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In the Darkroom
Susan Faludi
A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK OF THE YEARWINNER OF THE KIRKUS PRIZESHORTLISTED FOR THE PULITZER PRIZE 2017From the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and best-selling author of ‘Backlash’, an astonishing confrontation with the enigma of her father and the larger riddle of identity.In 2004 feminist writer Susan Faludi set out to investigate someone she scarcely knew: her estranged father. Steven Faludi had lived many roles: suburban dad, Alpine mountaineer, swashbuckling adventurer in the Amazon, Jewish fugitive in Holocaust Budapest. Living in Hungary after sex reassignment surgery and identifying as ‘a complete woman now,’ how was this new parent connected to the silent and ultimately violent father who had built his career on the alteration of images?Faludi’s struggle to come to grips with her father's metamorphosis takes her across borders – historical, political, religious, sexual – and brings her face to face with the question of the age: is identity something you "choose" or is it the very thing you cannot escape?
Copyright (#ulink_95a7fdcc-0e94-5a69-b46f-069b5d93ad4c)
William Collins
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
www.WilliamCollinsBooks.com (http://www.WilliamCollinsBooks.com)
First published in Great Britain by William Collins in 2016
This eBook edition published in Great Britain by William Collins in 2017
Copyright © 2016, 2017 by Susan Faludi
Susan Faludi asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
This is a work of nonfiction. The names and identifying characteristics of three individuals have been changed to protect their privacy.
‘I Am Easily Assimilated’ from Candide by Leonard Bernstein. Lyrics by Leonard Bernstein. Copyright © 1994 by Amberson Holdings LLC. Copyright renewed, Leonard Bernstein Music Publishing Company, publisher. International copyright secured. Reprinted by permission.
Excerpt from ‘Red Riding Hood’ from Transformations by Anne Sexton. Copyright © 1971 by Anne Sexton, renewed 1999 by Linda G. Sexton. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
Excerpt from ‘Optimistic Voices (You’re Out of the Woods)’ from The Wizard of Oz. Lyrics by E. Y. Harburg. Music by Harold Arlen and Herbert Strothart. Copyright © 1938 by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc., renewed 1939 by EMI Feist Catalog Inc. Rights throughout the world controlled by EMI Feist Catalog Inc. (publishing) and Alfred Music (print). Used by permission of Alfred Music. All rights reserved.
All photographs courtesy of the author, except for the following: here (#litres_trial_promo), Einar Wegener/Lili Elbe by Wellcome Library, London; here (#litres_trial_promo), Christine Jorgensen by Art Edger/NY Daily News Archive/Getty Images; here (#litres_trial_promo), Melanie’s Cocoon by Mel Myers; here (#litres_trial_promo), Class of ’45 photograph courtesy of Otto and Margaret Szekely; here (#litres_trial_promo), Parasite Press photograph courtesy of Judit Mészáros, the original in Budapest Collection of Szabó Ervin Central Library; here (#litres_trial_promo), Ford convertible by Marilyn Faludi; here (#litres_trial_promo), Magyar Garda rally by European Pressphoto Agency/Tamas Kovacs
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins
Source ISBN: 9780008194475
Ebook Edition © July 2017 ISBN: 9780008193515
Version: 2017-06-24
Additional Praise for In the Darkroom: (#ulink_3f1d42cc-a2cd-56f1-9a28-2aed899dcbeb)
A SUNDAY TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR 2016
‘Faludi’s remarkable, moving and courageous book is extremely fair-minded’
Guardian
‘In the Darkroom reads like a mystery thriller yet packs the emotional punch of a carefully crafted memoir. Susan Faludi’s investigation into her father’s life reveals, with humour and poignancy, the central paradox of being someone’s child. However close, our parents will always be, perhaps by nature of the role, fundamentally enigmatic to us’
AMANDA FOREMAN
‘Faludi weaves together these strands of her father’s identity – Jewishness, nationality, gender – with energy, wit and nuance … Faludi has paid her late father a fine tribute by bringing her to life in such a compelling, truthful story’
New Statesman
‘[A] mighty new book … a searching investigation of identity barely disguised as a sometimes funny and sometimes very painful family saga … reticent, elegant and extremely clever’
Observer
‘A fascinating chronicle of a decade trying to understand a parent who had always been inscrutable’
Economist
‘Compelling’
Sunday Times
Well-written … touching … compelling’
The Times
‘An astonishing, unique book that should be essential reading for anyone wanting to explore transsexuality’s place in contemporary culture’
Irish Independent
‘In the Darkroom is a unique, deeply affecting and beautifully written book, full of warmth, intelligence and humour’
Saturday Paper
Dedication (#ulink_5094d0db-12e4-5d1c-b37b-97840f4bd52c)
For the Grünbergers of Spišské Podhradie and the Friedmans of Košice, and their children and their children’s children, the family I found, and who found me
Epigraph (#ulink_c9593004-edbe-5807-8c7c-5beb78203e40)
He thought about how he had been despised and scorned, and he heard everybody saying now that he was the most beautiful of all the beautiful birds. And the lilacs bowed their branches toward him, right down into the water. The sun shone so warm and so bright. Then he ruffled his feathers, raised his slender neck, and rejoiced from the depths of his heart. “I never dreamed of such happiness when I was an ugly duckling!”
Hans Christian Andersen, “The Ugly Duckling”
The identifying of ourselves with the visual image of ourselves has become an instinct; the habit is already old. The picture of me, the me that is seen, is me.
D. H. Lawrence, “Art and Morality”
Long ago
there was a strange deception:
a wolf dressed in frills,
a kind of transvestite.
But I get ahead of my story.
Anne Sexton, “Red Riding Hood”
Contents
Cover (#ua96a829b-3da2-5096-ae13-57165e4a76f7)
Title Page (#ub2b6a544-3da7-54a3-a8c3-9d513102eb52)
Copyright (#uaf9d0055-5675-5e0f-a1ff-1f544a225857)
Additional Praise for In the Darkroom (#ufd344a2f-3ecc-5004-bc06-c2d07054b0ea)
Dedication (#ue92d6d3b-de28-52b5-a1a5-cd6c988528ea)
Epigraph (#u48a5b879-8ff3-5452-b867-6734b0e11d5f)
Preface: In Pursuit (#udd98535d-fad9-5f88-9f21-7487fc858fd3)
PART I (#u5b40660e-ff3d-526b-9439-08ed8f684aab)
1. Returns and Departures (#uc8cf88bd-4e02-5ed6-a82a-787bc8d73a4d)
2. Rear Window (#u38f2b4a4-6c6e-5bc0-8c98-4a524508fc82)
3. The Original from the Copy (#u3f2e5294-b8f5-5c45-92ff-4c2fba99b792)
4. Home Insecurity (#u96c1965b-7ca1-532f-8b00-381380126a0c)
5. The Person You Were Meant to Be (#uab8909f0-77e6-56a6-8c6a-212d4a146cb7)
6. It’s Not Me Anymore (#u47c5638a-1df6-5cdd-a8c0-ca001736c135)
7. His Body into Pieces. Hers. (#ucdae4e29-e72e-5ef9-a23b-9c7cd1a96aa3)
8. On the Altar of the Homeland (#ud12c33fd-ce60-5416-929a-3108eb60c1e8)
9. Ráday 9 (#litres_trial_promo)
PART II (#litres_trial_promo)
10. Something More and Something Other (#litres_trial_promo)
11. A Lady Is a Lady Whatever the Case May Be (#litres_trial_promo)
12. The Mind Is a Black Box (#litres_trial_promo)
13. Learn to Forget (#litres_trial_promo)
14. Some Kind of Psychic Disturbance (#litres_trial_promo)
15. The Grand Hotel Royal (#litres_trial_promo)
16. Smitten in the Hinder Parts (#litres_trial_promo)
17. The Subtle Poison of Adjustment (#litres_trial_promo)
18. You’re Out of the Woods (#litres_trial_promo)
19. The Transformation of the Patient Is Without a Doubt (#litres_trial_promo)
PART III (#litres_trial_promo)
20. Pity, O God, the Hungarian (#litres_trial_promo)
21. All the Female Steps (#litres_trial_promo)
22. Paid Up (#litres_trial_promo)
23. Getting Away with It (#litres_trial_promo)
24. The Pregnancy of the World (#litres_trial_promo)
25. Escape (#litres_trial_promo)
Footnotes (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
Also by Susan Faludi (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
PREFACE (#ulink_0a7a0f1a-d3db-5f14-b081-ae4b05116079)
In Pursuit (#ulink_0a7a0f1a-d3db-5f14-b081-ae4b05116079)
In the summer of 2004 I set out to investigate someone I scarcely knew, my father. The project began with a grievance, the grievance of a daughter whose parent had absconded from her life. I was in pursuit of a scofflaw, an artful dodger who had skipped out on so many things—obligation, affection, culpability, contrition. I was preparing an indictment, amassing discovery for a trial. But somewhere along the line, the prosecutor became a witness.
What I was witness to would remain elusive. In the course of a lifetime, my father had pulled off so many reinventions, laid claim to so many identities. “I’m a Hungaaaarian,” my father boasted, in the accent that survived all the shape shifts. “I know how to faaaake things.” If only it were that simple.
“Write my story,” my father asked me in 2004—or rather, dared me. The intent of the invitation was murky. “It could be like Hans Christian Andersen,” my father said to me once, later, of our biographical undertaking. “When Andersen wrote a fairy tale, everything he put in it was real, but he surrounded it with fantasy.” Not my style. Nevertheless, I took up the dare with a vengeance, and with my own purposes in mind.
Despite the overture, my father remained a refractory subject. Most of the time our collaboration resembled a game of cat and mouse, a game the mouse generally won. My father, like that other Hungarian, Houdini, was a master of the breakout. For my part, I kept up the chase. I had cast myself as a posse of one, tracking my father’s many selves to their secret recesses. I was intent on writing a book about my father. It wasn’t until the summer of 2015, after I’d worked my way through many drafts and submitted the manuscript, and after my father had died, that I realized how much I’d also been writing it for my father, who, in my mind at least, had become my primary, imagined, and intended reader—with all the generosity and hostility that implies. It wasn’t an uncomplicated gift.
“There are things in here that will be hard for you to take,” I warned in the fall of 2014, when I called to announce that I had a completed draft. I braced myself for the response. My father, who had made a career in commercial photography out of altering images and devoted a lifetime to self-alteration, would hate, I assumed, being depicted warts and all.
