Darlings, The "Survivor Classic" Is Back!!!!!!!!!!!!

"I am the daughter of a father who has been married five times.
Mother killed herself. My sister killed herself. My brother
has been in a mental institution. I'm twenty-three and divorced,
with two kids."--Brooke Hayward
Tom Mankiewicz--"I said, 'Brooke, either you've got to open
the window right now--we were on the tenth floor--either you've
got to open the window right now, and jump out, or say, 'I'm
going to live,'because you're right, it's the worst family history
that anybody ever had, and either you jump out the window, or you
live."
---From "Haywire" by Brooke Hayward

Girls, I cannot begin to tell you how many times, during periods of duress, I have read this passage aloud, or recited it to myself, and it has kept me centered and grounded. As Eleanor of Aquitaine said in "The Lion In Winter, "What family doesn't have its up and down?" Mine might not have matched the Haywards, though we had our own. And then there was my own stuff. Which the above helped me to reign in
and kept me balanced.

After thirty years in the Business, loves, people sometimes call me a Survivor. But, Brooke, honey, has endured through the death of her entire family, which included the suicides of her mother (actress Margaret Sullavan) her sister (aspiring actress Bridget Hayward), and, nearly fifty years later, her brother, Bill (an actor and producer) who shot himself, on March 9. 2008. And she survived not only to tell about it, but, in a way, to recount it again, via the republication of this classic memoir, which set the gold standard for such, and remains still the best memoir, let alone the best one written by a celebrity's child, I have ever read.

For years, I carried the Knopf hardback of Brooke's book from place to place, when I would move, like it was some psychological extension of the Holy Grail, which, I suppose, for me, it was. But things get lost in moves, as will happen, and this item did, and remaindered copies eventually dried up. So I am thrilled Vintage Paperbacks has chosen to republish what I call this Survivor's Classic, for all my girls, who need help, from time to time, and for yours truly, whose memory of clutching this firmly to my bosom, like a lesbian holding "The Well Of Loneliness", is embedded deep in my consciousness. So it would be a nice memento to have.

Brooke Hayward is such a brilliant writer, it is a mystery to me why she never wrote anything else. Yet she has, in a way; this edition of the work contains two features the original Knopf one did not. The first is a Prologue by Brooke's friend, Buck Henry, who, when she was writing it originally, urged her to finish it, even though she was devastated by the sudden death of her good friend Johanna Mankiewicz (Josie) Davis. The second is an Epilogue from Brooke herself, relating some things having happened in the years following her book's initial 1977 publication. My God, can it be 35 years????? Including her reaction to her brother's death, and an account of his service.

Darlings, it is so good to have Brooke and "Haywire" back. This survivor will make you into one. And far more inspirational than that Joan Didion!!!!!!!!

I mean, not even I, girls, had Diana Vreeland pass through my house!!!!!!!!!