Happiness Is Too Much Trouble

Sandra Hochman

Description

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Turner Publishing is proud to present a new edition of Sandra Hochman's, Happiness Is Too Much Trouble

First published by Putnam in 1976, Hochman's follow-up to Walking Papers is the story of a unique woman told by a unique voice in American literature.

From the Putman edition: Who took over where Louis B. Mayer left off? A new kind of woman: Lulu. Lulu Cartwright is a troublemaker on a pilgrimage to save souls. One morning she wakes up and finds that she has been named head of the world’s largest film studio. This powerful job is hers by a freak of computerized technology and ironic justice. As Lulu describes herself, she is the “unbroken token.” She is also wise, frightened, funny, and sexually vulnerable.

Throughout the novel we follow Lulu from her moment of triumph back into her thoughts and memories. We meet her old lovers, husbands; we meet her parents, her childhood friends, her child; but most important of all, we meet Dumbo—a hustler and a stud. We watch Dumbo change from an out-of-work extra into Lulus “wife” and finally into an entrepreneur in the foot business. Through Lulu s eyes we put together the puzzle of her love for Dumbo. Dumbo is alive with contradictions, devotions, and a desire to heal soles. Dumbo, as perceived by Lulu, is the new hero, a stud-savior.

We also enter, with Lulu, through the computerized portals of the new Hollywood. We encounter the movieland of executives who never see films, the Hollywood of consultants, accountants, and frightened corporation men who have to deliver image and product in order to satisfy stockholders. On the way to the top, Lulu Cartwright finds herself in bed with Machiavellis, losers, and vibrators. Lulu is the kind of woman who manages to change the system, not merely be victimized by it.

Happiness Is Too Much Trouble is the story, past and present, of a woman who is finally, and against all odds, a winner. Lulu, by an accident of history, is forced to give up happiness and settle instead for fame, fortune, power. What makes her different is that she loves every minute of it. And so will you.

Sujets

• Literary
• Sandra Hochman
• Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: Turner Publishing Company
• Date de parution: 02 mai 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781683365211
• Langue: English

Extrait

happiness is too much trouble
other books in the sandra hochman collection from turner publishing:
Streams
Endangered Species
Happiness Is Too Much Trouble
Jogging
Playing Tahoe
for children:
The Magic Convention
sandra hochman
happiness is too much trouble
a novel
My thanks to Stanley Kunitz, Sophie McConnell, Patricia Irving, Anna Thornhill, Julia McFarlan, Susan and Mark Straussberg, and Don Townsend-who helped.
Turner Publishing Company
Nashville, Tennessee
New York, New York
www.turnerpublishing.com
Happiness Is Too Much Trouble
Copyright 2017, 1976 by Sandra Hochman. All rights reserved.
This book or any part thereof may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are either products of the author s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Cover design: Maddie Cothren
Book design: Glen M. Edelstein
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Hochman, Sandra, author.
Title: Happiness is too much trouble : a novel / Sandra Hochman.
Description: Nashville, Tennessee : Turner, [2017]
Identifiers: LCCN 2017002567 | ISBN 9781683365198 (pbk. : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Women--Fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3558.O34 H3 2017 | DDC 813/.54--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017002567
9781683365198
Printed in the United States of America
15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For:
My mother Mae Barrett,
My daughter Ariel,
And for my friend Shirley Bernstein
Every day
A deal is made. Every day someone drops down
And the film industry flashes its own
Message: Awake awake. The industry-
That mistress with big tits larger than a goddess
And good enough to suck: the film world
Where business and teeth and power and lips
And aromas and sights take flight with the insane: the industry.
happiness is too much trouble
the dialogues

By accident. The way things sometimes happen-
I was about to be reborn.
It was too bad. What was too bad? That-
My father wasn t alive.
He would have been very proud of me. Or perhaps he was turning over in his grave. He always thought of me as a little schlump who would not amount to much. That was because I liked to read. I trusted people. I liked to make up songs. Dance in a room by myself. Make music with a comb. Wanting to be a stand-up comedian.
What kind of occupation is that for a girl? he would ask. His main fear was that I would fall on my face.
Now by accident I d been picked by a computer to be the boss of one of the world s largest film studios. I was an executive by accident. That often happens to women. Or madmen. Or unsuspecting people. It sort of fucks up the entire system. When someone comes to the party who never wanted to go to the party in the first place. Here I was, little dreamer, daddy s own little Lulu entering the world of profit and loss and big and little movie deals. I was now bankable.
You ll never amount to much, my father would say.
Why not?
Because you have no ambition, Lulu. Because you wear your heart on your sleeve. You re too emotional.
I wear my heart on my sleeve because I m free of ambition, I used to say.
We used to argue. We loved each other for being so opposite. Why can t you be practical? my father used to ask. Ask? Lament.
You re a dreamer in a world where dreaming doesn t count.
What counts? I asked.
It counts to know about money. It counts to toughen up. Why can t you toughen up? It counts to know how to budget. It counts to know something about real life. I didn t have your education. I didn t go to school beyond the eighth grade. But I taught myself to think. To be tough. To know what the real world s about. Can t you wise up? You re too good-natured. A scatterbrain.
I remember my father trying to teach me how to buy a car-check the tires, check the chrome, check the glass, the suspension, leaks, chassis, is the horn working? Are directional signals working? Is the steering wheel safe? Are the floor mats worn?
But, Papa, I would say.
Don t interrupt-
But, Papa, I don t want a car. Why do I have to learn all these things if I m never going to buy a car?
The fact was this: It pained my father that I really didn t want anything he wanted. I wanted to travel, be an actress, be a comic. If you don t want, you don t get . But I wasn t interested in my girlhood in frames and engine transmissions and bumpers crooked or straight. I didn t want to get anywhere in his world. I wanted to tell him. I was now in his world. But he was dead. Under grass. He probably wouldn t have understood anyway. He might have told me what not to do, and worried about what would happen if I failed. But how could you fail? There was no failing. That was the answer. The records filed away in memory. All the pressures of girlhood and womanhood and lonelihood recorded there for the rest of my life. I had just bumped into success.
I wanted, despite everything, to tell my secret to someone close to me. I thought of my ex-wife. It was really my ex-wife that I wanted to contact, to share the great news with, to tell all that was happening.
I wondered where Dumbo was. The last time I had seen Dumbo he had come over to my apartment to rub my feet, to show me how he could cure me by all the methods of reflexology. It was odd that now, three years later, so much had changed in both our lives. I was moving into a new life in California, a new life complete with new judgments, new people, new gardens of contacts where the unprofitable had to be weeded out. Never had I felt less weary, more able to change my life and live it in all its absurd mazes and wanton complexities. But one old weariness stayed inside my gut, the fear, even the unwillingness to share the frightened part of myself. Dumbo, my last lover, my ex-wife as I called him, was the last person that I had shared that old self with. I thought I was over the obsession with Dumbo-that need I had experienced to see him, the need to reach him that was almost an automatic reflex. I had deadened the pain. Cut him off like a hangnail. And it seemed forever finished. Except at this moment of-triumph and yes, extreme loneliness-the only thing that would cure me of the frailty of fear was this: to talk to Dumbo. I had made him into a fairy tale jester, I had seen all his pratfalls in perspective; I had divested him of all the attractions he held for me. It was almost as if he were now dead. But I had to tell him. Telling him was everything. It was almost as if reality which seemed more like fantasy was not happening, not happening at all, until I told Dumbo. It seemed at that moment that living was nothing, telling was everything, that the event did not become alive or meaningful until I spoke it. I had to reach him.
I called his number. Predictably it had been changed. The voice inside the phone referred me to another number. The phone rang. I suddenly looked at the clock next to my bed and realized that it was ten o clock at night. I wondered if he would be out. A strange voice answered the phone. A pleasing woman s voice. It was his mother. So he was now living with his mother. Dumbo adored his mother and had carried her with him, like a bunny s foot, from city to city, as if there were no good luck without her. During the time we lived together in Manhattan she had been working in a factory in Canada, but she had come to visit Dumbo often. I remember riding with him in the Cadillac I had bought him as a gift, to pick her up at the bus terminal. She was a frail woman with a lovely speaking voice. She remembered me. Dumbo is in Ohio, she said proudly. She advised me to call him there and gave me the name of a Holiday Inn where he was staying. I thanked her. I poured a scotch before I picked up the phone again. I wondered what the point was-calling across the country trying to reach an old lover, my ex-wife. Why would Dumbo care what had happened to me? And yet-he would care. I phoned the number and was connected to his room. I almost could not bear the excitement in my stomach as the phone rang.
Yes? he said.
Dumbo, and then I couldn t say anything to him.
Lulu. He laughed. He did not seem surprised to hear from me. How are you doin ? he asked. It was a particularly obnoxious form of greeting, and I remembered hating it.
Hello, I said. And I said it again. Hello. I was so happy to be able to say hello to Dumbo, whom I hadn t spoken to for so many years. I told him what was happening. He told me what was happening to him. He had started a chain of reflexology centers throughout the country. He had also opened up a chain of shoe stores which were modifications (a fancy word I m sure for rip-offs) of the Earth Shoe-a new brand of shoe which lowered the heel and raised the toe and cushioned the sole.
The soles are different, Dumbo said. The soles are really the important element, and so many people overlook that very basic piece of information. I ve mastered the natural shoe, the shoe that bends with the entire foot, the shoe that fits over your foot and cushions it. I m branching out-using the principle of the natural shoe and the basic a b c s of reflexology.
Oh, I said.
I wish I could see you, Dumbo said.
Suddenly I felt horny-and all the horny moments that I had been pushing away and blocking out came back from the underground of my imagination. I stubbornly fought them off. I m going to head up the world s largest studio, I said.
What kind of benefits are you getting? my ex-wife answered.
I m no longer an applicant for your affection, I was about to say, but it all seemed mindless.
Dumbo, I somehow wish you were here.
You ll see me soon, he said.
When?
As soon as I get my headquarters set up.
Those were the realities of separation. We would