Picture by Lillian Ross (review)

Reading Lillian Ross’s Picture for the second time, I find myself approaching the book somewhat differently than I had a decade ago when I first read it while researching A Journey through American Literature. Then I was trying to situate Ross’s story of the making of The Red Badge of Courage, John Huston’s film adaptation of Stephen Crane’s novel, within literary history. I saw Picture as a seminal contribution to the New Journalism, anticipating such works as Hunter S. Thompson’s Hell’s Angels and Tom Wolfe’s Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. The New Journalists sought to elevate nonfiction to the level of the novel, using novelistic techniques, original narrative approaches, recurring motifs, and extensive dialogue. Having previously made the case for Picture as literature, I now find myself rereading the book to see how it holds up.

The most detailed production history then written, Picture unquestionably deserves attention as a film studies classic, as its publishing history verifies. Ross initially published Picture as a series of articles in the New Yorker. MGM released The Red Badge of Courage in 1951, and Picture appeared in book form the following year. It has been frequently reprinted. Limelight Editions, a publisher of important works of cinema history, reissued Picture in 1984. Garland reissued it the following year as a Cinema Classic, and, in 2004, an Italian translation appeared in the series Minimum Fax Cinema, which includes several fine books documenting the history of motion pictures. Other publishers have made taller claims for Ross’s book, seeing Picture as an important literary work in itself. In 1998 Picture appeared in the Modern Library, the longstanding series of great books. The New York Review Books edition similarly situates Picture within the history of world literature.

Other editions have appeared with supplementary material. In 2002 Da Capo published the fiftieth anniversary edition with an introduction by Ross, which the New York Review Books edition reprints. Recalling the genesis of Picture, Ross conveys her awareness that she was taking a new literary approach. When she first pitched the project to the editor of the New Yorker, she characterized it as “a kind of novel-like book because of the way the characters may develop and the variety of relationships that exist among them.” She told the editor, “I don’t see why I shouldn’t try to do a fact piece in novel form, or maybe a novel in fact form” (xv).

The Anchor Books edition is the one that introduced me to Picture. This edition appeared in 1993 with an original foreword by John Huston’s daughter and a distinguished filmmaker in her own right, Anjelica Huston. The New York Review Books edition reprints her foreword, as well. She recalls reading Picture aloud with her husband: “We were laughing and having a lot of fun when suddenly I realized that reading this book was like being in the same room with my father” (ix). Prompted by Anjelica Huston, I initially approached Picture as John Huston’s story. Rereading it in search of additional elements that give Picture the necessary depth and complexity great literature requires, I now notice other characters.

My initial impulse to read Picture as John Huston’s story is understandable. Besides being a great director, he was a larger-than-life character, the only person in Picture who can be so described. Seen as a literary character, however, Huston is a disappointment. Though Ross had stressed character development as she foresaw the completed work, Huston never really develops. He is pretty much the same at the end of Picture as he is at the beginning. Gottfried Reinhardt, the producer of The Red Badge of Courage, is much more interesting in terms of character development. So is Huston’s assistant, Albert Band, who starts as a yes-man and gopher, reaches a low point when Reinhardt forces him to puppy-sit his wife’s French poodle, but gradually comes into his own.

Huston’s producer...