Clancy Sigal (September 6, 1926 – July 16, 2017) was an American writer, and the author of dozens of essays and seven books, the best-known of which is the

autobiographical novel An autobiographical novel is a form of novel using autofiction techniques, or the merging of autobiographical and fictive elements. The literary technique is distinguished from an autobiography or memoir by the stipulation of being fiction. ...

''Going Away'' (1961).

Early life and education

Sigal was born in

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = List of sovereign states, Count ...

Illinois Illinois ( ) is a state in the Midwestern United States. Its largest metropolitan areas include the Chicago metropolitan area, and the Metro East section, of Greater St. Louis. Other smaller metropolitan areas include, Peoria and Roc ...

, to a poor family. His father, Leo Sigal, and mother, Jennie Persily, were both labor organizers; He "acquired his chutzpah and resilience in 30s Chicago," Kim Howells wrote in ''The Guardian,'' "raised by his tough Jewish mother in a neighborhood blighted by gangsters, poverty and violence."Kim Howells, "Clancy Sigal Obituary," ''The Guardian,'' July 25, 2017
/ref> He later wrote a book about his mother, ''A Woman of Uncertain Character'' (2007). There he describes joining the Communist Party at 15. Marc Cooper, reviewing the book for the ''Los Angeles Times,'' explained that "Nothing, he figured, could be a greater affront to Jennie, who was an ardent socialist but an even more ardent anti-Communist." During World War II, "The army saved my life," he later wrote. The high point of his time as a soldier in Occupied Germany, he later said, came when "I went AWOL to the Nuremberg War Crimes trial bent on shooting Hermann Goering." After the war he worked as an organizer in Detroit for the auto workers' union, but was expelled in a purge of communists and fellow travelers. He then moved to Los Angeles and enrolled at the

University of California, Los Angeles The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a Normal school, teachers colle ...

(UCLA) under the

G.I. Bill The Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, commonly known as the G.I. Bill, was a law that provided a range of benefits for some of the returning World War II veterans (commonly referred to as G.I.s). The original G.I. Bill expired in 1956, bu ...

; he was managing editor of the student newspaper, the ''Daily Bruin''. His "drinking buddies," he later wrote, "included the later Watergate conspirators, Bob Haldeman and John Ehrlichman, the latter of whom reported me regularly to the FBI."

Career

After graduating from UCLA in 1950, he got a job at Columbia Pictures, but was fired by Columbia boss Harry Cohn for making copies of radical leaflets on studio equipment (he dropped the leaflets over Los Angeles from an airplane). He then went to work as a Hollywood agent, during the blacklist years of the 1950s—the basis of his memoir ''Black Sunset.'' He was subpoenaed by the

House Committee on Un-American Activities The House Committee on Un-American Activities (HCUA), popularly dubbed the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), was an investigative committee of the United States House of Representatives, created in 1938 to investigate alleged disloy ...

, he wrote in that book, but his hearing was abruptly cancelled. Soon after, in 1957, he left Los Angeles and the U.S.—the story he told in ''Going Away''—and settled in

Great Britain Great Britain is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean off the northwest coast of continental Europe. With an area of , it is the largest of the British Isles, the largest European island and the ninth-largest island in the world. It is ...

. In 1961 he published ''Going Away.'' The book is set in 1956 and tells the story of the author's drive from Los Angeles to New York "to look at America and figure out why it isn't my country any longer." It won a National Book Award nomination. John Leonard later wrote in the New York ''Times'': "Better than any other document I know, ''Going Away'' identified, embodied and re‐created the postwar American radical experience. It was as if ''On the Road'' had been written by somebody with brains.... (Sigal's) intelligence is always ticking. His ear is superb. His sympathies are promiscuous. His sin is enthusiasm." In London he lived with Doris Lessing, with whom he had a four-year affair. She portrayed him as "Saul Green" in ''The Golden Notebook.'' He later wrote about those years in ''The Secret Defector.'' The ''New York Times Book Review'' declared about that book, "Lenin and Stalin may have fallen, but Mr. Sigal still stands, dispensing his memories of the left with wit, irony and sheer pratfall comedy." In London he ran an underground operation for U.S. Army deserters, which he later wrote about for the ''

London Review of Books The ''London Review of Books'' (''LRB'') is a British literary magazine published twice monthly that features articles and essays on fiction and non-fiction subjects, which are usually structured as book reviews. History The ''London Review ...

''. He was also part of the

Philadelphia Association The Philadelphia Association is a UK charity concerned with the understanding and relief of mental suffering. It was founded in 1965 by the radical psychiatrist and psychoanalyst R. D. Laing along with fellow psychiatrists David Cooper, Joseph ...

experiment with

R. D. Laing Ronald David Laing (7 October 1927 – 23 August 1989), usually cited as R. D. Laing, was a Scottish psychiatrist who wrote extensively on mental illnessin particular, the experience of psychosis. Laing's views on the causes and treatment of ...

Kingsley Hall Kingsley Hall is a community centre, in Powis Road, Bromley-by-Bow in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, East End of London. It dates back to the work of Doris and Muriel Lester, who had a nursery school in nearby Bruce Road. Their brother, ...

, drawing on his experiences there for his satirical novel ''Zone of the Interior''. The novel could not find a British publisher in the 1970s willing to risk the libel laws. Sigal was ''

The Observer ''The Observer'' is a British newspaper Sunday editions, published on Sundays. It is a sister paper to ''The Guardian'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', whose parent company Guardian Media Group, Guardian Media Group Limited acquired it in 1993. ...

'' correspondent for the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games, and after 30 years in England decided to return to

Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the wor ...

after falling in love there with writer Janice Tidwell. They soon married, and became a screenwriting team. Together they wrote the screenplay for the Oscar-winning 2002

Salma Hayek Salma Hayek Pinault ( , ; born Salma Valgarma Hayek Jiménez; September 2, 1966) is a Mexican and American actress and film producer. She began her career in Mexico with starring roles in the telenovela ''Teresa'' (1989–1991) as well as th ...

film ''

Frida ''Frida'' is a 2002 American biographical drama film directed by Julie Taymor which depicts the professional and private life of the surrealist Mexican artist Frida Kahlo. Starring Salma Hayek in an Academy Award–nominated portrayal as Kahl ...

''. In 2016 he published his Hollywood memoir, ''Black Sunset: Hollywood Sex, Lies, Glamour, Betrayal and Raging Egos.'' "The beauty of ''Black Sunset''," Paul Buhle wrote in the

Los Angeles Review of Books The ''Los Angeles Review of Books'' (''LARB'' is a literary review magazine covering the national and international book scenes. A preview version launched on Tumblr in April 2011, and the official website followed one year later in April 2012 ...

, "will be found in the details, lovingly or painfully described, page after page . . . Clancy Sigal brings the innocent and guilty back, once more, at close range, and proves himself the liveliest of literary nonagenarians in the process." His final book, ''The London Lover: My Weekend that Lasted Thirty Years'', a memoir of his London years, was published in 2018.

Awards

National Book Award The National Book Awards are a set of annual U.S. literary awards. At the final National Book Awards Ceremony every November, the National Book Foundation presents the National Book Awards and two lifetime achievement awards to authors. The N ...

, runner up for ''Going Away'' * 2007:

PEN Center USA PEN Center USA was a branch of PEN, an international literary and human rights organization. It was one of two PEN International Centers in the United States, the other being the PEN America in New York City. On March 1, 2018, PEN Center USA unifi ...

, Lifetime Achievement Award presented by

Gore Vidal Eugene Luther Gore Vidal (; born Eugene Louis Vidal, October 3, 1925 – July 31, 2012) was an American writer and public intellectual known for his epigrammatic wit, erudition, and patrician manner. Vidal was bisexual, and in his novels and e ...

Bridget Kinsella, "PEN USA Honors the First Amendment." ''Publishers Weekly,'' Nov 9, 2007

/ref>

Personal life

Sigal's first marriage, to Margaret Walters in 1980, ended in divorce in 1989. In 1995, Sigal had a son, Joseph, with his second wife, Janice Tidwell. Sigal died July 16, 2017, in Los Angeles, California, of congestive heart failure.

Work and publications

Books

* ''Weekend in Dinlock'', Houghton Mifflin, 1960. * ''Going Away: A Report, A Memoir.'' Houghton Mifflin, 1961. National Book Award nominee. * ''Zone of the Interior'', New York: Thomas W. Crowell, 1976. Published in the UK by Pomona Press, 2005. * ''The Secret Defector'', New York: Harper Collins, 1992 * ''A Woman of Uncertain Character: The amorous and radical adventures of my mother Jennie (who always wanted to be a respectable Jewish mom) by her bastard son'' (2006) New York: Carroll & Graf. * ''Hemingway Lives! Why Reading Ernest Hemingway Matters Today'', OR Books, 2013 * ''Black Sunset: Hollywood Sex, Lies, Glamour, Betrayal and Raging Egos'' Soft Skull Press, 2016 * '' The London Lover: My Weekend that Lasted Thirty Years '' Bloomsbury, 2018. ()

Journalism, Essays, Stories, Reviews

Essays and articles
for

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper A newspaper is a periodical publication containing written information about current events and is often typed in black ink with a white or gray background. Newspapers can cover a wide ...

(64 items)
Reviews
for

The New York Review of Books ''The New York Review of Books'' (or ''NYREV'' or ''NYRB'') is a semi-monthly magazine with articles on literature, culture, economics, science and current affairs. Published in New York City, it is inspired by the idea that the discussion of i ...

Writings
for the

Paris Review ''The Paris Review'' is a quarterly English-language literary magazine established in Paris in 1953 by Harold L. Humes, Peter Matthiessen, and George Plimpton. In its first five years, ''The Paris Review'' published works by Jack Kerouac, Ph ...

Writings
for the Huffington Post

Films

* ''Frida'' (2002) screenwriting credi

* ''In Love and War'' (1996) screenwriting credi

* ''The Trap: What Happened to Our Dream of Freedom?'' (2007) BBC Documentary. acting credit: "as himself.

* ''Nelson Algren: The End is Nothing, the Road is All.'' (2015) Documentary. acting credit: "as himself.

References

External links

*
Clancy Sigal
at

USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism The USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism comprises a School of Communication and a School of Journalism at the University of Southern California (USC). Starting July 2017, the school’s Dean is Willow Bay, succeeding Ernest J. ...

Clancy Sigal Papers, 1956-2007
at the

Harry Ransom Center The Harry Ransom Center (until 1983 the Humanities Research Center) is an archive, library and museum at the University of Texas at Austin, specializing in the collection of literary and cultural artifacts from the Americas and Europe for the pu ...

University of Texas at Austin The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas. It was founded in 1883 and is the oldest institution in the University of Texas System. With 40,916 undergraduate students, 11,075 ...

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Sigal, Clancy 1926 births 2017 deaths 20th-century American novelists American male novelists American male screenwriters Jewish American novelists Writers from Chicago 20th-century American male writers Novelists from Illinois Screenwriters from Illinois United States Army personnel of World War II 21st-century American Jews