Clancy Sigal

Clancy Sigal (born 1926) is an American writer, the author of an autobiographical novel Going Away (1961).

Life

Clancy Sigal was born in Chicago, Illinois, where his father was a labor organizer.^[1]

Sigal arrived as an immigrant in Great Britain and lived with Doris Lessing, with whom he had a four-year affair.^[2] He was a part of the Philadelphia Association experiment with R. D. Laing at Kingsley Hall, 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.^[3]

Sigal was The Observer correspondent for the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games, and decided to settle in Los Angeles after falling in love there.^[4] His wife, Janice Tidwell Sigal, is featured in the recent BBC TV series The Trap. He was one of several co-writers of the screenplay for the 2002 Salma Hayek film Frida, based on the book Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo by Hayden Herrera. In 2013 he published Hemingway Lives! Why Reading Ernest Hemingway Matters Today. (OR Books)

Works

Books

• Weekend in Dinlock, Houghton Mifflin, 1960.
• Going Away, 1961
• Zone of the Interior, New York: Thomas W. Crowell, 1976. Published in the UK by Pomona Press, 2005. ISBN 1-904590-10-1
• 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. ISBN 0-7867-1748-3
• Hemingway Lives! Why Reading Ernest Hemingway Matters Today, OR Books, 2013

Other

• "Harry Bridges" The New York Times, January 7, 1973, p. 388
• Reviews for The New York Review of Books
• On the run again
• On the run again version at the Guardian
• Letter to the Editor, The Observer
• From Sophie Scholl to Paul Robeson: Contemptible Heroes (February 2015)

References

1. http://www.clancysigal.com/bio.html
2. Roberta Rubenstein, Literary Half-Lives: Doris Lessing, Clancy Sigal, and roman à clef, Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. ISBN 978-1-1374-1365-9
3. Elaine Showalter, The Female Malady: Women, Madness and English Culture, 1830-1980, Virago, 1985, p.244
4. Hollywood blacklist paranoia, interview with Philip Adams on Late Night Live

External links

• Website
• Clancy Sigal at the Internet Movie Database
• A trip to the far side of madness
• "Remembering Mom, the Labor Organizer", Morning Edition, National Public Radio, September 4, 2006.
• Clancy Sigal's personal story, "Married to the Cause" on how me met his wife through the early women's movement in the United Kingdom, circa 1970.
• "Liberal Fatalism Lit the Fire," Los Angeles Times, Jun 10, 1992, page 7 Sigal on the first Rodney King verdict. Library card required
• 2014 interview withPhillip Adams regarding Sigal's life, including the Hollywood blacklist, Lauren Bacall, Doris Lessing, R.D. Laing, Australian cinema, etc. (audio)