The Last Closet: The Dark Side of Avalon
by Moira Greyland
Castalia House, 2018
The Last Closet: The Dark Side of Avalon is the book that grew out of the 2014 revelation that fantasy and science fiction and fantasy author Marion Zimmer Bradley abused her own children and knowingly protected and facilitated her husband Walter Breen’s pedophiliac activities. If you were reading SFF in the 1970s and 1980s it was a helluva blow. (Bradley, in case you don’t know, was also the author of the best-selling book The Mists of Avalon, a popular retelling of Arthurian myth from the viewpoint of its female characters, who were pagans as opposed to Arthur’s Christianity. In this post, I’ll call her MZB as she has been called in the SFF field.)
The book is an account from MZB’s daughter Moira Greyland of how she overcame her parents’ crimes and abuse; it also functions, in a rough way, as a biography of MZB, of whom no other published bios have been written. It’s also an indictment of the hippy-dippy atmosphere of Berkeley, California, where MZB came to eventually live and prosper. It also serves also as a larger indictment of SFF and Ren Fair culture and a much larger one of Baby Boomer sexual attitudes in general, though I think the last was unintended.
Greyland’s account is casually told and probably could have benefitted from more discipline and structure, though that was likely beyond her or her editor. It reads like an adapted set of transcriptions between Greyland and her therapist. This doesn’t mean that it isn’t readable, but it does lead to the question of Is this really true? from its readers, especially if they were fans during the decades in question. Greyland anticipates this with a set of transcripts from a civil lawsuit of MZB included at the end of the book – a lawsuit from the mother of one of the boys Walter Breen molested — and it’s chilling in how it illustrates MZB’s unconcern about her then-husband’s activities. Personally, I feel that all the evidence is pretty damning.
It’s also damning that Greyland’s older brother struggled as well with the abuse and committed suicide in 2019.
The extended family continues to struggle with its legacy, evidenced by this news story of how Greyland’s aunt Diana Paxson and her son Ian were attacked by Byron DeCles, a 21-year-old relative of Greyland’s uncle Jon DeCles. MZB’s extended family, their places of residence, and sexual and professional ties are convoluted, but by the name it’s likely that Byron DeCles is a grandson of Jon DeCles, an adopted brother of MZB’s. It was hinted by Greyland in her book that the adoption took place because her uncle Paul and DeCles had had a youthful sexual relationship; both followed MZB out to California in the 1960s to enter in her lifestyle. Either one may have been the unnamed older sexual predator Greyland’s given hints about in subsequent news stories. If so, the family trauma spans generations.
As for the kookiness, some of it’s now mundane, some still shocking. For example, a group marriage took place between Paxson, Paul Zimmer, and another couple; only Paxson and Zimmer were legally married. Drugs abounded in both the Paxson household of Greyhaven and the MZB one of Greenwalls, as well as teenage runaways and Berkeley street kids, some of whom were molested. Nudity was common. Swordplay, folk singing, and historical costuming were the hobbies of choice. In the 1960s and 70s such things stayed in California and out of the larger culture. In my family, we were all shocked when my aunt, my mother’s youngest sister who lived near LA, sent us photos then of her and husband relaxing naked in a hot tub, with the naughty parts under water scribbled out with a magic marker.
A word about Diana Paxson here. She was a co-founder of the Society for Creative Anachronism along with MZB and rose on her coattails, so to speak, publishing the Westria series of fantasy books and later co-authoring the some Mists of Avalon books as well. She is the owner of the Greyhaven house referred to in the news stories, for decades a magnet and hub of the Berkeley SFF community. I read some of Paxson’s Westria books when they came out, which impressed me as SCA role-playing in a post-apocalyptic Bay area, with a twist in that magic and paganism has made a resurgence. It is of note that sexual squick was all over it in that the main villain of the books, Caolon, is a lover of one of the heroes, and that another young hero, Julian, has sex with his cousin Robert after a too-intense wrestling match. It raised my eyebrows then, and does so now, with fuller knowledge of the author and her world. I can see how the books’ content both reflected and encouraged it.
I never read The Mists of Avalon; I just wasn’t interested. But I enjoyed some of MZB’s Darkover (her other main SF series) books and her Black Trillium ones. They were competently written, but I don’t feel a need to re-read them. After the scandal, many fans swore to never read MZB again and cleared their homes of her books. I am not one to be that extreme, but in hindsight, the books reflected the author. The aging, slightly mad Haramis of The Lady of the Trillium could be a stand-in for MZB, as she copes with a headstrong, ungrateful child she wants to be her heir, but fails to mold her because of her own ignorance and weakness. As a fantasy novel the subject matter was mighty odd, but in light of the MZB’s life, and Greyland’s book, it completely makes sense.
After all that’s said about the extended MZB clan – the abettors, the abusers, and often the mentors — Moira Greyland herself follows a path trodden by many of Generation X, that of recovering from their questionable child raising practices. I get the feeling the book would have found a better place in the 1990s in the wave of sexual abuse self-help books like the The Courage to Heal, which everyone of my generation was reading back then. But it came out too late to have the impact that it might have.
Plus, the publisher was Castalia House, owned by right-wing SF author Vox Day (the rabid, Rabid Puppy guy) and so carries a message in these divided times: Left wrong; Right, right. For example, the blurb on the back cover reads: “It is the true story of predatory adults exploiting the innocence of children without shame, guilt, or remorse. It is an eyewitness account of how high-minded utopian intellectuals, unchecked by law, tradition, or religion or morality, can create a literal Hell on Earth.” O-kay. Note also the cover design, with the red font that looks like smears of blood, and the sad teddy bear lying on the floor, who was not mentioned once in the book. Subtle and sophisticated it is not.
The author herself leans into right wing views at times, for which I don’t blame her. For example to her all homosexuality is synonymous with pederasty, which is simply not true. But in the end I don’t think it’s useful, or moral, to pile on her for that. It is, however, uncomfortable for me to see how her story has been co-opted and exploited by others who have their agendas to push, which can be seen as another layer of abuse.
The overall impression I get is that there’s a much greater story here to be told of the people, time, and era and that book will be verrry thick.
