Alvah's Books

Inquisition in Eden
By Alvah Bessie
Seven Seas Books, 1967
308 pages

Part screenplay and parrt narrative, Inquisition in Eden opens with a Cast of Characters, The book’s leading man, the narrator is, of course, Alvah Bessie; his leading lady is his second wife, Helen Clare. Supporting characters are the other nine blacklisted writers, producers and directors, Mr. McDonald, the warden of U.S. Federal Correctional Institute in Texarkana, Texas; a slew of cameos by actors including Gary Cooper, Bette Davis, Errol Flynn and Lee J. Cobb; and bit players from inmates to guards, FBI agents, Ayn Rand, Richard M. Nixon, Jack Warner, Ernest Hemingway and “various varieties of ass kissers”.

Fade in. The reader is placed right at Texarkana. It’s July 1950. And Bessie writes in a straightforward manner with enough detail to put the reader right into the scene. We learn that Bessie is in prison to serve a year’s sentence “for a misdemeanor called contempt of Congress,” and is sitting with his parole official’s office. The conversation is as follows:

Huber: This where I get your side of the story; why you think you’re here.

Huber pauses, lights a cigarette, nods when the inmate gestures toward the pocket of his blue-denim shirt. Inmate, seated in a chair across from Huber, lights his own cigarette.

Huber (continuing): But before you start, let me tell you that in twenty years of custodial work, I have yet to meet an inmates who wasn’t here on a bum rap.

Narrator (all officers are “sir”): Sir, in my opinion, I’m a political prisoner.

Huber (deadpan): Bessie, we don’t have any political prisoners in the United States.

(glances at dossier on his desk, points with finger)

You’re here for violation of Section 192, Title 2, U.S. Code, which means refusal to testify before a duly constituted committee of Congress . . .

The likelihood that these sections of dialogue are remembered verbatim almost 20 years after the fact really doesn’t matter because Bessie has a natural ear for dialogue and he’s written several scenes that are very funny and biting,  but Inquisition is not entirely a prison memoir.  Bessie writes about his early acting ambitions as a young man on the New York stage, life in during the Depression in Vermont, struggling to survive with his first wife Mary Burnett and their children Dan and David, his first novel Dwell in the Wilderness and Spain.

It’s after his return from Spain that he writes (and which was endorsed by Hemingway) Men in Battle. Well-reviewed in Time, Bessie writes, “…it never sold. For it appeared the week that Hitler invaded Poland, and people had other things to read—the newspapers.” But his luck changed when he was offered the drama critic position at the New Masses, where he remained for four years as the drama, book, film critic and feature writer until Hollywood beckoned.

Gossip-mongers of old Hollywood will be disappointed because Bessie doesn’t dish any dirt. He writes of the studio politics, the haggling with producers and studio executives over stories and scripts. He cuts these scenes with life in prison and his friendships with some of the inmates. Yet it’s the road to HUAC, that Bessie documents so well. And when the pink subpeona comes and the jobs peter out, Bessie writes of his financial problems. Determined to not borrow money to survive and feed his family, writes of how he pitched a modern-day version of Don Quixote to Charlie Chaplin with no success. After his meeting with Chaplin, Bessie leaves with no job offer, but with a handshake and a $100 bill slipped in his hand.

As for the charges agaisnt the Hollywood ten Bessie provides a reader-friendly legal explanation of why the Hollywood Ten chose to plead the first amendment rather than the fifth. Although the book’s pace slows down at this juncture, it immediately picks up after his release from prison and life as a blacklisted writer.

Of all the books and articles written on the Hollywood Blacklist, Inquisition in Eden is one of the most honest accounts of a terrible time in this country’s history, and Bessie tells his story with wry wit of his life before, during, and after the blacklist.

For those who don’t follow me on Twitter (and shame on you, if you don’t) that’s my handle. However, this post isn’t about Twitter or me (well, a little about me, but really more about books). It’s all about that favorite pastime that many bibliophiles have and that’s the beach read or the pool read, or the cabin read. We’re five days away from the Summer Solstice and it’s time to do some thinking of what might be good reads for the summer.

For yours truly, I have an esoteric list that might make some eyes glaze over or maybe roll up to the ceiling–that’s what my husband does accompanied by a muttered, “Fun stuff, Boo.” But then again HE’s reading a book about the Romany (which does seem fascinating).

For  the next three months, my reading will focus on the Spanish Civil War, the history of Communism and two classics, but don’t fret I do have some “fun stuff” thrown in between the serious subjects. So here’s a rundown of my Beach Reads:

June (fun stuff in italics)

Men in Battle, Alvah Bessie

The Un-Americans, Alvah Bessie

A World I Never Made, James LePore

If the Buddha Came to Dinner, Hale Sofia Schatz

July

The Spanish Civil War, Hugh Thomas

A Passionate War, Peter Wyden

The Spanish Civil War: A Very Short Introduction, Helen Graham

Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen

From Where the Rivers Come, Terin Tashi Miller

The Last Dickens, Matthew Pearl

August/September

The Rise and Fall of Communism, Archie Brown

The Roots of Amercan Communism, Theodore Draper

The Communist Party of the United States, Fraser M. Ottanelli

Black Boy, Richard Wright

Stardust, Joseph Kanon

Fun stuff,eh? I think so…

My attempts to assign myself books to read is an utter and dismal failure. I start one book, put it down, and then start another.  And then there are those “Come Hither” books that seduce you to reading them although they were not on your reading list at all. Damn you, Audrey Niffenegger and The Time Traveler’s Wife!

As much as I am enjoying Ms. Niffenegger’s book, I have set it aside. My list remains the same as last week’s:

• A World I Never Made, by James LePore
• The UnAmericans, by Alvah Bessie
• Men in Battle, by Alvah Bessie
• The Spanish Civil War: A Very Short Introduction, by Helen Graham

TWO FINGERS AND A THUMB, by Dan Bessie

With just those three digits my Pop (we never called him Dad, Father, or Alvah), pecked out, during his 65 year writing life, six novels, three book length works of non-fiction, several translations from the French, dozens of shorts stories, perhaps a dozen screenplays, hundreds of articles, poems, theater pieces, speeches (to be delivered by himself and others), and countless book, theater and film reviews, flyers, leaflets, essays and newspaper copy. And he edited two anthologies. In a career that began during high school with indignant letters to the New York Times, blasting hunters who callously shot American eagles, to an affectionate piece on his pet Iguana Jaime (written a few years before his ancient typewriter was stilled), Pop’s literary output dealt almost exclusively, as does that of many writers, with what he knew, or what intimately concerned him.

He had initially hoped for a career dealing with reptiles and amphibians. But when a departmental head at New York’s Museum of Natural History let him know- after he’d spent weeks misclassifying 7,826 specimens of Hyla crucifer (the spring peeper), that “You don’t a scientific mind, Alvah,” he gave it up. And went on to author, among so much other writing:

A first book, of which writer and editor Whit Burnett (who he met in Paris in 1928) said, “That was a novel. Full of humor and young love which became, we think, slightly contaminated due to the indiscretions of the young protagonist’s merry old aunt.” Pop never did tell me what caused him to finally burn the manuscript instead of submitting it to a publisher. Was it because he passed out from the immense “glass washtub” of Spatenbrau he downed at the Café Balzar one evening? Or perhaps he decided that since he himself was the young protagonist, and his cousin’s mother, Ella, the model for the merry old aunt, he’d be revealing too many purple family secrets?

Dwell in the Wilderness: his first published novel (and best in my view), tracing the life of a Michigan family from 1876 to 1925, was culled from my mother’s memories during a long Vermont winter that she and Pop spent “gracefully starving to death” (as he once put it), and closely details my mother’s early life and those of her parents and brothers. (Some in her family were not too happy with the portrait.)

Men in Battle / Alvah Bessie’s Spanish Civil War Notebooks (the latter published posthumously, and on which Men in Battle is based), detail his 1938 experience, along with other American and international volunteers, opposing Franco’s revolt against the Spanish Republic. Gritty and honest, the memoir and notebooks reveal his hope to return alive, and his eagerness to shed himself of a privileged early life by submerging himself in a body of ordinary men championing a cause. Hemingway, who Pop (as both a foot soldier and as a front line reporter) met in Spain, called Men in Battle “A true, honest book … Bessie writes finely of all that he could see of it and he saw enough for one man.”

Bread and a Stone: once again drawing on my mother’s life, this time Pop, who appears in the novel as brother-in-law Bill Hogan, recounts a Pennsylvania case in which Mom’s new husband (she and my father had been divorced for three years) is tried for a murder committed during a muddled armed robbery, carried out in an effort to keep our family’s head above water during the last days of the Great Depression.

Objective Burma: an original story for Warner Brothers, for which Pop received an Oscar nomination, the film finds Errol Flynn leading a troop of American soldiers on a search and destroy mission against a Japanese radar facility. The character of a middle-aged journalist clearly represents Pop. (Shown in London, the audience pelted the screen with rotten vegetables, because it was well known that Allied activity in Burma was strictly a British operation.)

The Heart of Spain: an anthology of writing about the Spanish Civil War. This fine collection, edited by my father, and introduced by Dorothy Parker, includes work by such writers as Langston Hughes, Pablo Neruda, Martha Gellhorn, Frederico Garcia Lorca and Lillian Hellman – as well as by many veterans of the war, including Pop. Significantly, Hemingway isn’t included; because at that point the American vets who had volunteered for Spain felt that his For Whom the Bell Tolls was a dishonest view of the war.

The UnAmericans: drawn from his experience in Spain and that during the witch-hunt period, this somewhat didactic work (as I consider it retrospectively) melds several former Communist Party comrades (among them, CBS correspondent Winston Burdett), with non-communist individuals Pop knew (such as journalist Vincent Sheean) into the fictionalized informer Frances Xavier Lang. Ben Blau, the novel’s protagonist, combines several veterans my father knew (principally Joe Hecht and Aaron Lopoff) with aspects of his own personality.

Inquisition in Eden: a straightforward, often amusing, sometimes revealing and always colorful account of Pop’s two year internment as a screenwriter at “Warners concentration camp,” followed by his ten-month incarceration at the Federal Correctional Institute in Texarkana, Texas, for Contempt of Congress, following his appearance before the House Committee on UnAmerican activities.

The Symbol: though not terribly successful at marriage, Pop often had an uncanny knack of getting into the minds of women for whom he had great sympathy. In this case Marilyn Monroe is the thinly disguised subject, in the person of movie star Wanda Oliver. Trashed by several reviewers, writer and journalist Martha Gellhorn nevertheless felt that “Bessie has accomplished a superb feat of the imagination by inventing a woman who is not a man-made puppet; she is a breathing female, alive on her own. That is a magical achievement and cannot be explained. It has happened.”

One for my Baby: the Night Box stands in for San Francisco’s legendary hungry i. Headlining comedian Dr. Sour is a composite of the hungry i’ mainstay, “Professor” Irwin Corey – along with Aaron Sussman, an aesthetic young man Pop had known as a youth. Jose “Pepe” Gonzales, the proprietor, is loosely modeled on hungry i owner Enrico Banducci. And the character of Dan Noble, a blacklisted actor who announces the acts, is Pop himself. (He later wrote an excellent screenplay based on the novel. It has never been filmed.)

Alvah Bessie’s Short Fictions / The Serpent Was More Subtil (that’s the Biblical spelling), comes full circle, combining my father’s youthful and often hysterical misadventures as an aspiring herpetologist, with several of his early short stories. Fictionalizing himself as Julian Leonard, the thinly disguised Serpent memoir also reveals a great deal about life in the Bessie family, including Pop’s dislike (that’s too mild a word) of his stuffy and conservative father.

With the exception of a few comments herein, I don’t feel it’s my job to analyze Pop, my relationship with him, or his writing. But I can honestly say that I’ve enjoyed his work, and found him to be an unusually skilled and often perceptive writer. (And once in a while a less than adequate one.)

In spite of our occasional differences, the angst that crops up now and then between fathers and sons (or mothers and daughters), I’m enormously proud of the part he played in the drama of our times; of his standing shoulder to shoulder with the Spanish people in their fight against fascism, and for the courageous and self-sacrificing position he took against our own native reactionaries. Not too many sons can say that. It pleases me that I can.

And that the vast majority of his creative life was accomplished with just two fingers and a thumb is something I find quite astonishing.

About Dan Bessie
Dan Bessie began his film career in 1956, with MGM’s animation department. Later staff and freelance assignments saw him contributing to TV cartoon series such as Spiderman, Lineus the Lionhearted, and Mr. McGoo, Moving on to educational films, he wrote, produced and, or, directed more than 125 titles, including several award winners. In 1973 he co-produced Executive Action (Burt Lancaster), a dramatic feature dealing with the assassination of JFK. From 1979 until 1995 he was a partner in Shire Films of Santa Cruz, California, writing and directing the feature Hard Traveling (New World Pictures, 1986), and Turnabout: the Story of the Yale Puppeteers (PBS,1993)., along with Peter and the Wolf, The Ugly Duckling and Beware the Jabberwock (all starring Ray Bolger), which appeared on CBS, HBO, Showtime and the Disney Channel. Author of the family memoir Rare Birds (University Press of Kentucky, 2000) and Reeling Through Hollywood (Blue Lupin Press, 2006), detailing his 40 years in film, Dan also critiques and consults on screenplays and novels, and takes freelance assignments as a writer and cartoonist. With his wife Jeanne Johnson, also a writer, he lives in southwestern France.

I’m getting  little better at completing my reading goals. I managed to complete:

• Spain Again, by Alvah Bessie
• A Spy by Nature, by Charles Cumming

Still working on:

• A World I Never Made, by James LePore

Since it is Alvah Bessie Month this week’s books include:

• The UnAmericans, by Alvah Bessie
• Men in Battle, by Alvah Bessie
• The Spanish Civil War: A Very Short Introduction, by Helen Graham

I’m still behind on reviews, but Lush Life and A Spy by Nature will be posted later this week.

Today is Memorial Day and many of us are honoring the soldiers who defended our country and ideals in the numerous wars we’ve fought and in our current ones in Afghanistan and Iraq.

In today’s post, I’d like to honor the writer-warriors of the Abraham Lincoln Battalion. These men and women were volunteers from the United States who served in Spain during the Spanish Civil War. Of the 2,800, writers such as Alvah Bessie, Edwin Rolfe, James Gardner–son of humorist Ring Lardner and brother of screenwriter and Hollywood Ten member Ring Lardner, Jr.–Milt Woolf, James Neugass, and many more, illegally crossed into Spain from France to fight Franco and save the democratically-elected Spanish government. According to estimates, 800 American volunteers died in Spain including James Lardner–the last American casualty.

Not many Americans know of the Abraham Lincoln Brigades, its history, or about the Spanish Civil War-a war known as the practice run to World War II. Readers who want to learn more about the “Abies” as they were known in the 1930s, should read Peter Carroll’s The Odyssey of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade or read Alvah Bessie’s Men in Battle. For a quick introduction visit the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives.

As to why these men and women volunteered in a war that America wanted no part, reporter James Gardner said it best in a letter to his mother:

Mother, darling,
This is a letter which I started to write on April 10. At that time I thought I was going to have to break the news to you gently, but you seem to have heard it before I had the chance. I have kept putting off writing you because each day it seemed as it on the next I would know what I was going to do and where I would be stationed. I still don’t know exactly what the situation is, but I am leaving in half an hour for Badalona, about seven miles up the coast, where I will learn the rudiments of artillery in company with a new mixed international unit. It looks as if French will be the medium of instruction. I shall let you know more as soon as I can.

This is a most exclusive army. It has taken me twelve days of going from person to person and office to get where I am. I have listened to advice of all varieties, a large part of it against my enlisting at all. The decision has been very much my own, and I took it after a great deal of consideration. My closest friend and principal adviser here has been Vincent (Jimmy) Sheean, who told me not to join, which shows you how stubborn I am, if you didn’t know. Ernest Hemingway’s advice was that it was a very fine thing if I wanted to fight against fascism, but that it was a personal matter that could only be decided by me.

I don’t know how closely you have followed the war, but I imagine you must have an exaggerated idea of the danger of our position. On the map it looks as if Catalonia were a small fragment of territory about to be pushed into the Mediterranean, but in reality it is a lot of country, and I don’t think it will ever be conquered. There are too many people here who are fighting for things they believe in, and too few on the other side.

My views on the whole question are too complicated for me to try to explain here. I hope you are on our side and will try to convince your friends that I am not just being foolish. Not that I mind being though foolish, but American opinion is a very important factor.

I have made up a list of reasons why I am enlisting in the International Brigade, which is fairly accurate, as I did it for my own information. I am copying it here so that you may see for yourself which are the real ones. Some of them are picayune and most of them would have been insufficient in themselves, but all have something to do with it.

Because I believe that fascism is wrong and must be exterminated, and that liberal democracy or more probably communism is right.

Because my joining the I.B. might have an effect on the amendment of the neutrality act in the United States. Because after the war is over I shall be a more effective anti-fascist.
Because in my ambitious quest for knowledge in all fields, I cannot afford in this age to overlook war.
Because I shall come into contact with a lot of communists, who are very good company and from whom I expect to learn things.
Because I am mentally lazy and should like to do some physical work for a change.
Because I need something remarkable in my background to make up for my unfortunate self-consciousness in social relations.
Because I am tired of working for the Herald Tribune in particular and newspapers in general.
Because I think it will be good for my soul.
Because there is a girl in Paris who will have to learn that my presence is not necessary to her existence.
Because I want to impress various people, Bill for one
Because I hope to find material for some writing, probably a play.
Because I want to improve my Spanish as well as my French.
Because I want to know what it is like to be afraid of something and I want to see how other people react to danger.
Because there may be a chance to do some reading and I won’t have to wear a necktie.
Because I should like once more to get in good physical condition.

The first four reasons and the ninth, especially the first, are the most important ones in my opinion, but you may decide for yourself. I have also considered a few reasons why I should not join the army, such as that I might get seriously wounded or killed and that I shall cause you many weeks of worry. I am sorry for your sake that they are not enough to dissuade me. If it is any comfort to you at all, I still hate violence and cruelty and suffering and if I survive this war do not expect to take any dangerous part in the next.

If you still consider me one of your sons, you can send me an occasional letter and possibly a package now and then. My address here, I think, will be in care of the Brigadas Internacionales, but for a while I think it will be simpler to communicate through the Sheeans. Anything edible would be appreciated, milk chocolate or raisins, or anything in cans that does not require preparation.

Love,
Jim

In memory of those who fought and died in Spain.

Salut!

Readers who have stumbled on Exiled at the Beach will know that I was an editor of The Internet Review of Books until very recently. At IRB, we had a few guidelines I found a little restrictive. Sometimes we were pitched a book that might be a year old (this exceeded our no more than six months old limit) or a category or genre we normally wouldn’t review such as poetry or cookbooks.  

So this got me thinking, why not personally review the books we rejected and then some?  The then some led to more thinking. Why not review or, perhaps, introduce books that were published long ago to readers. And that’s how this site came to be.