"City of Girls"

[fiefoe]

Blair Brown conveys the energy of the 1940s' New York perfectly. This novel is mostly light and giddy, (who wouldn't want to hang out with showgirls vicariously!), and the second-person framing only breaks down a bit towards the end. This is the second heroine from an Elizabeth Gilbert's book who doesn't share anything carnal with her love of life.

• How many more books does a person need to read in order to prove that she can read a book?
• being captivated by your own appearance is part of what it means to be a young and pretty girl.
• War is a dreadful business, but it teaches everyone something; this particular war taught my Aunt Peg how to put on a show.
• A person only gets to move to New York City for the first time in her life once, Angela, and it’s a pretty big deal. Perhaps this idea doesn’t hold any romance for you, since you are a born New Yorker. Maybe you take this splendid city of ours for granted. Or maybe you love it more than I do, in your own unimaginably intimate way. Without a doubt, you were lucky to be raised here. But you never got to move here—and for that, I am sorry for you. You missed one of life’s great experiences. New York City in 1940! There will never be another New York like that one. I’m not defaming all the New Yorks that came before 1940, or all the New Yorks that came after 1940. They all have their importance. But this is a city that gets born anew in the fresh eyes of every young person who arrives here for the first time. So that city, that place—newly created for my eyes only—will never exist again. It is preserved forever in my memory like an orchid trapped in a paperweight. That city will always be my perfect New York.
• I never tired of moving through these scenes. I relished the sensation of being one small dot of humanity in a larger ocean of souls.
• It was all grandiose, it was all crumbling. The Lily reminded me of Grandmother Morris. Not only because my grandmother had loved gaudy old playhouses like this, but also because my grandmother had looked like this -- old, overdone and proud, and decked to the nines in out-of-date velvet.
• I don't think it was my imagination that Olive said the words “enduring affection” much the same way someone else might say “stubborn rash.”
• But more often, we caught dancers on their way down the ladder. (There is nothing more brave or touching than an aging Rockette auditioning to be in the chorus line of a cheap and lousy show called Catch That Boat!)
• “Good morning, Mr. Herbert!” I would say.
  The point is debatable,” he might respond.
  Or, on another day: “Good morning, Mr. Herbert!”
  “I will half allow it.”
  Or: “Good morning, Mr. Herbert!”
  “I fail to see your argument.”
  Or: “Good morning, Mr. Herbert!”
  “I find myself unequal to the occasion.”
  Or, my favorite ever: “Good morning, Mr. Herbert!”
  “Oh, you’re a satirist now, are you?”
• Because for now, I just want to say that the Lily Playhouse was unlike any world I'd ever inhabited. It was a living animation of glamour and grit and mayhem and fun - a world full of adults behaving like children, in other words.
• (If you know anything about the friendships of young girls, you will know that there is always one person playing the part of the handmaiden, anyhow.)
• In other words, despite all evidence that sex was being exchanged for money (and sex was being exchanged for money, make no mistake about it) nobody here was engaging in prostitution. This was merely an alternative arrangement that suited everyone involved. You know: from each according to their abilities; to each according to their needs.
• “Now, Vivvie, what you have to understand is that he’s boring,” said Jennie. “If you get bored, don’t go thinking this is always how it feels to fool around.”
  “But he’s a doctor,” said Celia. “He’ll do right for our Vivvie. That’s what matters this time.”
• “I got you this,” said Celia. “It’s a towel. It’s for in case you bleed.”
  “Thank you, Celia.”
  She shrugged, looked away, and—to my shock—blushed. “Sometimes people bleed. You’ll want to be able to clean yourself up.”
  “Yeah, and you don’t want to use Mrs. Kellogg’s good towels,” said Gladys.
• Perhaps I’m not being fair to Dr. Kellogg. <> He was a nice enough man, and he was only trying to help me out, without alarming me too much. I do believe he did not want to hurt me. Maybe he was applying the Hippocratic oath to this situation: First, do no harm and all that. <>Or maybe he wasn’t such a nice man.
• “I suppose there are worse ways to lose your virginity.”
  “All the other ways are worse,” Jennie said. "Believe me. I’ve tried them all.”
• It helped that Celia Ray could walk into a joint like nobody I’ve ever seen. She would throw her resplendence into a room ahead of her, the way a soldier might toss a grenade into a machine gunner’s nest, and then she’d follow her beauty right on in and assess the carnage.
• Drunk, pinwheel-eyed, briny-blooded, brainless, weightless—Celia and I spun through New York City that summer on currents of pure electricity. Instead of walking, we rocketed. There was no focus; there was just a constant search for the vivid. We missed nothing, but we also missed everything. We watched Joe Louis train with his sparring partner, for instance, and we heard Billie Holiday sing—but I can’t remember the details of either occasion. We were too distracted by our own story to pay much attention to all the wonders that were laid before us.
• Until that night, I’d been able to kid myself that Celia Ray and I were exactly the same—just two equally worldly and gutsy women, conquering the city and having fun. But clearly that wasn’t true. I had been recreationally dabbling in danger, but Celia knew danger. She knew things—dark things—that I didn’t know. She knew things that she didn’t want me to know. <>  When I think back on it all now, Angela, it’s appalling to realize that this kind of violence seemed so commonplace back then—and not just to Celia, but also to me. (For instance: why did it never occur to me at the time to wonder how Gladys had come to be so good at covering up black eyes?)
• It’s not difficult to compliment people in order to try to win their affections. What is difficult is to do it in the right way. Everyone told Celia she was beautiful, but nobody had ever told her she had the carriage of a trained ballerina. Nobody had ever told her she had a face made for her times.
• “I prefer trousers for daily wear,” she explained. “I’m small, but I have a long stride. I need to be able to move about freely. Years ago, a newspaperman wrote that I had a ‘titillating boyishness’ to me, and that’s my favorite thing a man’s ever said about me. What could be better than having a bit of the titillating boy about you?”
• No fashion trend is compulsory, remember—and if you dress too much in the style of the moment, it makes you look like a nervous person.
• She opened her eyes and smiled. “Coco Chanel is a gifted, ambitious, cunning, unloved, and hardworking eel of a woman. I’m more afraid of her taking dominion over the world than I am of Mussolini or Hitler. No, I’m teasing—she’s a fine enough specimen of a person. One is only ever in danger from Coco when she starts calling you her friend. But she’s far more interesting than I’m making her sound.
• “The difference between making a dress and making a costume, of course, is that dresses are sewn, but costumes are built. Many people these days can sew, but not many know how to build. A costume is a prop for the stage, Vivvie, as much as any piece of furniture, and it needs to be strong. You never know what’s going to happen in a performance, and so the costume must be ready for anything.”
• What else? Oh, yes—my shoulders are narrower than they seem. And my neck is awfully short, so proceed with caution, especially if you’re going to put me in some sort of a large hat. If you make me look like a stubby little French bulldog, Vivian, I’ll never forgive you.”
• “You are designing for the stage, Vivian,” she instructed. “Rely upon shape more than detail. Remember that the nearest viewer to me will be ten strides away. You have to think on a large scale. Big colors, clean lines. A costume is a landscape, not a portrait. And I want brilliant dresses, my dear, but I don’t want the dress to be the star of the show. Don’t outshine me, darling. You understand?”
• It would be closer to the truth to say that Edna Parker Watson was the first native speaker I’d ever encountered of the language that I wanted to master—the language of outstanding apparel.
• “You can have all of it, Peg. And you might even make a nice lump of brass off this venture, too. If you’ll only let me write this show for you—and if it’s as good as I think it could be—why, you’ll make so much money, your ancestors will never have to work again.”
• most marriages are neither heavenly nor hellish, but vaguely purgatorial.
• (Anything can get tedious after enough time, Angela—even watching heartbreaking acts of naked vulnerability.)
• But maybe the young are just feral animals in the way that they shift their affections and allegiances so capriciously. Celia could certainly be capricious, too. I realize now that I always needed somebody to be infatuated with when I was twenty years old, and it didn’t really matter who, apparently. Anybody with more charisma than me would do the trick. (And New York was filled with people more charismatic than me.) I was so unformulated as a human being, so unsteady in myself, that I was constantly grasping for attachment to another person—constantly anchoring myself to someone else’s allure.
• The secret to falling in love so fast, of course, is not to know the person at all. You just need to identify one exciting feature about them, and then you hurl your heart at that one feature, with full force, trusting that this will be enough of a foundation for lasting devotion.
• ... and announced, “I’ve just been to the printers. It’s going to cost two hundred and fifty dollars to print the five thousand new tickets you want, and I refuse to pay it.”  Peg spun on her heel and shouted: “Goddamn it, Olive—how much money do I have to pay you to stop talking about fucking money?”
• Stay relaxed by seeing how relaxed she is. Remember that an audience will forgive a performer for anything except being uncomfortable. And if you forget your lines, just keep talking gibberish, and Edna will somehow fix it. Trust her—she’s been doing this job since the Spanish Armada, haven’t you, Edna?” “Since somewhat before then, I should think,” she said, smiling.
• But mostly, watch for signs of pride. When an audience is happy with what they’re watching, they always look so goddamn proud of themselves. As if they made the play themselves, the selfish bastards. Go out there and tell me if they’re looking proud of themselves.”
• What you are Vivian is a type of person. To be more specific,you are a type of woman. A tediously common type of woman. Do you think I've not encountered your type before? Your sort will always be slinking around, playing your boring and vulgar little games, causing your boring and vulgar little problems. You are the type of woman, Vivian, because you will always be playing with toys that are not your own. A woman of your type often believes she is a person of significance because she can make trouble and spoil things for others. But she is neither important nor interesting.
• This matter must never be spoken of again. We WASPs can apply that rule to anything.
• For my mother, acceptance would always have to be a stand-in for enthusiasm.
• And so I slid toward marriage, like a car sliding off the road on a scree of loose gravel.
• “I’m disappointed in everybody,” she said after a long silence. “In who, exactly?” I was thinking she would say the Nazis. “The adults,” she said. “All of them. How did they let the world get so out of control?”
• we were also propagandists. The Navy filtered information and inspiration through us. We had to keep everyone angry and fired up at Hitler and Hirohito at all times (we killed Hitler so many times, in so many different skits, that I can’t believe the man wasn’t having nightmares about us all the way over there in Germany).
• “Are you talking about having a store?”
  “A boutique, Vivian. God, honey, get used to saying the word. Jews have stores; we shall have a boutique.”
  “But you are Jewish.”
• “Immigrant or no, the only way people make money in retail in this city is by owning property, not by selling clothes. Ask the Saks family—they know.
• As with costumes, wedding gowns are not sewn but built. They are intended to be monumental, and so it takes a monumental amount of effort to make one.
• If there was a stain that I couldn’t remove, I’d have to cut around it, and figure out how much I could salvage of the old fabric. Or maybe I would turn that piece inside out, or use it as a lining. I often felt like a diamond cutter—trying to keep as much of the value of the original material as I could while shaving away what was flawed.
• The field of honor is a painful field...(It) is not a place where children can play. Children don't have any honor, you see, and they aren't expected to, because it's too difficult for them. It's too painful. But to become an adult, one must step into the field of honor. Everything will be expected of you now. You will need to be vigilant in your principles. Sacrifices will be demanded. You will be judged. If you make mistakes, you must account for them. There will be instances when you must cast aside your impulses and take a higher stance than another person - a person without honor - might take. Such an instance may hurt, but that's why honor is a painful field.
• “The world ain't straight. You grow up thinking things are a certain way. You think there are rules. You think there's a way that things have to be. You try to live straight. But the world doesn't care about your rules, or what you believe. The world ain't straight, Vivian. Never will be. Our rules, they don't mean a thing. The world just happens to you sometimes, is what I think. And people just gotta keep moving through it, best they can.”
• But the 1960s made me feel proud, too, because there was a level at which my community had already foretold all these transformations and upheavals.
• “You must learn in life to take things more lightly, my dear. The world is always changing. Learn how to allow for it. Somone makes a promise, and then they break it. A play gets good notices, and then it folds. A marriage looks strong, and then they divorce. For a while there's no war, and then there's another war. If you get too upset about it all, you become a stupid, unhappy person—and where's the good in that?
• I can’t be certain that Frank and I would have felt the same depth of love and tenderness for each other, had sex ever been part of our story. Sex is so often a cheat, a short cut of intimacy, a way to skip over knowing somebody’s heart by knowing instead their mere body.
• I can only assume that she was like all of us—a complicated being, composed of more than one man’s impressions.
• We may fall victim to the misconception that time will heal all wounds and that eventually everything will shake itself out. But as we get older, we learn this sad truth: some things can never be fixed. Some mistakes can never be put right—not by the passage of time, and not by our most fervent wishes, either.
• “I hope that your heart is strong within your grieving.”
• I fell in love with him, and it made no sense for me to fall in love with him. We could not possibly have been more different. But maybe that’s where love grows best—in the deep space that exists between polarities.
• This is what I've found about life, as I've gotten older: you start to lose people, Angela. It's not that there is ever a shortage of people - oh, heavens no. It is merely that - as the years pass - there comes to be a shortage of your people. The ones you loved. The ones who knew the people that you both loved. The ones who know your whole history. Those people start to be plucked away by death, and they are awfully hard to replace after they go.
• “Thank you for the tribute of your honesty,” he said—which I thought then, and still think, was one of the most elegant things I’d ever heard anyone say.
• Sometimes it's just true that other people have better ideas for your life than you do.
• Nathan, dear as he is, will never set the world on fire. But I do love him.
• It's good to be sorry - but don't make a fetish of it. The one good thing about being Protestant is that we are not expected to cringe forever in contrition. Yours was a venial sin, Vivian, but not a mortal one.' 'I don't know what that means.' 'I'm not sure I do, either. It's just something I once read. Here is what I do know, however: sins of the flesh will not get you punished in the afterlife. They will only get you punished in this life. As you've now learned.