Marina Meets Lee
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4905-07 Magazine Street, New Orleans. If we understand what happened while Lee and Marina lived here from end of April to end of September 1963 we will understand the assassination.
Photograph ©️Robert Manz
I have been writing in earnest recently. My ability to put this whole story into the meta context of the crumbling of liberal democracy in my lifetime has helped a lot. For my purposes anyway, I know where the pieces go.
I know what I’m saying to my boomer audience . “We blew it.” And I know what my main theme is, it is the multiple degrees of complicity.
More of all that later. One of the pieces I have been working on is how Marina met Lee. I have dared to tell this from Marina’s perspective, drawing on Mailer and Titovets. An awful lot of Priscilla Johnson McMillan’s account is in Mailer (Oswald’s Tale) so her perspective is coming through.
I have talked to Ruth Paine in the past but at the time did not know enough to ask her about her relationship with Marina; I have read Ruth’s letters to Marina, or at least her transcripts of her letters to Marina - why do I think all that has been massaged??
I mention Ruth because she passed recently, August 31 per accounts. RIP. (See link below)
I have taken one major liberty with the story and have set it not at a culture dance, but at an opera, a performance of Lee’s favorite The Queen of Spades.
To summarize briefly Marina goes to the opera. It is clear that her secret police uncle, Ilya Prusakova, has had some hand in setting this up. It is also clear that Marina is bored to tears in Minsk and will jump at any chance to get out of Minsk and out of the Soviet Union. Lee is unclear whether he is more interested in the music or the girl. Commander Bash is happy.
Here it is below. I like it very much. I hope you will. Please subscribe to read.
About Ruth Paine:
https://www.google.com/gasearch?q=ruth%20hyde%20paine&source=sh/x/gs/m2/5
And, if you would like to know more about the opera, Queen of Spades, here is some background.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Queen_of_Spades_(opera)
Here, for paid subscribers is my account of Marina meets Lee.
