Rich - Ghost light: a memoir

This book was written with deep love and
gratitude for the family I found
ALEX
NATHANIEL
SIMON
and in loving memory of the one I lost
H.A.F.
J.H.F.
C.C.

GHOST LIGHT: Especially in the professional theater, a single light left burning in center stage when the theater is empty. The source of the term is a superstition that a ghost will move in if the theater is left completely dark.

An International Dictionary of Theater Language

PRAISE FOR
GHOST LIGHT, BY FRANK RICH

Richs engaging memoir... describes how and why, in the wake of his parents divorce and remarriages, he embraced the world of the stage so passionately, and what pleasures and disappointments playgoing offered in return.... Revealing and unexpected.

The New York Times Book Review

A tender reminiscence... In this eloquent book, we see [Rich] becoming a critic and art lover in the truest, deepest sense.

Time

There are all sorts of reasons to find Ghost Light a powerful book. In the tradition of Moss Harts Act One, this is a celebration not only of the theater, but of life itself.... It... should endear [Rich] to readers in much the way that Russell Bakers Growing Up did.

Louisville Courier-Journal

You dont have to be a theater buff... to find Ghost Light intriguing.... What makes Ghost Light so appealing is that despite its profound if understated emotional investment in the saving power of art, its never mindlessly starry-eyed, as so many showbiz memoirs can be.

New York magazine

Terrific... [Rich] writes with poignancy and pace.

LARRY KING, USA Today

So transparently honest that the ancient seeker for an honest man would feel comfortable in Richs presence.... He is an incredibly gifted writer.

CAL THOMAS, columnist, Los Angeles Times Syndicate

[Rich] brings his usual incisiveness to bear on the drama enacted on his own lifes stage.

The Boston Globe

Ghost Light is a superb memoirrich in anecdote, dense in theme. Its a spellbinding coming-of-age tale, a meditation on art and youth in the 60s, a horror story of urban family life. Deft, raucous, occasionally terrifyingyou applaud Frank Rich for his journey and his brilliant skill in delineating it.

JAMES ELLROY

A poignant memoir... The personal stories are touching, nostalgic, and sometimes harrowing... but it is [Richs] bone-deep pleasure in the theater that is contagious.

The Denver Post

This is an absolutely marvelous memoir, the best I have read in recent years. It recounts, passionately and often painfully, the story of an endearing young child from a broken home who finds refuge and finally redemption in the world of theater. It is a thoroughly absorbing tale, told beautifully and without a hint of self-pity. It is everything a literary memoir ought to be.

DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN

The book is illuminating and casts a warm and nostalgic glow on numerous plays, actors, directors and theaters.... Charming and moving.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

An affecting portrait of a boyhood stirred, molded and ultimately transformed by the healing power of theater.... Its the humanity of Ghost Light that informs all of Richs writing. Everyone who loves the theater will see themselves in his words.

The Orlando Sentinel

Beautifully written and hard to put down.

Biography magazine

A lovely and painful coming-of-age memoir that deserves a wideand, more the point, diverseaudience.... A big part of the charm and power of this book is its honesty.... As a journalists childhood memoir, Ghost Light ranks with H. L. Menckens Happy Days in its bright writing and its evocation of a time and a place.... Ghost Light is a wise memoir that underscores lifes complexity and fragility.

Sunday Oregonian

Ghost Light is not so much a memoir as an exorcism. Frank Rich revisits those defoliated battlegrounds we call family and childhood, picks his way through the still live booby traps of memory, and returns if not at peace then at least with the shards of understanding.

JOHN GREGORY DUNNE

Frank Richs Ghost Light is a stunning book. He manages to weave memories of childhood and theater into a complicated and deeply touching pattern. For anyone who remembers or still believes that their true lives begin when the curtain goes up, Ghost Light will illuminate their passion. This is a beautifully written, honest book. As in the best of theater, any reader will laugh, cry, and be very moved by the end.

WENDY WASSERSTEIN

I started to read it at 11:30 P.M. and could not put it down until I finished... at 6 A.M. This is a story of an insecure, lonely child from a broken home who found refuge and solace in the world of theater. His relatives will remind you of yours. Youll laugh out loud, and maybe shed a tear to two.

ANN LANDERS

Ghost Light ultimately haunts you long after the final page has been read. Its both stark and dreamy, sad and jubilant. It elicits tears, causes smiles of nostalgic reverie and softens even the hardest of hearts.

The Tampa Tribune

DECEMBER 1956

The spotlight, I now realize, was a product of my imagination. My mother was not on a stage but on the floor of National Airport, perched on a stack of suitcases. She, her two children, and the baggage had been deposited there a couple of hours earlier by a helpful Chevy Chase neighbor with a station wagon. It was Christmas, and we were supposed to be on a plane to Miami Beach.

Looking back on that scene, I always see Mom in the middle distance, as if she were illuminated by a spot from above and framed by a proscenium: the uncertain flicker in her shy eyes, the thick wave of her brown hair, the dark wool coat unbuttoned to reveal her gray cashmere sweater crowned with a small pearl pin. The light picked her out dramatically from the blurry dark background, isolating her from us and all the other heavily bundled holiday travelers making their way through the terminal.

At the counter, a man in a uniform had turned Mom awaythough we had tickets, the plane was already full. Mom didnt know what to do. Recently separated from her husband, she was, at thirty, a single woman again, and in those days single women, let alone single mothers with children, were not expected to make their own way in airports. Moms parents were out of reachin Florida, awaiting our arrival. I was seven, Polly was five; we were a pair mismatched in more than age: a short, fair boy with expectant blue eyes and a yet-to-be-corrected overbite, and a dark, round girl whose overcast expression kept its secrets. Neither of us had ever been to an airport or on an airplane before.

So I stood a few feet away and watched Mom, who was more often prone to laughter, sitting in her spotlight, in tears. Her head slightly bowed, her makeup smeared, she looked so lonely, as if she had been dumped on a street corner like an abandoned child. She waitedfor what? The moment stretched as if it would never end. Were this a play, it would be the Act One curtain, and the audience could look forward to a resolution of Moms predicament, happy or tragic, in Act Two.

Real life, I would learn, is never so tidy. On this particular night I was not just a spectator but an actor in the drama. The problem was, I didnt know my role. I had no idea if it was up to me to get us on the plane. Father knows best, and if Father is no longer around, isnt the only son, the elder child, supposed to step in as understudy? At least I might be expected to stop Moms crying somehow. But I just stood there, frozen, and watched, as if I were in a theater, hoping that someone, some grown-up man, surely my father, would somehow materialize and come to the rescue.