13 - An Open Book (1980): “Sufficiently Absurd”

Summary

Writing to the publisher Simon and Schuster in 1972, Huston proposed an autobiography, “a book with a unique approach…. The closest I know would be Gertrude Stein's autobiography of Alice B.” Eight years later, An Open Book appeared from Alfred A. Knopf under its prestigious Borzoi imprint. In the meantime, in 1977 Gerald Pratley had published The Cinema of John Huston, a brief survey of Huston's life and films through The Man Who Would Be King and Independence ('75), incorporating reminiscences and introductory remarks about the pictures by their director. Pratley's book may possibly have stimulated the completion of Huston's, but An Open Book shows almost no trace of the earlier work. On one occasion, speaking of Humphrey Bogart's determination to make Beat the Devil, Huston told Pratley, “That stiffened my back,” a phrase that he repeats in the same context in An Open Book. Such echoes occur with extreme rarity, however, probably no more than half a dozen times in the autobiography. An Open Book represents a far more carefully crafted and complete work than the casual remarks Huston made for Pratley. Heavily reworked early chapters and revisions of late drafts and galley proofs in the Herrick Library collection testify to the consideration Huston devoted to his memoirs.

A detailed index identifies one audience to which An Open Book is directed: readers seeking factual detail about the circumstances of Huston's life and filmmaking or about the myriad luminaries with whom he worked and socialized.