{"id":89522,"date":"2015-09-04T12:01:14","date_gmt":"2015-09-04T16:01:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=89522"},"modified":"2015-09-04T12:01:14","modified_gmt":"2015-09-04T16:01:14","slug":"a-journey-of-discovery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/09\/04\/a-journey-of-discovery\/","title":{"rendered":"A Journey of Discovery"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

From the cover of South Mountain Road<\/i>.<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cMy mother killed herself on the first day of spring.\u201d That\u2019s the first line of Hesper Anderson\u2019s memoir, South Mountain Road:\u00a0A Daughter\u2019s Journey of Discovery<\/a>.\u00a0<\/em>Please persevere. And don\u2019t be put off by the subtitle\u2014even if the squishy word \u201cjourney\u201d gives you hives, the book won\u2019t. I promise. This is a straightforward recommendation\u2014a prolonged staff pick<\/a>, if you like.\u00a0<\/p>\n

If \u201cSeptember Song\u201d\u2014discussed recently in these pages<\/a>\u2014feels inherently melancholy, the standard comes by this honestly: its lyricist, Maxwell Anderson, led a life marked by sadness. The autobiographical\u00a0Morning, Winter, and Night\u00a0<\/em>(written under a pseudonym) recounts a gothic childhood filled with abuse. And before he began his long and successful career as a Pulitzer Prize\u2013winning playwright, Anderson lost a number of jobs over his politics. <\/p>\n

Anderson married his first wife young; they had three sons. But he soon started seeing the married\u00a0Gertrude Higger (stage name: Mab Anthony), and he and his wife separated; not long after, she was killed in a car wreck. Anderson and Mab moved in together, and had a daughter, Hesper. The marriage was troubled by infidelity and extravagance, and after Anderson left her in 1953, Mab committed suicide.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Enter South Mountain Road.\u00a0<\/em>Hesper\u2019s memoir recounts one year in her life: that following her mothers death, in which she digs into Mab\u2019s past in search of that modern but timeless thing, closure. But it\u2019s also a story of the theatrical world of the 1930s and forties\u2014yes, there are plenty of celebrity cameos, if that\u2019s a draw\u2014of growing up around depression and instability, of complex family dynamics, and of, well, journeys of discovery. It wasn\u2019t until after her mother\u2019s death that Hesper learned that her parents had never married, or about her father\u2019s own troubled childhood. She discovers a locked strongbox of letters, no less! And one central narrative of the book\u2014her lifelong adoration of an older writer\u2014adds to the turmoil. I don\u2019t offer any sort of spoiler alert because these events, dramatic as they are, are not the \u201cpoint\u201d of reading\u00a0South Mountain Road.<\/em>\u00a0<\/p>\n

It sounds lurid, but really, it\u2019s not. First line notwithstanding, the book is written with a deft touch and a sure sense of place. It\u2019s spare and unsentimental. The author doesn\u2019t romanticize herself or exaggerate the sense of tragedy, but she likes her own character enough to be good narrative company. And in her portrait of her mother, Anderson gives us one of the more nuanced narcissists in recent memory.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I found the book at a library sale. Maybe stumbling upon it is the best way, I don\u2019t know. But we don\u2019t always have that luxury\u2014life is too short.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Sadie Stein is contributing editor of <\/em>The Paris Review, and the <\/em>Daily\u2019s correspondent.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cMy mother killed herself on the first day of spring.\u201d That\u2019s the first line of Hesper Anderson\u2019s memoir, South Mountain Road:\u00a0A Daughter\u2019s Journey of Discovery.\u00a0Please persevere. And don\u2019t be put off by the subtitle\u2014even if the squishy word \u201cjourney\u201d gives you hives, the book won\u2019t. I promise. This is a straightforward recommendation\u2014a prolonged staff pick, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":178,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13115],"tags":[17,19356,19358,19359,10368,19339,19357],"class_list":["post-89522","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-our-daily-correspondent","tag-books","tag-hesper-anderson","tag-mab-anthony","tag-maxwell-anderson","tag-memoirs","tag-september-song","tag-south-mountain-road"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nOn Hesper Anderson\u2019s \u201cSouth Mountain Road\u201d<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"September 4, 2015 \u2013 \u201cMy mother killed herself on the first day of spring.\u201d That\u2019s the first line of Hesper Anderson\u2019s memoir, South Mountain Road:\u00a0A Daughter\u2019s Journey of\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, 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