Hamlet and Harry and Eleanor Owen

I bought Spare. It should arrive tomorrow.

In case you have been living under a rock, Spare is the Prince Harry's memoir.

Initially, I wasn't going to read it because I thought it was going to be stupid and I am a snob and I didn't want to read some schlocky celebrity memoir. Then, I read The New Yorker review, which favorably compared Spare to Hamlet. 

I was not expecting that.

(I am not expecting Spare to end in a bloody massacre, but maybe it will end with a metaphorical massacre, like people get cancelled, the modern day version of murder. Instead a poison sword, people get the sharp end of a poisoned pen.)

Harry's ghostwriter is J.R. Moehringer, and it sounds like he is a really good writer. Rebecca Mead, the reviewer for the New Yorker, loved most of the book but she said it drags in parts where Harry has to talk about every single insult from the British press. Other than that, she said the rest of the book is well written.

This reminds me of my friend Eleanor Owen who died last year at 101. First, she was a Shakespeare fiend. She knew the complete works inside and out. I'd love to get her take on Spare. It also makes me think about her own memoir, The Gone Room. I read dozens of drafts of chapters of Eleanor's memoir before it was self-published, and I loved the bits and pieces. We would share pages of our writing via email and then a week later, we would meet for lunch at her beautiful old house in Roanoke Park and have homemade lentil soup.

The story takes place during the Depression as Eleanors mother support's her eight children on the farm in Upstate New York after her unstable husband disappears. In my mind, Eleanor's story is about a strong-willed and resilient matriarch's forgiveness of her daughter. Eleanor was responsible for watching her younger brother when he was hit by a train and died. 

What could have been a beautifully written tragic tale of forgiveness got lost in Eleanor telling too many stories about the names of her chickens on the farm.

Okay, that is a bit of an exaggeration and I love Eleanor. Nevertheless, she could have used a ghostwriter who would have taken her beautiful life and her beautiful words and make into a beautiful story. 

Likewise, Harry's "ghost"writer (get it? "ghost" writer like ghost in Hamlet who is Hamlet's dad who tells him to kill Claudius...) had this beautiful story of the second son, and then the second son wants to rant about the press and how he got frostbite on his wanker and all of this random shit. I want to read the Director's Cut version of the book, you know, sans interruption from the subject himself, naming all of the chickens.

One of my friends from India used to read a lot of British literature and history, and she had different perspective on British and American history than I did. 

"America was created by the second and third sons of the British aristocracy. They couldn't inherit land, so they left in England to find their fortune and then they formed the United States," she told me. This version was skipped over in U.S. textbooks in favor of the Pilgrims and religious freedom. 

In that context, it makes sense that Harry, the Spare, moves to the U.S. like the other second sons who crossed the Atlantic centuries ago.

Alright, the real reason I want to read this: I want to see exactly how messed up the Royal Family is. After sending my own kid to treatment and getting a divorce, I want to see how it could be worse.

Honestly, I think the elephant in the room in the late queen. I am not spilling any secrets here--I've seen a few episodes of The Crown--the woman had some control issues, kind of by definition because she was the queen. And it wasn't just her, but the whole idea of "This is how things are done." That is the opposite of peace and freedom and serenity. The only way to survive in that environment is to act in, act out, or to get out.

I also feel for the Royal Family, not because they are royal, but because they are a family and sometimes families are really messed up. Harry went to therapy after his mother died, and probably isn't too different than the kids at Pedro's boarding school. They got there because they were troubled, and then the families had to face with their own dysfunctions. According to Pedro, the kids who got better were the ones whose parents did their own work, who faced their own faults and flaws. Those whose parents blamed the kids for their own problems struggled because their parents never took responsibility for their own actions.

Harry is calling bullshit on his family. I feel for King Charles, having his son call him out and everyone else out. I get it. I've been there, with my kids calling me on my crap. When I didn't listen, they yelled and screamed and acted out and got louder and louder. When I sat quietly and listened, they felt seen and heard. Writing a book about your messed up family is screaming.

I am curious to read about this, and see how it all turns out.