The 2003 edition of Adolfo Bioy Casares’ The Invention of Morel, featuring a photo of silent film star Louise Brooks on the cover.
The fictional character at the heart of Jerome Charyn’s “Lulu in Love,”¹ an excerpt from a forthcoming novel, was inspired by a real person, Louise Brooks. Today, this 1920s film star is best known for two things. The first is her iconic look. What defined her image was her sleek bobbed hair—a “black helmet” as critic Kenneth Tynan once put it. Brooks’ legend also rests on her role as Lulu in G.W. Pabst’s 1929 film, Pandora’s Box. Like her oft-copied haircut, Brooks’ memorable portrayal of Lulu has inspired more than fashion, including a handful of other films and film characters.
Charyn, it should be noted, has written about Brooks in the past, though never in a fictional setting. The actress is the focus of the chapter titled “Mr. Feathers” in his 1989 book, Movieland: Hollywood and the Great American Dream Culture.² Brooks is discussed as well, in another of Charyn’s non-fiction works, Gangsters and Gold Diggers: Old New York, the Jazz Age, and the Birth of Broadway. In fact, she is one of three in a “bestiary” to whom this 2003 book is dedicated.
It should also be noted that Jerome Charyn is not alone in his interest in Brooks, nor is he the first to create a literary character based on the actress. Perhaps the most significant is Faustine, a key “character” in Adolfo Bioy Casares’ 1940 novel The Invention of Morel. Bioy Casares’ short novel is widely considered one of the first works of magical realism in Spanish American literature.³ Jorge Luis Borges, who wrote a prologue to Bioy Casares’ book, placed it alongside Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw and Franz Kafka’s The Trial as examples of works with “admirable plots.” Octavio Paz echoed Borges’ assessment, as have Gabriel García Márquez, Julio Cortázar, Alejo Carpentier and others.
The Invention of Morel is an oblique homage to the actress, and a means to preserve, in writing, the memory of one writer’s interest / affection / desire for a favorite film star. In his memoirs, Bioy Casares wrote of habitually going to the movies in his younger days, and of his youthful disillusionment over the decline of Brooks’ career. A year after Bioy Casares’ Memorias was published in 1994, an Argentinian film magazine ran an interview with the now 80-year-old author, in which he once again declared his love for Brooks, specifically crediting her with inspiring the character of Faustine, and to a degree, the landmark novel.⁴
The 1987 (left) and 2002 (right) editions of Willem Frederik Hermans’ Een Heilige van de Horlogerie (The Saint of the Clockmakers), featuring photos of silent film star Louise Brooks on their respective covers.
Another metaphysical novel inspired by the actress is Willem Frederik Hermans’ The Saint of the Clockmakers (1987), a philosophical work described as a meditation on time, and longing. In it, a character named Louise Brooks, who the actress resembles, plays a central role. Herman's novel tells the story of an out-of-work philosopher who is hired by his uncle, a clockmaker, to wind the timepieces in an empty palace. There are no fewer than 1473 clocks spread throughout its 297 rooms. The philosopher is satisfied with his work until the doppelganger of Brooks, an actress the philosopher had loved from afar, appears on the scene.
The Saint of the Clockmakers, whose original Dutch title is Een Heilige van de Horlogerie, has yet to be translated into English, despite it being considered a significant work by one of the most important Dutch novelists of the post WWII era. The book was published on what would have been Brooks' birthday in 1987, and two Dutch editions of Hermans’ novel feature the actress on their cover.
Francis Lederer and Louise Brooks in Pandora's Box (1929).
At the author’s request, Brooks was also the “cover girl” on Ali Smith’s debut collection, Free Love and Other Stories (1995). One of the stories in Smith’s book, “To the cinema," centers on a theater usher who has a postcard of Brooks. In the story, the usher describes her favorite films, her loss of faith, and her relationship with her boyfriend. Two of Brooks’ films, Pandora’s Box and Prix de Beauté, are among the handful of movies described—though it is a still from another of Brooks’ films, The Diary of a Lost Girl, that adorns the cover of the book’s first edition.
Along with the Ali Smith short story, Brooks appears as a major or minor character or via some sort of reference or shout-out in a handful of other story collections and novels. These include Paul Auster’s Leviathan (1992), and more significantly as background, in Auster’s published script and film, Lulu on the Bridge (1998). Brooks is a key presence in Theodore Roszak’s underrated Flicker (1991), and shows up in William Hjortsberg’s Nevermore (1994), Ann-Marie MacDonald’s Fall on Your Knees (1996), and Janet Fitch’s White Oleander (1999).
A number of other authors have also referenced the actress, including Guillermo Cabrera Infante, Carlos Fuentes, Audrey Niffenegger, Gary Indiana, Jerry Stahl, Roddy Doyle, Mary Lee Settle, Salmon Rushdie and a couple dozen more, including even Lemony Snicket. You will also find Brooks woven into various works of science fiction, fantasy and horror by the likes of Peter Straub, Neil Gaiman, Elizabeth Hand, Clive Barker, and others. Fritz Leiber, who referenced the actress in his classic Our Lady of Darkness (1977), was a big fan.
Early on in their relationship, Jean Paul Sartre asked Simone de Beauvoir to go to the movies. The film he wanted to see was Brooks’ A Girl in Every Port (1928), a cult favorite in Paris and a film once described by Blaise Cendrars as marking “the first appearance of contemporary cinema.” French movie goers and French writers have long been fascinated by Brooks. One of the earliest references to the actress in a literary work dates to Leon Bopp’s 1933 story collection, Jacques Arnaut, where a character in one story is described as being in “love with the actress.” A few of the more recent French works which feature Brooks include Patrick Mosconi’ Louise Brooks Est Morte (1993), Katherine Pancol’s Embrassez-moi (2003), and Matthieu Baumier’s Le Manuscrit Louise B (2005).
The first novel to feature Brooks as a major character is J.P. McEvoy’s comedic gem, Show Girl (1928). It was based on Brooks, and everyone knew it, despite the fact the Brooks’ character was renamed Dixie Dugan. McEvoy’s story was originally serialized in Liberty magazine, and a few of the illustrations which accompanied it were based directly on film stills. Show Girl was a sensation. So much so, it inspired a sequel, Hollywood Girl (1929), a musical, two films, and a syndicated newspaper comic strip which ran from 1929 to 1966.
The most recent novel inspired by Brooks’ life is Laura Moriarty’s The Chaperone (2012). Based on actual events, it centers on the summer of 1922 when Brooks, just 15 years old, left her Kansas home to go to New York City to study dance. Within months, she was invited to join the legendary Denishawn Dance Company, whose members included a young Martha Graham. The Chaperone was made into a film in 2018.
Other early films stars, like Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton, as well as Greta Garbo and Rudolph Valentino to a lesser degree, have drawn the attention of various writers over the years. Louise Brooks, I would suggest, has done so more than any of her contemporaries.
I once wrote an article titled “Louise Brooks - Cover Girl and Secret Muse of the 20th Century.” In it, I put forth the notion that Brooks had become a kind of a 20th-century icon, her name and image shorthand and a symbol for the Jazz Age. Now, I think she is something more than that. I think I know why I am spellbound by Brooks, and what she means to me. But that may not be what has drawn others. What is it that has drawn Jerome Charyn, Adolfo Bioy Casares, all the above-named authors, Christopher Isherwood, Angela Carter, Kathy Acker, and even S.J. Perelman? Louise Brooks may well be more than just an icon. She may be, as she was once described, a “magnet for meaning.”
(1) See Fiction Number 65, pgs. 121-130.
(2) “Mr. Feathers” can also be found in Charyn’s 2018 collection, In the Shadow of King Saul: Essays on Silence and Song.
(3) "Magical realism" was coined by German art critic Franz Roh in the 1920s and was later extended to literature. Literary works of magical realism became popular in Latin America during the 1940s and 50s, but Fiction would like to note that many critics and scholars disagree about what constitutes magical realism and movement's precise origins. -The Editors
(4) The sur-reality of The Invention of Morel reportedly influenced the Alain Resnais’ film Last Year at Marienbad (1961), a claim denied by the French novelist Alain Robbe-Grillet, who adapted the film for the screen. Bioy Casares’ book also likely affected the popular American television show, Lost. The latter contains a visual shout out to Bioy Casares’ book in which a character is seen reading The Invention of Morel.
Thomas Gladysz is the author of a number of articles on early cinema, as well as four books on Louise Brooks and her films. A couple more are in the works. Gladysz has contributed to the Red Cedar Review, Film International, San Francisco Review of Books, LitHub, Huffington Post and elsewhere. He is also the Director of the Louise Brooks Society, which he launched online in 1995.
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