Customer Reviews

Swans and Pistols: Modeling, Motherhood, and Making It in the Me Generation

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"May you live many lives" is often considered a blessing. But it may also be a curse. You can decide for yourself by reading this memoir which covers fashion, art, movies, theater, drugs, gangsters and, oddly linking them all, being and having an extremely original mother. A definite blessing is that Leon Bing is a damn good writer. I felt present at the events of her life, some of which I was glad happened to her and not me.

Memoirs usually have a 'hook,' like celebrity, an alternative lifestyle, or a tragic event. Leon Bing has two: having been a model and befriending gang members, but much more attention is paid to the former. Additionally, the first third of the book is spent describing her childhood, which has nothing to do with either modeling or gangs, but I suppose is necessary exposition.
Leon has spent time with a lot of famous people, but instead of being gossipy (and only occasionally coming off as a name dropper), she relates anecdotes of celebrities with the same warmth and love as she does stories about her own family members. Conversely, I had to look up a few names, because the way she wrote about some people, I thought they were famous.
The book is organized chronologically and mostly consists of loosely related vignettes and anecdotes. For the most part, they are compelling and entertaining to read. Leon herself is likable, if a little ditzy, but a decent writer. I wouldn't go out of my way to read this book, but I enjoyed reading it.

The Virgin Knows: an art theft thrillerI couldn't quite get a grip on the author's character and personality or understand why she wrote the book. Topics that might have enriched the story in ways that profoundly connect writers to readers, that illuminated the human condition, casually slid across the page and then disappeared. For instance, in her autobiography, Leon Bing never tells us how not knowing who her father was impacted her emotional life and the choices she made about men. She doesn't speculate how her mother's parenting set the stage for the success and failure of her own mothering, or tell us much about how the two most important people in her life--her daughter and mother--related to each other. She doesn't talk about the emotional, intellectual or psychological snags of being an only child ( Her mother and daughter are also only children.) Every career move happens as if by magic and certainly without effort: Mary Leon simply goes out to dinner, meets celebrity and then the next thing you know she's a runway model or out on assignment for Harpers and Rolling Stone.

There were mixed messages. For one, she engaged in serial adultery, got very enthused about the creativity or wealth or sexiness of each lover, and at the same time espoused high standards about `the right way to live' and the need to have approval from both her mother and daughter for each new man. The approval amounted to their saying "oh he's nice, he'll take good care of you." One man was big time a coke dealer who she was attracted to because he reminded her of Tony Soprano. But, according to Bing, he was a good man because, being a kingpin, he didn't get his hands dirty: he sold drugs only to big-time distributors and to celebrities for whom he would cut special coke concoctions. Plus, he regularly peeled off thousands from his big wad of cash and told her "Go out and get yourself something nice."

Getting even with people who did her wrong in life**(See comment below) seemed to play a part of the autobiography, too. For instance: recalling the rape in NYC when she was looking for an apartment, naming the care giver who embezzled money from her invalid mother. Perhaps rationalizing her mother's sometimes bizarre behavior towards her was a necessary part of the intent of writing her book. Her mother wore Chanel suits, shipped her off to live with grandparents, and married and divorced five times without sneezing. When Mary Leon was a child having a tantrum, the mother poured a pitcher of cold water over her face, "Then, as if she were offering another helping of dessert to a dinner guest, she asked if I'd like some more." By book's end readers get a feeling that Bing's relationship with her daughter is on hold, and I wondered if the book was a public scolding of her daughter, or a plea for her to come back home.

The good parts? Swans and Pistols is an exciting whirlwind tour through the fashion, art and celebrity scene of the 60s,70s and 80s. Readers get a glimpse at L.A. lifestyles, at turbulent party creatures like Mama Cass and Judy Carne, at the intense Ed Rushca, and the endearing Rudi Gernreich. The `true love finale' is sweet, if a little over the top. Bing, who never reveals her birthdate or age, but who I guessed is between 55 and 60 when she concludes the book and falls in love with a 29 year old man who is the real thing, the love of her life, her soul mate.

I wish she would have gone in deeper. The book has all the fabric for a magnificent retelling of an important life and time. Bing writes well.

** From Author Bing about names in the book: Thanks for taking the time to read and then review my book, Swans and Pistols. No complaints, but I must make a single correction: some of the names I used (my mother's thieving caregiver, the dealer I lived with, the man who raped me when I first moved to New York) were changed to sound real but were, in fact, fake.

Leon Bing is a wonderful writer. And model beautiful, with good reason. She was a model in the Rudy Gernreich era. In her book "Swans and Pistols:Modeling, Motherhood, and Making it in the Me Generation", she tells her own story, of a childhood living with relatives, boarding school, modeling, Bloods and Crips, and all. She became a journalist, after her modeling career, after having heard for years that she should be a writer. She seems to have had a tough time dealing with the emotions surrounding her mother, as so many of us do, but shows grace and love when writing about her.

Whether writing about homeless teens, or gang members, she really connected with the folks she was writing about. She connects here as well.

She is unflinching when writing about living with a cocaine dealer, the shady characters, the stars, the fascinating people she has met over the years. I envy her, the friends she has, and I admire the choices she has made. Her much younger love, later in life, show how young at heart she is, and man, is she ever beautiful.

This is a no holds barred autobiography, that will hold your attention and pull you into a world few ever get to see.

I received this book from Library Thing for review.

From an over-protective childhood to the mean streets of South Central L.A., and with a heavy dose of East Coast/West Coast glamour and glitz in-between, Leon Bing takes us on her long and winding road. Bing's stories of family and fashion, men and the misbegotten, romance and reinvention, are remembered with humor, grit and razor-sharp clarity. It's a singular life, told rivetingly by a singular writer.

Bing's memoir is a true walk on the wild side, straight-shooting, compelling, and lyrical. First-rate writing and Dennis Hopper's photographs are knock-out!

Leon Bing is an astute observer and luscious writer who here turns her jeweler's loup on her own fascinating and contradictory life. Raised in a close-knit, multi-generational Jewish family, she was sent to convent schools. She never knew her father, but was in thrall to her glamorous mother, who married five times and threw men away like lipstick-stained kleenexes. A top model in the 1960s and 70s, Bing reinvented herself as a brilliant journalist, going where many male reporters feared to tread --straight into the heart of Los Angeles's ganglands. Along the way, she knew--in several senses of the word--everyone, from Dennis Hopper to Warren Beatty to artist Ed Ruscha. She relates her glittering adventures with a clear eye and a sharp tongue, painting an indelible portrait of Los Angeles and its denizens in one of the city's most compelling eras.

Highly recommended.

Bing has distinguished herself before with Do or Die, a book that one suspects will remain in print for a very long time. Her new memoir is equally compelling in different ways. What it provides is both a distillation of an era, of a distinctly american collective mind set, as well as a journey of the woman writing it. A woman both distinct and of this era. Its not at all the usual screech of the modern ego, but rather a haunting self examination and reflection on what our paths contain, and what they dont....as well as a shrewd side glancing look at US culture....strange as that may sound. Think joan didion crossed with dorothy parker by way of john fante and maybe the step child of pretty boy floyd.

Its also, i hasten to add, beautifully written.