Superstar, Jr.

This book has kind of saved my life in a way a lot of other books can't because they try so hard to make things meaningful "meaning" gets placated, sucked into ego and other stuff.  Molly Shannon, the memoirist, definitely has a sense of self, an ego, but her memoire is truly given over to other people, especially her father, who was a beautiful mixed bag of greatness and not-so-greatness, an alcoholic cheerleader/lunatic who was responsible for the death of Molly's mom, sister and cousin because of a horrible car accident in 1968.  But somehow all of that is contextualized through focusing on just getting through.  Molly's early life in Cleveland, her ambition to get out of there, her struggles and triumphs in NYC and LA...  And yet even though the book is stuffed with wonderful show-biz anecdotes (a lecherous Gary Coleman, a lovely Lorne Michaels, etc.), the focus always swings back to James F. Shannon, that boozy Catholic husband and father who is a combination of John Waters and Jimmy Stewart, with a little Liza Minelli and Paul Lynde thrown in for good measure. 

His life was about recovering from a huge and horrible mistake, and therefore the book is layered with a sense of mercy and kindness that really totally inspired me.  Molly's voice in the book is rat-tat-tat let's-get-it-going all the way through, but also somehow musically discretionary, one-liners leading into epithets into epigraphs.  She uses words without preciousness, her language cutting through all the sentimentality needed to make things tolerable.  Her love for her dad is amazingly simple and beautifully complex.  Her love for everything else is like that too.

When her dad finally tells her he's gay right before he dies at age 72, you feel the world somehow stopping and coming together.  All of Molly's characters seem to blossom from that moment:  Mary Katherine Gallagher's superstar weirdness, Helen Madden's joyoligist joy, Sally O'Malley's kicking and ranting about who she is and how old she is...  All of that and more seems to spring from her relationship with her dad, from his thwarted need and sweetness and hurt.

I was sobbing Tuesday night reading the final pages of Hello, Molly.  It was strangely and beautifully cleansing.  In a world where everyone is building their fucking brands, Molly chose to use her memoire to build an elegy.  God bless her and everyone else.