Customer Reviews

Nobody Said Not to Go: The Life, Loves, and Adventures of Emily Hahn

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I knew nothing about Emily Hahn and I picked this book up being intrigued by a synopsis. It is a very well written book about an extraordinary life. Emily (Mickey) Hahn broke every convention of her time: a woman who studied mining engineering in collage, a lone white woman in Africa in the early 1930's, a single woman in China, an American "married" to a Chinese as his concubine and a journalist caught in the Japanese invasion of that country. Hopefully, I have said enough to tickle the interest of would-be readers since I don't want to give away any more.

This is a life story that reads like a novel. Why the Chinese portion of this book has not been made into a movie is a surprise to me. There is a cinematic quality of Ms. Hahn's life in China (which she wrote about herself) that cries out for filming. Ken Cuthbertson tells the story of this life without judgement calls does not clutter his book with useless facts. The book is illustrated with photographs spread throughout the chapters where they are needed. I could not recommend this book more highly.

I picked up a copy of this book because the cover looked so interesting. The cover matched the contents of the book. Emily Hahn was a writer for the New Yorker magazine, but she also wrote more than 50 books. When she was not writing, she was an adventurer, a traveler, an opium addict, and a whole lot of other things. Wow, what a life she led! Emily Hahn did the kind of wild things that most women of her day (she was born in 1905 and died in 1997) only dreamed of and that very few dared to write about. The author has done an excellent job of telling Hahn's story. I enjoyed Nobody Said Not to Go. It's a well written, quick paced story about an amazing woman.

"A forgotten American literary treasure." That's what one of Emily Hahn's young admirers called her. Hahn's friend and one-time mentor once told her, "If you and I had been born male and had written what we've written, we'd be a lot better known."

Hahn, who wrote for the New Yorker magazine for an astounding 68 years, died in February 1997 at age 92. She left a rich literary legacy that includes 52 books and hundreds of articles, short stories, and poems. In the course of her lifetime, she was many things: a mining geologist, a horseback trail guide, a greeting card writer, a receptionist, a medical aide worker, a reporter, and a teacher, to name just a few of her many occupations.

Hahn lived with African pygmies. She was the concubine of a Chinese poet. She and a girlfriend disguisged themselves as men when they drove solo across the U.S. in 1924, before it was safe--or prudent--for any young woman to do so. Hahn had an affair with, and a child by, the married head of British intelligence in Hong Kong just prior to the 1941 Japanese attack on that British colony. She was an opium addict. She once tried to kill herself. She smoked cigars, enjoyed strong drink, and she knew everyone who was anyone in the glittery New York literary world during the period 1940-1990. Emily Hahn fervently believed a woman could do anything a man could do. And she did it long before the word "feminism" was even coined. Emily Hahn led an amazing, uninhibited, and totally fascinating life. In this, the first biography of Emily Hahn, Canadian journalist Ken Cuthbertson explores the life, loves, and adventures of the woman known to her friends simply as "Mickey." In the words of an Entertainment Weekly reviewer (June 19, 1998), this is "a rip-roaring bio with surprise turns."

What a demand Emily Hahn had for authentic experiences and stimulating people! Her parents must have had sleepless nights wondering how their daughteer could survive her current situation and what she would what do or say next. Thanks to author Ken Cuthbertson, who tempted me away from hiking in New Mexico to hang around the hotel finishing his book. He was able to describe a person with whom I would love to have dinner and hate to work. Now I'm ready to read anything he writes: John Gunther's biography, grocery lists, whatever.

Ah, Emily! It is perhaps appropriate that Emily Hahn was friends with Chinese writer and Kuomintang spy Lin Yutang, who despite his dubious politics was a fantastic philosopher and writer. Among his best known works was "The Art of Living," and Emily Hahn could serve as the poster girl for the Western version of his ideals.

Her mythology is well known, although not as well as it deserves to be: she elbowed her way into a male-only university department, lived alone in New York, and drove cross-country with a girlfriend in a time when such things Just Weren't Done. Once she'd exhausted the adventurous possibilities of North America, she struck out for Africa and then China.

She was a bohemian in Shanghai, and her flat enjoyed visits from even a grubby, earnest young Mao Zedong and the ever-dapper Zhou Enlai. Unlike other China Hands, though, Hahn mainly shied from revolutionary company in favor of the decidedly bourgeois literati, led by handsome dandy poet Shao Xunmei. (Read "Shanghai Modern" for more on him.) Hahn became Shao's lover and later concubine, and together they launched the literary magazine Tianxia, "Under Heaven". Emily was also a fixture in the expatriate scene, writing for the New Yorker and known for showing up at Victor Sassoon's lavish parties with a pet baboon in tow, clad in diapers after a few unfortunate mishaps.

She moved with the war to Chongqing, and from there to Hong Kong, where she began an indiscret affair and had an illegitimate child with the head of British Secret Services. She sat out the Japanese occupation, returned to the States after the war ended, and then moved with her lover to England.

Emily Hahn was more a writer and professional character than a journalist. Her best works are autobiographical, and when she ventured into research the result was painfully propagandistic puff pieces.

But that is the problem with this biography: Emily Hahn's life had already been documented with both care and color in her own writings, so Cuthbertson's account mostly rehashes Emily's own words in more prosaic terms. The main advantage is to find out the historical characters behind the fictional names, and to have a clearer chronology than Hahn's writing provides.

The thing is, Emily Hahn didn't lead that interesting or colorful or significant a life, not compared to the many other young Americans lured to the East at the same time. Rather, she was so talented at describing people, places, events with a sharply bemused eye for the ironic idiosyncracy. That is what makes her intriguing.

[Hahn's] fiction, travel,history, and other writings are not much read these days, alas. Mr. Cuthbertson suggests this may be partly due to refusing to be pigeon-holed. Perhaps [this] book will prompt a new generation of readers to give her a try. Either way, her life is still fun to read about."

--From On Books by Colin Walters, Washington Times, May 31, 1998, p. B-6

While I don't necessarily agree that Emily Hahn has been forgotten (see, for instance, Prisoners in Paradise: American Women in the Wartime South Pacific) I do believe that a biography about her helps us to understand the complexities of women's lives in the 20th century. Ken Cuthbertson has done a competent job of outlining Hahn's life and his prose is just about as lively as her adventures. However, I think his historical analysis is weak, especially in the matter of feminism, which was so controversial during Hahn's lifetime. Putting her life in sharper perspective with the historical times would have made this a fuller biography. But for people who don't really care about that, they will certainly enjoy the retelling of Hahn's fast-paced life and may even be motivated to dig up some of Hahn's own books.

Considering that Emily Hahn wrote 52 books and countless articles and short stories--her career at the New Yorker alone spanned 68 years--and generated plenty of controversy both in her personal life as well as her writing, it's amazing that few people have heard of this unique woman. She was born in 1905, when women's place was in the home, so she found plenty of ways to shock people. In fact, she enjoyed doing it. Hahn took words like "no," "can't," and "shouldn't" as a personal challenge to prove that she could and she would. Without a doubt, Hahn was a remarkable woman who was clearly ahead of her time. Cuthbertson's well-done autobiography of this exotic one-time Shanghai resident allows us to enjoy a wild romp through Hahn's life story.

Even during girlhood, Hahn showed that a propensity to break rules and to write would shape her future. She majored in engineering, despite the unpopularity it caused her. After graduation, Hahn refused to marry. She had too many other things she wanted to do, and she freely admitted that she hated housework. After a stint as an engineer, Hahn worked as a waitress and then a tour guide in Santa Fe for a few years. In 1928, her parents bribed her to come back north and try again by offering to pay her way through graduate school. So, Hahn attended graduate school at Columbia University. While in New York, a friend asked her to cover a journalism assignment for him. Her career as a writer was launched.

Always living on the edge, Emily's next project was a satirical "how to" handbook on the art of seduction--certainly a subject nice young ladies should know nothing about! Hahn then moved in with a male friend, Davey Loth, and bought a Capuchin monkey. She loved to amuse herself by watching people's reactions as she went around the city with "Punk" proudly perched on her shoulder.

Despite seeming to be on the road to success, Hahn succumbed to the family propensity for depression and attempted suicide in 1929. That, however, was probably also on the list of requirements for an artistic temperament. To recover, Hahn decided to move to London with her former male roommate, Loth. Though she loved spending time in the British Museum reading room helping Loth with research for a book he was writing, she readily became bored with London and decided to visit her old friend Patrick Putnam, who was a Harvard-trained anthropologist now working in the Belgian Congo. Of course a young lady traveling alone to Africa raised many eyebrows, as did her shipboard drinking contests with Corsican soldiers. Once she arrived in Africa, the journey she endured to Patrick's village would have daunted even the heartiest male travelers.

Emily remained in the Belgian Congo for nearly two years, learning Swahili and paying for her living expenses by working as a nursing assistant at the hospital in Patrick's village. Naturally, her African experiences led to a book, which she called Congo Solo: Misadventures Two Degrees North.

After returning to London, Emily began an affair with the already-married Edwin Mayer --a founder of MGM Studios. When that relationship ended, she decided to put the past behind her by going abroad again. This time, she decided to try Shanghai, which was "the place to be" in the 1930s. Jobs were plentiful, and many foreigners were able to live a lifestyle they could only dream of back home. Shanghai was also China's cultural and intellectual center, which suited Hahn, as she became part one of the socially hip. One of the highlights of this period was the time she posed nude for Sir Victor Sassoon. Before the local gossips had finished wagging about this event, Hahn stunned everyone by beginning a relationship with a man who was not only married but Chinese. Interracial relationships were highly taboo, but Hahn felt drawn Sinmay Zau not only because he was forbidden, but because he was a poet, an intellectual, and a publisher. Unfortunately, he was also an opium addict, who initiated Emily's battle with the drug. Smoking opium, however, fit her concept of herself as an artist. She thought the drug was exotic, daring, and romantic.

Despite her opium addiction, her busy social life, and her scandalous affair, Hahn managed to remain highly productive during these years. She wrote for local English language publications and The New Yorker, she taught, and she worked on her next book, Affair. One of the more interesting series of articles she created during this period concerned a Chinese gentleman called Pan Heh-ven, who was based on Zau. Through Zau, Hahn gained an intimate view of Shanghainese life that few other outsiders could observe, or would dare to participate in.

Hahn enjoyed her notoriety, but to ensure that the gossips had enough material, she adopted Mr. Mills, a pet gibbon she often took around with her. The naughty Mr. Mills was not very popular with Hahn's neighbors, but she enjoyed the boost it gave her colorful persona.

In the fall of 1937, the Japanese took over Shanghai, threatening to put an end to Hahn's exotic escapades. She had just begun to write a book on the infamous Soong sisters, which became her most recognized work. She was excited about the project as it would be a reason to kick her opium habit and to break off her relationship with Zau. Because of the political situation, however, Hahn decided to actually marry Zau. Since he already had a wife, she would become a concubine. This move actually turned out to be less insane than it appeared to outsiders. Among several reasons, this strange union turned beneficial for her later, as being married to a Chinese allowed her to avoid being interned during the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong.

Following her "marriage" to Zau, Hahn went to Hong Kong to work on the Soong book, where she met 36-year-old British army intelligence officer Charles Boxer. Boxer was unhappily married to a wife who had been evacuated to Australia when he began an affair with Hahn. This was disgraceful enough behavior for an officer, but it became scandalous when he wanted to have a child with Emily. At age 35, Hahn assumed she might never get another chance, and she had been told by a Shanghai doctor that probably could not conceive. Since she had been told "no,"... well, by 1941 she was pregnant.

Just imagine the rumor mill: a former opium addict, a Chinaman's concubine, who goes around with a gibbon on her shoulder and smoking cigars, refuses to leave Japanese occupied Hong Kong, and who was now pregnant by a married British officer! Inarguably, Hahn was living life fully and on her own terms.

Hahn was teaching and writing in Hong Kong when baby Carola was born in October 1941. When the Japan attacked in December, it was too late to evacuate. After all the deprivations of war, Hahn returned to the States to discover that her bank account was flush with the royalties from The Soong Sisters and Mr. Pan. She was full of creative energy after her experiences. One of the first projects she completed was penning China to Me. Not everyone appreciated her honesty about her experiences or her views on China's political situation, but again she received mountains of publicity and provided ample fodder for drawing room gossips. She also became a regular contributor at The New Yorker. During this prolific outpouring, she was spinning out articles on a variety of subjects, earning $2,000 per article at a time when the average factory worker earned $1,700 per year. Not bad for a single mother who was only recently a half-starved, penniless refugee!

After the Japanese surrender in 1945, Boxer made his way to New York and married Hahn, but naturally their marriage was anything but ordinary. After the wedding, the family of three made their home at Boxer's family estate in England. While Boxer felt at home as a "country gentleman," burying himself in his research and working at his dream job as a Professor of Portuguese History and Literature at King's College at U of London, Hahn rapidly grew bored. After giving birth to baby Amanda in October 1948, she accepted her dream job on the staff of The New Yorker. She seems to have invented the "commuter marriage" as she divided her time between the two continents for the rest of her life.

For the next 40 years, Hahn indulged her natural curiosity by writing about everything, and she thrived on the stimulation of being a writer in New York City. In her work, as in her personal life, she sought to be unpredictable. In some ways her career was harmed because she moved so effortlessly, and frequently, among genres. As a result, editors did not know how to market her work and publishers seemed at a loss as to how to promote an Emily Hahn book, as her work could not be categorized. Readers, however, liked her eye for intriguing detail and her casual perspective on life in a convention-bound era. When she died in 1997, Hahn was 92 years old, still busily tapping out articles on her trusty typewriter.

Cuthbertson has done a fine job researching Hahn's life and making her story come to life in the pages of "Nobody Said Not to Go." The book is easy to read and inspires readers to explore Hahn's work. Was she simply born to be outrageous? Did declaring herself an "artistic personality" give her a license to do as she pleased? Does she deserve to rank among the best writers of her generation? As Hahn's work has been largely forgotten, the tantalizing answers are happily left for us to discover.

This is a very interesting, well written biography of a very very interesting woman. I first encountered Emily Hahn as a source for the new novel, The Piano Teacher. China to Me, written by Hahn in 1944 was a source for Janice Lee, writer of The Piano Teacher. I checked that book out of the library and was enthralled with the experiences of Hahn. That led me to this biography. Truly a person of history that should not be forgotten.

I loved this book when I first bought it a few years ago and wanted to buy a copy for a friend who has lived a similarly exciting, untraditional, international life. I am not willing to give up mine. I saw that it is out of print so I paid the price to buy one from one of the non-Amazon sellers here.

There are other books about Emily Hahn's life, apparently including her own version as culled from her columns for the New Yorker. The reviews on that book aren't very good, but in this book Ken Cuthbertson did a fabulous job of capturing the excitement of her outrageus life and the sassiness of her personality as well as the amazingness (not a word but you get the idea) of her accomplishments as a woman living where and how she did many decades ahead of her time.

I mostly read murder mysteries and thrillers and it takes a lot for a biography to keep me reading until the end. This one did. Plus, how many books do we mow through and six months later not remember the whos or whys or wheres, whereas this one has stayed with me for several years. I wished I could have met Emily Hahn after reading this book.