“…I have been working on it— learning to write… but mostly learning to tell the truth. At first it’s quite impossible. You make yourself better than anybody, then worse than anybody, and when you finally come to see you are ‘like’ everybody… that is the bitterest blow of all to the ego. But in the end, it’s only the truth, no matter how ugly or shameful, that is right, that fits together, that makes real people, and strangely enough— beauty.
The title might well be ‘The Making of a Shit.’ For that is what it shows.
About eight years ago (1944), I took a good look at myself and my little friends and began to wonder what had turned us into bitter, envious phonies. Further, I decided to grow up, face reality and truth. But I’d spent 30 years of hard work becoming a fool, and you just can’t stop like that…”
—Louise Brooks, letter to an old friend in Cherryvale, Kansas, 1952.
