William Monahan is a "has been" at this point. I state that with some hope that he'll prove me wrong. Sadly, that's not going to happen. I personally feel that screenwriter William Monahan has already done his best work and everything going forward will be derivative. That's if there is anything going forward.
Time to look back on his career, starting with his epistolary series, Dining Late with Claude La Badarian. I recently had to go through the Internet's Wayback Machine to find these stories again. I'm proud of my work in bringing Dining Late back to life, restoring the portraits of Claude La Badarian that appeared in the original New York Press run, and my blog entries decrypting the autobiographical elements in it. With New York Press being terminally ill, the only way to reliably read the Dining Late series now is through the Wayback Machine or a visit to the New York Public Library.
Take a gander at my restoration of Dining Late with Claude La Badarian and write up your own comments on it.
Showing posts with label Dining Late with Claude La Badarian. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dining Late with Claude La Badarian. Show all posts
Saturday, March 24, 2012
Thursday, July 22, 2010
The Collected Electronic Correspondences of William Monahan
While imagining, as a thought experiment, what could be contained in a volume titled "The Collected Electronic Correspondences of William Monahan," I realized that I could be in it. I've had my share of correspondences with filmmaker William Monahan. At first probing with various fake email accounts, Mr. Monahan eventually began using an @mac.com email address ("wjmonahan@mac.com") to size me up. Ours has been a savage correspondence, with Mr. Monahan acting as a ruthless mentor through edit summaries on the English Wikipedia and as a paranoid celebrity through various email accounts. Originally, I antagonized Mr. Monahan by simply being a terrible writer who was working on his Wikipedia article. He'd correct my writing on Wiki. After he got a hold of my email address, silliness took over. Through perseverance I like to think that I've progressed from someone who had below average reading comprehension into a mediocre scholar. Certainly Mr. Monahan had legitimate issues to raise about some of my bad writing on the English Wikipedia. These days, I do my work at Squidoo.
I'm fascinated by the subject of collecting emails from authors. Are such collections of emails going to become the new Collected Letters? Any kind of electronic correspondence could possibly be collected. Facebook and Twitter are currently big with celebrities. The Library of Congress recently announced that it will be archiving all tweets, by everyone. Twitter is easy, since the information is public, but emails are private.
Although all these electronic correspondences need to be saved, it's hard to say exactly how the next generation of scholars will get a hold of all these Important Emails. An extreme method would be to hire your hackers Joe Wardriver, Sue Cracker, or Thomas Nation to break into the email accounts of authors for the purposes of dumping the lot onto the web. There have been instances when excerpts of Mr. Monahan's emails have been published, but this can hardly be relied upon. NYPress founder and former publisher Russ Smith has excerpted, in his Mugger column, some of his correspondences with Mr. Monahan regarding the possibility of a Hillary Clinton assignment. I believe, however, that a more practical method of acquiring Important Emails might be email donations from persons who have had lengthy exchanges with authors like Mr. Monahan. I, myself, happen to have been blessed with several emails from Mr. Monahan, from his MobileMe account, as well as from his various fake email accounts. To give this idea of making donations of Important Emails Exchanged With Authors some weight, I've decided to release a few of the more interesting emails that Mr. Monahan and I have exchanged.
Before I do that, however, I would just like to emphasize the importance of Mr. Monahan's electronic correspondences. In prose, Mr. Monahan is incredibly informative. His densely packed sentences are of equally high quality in both his journalism and his interviews. Mr. Monahan doesn't do conventional interviews, as Juan Morales wrote in his Los Angeles Times article. It seems his preferred format is the email interview and for good reason. Compare his recent Screen Daily interview with the 2008 video interview conducted by Evelyn Vaccaro below:
There's a stark difference in the quality of these two interviews, though both are equally informative. In the Screen Daily interview he's eloquent, but in the video interview above he comes off as a blubbering fool constantly wondering if, you know, we, you know, know what he's talking about. It's unlikely that Mr. Monahan will be submitting himself to much more of that. So when it comes to Mr. Monahan, we scholars will find the most interesting insights in his emails, forum posts, and so on.
There may be a wealth of forum posts out there by Mr. Monahan, somewhere in the deep Web. Vanity Fair columnist James Wolcott remembers Mr. Monahan participating in discussions on an Internet chat board, which might have been Echo BBS since that's where TV critic Aaron Barnhart encountered Mr. Monahan in those days. I haven't yet probed the archives of Echo BBS. You have to register. There's research to be done there.
But to get back to the subject of Important Emails, it was on August 7th, 2009 that Mr. Monahan decided to switch from using various fake email accounts for his correspondences with me to using an @mac.com email address with his real name: "wjmonahan@mac.com". What is telling is that by 2009, you could no longer get yourself an @mac.com email address. The .Mac service was re-branded as MobileMe in 2008, so from then on Apple was handing out @me.com email addresses. It is highly unlikely that the "wjmonahan@mac.com" email address was created a year in advance for future use as a fake email account.
At any rate, it was a Friday night when I received my first email from Mr. Monahan's @mac.com email address. According to the email header of this first email, Mr. Monahan was in the City of London. He had been filming London Boulevard. It was a Saturday morning for him.
Received: from Unknown-00-23-6c-94-2f-4b.home ([81.154.188.105])
by asmtp014.mac.com
From: WILLIAM MONAHAN
To: [my email address]
Subject:
Date: Sat, 08 Aug 2009 04:20:42 +0100
X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.935.3)
You're fucked. Have a nice day.
END OF EMAIL
My response was immediate:
To: WILLIAM MONAHAN
Subject: Re:
Date: Fri, 7 Aug 2009 20:56:56 -0700 (PDT)
Sir, you have dreamed of having an antagonist like myself. Light House: A Trifle, Dining Late with Claude La Badarian, and even that BlackBook Magazine interview you did with Mr. Thewlis, indicate a deep obsession with the kind of character I have been.
How much do you know about me?
END OF EMAIL
Mr. Monahan's response was equally immediate:
To: [my email address]
Subject: Re: Re:
Date: Sat, 08 Aug 2009 05:36:24 +0100
X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.935.3)
I know most recently, Moriarty, that you're the kind of fool who responds to a showdown by instantly cutting his own throat legally with a single English sentence. You're all done, William.
END OF EMAIL
My response was:
To: WILLIAM MONAHAN
Subject: Re: Re:
Date: Fri, 7 Aug 2009 21:42:51 -0700 (PDT)
You mean your email from an hour ago was the beginning of a showdown?
What could I have won if the "showdown" had gone better for me?
END OF EMAIL
Mr. Monahan's response was:
Received: from Unknown-00-23-6c-94-2f-4b.home ([81.154.188.105])
by asmtp019.mac.com
From: WILLIAM MONAHAN
To: [my email address]
Subject: Re: Re: Re:
Date: Sat, 08 Aug 2009 05:47:00 +0100
X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.935.3)
No, it was the end of one. You crapped it at first fire and admitted that you were an insane stalker, you retard.
END OF EMAIL
Yet, off-and-on we went for months. I tried to steer the conversations toward questions I had about his works, but I was never even remotely successful. We simply had a very weird back-and-forth, which maybe said everything. For the record, I consider myself to be a Monahan scholar rather than his "insane stalker." The character that I had mentioned having been was that of an amateur desperately seeking recognition, an appreciative clapping sound for my efforts.
I'm fascinated by the subject of collecting emails from authors. Are such collections of emails going to become the new Collected Letters? Any kind of electronic correspondence could possibly be collected. Facebook and Twitter are currently big with celebrities. The Library of Congress recently announced that it will be archiving all tweets, by everyone. Twitter is easy, since the information is public, but emails are private.
Although all these electronic correspondences need to be saved, it's hard to say exactly how the next generation of scholars will get a hold of all these Important Emails. An extreme method would be to hire your hackers Joe Wardriver, Sue Cracker, or Thomas Nation to break into the email accounts of authors for the purposes of dumping the lot onto the web. There have been instances when excerpts of Mr. Monahan's emails have been published, but this can hardly be relied upon. NYPress founder and former publisher Russ Smith has excerpted, in his Mugger column, some of his correspondences with Mr. Monahan regarding the possibility of a Hillary Clinton assignment. I believe, however, that a more practical method of acquiring Important Emails might be email donations from persons who have had lengthy exchanges with authors like Mr. Monahan. I, myself, happen to have been blessed with several emails from Mr. Monahan, from his MobileMe account, as well as from his various fake email accounts. To give this idea of making donations of Important Emails Exchanged With Authors some weight, I've decided to release a few of the more interesting emails that Mr. Monahan and I have exchanged.
Before I do that, however, I would just like to emphasize the importance of Mr. Monahan's electronic correspondences. In prose, Mr. Monahan is incredibly informative. His densely packed sentences are of equally high quality in both his journalism and his interviews. Mr. Monahan doesn't do conventional interviews, as Juan Morales wrote in his Los Angeles Times article. It seems his preferred format is the email interview and for good reason. Compare his recent Screen Daily interview with the 2008 video interview conducted by Evelyn Vaccaro below:
There's a stark difference in the quality of these two interviews, though both are equally informative. In the Screen Daily interview he's eloquent, but in the video interview above he comes off as a blubbering fool constantly wondering if, you know, we, you know, know what he's talking about. It's unlikely that Mr. Monahan will be submitting himself to much more of that. So when it comes to Mr. Monahan, we scholars will find the most interesting insights in his emails, forum posts, and so on.
There may be a wealth of forum posts out there by Mr. Monahan, somewhere in the deep Web. Vanity Fair columnist James Wolcott remembers Mr. Monahan participating in discussions on an Internet chat board, which might have been Echo BBS since that's where TV critic Aaron Barnhart encountered Mr. Monahan in those days. I haven't yet probed the archives of Echo BBS. You have to register. There's research to be done there.
But to get back to the subject of Important Emails, it was on August 7th, 2009 that Mr. Monahan decided to switch from using various fake email accounts for his correspondences with me to using an @mac.com email address with his real name: "wjmonahan@mac.com". What is telling is that by 2009, you could no longer get yourself an @mac.com email address. The .Mac service was re-branded as MobileMe in 2008, so from then on Apple was handing out @me.com email addresses. It is highly unlikely that the "wjmonahan@mac.com" email address was created a year in advance for future use as a fake email account.
At any rate, it was a Friday night when I received my first email from Mr. Monahan's @mac.com email address. According to the email header of this first email, Mr. Monahan was in the City of London. He had been filming London Boulevard. It was a Saturday morning for him.
Received: from Unknown-00-23-6c-94-2f-4b.home ([81.154.188.105])
by asmtp014.mac.com
From: WILLIAM MONAHAN
To: [my email address]
Subject:
Date: Sat, 08 Aug 2009 04:20:42 +0100
X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.935.3)
You're fucked. Have a nice day.
END OF EMAIL
My response was immediate:
To: WILLIAM MONAHAN
Subject: Re:
Date: Fri, 7 Aug 2009 20:56:56 -0700 (PDT)
Sir, you have dreamed of having an antagonist like myself. Light House: A Trifle, Dining Late with Claude La Badarian, and even that BlackBook Magazine interview you did with Mr. Thewlis, indicate a deep obsession with the kind of character I have been.
How much do you know about me?
END OF EMAIL
Mr. Monahan's response was equally immediate:
Received: from Unknown-00-23-6c-94-2f-4b.home ([81.154.188.105])
by asmtp011.mac.com
From: WILLIAM MONAHAN To: [my email address]
Subject: Re: Re:
Date: Sat, 08 Aug 2009 05:36:24 +0100
X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.935.3)
I know most recently, Moriarty, that you're the kind of fool who responds to a showdown by instantly cutting his own throat legally with a single English sentence. You're all done, William.
END OF EMAIL
My response was:
To: WILLIAM MONAHAN
Subject: Re: Re:
Date: Fri, 7 Aug 2009 21:42:51 -0700 (PDT)
You mean your email from an hour ago was the beginning of a showdown?
What could I have won if the "showdown" had gone better for me?
END OF EMAIL
Mr. Monahan's response was:
Received: from Unknown-00-23-6c-94-2f-4b.home ([81.154.188.105])
by asmtp019.mac.com
From: WILLIAM MONAHAN
To: [my email address]
Subject: Re: Re: Re:
Date: Sat, 08 Aug 2009 05:47:00 +0100
X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.935.3)
No, it was the end of one. You crapped it at first fire and admitted that you were an insane stalker, you retard.
END OF EMAIL
Yet, off-and-on we went for months. I tried to steer the conversations toward questions I had about his works, but I was never even remotely successful. We simply had a very weird back-and-forth, which maybe said everything. For the record, I consider myself to be a Monahan scholar rather than his "insane stalker." The character that I had mentioned having been was that of an amateur desperately seeking recognition, an appreciative clapping sound for my efforts.
At some point, Mr. Monahan decided to try to convince me that he actually wasn't "William Monahan," but I am someone who can penetrate background, so while he was trying to convince me that he actually wasn't who he had presented himself as, he gave himself away, ironically, using a single English sentence:
Received: from [10.103.27.56] (166-205-007-042.mobile.mymmode.com [166.205.7.42])
by asmtp011.mac.com
From: William Monahan
To: [my email address]
Subject: Re: Build now
Date: Mon, 28 Sep 2009 21:25:42 -0700
X-Mailer: iPhone Mail (7C144)
Hey, Maggot, what's shaking. It's probably past time to tell you that im not William Monahan, so whatever rocks you're getting off with the doofy subnormal autodidact antichrist shit, sorry.
END OF EMAIL
In that last English sentence he uses the idiom "get your rocks off" and the term "autodidact", all the while using a persona that reminded me of some sort of "Rock 'n Roll" guy. Your clues are "get your rocks off" and "autodidact". Back in 1997, when he and NYPress colleague C.J. Sullivan had a tiff in the letters column of NYPress, he made a similar remark to C.J. Sullivan.1 It's a long letter, which I only excerpt below, but worth reading in its entirety, particularly if you're doing criticism of The Departed:
So while C.J. Sullivan is the type who gets his rocks off by being "connected," I am apparently the type who gets his rocks off with my "doofy subnormal autodidact antichrist shit." I would have described myself as the type who gets his rocks off by doing literary biography, piecemeal, all the while chronicling my efforts in my blog. As for the term "autodidact", it shows up, in comedic form, in his novel Light House: A Trifle, but more so, it's one of the main themes of his journalism.
It's ironic that while attempting to deny who he was to his unofficial biographer (me), he in fact gave himself away. But then again, I have an encyclopedic knowledge of Mr. Monahan's works, and if anyone was going to pick up on these clues it was going to be me.
After the @mac.com email address ceased to be responsive, other fake email accounts continued our correspondence, with one lady named "Manda Trothero" writing to inform me that the "wjmonahan@mac.com" email address had been previously used by an assistant in her office:
Our conversations abound with silliness. Mr. Monahan is a writer who writes weird characters, such as Claude La Badarian. If I've become a part of Mr. Monahan's creative process, so be it. I enjoy our emails.
As the fictional character Claude La Badarian said of Mr. Monahan:
Received: from [10.103.27.56] (166-205-007-042.mobile.mymmode.com [166.205.7.42])
by asmtp011.mac.com
From: William Monahan
To: [my email address]
Subject: Re: Build now
Date: Mon, 28 Sep 2009 21:25:42 -0700
X-Mailer: iPhone Mail (7C144)
Hey, Maggot, what's shaking. It's probably past time to tell you that im not William Monahan, so whatever rocks you're getting off with the doofy subnormal autodidact antichrist shit, sorry.
END OF EMAIL
In that last English sentence he uses the idiom "get your rocks off" and the term "autodidact", all the while using a persona that reminded me of some sort of "Rock 'n Roll" guy. Your clues are "get your rocks off" and "autodidact". Back in 1997, when he and NYPress colleague C.J. Sullivan had a tiff in the letters column of NYPress, he made a similar remark to C.J. Sullivan.1 It's a long letter, which I only excerpt below, but worth reading in its entirety, particularly if you're doing criticism of The Departed:
Boston or the boroughs, I know Sullivan like a species of bird: a shamrocks-and-vomit shovel leaner of the type who gets his rocks off by being "connected." These guys like to hang out with cops and ward bosses and so forth. They tend to use phrases like "fallen fireman" without irony; they start to sound like Barry Fitzgerald when they get drunk; and they like to hang around bars getting off on how superior they are to guys who actually do anything or, say, go home and fuck their wives. You know what had me on the floor about Sullivan's letter? When he mentioned knowing the cop.
So while C.J. Sullivan is the type who gets his rocks off by being "connected," I am apparently the type who gets his rocks off with my "doofy subnormal autodidact antichrist shit." I would have described myself as the type who gets his rocks off by doing literary biography, piecemeal, all the while chronicling my efforts in my blog. As for the term "autodidact", it shows up, in comedic form, in his novel Light House: A Trifle, but more so, it's one of the main themes of his journalism.
It's ironic that while attempting to deny who he was to his unofficial biographer (me), he in fact gave himself away. But then again, I have an encyclopedic knowledge of Mr. Monahan's works, and if anyone was going to pick up on these clues it was going to be me.
After the @mac.com email address ceased to be responsive, other fake email accounts continued our correspondence, with one lady named "Manda Trothero" writing to inform me that the "wjmonahan@mac.com" email address had been previously used by an assistant in her office:
You recently wrote to a defunct email previously used by an assistant in this office. William Monahan does not use email. However, he does answer questions! If you would like to ask questions, please direct them to this address. If you are a journalist please identify the publication for which you work. If you are a scholar, please identify the institution at which you study or teach. Thank you!
Our conversations abound with silliness. Mr. Monahan is a writer who writes weird characters, such as Claude La Badarian. If I've become a part of Mr. Monahan's creative process, so be it. I enjoy our emails.
As the fictional character Claude La Badarian said of Mr. Monahan:
An obscenity has come to my attention. William Monahan's Light House: A Trifle has gone into trade paperback. After all the work I did--all the letters I wrote, telling Riverhead Books what an unreliable, ridiculous clown and megalomaniac viper they had taken to their multinational breast--after all the lack-of-character-demonstrating e-mails many mediums have received from various "hotmail" addresses, as well as the mindspring account Monahan claimed dubiously was password-hacked a few years ago (Monahan, usually indisposed in other states, as well as rather various, personality-wise, is unusually open to calumny)--I cannot believe that this book has again been put into print.
The part above about Mr. Monahan being "rather various, personality-wise" has been my experience, too. In the fiction serial Dining Late with Claude La Badarian, Mr. Monahan's fictional character Claude La Badarian mentions how the fictional William Monahan's Mindspring account had apparently once been password-hacked, throwing all suspicion on Claude La Badarian, of course; but this is fiction, fiction set in 2001. In the year 2010, I know of only one person who still has a Mindspring account and uses it regularly for email; other than that, it's a relic. The fictional character Claude La Badarian had a Mindspring email address too: LaBadarian@mindspring.com. If Mr. Monahan truly had a Mindspring account in real life, I hope we will one day get to read the email correspondences that took place in his Mindspring account, perhaps in a volume titled "The Collected Electronic Correspondences of William Monahan"?
Take-away question: Is there anyone else out there willing to make donations to the web of their email correspondences with William Monahan?
Sources:
1) William Monahan responds to C.J. Sullivan's letter "The Troubles" to the paper, in his own letter "They're a Touchy People, And Like to Fight", New York Press, vol. 10, no. 4 (January 22–28, 1997), p. 46. Note: Both William Monahan and C.J. Sullivan were NYPress writers at the time.
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Who disinherited William Monahan?
Now, for some of you who are following my blog religiously, as much as that is possible given my infrequent posts, the idea that writer and filmmaker William Monahan modeled the personal history of his fictional character Claude La Badarian after his own personal history, may be a self-evident truth at this point. Yet, I am still not satisfied with the evidence that I have discovered and I believe that there remain nuances that could be better understood with further research. Knowing which family member it was that, at some point in time, disinherited Mr. Monahan, could potentially have a huge impact on the body of knowledge concerning the fiction serial Dining Late with Claude La Badarian, particularly if it was Mr. Monahan's maternal grandmother who disinherited him under similar circumstances to which Claude La Badarian was disinherited by his own grandmother. Already I have provided supporting evidence that Mr. Monahan's maternal grandfather is a match for Claude La Badarian's grandfather, so to be able to say as much about both of Mr. Monahan's maternal grandparents would be earth shattering to the insular world inhabited by Monahan scholars such as myself.
It is in Mr. Monahan's 2000 essay "Stoned in Amherst," that he mentions that he was disinherited, a commonality he points out that he shares with the fictional character Ivanhoe:1
From letter 1, "The Last Supper": Claude La Badarian writes:
In his 2000 essay "Coney-Catching,"2 Mr. Monahan wrote the exact same thing, which was later copied verbatim to the La Badarian letter excerpted above:
And yet another comparison! From letter 4, "Silence, Exile, and Claude La Badarian": Claude La Badarian writes:
In his 1995 essay "The Angel Factory",3 Mr. Monahan wrote of having had the exact same experience:
Pretty amazing stuff. The prose speaks for itself.
So, no concluding thoughts this time, simply a promise to discuss the importance of Edgar Allan Poe's short story "The Cask of Amontillado" as it appears in the La Badarian letters for my next blog entry about Dining Late with Claude La Badarian.
Oh wait, I almost forgot, here is a quote from Mr. Monahan's essay "A Night on the Tiles," in which he states that the only person he ever satirizes is himself:4
That says it all, doesn't it?
It is in Mr. Monahan's 2000 essay "Stoned in Amherst," that he mentions that he was disinherited, a commonality he points out that he shares with the fictional character Ivanhoe:1
"I suppose it's a sketchbook, technically, perennially associated with undergraduate poets and ex-Seven Sisters Young Moms with a few minutes to spare to pour forth from their collective anima their Mistreatment Diaries and the latest version of I Stand here Ironing, Tillie Olsen's much-anthologized masterpiece about standing there ironing and feeling Vaguely Dispossessed and au fait, as opposed to, say, Disinherited, like Ivanhoe and me."
That phrase, "Disinherited, like Ivanhoe and me," could just as easily have been said by Mr. Monahan's fictional character Claude La Badarian in the La Badarian letters (aka Dining Late with Claude La Badarian) since Claude La Badarian happens to have been disinherited as well, by his grandmother no less, the result of a conspiracy on the part of the Medford La Badarians. Claude La Badarian writes in letter 7, "Claude and the Little People":
"When I explained to my grandmother that I had been disinherited, she wrote me a check for five dollars, the sum she put in my Christmas cards until I was 40. It bounced. If I am going to get a summerhouse of the sort to which I am accustomed, Henry, I am going to have to do it myself–a daunting prospect."
I admit, this is one of the weakest comparisons I have made between the personal history of Mr. Monahan and his fictional character Claude La Badarian. But seen within a larger context, it is further damning evidence. Perhaps you are not familiar with some of the supporting evidence I have previously proffered, indicating that Mr. Monahan was lifting passages from his own published works while writing the La Badarian letters? I will be drudging up new supporting evidence below, so feel free to ignore my previous blog entries while reading this one, until after you are done.
I have previously postulated that in using his own autobiography to create Claude La Badarian, Mr. Monahan is making some sort of point about autobiographical writing. But, then again, there is always the possibility that I am afflicted with a mild form of Asperger's syndrome (based on my understanding of that disorder from David Mamet's book Bambi vs. Godzilla) and am simply connecting everything to the point of uselessness. It's not like a writer becomes an entirely new person each time he starts an essay, novel, or script. But as you will see below Mr. Monahan very clearly copied from his works, practically verbatim. As I have delved deeper into Mr. Monahan's personal history through his works (and genealogical research with regards to his maternal grandfather Harold L. Armstrong), I have come to realize just how much of Mr. Monahan's autobiography has been passed down to his character Claude La Badarian.
There comes a time in every writer’s life when he realizes that he has a biography rather than a life. Some of us can delay this disastrous cognition until the Pulitzer, or the Lethe of senility; but I’ve been worried since the age of sixteen about unborn people wondering about what "lay behind" my poems, and where I was living, and whose purse I was taking pills out of, and so forth. Paranoids, Henry, have real biographers–especially when, like me, Claude La Badarian, they’re massive polymathic geniuses.
In his 2000 essay "Coney-Catching,"2 Mr. Monahan wrote the exact same thing, which was later copied verbatim to the La Badarian letter excerpted above:
"We wander around Cunt Island, feeling the same. Still hazy. A day to become disoriented in the sky. A day to slam your plane into the water to stop whatever this fucking shit is that is different from life, the shit that happens when you have, and know you have, a biography instead of a life.
And yet another comparison! From letter 4, "Silence, Exile, and Claude La Badarian": Claude La Badarian writes:
Claude La Badarian, from earliest youth (photograph exists of the young Claude in a badged blazer, emerging from a basilica with his palms pressed together and his eyes turned skyward), has been besieged by gratuitous integrity. Anti-success training is the specialty of the Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church.
In his 1995 essay "The Angel Factory",3 Mr. Monahan wrote of having had the exact same experience:
"The last time I took Communion and believed it meant anything was when I was in the second grade, wearing a blue school blazer with a badge on it, coming out of a counterfeit basilica with my palms pressed together, in a sexist double-crocodile of embarrassed Irish and Italian kids. I never got confirmed."
Pretty amazing stuff. The prose speaks for itself.
So, no concluding thoughts this time, simply a promise to discuss the importance of Edgar Allan Poe's short story "The Cask of Amontillado" as it appears in the La Badarian letters for my next blog entry about Dining Late with Claude La Badarian.
Oh wait, I almost forgot, here is a quote from Mr. Monahan's essay "A Night on the Tiles," in which he states that the only person he ever satirizes is himself:4
"It's ordained […] that I can never write satire of other people: I can start to do it, but God has ordained that I am smart enough to turn the burning glass around on myself: the only person I ever satirize, thank Christ, is myself. I have a built-in, possibly Catholic, ethical alarm system."
That says it all, doesn't it?
Take-away question: Whom was it that disinherited William Monahan?
Sources:
1) William Monahan. "Stoned in Amherst", New York Press, vol. 13, no. 2 (January 12–18, 2000), pp. 1 (Sec 1), 8–9 (Sec 2).
2) William Monahan. "Mermaid Parade: Coney-Catching", New York Press, vol. 13, no. 26 (June 28–July 4, 2000), pp. 14–15.
3) William Monahan. "The Angel Factory: Making Martyrs & Monsters", New York Press, vol. 8, no. 3 (January 18–24, 1995), pp. 1, 16–17.
4) William Monahan. "A Night on the Tiles: The Big Bad Bollocks & the Mirror of England", New York Press, vol. 13, no. 27 (July 5–11, 2000), pp. 1, 27–29.
2) William Monahan. "Mermaid Parade: Coney-Catching", New York Press, vol. 13, no. 26 (June 28–July 4, 2000), pp. 14–15.
3) William Monahan. "The Angel Factory: Making Martyrs & Monsters", New York Press, vol. 8, no. 3 (January 18–24, 1995), pp. 1, 16–17.
4) William Monahan. "A Night on the Tiles: The Big Bad Bollocks & the Mirror of England", New York Press, vol. 13, no. 27 (July 5–11, 2000), pp. 1, 27–29.
Monday, March 22, 2010
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:
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:
Mr. Monahan writes in a 2007 Variety essay:
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.
Claude La Badarian writes in letter 4:
Mr. Monahan writes in a 2001 Bookforum essay:
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:
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.
Saturday, March 13, 2010
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.
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."
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 leave you with Mr. Monahan's description of his maternal grandfather from his essay "The Irish Question."4
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
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
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