DATE: Sunday, November 23, 1997             TAG: 9711130670

SECTION: COMMENTARY              PAGE: J2   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Book Review

SOURCE: BY TEMPLE WEST

                                            LENGTH:   77 lines

FORCED AUTOBIOGRAPHY DOESN'T PROBE FAR ENOUGH

RITA WILL

Memoir of a Literary Rabble-Rouser

RITA MAE BROWN

Bantam Books. 479 pp. $23.95.

In a recent issue of Vanity Fair, James Wolcott proclaimed that there is a new confessional school of writing that has spawned an avalanche of memoirs. ``Never, '' he says, ``have so many shared so much of so little.'' He may be right.

Writer Rita Mae Brown's many loyal fans will surely be disappointed if they are expecting her usual, delightful humor in her memoir, Rita Will. In the past Brown has been able to make us laugh; here, she doesn't. Perhaps it's a function of not being able to translate a humorous outlook objectively into her own life; perhaps it's because, as she explains in her apologetic introduction, ``the pressures of daily life'' weigh heavily, or perhaps it's because the urge to write her autobiography came from her publisher and her editor, rather than from herself.

Whatever the reason, humor, truth, well-written prose and history do not carry the burden of this autobiography. The only thing we get, is a glimpse into a sometimes glitzy life.

Brown, who earned attention with her first novel, Rubyfruit Jungle, claims to be married to the truth. Indeed, she makes the generalization that ``a writer is the one person in every culture, in every epoch, married to the truth.''

Honest writing, however, does not necessarily define good writing. Following the narrative of her life, Brown delivers frightening flights of metaphor, unsubstantiated generalizations, platitudes, cliches and patronizing didacticism. Nowhere are these elements more evident, perhaps, than in a chapter titled, ``Assholes Anonymous,'' where she waxes pretentiously about the English language, literature and other writers.

The English language ``is and always will be the perfect language for comedy (because) English-speaking peoples are wary of emotion,'' she asserts with no further explanation.

Giving her reader little credit, but perhaps unconsciously exposing a little of herself, she tells us that ``Milton and Faulkner were deeply wounded men, deeply feeling men.'' Assuming that her reader still doesn't understand, she continues, ``You might not think it upon first reading, but read those works again.'' There is nothing worse for a reader than being patronized.

This is as much an autobiography about a particular time as it is of a specific person, Brown claims. She carries us from her birth in 1944, as an illegitimate child born to her adoptive mother's half cousin, to her college activism and openly gay lifestyle, to her Hollywood screen writing days, through her publicized romance with Martina Navratilova, to her farm outside Charlottesville, where she still lives. And she is completely unabashed about who she is and her contributions to these historical times.

``I have never lacked self-esteem. In fact,'' she says, ``if you need some, I'll give you some of mine.'' That is one of the few refreshing statements she makes; and, initially perhaps, one that rings true.

We soon begin to understand that there is something driving that self esteem, some hidden truth. Brown is clear, on many occasions, that in her family, she was known, tritely, as ``the horse of a different color.'' She has always been open about being gay, and that too, is refreshing. But when she claims to have ``inhabited a peculiar territory as the only public lesbian in a nation of 200 million people,'' we begin to squirm a little. We are left wondering just what is beneath the macho bravado that allows her to make that statement, and to say, after her adored father died, simply ``Life goes on,'' and about her days in California, that ``I would be in a room full of men, yet be the only person with balls.''

From Rita Mae Brown, a writer who professes a love of truth and the English language, we expect more than tired old observations, lazy language, stale meaning and hinted disclosures. Her book is dedicated to her reader. We expect her to take us seriously.

But as she says, ``I couldn't cram my entire life into here even if I had 22 volumes.'' MEMO: Temple West is a student in the M.F.A. creative writing program at

Old Dominion University. She lives in Norfolk.

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