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Jacqueline Susann

  
 
Jackie Susann
04:26 / 06.03.02
From The Great Gatsby Thread:

quote: <fervently> How much do I love Valley of the Dolls, all of Jackie Susann... did you ever read Yargo? Someday I have to put that on stage (already did Valley, natch.)

quote: <equally fervently> Valley is one of my all-time faves. Do you know the story of the original Yargo-ite ending to 'Once Is Not Enough'? 'Once' is maybe my fave Susann novel, maybe we should start a new thread...

quote: Let's do... just the excuse I needed to reacquire the entire Susann canon, how I remember painstakingly collecting them from the library's paperback exchange as a teen. Geez, I wonder if they're still all at my parents' house... maybe I will pay a visit this weekend. (No, do *not* know about alternate Once ending...!)

<squealing with joy>

So speaking as someone who used to wear a Jackie Susann suit, let me just say I am crazy-excited to get to talk about her amazing work on Barbelith. I'm gonna start by contextualising a little...

Susann is generally dismissed as a hack - we could talk here about the way 'women's fiction' is constructed and downgraded - but her books were genuinely innovative in a whole bunch of ways. Gloria Steinem called Valley the first book for people who can't read, and despite her contemptuous tone she had a point; it's a key turning point in the popularisation of literature. In her way, she turned away from the bourgeois conventions of the novel, or at least the conventions of the literature of the time; she looked down on 'great books' and insisted she'd rather tell a story people would want to read than 'turn a nice phrase' (her disparaging description of James Joyce's work). She was also an innovative marketer, coming up with unprecedented schemes like personally delivering cake to the teamsters who stocked airport bookstores so they'd make sure her books were upfront. Her books have sympathetic queer characters who were decades ahead of their time (i.e., Jennifer from Valley, who is allegedly the subject of Hole's song, Jennifer's Body, although I've never heard the song to confirm this).

Valley of the Dolls is more fun than just about any other book I've ever read. The same goes for The Love Machine, and Once Is Not Enough, the latter espesh fascinating for Susann's take on the budding hippie subculture and forays into experimental writing (the orgy scene could have come straight out of Burroughs). Sadly, I haven't read any of her other books but I've read all of those a bunch of times. (I've got the others on my bookshelf, I'm about to take on Yargo). I've also read the bio, Lovely Me, by (I think) Barbara Seabrook and David Trinidad's book of poetry, Answer Song, which includes a section devoted to Valley (a fantastic poem called 'Things to do in Valley of the Dolls (the movie)' and two pieces of prose). I even enjoyed Isn't She Great, the biopic with Bette Midler.

I will come back later and post about the original Once ending, but I would love to hear about your production of Valley. Swoon. The movie isn't available in Australia, I want to see it so badly. Do other Barbelithers have opinions on Susann, pro or con?
 
 
The Return Of Rothkoid
04:26 / 06.03.02
Crunchy;

The video is available in the UK, and will play on Australian systems, iffn you're interested. Be warned, though - it's about £26. Info here...

(Edit: just found out that WH Smith do it for about £12 all up...)

Personally, I've never read any Susann, but your enthusiasm is infectious. I do have a copy of Valley Of The Dolls at home somewhere...

[ 06-03-2002: Message edited by: The Return Of Rothkoid ]
 
 
Persephone
11:41 / 06.03.02
YAYYY!!! Must take cats to vet this morning, so only time for a couple of quickies...

First, a warning before you spend lots of money on Valley the movie. It is dreadfully bad, very bowdlerized, and downright boring in stretches. It definitely has earned its place in the bad-movies-we-love canon, and it does contain more than a few high trash points that really *must be viewed* in a lifetime. See it definitely, buy it only maybe.

I don't even know where to begin, which of these to say...

Well, this: Jackie Susann books can be read just for sheer fun, and first of all that's not nothing. It's like the difference between raw sex appeal and refined beauty, and you know sex appeal doesn't befall everybody. That alone is worthy of analysis in the woman and her books.

But also, a Susann novel holds up remarkably well when judged by "literary" standards--cf. Danielle Steele, hope I'm not treading on toes here, but her stories --and worse, her characters-- hardly hold together.

Or you could take a biographical approach, but I'd save that after people have read the books once b/c everyone deserves to experience the books as they are at first blush, and subtext later.

Gotta get my books back, there's no way I'm going to do this thread and deny myself the joy of plopping into the tub with a stack of fat paperbacks...

[ 06-03-2002: Message edited by: Persephone ]
 
 
Goodness Gracious Meme
15:10 / 07.03.02
oh! god! yes!

no time now but *will* be back to elaborate.
 
 
The Natural Way
08:34 / 08.03.02
I have absolutely no opinions about Valleyness, 'cause I havnae read any of Susann's stuff. But you've made me want to. A lot. In fact, I'm gonna go buy some for the train journey down to Brighton this arvo (or however you fun Aussies spell it).

Thanks.

Might have something more interesting to say come Monday.

[ 08-03-2002: Message edited by: You and Runce ]
 
 
Jackie Susann
08:53 / 08.03.02
Ace! And yes, 'arvo' it is - I am surprised to hear that's an Aussie thing. Surely most people can't be bothered pronouncing three whole syllables when they want to say 'afternoon'?

Anyway, big massive
S
P
O
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E
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for Once Is Not Enough, which has maybe my fave ending of any book, ever. This is about its other ending, the one Susann wrote originally but was forced to change by her editors. So, if you've read it you remember January keeps seeing this strange guy who kind of looks like her father? Well, in the original ending after Mike and his partner (forgotten the name) die, the guy arrives (as he does, kind of, in the published version) and it turns out he's an alien from Yargo! He takes her back to his planet and there's a hundred pages or so of the insane scifi romance with her falling in love with her dream guy in outer space. Her editors insisted, probably correctly, that the public wouldn't go for that ending. But I would dearly love them to release a kind of director's cut thing (although I suspect much of that stuff is in Yargo, which wasn't published until after her death - I think - even though she wrote it earlier).

By the way, Jackie said when asked that January did, indeed, die at the end of the published version. I still think the jury is out and that she may have gone to Yargo. I find the end of that book completely fascinating, and have a Deleuzoguattarian interpretation that is incomprehensible to anyone but me, although relatively clear in my head. It's a deconstruction of the paralogism of the double blind - a common theme in Susann's works, which are relentlessly anti-oedipal. I tried to explain this in a class presentation once and in the middle of talking about the hilarious discussion of oral sex January has with her boss (where the latter recommends using semen as a facial cream, much to J's disgust), somebody said 'this is really interesting but... what are you talking about?' It was very deflating.
 
 
grant
13:53 / 08.03.02
In Star Trek IV, the one where they have to go back to 1980s San Francisco to bring whales into the future, Jackie Susann is name-dropped (along with Harold Robbins) as "one of the literary classics" of the period. It's in a scene where Kirk is trying to explain swearing to Spock.
Uh, and was just on TV last night.
 
 
Cherry Bomb
10:36 / 21.03.02
When we're talking "Dolls" movies, are we talking "Valley of the Dolls" or "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls" ?

Personally I think either one is worth £26. They are camp works of genius. ESPECIALLY "Beyond." Though I do love Patti Duke in the actual book adaptation.

I would be interested in hearing more about why you like Susann so much, Crunchy and others. I've read "The Valley of the Dolls" twice, and the last time I read it I spent an afternoon outlining the female stereotypes in the book. Plus "Dolls" has my favorite/most infuriating line in any book, right after
S
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Anne and Lyon Burke sleep with each other for the first time, I believe it's something like, "Though she didn't find the experience pleasurable, she reveled in the pleasure that she had given him."


I believe I had to put the book down for a think after I came accross this line.

Please people, present your pro "Dolls" treatises!
 
 
grant
13:20 / 21.03.02
There's an old copy of "Once is not Enough" on the shelf in the living room. I may have to give it a read right after Easter....
 
 
Jackie Susann
08:20 / 09.04.02
In relation to that line, Cherry, ALL the characters in JS books have monstrously fucked up sex lives and sexual values. Anne is a tragic character because the values she holds on to are utterly out of sync with her environment, and her attempts to play the good woman are, ultimately, completely self-destructive. It's not like Susann is plugging the idea that women should feel that way.

More generally, JS consistently undercuts 'romantic' sexual mythology - sex is routinely bad, bland, weird, and pathetic. This is just as true of the 'shocking' deviations she portrays - Jennifer and Maria's relationship is pretty unpleasant, but in the context of other relationships in the book it's a very positive portrayal of lesbianism. And surely you could make a case for Neely O'Hara as (post)feminist heroine - I mean, she's the only person ever to rip that restraining device at the asylum, she consistently attacks and ignores authority, she, I don't know what to say - you have to love Neely.

I am tired now but their may be a more extensive response later.
 
 
grant
18:23 / 09.04.02
I just started "Once Is Not Enough" last night. It's a real page-turner. Great grasp of dysfunctional characters.
 
 
Persephone
02:44 / 10.04.02
You know the trouble with doing a show is, you can't remember if the thing that you've heard is something real or something that you made up for the damn show.

But.

From what I've heard, JS had a very specific theory/strategy about writing popular fiction. She said that she wrote for "women who take the subway." Half of her strategy was to present the lives of the rich, famous, and glamorous, to put a little sparkle into the lives of secretaries whose only time for themselves was on the train to and from their drab jobs and their drab homes. Something that they would read as an escape, a fantasy... but with a moral ending, because the other half was to make sure that none of her characters would have happy endings; so that by book's end her readers would actually feel luckier about their lives than those rich, famous, glamorous characters. They're all flawed in a way that makes them unable to achieve ordinary happiness, including in the case of Anne Welles sexual pleasure. So I don't think, as D. P. Crunchy says, that she is presenting Anne as an example to be followed... if Anne could just let go, Lyon probably wouldn't have abandoned her in the first place. Although I actually applauded that she didn't just acquiese to his fantasy about the writerly life in New England. But in any case she's not rewarded for her wifely frigidness & I think that's a consideration.

To my mind, yes, JS writes tragedies almost in a Greek sense & that makes me think that as a storyteller & an entertainer, she figured out how to tap into some pretty ancient psychology about what we read stories for.
 
 
Goodness Gracious Meme
09:33 / 10.04.02
Susann's handling of the various women and their experiences with sex is one of the things I love most about Valley of the Dolls... It's the antithesis of what 'sex and shopping' novels (which is one of the genres you could slot J.S's stuff into) do with women and sexuality.

The Love Machine is also great for this, you have this 'take any woman he wants' man, cutting his swathe throught beautiful women who aren't sure whether he notices they're there or not but for some reason he blanks out when he sleeps with certain women. J.S. hits him where it hurts, as a character... and what develops is what makes it interesting.

Grant, yeah, she's really good on disfunction, formative experience and how it shapes adult traits/expectations.

To me her stuff is all about expectations, how this are created, and in her novels, how they're almost always frustrated, and often destructive...

And yeah, she writes stuff that keys into emotions and motivations that chime with alot of people, in language and structures that are accessible and addictive...
 
 
Persephone
12:16 / 10.04.02
I remember being very hostile to The Love Machine because it was so patently ridiculous that there would ever be a fourth television network...
 
 
Cherry Bomb
14:08 / 10.04.02
Yay - this was worth the wait!

Crunchy, I hear what you're saying about Neely as a strong character. But another way to read her character is as the traditional ball-buster; the woman who demasculates men. Every man she gets involved with either is or becomes "effeminate" in some way. Her first husband lives in the shadow of her career and is a bit of a hausfrau because of it. Her second man (husband? can't remember) is either bi or gay. Even Lyon Burke, who's like the prototypical "male" in the book takes a back seat to Neely.

As far as her being a post feminist heroine, when is she ever looking out for anyone besides herself? I think she screws over all the women who've ever befriended her (if memory serves, it's been about a year and a half since I last read "Dolls"). What kind of heroine is that?

Now, I respect all y'all's opinions, and I'm fully aware that I simply may not have read Dolls on as many levels as some of you have. I'd be very interested to hear more critiques. And I definitely will be pickig up at least one of her books again to give another glance thru.
 
 
grant
16:38 / 19.04.02
Reached the end of "Once is Never Enough" last night.

Sort of Dynasty meets Picnic At Hanging Rock, isn't it.

Initial response: she writes the most evocative drug scenes I've ever read. I've never read a better acid trip than the sangria one.

And she knows people, that's for sure.

So are there any reads on what happens at the end? Is that a UFO or a flashlight? Or the FACE of GOD?
 
 
Persephone
20:39 / 19.04.02
Hey grant, scroll up to see Crunchy's post about the Once ending --the one that has a SPOILERS stripe down the middle.

You might like to follow that Once shot with a Yargo chaser...
 
 
grant
18:55 / 22.04.02
Well, my source is pressing me to hit the one about her dog first.

Yargo. Aliens from Yargo.

That fuckin' rules.
 
  
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