Okay, I know it’s close to Mother’s Day but there’s something about Fathers and Daughters. God knows, I adored mine. He was funny, smart and bullheaded, just the kind of man to indulge a mischievous daughter who didn’t want to obey her mom. Yes sir, I think my father was brilliant but a lot of girls feel that way about their dads.. Adela Rogers St. Johns certainly did and she captured that father-daughter spark in her biography, Final Verdict. Of course, when she said her Old Man was brilliant the rest of the world agreed. Earl Rogers may still be the greatest trial attorney that ever entered a courtroom. It’s funny but no one remembers Earl Rogers these days. Mention Johnny Cochran or F. Lee Bailey or Gerry Spence and legal heads will nod. Talk about Bill Kunstler or Clarence Darrow and some history mavens will admit they had skill but they point out these guys lost as many cases as they won. Talk about the man who Perry Mason was based on and you’ll hear “Perry who??” Well, such is the nature of fame. Still, in the first half of the twentieth century, if you were charged with murder…
Adolescent friendships are unique: The close friends we make as children almost become part of our family, watched over equally by supervising parents, teased or ignored by resident siblings. Glad to be included, they become part of the whole and accept conditions without thought or judgement. On the other hand, our adult friends find us as self-sufficient beings, with loosened family ties. Only the friends of our adolescent years perceive the context of our family’s past and the adults we will become. More observant than young children, they witness the stresses in these families they know and, being teenagers, they sometimes judge, although they rarely blab about what they learn. Self-conscious and plagued by hormones, most teenagers prefer to keep secrets. These are the undercurrent themes of Bittersweet, Miranda Beverly-Whittemore’s new novel about identity and lies. Mabel Dagmar is her narrator, a working-class girl dependent on scholarships for her college education and the opposite of her roommate Genevra Winslow, the assured descendent of a wealthy, Eastern family. To Mabel, the Winslows exist in rarefied existence of Ivy League schools, named summer cottages and the kind of confidence that only comes from generations of independent wealth and she joins Ginevra for…
We all know the plays I’m talking about, right? The characters are usually family or very close friends and they enter the play facing hardship or strife. Conflicts may be aired but the True Meaning of Christmas finally gets through and everyone remembers the Reason for the Season and makes up in time to unwrap presents. Cue the Figgy Pudding and Curtain, we’re finished. Well, those don’t do it for me. I watched “Father Knows Best” episodes when I was a kid and those happy families on the stage only added to my confusion and neurosis. I’ll take the dysfunctional Plantagenet family in “The Lion in Winter” for Christmas instead. They show me I’m not insane. James Goldman’s”The Lion in Winter” is a fictional take on the real life Plantagenet family and their problems in 1183. The patriarch, Henry had been King of England nearly thirty years by then and time was catching up to him. It was time to reflect on his accomplishments, (he reigns over England and controls a good bit of France) think about retirement and (to quote Lear) ” shake all cares and business from our age, conferring them on younger strengths.” At least that’s…