Autobiographical elements in 'Dining Late with Claude La Badarian'

The autobiographical parallels between writer-director William Monahan and his fictional character Claude La Badarian in the fiction serial Dining Late with Claude La Badarian are many. Claude La Badarian is a middle-aged writer who often muses upon his complicated upbringing, has published a first novel and is working on a second novel, smokes a lot, and has been unsuccessful as a magazine professional. The same could have been said of William Monahan back in 2001 when the fiction serial was running. But Claude La Badarian makes a curious remark in letter 9, when he is confronted with a German translation of William Monahan's first novel Light House: A Trifle, that suggests that Claude La Badarian and William Monahan are really entirely different people despite the many similarities in their biographies. To make Claude La Badarian the despicable human being that he is and different from Mr. Monahan, Mr. Monahan has assigned Claude La Badarian the opinions of a juvenile sociopath. At least, that's what I've concluded from the following passage by Claude La Badarian from letter 9:

Had I seen this "exciting work of art in the Amerikanischen"? Well yes, Herr Doktor, you cunt, I have seen this masterpiece in the "Amerikanischen," and in fact tried to torpedo it on sight in one of the less-influential trades, through assigning to the auctorial voice the opinions of the protagonist, a juvenile sociopath. A base trick, yet an effective one, and unusually useful in a literary culture where it is utterly unknown (especially, alas, at the moment of composition) that author and protagonist are, or can be, different people.

Claude La Badarian is much more than a shell of autobiographical elements taken from Mr. Monahan's life. It is Claude La Badarian's abusive opinions, regularly spouted in his letters, that make him the character that he is. As the fictional character Claude La Badarian explains in the above passage, it is through the employ of a "base trick" in "one of the less-influential trades" (read: The Aristocrat or New York Press) that he purports to have succeeded in creating a fictional character for his works that is entirely different from himself. Although this "base trick" is discussed as having been employed by Claude La Badarian, I believe that it is Mr. Monahan (as the creator of Claude La Badarian) who has applied this "base trick" while creating Dining Late with Claude La Badarian. Though Claude La Badarian talks about creating a new sort of fictional character in American fiction, I suggest that it is actually Mr. Monahan who believes he has created a new sort of fictional character in Claude La Badarian. Conflating the author William Monahan with the fictional character Claude La Badarian is easy to do for any reader familiar with Mr. Monahan's autobiography. While not particularly in my first reading of Dining Late with Claude La Badarian, but more so my subsequent readings, I often did conflate the two. Certain aspects of Claude La Badarian do echo Mr. Monahan. But upon closer inspection I realized that something more was going on.

When Claude La Badarian writes about having tried "to torpedo [Mr. Monahan's novel Light House: A Trifle] on sight in one of the less-influential trades, through assigning to the auctorial voice the opinions of the protagonist, a juvenile sociopath," Claude La Badarian is in a sense talking metafictionally about how Mr. Monahan went about creating his character Claude La Badarian. In reality, it is Mr. Monahan who has assigned the opinions of a juvenile sociopath to his auctorial voice, which happens to be Claude La Badarian in the fiction serial Dining Late with Claude La Badarian. Claude La Badarian's personal history bears a striking resemblance to Mr. Monahan's. The "less-influential trade" that Claude La Badarian refers to in his letter is, most probably, either the Aristocrat magazine or the New York Press, which can be considered essentially the same publication in the context of Dining Late with Claude La Badarian. William Monahan is often personally attacked in Dining Late with Claude La Badarian, though ultimately his fictional self has his revenge on Claude La Badarian.

Although it is very clear that Mr. Monahan purposely gave Claude La Badarian a personal history similar to his own, it is less clear what his reason for doing this was. In the passages below I show that identical autobiographical details appear in both Mr. Monahan's essays and in the letters written by the character Claude La Badarian. The comparisons are remarkable! Afterward, I will explain the reason for which I think William Monahan created the Claude La Badarian character in the way he did. As you will see below, it's almost as if Mr. Monahan went through his non-fiction work with the specific intention of lifting key autobiographical passages for the purposes of applying them to Dining Late with Claude La Badarian. Here are three examples in which Mr. Monahan's essays match up with his fiction serial (note: the Variety essay came nearly six years after the publication of Dining Late, meaning Mr. Monahan may continue to shed light on the autobiographical elements in Dining Late with future essays):

Example 1: Mr. Monahan's maternal grandfather

I have written in a previous blog entry about the similarities between Mr. Monahan's maternal grandfather and Claude La Badarian's grandfather. Please see "William Monahan put his maternal grandfather into fiction" for further details.

Example 2: Mr. Monahan's childhood

Claude La Badarian writes in letter 12:

[T]he term "American" is a fiction for simpletons, foreigners and federals: the USA is a lot of countries unnaturally related. Claude is a member of the New England civilization. Poor Claude, literate little boy, fond of drawing, diffidence, solitude, beans on toast, "r" unknown in the La Badarian household, never saw himself on tv–not on Gilligan, not in cowboy films–until he saw David Hemmings in the cheapo early-60s seaside musical comedy Be My Guest.

Mr. Monahan writes in a 2007 Variety essay:

Growing up in Boston and environs in the '60s and '70s was very strange, because we, perhaps the primary American civilization, had no representation in art, anywhere. When I was a kid I used to watch television and you'd see an "American" family living in an "American" house having "American" problems, and I'd think, right, but where do they put their books? Why are they talking openly rather than metaphorically? On top of that, why don't they realize that what bothers them doesn't matter? Why isn't it raining and why is no one actually funny? Why do they think that a doctor has social status? Why doesn't anyone die?

Television and most films, granted, are under no obligation to be a mirror to nature -- Sherwood Schwartz was not required to be Flaubert -- but I literally didn't see anyone like myself, or anything like my own environment or condition or family, until I started to read books such as "The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner" and see movies set in the north of England, which were usually about reassuringly paradoxical people who made terrible, negative decisions.

Both Claude La Badarian and William Monahan had problems "seeing themselves" in TV and film, until they came across a certain type of British film. They also both emphasize that the term "American" is a vague one. They both mention Sherwood Schwartz's work as an example of the kind of TV in which they didn't "see themselves" (Sherwood Schwartz was the creator of Gilligan's Island), and they both point to films set in the north of England as examples of films in which they did "see themselves" (the seaside musical comedy Be My Guest was filmed in the north of England). Both Claude La Badarian and William Monahan had the same experience with TV and film while growing up in New England.

Example 3: Mr. Monahan's philosophies

Claude La Badarian writes in letter 4:

La Badarian, pill-crazed late-night epistolarian—omnia transformans sese in miracula rerum—operating on the Rimbaudian principle that the "I" is someone else, enhanced by insomnia, financial peril, and extensive media connections, is definitely not something we need to resurrect

Mr. Monahan writes in a 2001 Bookforum essay:

When the present writer was a very horrible young man, transfixed by Duchamp and the Sex Pistols, unable to forget Rimbaud's "The 'I' is somebody else" and Iago's artistically metasignificant "I am not what I am," he typed the following on a piece of paper: Write like Hamlet mad: Risk everything.

So both Claude La Badarian and Mr. Monahan are adherents to the Rimbaudian principle. Mr. Monahan is obviously basing his character Claude La Badarian on his own autobiography.

Yet, despite the fact that Claude La Badarian has the grandfather of William Monahan, the childhood of William Monahan, and some of the same philosophies as William Monahan, he is really best defined by his crude opinions which seem to be crafted by Mr. Monahan to be those of a juvenile sociopath. Claude La Badarian slowly takes on the character of a scumbag as he shares his opinions about women, colleagues, and so on. Similar opinions have not been expressed by William Monahan.

Interestingly, in the final letter from Claude La Badarian, a fictional Mr. Monahan is reported to be "having the usual problems with people he hadn’t thought about in a million years confusing themselves hopefully with completely fictional creations." A slight digression, so let's get back to the main thrust of my argument:

Throughout the fiction serial, Claude La Badarian is always ranting about how predictable American literature is, emphasizing how a lot of American fiction seems to be memoirs converted into fiction. This particular excerpt from letter 4 is interesting because it shows that Mr. Monahan is keenly aware of how ordinary it is for an author to include autobiographical elements in his/her fiction: 

After one realises that one’s Memoir is a stack of prevarications, it is possible to convert the mass of text into a perfectly serviceable coming-of-age novel, but alas, Henry, what you’re left with then is the ordinary First Novel (a pitfall Claude La Badarian tried to avoid by calling his first novel Second Novel), in which a person resembling yourself in every detail ends up doing roughly the same shit you did but doing it (precisely as in Memoir) better than in the original. At this point in literature this obscenity (which is to say all of American Literature) must be avoided at all costs. 

Mr. Monahan confronts this tendency among writers of American literature to include autobiographical elements in their work by doing something new with Dining Late with Claude La Badarian. Although he seems to be doing the same as most authors do with their fiction -- using their autobiography to create fictional characters -- he goes a step further by throwing in a twist. Mr. Monahan gives Claude La Badarian the opinions of a juvenile sociopath. These opinions are what make Claude La Badarian who he is. As sprinkled with autobiographical prose from William Monahan's essays as Claude La Badarian's letters may be, Claude La Badarian is not really anything like William Monahan. He quickly comes into his own, as the fictional character Claude La Badarian.

William Monahan put his maternal grandfather into fiction

Writer-director William Monahan grew up in Gloucester, Massachusetts, where, in his own words, he "had a whole vibrant network of relations in the best marine landscape on the earth."¹ His maternal grandparents resided above Gloucester Harbor, in an old sea captain's house. Mr. Monahan occasionally mentions his maternal grandfather in his essays, and as I pieced together a mini biography of his maternal grandfather, Harold L. Armstrong, I realized that Mr. Monahan had also put him into his fiction, as the grandfather of the protagonist Claude La Badarian of the fiction serial Dining Late with Claude La Badarian. If you don't know about William Monahan's fiction serial Dining Late with Claude La Badarian, then get on it. I've written up a web page at Squidoo about it. Dining Late with Claude La Badarian is written in epistolary form, meaning as a series of letters, and was published in 2001 over a period of thirteen weeks in the Manhattan weekly New York Press. In it, the protagonist Claude La Badarian has a grandfather nicknamed The Senator who shares much of the same personal history as Mr. Monahan's maternal grandfather, Harold L. Armstrong.

Back when James Michael Curley was Governor of Massachusetts during the period 1935-37, Mr. Monahan's maternal grandfather Harold L. Armstrong was appointed⁸ clerk magistrate of the Eastern Essex District Court in Gloucester, Massachusetts, a position he held for 45 years.² Mr. Monahan has described his maternal grandfather as a "low-level pol,"³ "Anglo-Saxon and Protestant,"⁴ and "influential."⁵ He has a photograph of his maternal grandparents "at a table at some fundraising function with Robert F. Kennedy."⁹ At some point during his lifetime, Mr. Armstrong had been an exalted ruler of the Gloucester Lodge of Elks and a commander of the Veterans of Foreign War post in Gloucester. He was also a charter member of the Gloucester Council of the Knights of Columbus and a member of the American Legion in Rockport, Massachusetts.² Born on January 21st, 1898, he died of pancreatic cancer⁴ on April 21, 1981. He left behind his second wife, Mary G. Armstrong, whom he had been married to for 49 years and with whom he had a daughter named Constance Armstrong, the mother of Mr. Monahan.

As a member of the American Legion in Rockport, Massachusetts, Mr. Armstrong took a particular liking to the American Legion Post in Paris, as recollected by Mr. Monahan. When his grandfather was dying of pancreatic cancer, he had longed to return to France and "have a steak and mashed potatoes at the American Legion Post in Paris, which ... was his favorite place to eat in Paris."⁴ Back then, when the American Legion Post in Paris (also known as Paris Post No. 1) was located in Pershing Hall, it had a restaurant, which is no longer the case since Paris Post No. 1 moved to a different building. What is very interesting is that Claude La Badarian's grandfather also enjoyed eating at the American Legion Paris Post No. 1, as mentioned in the twelfth letter of Dining Late with Claude La Badarian, "Je Suis Un Genius, Baby."

"The Senator, desperate for two eggs, used to order "dix oeuvres" (which sounds like half of what his grandson serves in Café La Badarian) in the morning and finally gave up and took his meals over at American Legion Post Number One. "

There are other similarities, too. Mr. Monahan has fond childhood memories of trips he went on with his grandfather, just as Claude La Badarian does. In a 2001 Hartford Courant interview, Mr. Monahan fondly mentions that his "grandfather took him to Europe" when he was a kid.¹⁰ Mr. Monahan reminisces, in his essay "Dixville Notch", about visiting Benson's Wild Animal Farm with his grandfather, a long-running private zoo in New Hampshire that's now defunct.⁶ Then there is La Badarian who recalls trips to New York with his own grandfather the Senator, in Letter 10 (L10), and seems to be recalling firsthand the eating habits of his grandfather while visiting France, in Letter 12 (L12), which strongly suggests that Young La Badarian's grandfather also took him to Europe. While not exactly shocking that a writer's fiction contains autobiographical elements, Mr. Monahan's intention in making the grandfather of the fictional character Claude La Badarian similar to his own grandfather is actually much more interesting and deserves further consideration, but will have to be the subject of a future blog entry as it requires taking a much broader look at Dining Late with Claude La Badarian. But to continue with the subject of The Senator, he appears in a total of three letters in Dining Late with Claude La Badarian: "Claude and the Little People" (L7), "Home Again" (L10), and "Je Suis Un Genius, Baby" (L12). Claude La Badarian almost always refers to his grandfather as The Senator, an apt nickname for a man who is politically ambitious, which, based on the three letters The Senator appears in, is hard to determine, however, if Mr. Monahan were making a further nod toward his maternal grandfather then this makes much more sense. His maternal grandfather was politically ambitious, as evidenced by his social status in and around Gloucester, Massachusetts, which is what a nickname like The Senator is supposed to imply.

Very recently, Mr. Monahan's maternal grandmother, Mary G. Armstrong, passed away.⁷ Mrs. Armstrong lived to be a centenarian. It's not yet possible to draw any concrete connection between the grandmother of Claude La Badarian (whom he calls Gram) and Mr. Monahan's maternal grandmother, because little is known about her biography, but were more known, perhaps a resemblance would arise between Mr. Monahan's maternal grandmother and Claude La Badarian's grandmother. Claude La Badarian's grandmother had a troubled time after The Senator died: the Medford Badarians put her in a home and robbed her of her finances. At any rate, as far as similarities between real people and fictional characters in Dining Late with Claude La Badarian go, what I have found is that the most striking similarities lie between Mr. Monahan's grandfather and Claude La Badarian's grandfather.

Yet, despite the striking similarities, some of the description of Claude La Badarian's grandfather has nothing to do with Mr. Monahan's maternal grandfather, such as the fact that Claude La Badarian's grandfather died after being struck by lightning, while Mr. Armstrong died of pancreatic cancer. However, they did both die around the same year and they did both reside in Massachusetts. Mr. Armstrong died on April 21, 1981, while Claude La Badarian's grandfather seems to have died some time in between September 1981 and August 1982 if the publication date, August 1st 2001, of the letter "Claude and the Little People" is any indication and considering what is written in the letter:

"I do not know if I reported to you, Henry, that my grandfather, the Senator, is dead. He is. It happened 19 years ago. He was struck by lightning and incinerated while guiding his gasoline-powered Scamp between the eighth and ninth holes at some sinister, scrubby links on what people call The Island."

I leave you with Mr. Monahan's description of his maternal grandfather from his essay "The Irish Question."⁴

"My father coughed blood, was diagnosed, and died within months, but his affairs were in order and had been in order every single day of his adult life, owing precisely to his being what my mother called Irish and morbid, or being what my father called prepared. As an opposite case, when my maternal grandfather (Protestant and Anglo-Saxon) died, his affairs were not in order, even though he died in his eighties, and took two lucid and relatively painless years to die of pancreatic cancer.

Even when he couldn't walk and was finally hospitalized, my grandfather was making luminous plans to get the hell out of there, and go to Paris. He liked to speak French to French people, especially because his French was fifty times worse than Winston Churchill's reduction-of-Harfleur assaults on the language. He wasn't dying: he might have been slightly up against it, obviously, what with being eighty-three and having terminal cancer, but what he was going to do, instead of dying, was to go and have a steak and mashed potatoes at the American Legion Post in Paris, which (it wasn't my turn to watch him: no one could) was his favorite place to eat in Paris. He liked to walk around France trying to use U.S. currency, and when it was refused, he'd say, well, they'd sure as hell taken it in World War One. This was his hobby.

He didn't really think he was going to have a chance to needle French people again: but he liked to think it: so he believed, for the hell of it, that that was what was going to happen, and he didn't want to jinx himself by writing a will. He lay there obviously dying, and thinking simultaneously that he was going to be landing at Orly on Monday. It was a different intellectual set-up: it wasn't Irish. He did ask inspecifically to be cremated and have his ashes scattered at sea, if - that is, if - he died: my grandmother did the first, but then impulsively buried the urn where she could get at him with trowels and flowers." 

Take-away question: Did William Monahan also fictionalize his maternal grandmother in the fiction serial Dining Late with Claude La Badarian?


Sources:

1) William Monahan. "Greek Revival: Why You Need a Summer House", New York Press, vol. 10, no. 21 (May 21–27, 1997), pp. 64–65.
2)  Obituary: "Harold L. Armstrong, Magistrate in Gloucester for 45 Years; At 83", 1981-04-22, The Boston Globe.
3) William Monahan. "STRAW DOGS: Fairytale in New Hampshire", New York Press, vol. 9, no. 7 (February 14–20, 1996), p. 20.
4) William Monahan. "The Irish Question", Old Crow Review, no. 6, December 1995, FkB Press, 5 pages.
5) William Monahan. Stoned in Amherst", New York Press, vol. 13, no. 2 (January 12–18, 2000), pp. 1 (Sec 1), 8–9 (Sec 2).
6) William Monahan. "Up New Hampshire: Dark Thoughts in Dixville Notch", New York Press, vol. 11, no. 52 (December 30, 1998–January 5, 1999), pp. 1, 16–17.
7) Obituary: "Mary G. (Robinson) Armstrong", 2010-03-12, The Boston Globe.
8) William Monahan. "Guns and H.H. Rose's Biography, Please", New York Press, vol. 8, no. 48 (November 29–December 5, 1995), pp. 22, 26–27. QUOTE: "My grandfather, a Curley appointee to a Massachusetts court, used to be deluged with gifts of whiskey and cigars."
9) William Monahan. "The Angel Factory: Making Martyrs & Monsters", New York Press, vol. 8, no. 3 (January 18–24, 1995), pp. 1, 16–17.
10) Darcy Cosper (2001-10-02). "Writer's 'trifle' Aims Higher", The Hartford Courant.


See also Bibliography of works by William Monahan