Borrowed Finery

Borrowed Finery: A Memoir is a 2001 memoir by the late author Paula Fox. Fox, born in 1923, has only recently come to mainstream attention – and only just – because of the great fan and champion she has in Jonathan Franzen, author of The Corrections (2001). Franzen discovered Fox's 1970 novel, Desperate Characters, two decades later, and sensed in it an unrecognized genius. Since then, he, David Foster Wallace, and Jonathan Lethem have all touted her work. Besides her harrowing adult fiction, Fox authored several award-winning children's books, notably The Slave Dancer, which won the Newbery Medal in 1974. She was the grandmother of American rock singer Courtney Love.

Paula Fox was born in 1923, to glamorous and deeply flawed parents. Her father and namesake, Paul Fox, was an alcoholic and struggling screenwriter, who penned what Graham Greene called the worst movie he ever saw, The Last Train to Madrid. Her mother, Elsie, was a Spanish beauty; according to Fox, her defining characteristic was that she was possessed of an unremitting resentment, even hatred of her own child. This resentment begins the moment she bears Fox, at only 19 years old. Within days, her parents have abandoned Fox at a Manhattan orphanage, from which her grandmother saves her, mostly out of shame. Fox is then passed around to a string of strangers for short periods, before the Reverend Corning, a compassionate Congregational minister from Upstate New York finally takes her in. She lives with “Uncle Elwood” for several near-idyllic years before her father, in one of his sudden fits of contrition, beckons her to Los Angeles, where he and Elise are then living.

However, the homecoming, like all of Fox's homecomings, is short lived. She complains of a toothache to her mother, who inexplicably throws her in the backseat of a car and rides along wildly, to shake her and cause her pain. Finally, her mother issues a flat ultimatum to Paul that he must choose either her or the child. He chooses Elsie, and Fox is sent back to her grandmother. Fox lives with her Grandmother in a small apartment in Queens, before her grandmother is summoned to be a caretaker and companion for a wealthy, senile family member in Cuba. She accepts the appointment and drags Elise along, who subsequently spends a year on the island before returning once again to New York.



Throughout Fox's several journeys between temporary wards, she is subject to the sporadic visitations of her parents. These inevitably go poorly. Fox recounts one time, when she was only five years old, being summoned by her parents for a visit. Her mother responds to her appearance by throwing a glass of ice water at her, soaking and stunning the child. Her father responds by turning to comfort Elsie and then removing Fox from the premises. On another occasion, Elsie meets Paula and offers to buy her a pair of shoes; afterward, she literally abandons her daughter to find her way home across the city by herself.

As she ages, Fox's life doesn't become any more typical. At only 15 years old, she lives alone while she briefly attends art school, but soon the cost of living independently catches up with her. She works for a theater in Nantucket; she attends the Julliard School of Music for a time. On the cusp of adulthood, her father tries, one last time, to do something vaguely parental by putting her into the care of a questionable and alcoholic family friend, sending her to Hollywood.

Fox never lapses into sentimentality in depictions of her childhood. She never speculates at length on why her mother despises her, or why her father permits that spite to rise to the level of outright abuse. This, according to most critics, is part of the strength of her autobiography – Fox sticks to the surface, portraying actions as they happened, without undue commentary. By letting actions speak for themselves, her work attains a cinematic quality. At one point, after her parents separate, Fox receives a call from her mother. Elsie asks her to spy on her father's new flame; she also, by way of guilting her daughter into action, asks Fox whether or not she loves her. The call prompts Fox to question, "Who was I to love such a person, and who was she to be loved? I was frightened by her question; there was something in her voice that made loving her a punishment. But I said yes."



Fox's Borrowed Finery, with its acceptance of ambiguity, ambivalence, and the inherently complex, even hypocritical nature of family dynamics is in some ways a very modern memoir. Nevertheless, Fox's approach is purely her own, and her memoir well demonstrates how a unique voice can bring freshness and relevancy even to the most well-trod topics.