Patricia Bosworth: The Men in MY Life

Patricia Bosworth

Patricia Bosworth passed away at age 86 a few weeks ago of Covid-19.

This is a terrible loss for a few reasons.

First, I could go on endlessly about how Trump is an epic failure as president and a human, but that is blindingly obvious.

But really, her voice was one that we need more of, not less. She was a writer not of beautiful sentences—though she could manage that—but of simplicity that enthralls and tells the truth, many truths.

I am halfway done with her memoir The Men in My Life in which she describes her young adulthood and the loss to suicide of her dear brother and father.

She most certainly was born with a silver spoon firmly planted in her mouth—few others attended parties with Paul Newman, Marilyn Monroe, et all at age 20—but she is self-aware of this fact.

And yet, her life even as it was surrounded by the trappings of wealth had more than its share of pain. She was impulsive and made poor decisions with regard to men, especially her first husband. Her father suffered severe depression, alcoholism, and pill addiction. Her brother—a closeted homosexual suffering that brand in the 1950s—was deeply depressed, too, experienced terrible traumas, and killed himself.

But she soldiered on and achieved acclaim as an actor and then a writer.

In fact, she gave up acting to become a writer. Thank goodness she did.

Her memoir is everything that certain books I could name—looking at you Eat Pray Love—are not nor will their writers ever be. Her voice is true and real, each sentence holds its weight and does its work. She does not ever fall into cliche or platitude—she resists these and obviously worked hard to strip them out—nor does she bore.

She is self-aware and takes fault when deserved and honestly places it when deserved, but mostly she leaves it to the reader to figure it out.

And reading this book makes me wish I could live at least a little, tiny fragment of my life in the literary firmament. Yes, I’ve won awards, written and published books, interviewed important people, etc, but I’ve never spent much time with other people and writers of Bosworth’s weight and stature. To be accepted and share and hear and discuss life and writing with people living it on this level would be a nice thing.

And so, I keep writing. I do it because I love it even when I hate it and because I want and strive.

Reading Bosworth inspires and puts a little gas in the tank.