Mae West

After reading the books it seemed like a plan to watch the films, especially after I found a very reasonably priced box set in HMV. Reading about Mae West here was an education in itself. She would be years ahead of her time now never mind 80 years ago. 

I've watched a couple of the films - She Done Him Wrong and Belle of the Nineties which has a lot in common with 'The Constant Sinner' though in a considerably cleaned up way. Mae was 38 when she made her Hollywood debut, the collection I have will take her well into her 40's - she looks damn good but she also looks mature, she's not skinny, and her clothes cover her from neck to floor - though figure hugging hardly begins to describe it, and everybody is wild about her.

I can't imagine an actress being allowed to pull that off today but in Mae's films the men are falling over themselves to get to her - and rightly so. She's glamorous, intelligent, ruthless, independent, knows what she wants, and is exceptionally confidant, nobody's taking advantage of her (when someone tries it in Belle of the Nineties one ends up dead another in prison). Again - you just don't get heroines like that these days. 

It looks like there are a few wet afternoons and cold dark nights around the corner, time could be much worse spent than in watching these films or reading her books. 

She Done Him Wrong - Mae West

Mae West must have been a hell of a woman to know if 'She Done Him Wrong' and 'The Constant Sinner'  are anything to judge by - the heroines in both are physically dead ringers for Mae, and I'm guessing share some of the same principles as well as her gift for memorable one liners. I still have her autobiography 'Goodness Had Nothing To Do With It' to read but I suspect it will only confirm my suspicions.

Of the two novels I preferred 'The Constant Sinner' to read, or at least I remember it being better paced, but 'She Done Him Wrong' is a shade less disturbing. Babe Gordon in 'The Constant Sinner' had to much experience and to few morals to be an easy heroine to care for, Diamond Lil is a shade less troublesome. She reads as a little older than Babe and not quite as damaged but she's still "a beautiful short course to Hell". 

Lil's ex lover, Chick Clark, has found himself in jail due in part to stealing diamonds to keep her happy. Lil not being a girl to let the grass grow under her feet has skipped town and taken up with rising politician and white slave trader Gus Jordan. She doesn't know about the sideline in selling women into the brothels of Rio and wouldn't be happy if she knew that's where the money that buys her diamonds was coming from. Lil's funny like that. Gus's partner in crime Rita has arrived from Rio with a handsome young bull fighter in tow - Jaurez - who's making eyes at Lil, and Rita who didn't like her much in the first place really isn't happy about it. Neither is Gus - but Lil likes a bit of variety. Meanwhile Chick Clark has escaped from prison and is after Lil, intent on revenge and Gus is being watched by a mysterious policeman known only as 'The Hawk', oh and Lil has spotted a handsome salvation army Captain and she's never wanted a man more... 

What's really interesting about 'She Done Him Wrong' though is Mae's attitude to sex. Published as a book in 1932, 'She Done Him Wrong' is based on Mae's 1927 play of the same name, it's not particularly graphic but it's very frank. Lil enjoys sex but her passion is diamonds, they're her career and her only real love. She likes the men she sleeps with, but she's never been in love. She's smart, tough, and quite capable of taking care of herself. She has no particular problem with prostitution believing that a smart woman will make the best of herself and her opportunities such as they are, and in an age when the most respectable career option for a woman was still marriage she makes a sly point. Is it more honest to have fun with a man whilst having an eye on the bottom line or to marry him for bottom line? 

Mae's underlining of the point that Lil doesn't love the men she takes to bed but loves what she does there still feels a little bit unusual for a woman to be admitting to - Lil is a liberated woman by any standards and one who commands respect. Even at the end of the book when it looks like she might get her love story Mae   has Lil ask herself  "Is this love? Really love? Or something just for the winter season?" which is admirably honest as is the last line - the rather splendid 'I always knew you could be had'. Inner goddesses be damned, I want to discover my inner Diamond Lil, she'd give me better advice.

Ten books from the last twelve months.

Books of the year lists are a bit of a departure for me but I thought I’d give it a go, indeed I meant to do it for the first of December but didn’t get organised in time – which is why lists like this generally are a departure for me. However it’s the season to look back on things and having looked back at books it feels like it’s been useful – and slightly surprising. I’ve not perhaps read as much as I hoped I might this year but that’s par for the course (damn having to work for a living and its constant getting in the way of more entertaining things) but although there have been a lot of good books – this is after all the year that I finished Trollope’s Barchester chronicles, read my first Walter Scott, and worked through Mrs Oliphant’s Carlingford series – I don’t feel that it’s been a vintage year. It’s not a struggle to come up with ten books I’d happily recommend, anything I’ve written about I’ve been enthusiastic about, but it’s been quite hard to identify the ones that really stood out – the books which might make it to my fire shelf.

Somehow though I managed, and so in no particular order here they are – all read between December 1^st 2010 and December 1^st 2011. First up is Matthew Sweet’s ‘West End Front’ from a couple of weeks back. The more I think about it the more time I have for this book. It’s a lot of the dirtier side of war which we do well to remember, it’s also a lot of stories that deserve to be told, thoroughly entertaining, and at times desperately moving. All good.

Another recent read was Constance Maud’s ‘No Surrender’ from Persephone books. Not the best novel ever written but possibly a contender for the most passionately heartfelt. It has an enthusiasm for a cause that’s infectious. It’s also a book that makes you question how much things have changed, and how much has stayed the same. The answers aren’t entirely encouraging for anyone of a feminist persuasion and again these are things which should be thought about otherwise nothing will ever change for the better.

Mark Girouard’s ‘Enthusiasms’ also makes the list, partly because it’s a lovely thing in itself, partly because it’s entertaining, but mostly because it’s a showcase for the virtues of good scholarship – whatever they’re being applied to.

A.S Byatt’s ‘Ragnarok’ was easily my most anticipated title of the year, it didn’t disappoint. I read it months ago but there are still bits that run through my head. I think Byatt is at her best when she writes short stories and novellas; she’s pretty bloody good when she writes epic doorstops as well but I find her shorter books perfectly polished jewels – or something like that anyway. She’s just very, very, good.

Preparation/anticipation for ‘Ragnarok’ featured Kevin Crossley-Holland’s ‘The Penguin Book Of Norse Myths’ which I approached in the manner of a chore. It wasn’t, and good intentions to read far more saga’s feature for next year.

 John O’Hara’s ‘A Rage to Live’ was a great big messy compelling wonderful book – I love vintage for reprinting him (and so many others). He’s a slight departure from my normal middle brow women – rather less tea and a nice sit down with a scone, more dirty martinis and a few too many of them.   

Sticking with sleazy was Mae West’s ‘The Constant Sinner’ – not just an eye opener. I have more Mae West to read which is something to look forward to. She’s everything I hoped in the way of one liners and wisecracks but underneath that there’s a veracity that makes the heroine Babe Gordon stick with you.

I’m a big fan of Victorian literature and if I’d read Lady Audley this year she would be a shoe in, but I didn’t and I also really love Mrs Oliphant so I’m going with ‘Phoebe Junior’ the last of the Carlingford chronicles. I think it stands well alone, has a cracking good plot, and rips of Trollope with style. That’s virtually the perfect Victorian novel in my world.

The last two books on my list are both a little bit Noir. Vera Caspary’s ‘Bedelia’ which had a twist I didn’t see coming and which turned something run of the mill into something extraordinary. Dorothy B. Hughes ‘In a Lonely Place’ was even darker – and nothing like the film which is good, but an entirely different story. Dorothy B. Hughes was a Persephone find and since then I’ve come across a few of her other titles. Persephone’s ‘The Expendable Man’ is so far the best; ‘In A Lonely Place’ is a very close second.

Now I need to go and get a head start on next years list.  

The Constant Sinner – Mae West

The last of my pulp trio, ‘The Constant Sinner’ is an odd beast of a book. The Blonde has a couple of Mae West’s on her shelf and I’ve been coveting them for a long time so was very pleased when I found this (and slightly smug when we realised she didn’t have it already – less smug on finding her copy of ‘Goodness Had Nothing To Do With It’ is hard to find under £30, the Blonde wines this round).

All I really know about Mae West are the famous quotes (which reminds me that I really want a new dictionary of quotations) so I learned something from the introduction. Born in 1893 Mae made a career as a writer and actress, was arrested under obscenity laws for her play ‘Sex’, and I’m guessing was a stranger to inhibitions. I’m not unshockable, but I’ve reached an age and level of experience (thankfully some of its anecdotal) when it’s not so easy to do but ‘The Constant Sinner’ provoked the kind of response normally reserved for the price of good gin (outrageous I tell you).

The constant sinner in question is Babe Gordon, the first time we meet her she’s leaning against the crumbling wall of the Marathon Athletic Club in Harlem and West introduces her thus:

"Babe was eighteen and a prizefighter’s tart, picking up her living on their hard earned winnings. Her acquaintances numbered trollops, murderers, bootleggers and gambling-den keepers."

 Babe is a beauty in the Mae West mould, she likes men, and men love her but it would seem she’s a very dangerous woman to know. She and her friend Cokey Jenny watch the fight, Babe always with an eye to who her next pick up will be, a Frenchman is first up and she wonders if he can provide a bit of novelty for her, but he loses and she loses interest settling instead on the night’s champion.

The poor sap is soon chewed up and spat out. He marries Babe in a haze of infatuation but when the hard pace she sets ruins him as a fighter she moves on, initially to dealing coke, morphine and heroine in a five and ten store, and then onto life as the mistress of Harlem gangster Money Johnson for whom a white woman is the last status symbol. When Money goes down for three months Babe moves on again this time to a social register millionaire which is where her past starts to catch up with her. Babe who “would not have known what a moral was if it could be made to dance naked in front of her” has had no compunction in lying and cheating her way up, the men she can handle but the women want blood and are set to get it.

It’s an exciting read but it’s troubling too. At 18 Babe has far too much experience, there’s no back story, no suggestion that the reader should feel any sympathy for her, and very little in her actions that allow for empathy. Babe loves sex, loves men, loves high living and indeed any sensual experience but beneath that there’s nothing. Not just a lack of morals but a lack of affection or loyalty or foresight, Babe lives entirely in the moment and has to be the archetypal tart without a heart in search of sensation. Seventy or more years after it was written there’s still something deeply shocking about her attitudes – maybe it’s how contemporary they sound.