Prior to writing a nonfiction book—be it a memoir, a biography, or a series of essays—one should feel pleasantly efficient toward the form and the subject. “Yes, I can do this!” “I have trained.” “I have the proper passion.” “I have something special to say.” There is a very nice, plumped-up sensation before beginning.
When I was contracted by Penguin Random House to write my book about Edna Ferber’s 1952 novel, Giant, and George Stevens’s 1956 classic motion picture of the same name, I was confident, even a touch smug. This was well-worn territory for me.
I am Edna Ferber’s great-niece. Her sister was my grandmother, and my mother was her niece. I am an only child, and Ferber, childless and mate-less, lived 20 blocks away from us. I was her favorite great-niece—at least until my cousins were born. So, I had a head start in her affections.
By the time I was an adult of 21, I had absorbed a great deal about my great-aunt. I had read most of her work—starting with One Basket, a collection of her short stories, and then graduating to blockbusters: So Big (for which she won the Pulitzer Prize in 1925), Show Boat, Cimarron, Come and Get It, and Saratoga Truck, as well as Part I of her illuminating autobiography, A Peculiar Treasure. And because I had early plans of being an actress, I read the plays she wrote with George S. Kaufman: The Royal Family, Dinner at Eight, Stage Door.
I had spent many hours in her company, eaten countless brunches, lunches, and dinners with her, gone to glorious matinees seen from privileged orchestra seats, and opened many elegant, wondrous gifts from her, as well as many envelopes containing generous and helpful checks.
It was my great-aunt who financially endorsed me at college. It was she who supported and cheered me on toward my chosen acting career, she who arranged for my Lincoln Center audition for Magnolia in Show Boat, where Richard Rodgers was one of the producers. It was she who comforted me when I blew the audition, but who practically cautioned me not to do it again. “Next time you’ll be more prepared and less emotional.”
It was Aunt Edna who, in her late 70s, descended the steps to the basement of the Duane Metropolitan Church on New York City’s Lower West Side to watch me perform as Mrs. Smith in Eugène Ionesco’s The Bald Soprano.
And it was stoic Aunt Edna who in 1968 faced death from stomach cancer at 82 by counting backward from 100, over and over.
It was only after she had died that I came out of the acting closet and plummeted down the writing rabbit hole. I avoid imagining what she would think of my work, especially the work concerning her. There is one biography that I wrote, called Ferber: Edna Ferber and Her Circle, published by Doubleday in 1978. It was nominated for a Book Critics Circle Award and remains in print lo these several decades following its initial publication.
And now this one: Giant Love. In a funny way, this one is more personal than her biography. I am older. She is older. It is a more layered look at her. I hesitate saying “hard-boiled,” because the love and respect for her are if anything more effusive. My investigation, however, feels more worldly. I know more now about how she lived a full life but would divulge little beyond her writer’s persona. Back then, her proclivities were sophisticated—perhaps better explained as exotic—but placed deep in a vault of privacy.
There were unconventional friendships such as the one with much younger James Dean; there were rages and grudges, and there were lavish acts of forgiveness.
During one of the early meetings with my editor, Victoria Wilson, she said to me, “Go deep.”
“I’ll try,” I said weakly, recalling my father’s opinion of my earlier biography of Ferber, the paraphrase of which was “She never really lived. She only really wrote.”
To Edna, living was writing. This assessment had made me mad and sad. After all the dutiful research and work I had done to excavate her life, would this mean that a reader wouldn’t really care about her? Would this mean a lack of interest and investment because she had chosen a varied and spectacular career over a man or men and a child or children?!
So, decades later, I have been able to approach and discover, if not totally answer, my own plea. I think the biggest surprise in writing this book was just how bottomless a person’s life is. The first time, I peered down the well. This time, I took a giant and loving free fall and found many surprising aspects of Edna Ferber.
Julie Gilbert is a New York–based writer
