 |
 |
|
Jesse Monteagudo's Book Nook
by Lorna Luft The Myth of the Modern Homosexual: Queer History and the Search for Cultural Unity by Rictor Norton
Me and My Shadows: A Family Memoir by Lorna Luft; Pocket Books; 417 pages; $25.00. 
Lorna Luft (born 1952) is the daughter of the late Judy
Garland and her third husband, producer Sid Luft. Though herself an actor
and singer of note, Luft lives in the shadows of her legendary mother and
her older half-sister, Liza Minnelli. Even Me and My Shadows, Luft's
long-awaited autobiography, is as much about Judy and Liza as it is about
the author.
Me and My Shadows was written in response to the barrage of books written about Garland and her family, books which, in Luft's view, "ended up either glorifying or vilifying a group of people [the authors] really knew little about. . . . I don't want either to glorify or to vilify my family; I want to tell a much truer, much more interesting story about a group of people who grew up in the public eye and got through it all the best way they could." Needless to say, Lorna's family wasn't too happy about the whole project; and even Sid Luft - still alive at 81 - was upset by his daughter's candor.
The inevitable divorce of Garland and Luft left their children at the mercy of a woman who could no longer be treated like a rational human being. Though Liza had the wit to marry Peter Allen (gay or not) her half-sister, still in her early teens, was left holding the bag: "With the staff gone and Mama unable to function much of the time, I was now in charge. . . . I was thirteen or fourteen, but it was up to me to take care of Mama and Joey." Though "Mama" never faltered in her love for her children, her increasing neuroses and addictions incapacitated her as an entertainer and as a woman. Lorna believes that her mother was insane for the last few years of her life. Lorna herself had a nervous break-down, caused no doubt by her mother's antics, and so was not around when Garland had her fatal overdose (1969). Luft never forgave her mother's last husband, Mickey Deans, for her mother's death: "What a putz. He makes Kato Kaelin look like a Man of the Year." It should be pointed out that Lorna's opinion of her mother remains high, in spite of it all, and in Me and My Shadows she praises her mother's sensitivity, love and kindness, not to mention her legendary talents.
All three of Judy Garland's children inherited her addictive
personality, and Lorna Luft was no exception. What could have been a
brilliant career was sidetracked in the seventies by cocaine and other
recreational drugs and by love affairs with the likes of Burt Reynolds--did
every woman in the 70's have an affair with Reynolds?--and Barry Manilow
(!!!). She even had the mandatory, drug-ridden, rock and roll marriage with
Jake Hooker of the Arrows (who?) "One trait of members of addictive families
is we never recognize our own addictions. We may recognize everyone else's,
but never our own." To say the least.
One addiction that Luft noticed was her sister's. During the Studio 54 years, "it was ... clear that Liza's drug use was out of control," writes her sister, with some understatement. Later Luft conspired with Minnelli's secretary, Roni Agress, to commit Liza to the Betty Ford Center. (Lorna herself later spent some time at the Center.) Though Liza survived that mishap, her sister believes that "she is not yet willing to take responsibility for her life or to leave behind the hangers-on who encourage and enable her self-destructive behavior. She has made a choice I cannot support, so I have chosen to live my life without her for now." Needless to say, the two half-sisters haven't spoken to each other in years. Though Me and My Shadows tears Liza Minnelli to shreds, it is surprisingly kind towards Joey Luft, whose life was as chaotic as his sisters'. All Lorna tells us is that Joey never married (mmm!) and that, "like me, he has struggled with addiction." This is very noble but, then, dirt about Joey Luft doesn't sell books the way dirt about Liza Minnelli does. Lorna herself has found some degree of happiness in recovery, and with a new husband and two children. Me and My Shadows, with all its faults, is part of this recovery. The Myth of the Modern Homosexual: Queer History and the Search for Cultural Unity by Rictor Norton; Cassell; 310 pages; $19.95.
In the preface to The Myth of the Modern Homosexual , noted historian Rictor Norton
describes his "ideal of the queer historian":
"to liberate gay pride by liberating queer history and queer culture from that secret closet to which heterosexual history has consigned them; to celebrate the uniqueness and diversity of gay peoples rather than presenting them as just plain folk; [and] to challenge the notion that the features of queer culture throughout history are little more than symptoms of pathological oppression, internalized guilt, repression or sublimation." Professor Norton has remained loyal to this idea during his 20-plus years as a "queer historian." In this, his latest book, Norton counters the social constructionist notion that "the homosexual", as we know him, is a modern invention. On the contrary, "a homosexual category existed many centuries before the nineteenth century"; certainly before the "watershed" year of 1869, when the word "homosexual" was coined. "Assertions that the modern homosexual and modern gay subculture are significantly different from the past are based primarily upon ignorance of that past." "Queer historians," Norton continues, "need to widen the definition of 'homosexuality' so as to encompass queer culture rather than just queer sex and the laws against it, and then to engage in the task of verifying the authentic features of queer culture. " After all, Norton adds, "queer history is essentially the history of queer culture." With its diverse and wonderful samples from the gay past, The Myth of the Modern Homosexual does just that. American Library Association Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Book Awards Announced: The Hours, by Michael Cunningham (Farrar, Straus, Giroux) was named the winner of the American Library Association's Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Book Award for Literature. Stagestruck: Theater, AIDS, and the Marketing of Gay America by Sarah Schulman (Duke University Press) was named the winner of the Nonfiction Award. The Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Book Awards are sponsored by the Social Responsibilities Round Table (SRRT) Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Task Force of the American Library Association. |
© 1997-99 BEI