I Hate Everyone, Starting With Me (Joan Rivers)

In I Hate Everyone, Joan Rivers dishes on all the things she hates. With her usual shocking honesty, political incorrectness and multiple swearwords. This book is a long list of Joan’s grave irritations, which include old people, dating and Anne Frank.

Here's an excerpt:

“For those of you thinking, Geez, Joan seems a little angry, you’re half right. I am angry. I’m also fed up. I’m fed up with the morons and losers and cretins who are cluttering up the planet. But being fed up and angry is better than being depressed. Psychologists tell us that depression is just anger turned inward, but I say, why waste your time? It is what it is and quite frankly I’d rather be angry than depressed. Why? Because antidepressants can cause bloating—and I hate bloating! (I need to go back and add bloating to the list of things I hate. Is there anything worse than not being able to fit into a size two Valentino? I think not. Talk about depressing.)”

What I’ve just read is the tamest thing in the book. If you’re easily offended, read something else. But remember what one reviewer said, ‘This is an awful book that’s so offensive I ought to throw it out the window. But I can't, ‘cos I can't stop laughing.’

To go back a bit, Joan Rivers is an award-winning entertainment person – actress, talk show host, comedian. She’s also that woman on the red carpets and on E!’s Fashion Police with the frightening plastic surgery. She’s 79 and looks like a 69-year-old who’s had frightening plastic surgery. But she’s really, really funny…

On TV. Not so much in writing, where every paragraph has a punchline. Don’t get me wrong: I love Joan. But this book should perhaps have been a DVD.

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My July book reviews on 101.9 ChaiFM

Howzit.

So today I was interviewed by the lovely Niki Seberini on the ChaiFM Books Show.

My review choices were eclectic: one kiddie book, one non-fiction moms' handbook, one behind-the-scenes, one memoir and one crime fiction novel.

And of the five, I loved two and liked three.

Here they come...

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Full Service: My Adventures in Hollywood (Scotty Bowers)

Disclaimer: I have developed, recently, quite a passion for salacious non-fiction; among them, the memoirs of porn stars, pick-up artists, weirdo rock stars and dysfunctional politicians. This review refers to the book that started it all.

This is the juicy, filthy memoir of a Hollywood ‘fixer’. Scotty Bowers, now 88, was a Marine paratrooper, petrol pump attendant and bartender who carved a bizarre niche for himself during Hollywood’s Golden Age.

For six decades he claims to have arranged or participated in the sordid trysts of some of the biggest names: Katharine Hepburn, Vivien Leigh, Edith Piaf, Spencer Tracy, Cary Grant, Tennessee Williams, Rita Hayworth, Bob Hope, J Edgar Hoover and even the Duke of Windsor and ‘Wally’.

Although fascinating, Full Service isn’t an easy book to read, for several reasons.

Chief among them is the reader’s growing skepticism about the book's veracity, especially because almost so many of the celebs Bowers mentions are long dead and unable to refute his accounts of their peccadilloes. (Interestingly, Gore Vidal, who is apparently an old friend, vouches for Bowers’ authenticity on the cover.)

The prose is also what we call ‘purple’: so extravagant or flowery as to draw attention to itself. Purple prose is sexually suggestive beyond the requirements of its context.

This could be why critics have been skeptical. “This is offensive gibberish,” said The Daily Mail. “If you take it as a novel, however, rather than non-fiction, it is weirdly impressive.” Yes, there’s another way to look at the book, which reads like a historical document – the Kinsey report, if you will, on the sex lives of the rich and famous. (Bowers claims to have helped Alfred Kinsey research his famous book.)

The only endearing aspect of Full Service is the author’s astonishing tolerance for the weirdness of human passions. Nothing shocks him. He will describe some outrageous preference; then say how charming the person was who held it.

If you're looking for a morality tale where Bowers eventually realises the error of his ways, this isn’t it (Jenna Jameson’s How to Make Love like a Porn Star is – read that instead). But if you're looking for an unvarnished account of the shenanigans of 1950s Hollywood – and you like a good trashy read – Full Service will enthrall you.

www.tiffanymarkman.co.za 

Mennonite in a Little Black Dress (Rhoda Janzen)

I love books about cults. The more polygamous marriages, multiple children, bizarre religious practices and outlandish views, the better. I also love novels set in the Amish community, the Mormon community and the Quaker community because, as a Jew, I find insights into little-known or oft-misunderstood religions fascinating.

It’s strange, then, that in my literary travels, I’d never come across Mennonites.

They’re a devout but very friendly and unusually tolerant (of non-Mennonites, that is) sect of Christian Anabaptist denomination, with their origins in German and Dutch-speaking central Europe. It’s from the Mennonites that the Amish broke away in the 17th century because the former were ‘too liberal’. I mean, have you ever?

But this little write-up makes them sound very boring, when they’re quite divine. The book in question, Rhoda Janzen’s Mennonite in a Little Black Dress, reveals the eccentricities, naiveties and family foibles with which the author is faced when she moves back home after having been abandoned by her suddenly-gay husband.

Her people welcome her back with open arms and weird advice, like “Why not date your first cousin? He owns a tractor!” This, from Janzen’s mother. Her father is a theologian and doyen of the community, so Janzen grew up in a traditional household. Most things were banned, she explains, like "Drinking, dancing, smoking, sex outside of marriage, sex inside of marriage, gambling, playing cards, foul language like the word 'fool', Ouija boards, slumber parties, divorce, Prada…”

Written with self-effacing, delicious humour – and tackling universal issues like faith, love and family, Mennonite is both moving and absolutely hilarious. I adored it. 

www.tiffanymarkman.co.za

My May radio reviews on 101.9 ChaiFM

So May was my Non-Fiction Period. Like Picasso's Blue.

But smaller.

For some reason, I couldn't seem to pick up anything that wasn't a memoir, a behind-the-scenes or a biography.

And I loved every minute of it.

So my third book review show on ChaiFM was dedicated to three non-fiction delights:

• Mennonite in a Little Black Dress by Rhoda Janzen
• How to Get Quoted in the Media by Damaria Seine
• Full Service: My Adventures in Hollywood by Scotty Bowers, Lionel Friedberg

Having lapped up non-fiction-ish May, I made a list of some biographical want-to-reads:

• Growing Up Amish (Ira Wagler)
• Jackie, Ethel, Joan: Women of Camelot (J Randy Taraborrelli)
• The Long Hard Road Out of Hell (Marilyn Manson)
• The Game (Neil Strauss): read it, loved it, couldn't stop thinking about it

Look out for a coming summary of June's reviews, and listen in on Tuesdays from 11-11.30am.

www.tiffanymarkman.co.za