Lucy had written Autobiography of a Face, a memoir about being a child survivor of cancer who lost half her jaw. I read this close to when it came out, in the early/mid 90s I guess. I remember the author describing excruciating chemotherapy, and I remember for some reason not particularly liking the author. Not that I didn't like her, but somehow I felt that there was a distance there, that I didn't connect with the narrator on an emotional level, when she was telling such an emotional story. I guess the proper adjective is restrained, but I wanted to feel more.
Anyway, I remember around that time actually seeing Lucy Grealy in Soho. She was recognizable because of her lack of a jaw. For some reason seeing her made a big impression on me.
Well, after having read Winterson's memoir, Amazon recommended Truth & Beauty, and so all these years later I'm revisiting Lucy Grealy.
Grealy, or Lucy as she is in Patchett's memoir, died of a heroin overdose in 2002. Patchett tells of an intense friendship dating back to when their days in graduate school as young aspiring writers at the Iowa Workshop. The friendship's intensity seems to all come from Lucy, who is dramatic and needy and over the top and larger than life. She doesn't suffer, she SUFFERS. Although Patchett describes Lucy as always surrounded by friends, there was nothing in her description that captured Lucy's charm, so she just seemed like a weird pain in the ass and it was hard to see what drew people to her.
The friendship itself seemed awfully lopsided. Ann is kind of a non presence. For instance there are many of Lucy's letters, but none of Ann's. Ann tends to Lucy's needs, but never does this seem to be reciprocated. I do understand friendships like that. I've actually been on both sides of them, but it was annoying having such a bland narrator.
I was morbidly fascinated by Lucy's lack of a jaw. She didn't have lower teeth, couldn't closer her mouth, and couldn't chew. So she could only slurp mashed up stuff... She endured a total of 38 surgeries, all intended to rebuild her jaw so that she could look normal. Actually she wanted badly not to be normal but to be beautiful. At one point after a surgery she asks Ann how she looks and Ann says "good". Lucy says "I didn't go through all of this to look good. I want to look great!"
Lucy had a lot of sex, and I couldn't help wondering how about her kissing and that aspect of her physical relationships. Other than the sex, her love life was empty and she suffered greatly from loneliness and a desire to be really loved.
Another thing that was interesting was getting to see aspects of the lives of the literati. Patchett, Grealy and all their friends were very successful writers, writers for whom success happened quickly and, from Patchett's account, relatively effortlessly.
Oh, one last thing, Lucy could not put together another book after Autobiography of a Face. It seemed she shot her wad on that and there was nothing left. She had a deadline for another book that she kept putting off, and at one point Ann offers to write the book for her. WTF? How fucked up is that?
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