Being considerably ill, and under orders to "take it easy," I tried to read myself to sleep, but the brain was working in overtime, spinning and churning about a first attempt to write fiction; a novel about a primitive.
One notices the primitives on Skins's island have been commenting a great deal lately, about writing, and apparently franksolich caught that "bug" from them.
So in the manner of the literary primitives on Skins island, franksolich has his first novel, about the life of a primitive, all laid out.
It could not possibly be a novel about a primitive other than the Rita Hayworth primitive, the "Tangerine LaBamba" primitive, who has led a long, interesting, and colorful life, as betrayed in between the lines of her comments around bonfires on Skins's island.
The Rita Hayworth primitive is utterly fascinating, the mirror-opposite of the now-banished lying tits primitive, the "TomInTib" primitive. The lying tits primitive led a rather boring and meaningless life, but made up bombastic tales to make it seem otherwise.
The Rita Hayworth primitive, on the other hand, has actually had a long and exciting life, but refrains from talking about it.
Really, she should, as it has not been unimpressive, but as the Rita Hayworth primitive won't, franksolich will do it for her.
The Rita Hayworth primitive is pretty old; she recalls the landing on the moon in 1969, watching it on television while sitting in a nursing home in a wheelchair.
Anyway.
The novel opens with the Rita Hayworth primitive, then a teenager, exploring the South Seas and Deepest Africa with the then-famous photographers Martin and Osa Johnson.
There comes a little dust-up in Europe, and the Rita Hayworth primitive bears a "love-child" fathered by the gallant late-middle-aged Marshal Philippe Petain.....which leads to international gossip and rumors that the Rita Hayworth primitive is the real mother of the then-infant Reza Pahlavi.
The Rita Hayworth primitive has an ephermal association with Robert Leopold and Richard Leob, and then goes on to teach Gertrude Ederle how to swim.
Then there is a torrid affair with Generalissimo Chaing Kai-Shek, before the little peanut turns his attentions to one of the Soong sisters.
After which comes a vague association with l'affaire Stavisky in France.
It goes on and on, an Elsa Maxwell sort of life.
Right now I'm up to the Rita Hayworth primitive's middle age, where still possessing feminine guile and pulchtritude, the Rita Hayworth primitive competes with Lady Edwina Mountbatten for the bed of Jawaharlal Nehru.
There's still a lot of ground to cover in this novel-based-upon-real-life, and before I get there, I'm curious as to what others might think--do you suppose the Rita Hayworth primitive, the "Tangerine LaBamba" primitive, was the left-handed attorney, the "oldleftylawyer" primitive, who gave the Bostonian Drunkard so much grief during Fitzmas?
