In 2012, author and editor Kevin Sessums shared a post that his old colleague from Vanity Fair George Hodgman had written from his hometown of Paris, Missouri, where he was caring for his mother, Betty.
Sessums introduced it, in part, by saying: “His missives here on Facebook about his time back home with her are so beautiful. I had to share this latest one… (they) resound with such love and respect and a kind of sweet regret.”
Portions of the story in that missive appear in Hodgman’s new book Bettyville, which will debut at #9 on the New York Times bestseller list next Sunday. Hodgman–a noted book and magazine editor who has worked at Simon and Schuster, Vanity Fair, Talk magazine, Henry Holt and Company, and Houghton Mifflin–announced it on his Facebook blog on March 18: “This is a total thrill and unexpected. I wanted to post this here because I truly owe it to all of you. YOU MADE THIS BOOK FOR ME.”
Writing in the New York Times, Cathy Horyn calls Bettyville, “a most remarkable, laugh-out-loud book” that “works on several levels (as a meditation on belonging, as a story of growing up gay and the psychic cost of silence, as metaphor for recovery).” When Horyn notes that he approaches memoir from a “fairly new perspective: that of a gay son,” Hodgman says, “Here was this neurotic, self-centered, New York, childless gay man.”
Horyn quotes Sara Bershtel, publisher of Metropolitan Books and a Hodgman colleague from his time at Henry Holt, who said, Bettyville suggests “the development of a watchful gay kid. You have to watch everybody, you have to watch your parents, and you can’t show anything.” Horyn feels that watchfulness “made him a shrewd and witty observer.”
Hodgman told the Times that he generally wrote from 4 to 9 a.m., when his mother rose. Sometimes he would key in their chats while his mother spoke from the sofa.
“My mother is funny and dry without knowing that she is. Together, we can make people laugh. So I had this idea of a quirky comedy team…I’m also very nostalgic about these towns…I just felt that this rural area was a real story that nobody was telling.”
People are listening. In January, Publishers Lunch had already flagged it as a book to watch in its BUZZ BOOKS 2015: Spring/Summer edition. Amazon and Books-a-Million recently made Bettyville a Top Pick, and People named it a “Book of the Week.”
“I am a believer in God in my own special way. But I think I was given this book because I came back.”