WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — Kaylie Jones has delved into her family's life before, in her novel "A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries," which was made into a little seen but very good movie with Kris Kristofferson playing her father and Barbara Hershey her mother.
But "Lies My Mother Never Told Me" (Morrow) is something else. It's a tough, unflinching memoir of being the beloved daughter of novelist James Jones ("From Here to Eternity," "The Thin Red Line"), and her long battle with her alcoholic mother Gloria, a former actress and one-time stand-in for Marilyn Monroe.
James Jones and family lived in Paris in the late '50s and early '60s. They came to Florida for a year, where he was a visiting professor at Florida International University. Jones needed money and medical care for the congestive heart failure that would finally kill him in 1977.
Jones loved Florida — he liked atmospheres — but his wife hated it. After a single year, they left for the Hamptons, where he lived for the rest of his life. Kaylie Jones' book lays all of it out, focusing on the way the family spun out of control after the death of James Jones.
A conversation:
Q: I would think growing up the way you did in Paris, surrounded by your dad's famous friends, was like growing up in Beverly Hills — it kind of ruins you for the real world, no?
A: That's true. Although if people are drinking to solve every problem, it doesn't matter if you're growing up in a truck stop or the Il Saint-Louis. If you don't have the tools to handle adversity, you can't deal with anything.
My dad was a child of the Depression. Growing up in privilege worried him. But I didn't know that those people were famous until I went to college, and I saw them on my reading lists. Then it was, "Oh my God, I know Norman Mailer, I know James Baldwin, I know Mary McCarthy." It was so odd!
Q: The curious thing about that postwar generation of writers — they always seem as if they're in danger of being forgotten compared to the post-World War I generation.
A: Things change. We have a kind of literary circularity. My father's been dead 30 years. When I read Proust, there's a line I just love to the effect that it takes 30 or 40 years to recognize a true genius. And that's true for every generation.
Q: Would your mother's condition have deteriorated so radically if your dad hadn't died young?
A: I remember that it was already a serious issue when we moved from France to Florida in 1964. I think that my father left Florida to get her drinking under control, because she hated it and was depressed. She was drinking all day long at home at that point. I remember her packing Scotch in bags when we went to Greece in 1971, as if the liquor stores would be closed.
He didn't want to live in New York — it's too much fun, and there's too much to do. I remember him saying, "I can't work there." New York was a playground, and it didn't suit his temperament; he was from a town of 7,500 in Illinois. He liked the beach and the fields and the sea.So the Hamptons was perfect for him. He didn't want to do what Norman did — be a part of it, be cool beyond hip. He wasn't a scene kind of guy. And he wouldn't have stayed in Paris, either. We came back four years earlier than he wanted to. He wanted us to go to college in America, but his health got real bad, and he knew it. He decided that the doctors here would be better, although in the end I don't think it made any difference.
Q: You kind of dodge the issue of whether your dad was an alcoholic — what's your sense of it?
A: I think he was. He was the child of an alcoholic. His father was a suicide, but by the time he killed himself he was a street drunk. His uncle was a drunk. My father could always do his work, but then the last thing to go is the job. The family leaves you, the dog leaves you, but the last thing to go is the job.
Q: You seem to have found a solace in motherhood that your own mother didn't — why was she so thwarted by the domestic? Did she want to be a star?
A: If she had wanted to be a star, she would have been. She was very beautiful, and there's film footage of her, and she literally glows. You can't take your eyes off her. And she could be really funny; she had the most amazing stories, belligerent and off-color, and funny. But there was some missing thing. I don't think she wanted stardom that badly; she wouldn't sleep with people for a job.
In some weird way she was lazy. She wanted to be the wife of a very successful American novelist, and she got that. And that was 20 years. She was 29 when they got married, and she was 49 when he died, and everything before that and after that didn't count.
Q: When did you know you were going to write the book?
A: After my mother died (in 2006), I was a mess. I was in shock for a few months; it was like walking out of a storm cellar after a hurricane and you're in a daze and everything is different. I was walking my dogs down the street, and there was Susan Cheever with her dog, Sweetie. She asked me how I was doing, and I said, with an empty laugh, "My godmother says it'll make a great novel." And she said, "It's not a novel, it's a memoir." And I was stunned speechless.
I went home and told my husband, "Susan Cheever says it's a memoir," and he didn't react with the shock and horror I expected. But I have to be honest: Fiction is my heart, what I'm really good at.
Scott Eyman writes for The Palm Beach Post. E-mail: scott(underscore)eyman(at)pbpost.com.