How to Hepburn

HOW TO HEPBURN
LESSONS ON LIVING FROM KATE THE GREAT
WRITTEN BY: KAREN KARBO
ISBN: 10-1-59691-351-7

I got this book from the library as well. The lovely Collier branch in Houston, Texas, my favorite branch outside of the Central Location. I got it mainly because of the cover (which you can’t judge books by) and the fact that I am a fan of Katherine Hepburn.

She was a woman who understood the world and her place in it. She loved passionately and with all her heart and she let nothing stand in the way of her goals. Sandra Bullock would come the closest to her true style underneath while no around comes close to her almost manly aggression and stubbornness.

This book, however, is written like a bad Barbara Taylor Bradford novel. So let me says this, BTB can be a great read, A Woman With Substance is awesome! However, she overuses her adjectives and you can find yourself skipping parts because they are repeated so much. (Emma Heart was indomitable and implacable but her enemies always knew she was fair and just, yadda yadda.) Apparently, Katherine Hepburn was brash. At least that’s the thought that Ms. Karbo wants to beat over our heads. She tries to show us through anecdotes but interrupts the showing for more telling.

This would be OK as this book is not a biography on KH but it is Ms. Karbo’s interpretation of KH’s life and how we should emulate her. We’re supposed to look at KH’s responses to things and not only go oohh and ahh, but figure out how we should respond in kind should these same set of life circumstances befall us.

For example, page 6 – The Importance of Being Brash, Katherine is arriving in LA wearing couture that is hugely inappropriate for the weather and general California looks.

During the long train trip across country some steel shavings had found their way into her eye, causing both eyes, for some reason, to turn red…. To Leland Hayward, her agent and future paramour, waiting at the train station to collect her, she looked like a cadaver with a drinking problem.

They repaired to RKO [a movie studio in the thirties], where Hepburn demanded to see a doctor immediately.

Instead of getting the doctor, Hepburn discusses fashions for her first movie, A Bill of Divorcement. She makes a wise crack and gets one thrown right back at her and thus forming a life long friendship.

What does this show us, ladies? What goes around comes around and actors/actresses are opportunists who fight for their chance to the top and will sacrifice (even their eye health) to get there.

The book doesn’t quite make it as a self-help/new living style. It ends up falling short and makes me think less of KH than thinking more of her. In truth, KH was just a woman with goals and a focused mind in real life. In movies, she was an outstanding actress who found good roles with good people (other actors and directors) and wowed the audience. Thankfully, for her and us we still remember and admire her in the movie roles she played.

However, emulating her caustic wit, comically gruff voice, and manish mannerisms will only get you labeled a bitch or worse. (Remember the feminist of the 80s – yeah ladies, we’ve been there done that and got no where with it.)

What made Kate Great was her singularity as an entity. She wouldn’t be great if she were common. Emulate her way of walking, her hairstyle or her manner of dress. But if you were to act like Kate it would lead to problems. Remember the real Kate understood the world and her place in it and I’m sure she would agree.

Out of 5 stars

NASHVILLE NOIR - A MURDER SHE WROTE MYSTERY

NASHVILLE NOIR
A MURDER SHE WROTE MYSTERY
A NOVEL BY JESSICA FLETCHER & DONALD BAIN
Based on the Universal TV series created by
Peter S. Fischer, Richard Levinson & William Link
ISBN: 978-0-451-22927-4

I was a huge Murder She Wrote fan when the series was on and even in repeats I still DVR them. Remember when Jessica and Seth found the guy drowned in the desert! Genius, sheer genius.

The best thing about MSW were the twists and turns that made the story worth watching. Jessica was also a huge part. The everyperson’s best friend/grandmother/cool aunt. People invited Jessica everywhere, she knew how to get inside any locked room, and around law enforcement or mafia goons in order to find the clue she needed to solve the mystery.

In Nashville Noir, Jessica is back on her home turf of Cabot Cove and one of their own is a soon to be rising star. Apparently, the people of Cabot Cove don’t try that other small town stuff of keeping young people at home. Instead, CC has grants given to young people with potential in the arts to send them to another state or city for them to receive tutelage and live without having to work. In this situation, Cindy Blaskowitz, is the chosen one and because she leans towards country music she is being sent to Nashville.

Now, in MSW there was some trite writing and some things seemed forced even in the later years since Jessica had to leave CC in order to keep the viewers from wondering why every other small town had a murder every 10 – 20 years and CC had them almost twice daily. I’m not looking in this book for a new Hemingway or Shakespeare but I did want some semblance of common sense. The show had deadlines and inevitably the stars and co-stars/guest stars would have had input and wanted changes; all making it understandable if not necessary not to have perfect writing in the script in sacrifice for time and budget.

However, this is a book and books are a different animal. You are able to write several drafts and since this is obviously being written to follow the series should have planned with enough forethought to prevent silly mistakes. After all, there is a guaranteed following for this book and the publishers should have spent enough money in preparation to make sure people were satisfied. Poor editing on the writing and publishing end makes me think this was rushed.

Page 13 has the initial plot twist of Cindy no longer being happy in Nashville due to her record label giving her best song away to someone else and worse yet putting that starlets name as co-writer all without her knowing about it. In response to this bombshell delivered by Cindy’s mom Jessica says, “That’s outrageous,” I blurted, “to say nothing of illegal. It’s fraud. It’s theft. It would be like taking one of my novels, putting another writer’s name on it along with mine, and publishing it without my knowledge or approval.”

No, Jessica, it would not be similar to what you just said it would be exactly what you just said. Because you repeated the “real-life situation” Cindy’s mom told you and put yourself in it. Makes me wonder about the psyche of someone who single-white female themselves.

In real life, mothers and daughters argue and go back-and-forth, but when written it interrupts the progression of things and throws the reader off balance. Cindy and her mother arguing on the phone and the constant mother advice of being polite got on my nerves and I couldn’t wait for the scene to be over.

There is also the notes to the readers without explanation. Jessica goes to Nashville and visits a diner “where a waitress took my order of a bowl of fruit and a narrow wedge of buttermilk chess pie, a tasty but very sweet Southern specialty she’d recommended.” Umm… excuse me, Fletcher/Bain, shouldn’t you be showing and not telling? Why not have the conversation with the waitress and have Jessica say I’ll take that blah blah the rest of the order blah. This is another factor that threw me off and almost irritated me, this was originally written for television where the luxury of bad expositions weren’t available and they had to include everything as conversation or a found letter or some such thing. Why not follow up on that tradition here instead of doing the worst mistakes a writer can make?

Page 178 Det. Biddle speaking, “…no love lost between him [the victim’s son] and his step-mother either… They barely said two words to each other in the waiting room.”
“Not a Norman Rockwell family,” I [Jessica Fletcher] commented.
“Meaning?”
“Not the sort of loving family the artist depicted in his paintings,” I explained.
“Not at all.”

Stuff like the above, you’ve got to be kidding me. How could this get past editing? Did they give the ghostwriter a deadline and a word count to meet? You couldn’t have cut this and still had a good book, this exchange was essential for others to know? Why?

OK, once I got into the rhythm of the book things picked up. I knew what I was getting into when I read the inside cover flap, Jessica on a travel excursion solving a murder or MSW – The Later Years. The poor editing and bad writing faded after a while and you enjoyed the usual twists and turns that MSW provides. Towards the end there are a slew of suspects to choose from which heightened the suspense just like old times. Finally, the villain is revealed and all the clues are laid bare.

I must admit to really liking this book but only because it’s based on the TV show. Had it been anyone else’s first attempt I wouldn’t have finished reading it. I got this book from the library but if you’re going to buy it $22.95 is the price though of course by now it should be a bit cheaper on Amazon and the usual sources of book buying.

Out of 5 stars
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