Jo-Ann Mapson

Add Another Name to the List of People
Who Died Way Too Soon

Dear Olivia Goldsmith, whose real name was Justine,

When I heard of your death I was sitting at my desk, writing. I stared at the computer screen filled up with my words and saw nothing but a blur. Sources said you were 54 years old, that you'd died undergoing a facelift, and that your books became a "revenge fantasy for women whose husbands had dumped them for younger women." (Newsday.com) Unspoken, but definitely palpable, was the insinuation that your death resulted from a needless surgery. I worried that people would remember you as the writer who wrote The First Wives' Club who died in the throes of a vain attempt to thwart the aging process.

I'd watched First Wives' Club a week earlier, while I lay on the couch nursing a bad cold. The film portrays aging female characters that initially seek revenge on their philandering husbands, but quickly realize revenge isn't the problem at all. That issue is women needing other women's help to make it through the tough times. With sassy, clever, kind hearted, humorous friends, women can change the world. Bestseller, your book that "explored" the publishing world caused a bit of a legal stir. You had to apologize to a well-known thriller writer who was none too pleased at the insinuation of his writing process. Shortly after you changed publishers.

Your publishing story is legend to other writers. Following a bitter divorce, your ex got the Manhattan apartment, the house in the Hamptons, the car, and a young girlfriend. You got $300,000, which you spent on attorneys' fees. You found yourself homeless, with no role to fill. In interviews you made it clear that First Wives' Club in no way mirrored your divorce, but I have to wonder. Rather than fade away gracefully like a good little ex-wife, you transformed yourself into a Wall Street executive, a valued partner of Booz Allen Hamilton. Then you wrote a novel. Not just any novel, The First Wives' Club.

The publishing world didn't see its value right off. Divorced women in their forties were supposed to be thankful for the retail clerk job and a tiny apartment. Many writers would hang their heads in shame, and give up writing. But not you. You took your book to Hollywood and sold it as a movie. With Goldie Hawn, Diane Keaton, and Bette Midler in tow, suddenly New York saw the light.

Your bio makes for a great rags-to-riches story, but a few facts are missing. Your birth name was Randy Goldfield. You changed it to Justine Rendal; Olivia Goldsmith was your pen name. You ventured into the unglamorous parts of women's lives, and through zany plots and satire, you shined a light on all women. It's said that in situations where you felt flattering female charm was the only way you were going to get what you wanted, you donned a blond wig. For the novel Pen Pals, you spent time in a womens' prison listening to the convicts' stories, showing their humanity. In my opinion, your books carried on the banner of the women's movement. Your stories convinced me that the women's movement was alive and kicking. Unwelcome in public, it had simply gone underground. You were a storyteller who used her art as social instruction.

Now you're gone, and I don't get to know you as an old lady. Too many women writers have left us early. Poet Anne Sexton, for instance, who died by her own hand before antidepressants became a household word. All the time I wonder, what would Anne have told us at age seventy?

People will hear that you died while getting a face-lift to remove loose skin, when the truth is you died from the complications of anesthesia, which can happen with any surgery. Loose skin? I suspect that means you had lost a lot of weight very quickly. What was it, Olivia? The Atkins diet? A gastric bypass? Or did you flirt with anorexia, like most women have done at least once in their lives? Maybe you felt the facelift was necessary to keep you visible in a society that values looks above so many other more important attributes.

People think that the lifestyle that accompanies being a writer is all about publicity tours, stretch limos, fabulous five-star hotel rooms, cushy first class plane seats, and money falling from the sky while FedEx delivers our polished chapters to us that require absolutely no work and are never in need of editing. That fantasy. But PR is the necessary business of the job, to get one's book out there, reviewed, and selling. It's turning a shy bookworm kind of person into an unflappable flamenco dancer who takes all the tomatoes that get thrown at her and makes a fabulous sauce for the her friends at the Literary Roundtable. Only that table is nowhere to be found.

To write those wonderful tales, things get shortchanged. Maybe it's a relationship, or not having children. Maybe it's trying to get health insurance, because that surely does not come with being a writer. Your death has me taking stock. I don't know the names of any cars built since the sixties. I have no idea what music currently tops the music charts. Sometimes in the middle of giving a lecture, my mind goes utterly blank. Menopause? An overloaded mental disk drive? Or is it just plain old fatigue because every year I have to run faster and jump through more hoops to get people to notice my books? Writing exacts its price. Every day new writers are jockeying for a spot, and eventually they will get yours.

Olivia, I regret not writing you a letter to say how much your books meant to me. When I had a bad writing day, or just wanted to lose myself in a good story, your books helped. How I lament that you felt you had to undergo a face-lift, for whatever reason. But if it was to recapture your youthful mug, I would have told you that my naturally aging 81-year-old mother is in the middle of a passionate affair with her old high school sweetheart. Who knew such a treasure was waiting for her so far down the road? I would have said the world is too fascinating a place to worry about what you look like. I would make you banana cake, and hot chocolate, and let you have the good chair when we curled up to watch soap operas, and to pet our tiny lap dogs. Maybe we could have tried out plot ideas on each other. For sure I would have e-mailed you every day to say hello, what's up, and do you need some feedback, or can I send you the chapter I cannot seem to fix?

Instead, I sit here typing into the void, deciding that not even when I look like a Shar-pei, will I have a facelift or a tummy tuck or worry about my thighs which are unfortunately wider than than my husband's. Olivia, no one knows about the afterlife, but I believe in Heaven, and when I picture you there, I see lots of friendly small dogs, and yummy things to eat, and everyone is an angel with a story to tell.

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