Bettyville

Bettyville is a 2015 memoir by American author George Hodgman. The memoir relates George’s experiences growing old as an author, contrasting his well-known and seemingly shameless public persona and writings with his private struggles with his mother and her intolerance of his homosexuality. George wrote the memoir while caring for his mother, Betty Hodgman, as she neared death. This experience evokes in George many memories of his childhood in Paris, Missouri, both good and bad. The memoir is centrally concerned with his parents’ intolerance of his identity, and his resulting difficulty connecting with them. He also humorously describes his mother’s demanding personality, which led him to rename his hometown, and then his memoir, “Bettyville.”

Bettyville is written from George’s perspective in his late fifties. At the same time, his mother is in her nineties. In the early stage of his career, George left Betty and the quaint town of Paris, Missouri to live in New York City. There, he built a life as an editor and publisher. As the memoir begins, it is years after George’s father died, and Betty has grown too old to take care of herself. George moves back to Paris, finding that though he and his mother get along, her silence about his homosexuality and past relationships puts great strain on their relationship.

Each day, both George and Betty have to renew their acceptance of the fact that her health is deteriorating. In her youth, Betty was energetic, personable, and beautiful; the memories of her past life linger, sometimes painfully, in both of their minds. Betty’s desires to reclaim her younger life, contrasted with the difficulties of old age, sometimes overwhelm her. She occasionally vents her frustrations on George, who tries to respond with compassion and understanding. Knowing that she has a limited amount of time left, he resolves to make each day not only endurable but enjoyable.



When Betty starts needing around-the-clock care, George suggests they consider moving her into an assisted living center. Rejecting the idea, Betty concedes a visit to a local center. Once there, Betty makes it abundantly clear that the facility is not right for her. George and even their contacts at the assisted living center agree that the right place for Betty is at home. This puts a lot of pressure on George to take Betty to her many appointments and to try to preserve a normal routine. He accompanies her to places he never thought he would go, such as her beauty salon, where she complains, comically, about the stylists’ work every time she goes.

George is haunted by memories of growing up gay in his hometown. He remembers incidents with bullies and the years he struggled in sports. During the summers of his youth, he labored in his family’s lumberyard in order to avoid sports. Worst of all, he feels that his mother and father never truly recognized or accepted him because they never told him it is acceptable to be gay. Other memories are overwhelmingly positive, such as those of his grandmother, “Mammy,” and father, who had a boisterous and rebellious attitude and loved music.

In addition to having difficulty connecting to his mother, George also feels alienated from his childhood peers, who approach him in town and ask him questions about his life in the big city. George has told few people, even among his New York friends, that he was fired from his job and has been working as a freelance editor to stay afloat. As Betty’s dementia worsens, she becomes totally dependent on George’s help. George writes the later parts of his memoir from the card table in the house’s common area so he can keep a constant watch on his mother.



George’s feelings of imprisonment in Bettyville have a silver lining: he and Betty eventually grow closer, and he feels some of the validation he has always craved in the act of caring for her. At the end of the memoir, Betty finishes cancer treatment and seems to be in remission. She reaches her ninety-first birthday, and George stays in Paris to care for her indefinitely. He expresses his ambivalence about being tethered to the care and well-being of a family member, but he does not want to give back the lessons he has learned.