City Works Press is thrilled to announce the publication of its latest book, Privilege and Passion: The Novel by The Jumping-Off Place’s own Mel Freilicher.
As Fanny Howe, author of Radical Love: 5 Novels, notes:
The newest novel by Mel Freilicher uncovers a layer of American life not noticed before. By lashing together recently passed characters in fiction, cartoons, and pop culture and watching them squirm, he has managed to dignify some while eviscerating others. It is in this balancing act that the tragedy is acted out. Yes, political repetition is a tragedy. Those who noticed it and parody it, like Freilicher, deserve all our thanks.
Jason McBride, author of Eat Your Mind: The Radical Life and Work of Kathy Acker, observes:
Privilege and Passion is a delightful, knowing, and tender study of collectivity and its discontents. Freilicher skips easily between fictional and historical characters and milieus—from The Group to the Group Theater, Tender is the Night to the Mattachine Society—borrowing and customizing each to his own purpose: that is, to enlighten, titillate, and, above all, amuse. I wish this novel went on forever.
Privilege and Passion offers up a by turns cheeky and biting pastiche of history, literature, art, popular culture and more. One part parody, one part adventure story, one part scholarly article/book review, Frelicher shapeshifts throughout the text, treating his readers to salacious gossip as well as heady doses of the sobering political history of the mid-twentieth-century.
Freilicher retired from some four decades of teaching in UCSD's Literature Department/Writing Program. He was publisher and co-editor of Crawl Out Your Window magazine (1974-89), a journal of the experimental literature and visual arts of the San Diego/Tijuana region. He's been writing for quite some time. He is the author of The Unmaking of Americans: 7 Lives, Encyclopedia of Rebels, and American Cream, all on San Diego City Works Press. He is a regular contributor to the “Book Report: Americana” column on The Jumping-Off Place.
JOP editor, Jim Miller recently sat down with Freilicher to discuss his latest novel—what it’s about, what motivated him to write it, and its relationship to life and politics in U.S. society.
Jim Miller: Tell us about Privilege and Passion. What is your new novel about? What motivated you to write it? What are the broad themes and/or issues that the novel addresses. Of course you don’t want to give too much away, but are there any big ideas that you address in the book? What does it tell us about American life and politics?
Mel Freilicher: I’ve been dedicated to writing about past American rebels, and progressives, especially ones I feel have not gotten the attention they deserve. In conceiving this novel, it was important to incorporate the stories of Hallie Flanagan, FDR’s head of the Federal Theater Project; Varian Fry, instrumental in helping literally thousands of refugees (who’d fled to Vichy France), to get out of Europe; and Harry Hay, founder of the first consequential gay movement here, the Mattachine Society. Their achievements are all discussed.
Flanagan and Fry are also characters in this book. I’d never written a novel before (doubtless never will again), but in my last two years of teaching at UCSD, I offered a two-quarter sequence in novella writing. The students were fantastic; we read many older and contemporary novellas, as well as several drafts of each student’s works. Reading novels is probably my main passion in life, so on retirement, I was primed.
I wasn’t really interested in creating characters. I didn’t feel capable of that, plus so many novels have already been written, with multitudes of vivid characters. So I utilized some from previous novels. I’ve always been a believer in selective plagiarism (known in more recent years as “appropriation”). Though if providing information, I’m careful to cite my sources and to directly quote biographers on particular controversial or startling points. Especially tricky in this book, since some of the characters are made up and others more or less based on real people.
Intrigued by the idea of bringing together a couple from different classes, and depicting how they, and everyone around them, reacted, I found what seemed like the perfect pair to mate: one from Mary McCarthy’s soapish, mainstream and rather mediocre novel, The Group, about (wealthy, naturally) graduates of Vassar, class of ’33. (Perfect, in part, because Hallie Flanagan was a professor at Vassar then, and actually appears in that novel.) Kay weds “Ragged Dick” Diver, Hard Knox ’29--Horatio Alger’s rags-to-riches prototype.
Soon, I put the happy couple in a 3-way with bisexual Fearless Fosdick, a fellow traveler with the CP. To be fair, Fearless had taken up with Ragged D before he ever met his future wife-- as in the McCarthy novel, Kay ends up going crazy and killing herself.
So the first part of this book is rather satirical (and I hope, funny), somewhat following McCarthy’s tale. But, the joke ran way thin as the characters (some almost Dickensian) were grinding through the decades--WW2, HUAC, McCarthyism.
The main protagonists become Fosdick, who returns from California, after working in unions in San Diego and LA, acting as a kind of intermediary between CP members and other progressives, and Lakey Waspy, (Candace Bergen in the movie; Lakey looks like her, a burnished blonde)--the lesbian who comes back from Europe with the Baroness (she eventually dies) and an excess of suitcases.
At Vassar, Lakey had a major, unexpressed, crush on Kay--except she did insert Kay into The GROUP. Having been an aesthete, Lakey matures, becoming politicized during the war, befriending and helping to fundraise for Varian Fry.
The protagonists meet again years later at a party in New York, which Varian and his main assistant in France, Miriam Davenport, are scheduled to attend. After some hesitation, Lakey and Fearless have an intimate conversation, and end up becoming close friends (with some sexual frisson).
It turns out both are virtually single parents--though it wasn’t planned that way--having adopted war orphans, who are close in age. I’m a bit embarrassed about this cliché, but this younger generation does seem to take on lives of their own, within certain constraints.
Among the parents’ set, often acerbic discussions focus on HUAC and McCarthy. To prepare, I read a lot of actual testimonies from key witch hunt witnesses (mostly “friendly”) about which these somewhat elite characters have inside information, along with some juicy gossip. (Incidentally, Pete Seeger’s not friendly testimony is hilarious. When asked if he played at various pinko concerts, he replies, Sure! He’ll play anywhere he’s asked. Would the committee like him to strike up a tune?)
The adopted children, who basically become like brother and sister, end up going to Berkeley and Stanford in the early ‘60s where both, especially Fearless’ son, Richard, are quite involved in politics. At the major San Francisco anti-HUAC demo, they, with all the protestors, mostly students, get hosed down a long staircase.
Richard and Esther have a number of intimate discussions about school, Bay area politics, and much speculation about their parents’ sex lives, not to mention their own (which, of course, the parents, who’ve arrived in the Bay area, are also much speculating about).
Directly preceding and leading into the monumental Free Speech Movement, Fearless’ son is part of a group at Berkeley called SLATE, who are agitating against HUAC, U.S. involvement in Cuba, Caryl Chessman and the death penalty, and for nuclear disarmament. (Again, requiring some fascinating research.)
SLATE gains some power in Berkeley campus politics which had formerly been controlled by the Greek system (until their massive, out-of-control panty raid). Naturally, administrators are attempting to defund SLATE, and, in an unprecedented move, kick the group off-campus. Exciting discussions, particularly between Richard and his dad, about many possible organizing opportunities when that occurs.
The climax is a dramatic and emotionally loaded, surprise meeting at City Lights bookstore where parents and children bump into Ragged D, who’s up from Los Angeles with his friend, Dr. Oreste Pucianni, first translator of Sartre into English.
Ragged D had been an alcoholic, and a gigolo, but was saved by AA when he went west, and particularly by Harry Hay and the Mattachine companions. The denouement is in subsequent dialogs between the children, then between the parents: everyone trying to figure out what the hell happened in Fearless’ and Lakey’s earlier lives.
JM: Talk a bit about your style as a writer. In your previous books and columns you cover such a stunning range of history and culture with an interesting lens. What can you tell us about your style as a writer of both fiction and nonfiction? Why do you write the way you do? Are there any influences that shaped your approach?
MF: Several aspects of this novel are unusual, aside from virtually all the characters’ obsessions with leftist politics. For one, stuck in the midst of the ongoing narrative are distinct non-fiction sections which outline both Hallie Flanagan’s and Harry Hay’s lives and accomplishments, and to a lesser extent, some others.
For another, as a dedicated “postmodernist” writer (even though that must be way passé by now), if I’m working on a section, say, about a bougie couple who used to be leftists, irresistibly I’ll stick in a section from a different bad novel with similar characters and situations: in this case, Rona Jaffe’s Class Reunion. The characters’ names change for a while, and the juxtapositions can be startling. I used to be interested in accentuating the suddenness and rawness of those juxtaposed texts: but in later years have been more involved with trying to make them appear seamless.
As for influences, it’s taken most of my life to get out of the l9th century, where novels were so grand and engrossing. During the pandemic, I read about l0 Zola novels, wonderful and grim. Tending to appreciate the grim (it seems so real), recently been reading a lot of noir crime fiction from the ‘40s and ’50s, especially David Goodis, Patricia Highsmith, and Horace McCoy. I’ve appreciated some modern and contemporary novelists, but mainly in later years, and I don’t feel my writing has been influenced by them.
The two fiction writers who have greatly influenced me are my friends: the late Kathy Acker and Stephen-Paul Martin. In the past, Stephen has been invaluable in reading some of my manuscripts when I’ve gotten stuck, and providing VERY useful feedback and suggestions. (To a lesser extent, I’ve done the same for him.)
I suspect every writer needs a careful reader like this. In the old days, presumably it used to be the editors, but corporate publishing has systematically replaced most literary editors with younger MBA’s, with fabulous marketing skills.
JM: Is there anything else that you’d like to add about Privilege and Passion? The art of writing in the fallen world as we know it?
MF: I’ve never really believed writing, especially novels, has much effect on the body politick (with notable rare exceptions), and less so now when nobody seems to read. My writing is out of the ordinary, and I have no delusions about reaching a wide audience. On the other hand, I value the audience I can reach—especially through the Jumping Off Place platform—who tend, I imagine, to be interested in these figures and their movements, and may not know much about them. I cannot express how profoundly I appreciate Jim and Kelly as well as City Works Press who’ve made much of these opportunities possible for me.
I consider writing—and in some ways teaching—as the most un-alienated work I’ve ever done (which doesn’t suggest it’s easy). That in itself seems important to me. As far as personal benefits, I wouldn’t exactly say writing has helped me overcome an “imposter syndrome.” But in college and younger years, I was always afraid I was more glib than “deep.”
Not claiming the latter now, I have found finishing a work is crucial--to feel I’ve done the utmost I can on that particular project, which enables further pondering: planning the next evolving work, in terms of content, form, and style.
Our planet does seem more or less doomed. But, until then…soldiering on (while I still can)! Of course, if the monstrous Republican candidate for President wins the election that will certainly precipitate various collapses of various civic and natural worlds.