The best books about running away

There’s running away from home, running away from your life, and there’s running away from yourself. Edie Sedgewick did all three. After being raised in an elite family on California ranches, after boarding schools and mental hospitals, Edie landed right smack in the midst of one of the most socially and artistically exciting scenes on the planet - New York in the 1960s. As Andy Warhol’s “It Girl,” she lived a decadent work/party life full of new ideas in music, politics, film, poetry, and art. A classic romp through that glamorous, incredibly fun, and inspiring, yet tragic counterculture.

Trivia from my life: Bob Neuwirth, who Edie claimed was the love of her life, and “Like heroin to me,” was also a beloved friend of mine. 

Her business card simply says, Holly Golightly, Traveling. With darker undertones than the classic fifty-year-old film, this very short novel is a portrait of a nineteen-year-old woman who runs away from her husband in Texas, establishes herself as a socialite in New York City, then runs away some more. Holly seems all fun and bubbles—witty, resourceful, resilient, and flirtatious, but her insides are haunted by trauma. She describes her past with an “almost voluptuous account of swimming and summer, Christmas trees, pretty cousins and parties...” in a way the narrator concludes is certainly not the background of a child who had run away. Holly is dissociated most of the time. And as a writer, I’m really impressed by all of Capote’s characters—each extraordinarily sculpted; his descriptions simply leap, all with delightful images.

Leonora Carrington was a surrealist painter and writer (I love her paintings—am surprised they are very much like the style in which I paint) who ran away from her European origins and lived out her life in Mexico. The Hearing Trumpet is about a spunky 92-year-old woman who is put into an institution for senile women. Carrington’s imagination is wonderful weird and wild (she even rewrites the creation myth); she creates fabulous dream-like episodes. Her sense of humor is delightfully, wickedly dark. The Hearing Trumpet is a joyful and rebellious take on women growing old. It is a dark story told in bright colors. 

Even after seeing the extraordinary film based on the novel, I found this book to be a fantastic story, with a simple and soulful philosophy of life, and is enriching even if you’ve already seen the film. It’s a survival tale about a sixteen-year-old boy on a lifeboat with a tiger and it is true to life in the beginning, then veers off into the surreal. As a writer, I was in awe of his details and specificity. His lengthy description of hyenas, for example, hyenas being an animal I’ve never had much interest in, was absolutely fascinating, though who knows if it’s all true! He plays with truth and fiction. And this is the first time I’ve heard a take on spiritually that totally agrees with my own.

In case you missed it (I was a child actor, missed a lot of school) Huck Finn used to be taught in nearly every U.S. high school. This classic American novel, full of adventure and wanderlust, follows Huck and escaped slave Jim down the Mississippi River, in search of freedom. Huck just needed to bolt—anywhere would do. “All I wanted was to go somewheres; all I wanted was a change, I warn’t particular.” 

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is controversial because Twain often uses the N-word and some think the character of Jim is minstrel-like and racist. But Twain puts a disclaimer before the novel begins, telling how painstakingly he researched the dialects. I believe one should look at the offensive word as part of his imitated dialects.