Michael Lindsay-Hogg: Luck and Circumstance: A coming of age in Hollywood, New York and points beyon
The art of writing in an interesting fashion about your own life is still severely underestimated. Having had an interesting life doesn't do the trick, as I found out many years ago when I slogged through Marlene Dietrich's memoirs, which were deadly dull, despite the facts of her life being certainly of the fascinating kind. But not many people
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I hadn't thought to compare his ways of dealing with the father question to John Lennon's, since I was too struck by the way it was both a parallel and a complete contrast to Orson Welles' own surplus of fathers and what happened there. In OW's case there was also legal and most likely biological dad (Richard Welles), his mother's long term lover who was absolutely obsessed with him (Dr. Maurice Bernstein, nicknamed Dadda), and fantasy dad (the headmaster of his school, Roger Hill, whom he hero-worshipped and according to himself even had a crush on). The big difference to MLH's circumstances is that far from being absent, all three fathers are ever present and competing, especially once Beatrice Welles has died, and it all climaxes in Bernstein and Hill teaming up to advise 14 years old Orson to reject by-then-a-complete-alcoholic Richard. Which he does, Richard dies a few months later, and Orson develops not just the conviction he killed his father but a life long obsession with Falstaff. (Simon Callow pointed out the significance of Welles even at age 22, the first time he tackled the Henries, casting himself as Falstaff, never Hal.)
To return to "Luck and Circumstance": it really is a superb book, and I'm profoundly grateful you drew my attention to it.
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