Instant notoriety in 1902

Press, 31 October 1981, Page 17

Instant notoriety in 1902

The Story of Mary Mac Lane. By Herself Jonathan Cape, 1981. 322 pp. $22.95 (Reviewed by Margaret Quigley) Mary Mac Lane was born in Winnipeg, in Canada, in 1881, but after the early death of her father the. family moved to Butte, Montana. This raw, small American town was startled when, in 1902, the quiet, conventional young woman, Mary Mac' Lane, published a very unusual book. “The Story of Mary Mac Lane” brought its author instant notoriety and also “much good gold money” with which she moved first to New York and later to Hollywood where she wrote and starred in a very early movie, “Men Who Have Made Love to Me”. She died in Chicago in 1929. Butte’s astonishment in 1902 is easily understood when one reads this short, strange book, which begins, “I of womankind and of nineteen years, will now begin to set down as full and frank a portrayal as I am able of myself, Mary

Mac Lane, for whom the world contains not a parallel.” Her portrayal is full and frank. She writes of her hatred for Butte and its society, “that near perfection of ugliness’ 1 ; of her contempt. for the mediocrity of her family; of her sexual longings, her loneliness and her fantasies. “I am ready and waiting to give all that I have to the Devil in exchange for happiness.” For three months Mary Mac Lane recorded in diary form all her feelings and desires, her frustrations and her dreams. In the last entry she writes, “My portrayal in its analysis and egotism and bitterness will surely be of interest to some ... It will amuse you. It will arouse your interest. It will stir your curiosity.” The reviewer cannot do better than to endorse these claims of the author. The contrast between the conventional photograph of the author on the dustjacket and the tormented mind revealed in the writing . remains almost as astonishing today as it was in 1902.