Friday, Jul 4, 2008
In Sunday's New York Times Magazine, Martha Stewart let it slip that the real reason she's leaving Westport, Conn., is because she's lonely.
Apr 11, 2000 | In the Feb. 21-28 issue of the New Yorker, Joan Didion made some incisive observations about the enigmatic allure of Martha Stewart. "The promise she makes her readers and viewers," Didion wrote, "is that know-how in the house will translate to can-do outside of it ... The 'cultural meaning' of Martha Stewart's success, in other words, lies deep in the success itself."
It's hard to argue with Didion's point -- to a point: The Polish girl from Nutley, N.J., who started a part-time catering business in her house, is now the famous scion of a staggeringly successful, publicly owned multimedia corporation bearing her name. She's running an empire on four hours of sleep a night, has numerous tastefully appointed residences and she's got all of those tag-sale treasures that you and I will never have.
But what are we to make of Stewart's unwitting confession of interpersonal failure in last Sunday's New York Times Magazine?
An essay titled "Martha Stewart Leaving" appeared under Stewart's byline in the Times' theme issue on American suburbia. The piece was ostensibly the author's apologia regarding her decision to move away from Westport, Conn., her home base for almost 30 years.
Yet with the astonishing lack of insight that is familiar to regular readers of Martha Stewart Living magazine, Stewart made it apparent, if not exactly clear, that the real reason she's giving up on Westport is because she's lonely there. Her revelations of her neighbors' cold-blooded rejections and her increased obsession with her pets don't jibe with the idea that Stewart's "know-how" in her Turkey Hill estate has translated to "can-do" in the community outside of it.
In short, Stewart needs friends.
Casting out from her unintentionally illuminating, purposely nostalgic "Remembering" column, which appears monthly on the back page of Martha Stewart Living, Stewart wrote in the Times about the changing face of suburbia, in particular, Westport. The Times editors capture it thus in their concise, subtly ironic subhead: "The reason Westport no longer works for Stewart: Small-town life just isn't what it used to be."
Stewart then outlines the way Westport was vs. the way it is now, a difference she boils down to two primary assessments: one, that the town is no longer full of hospitable folks, and two, that its local regulations have not proven to be helpful to the entrepreneurial projects of its best-known resident. Stewart details how her favorite local businesses have disappeared, how her "extremely critical" neighbors have created "an increasingly unfriendly neighborhood atmosphere," how her acrimonious divorce divided her social circle and left her lacking in companionship, how her married daughter doesn't want to visit "with the atmosphere in Westport so changed."
It's surprising to hear that "friendliness" actually matters that much to Stewart, for whom people have always seemed such an afterthought. Stewart's meal-centered "reunions" with various friends and acquaintances that are featured in the monthly magazine always seem stiff and staged, as if "An Iowa Picnic" or "A Luncheon in Harlem" are the only ways to capture Stewart in commerce with someone not within her employ.
It's equally surprising that nowhere in her essay does Stewart take note of how significantly she -- not just her town or her marital status or "things" -- has changed since she made Westport her home.
Instead, Stewart tells us how she's managed to cope with "the warning signs" that her community was turning its back on her. She's redecorated her house and "carefully edited" her furnishings. She's enlarged her gardens. She's tried to offer fresh eggs and garden produce to her endless stream of new neighbors, only to be rebuffed ("once with a slammed door"). She's ultimately given in to creature comforts -- in addition to her chow chow dogs and her eight cats, she's now breeding chinchillas.
Yet despite how much she loves her pets and the oft-cited Turkey Hill estate, despite her "bold attempts" to keep up her own social traditions, nobody's inviting her to dinner and she feels isolated. The vision this information evokes in the mind's eye is rather creepy: Stewart is just another lonely loser in suburbia, a shut-in surrounded by landscaping and material comforts and litter boxes, someone who is draped with shedding, long-haired animals and reduced to watching "The Sopranos" by herself every Sunday night.
This is, quite frankly, more than I wanted to know about our Martha. Don't get me wrong. There's a certain mean-spirited pleasure I get out of scanning the "Remembering" column for dirt every month. Unlike the front-of-the-book "Letter from Martha," which is constrained by editorial necessity to hollow-souled flag-waving for the month's features and an occasional mortified mea culpa for some transgression in the previous issue (no flour in the recipe for Easter Egg Cake!), Stewart's regular "Remembering" essay is clearly the Good Thing queen's sacred opportunity to flex her literary muscles on a wistful subject of her choosing.
She's written about undertaking a third major garden, making marshmallows and sending her young daughter to camp. The current issue's "Remembering" glorifies the good old days when Stewart's mother used to spend every Monday slaving over the laundry for a family of eight in the steamy basement of their house in Nutley.
Utterly devoid of even a whiff of irony, these missives are frequently peppered with weird and unintended revelations about the inner Stewart, whose earnest reminiscences and forthright, if prosaic, storytelling are the scrim through which we are witness to her thorough lack of self-awareness.
There are so many classic examples of Stewart's obliviousness regarding her own psychology that it's hard to narrow down the field of favorites. In her latest "theme" issue, the just-released "Martha Stewart Baby," which outlines the many ways a baby can be utilized as a decor statement, Stewart remembers that her labor with Alexis lasted -- yes! -- exactly one efficient hour!
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