The Mystery and Mastery of Molly Ivins
In 1991, Molly Ivins published her first book, a collection of columns called “Molly Ivins Can’t Say That, Can She?” I was the editor, which is to use the term very loosely since I didn’t change a word.
Molly was a columnist for the Dallas Times Herald. Her assessment of all matters Texan was strikingly acute and funny. She observed, for example that a guide to state legislators showed their profiles from the back so that lobbyists in the balcony could identify them. Her writing cascaded into brilliant snapshots of the world she both mocked and adored.
“When I would denounce some sorry sumbitch in the Lege as an egg suckin’ child molester who ran on all fours and had the brains of an adolescent pissant,” she wrote in her introduction to the book, “ I would courageously prepare myself to be horse-whipped at the least. All that ever happened I’d see the sumbitch in the capitol, the next day, he’d beam, spread his arms and say, ‘Baby! Yew put mah name in yore paper!’ Twenty years and I’ve never been able to piss off a single one of them.”
It turned out Molly had another constituency. She wrote freelance pieces for the Nation, the Progressive, Mother Jones and pretty much whatever “lefty” magazine there was. The result was that Molly had a fanbase in a variety of places that was bigger than we realized. When Random House released 11,000 copies of the book it went on to the New York Times bestseller list for 29 weeks in hardcover, selling well over 100,000 copies and an equal number in paperback. That version is still for sale.
I had met Molly in the 1970s when she came to Moscow, where I was based as part of a group of “young” leaders of some rubric or another. We hit it off, probably because one of her journalistic heroes was I.F. Stone, my first boss. In the intervening years she worked as a reporter at the Minneapolis Star Tribune, the Texas Observer and the New York Times where she always said with pride that she had written the memorable obituary of Elvis Presley. Molly was six feet tall with an imposing, big-boned presence. Her demeanor was folksy. She liked to walk around barefoot. Hers was not the expected decorum of what was then still thought of as the Gray Lady of the news business. She finally was fired from the New York Times, she believed, for describing a community chicken-killing festival as “a gang-pluck.”
So, when Dallas called, Molly went. A few years later a friend from the Times, Eden Ross Lipson, introduced her to Dan Green, a publisher-turned-book agent. Molly developed the concept for a book about the wacky Texas state “Lege”. Green sent the proposal to me and four other publishers. We had lunch at a fancy East Side French restaurant, in the high style of 1980s New York publishing. There was an auction and my bid of $249,000 prevailed — actually, a lot of money for a first book by essentially, a local columnist. There was also to be a collection of pieces. Dan said we should put that book out first. I was reluctant because books of previously published work can be a tough sell, but I agreed. The idea was that Molly would take a year off from the paper to write about the “Lege”.
When the book of columns became an unexpected hit, Molly appeared on television and radio, visited bookstores and started giving speeches. That led to a syndication agreement for her writing. I didn’t check in much with Molly that year as she rode the bestseller crest. On the date she was scheduled to return to the Times Herald, she wore a tee-shirt that declared: “Don’t Ask About The Book.” I think there was an expletive also.
The “Lege” book never materialized. As a writer, Molly was a sprinter. Columns were her format, not narrative. Random House published other successful column books by her. She also collaborated on two books with Lou Dubose, another great Texan writer, about George W. Bush who she always called “Shrub.”
I worked well with Molly, but accepted the fact that as a New York publisher, I was a valuable ally to be sure, but not really qualified to be a friend. At my invitation, Molly came to big-time Random House sales events and was a featured speaker at the annual meeting of the American Association of Publishers in Florida. On that occasion, she chose to give a stern lecture on the importance of courage in defending the first amendment. The audience was polite. I think they would have preferred funny Molly.
I lost contact with her when I left Random House. I did keep up reading about her seven-year battle with cancers that eventually took her life in 2007. Through most of that time Molly kept up her schedule of speeches, columns, accepting deserved awards and always refining her reputation as a shit-kicking, bad-ass, hard-drinking Texan who could hold her own with the roughest-toughest denizens around her.
The occasion for these reflections about Molly now is the release of an admiring feature documentary about her called “Raise Hell: The Life & Times of Molly Ivins.” My title for this piece refers to the “Mystery” of Molly because the film makes much clearer what I had always suspected about who she really was. I’m told the “love of her life” died in a motorcycle accident when they were very young. She never married. She was a very heavy drinker, probably an alcoholic. She seemed gregarious, but except for a very few people, essentially a loner to the point of loneliness. There was a barrier for most people. Her fellow Texan journalist, Mimi Swartz wrote in the Times recently that “as her fame grew, Ms. Ivins was sometimes better experienced better at a distance than close up.”
The documentary shows — unequivocally and perhaps, unintentionally — that Molly’s Texas persona, was acquired. She was not born that way. She was raised in a gated community in Houston. Her father was a top-level oil executive. She went to a private girl’s school and landed at Smith College. She loved Paris and spoke fluent French. There are photographs of young Molly in various stages of adolescence and young adulthood when she looked more a debutante than a cowgirl.
Late in life, her father, dying of cancer, committed suicide. He was, from all accounts, a domineering presence. While she clearly differed from her father’s politics and style, I think she understood, where family was concerned, “You Got to Dance With Them That Brung You,-” the title of one of her books.
Watching the movie, I understood that “Mary Tyler Ivins” invented a character called Molly and inhabited her completely and very successfully. That distance I and others felt was a signal that she didn’t really want us to press too deeply behind her bravado. Molly was brilliant as were her insights about people and politics. Still, I now believe that being the Molly she devised was harder than it looked.
