A Death in the Family por Dominick Dunne

URL https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2004/03/dunne200403

Perspectiva de Dominick Dunne sobre a morte de seu irmão John Gregory Dunne. Os irmãos tiveram uma relação complicada, mas se reconciliaram nos últimos anos. Quando John morreu, Dominick estava lendo a biografia de Natalie Wood que John escreveu.

O texto de Dominick Dunne fala um pouco do histórico familiar, de onde vieram, a herança católica irlandesa. Então explora os anos em Hollywood dos dois irmãos com Joan e, logo após, do trabalho do casal sem ele em “A Star is Born”, quando passou a invejar seus sucessos. Na sequência, sua queda e fracasso, incluindo abuso de drogas, álcool, divórcio e o assassinato da filha, Dominique Dunne.

Também aborda a relação de John e Joan tão próxima, a ponto de terminarem frases um do outro e fazerem tudo juntos, incluindo falarem ao telefone juntos com quem ligasse.

Dominick e John tinham outros 5 irmãos. O mais novo se suicidou, duas irmãs morreram de câncer e outro morreu numa queda de avião particular.

Passagens que mais me impactaram

Quando a imprensa noticiou a morte de sua filha, referindo-se a ela como a "sobrinha de Didion”:

The major experience of my life has been the murder of my daughter. I never truly understood the meaning of the word “devastation” until I lost her. Since I was still a failed figure at the time, an unforgivable sin in Hollywood, where the murder took place, I was deeply sensitive to the slights I met with when I returned there. In “Justice,” an article about the trial of the man who killed my daughter, the first article I ever wrote for Vanity Fair, in the March 1984 issue, I said:

At the time of the murder Dominique was consistently identified in the press as the niece of my brother and sister-in-law, John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion, rather than as the daughter of Lenny and me. At first I was too stunned by the killing for this to matter, but as the days passed, it bothered me. I spoke to Lenny about it one morning in her bedroom. She said, “Oh, what difference does it make?” with such despair in her voice that I felt ashamed to be concerned with such a trivial matter at such a crucial time.

In the room with us was my former mother-in-law, Beatriz Sandoval Griffin Goodwin, the widow of Lenny’s father, Thomas Griffin, an Arizona cattle rancher, and of Lenny’s stepfather, Ewart Goodwin, an insurance tycoon and rancher. She is a strong, uncompromising woman who has never not stated exactly what was on her mind in any given situation, a trait that has made her respected if not always endearing.

“Listen to what he’s saying to you,” she said emphatically. “It sounds like Dominique was an orphan raised by her aunt and uncle.…And,”she added, to underscore the point, “she had two brothers as well.”

E de quando John dedicou um livro a Leslie Abramson, quem Dominick desprezava:

The final break came over the defense attorney Leslie Abramson, who defended Erik Menendez, one of two rich Beverly Hills brothers who shot their parents to death in 1989. Abramson gained national attention during the Menendez trial, which I covered for this magazine. My brother and I both wrote about her. She was a character in his novel Red, White, and Blue. John admired her, and she doted on him. I despised her, and she despised me right back. It got ugly. The crux of our difficulties came when John dedicated one of his books to her at the very time she and I were in public conflict. After that my brother and I did not speak for more than six years. But our fight really wasn’t about Leslie Abramson. She played no part in my life. I never once saw her outside of the courtroom. An eruption had long been building between John and me, and Abramson just lit the match. When a magazine wanted to photograph us together for an article it was doing on brothers, each of us declined without checking with the other.