Cinderella Is a Man: A Picaresque Passage to Serenity - Hardcover

Gustafson, R. Eric

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0966839617 ISBN 13: 9780966839616

Publisher: W A M Pr, 1998

Synopsis

This is the story of an energetic, intelligent, and handsome young man flowering on the international scene despite the obscurity of his birthplace. Eric in search of himself hid behind substance abuse while putting on a facade of self-confidence. In the milieu of Joan Crawford, Greta Garbo, Georgia O'Keeffe, Andy Warhol, Leonard Bernstein, European royalty including a ruling king, and even Pope John XXIII, his life spiraled into a nightmare out of control.

The ornamental jet-setter who was the debutante's delight, the dowager's dream extra man at table, and the gay man's pleasure grew swollen with drink and withdrew into a reclusive world.

Elizabeth Taylor's admonition, "Get your ass over to Betty Ford's" together with similar advice from Bill Hurt changed the course of events. Betty Ford and the road to recovery through a 12-step program inducing a growing spiritual life augmented by the healing powers of the arts saved his life. This sharing of a glittering life in which destruction seemed inevitable actually led to redemption through sobriety and faith should be an encouragement for others.

This is a story full of humor, drama, and, most of all, hope.

About this title

About the Author

R. Eric Gustafson has worn varioous hats in the arts for more than four decades. A graduate of Stuyvesant Hight School in lower Manhattan, he went on to Queens College where he received his Bachelor of Arts degree in January 1957. After a tour of Europe, he was one of ten students accepted in the graduate program of theater arts at Carnegie Institute (now Carnegie Mellon). His Master of Fine Arts thesis was on the Japanese medieval Noh drama (1959).

Many trips to Europe, north Africa, Central and South America have afforded him a newworking of extraordinary people and an expanded view of the world.

Several years during the 1960's at prestigious Parke-Bernet auction house (now Sotheby's) and later under his directorship of art galleries in New York, Santa Fe, and at the Festival of Two Worlds in Spoleto, Italy, several opportunities to develop impressive innovations in the art world sparked his budding career.

Museum curatorship followed with exhibitions at the Cooper-Hewitt Museum (1978), Lincoln Center Library & Museum for the Performing Arts (1980) and others.

Author of THE COURT THEATERS OF EUROPE (1982), he has lectured internationally on the subject. For the past five years, his column, "Classical Notes," has appeared in Gannett's Courier-News.

His brainchild, Apollo Muses, was created fifteen years ago by Gustafson as a means of providing showcases for young professional talents in the fine and performing arts. In addition, seasoned artists of note have been invited to participate in the conversation among the arts, usually on Sunday afternoons at exceptional sites in June or July.

When not travelling or creating beautiful environments, the author has appeared on stage, television and cinema in cameo performances. He resides in New Jersey and Florida.

From the Back Cover

"CINDERELLA IS A MAN is a very personal confirmation of the regenerative power of the arts." Celeste Holm, Academy Award-winning actress.

"The truly amazing testament to luck, pluck, and greatly-deserved rewards. The pin-pricked illusion --- unsentimental, smart as a whip --- and happily, as well and rightly mastered from the performances of his avowed role model, Mae West, the whip is turned not on self, but on the big cats in the gilded cage. Eric has come through --- come out of the cage very much more alive than ever. The big cats can go back to sleep --- their roaring is of small interest to us now: we want to see what Eric is going to do next. Bravo! " Jimmy McCourt, author of MAWRDEW CZGOWCHWZ and TIME REMAINING.

"This intriguing modern-day ODYSSEY about a creative, outrageous, and charming knight errant searching for life's meaning takes an extraordinary turn. CINDERELLA IS A MAN is a well-written story with an inspiring, heart-warming denouement." Ruth Warrick, star of more than forty Hollywood films including "Citizen Kane" and currently Phoebe in ABC-TV's "All My Children."

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

(Author's note: Though there are moments of great hilarity and mirth in the book, the following are all of a most serious nature.)

"I lived out a peripatetic, desperate clutching-at-straws existence: wandering from one city to another, making a feeble effort to work on a book, staying afloat with celebratory drinks and reunited friends. "Gaily Lit Boulevards" germinated within me during that nadir of my existence. The bleak piece was written in one sitting, without changing a word, while brooding in Montrose during a particularly low moment. There were lots of those moments when I was at wit's end. Thoughts of suicide were frequent. I decided to kill myself by escalating my drinking, living more flamboyantly, ending with a glamorous, alcohol-induced flourish. I glorified those tormented writers and artistic souls who had died of drink. I spent more than another decade in an increasing blur, with more intense desperation than ever, after exhibarating moments of devil-may-care "bedaucheries."

GAILY LIT BOULEVARDS

I suppose
The culmination
Was that morning
When I looked into a mirror
And saw a bloated aging queen
With only the slightest resemblance
To my mind's image of myself.
The total of the various experiences
Afforded by a-quart-a-day rampages
Flooded my consciousness.
There was a mixture of delicious mad abandon
Tinged with embarrassing, aggressive bad taste:
A magic horror show!

It seemed at that moment-
The only moment possible-
The decision had to be made.
It was time
To hang up those roller skates.

I was thoroughly tired of careening
Down gaily lit boulevards
Only to find myself
At some dead end
Or in a darkened alley-
Usually with someone
I did not really want to be with!

Gaily lit boulevards can be fun
With all those vibrations;
Alluring inducements promising the unattainable;
Scintillating illusions,
Shimmering aspirations;
Nightmarish loss of control or proportion-
A topsy-turvy world
With little meaning
Outside of the quest for fresh pleasure
And an insatiable thirst.

Broken roller skates make a horrible sound.
Direction is lost and perhaps unimportant.
The lights blur,
Swim before the careening figure.
Few notice or seem to care.
The pulse continues;
Echoes fade
With new voices
Soon to add to the sum memory of
Inconsequentia.

There is no winner in this marathon block party.
Endurance
With grace
Is the badge inconspicuously worn
By the least of the losers.

...

"Bill Moyers states that it is necessary to use a rear-view mirror to get where you want to go. Without knowing where you came from, it is hard to determine where you are going. Acknowledging my path makes for a safe highway to the future. Part of the process is to absorb the healthy, even godly aspects of androgyny into my life with openness. Acceptance of the dual nature of my makeup, like everyone's, permits me to live with dignity and strength."

...

"Much of my life was spent in confusion and self-doubt. I used alcohol to overcome, albeit for only a moment at a time, shyness, alienation and deep-seated insecurity. Now that I perceive that I am on a lifelong road to rcovery and constant challenge, I can pray for guidance and courage in the struggle. My intent is to travel the open road of what is spiritually beautiful. My goal is to live in harmony with the world, even with the universe, so that my sense of being may be attunded to the Music of the Spheres."

Edition details

• Publisher: W A M Pr
• Publication date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0966839617
• ISBN 13: 9780966839616
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 368