| Liz
Smith cont.
JJ:
You were gutsy to even bring it up!
LS:
Actually I didn't bring it up to them—they read my mail
and ferreted out nefarious things.
JJ:
How would you describe your father? He called you "my
best boy."
LS:
He was always pushing me to excel and I think it finally worked
for me. He did a lot for me. Sent me to college, made a lot
of sacrifices and I adored him. But he was very demanding
and competitive and hot-tempered. My mother was very sweet.
If you called Central Casting and said, send over the perfect
looking and acting mother, she'd arrive. If religion hadn't
stifled her, I think she'd have been a really great woman.
JJ:
I was very taken by the chapter where you described in
a bittersweet way your mother having just had her hair and
nails done, and then just died looking great.
LS:
Yep. She was waiting for one of my brothers to come visit
her and she got all tarted up and was there playing solitaire
watching her soap opera, and she died of a massive cerebral
hemorrhage. That's the way to go!
"I've
had a charmed life!"
|
JJ:
Was there pressure in the gay community to expose your
preference?
LS:
Oh sure, they carried on for years. For the whole '80s they
carried on. I'm not interested in pleasing the gay community.
I didn't want to be a role model for them and I didn't know
what I'd want to do the next day.
JJ:
So what made you come out now?
LS: I couldn't write a
memoir and lie about one of the central interesting facts
of my life. I didn't think I could get away with that. I wasn't
going to write a lie.
JJ:
You're so honest. Why didn't you tell more about your sexuality?
LS: What else was there
to say? I might have wounded somebody else's career. Or reputation.
It's one thing to write about the men in your life, but if
these women I knew want to write about it, they can write
their own book.
JJ:
You're still friends with your once live-in relationship,
archaeologist Iris Love.
LS:
We're very good friends. She was like my child. She's a wonderful,
fascinating, eccentric person. And she meant a lot in my life.
I mean, we had a wonderful intellectual companionship. Still
do.
JJ:
What's your most embarrassing moment?
LS: Oh I don't know ...
I've had a charmed life.
JJ:
Do you regret not having children?
LS:
I have lots of them. Fifteen or something nieces and grandnieces
and nephews. I would have been an awful mother! I never had
the impulse anyway. And I was too ambitious.
JJ:
Do you go to the Hamptons much?
LS:
I still visit there, my friends Pete Peterson and Joan Ganz
Cooney. I like it better than anywhere I've ever been. The
light in the summer is like the south of France. I think it's
the most beautiful place in the world.
JJ:
So do I. Thanks, Liz ... for the dish!
|
