This summer, after reading The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society written by Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows, I was reminded of a few other ‘epistolary’ books or books of letters that I have read. The first one was a much beloved book from my childhood called Daddy Long Legs by Jean Webster. Webster also wrote the book, Dear Enemy as a series of letters. Another great epistolary book that I love is 84 Charring Cross Road written by Helene Hanff.
If you have yet to discover the writing of Helene Hanff, I am sorry to tell you this, but your life is a sore, empty, scabby little pit and you should remedy it immediately by reading one of her books. Her writing is like a half starved fox terrier, barely managing to hang on by her pinky toenail, sucking all the marrow out of life as she hangs there, brazenly telling the truth, very aware of her limitations, deeply in love with great literature , and fiercely determined to keep herself going no matter how hard, how stony, how slippery the path. Oh! And she makes you laugh the entire way. Her warmth, her humor, her hardscrabble determination are unlike any writer I have ever found.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________
A History of Helene Hanff…
Helene grew up in Philadelphia, the daughter of a shirt salesman. Her parents were theater nuts and her dad traded new shirts for tickets in order to take his entire family to a show every week. Like her family, Helene loved the theater and hoped to become a playwrite, but the 1930′s were hard times for the Levy-Hanff family. Helene was only able to attend college for one year on a scholarship that was cancelled due to monetary restrictions. She came home and took a summer job at a bookstore, but business was so slow, she had plenty of time to educate herself with books from the public library. Her principle guide through her self-education was the book On The Art of Writing by Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch. With Quiller or “Q” as she came to call him, as her teacher, she slowly worked her way through all the classic tomes from Paradise Lost to Shakespeare. “Q” was an Oxford Professor who wrote in a manner that was easy to understand and even though Helene did not at first agree with his insistence on speaking plainly rather than using flowery phrasing to communicate, it is clear in her own writing that she eventually embraced “Q’s” idea of writing simply and concisely rather than writing to demonstrate how many big words one can use in a sentence.
Helene’s paycheck was needed to help her family. She worked a succession of jobs, but her heart was not in any of them. In her spare time she wrote plays in her bedroom and in 1938 Helene entered one of her plays into a national competition. She was chosen as one of fifteen winners and was awarded a $1500 scholarship which allowed her to move to New York and begin to work toward her dream of writing a Broadway play. The year’s previous winners of the same contest were Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams. Given this illustrious start, it would seem that Helene was a shoe-in to become a success. Over the next ten years she wrote twenty plays and though her plays were often highly regarded by various leaders in the industry, not one of them was ever produced. In the mean time, Helene was living a bare bones existence in New York City, residing in sketchy hotels in edgy neighborhoods and scraping together just enough to keep herself fed. She always managed to find jobs that allowed her to hone her skills as a writer and also kept her in the world of theater. She read scripts and typed up synopsis’s for publishers. She eventually wrote for television and when that venue picked up and moved to Hollywood, she wrote children’s history books and magazine articles. She rarely had any money to spare, but when she did, she often spent it on great books and that is how her correspondence with the London book shop ‘Marks and Co’ located at 84 Charring Cross Road in London came to be.
Searching for many of the books that her ‘teacher’ Sir Arthur’ or ‘Q’ directed her to read was not always easy. These were often rare collectons of English poets, or books that were long unpublished. The antique book stores in New York where she could have probably found many of these books intimidated her with their rarefied atmospheres and she was sure she could not afford their prices. She saw an ad for a bookshop in London that seemed as if it would have many of the books for which she was looking. She was sure that this store would also be out of her price range, but where stepping into an elegant bookshop was intimidating to a poor, struggling, playwrite – writing a letter to a store in London was her strong suit. She quickly found that Marks and Co. not only had the books she was looking for, but that they were downright cheap! Thus began a twenty year letter exchange with a London bookshop and primarily with Mr. Frank Doel,the store’s buyer, that would eventually become the exquisite little book – 84 Charring Cross Road. Sadly, ‘Charring Cross’ was not written until after Frank Doel’s death and Helene was never able to meet him in person nor visit the bookstore that had provided her with so many wonderful books as the shop closed not long after Frank died.
Still, 84 Charring Cross Road became a cult hit. It may not have sold huge numbers, but it created a devoted fan base for Helene and filled her life with fan mail for the rest of her days. The small success of the book allowed her to finally visit England and that visit resulted in a second book called The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street which chronicled her first trip to London during which she instructs her hotel bartender how to properly make a martini, is overjoyed to visit many of the literary sites that have meant so much to her and is the toast of the town and invited to dine with the rich and famous of London for entire an month of her life. For a woman who has spent her adulthood barely getting by, the entire episode is a shock to her system and yet she narrartes it with the same down to earth, humorous, wry commentary that one comes to love and to expect with Helene.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
A Prescription for Literary Bliss
Helene went on to write several more books after the success of 84 Charring Cross Road. I have read all of them except for the New York travel books (and they are next in line on my nightstand). In order to fully appreciate the writing of Helene Hanff, I am going to give you a prescription for literary bliss – or a road map to reading Hanff – because I think it will make your experience with this particular author even more rewarding.
_
1 – Watch 84 Charring Cross Road the movie starring Anthony Hopkins as Frank Doel and Anne Bancroft as Helene Hanff. This movie is beautifully done and extremely faithful to the book. After viewing it, you will be able to picture Anthony Hopkins’ ever so understated and charmingly clipped interpretation of Frank Doel and even more importantly you will hear Anne Bancroft’s wrenching New York accent in your head when you read Helene’s letters. I really think that having Anne Bancroft’s voice in your head is critical. If you are reading Helene and have a Midwestern voice in your head, or a southern voice in your head, or a fragile feminine voice in your head, or a breezy romantic voice in your head, or your own voice in your head (unless your own voice is a wrenching New York accent) you are not going to understand her nearly as well as you will if Anne Bancroft’s voice is in your head. Trust me on this. It is very important.
2. Read 84 Charring Cross Road. It won’t take long as there are only 97 pages.
3. Take some time to recover from the sheer delight of reading this wonderful little book.
4. Read The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street.
5. Plan a trip to London based on Helene’s trip in The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street. Who cares if you actually take the trip ? The point is just to plan the trip… so you are ready… just in case a plane ticket to London falls out of the sky and lands in your purse or something.
6. Read Underfoot in Show Business - a book that takes you through the years that poverty stricken Helene struggled to write a successful play. As strange as it may seem, this is a highly entertaining book. You will meet Helen’s best friend, Maxine – a struggling New York actress. You will move with Helene from one run-down studio apartment to another, including one where five people share a communal kitchen that no one wants to clean, but everyone wants to control. You will spend a summer at a writer’s colony where there are a whole bunch of rules that everyone breaks. But mostly – you will live the life of a New York artist who refuses to give up on her dream no matter how hard it gets.
7. Reluctantly pick up Q’s Legacy - a book that Helene wrote about the man who inspired her to spend a lifetime reading the great books of all time. Figure that this book will be a long, tiresome ode to some dead Oxford professor who is staid, boorish, and dry as toast. Assume that you won’t connect to the story at all, but vow to grit your teeth and get through it.
8. Kick self hard for being so stupid about Q’s Legacy as it is written by Helene Hanff, an author whom you love and who can not seem to write a bad book. Through Q’s Legacy you will once again visit London with Helene as she goes back to see the sites she missed on her first visit and watches her first book, 84 Charring Cross Road be produced as the play she always dreamed of writing for the London stage.
9. Long to find another writer with the concise wit, bulldog tenacity, and upbeat charm of Helen Hanff.
10. Start over at number one again.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The Giveaway
I have two copies of 84 Charring Cross Road to give away. Leave a comment to enter. Winners will be chosen at random on Monday evening November 9th, 2009. Good luck and Happy Reading!
Recent Comments