Woman Triumphant?
Jul. 22nd, 2014 11:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mtvesselFeb 2014
Myra Breckinridge & Myron - Gore Vidal - Abacus, 1993
* * *
"I am Myra Breckinridge whom no man will ever possess." It's a good first line and it tells you much about the character who utters it. She is clearly strong-willed and self-confident, believes in the battle of the sexes and is utterly determined to win it. There is also a certain lordliness of tone, perhaps even arrogance, which suggests that she may not be entirely likeable. A thought that is worth hanging on to as the novel proceeds.
Initially, however, you are likely to be cheering Myra on as she powers into Buck Loner's academy for aspiring actors in Hollywood in - probably - the late 1960s. Myra's late husband Myron was Loner's nephew and she claims that fifty percent of the business has been left to her in his will. Loner takes her on to teach deportment while he checks her bona fides. As becomes apparent from his stream of consciousness diary recordings, Loner is sly, homophobic and sexist, so Myra's machinations are a source of considerable satisfaction. Perhaps rather more unease-making are her plans to get into the pants of Rusty Gordowski, a handsome but dumb hunk in her class, despite his devotion to the pretty Mary-Ann Pringle. An unease that grows as it becomes apparent that Myra is a distinctly unreliable narrator.
There is a lot to like in this book - the depictions of Hollywood and the encyclopaedic references to 30s and 40s films are fun, and Myra's iconoclastic and witty narration is never less than entertaining. However, there are several erotic scenes, and it is here, unfortunately, that the book has dated. Suffice to say that there are issues of consent that may have been acceptable in a comic novel in the 1970s but which read a lot darker now (especially now). To be fair, a satirical point is being made and the perpetrator gets an unusual come-uppance, but it leaves a sour taste.
Myron is in some ways a better book but suffers from being science fiction written by a non-SF writer. As its name implies, it features Myra's husband Myron, an ordinary guy who while watching an old film called Siren of Babylon on television is sucked back in time to a studio lot in 1948 where it is being made. There he encounters a community of people who have likewise been entrapped - and also his nemesis, Myra Breckinridge, who has a mad plan to change cinema history and curb the world population.
The setting is intriguingly surreal - while the main reality is that of the studio lot, there is a huge television screen hanging in the sky, and getting too close to the action gets you caught up in transitions such as FADE TO BLACK where you are unceremoniously teleported from one scene to the next as if the making of the film were actually the film itself - but unfortunately the only logic is dream logic, with the whole thing becoming increasingly incoherent as Vidal adds more and more rules to make his story work. This is regrettable, as the puzzle of how Myron is going to escape is an important part of the plot and the reader cannot really engage with it.
The characters are largely unmemorable, with the only standout being an unfortunately stereotypical gay hairdresser called Maude. This means that the chief entertainment is a continuation of the battle of the sexes represented in Myron and Myra, but Myra is by now so unlikeable that it is very one-sided, with the reader sympathising with Myron and his conservative Republican values rather more than I suspect Vidal intended.
I didn't dislike these books, but nor do I think they are classics. Vidal is a capable writer and I hope that some of his others are better.
Myra Breckinridge & Myron - Gore Vidal - Abacus, 1993
* * *
"I am Myra Breckinridge whom no man will ever possess." It's a good first line and it tells you much about the character who utters it. She is clearly strong-willed and self-confident, believes in the battle of the sexes and is utterly determined to win it. There is also a certain lordliness of tone, perhaps even arrogance, which suggests that she may not be entirely likeable. A thought that is worth hanging on to as the novel proceeds.
Initially, however, you are likely to be cheering Myra on as she powers into Buck Loner's academy for aspiring actors in Hollywood in - probably - the late 1960s. Myra's late husband Myron was Loner's nephew and she claims that fifty percent of the business has been left to her in his will. Loner takes her on to teach deportment while he checks her bona fides. As becomes apparent from his stream of consciousness diary recordings, Loner is sly, homophobic and sexist, so Myra's machinations are a source of considerable satisfaction. Perhaps rather more unease-making are her plans to get into the pants of Rusty Gordowski, a handsome but dumb hunk in her class, despite his devotion to the pretty Mary-Ann Pringle. An unease that grows as it becomes apparent that Myra is a distinctly unreliable narrator.
There is a lot to like in this book - the depictions of Hollywood and the encyclopaedic references to 30s and 40s films are fun, and Myra's iconoclastic and witty narration is never less than entertaining. However, there are several erotic scenes, and it is here, unfortunately, that the book has dated. Suffice to say that there are issues of consent that may have been acceptable in a comic novel in the 1970s but which read a lot darker now (especially now). To be fair, a satirical point is being made and the perpetrator gets an unusual come-uppance, but it leaves a sour taste.
Myron is in some ways a better book but suffers from being science fiction written by a non-SF writer. As its name implies, it features Myra's husband Myron, an ordinary guy who while watching an old film called Siren of Babylon on television is sucked back in time to a studio lot in 1948 where it is being made. There he encounters a community of people who have likewise been entrapped - and also his nemesis, Myra Breckinridge, who has a mad plan to change cinema history and curb the world population.
The setting is intriguingly surreal - while the main reality is that of the studio lot, there is a huge television screen hanging in the sky, and getting too close to the action gets you caught up in transitions such as FADE TO BLACK where you are unceremoniously teleported from one scene to the next as if the making of the film were actually the film itself - but unfortunately the only logic is dream logic, with the whole thing becoming increasingly incoherent as Vidal adds more and more rules to make his story work. This is regrettable, as the puzzle of how Myron is going to escape is an important part of the plot and the reader cannot really engage with it.
The characters are largely unmemorable, with the only standout being an unfortunately stereotypical gay hairdresser called Maude. This means that the chief entertainment is a continuation of the battle of the sexes represented in Myron and Myra, but Myra is by now so unlikeable that it is very one-sided, with the reader sympathising with Myron and his conservative Republican values rather more than I suspect Vidal intended.
I didn't dislike these books, but nor do I think they are classics. Vidal is a capable writer and I hope that some of his others are better.