I am hoping that this blog can be a phantasmagorical mix of all different topics, which should explain the name”thisNthatwithatewist,” because quite frankly my interests aren’t just limited to one thing. I figure to start it off; I’ll post a review of one of my favorite books: Families: A Memoir and a Celebration

      Wyatt Cooper might well have been one of the most talented writers of the second half of the 20^th century. His vivid imagery is reminiscent of Tennessee Williams or Mark Twain and his eloquent voice is, in my opinion, comparable to that of the Bronte sisters or even William Shakespeare.  Yet, most people have never read his only book, Families: A Memoir and a Celebration. This is because only three years after Families was released, Cooper died suddenly from a heart condition at the age of 50, and the book has never been republished.

            The 1974 book is dedicated, “To my two families, the one that made me and the one I made;” two families that couldn’t have been more different. Cooper was raised in rural Mississippi on a farm during the depression. They had very little, but they had love. In the 1960’s Cooper, by that time an actor and screenwriter, became the fourth Mr. Gloria Vanderbilt, who at the time was worth over $4 million. The two met at a party and, “saw in each other a spark of recognition, a desire for family and need to belong.” He became father to her two youngest sons Carter and Anderson Cooper.  Although I admire his talent throughout the book, it is the way he describes his wife, that I find the most beautiful.

“She moves on strange planes, that girl; she is a creature of some mystery, not altogether of this world, part wood nymph, part Earth Mother, and part American Beauty Rose. She has the freshness of Snow White and the glamour of the Wicked Queen. She is as exotic as a unicorn and as subtle as an Egyptian temple cat. She is as crisp as gingham, as sensuous as satin, and as inscrutable as velvet. She is also as tentative as a doe in the forest, as delicate as a spider’s web, as glittering as frost on a windowpane, and as plain as a willow. She is as gay as a meadowlark, as clean as a day in the country, as cool as strawberries, and as healthy as a pitcher of milk.”  It might just be the hopeless romantic in me, but I’d give anything for a man to speak of me that way. Thought the two families described in the book couldn’t have been more different, the theme of the book is universal; we are shaped by who and where we come from.

            Cooper depicts how society has led the family to lose closeness, something that he tried to counteract in his own life.  He warns against being too busy to cherish the now, saying, “I cherish each day with my children, for never again will that little boy be the same little boy he is today.  Tomorrow, or the day after, or the year after that, he will be a grave young man, solemnly shaking hands, keeping his secrets to himself, and expressing his love for me only with a quick and laughing eye. In the meantime one treasures each moment, preserves it, locks it away in memory, and knows that what exists between us tomorrow will be based on the joy, the respect, the truth, and the love that are ours today.” 

            He also discusses the different kinds of relationships and dynamics that exist within a family. He goes into the detail of his own personal losses, his father when he was 17, his sister’s death when she was in her thirties, all from heart troubles and foreshadows the future doom that would befall his children and wife.

            “When Carter was three years old, he asked me, ‘When I get to be as old as you are now, will you be very old and ready to die,’” Cooper recounts.  “Something turned over in my stomach; my eyes burned; and I felt constriction on my throat.”  Not only did Wyatt Cooper never live to see Carter Cooper into his forties, but Carter himself died just eleven years after his father.

            I’ve read this book several times, and every time I am inspired by his love of his family. As someone from a big family, he really speaks to me.  Anderson Cooper has said that he reads the book as a guild on how to live. Perhaps the world would be a better place if he wasn’t the only one.

            The final paragraph of the book reads, “We must, whenever possible, reach out to each other, tentatively to touch, with our hands with our eyes, and with our hearts. We must wish for each other love and laughter, smiles and sunshine, good thought and happy days. We must go rejoicing in the blessings of this world, chief of which is the mystery, the magic, the majesty, and the miracle that is life.”

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