, this story would not have gotten published because no one cares about mildly neglected rich kids.
I wonder how attentive her father was growing up. It didn’t seem like she had much to say about him in half of the article that I read.
From what I remember of her book (which admittedly I didn’t read all of), he was the usual custodial parent with Alice having liberal visitations. He had other children with his second wife, who brought her own children to the marriage as well, and her complaints are that he was basically career consumed. She seems to have liked her stepmother a lot though.
I haven’t got the slightest use for Alice Walker, but I have even less use for the Gary Crosby/Christina Crawford style tell-all books.
I’m quite prepared to believe that Bing Crosby, Joan Crawford and Alice Walker were lousy parents, but is there any reason I needed to know that? Would “White Christmas” be a better record if Bing had been a more loving Dad? Would “Mildred Pierce” be any less hilarious (unintentionally) if Joan Crawford had been a doting Mom? Does “The Color Purple” suck any harder now that I know Alice Walker is a selfish jerk?
In the posthumously released Kurt Vonnegut book on the shelves now his son Mark (a pediatrician who wrote Eden Express 30+ years ago) writes a preface in which he makes it clear that Kurt was NOT an easy father. There was no lack of love on either side (his or the kids) but he was basically a hard man to live with due to his moods and eccentricities and depression, etc… However, he said this as a son who clearly loved his difficult dad and didn’t mean to bash him, just to explain a couple of things about his writing- I don’t think there’ll be a Kurtie Dearest on the market anytime soon.
Rebecca is clearly writing for revenge and notoriety first and all else second. I haven’t read Christopher Rice’s books and have no idea what his relationship is with Anne Rice, but I do know that at least he makes the Anne Rice character a work of fiction so there’s plausible deniability et al, and he can play with facts without being libelous.
Now the novel Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood is how to bash a mother through fiction. It’s highly autobiographical I understand, but it’s also hysterically funny and extremely moving. That’s dysfunction and kvetching as literature, so it can be done. Rebecca just doesn’t.
Well, if they were really awful parents, child molesters or torturing the with lit cigarette butts awful, you might not want to patronize them with your money.
Count me in the “oh boo-hoo” crowd. So her mom was a bit absent and emotionally distant. Millions of fathers do the same thing and nobody says a word. And as for her specific complaints…you really thing it caused you to screw every boy in town because your mom took a vacation? You really think you are the only person in the world whose mom worked long hours? Come on lady, you are 38 years old. Maybe if your mom had been a mentally ill transient who sold you into prostitution I’d see why this is still bothering you so much. But at this point even if you have some genuine reasons to hate your mom, you should have already wrote her off and moved on.
Anyway, if it wasn’t that she was distant, it’d be that she was emotionally smothering. There comes a point when we realize our parents are human beings, with an emotional life that includes their children but does not consist of their children. Most of us grow to see our parents in a new light, and can turn that into a deeper relationship- one shared between two adults. Other write whiney newspaper articles.
Then again, perhaps this all is being to hard on her. Humans naturally tend to have close family lives, and perhaps much of the emotional troubles across the country are due to distant parents. It does sound to me as if Daughter Dearest never got over that lack of bond, and lashing out is her way of dealing with it.
I keep thinking of a fragment of poem from way, way back. It started off; “The lantern burns long in the attic,”
Then it went on for a couple of stanzas about bitter children writing about their parents and finished up; “For some little tyke is learning to write
and he’ll write a little book about you.”
Anyone who can cite the original will have my heartfelt gratitude.
Maybe, but to paraphrase Oliver Wendell Holmes, “Your right to catharsis ends where that stabbing pain borne of pretentious douchebaggery and media whoritude that is currently assaulting the area behind my left eye begins.”
Or, to quote that great American philosophizer Happy Scrappy Hero Pup, “Life’s hard. Get a helmet.”
Reading the article the thing that struck me the most about it was the sense that Rebecca Walker shares full measure of the certainty that she accuses her mother of having: She seems just as certain that motherhood is the one true way to happiness for women as she reports her mother as being certain of the opposite.
Which really is not much of a variation at all between them: just a flip in polarity.
Wow, she doesn’t suffer from too much self-doubt, does she? How interesting to know how bad I (and others) should feel for never having wanted children. Ooh, yes, Rebecca has all the answers. OR, alternatively, Rebecca has a book to sell and bad-mouthing her famous mother will help with that. It’s quite a nasty and sick-making article, really.
Heh, I’m wondering how young Tenzin’s autobiog is going to look in 18 years time or so.
It’s possible. OTOH, as Jon Voight learned with Angelina Jolie, humiliation in a public venue is not usually the most direct or successful route to reconciliation.
I think the reason people feel it might be noteworthy is because of the image these people portrayed… as great, wholesome parents. Or at least, that’s the impression I got from the first two anyway.
As to Alice’s daughter, I concur with Otaku. Same coin, different side.
