CBR Book 17: Furious Love

Furious Love, by Sam Kashner & Nancy Schoenberger

In a book full of sad tales, the saddest comes from the acknowledgements section at the end. The writers, on telling a recently graduated theater major that they planned on writing a book about the world-famous Taylor-Burton relationship, received this response: "Oh, wow. I never know that Elizabeth Taylor and Tim Burton were married!" After being one-half of the most famous couple in the world, not to mention an acting giant, it's too bad that Richard Burton is somewhat forgotten in the realm of celebrity these days. I am forced to admit that I have not, as yet, even seen a movie in which Mr. Burton appears. I promise you that there are at least 5 currently on my Netflix queue, though, and I bumped a couple up after reading this fascinating story of Hollywood's royal couple.

Furious Love serves as sort of a dual biography, giving us a presumably abbreviated look at the lives of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton before and after tumultuous relationship, as well as the full account of their years together. Elizabeth Taylor had been a movie star from childhood, whereas Burton was the most promising of stage actors until he answered the siren call of Hollywood. She had lived a life of privilege, while he was the 12th of 13 children born to a poor Welsh miner. When they began their affair on the set of Cleopatra in 1963, they were both married to other people: Taylor to Eddie Fisher (her fourth marriage) and Burton to Sibyl, who had weathered countless affairs before. Their relationship caused a sensation; scandalizing and fascinating the world, and engendering the landscape of celebrity obsession that we see today. Throughout their affair and their subsequent marriages (the first lasting ten years, the second a matter of months) they were alternately beloved and vilified by the public. They functioned almost entirely in the public eye, allowing the world to live vicariously through their extreme decadence. They purchased fabulous jewels, paintings, yachts, planes; they ate and drank to excess; they rubbed shoulders with everyone who was anyone. Oh, and they made a whole bunch of movies, too. In the end, their life was too extreme to maintain, both in terms of their relationship, and their health. They both suffered from uncountable health problems, many brought on by alcoholism and drug abuse (mostly in Taylor's case), and Burton died in 1984 at the age of 58.

This biography encapsulates two different stories. The first is that of Taylor and Burton's film careers. The list of people they worked with and movies they made is truly incredible. More interesting is the way in which they commanded their world: at the height of their stardom, and even when their shine had faded somewhat, they were capable of asking nearly anything of the studios and getting away with it. Elizabeth Taylor usually had full veto rights over everything from costume design to screenwriters and directors. Despite being remembered for a certain amount of high drama and camp today, Taylor and Burton worked hard to bring challenging, literary pieces to the screen; often adaptations of plays written by friends like Tennessee Williams and Noel Coward, not to mention classics like Shakespeare and Marlowe. They were conversely the critics' darlings or the laughingstock of the press, but they almost always did things the way they wanted to do them. The rise and fall of their Hollywood reign is a fascinating story to follow, and will certainly swell your Netflix queue beyond all reason (if it's not there already).

Darker, and much sadder (to me) is the story of their relationship. What existed in the Taylor-Burton romance was a situation wherein two people loved each other very much, but were living in such a fantasy world of movies, parties, and riches that they were rendered incapable of dealing with reality. I often think that we, as a society, become brainwashed by the romance of media. We believe in things like meet-cutes, last-minute reconciliations in airports, and happily ever afters; and more importantly, we think that these things are all engineered by magic, rather than hard work and communication. And if the average Joe gets sucked in by all of those things, then the movie stars themselves are twice as susceptible. Taylor and Burton are a perfect example of this. They did whatever they wanted, often suffering the consequences but usually coming out ahead because they were so popular that they were guaranteed to make money for anyone they worked with or for. They lived a life of hedonism and never seemed to truly catch on that they were paying for it with their lives. Burton suffered a wide variety of health problems due to his (never acknowledged) alcoholism, but never truly got sober for more than a few months at a time. Elizabeth, and their entourage, were so busy having a good time that they never really supported his efforts. We would look with horror on a "regular" relationship in which one partner attempted to get sober while the other continued to booze it up, but this was simply par for the course where the Burtons were involved. Depicted in this book, that was their whole life. They got sucked in to the limelight, into their public personae, and they couldn't escape. It's not enough to say that they "weren't allowed" a normal life or relationship - it's more like a kind of Stockholm Syndrome, wherein they knew their life was destroying them, but they loved the poison.

This is a depressing and fascinating story of two people who only sort of existed, and of two people who weren't allowed to truly exist. "Liz and Dick," as opposed to Elizabeth and Richard, played out their every move for reporters. The situations and stories are presented so well here that in the end, instead of being envious of the fabulous life they lived, all you can really feel for them is a certain amount of pity. Sure, we'd all like to have enough money to casually drop 2 million on a massive diamond, but what price would we really pay? There are numerous references throughout to Faust (a role Burton played, naturally), and it's an apt comparison. Furious Love is a book about movie stars, yes, but I think it gives us many greater things to think about. If nothing else, you'll stop and feel grateful, at least once, for your comparatively quiet and sane existence.

CBR Book 5: For All the Tea in China: How England stole the world's favorite drink and changed history

For all the tea in China: how England stole the world's favorite drink and changed history, by Sarah Rose

I love tea. Don't get me wrong, though: I'm not a tea snob. I actually find loose-leaf to be rather a pain in the rear, and sometimes I really just love a cup of Lipton's finest. But I drink a cup of hot tea nearly every morning, and when the weather's cold, I'll probably have more than one cup throughout the day. My point is, I'm a tea-drinker as opposed to a coffee-drinker, so when I heard about a book about the history of tea (sort of), I was pretty interested, and sure enough, this book does not disappoint.

For All the Tea in China ... describes a period of about 4-5 years in the mid 1800s, during which a naturalist by the name of Robert Fortune was hired by the East India Company to essentially "steal" tea from China. You see, England and China traded extensively in those days. England provided China with opium, grown in India; China provided England with tea. The East India Company, though, felt that if they only had the raw materials and the know-how, they could produce tea out of India instead. The problem was that the best tea all came from China, and the Chinese tea growers were the only ones who truly knew how to make it good. Thus, Robert Fortune, disguised as a mandarin, went deep into the Chinese interior, to the best green tea- and black tea-growing areas of the country, and stole tea plants, seeds, and any information regarding the production of tea that he could glean. Once he had the materials, he had to get them back to the coast, onto ships, and safely sent to India. He was also responsible for finding tea-makers and convincing them to go to India in order to grow tea for the East India Company. He was, ultimately, successful.

Sarah Rose's history mainly tells the story of Fortune's travels through China; stories that can be read in his own published memoirs. Also of interest, though, are the descriptions of the economic goings-on, the botanical innovations of the time, and the history that evolved out of these activities. The fact that England provided China with opium, for instance, was a fascinating realization to me. They actually fought wars over the stuff! And Mr. Fortune, in addition to bringing tea to India, was also responsible for bringing countless other types of still-popular flora to the Western world. He successfully proved that green tea and black tea come from the same plant (European botanists were convinced that they were merely cousins), and provided evidence that the Chinese green tea producers actually were poisoning their tea by adding Prussian blue and gypsum, which gave the tea a richer green color. He also revolutionized the way that plant life was transported by making important changes to Wardian cases (sealed glasses compartments, kind of like terrariums).

History is often dry stuff, even when a topic of interest is being discussed. By focusing primarily on Robert Fortune, Ms. Rose is able to provide a readable narrative of one man's "adventures," while providing the historic and economic context alongside it. Overall, an interesting read; I would have thought that corporate or industrial espionage was a fairly new concept, but it doesn't really come as a surprise to learn that the East India Company (the world's first global corporation) was engaging in it during the Victorian era. Also, even though I'm not much of a plant person, learning a bit about the economic importance and high aesthetic value of flora was equally interesting.

The verdict? Worth a read, and not just for tea-lovers. If you're looking for something easy and non-fiction, give it a try!