Unbuttoning America by Ardis Cameron

Unbuttoning America

Full Title: Unbuttoning America: A biography of "Peyton Place" by Ardis Cameron

Any writer able to create a character or location which becomes part of the linguistic landscape is, I believe, entitled to both respect and honor.  
This recognition indicates a profound part of the human soul has been tapped into and touched.  Hence, to describe any one as a Scrooge evokes ideas of major stinginess, while the word "quixotic” is based on Cervantes’ “Don Quixote”, depicting someone consumed by ideals to the point of dismissing the dreary details of daily monotony.  

Given this standard, Grace Metalious’ 1956 novel, “Peyton Place" has joined this lexicon.  Viewed in its time as lascivious and salacious, even now, whether or not one has read it, any town, community, university, office etc. where undercurrents of passion and corruption exist just beneath a polished, genteel ambiance, is likely to be referred to as a Peyton Place.  Ardis Cameron’s book is, in its true sense, a dual biography of both the history of Peyton Place through the years, and its writer, Grace Metalious.  

During WWII, countless young women had worked as nurses, or taken on factory jobs, striving to fill the emptiness left by so many young men having to risk/sacrifice their lives.  This freedom, while motivated by need, made it easier for women to interact with both one another and whatever men were not in military service.  Hence, latent lesbianism came to the fore.  Overall, the liberty to release libidos, permitted only to men throughout the centuries, grew available to women as well, although nearly always beneath a deeper veneer of discretion.

Given the joy of admitting and acting out erotic urges towards men who were not their husbands, made it difficult, after the war, to return to docile domesticity.  Once having reveled in their release, many women felt confined by those traditional roles once again foisted upon them.  Undoubtedly partly due to this reason, when during the mid 1950s, Grace Metalious found a publisher for her novel, (Peyton Place), she unearthed an audience thirsting for the candor it offered.

Women who had become pregnant, felt the need to undergo clandestine abortions, engage in extra-marital liaisons, or the penultimate taboo, incest, felt allowed to admit these facts and emotions, first to themselves, and then in letters to Grace, long before fan mail became an acceptable means of reaching a celebrity of any kind.  Until her stacks of mail became overwhelming, she responded to every letter with respect and candor. 

Who then was this Grace Metalious?  Given her writing, she was perceived as a gazelle who was offered and delighted in every fleshly pleasure.  In fact, she was an overweight wife and mother, who made only the most basic efforts to enhance the appearance of her hair, face and body, and then only for interviews conducted on televised talk shows. 

When asked why she had written her book, she said, in addition to her delight in the writing process, her family needed the money. All to often, living solely on her husband’s salary as a schoolteacher, she had needed to scrounge through their cupboards in order to prepare a barely edible dinner.  Once her novel was published, her husband suffered the humiliation of being fired from his job, due to the perceived sordid nature of “Peyton Place”.  Still, as it soon became a best/seller, this shortfall was remedied. 

Although at first surprised and disconcerted by the contrast between their perception of Grace and her unabashed stance of “Take me as I  am, or don’t bother”, this soon became a source of comfort and motivation to many of her female readers.  If a woman in her late thirties, on the plain and plump side, could achieve the fame Grace had accrued, why could they not do so as well, or at least make the effort ?  In what I view as one of her most sparkling responses regarding the supposed paltriness of her book,  she said if she was a lousy writer, there must be a large number of readers out there with equally lousy taste. 

Still, despite her seeming self-confidence, a bottle of whiskey was at hand, nearly at all times.  Doubtless due to this alcoholism, she died at only thirty-nine, due to what would currently have been diagnosed as cirrhosis of the liver.

Her book, or various versions of it, outlived her for decades. During the early 1960 s, it became a TV serial which would have almost certainly appalled her.  In keeping with the cliches of its time, heroes and heroines were rewarded, while villains were punished.  In short, what Grace Metalious intended as a puncturing of the balloon of small town life, was transformed into syrup.

Still, despite its popularity, with episodes featured three times each week, this series has become more-or-less forgotten.  What has remained is the term “Peyton Place”, which has become a way of conveying those glints of gossip which comprise so much of our day-to-day conversation.  

Arguably, this is, in itself, a triumph.