Clifford Browder's Blog, page 20
September 23, 2018
374. The Brooklyn Book Festival
GOOD NEWS: I just signed a contract with Black Rose Writing for publication of another historical novel, The Eye That Never Sleeps. It's about the strangest friendship that ever was, between a dapper young bank robber and the hymn-singing private detective whom the banks have hired to apprehend him.
ALSO: Next week I'll present an interesting work of fiction not by me but someone else. It's very special.
THE BROOKLYN BOOK FESTIVAL
MY FORAY INTO THE DEPTHS OF BROOKLYN
A Manhattanite with little knowledge of Brooklyn and its festival, in 2017 I had gone into this alien territory as an attendee, and having walked all the aisles, concluded that the natives were friendly and that exhibiting there was worth a shot. So I planned carefully. My young friend Silas, himself a transplanted Manhattanite now residing happily in Brooklyn Heights, would take most of the books by taxi or Lyft to his apartment on the day before, Saturday, September 15. Then on the day of the festival, Sunday, September 16, he would haul them in a wheeled suitcase down Joralemon Street to Borough Hall and our booth, #137, at the northern end of the festival. I would then come by subway with other items in my shoulder bag on Sunday morning. On condition, of course, that weather permitted, since the festival is an outdoor event, and our booth would be sheltered only by a canopy, leaving it exposed to wind and rain. Haunted by the prospect of a soggy festival, we uttered a silent prayer that Hurricane Florence would linger in the Carolinas a day or two, so the festival would be untroubled by high winds and flooding. Such was our selfish concern, while hapless Southerners were being ravaged by the fiercest storm in decades.
Our prayers were heard. The weather remained overcast but dry, so Silas had no trouble picking up the books on Saturday and getting them to Brooklyn by means of the magic of Lyft. Yes, magic. His quick online query brought a Lyft driver within less than ten minutes to take him from my building in the West Village to distant Brooklyn Heights. And the cost, with a discount for taking another passenger en route, was a mere $8.00.
The weather favored us again on Sunday morning, when early morning fog gave way to a mild, sunny day – perfect for an outdoor festival. I would go in shorts. After breakfast I loaded up my shoulder bag with twine, scissors, and transparent tape (for mounting a big sign in front of our table), plus smaller signs and the hinged easels for mounting them on the table top, plus my lunch, my business cards, and their holder, plus four books (reduced from six). But when I loaded all this, the shoulder bag was grievously heavy. Everything in it was essential, so off I went at a less than joyous pace.
My plan was to get to the festival by 9 a.m., allowing a more-than-ample half hour to set up our booth before the opening at 10. I left at 8, hoping the arrive by 9 at the latest. I caught my A train promptly, planning to transfer at Fulton Street to a #4 or #5 train for a quick trip to Borough Hall. The transfer, so I recalled from the year before, would be a simple matter. But when I got off at Fulton, I found that the station was more than a station: it was a huge shopping mall with signs pointing this way and that for various subway lines, and steps that took you up and down and up and down again, before delivering this confused traveler to the platform for his trains, where he just missed a #4.
Borough Hall, Brooklyn.Sandro Mathys
It was just past 9 a.m. when I got off at Borough Hall, but that doesn’t mean I had reached my booth on time. First, I got off on the wrong side of Joralemon Street, with Borough Hall looming across the street, which disoriented me completely. Then, in the distance, I saw a vast assembly of white canopies, looking rather like a flock of sheep: the festival! So thither I walked. But even when I reached the flock, I was at the wrong end of the festival and had to trudge north through the 500s, and then the 400s and 300s and 200s, before reaching the 100s and, finally, booth #137. Also in shorts, Silas waved to me from a distance, gave me the good word that food stands and porto-potties were installed nearby, and helped me set up the booth. Two things I noticed at once: dead leaves underfoot, and two chairs so low that, when you sat in them, you felt removed from the table, and had to make a real effort to stand up. And behind us, just across a quiet lane known as Cadman Plaza East, loomed a courthouse. Clearly, this was not the Javits Center, where BookCon had been lavishly installed indoors in June.
At book fairs, as everywhere else in life, you gotta have a gimmick, so here were ours:
· A big green sign with bold black lettering, NEW YORK STORIES, hanging in front of our table, to catch the attendees’ eye and let them know what we had to offer.· A big book rack holding four copies of three books each, to catch the eye next.· In the center of the rack, the bright rainbow colors and bold black words NEW YORK on the cover of my New York stories, to hook the visitors’ eye. Hopefully, visitors would then glance at my novels Bill Hope and Dark Knowledge, which, being overstocked, I was eager to get rid of.· On the table, smaller signs upright on small hinged easels, bearing deliciously witty words:
YOU READ?ILOVE YOU
BOOKSARESEXY
NORMAL?NOT MEI’M A NEW YORKER
I had decided against the serious ones I used at BookCon in June, deeming these silly fun ones more appropriate for the Brooklyn fair.
Me, Silas, and the bookrack. I'm a bit tousled from a gentle breeze.Also on the table were other books, upright on easels or lying flat, plus my business cards in a holder, and postcards with the cover of my gay-themed novel The Pleasuring of Men, featuring a naked young male sure to entice both male and female visitors. All these gimmicks had been proven at BookCon in early June. So there the two of us were, ready for the onslaught of visitors at 10.
Here I am, with all our gimmicks. Silas thinks it a good photo, but as usual, I think I look like a scarecrow. Behind me looms the courthouse.
Not an onslaught, really, since we expected only a trickle, and not the storm wave of rushing attendees that marked the opening of BookCon in June. But since, unlike BookCon, the Brooklyn fair was free and open to all, anyone and everyone might turn up. And so they did. From 10 on, visitors started coming down our aisle, some of them there for books, and some of them casual strollers who had no expectation of a book fair on their walk. There were cyclists walking their bikes, parents with infants in their arms or a stroller, and people with dogs. One T-shirt proclaimed BOOK NERD, and several book bags said LOVE THY SHELF. As the trickle increased to a steady flow, we experienced the usual anxiety, wondering when, oh when, the first sale would occur. Finally, after an hour, it did: a woman who had stumbled on the fair, noticed our table, came to it, and bought.
In the course of the day, five kinds of attendees came to us:
· Lookers· B-backs· Chatterers· Friends· Buyers
Lookers. They came, they looked, they noticed our sign and the book rack, acknowledged a discreet greeting from us, and checked out the front cover and the back-cover blurb of the New York stories. They opened it, flipped through the pages, and checked out the blurb again. Then they looked at the other books and similarly checked them out, and just when our hopes were rising, they smiled, put the books down, and left. Nibbles, many nibbles, no bite. “These are all Cliff’s books,” Silas told the visitors who came to us. “Awesome!” said one woman, who smiled and promptly left.
My self-published bestseller. It upstages all the others.(For info on this and my other books, see
BROWDERBOOKS below.)
The most baffling looker was a man in his early forties who picked up the New York stories – always the first book to get attention – checked out the cover and the blurb, then looked through it with the most intense concentration. This went on for ten minutes without a word from him, as he went from cover to blurb to pages and back again, always with the most concentrated look. Surely he’s going to buy, I couldn’t help but think, but finally he put the book down and walked away. “He’s a bit off,” said Silas, and I realized Silas was right. Later we saw him passing again in our aisle, with the same intense look but no bag of books. I suspect that he had looked at dozens of them and never bought a one.
Chatterers. They came, they might or might not look at the books, then engaged us in conversation. The subjects varied from books and fairs and food to the state of the nation and the secret of well-being in life. They were friendly and open and charming, but most of them went on at length. Then, with the most cordial farewell, they left without buying a book. It was our policy to listen to anyone and be welcoming, but, having blocked other visitors’ view of our sign and book rack, they may well have cost us some sales. Finally I let Silas handle them, which he did very well, even going out into the aisle to say hello to their dogs. They were quite a varied bunch:
· A grieving older woman stricken by news that morning of someone close to her who had died. She went on and on. Silas thought her a little “off,” wasn’t sure if all she said was true.· Three charming young women from Finland who had internships with the UN. Silas told them of some of his favorite ethnic restaurants in neighborhoods throughout the city, scribbling the info on one of my business cards. He also mentioned two popular “speakeasy” bars, including one named Please Don’t Tell, to access which you have to go to a hot dog joint and sneak in through a phone booth with a secret back door. For all this insider info, they were immensely grateful.· A young man from India who wanted advice about finding a publisher for a manuscript written by his father.· A woman with whom Silas shared many reminiscences and impressions of France. Probably a foreigner, she had delicate, finely drawn features, didn’t look the least bit American. Silas told her his college major was French, and even I chimed in, mentioning my two years as a Fulbright scholar in France, one year in Besançon and one in Lyons. Also, my love of the stained glass windows of Chartres cathedral, and my pride in informing French people that the word for Besançon residents was “les Bisontins.”
There had been very few non-buying chatterers at BookCon, since attendees had to shell out hard cash to attend. But Brooklyn welcomed everyone, and among them were a horde of non-buying chatterers, several of whom proved to be our most interesting visitors of the day.
B-backs. I learned this term from an artist friend who exhibits outdoors at the Washington Square Art Show. “I’ll be back,” the visitor announces and disappears into the passing throng. Do they come back? Almost never. When one man asked if we were cash only, I assured him that Silas could handle credit card purchases, but he too proved a no-show.
Friends. Two friends, learning of my appearance at the fair, told me that they lived not far from Borough Hall and would certainly attend and look me up. Which they did. The first one, an attorney, had in her office a shelf of books written by her clients, including one by me – the New York stories, of course. She chatted amicably with the two of us and then bought Fascinating New Yorkers. The other, a Taiwanese-born businesswoman, turned up later with her American husband, a judge, and likewise bought that book. She already had a copy, but she wanted another to give to a friend. When she asked me, I of course signed it with mention of the place and date – a favor that buyers requested of me throughout the day.
My favorite review: "Unputdownable."Buyers. Yes, they came. Not people who knew me already, but book lovers and people who, out for a stroll, saw the sign and the book rack, looked, perused, and actually bought a book. As always, they tended to be older, though there were also exceptions: a young Asian woman who bought the New York stories, and another young Asian woman who took us up on our “Buy two, get one free” offer and took three books. Though I had hoped for a different outcome, the nonfiction sold best: as always, the New York stories, but also my latest work, Fascinating New Yorkers. Not anticipating many sales of my gay-themed book, I had brought only four copies of The Pleasuring of Men and didn’t display it in the big book rack, banishing it instead to the other end of the table.
See what I mean?But the postcards showing the sexy guy on the front cover were grabbed by both sexes, and the book itself got a lot of looks; of the four copies, I sold three. Two went to quiet older men who were probably gay, and the third to a woman who planned to give it to a male friend who, she told me, was sure to enjoy it. And the two overstocked novels? For the slave trade story, Dark Knowledge, lots of nibbles but only one sale; for the novel Bill Hope, whose street kid protagonist is, of all my characters, my favorite, none. So I’m still overstocked.
The story of a lovable scamp of a kidwhose fingers find their way into people's
pockets.
The festival ended as it had begun – not with a bang but a whimper. By 6 p.m., the closing time, Silas was winding down and I was quite worn out. There were few people now in the aisle, and our neighbors – the chatty ones in #138 and the aloof ones in #136 – were already packing up. So we packed up too, and having sold 14 books, it was far easier than packing up to come. Soon enough we were standing on a street corner nearby, with no other exhibitor in sight, waiting for another Lyft driver to pick us up. We chose the option of riding in a vehicle that might pick up another rider en route, which gave us a fare of $15 for the trip all the way from Borough Hall to my West Village address – even more of a bargain, since no other rider appeared. Joining scores of vehicles crowding onto the Brooklyn Bridge, we crossed over the East River and finally entered lower Manhattan, at which point I marveled at the clusters of towering high-rises and felt, once again, the epic excitement of New York. Soon, driving up the West Side highway, we turned off and arrived at my address. Once we got all the stuff up the four flights and dumped it in the living room, Silas and I parted ways: he, at 28, to a good meal and a bit of Sunday-night socializing, and me to a skimpy supper and collapse in my bed.
The next day, feeling played out even after a good night’s sleep, I unpacked my stuff and did inventory. We took 34 books, sold 14 (not 16, as we at first thought), and came back with 20. A total of 14 sales matched, but did not surpass, our previous one-day record of 14 at BookCon in June. I had hoped to outdo that record, but alas, we only matched it. Once again, even with a better mix of attendees, it was just a matter of who happened to come down our aisle. We got a steady flow of visitors, and the weather couldn’t have been better, but it’s obvious that this, give or take a book or two, is the best that we can hope to do at Brooklyn. Will I do it again in a year? Is it worth the trouble and expense, and the risk of bad weather, to go there and sell 14 books? Had I done only 9 or 10, I would say decidedly no. Had I done 20 or more, I would say emphatically yes. But 14 is in a gray zone, neither clearly positive or negative, so my choice can go either way. Suspense: stay tuned. And to sell my overstocked novels, I’ll have to hide the nonfiction, especially the New York stories, which upstage all the rest.
One final note: Preoccupied with the festival, for the first time in decades I failed to buy the Sunday New York Times.
Coming soon: Junk: An Executor's Nightmare.
BROWDERBOOKS
All books are available online as indicated, or from the author.
1. No Place for Normal: New York / Stories from the Most Exciting City in the World (Mill City Press, 2015). Winner of the Tenth Annual National Indie Excellence Award for Regional Non-Fiction; first place in the Travel category of the 2015-2016 Reader Views Literary Awards; and Honorable Mention in the Culture category of the Eric Hoffer Book Awards for 2016. All about anything and everything New York: alcoholics, abortionists, greenmarkets, Occupy Wall Street, the Gay Pride Parade, my mugging in Central Park, peyote visions, and an artist who made art of a blackened human toe.
If you love the city (or hate it), this may be the book for you. An award winner, it sold well at BookCon 2017 and 2018.
Reviews
"If you want wonderful inside tales about New York, this is the book for you. Cliff Browder has a way with his writing that makes the city I lived in for 40 plus years come alive in a new and delightful way. A refreshing view on NYC that will not disappoint." Five-star Amazon customer review by Bill L.
"To read No Place for Normal: New York is to enter into Cliff Browder’s rich and engaging sixty years of adult life in New York. Yes, he delves back before his time – from the city’s origins to the 19th Century that Ms. Trollope and Mr. Dickens encounter to robber barons and slums that marked highs and lows of the earlier Twentieth Century. But Browder has lived such an engaged and curious life that he can’t help but cross paths with every layer and period of society. There is something Whitmanesque in his outlook." Five-star Amazon customer review by Michael P. Hartnett.
Available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
2. Bill Hope: His Story (Anaphora Literary Press, 2017), the second novel in the Metropolis series. New York City, 1870s: From his cell in the gloomy prison known as the Tombs, young Bill Hope spills out in a torrent of words the story of his career as a pickpocket and shoplifter; his brutal treatment at Sing Sing and escape from another prison in a coffin; his forays into brownstones and polite society; and his sojourn among the “loonies” in a madhouse, from which he emerges to face betrayal and death threats, and possible involvement in a murder. Driving him throughout is a fierce desire for better, a persistent and undying hope.
For readers who like historical fiction and a fast-moving story.
Reviews
"A real yarn of a story about a lovable pickpocket who gets into trouble and has a great adventure. A must read." Five-star Amazon customer review by nicole w brown.
"This was a fun book. The main character seemed like a cross between Huck Finn and a Charles Dickens character. I would recommend this." Four-star LibraryThing review by stephvin.
Available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
3. Dark Knowledge (Anaphora Literary Press, 2018), the third novel in the Metropolis series. Adult and young adult. A fast-moving historical novel about New York City and the slave trade, with the sights and sounds and smells of the waterfront.
New York City, late 1860s. When young Chris Harmony learns that members of his family may have been involved in the illegal pre-Civil War slave trade, he is appalled. Determined to learn the truth, he begins an investigation that takes him into a dingy waterfront saloon, musty old maritime records that yield startling secrets, and elegant brownstone parlors that may have been furnished by the trade. Since those once involved dread exposure, he meets denials and evasions, then threats, and a key witness is murdered. What price must Chris pay to learn the painful truth and proclaim it?
Reviews
"A lively and entertaining tale. The writing styles, plot, pace and character development were excellent." Four-star LibraryThing early review by BridgitDavis.
"At first the plot ... seemed a bit contrived, but I was soon swept up in the tale." Four-star LibraryThing early review by snash.
"I am glad that I have read this book as it goes into great detail and the presentation is amazing. The Author obviously knows his stuff." Four-star LibraryThing early review by Moiser20.
Available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
4. The Pleasuring of Men (Gival Press, 2011), the first novel in the Metropolis series, tells the story of a respectably raised young man who chooses to become a male prostitute in late 1860s New York and falls in love with his most difficult client.
What was the gay scene like in nineteenth-century New York? Gay romance, but women have read it and reviewed it. (The cover illustration doesn't hurt.)
Reviews
"At times amusing, gritty, heartfelt and a little sexy -- this would make a great summer read." Four-star Amazon customer review by BobW.
"Really more of a fantasy of a 19th century gay life than any kind of historical representation of the same." Three-star Goodreads review by Rachel.
"The detail Browder brings to this glimpse into history is only equaled by his writing of credible and interesting characters. Highly recommended." Five-star Goodreads review by Nan Hawthorne.
Available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
5. Fascinating New Yorkers: Power Freaks, Mobsters, liberated Women, Creators, Queers and Crazies (Black Rose Writing, 2018). A collection of posts from this blog. Short biographical sketches of people, some remembered and some forgotten, who lived or died in New York. All kinds of wild stuff, plus some stuff that isn't quite wild but fascinating. New York is a mecca for hustlers of every kind, some likable and some horrible, but they are never boring.
Reviews
"Fascinating New Yorkers by Clifford Browder was like sitting down with a dear friend and catching up on the latest gossip and stories. Written with a flair to keep the reader turning the pages, I couldn't stop reading it and thinking about the subjects of each New Yorker. I love NYC and this book just added to the list of reasons why, a must read for those who love NYC and the people who have lived there." Five-star NetGalley review by Patty Ramirez, librarian.
"Unputdownable." Five-star review by Dipali Sen, retired librarian.
"I felt like I was gossiping with a friend when reading this, as the author wrote about New Yorkers who are unique in one way or another. I am hoping for another book featuring more New Yorkers, as I couldn't put this down and read it in one sitting!" Five-star NetGalley review by Cristie Underwood.
© 2018 Clifford Browder
September 15, 2018
373. Bees and Me
Today I'm exhibiting for the first time at the Brooklyn Book Festival, booth 137, at the northern end of the Borough Hall exhibition space in Brooklyn. The festival is held at Borough Hall rain or shine, but at this point it looks like shine. My young friend Silas and I will be there under the sign BROWDERBOOKS. If anyone is in the neighborhood, come say hello, and no, you don't have to buy a book, though I won't refuse if you insist. Book fairs are fun. Just wander about and enjoy.
Brooklyn Book Festival, 2009.Nightscream
BEES AND ME
I’ve always had a thing about bees. Specifically, about Apis mellifera, the honey bee. Not that I’ve ever kept them, far from it. But as a vegan shunning animal-based foods, I always made an exception for honey, because I thought the way bees made it was a culinary and biological wonder. The parting advice to me from the dean of my college was to keep bees. I was graduating with a major in English with emphasis on writing, and my near-term plans were vague. So he told me of a writer who explained that she kept bees. “In the summer I keep the bees, and in the winter they keep me.” Profits from the honey she sold were enough to heat her house, or at least part of it; her bedroom was cold, but the rest of the place was heated. And that’s how she got by as a writer.
Bees on a honeycomb.Waugsberg
Later I managed to read Virgil’s Georgics in Latin, the fourth book of which includes a treatise on beekeeping. And then I read Maeterlinck’s The Life of the Bee, albeit in English, and marveled at the drama and grace that this literary master put into the subject. Imagine: the endless toil of the queen, on whom the survival of the whole hive depends. And the drama of her mating, when she climbs higher, higher, higher in the air, followed by the drones, who one by one fall away, till only one is left, the strongest, with whom she mates in midair and then tears out his guts, following which his ravaged body falls lifeless to the ground. What a wedding! It’s rather as if Tarzan and Jane had mated, and Jane then tears out his innards, goes about her business, and in time gives birth to a host of Tarzan Jr's. And following the queen’s fantastic mating comes yet another bit of drama: the massacre of the drones. Because who needs these useless males, now that the queen is again impregnated, and destined to go on with her relentless toil? In this world, it’s the girls who work, fetching pollen and making honey. The males are tolerated only because they are – occasionally – necessary for mating. (If I’ve got any of these details wrong, may the purists forgive me. It’s been a long time since I read Maeterlinck.)
A queen bee in the hive. Which one is she? The dark one in the center, of course, surrounded by tiger-striped worker bees. And not a male in sight.Levi Asay
Urban life put a distance between me and the honey bee, but I got back to her through hiking, since my hikes were really long-distance nature walks, with time for flowers and the insects crawling over or flitting around them. I loved to see honey bees buzzing about the blossoms, sticking their tubelike tongue, or proboscis, deep into flowers to suck nectar, while the little baskets on their hind legs got caked with pollen.
Louise DockerAs their tongue darted needlelike into flower after flower, they had no time to worry about me watching them up close, so I usually got a good look. Sometimes, while feeding on my favorite summer flower, the milkweed, they got trapped in that treacherous flower’s sticky pollen, and squirmed and wiggled there, unable to get free, a tempting morsel for a hungry spider or yellow jacket. Knowing such to be their likely fate, I would always take a twig and gently free them so they could go on their merry pollen-seeking way.
Luc ViatourBeekeeping used to be taboo in New York, thanks to the all-knowing and protective care of the city authorities, who apparently considered bees as dangerous as wasps and rattlesnakes. But in the long run sanity has a way of prevailing, and in 2010 the ban was lifted, and New Yorkers were soon quite legally installing hives in gardens and on rooftops and balconies. But the welcome mat was rolled out only for honey bees; wasps and hornets are still verboten.
A sign of the new tolerance of honey bees is the Andrew’s Honey stand in the Union Square Greenmarket, which advertises locally harvested honey, some of it from rooftops right close by. Andrew’s website says that his family, now based in Norwalk, Connecticut, have been keeping bees since the 1800s, and now have hives also in four of the five boroughs. (I’ll bet that the missing borough is Staten Island, which always gets left out.) They sell Union Square honey, Upper East Side honey, East Village honey, Central Park honey, Brooklyn honey, Queens honey, and even honey from “Da Bronx.” And services they offer include bee doctor consultations, swarm removals, and urban honey tours. Obviously, Andrew wants to be known as the go-to guy for honey. If his honey is sampled by me rarely, it’s because my sweet tooth is very limited, and even the best honey is sticky.
The problems facing bees and their keepers today are well known and, if one likes bees and honey, scary. Bees are dying in large numbers all over the world because of a host of causes:
· climate change, causing wildfires and hurricanes and flooding · our heavy use of insecticides· the Varroa mite, which sucks the bees’ blood and leaves them unable to navigate· suburban sprawl, depriving them of habitat· drought· theft.
Theft? Yes, theft. Two men were arrested in California in 2017 for participating in an operation stealing hives worth up to a million dollars – the largest bee heist ever. And these losses affect us all, for one third of the foods we eat depend on bee pollination; without bees, our diet would be drastically reduced.
Bees swarming.fir0002
One countertrend is the growth of urban beekeeping, and nowhere is this more noticeable than in New York. But it can pose problems. On the afternoon of Tuesday, August 28, thousands of honey bees suddenly swarmed over Times Square, sending tourists and passersby scrambling. After a few minutes the swarm settled on the cart of a dismayed hot dog vendor at 43rdStreet and Broadway, their dense mass weighing down sections of the stand’s umbrella. Onlookers flocked to watch at a safe remove, and among them by chance was beekeeper Andrew, who estimated the swarm at 15,000 to 20,000 bees, and said that there were at least a dozen rooftop hives within a block of there. To the rescue came New York’s Finest in the form of an officer of the Police Department’s beekeeper unit – yes, there is such a unit – who, keeping his face veiled with a net, used a large vacuum cleaner to suck up the swarm and remove it safely to a new location. Swarms usually occur in the spring, but Andrew opined that the summer heat may have prompted a queen to abandon her hive and take thousands of her worker bees with her in search of a new location. Which makes sense, unless they just wanted a hot dog. It was all over in an hour, allowing Times Square to return to its usual quiet commotion, after a rare event that tourists who witnessed and photographed it will not soon forget.
Coming soon: Maybe Madison Square, maybe the Brooklyn Book Festival.
BROWDERBOOKS
All books are available online as indicated, or from the author.
1. No Place for Normal: New York / Stories from the Most Exciting City in the World (Mill City Press, 2015). Winner of the Tenth Annual National Indie Excellence Award for Regional Non-Fiction; first place in the Travel category of the 2015-2016 Reader Views Literary Awards; and Honorable Mention in the Culture category of the Eric Hoffer Book Awards for 2016. All about anything and everything New York: alcoholics, abortionists, greenmarkets, Occupy Wall Street, the Gay Pride Parade, my mugging in Central Park, peyote visions, and an artist who made art of a blackened human toe.
If you love the city (or hate it), this may be the book for you. An award winner, it sold well at BookCon 2017 and 2018.
Reviews
"If you want wonderful inside tales about New York, this is the book for you. Cliff Browder has a way with his writing that makes the city I lived in for 40 plus years come alive in a new and delightful way. A refreshing view on NYC that will not disappoint." Five-star Amazon customer review by Bill L.
"To read No Place for Normal: New York is to enter into Cliff Browder’s rich and engaging sixty years of adult life in New York. Yes, he delves back before his time – from the city’s origins to the 19th Century that Ms. Trollope and Mr. Dickens encounter to robber barons and slums that marked highs and lows of the earlier Twentieth Century. But Browder has lived such an engaged and curious life that he can’t help but cross paths with every layer and period of society. There is something Whitmanesque in his outlook." Five-star Amazon customer review by Michael P. Hartnett.
Available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
2. Bill Hope: His Story (Anaphora Literary Press, 2017), the second novel in the Metropolis series. New York City, 1870s: From his cell in the gloomy prison known as the Tombs, young Bill Hope spills out in a torrent of words the story of his career as a pickpocket and shoplifter; his brutal treatment at Sing Sing and escape from another prison in a coffin; his forays into brownstones and polite society; and his sojourn among the “loonies” in a madhouse, from which he emerges to face betrayal and death threats, and possible involvement in a murder. Driving him throughout is a fierce desire for better, a persistent and undying hope.
For readers who like historical fiction and a fast-moving story.
Reviews
"A real yarn of a story about a lovable pickpocket who gets into trouble and has a great adventure. A must read." Five-star Amazon customer review by nicole w brown.
"This was a fun book. The main character seemed like a cross between Huck Finn and a Charles Dickens character. I would recommend this." Four-star LibraryThing review by stephvin.
Available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
3. Dark Knowledge (Anaphora Literary Press, 2018), the third novel in the Metropolis series. Adult and young adult. A fast-moving historical novel about New York City and the slave trade, with the sights and sounds and smells of the waterfront.
New York City, late 1860s. When young Chris Harmony learns that members of his family may have been involved in the illegal pre-Civil War slave trade, he is appalled. Determined to learn the truth, he begins an investigation that takes him into a dingy waterfront saloon, musty old maritime records that yield startling secrets, and elegant brownstone parlors that may have been furnished by the trade. Since those once involved dread exposure, he meets denials and evasions, then threats, and a key witness is murdered. What price must Chris pay to learn the painful truth and proclaim it?
Reviews
"A lively and entertaining tale. The writing styles, plot, pace and character development were excellent." Four-star LibraryThing early review by BridgitDavis.
"At first the plot ... seemed a bit contrived, but I was soon swept up in the tale." Four-star LibraryThing early review by snash.
"I am glad that I have read this book as it goes into great detail and the presentation is amazing. The Author obviously knows his stuff." Four-star LibraryThing early review by Moiser20.
Available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
4. The Pleasuring of Men (Gival Press, 2011), the first novel in the Metropolis series, tells the story of a respectably raised young man who chooses to become a male prostitute in late 1860s New York and falls in love with his most difficult client.
What was the gay scene like in nineteenth-century New York? Gay romance, but women have read it and reviewed it. (The cover illustration doesn't hurt.)
Reviews
"At times amusing, gritty, heartfelt and a little sexy -- this would make a great summer read." Four-star Amazon customer review by BobW.
"Really more of a fantasy of a 19th century gay life than any kind of historical representation of the same." Three-star Goodreads review by Rachel.
"The detail Browder brings to this glimpse into history is only equaled by his writing of credible and interesting characters. Highly recommended." Five-star Goodreads review by Nan Hawthorne.
Available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
5. Fascinating New Yorkers: Power Freaks, Mobsters, liberated Women, Creators, Queers and Crazies (Black Rose Writing, 2018). A collection of posts from this blog. Short biographical sketches of people, some remembered and some forgotten, who lived or died in New York. All kinds of wild stuff, plus some stuff that isn't quite wild but fascinating. New York is a mecca for hustlers of every kind, some likable and some horrible, but they are never boring.
Reviews
"Fascinating New Yorkers by Clifford Browder was like sitting down with a dear friend and catching up on the latest gossip and stories. Written with a flair to keep the reader turning the pages, I couldn't stop reading it and thinking about the subjects of each New Yorker. I love NYC and this book just added to the list of reasons why, a must read for those who love NYC and the people who have lived there." Five-star NetGalley review by Patty Ramirez, librarian.
"Unputdownable." Five-star review by Dipali Sen, retired librarian.
"I felt like I was gossiping with a friend when reading this, as the author wrote about New Yorkers who are unique in one way or another. I am hoping for another book featuring more New Yorkers, as I couldn't put this down and read it in one sitting!" Five-star NetGalley review by Cristie Underwood.
© 2018 Clifford Browder
September 9, 2018
372. Justice: Dorothy Day, a Devout and Rebellious Catholic
EXPOSURE FOR DARK KNOWLEDGE
Dark Knowledge, my novel about the slave trade in New York, has appeared twice in August in the LibraryBub newsletter, which lists small-press and self-published books of interest to librarians. The newsletters were opened by librarians 4909 times, and the Amazon link for the book was clicked 409 times. Dark Knowledge, which I think of as historical fiction, was also listed in the Mystery & Thriller category in LibraryPub press releases picked up by NBC, ABC, and CBS.
To get word of future reviews, giveaways, and other news, sign up using the form in the sidebar on the right.
Dark Knowledge (Anaphora Literary Press, 2018), the third novel in the Metropolis series. Adult and young adult. A fast-moving historical novel about New York City and the slave trade, with the sights and sounds and smells of the waterfront.
Available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
For my other books, see BROWDERBOOKS following the post below.
Justice: Dorothy Day, a Devout and Rebellious Catholic
Raised a Protestant in a tranquil Republican suburb of Chicago during the Great Depression, I never heard of Dorothy Day or her movement, and when I heard of them later, it was only in a casual and superficial way. But if ever there was a person who gave her life to justice, in the form of justice for the working poor and the underprivileged, it was Dorothy Day. So who was she, and what was her movement
all about?
Dorothy Day, 1916.She was Brooklyn-born to a family of nominal Protestants, and at age 14 became an Episcopalian while her family lived in Chicago. After two years at the University of Illinois, in 1916 she came to New York, settled on the Lower East Side, and worked for a series of socialist publications. She often covered radical activities in Union Square, where socialists, communists, anarchists, and the IWW (International Workers of the World, known as Wobblies) harangued and marched and demonstrated. At loose ends when one of her papers was shut down for criticizing the draft during World War I, she was recruited by a friend to join a women’s suffrage picket line in Washington, D.C., tangled there with the police, and at the tender age of 20 got arrested and ended up in a workhouse in Virginia where she was beaten and went on a 10-day hunger strike until released.
The anarchist Emma Goldman addressing a rally in Union Square, 1916. Just the sort of event that Dorothy Day covered as a reporter. The hats suggest an all-male audience.In the raucous Greenwich Village scene of the time she was a pal of Eugene O’Neill, drinking rye whiskey straight with him in a bar called the Golden Swan, known endearingly to its patrons as the Hell Hole. Rubbing elbows there were gangsters, writers, artists, and other suspect and disreputable individuals, including the Hudson Dusters, a notorious local gang who admired Day for her ability to drink them silly. The raucous doings at the Hell Hole inspired paintings by John Sloan and Charles Demuth, and maybe also Harry Hope's saloon in O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh. When not cavorting at the Hell Hole, Day and her pals would pick up "interesting-looking strangers" in Washington Square Park and take them to dinner -- perhaps a first indication of her later concern for the poor.
Surviving failed love affairs and an abortion, in 1924 she bought a beach cottage in the Spanish Camp community on the South Shore of Staten Island that she used as a retreat for writing. Soon she fell in love with Forster Batterham, an atheist who didn’t believe in marriage, and in 1926 bore him a child, her daughter, Tamar. Though neither she nor Batterham was Catholic, she had her daughter baptized in the Catholic Church. She had long been drifting toward religion, stopping off daily for early-morning mass at St. Joseph's on Sixth Avenue near Waverly Place. What long held her back was fear of losing her atheist partner. Finally, with the help of a Sister of Charity who had befriended her, in 1927 she herself was baptized at a Catholic church in Tottenville, Staten Island, and became a practicing Catholic. Breaking with Batterham, in 1929 she left Staten Island and took her daughter with her to Los Angeles for a brief stint as a film writer, following which they returned to New York. Photos of her both before and after her conversion show a tall, thin young woman who wore little or no makeup and kept her hair cut short, always plain-faced and unsmiling: an appearance she may have cultivated, so as to avoid any hint of glamour or sex.
Dorothy Day, 1934. A touch of lipstick, perhaps, but a very earnest look.
In December 1932, trying to be both activist and Catholic but not sure how these two sides of her life could interact, she met a Frenchman, Peter Maurin, a former Christian Brother, spiritual vagabond, and self-described peasant some 20 years her senior, who with a thick French accent preached to her in singsong monologues his version of the social teachings of Catholicism. Inspired by Saint Francis of Assisi, he lived a life of voluntary poverty and stressed the importance of building a new society where people could be good and therefore happy. A crank, said some, but Dorothy Day listened, and the Catholic Worker movement was born. Typically, it never occurred to her to ask a superior's permission; she simply saw a need and forged ahead to do something about it.
So it was that in 1933, in the very depths of the Great Depression, Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin started a monthly called the Catholic Worker. They handed it out at Union Square on May Day, where every species of radical was orating on a soap box, and hundreds of unemployed men, hungry and idle, were ready to listen to almost any program of action. Right next to the communists’ Daily Worker, they were touting the Catholic Worker, and its seemingly unprecedented social program for Catholics. Never one to hold back, she denounced "this rotten, decadent, putrid industrial capitalist system which breeds such suffering in the whited sepulcher of New York." Among those restless crowds there were plenty of Irish and Italians and other Catholics who listened. Within four months the new publication, offered at a penny a copy, had a circulation of 20,000, and with help from parishes that ordered bundles of it, within a year the circulation reached 100,000. In those early days their monthly sometimes failed to appear for lack of funds, but in time donations of food, clothes, and money began coming in.
Peter Maurin, 1934. Hardly the look of a spiritual vagabond or peasant. Soon the destitute were showing up at their door. Since they talked about feeding the hungry and sheltering the homeless, said the callers, maybe they could feed and shelter them. So Day and Maurin started a soup line that got longer and longer, and lodged people wherever they could. Finally, in 1936, they were able to rent a whole building on Mott Street in Little Italy, on the Lower East Side, for their first “house of hospitality,” offering food and shelter to the poor. Word spread, and soon the soup line stretched down the street for blocks. Farms for communal living followed, and the movement spread to other cities, and finally even to Canada and Great Britain. But among those welcomed were cheats and drunks and troublemakers whom she had to tolerate with strained compassion – not easy for an activist who was anything but meek. And as she became famous, rumors circulated of her having visions or even the stigmata. These notions she dismissed with scorn, for there was work to do; no time for folderol.
During the Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939 she supported the anticlerical Republicans fighting Franco’s fascists, while the Church supported Franco – the first of many conflicts where she and the Church were at odds. Catholic churches, schools, and hospitals stopped distributing the Catholic Worker, and circulation fell from 150,000 to 30,000. “How could you become a Catholic?” many relatives and friends had asked her. In her first memoir, From Union Square to Rome (1938), without dwelling on her years of “grievous mortal sin,” she told how a series of events over many years had made her feel the need of religion. But in 1941, when the U.S. entered World War II, her pacifism brought her into conflict with the government, the draft, and everyone.
Conflict was her way of life: labor vs. capital, pacifism vs. war, radical action vs. the status quo, and Dorothy Day vs. Francis Spellman, the Cardinal Archbishop of New York. She had one foot in Catholicism, one in anarchism, and even one in communism, which is more feet than one person ought to have. Well into her ripe later years she was ready to write and demonstrate and picket, and endured at least eleven sojourns behind bars. Busy as she was, she had little time to raise her daughter, whom she left to others. Tamar married very young and had nine children, the youngest of whom would write a biography of her grandmother and say of Dorothy Day that, while she might tussle with authority, she never lost sight of the heart of the Church.
Tussle she did. In 1949, workers in Catholic cemeteries managed by the archdiocese of New York went on strike for better wages, and Cardinal Spellman labeled the union action "communist-inspired" and used seminarians to break the strike by digging graves. Employees of the Catholic Worker promptly joined the picket line, and Day wrote the cardinal informing him that he was "misinformed." Spellman ignored her plea to resolve the dispute, and the union was forced to accept the archdiocese's terms. The cardinal, Day insisted in the Catholic Worker, was "ill-advised" in using a show of force against a union of poor working men. The archbishop, she acknowledged, was the diocese's chief priest and confessor, but he was not her ruler.
The Cardinal Archbishop of New York was not used to being told that his actions were "misinformed" or "ill-advised," least of all by a woman, and he was known to harbor grudges. In 1951 he ordered Day to cease publication or remove the word "Catholic" from the name of her paper. She wrote him, saying respectfully that she had every right to publish it with the word "Catholic" in the title. Thunder and damnation might well have followed, but in fact the cardinal did nothing. She surmised that church officials had no stomach for members of her movement invading St. Patrick's Cathedral to hold prayer vigils begging the cardinal to relent (which they were quite ready to do) -- a spectacle that was bound to be reported by the press.
Fidel Castro’s takeover in Cuba in 1959 imposed a familiar dilemma on Dorothy Day, who went there to see firsthand what was happening. She deplored the aggressive atheism of Castro and his allies, yet applauded their efforts to improve the lives of ordinary people. And when Cardinal Spellman visited the troops in Vietnam in 1965 and praised the Vietnam war as a war for civilization, she avoided a direct confrontation, but listed all the war zones he had visited over the years, and wondered why there were American soldiers all over the world so far from our own shores. In spite of her criticism of casual extramarital sex and abortion, her pacifism won her the respect of the young radicals of the 1960s, all the more so when she hailed Ho Chi Minh as a man of vision and a patriot. Upon meeting her, Hippie leader Abbie Hoffman hailed her as "the original hippie."
Her nemesis, but not her ruler.Cardinal Spellman's departing this earth for celestial pastures in 1967 may have simplified her life a bit, but she was still prone to picket lines and controversy. Honors as well as disparagement came to her in her later years, but for the Church she was always a hot potato, a firm believer admirable in many ways, but at the same time a rebellious troublemaker. Despite ill health, in the 1970s she visited India and met Mother Teresa, and with a group of peace activists visited the Soviet Union. In 1973, while picketing in support of Cesar Chavez's effort to organize farm laborers in California, she was arrested yet again and spent ten days in jail.
Day spent her last years in another beach bungalow on the South Shore of Staten Island, where she could again relax and breathe in the sea air that she loved. In 1980, at age 93, she died of a heart attack at Mary House, a Catholic Worker house of hospitality on East 3rd Street in Manhattan, with her daughter at her side. She was buried in the Cemetery of the Resurrection, near the South Shore of Staten Island. Her gravestone bears the words Deo Gratias (Thanks be to God): a Catholic to the end. Said Abbie Hoffman, she was the “closest thing to a saint I’ll ever see.”
Nor was Abbie alone in his opinion. Her Staten Island bungalow has been bulldozed, but in 2000 Pope John Paul II granted the Archdiocese of New York's petition to have her designated a candidate for sainthood and, as such, “a Servant of God.” Some members of the Catholic Worker movement immediately objected, saying this violated her own values. But in 2012 the U.S. bishops endorsed her sainthood campaign unanimously, and in 2016 the Archdiocese of New York launched a canonical inquiry into her life and work; the hunt for miracles was on.
Today Day's organization has some 250 houses of hospitality and farms in the U.S. and abroad, and the Catholic Worker, now published seven times a year, still sells for a penny a copy. Cardinal Spellman lies buried in a crypt under the main altar of St. Patrick's Cathedral in the company of eminent deceased ecclesiastics, but to my knowledge, there is no movement to declare him a saint.
Source note: The information for this post comes from various online sources, including a Fresh Air interview by Dave Davies of Dorothy Day's granddaughter, Kate Hennessy, on March 23, 2017. This interview followed the publication of Hennessy's biography of Day, The World Will Be Saved by Beauty: An Intimate Portrait of My Grandmother (Scribner, 2017).
Coming soon: Maybe something on the honey bee and me -- another of my love affairs with nature.
BROWDERBOOKS
All books are available online as indicated, or from the author.
1. No Place for Normal: New York / Stories from the Most Exciting City in the World (Mill City Press, 2015). Winner of the Tenth Annual National Indie Excellence Award for Regional Non-Fiction; first place in the Travel category of the 2015-2016 Reader Views Literary Awards; and Honorable Mention in the Culture category of the Eric Hoffer Book Awards for 2016. All about anything and everything New York: alcoholics, abortionists, greenmarkets, Occupy Wall Street, the Gay Pride Parade, my mugging in Central Park, peyote visions, and an artist who made art of a blackened human toe. In her Reader Views review, Sheri Hoyte called it "a delightful treasure chest full of short stories about New York City."
If you love the city (or hate it), this may be the book for you. An award winner, it sold well at BookCon 2017 and 2018.
Reviews
"If you want wonderful inside tales about New York, this is the book for you. Cliff Browder has a way with his writing that makes the city I lived in for 40 plus years come alive in a new and delightful way. A refreshing view on NYC that will not disappoint." Five-star Amazon customer review by Bill L.
"To read No Place for Normal: New York is to enter into Cliff Browder’s rich and engaging sixty years of adult life in New York. Yes, he delves back before his time – from the city’s origins to the 19th Century that Ms. Trollope and Mr. Dickens encounter to robber barons and slums that marked highs and lows of the earlier Twentieth Century. But Browder has lived such an engaged and curious life that he can’t help but cross paths with every layer and period of society. There is something Whitmanesque in his outlook." Five-star Amazon customer review by Michael P. Hartnett.
Available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
2. Bill Hope: His Story (Anaphora Literary Press, 2017), the second novel in the Metropolis series. New York City, 1870s: From his cell in the gloomy prison known as the Tombs, young Bill Hope spills out in a torrent of words the story of his career as a pickpocket and shoplifter; his brutal treatment at Sing Sing and escape from another prison in a coffin; his forays into brownstones and polite society; and his sojourn among the “loonies” in a madhouse, from which he emerges to face betrayal and death threats, and possible involvement in a murder. Driving him throughout is a fierce desire for better, a persistent and undying hope.
For readers who like historical fiction and a fast-moving story.
Reviews"A real yarn of a story about a lovable pickpocket who gets into trouble and has a great adventure. A must read." Five-star Amazon customer review by nicole w brown.
"This was a fun book. The main character seemed like a cross between Huck Finn and a Charles Dickens character. I would recommend this." Four-star LibraryThing review by stephvin.
Available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
3. The Pleasuring of Men (Gival Press, 2011), the first novel in the Metropolis series, tells the story of a respectably raised young man who chooses to become a male prostitute in late 1860s New York and falls in love with his most difficult client.
What was the gay scene like in nineteenth-century New York? Gay romance, but no porn. Women have read it and reviewed it. (The cover illustration doesn't hurt.)
Reviews
"At times amusing, gritty, heartfelt and a little sexy -- this would make a great summer read." Four-star Amazon customer review by BobW.
"Really more of a fantasy of a 19th century gay life than any kind of historical representation of the same." Three-star Goodreads review by Rachel.
"The detail Browder brings to this glimpse into history is only equaled by his writing of credible and interesting characters. Highly recommended." Five-star Goodreads review by Nan Hawthorne.
Available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
4. Fascinating New Yorkers: Power Freaks, Mobsters, Liberated Women, Creators, Queers, and Crazies (Black Rose Writing, 2018).
Short biographical sketches of colorful people who lived or died in New York. A cardinal who led a double life, a serial killer, a baroness with a tomato-can bra, and a film star whose funeral caused an all-day riot.
Reviews
"Fascinating New Yorkers by Clifford Browder was like sitting down with a dear friend and catching up on the latest gossip and stories. Written with a flair to keep the reader turning the pages, I couldn't stop reading it and thinking about the subjects of each New Yorker. I love NYC and this book just added to the list of reasons why, a must read for those who love NYC and the people who have lived there." Five-star NetGalley review by Patty Ramirez, librarian.
"Unputdownable." Five-star review by Dipali Sen, retired librarian.
"I felt like I was gossiping with a friend when reading this, as the author wrote about New Yorkers who are unique in one way or another. I am hoping for another book featuring more New Yorkers, as I couldn't put this down and read it in one sitting!" Five-star NetGalley review by Cristie Underwood.
© 2018 Clifford Browder
September 2, 2018
371. How I Mourn
GREAT EXPOSURE FOR DARK KNOWLEDGE
Dark Knowledge, my novel about the slave trade in New York, has appeared twice in August in the LibraryBub newsletter, which lists small-press and self-published books of interest to librarians. The newsletters were opened by librarians 4909 times, and the Amazon link for the book was clicked 409 times. Dark Knowledge, which I think of as historical fiction, was also listed in the Mystery & Thriller category in LibraryPub press releases picked up by NBC, ABC, and CBS.
To get word of future reviews, giveaways, and other news, sign up using the form in the sidebar on the right.
Dark Knowledge (Anaphora Literary Press, 2018), the third novel in the Metropolis series. Adult and young adult. A fast-moving historical novel about New York City and the slave trade, with the sights and sounds and smells of the waterfront.
Available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
For my other books, see BROWDERBOOKS following the post below.
How I Mourn
We all mourn in different ways. My partner Bob, whom I had been with for fifty years, died recently. For some people, my mourning for him might not seem like mourning at all. No long face, no tears, no black. I had seen him through to the end, but he didn’t need me now. No more pills to give him, no more huge bags of groceries to schlep up four flights of stairs, no more summonses in the middle of the night. As requested in his will, he had been cremated and his ashes scattered at sea. He was free, and so was I. So how did I mourn?
On the second Sunday after Bob’s death, I had hoped to chat with a friend of mine, a Sister of Mercy who would drive in from New Jersey and then lunch with me nearby. Since Bob’s hospital bed was still in the living room (pending collection the following day), I thought we could talk there beside his bed, with a coffee table between us, while I sipped wine and nibbled cheese as I had always done on Sundays with Bob, while she had her usual glass of ice-cold water. It would probably be the last time I would do it. But she phoned to say that, for reasons of health, she couldn’t come, so we rescheduled for a later get-together.
And so, contrary to expectations, there I was alone in the apartment on a Sunday. The week before, I had gone to my local library to see Mae West in She Done Him Wrong, a pre-Hays Office film with her starring opposite a very young Cary Grant. In the film she uttered her famous line, “Come up and see me sometime,” and sang Frankie and Johnny Were Lovers, an old song that has been echoing in my mind ever since. (Bob, who loved Mae West, would have applauded my seeing the film.) But no such attraction was available this Sunday, so what to do? I was all dressed up for company, and no company was coming.
My solution: sip wine and nibble cheese by myself. At first I was going to do it in the living room beside Bob’s empty bed, as a gesture of remembrance and mourning. But then I decided to adjourn to the kitchen, which would be drenched in midday sunlight and offered the wide surface of a table where I could spread out my only Sunday companion, the bulky New York Times. This I did, scanning the first section at length, as I sipped and nibbled. Not as good as sharing the moment with a friend, but better than nothing. And then I went out to lunch.
As often in the past, I lunched at Philip Marie, just a block away on the corner of West 11th Street and Bleecker. As I anticipated, it was crowded and noisy, but the noise was New Yorkers relaxing and having fun, so I didn’t mind and engaged in a bit of people-watching. Several waiters recognized me from earlier visits and said hello, well aware that I would start with yogurt and berries, and end with a cappuccino topped with milk foam sprinkled with cinnamon.
So who were the people I was watching? Near me, a quiet foursome, two young men and two girls, none of them boasting stellar looks, but having just as much fun as anyone. On bar stools at the bar, a very heterosexual older crowd, the men in long pants (shorts prevailed at the tables), two of them – both in caps, one with the cap reversed -- engaged in a friendly tussle that almost became a wrestling match, while they both flashed hearty smiles. Then they interrupted the friendly sparring to take a photo of their neighbors at the bar, an older man and his ample dark-haired girlfriend, who bunched their heads together and beamed loving smiles at the camera.
The star of the occasion was a young African-American woman, phenomenally thin, with a wide-brimmed cowboy hat. She arrived to much applause at another table where seven older white men rose from their seats in turn to give her a hearty hug of greeting, and one of them a kiss as well. She then took her place at the table, where loud laughter was soon heard, and she repeatedly beamed and clapped her hands in appreciation of something someone had said. An odd combination of people, but what the hell, this is New York. And as always, being aware that this moment was special and not to be repeated – not with the same cast of characters -- I was struck by the rich, intense, heart-breaking fragility of it all. But at least I had captured the moment, juicy and unique.
After that, it being a mild day, overcast, with a gentle breeze, I once again walked down West 11th Street to the river. En route I passed the Spotted Pig restaurant. Fronted by a leafy row of potted bushes and plants, it was open as always, with a spotted pig signboard dangling over the entrance. But I was well aware that the management has been entangled in a nest of #Me Too accusations, so even on this pleasant Sunday walk, the grim news of the day obtruded.
Arriving at the river, I sat on a bench facing the water, just opposite the old Erie Lackawanna terminal in New Jersey – a happily preserved Beaux Arts masterpiece, as I recently learned online. The sky was overcast and gray, but at times a bit of sunlight filtered through, and I could see on the roily gray surface of the water the dancing dots of silver that I love. On the grass nearby lay dozens of would-be sunbathers, but with little sun.
Next, I walked along the river to Pier 46, which I went out on, checking as always to spot sprouts of seaside goldenrod growing out of the rotten old wooden pier below the new one. Sprouts there were, here and there, plants that in a month, fully grown, would burst into terminal bright blossoms of gold: like so much on this walk, a sign of irrepressible life.
Continuing my walk, I came to my little garden with the big bronze sculpture of an apple, dedicated by sculptor Stephan Weiss to his friends and neighbors of the Far West Village. I had the garden to myself and one fluttering Monarch butterfly that darted about over the pink and red and yellow and blue flowers blooming there in the profusion of late summer. What assaulted my eye were masses of black-eyed Susans, blasts of bright golden yellow at the very peak of their bloom. If at times I uttered a curse or two while in the garden, it was because I had spotted a bit of trash among the flowers and had to stooped laboriously to pick it up. Not everyone treasures and respects the garden, which I long ago adopted as my own, picking up the trash of interlopers, whom I scorn as pigs.
This was the farthest point of my walk, from which I retraced my steps. During the whole outing, and even in the noisy restaurant, I was singing over and over again to myself, in my own inept and off-key way, the song I had heard Mae West sing in the movie:
Frankie and Johnny were loversLordy, how they did loveSwore to be true to each otherAs true as the stars aboveHe was her manBut he done her wrong.
I’ll admit that this one stanza obsesses me. I sing it over and over to myself – ad nauseam. But only to myself; I try to spare others the ordeal of my dubious singing.
The song's later stanzas tell how Frankie learns that Johnny has been seeing Miss Nellie Bly, a relationship that was more than casual. So Frankie whips out a .44 revolver and shoots Johnny dead, following which they lock her up and throw the keys away. Not a happy ending, but crime most decidedly does not pay, whether shooting your lover or doing your lover wrong. How I knew the tune I can’t imagine; floating around in the depths of my psyche are all sorts of old songs that, when the occasion arises, start playing in my head. But what intrigues me about this song – which exists in many versions – is its indifference to Victorian morality, which in the lyrics doesn’t even exist. Online research tells me that the song was inspired by a real shooting in St. Louis in 1899, though the song only appeared in 1904. The shooter, 22-year-old Frankie Baker, got off by claiming self-defense, though the lyrics give the song a different slant. Some say the song existed long before, but the familiar version appeared in print only in 1925. By then, of course, Victorian morality was dying or dead; a young woman can’t be a lady, in the Victorian sense of the word, if she’s doing the Charleston, or swigging gin in a speakeasy.
Be all that as it may, the song has put its print on my mourning – or lack of mourning – of Bob. My mood now is not one of grief; I’m quietly happy. I was there for Bob when he needed me, but now I'm free. I’ll always mourn him, but I’m free, and so is Bob. And if Bob is aware of all this, he won’t mind, he’ll applaud. If he had outlived me, he would have done the same, and I too would have applauded.
I have a way of sucking pleasure from small things. So here’s one final thought, prompted by that day’s trivia: what do all these things have in common?
· Mae West· Two men on bar stools engaged in a friendly tussle · A young woman in a cowboy hat at a table with seven older men· Silver dots dancing on the surface of a river· Goldenrod sprouting in the rotten wood of a pier· A yellow blast of black-eyed Susans· Frankie and Johnny Were Lovers
I can sum it up in one word: life. So at that moment, ten days after Bob’s passing, I was aware of two things, and am keenly aware of them today: (1) I’ve never had a greater loss; (2) I’ve never been so alive. And that is how I mourn.
Coming soon: The Way of Justice: Dorothy Day.
BROWDERBOOKS
All books are available online as indicated, or from the author.
1. No Place for Normal: New York / Stories from the Most Exciting City in the World (Mill City Press, 2015). Winner of the Tenth Annual National Indie Excellence Award for Regional Non-Fiction; first place in the Travel category of the 2015-2016 Reader Views Literary Awards; and Honorable Mention in the Culture category of the Eric Hoffer Book Awards for 2016. All about anything and everything New York: alcoholics, abortionists, greenmarkets, Occupy Wall Street, the Gay Pride Parade, my mugging in Central Park, peyote visions, and an artist who made art of a blackened human toe. In her Reader Views review, Sheri Hoyte called it "a delightful treasure chest full of short stories about New York City."
If you love the city (or hate it), this may be the book for you. An award winner, it sold well at BookCon 2017 and 2018.
Reviews
"If you want wonderful inside tales about New York, this is the book for you. Cliff Browder has a way with his writing that makes the city I lived in for 40 plus years come alive in a new and delightful way. A refreshing view on NYC that will not disappoint." Five-star Amazon customer review by Bill L.
"To read No Place for Normal: New York is to enter into Cliff Browder’s rich and engaging sixty years of adult life in New York. Yes, he delves back before his time – from the city’s origins to the 19th Century that Ms. Trollope and Mr. Dickens encounter to robber barons and slums that marked highs and lows of the earlier Twentieth Century. But Browder has lived such an engaged and curious life that he can’t help but cross paths with every layer and period of society. There is something Whitmanesque in his outlook." Five-star Amazon customer review by Michael P. Hartnett.
Available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
2. Bill Hope: His Story (Anaphora Literary Press, 2017), the second novel in the Metropolis series. New York City, 1870s: From his cell in the gloomy prison known as the Tombs, young Bill Hope spills out in a torrent of words the story of his career as a pickpocket and shoplifter; his brutal treatment at Sing Sing and escape from another prison in a coffin; his forays into brownstones and polite society; and his sojourn among the “loonies” in a madhouse, from which he emerges to face betrayal and death threats, and possible involvement in a murder. Driving him throughout is a fierce desire for better, a persistent and undying hope.
For readers who like historical fiction and a fast-moving story.
Reviews"A real yarn of a story about a lovable pickpocket who gets into trouble and has a great adventure. A must read." Five-star Amazon customer review by nicole w brown.
"This was a fun book. The main character seemed like a cross between Huck Finn and a Charles Dickens character. I would recommend this." Four-star LibraryThing review by stephvin.
Available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
3. The Pleasuring of Men (Gival Press, 2011), the first novel in the Metropolis series, tells the story of a respectably raised young man who chooses to become a male prostitute in late 1860s New York and falls in love with his most difficult client.
What was the gay scene like in nineteenth-century New York? Gay romance, but no porn. Women have read it and reviewed it. (The cover illustration doesn't hurt.)
Reviews
"At times amusing, gritty, heartfelt and a little sexy -- this would make a great summer read." Four-star Amazon customer review by BobW.
"Really more of a fantasy of a 19th century gay life than any kind of historical representation of the same." Three-star Goodreads review by Rachel.
"The detail Browder brings to this glimpse into history is only equaled by his writing of credible and interesting characters. Highly recommended." Five-star Goodreads review by Nan Hawthorne.
Available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
4. Fascinating New Yorkers: Power Freaks, Mobsters, Liberated Women, Creators, Queers, and Crazies (Black Rose Writing, 2018).
Short biographical sketches of colorful people who lived or died in New York. A cardinal who led a double life, a serial killer, a baroness with a tomato-can bra, and a film star whose funeral caused an all-day riot.
Reviews
"Fascinating New Yorkers by Clifford Browder was like sitting down with a dear friend and catching up on the latest gossip and stories. Written with a flair to keep the reader turning the pages, I couldn't stop reading it and thinking about the subjects of each New Yorker. I love NYC and this book just added to the list of reasons why, a must read for those who love NYC and the people who have lived there." Five-star NetGalley review by Patty Ramirez, librarian.
"Unputdownable." Five-star review by Dipali Sen, retired librarian.
"I felt like I was gossiping with a friend when reading this, as the author wrote about New Yorkers who are unique in one way or another. I am hoping for another book featuring more New Yorkers, as I couldn't put this down and read it in one sitting!" Five-star NetGalley review by Cristie Underwood.
© 2018 Clifford Browder
August 26, 2018
370. Dying in New York
GREAT EXPOSURE FOR DARK KNOWLEDGE
Dark Knowledge, my novel about the slave trade in New York, has appeared twice in August in the LibraryBub newsletter, which lists small-press and self-published books of interest to librarians. The newsletters were opened by librarians 4909 times, and the Amazon link for the book was clicked 409 times. Dark Knowledge, which I think of as historical fiction, was also listed in the Mystery & Thriller category in LibraryPub press releases picked up by NBC, ABC, and CBS. This is great exposure. Hopefully, librarians will schedule the book for purchase in their purchasing periods. A sale to a library means the book will be read, not by one reader, but by many.
To get word of future reviews, giveaways, and other news, sign up using the form in the sidebar on the right.
Dark Knowledge (Anaphora Literary Press, 2018), the third novel in the Metropolis series. Adult and young adult. A fast-moving historical novel about New York City and the slave trade, with the sights and sounds and smells of the waterfront.
New York City, late 1860s. When young Chris Harmony learns that members of his family may have been involved in the illegal pre-Civil War slave trade, he is appalled. Determined to learn the truth, he begins an investigation that meets denials and evasions, then threats. What price must Chris pay to learn the painful truth and proclaim it?
Reviews
"A lively and entertaining tale. The writing styles, plot, pace and character development were excellent." Four-star LibraryThing early review by BridgitDavis.
"At first the plot ... seemed a bit contrived, but I was soon swept up in the tale." Four-star LibraryThing early review by snash.
"I am glad that I have read this book as it goes into great detail and the presentation is amazing. The Author obviously knows his stuff." Four-star LibraryThing early review by Moiser20.
Available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
For my other books, see BROWDERBOOKS following the post below.
Dying in New York
Dying in New York is different from dying in a small town or a rural community where everyone knows, or at least knows of, everyone. Dying may be quick and fierce, or slow and relentless, but either way, in the city it brings into play an army of strangers. I have covered this subject before and may again, but here is an account of a dying that touched me personally.
My longtime partner Bob had been suffering from late-stage Parkinson’s for at least five years. Parkinson’s involves many things, none of them pleasant: shaking hands, a slow physical deterioration, constipation and incontinence, hallucination, and finally, an utter dependence on others. Bob went from an early stage where, at first without a cane and then with one, he could get out for short forays and have lunch in a nearby restaurant. He would come back smiling and announce, “Here I am, Shaky, the eighth dwarf.” Then he couldn’t go out anymore, but ordered food to be delivered by phone. Once he fell in the apartment, and I had to get a neighbor to help me get him back to bed. Soon we found we needed help, and Partners in Care sent a series of aides, several of them compassionate older African American women with a motherly, even grandmotherly, touch, but who had trouble negotiating our four-flight walk-up. Finally we found a younger aide, Jacques, a Haitian, who was totally capable and could do whatever was needed; he became a part of the family. And a doctor was found as well who made weekly house calls.
Twice Bob was rushed to a hospital in a coma caused by a urinary tract infection. From the first stay he came back with a stage-four bed sore, though he had gone in with stage two. From then on it was our chief task to heal the sore, which was big and went down almost to bone. This meant applying large dressings and turning him at intervals throughout the day, so as to relieve pressure on the sore. Next came the prima donna of high-tech healing, a Clinitron bed, designed to provide a soft, yielding surface that would help the healing. Supplementing it was a strange apparatus called a VAC that, with the help of a vacuum pump, drained the wound and would hopefully shrink it. My worst crisis came when, in the middle of the night, I somehow disturbed the VAC, and the dressing on the wound came off. At 4 a.m. I phoned the Visiting Nurses and, amazingly, a Florence Nightingale answered and told me what to do. To be sure, I then phoned the outfit providing the VAC and, amazingly again, some one answered and gave me exactly the same advice: to apply a simple bandage and inform the Visiting Nurses in the morning. In time, as the wound got smaller, the VAC apparatus and the high-tech bed were removed, replaced by a conventional semi-electric hospital bed. The wound got smaller and smaller; finally, after about three years, it closed.
When Bob had been in bed for a year, he resolved to make it to a wheelchair, and then to a walker. He amazed his therapists and doctor when he made it to the wheelchair, though dizziness or nausea often forced him to return to the bed. Slowly, his body readjusted to a sitting position, and finally he could make it to the walker. On good days he would walk the length of the apartment and sometimes, if he rested at intervals in his wheelchair, he could do it two or three times.
Parkinson’s, though slow, is relentless; mainstream medicine cannot cure it, though alternative treatments sometimes can (but that’s another story). Bob was able to walk less and less, until finally, with me and Jacques helping him, he could do only a few steps with the walker, then one or two, then none. He talked less and less until, in our weekly cocktail hour on Sunday when we nibbled cheese and sipped wine, I found myself doing monologues.
Last Thursday started out like any other day. Bob talked little, but ate a few bites for breakfast. He was sluggish and slept lots, his mouth open, but lately he had not slept well at night, and so slept much in the daytime. But by midafternoon on Thursday Jacques and I became alarmed: his whole body was limp, his head drooping and his mouth agape, and we couldn’t arouse him. Jacques called 911, and within eight minutes two Fire Department medics were there. They examined him briefly, found no pulse or other vital sign; his heart had stopped. They summoned help, and soon there were eight medics hovering over him, one of them rhythmically massaging his chest as he lay flat on the floor where they had put him. They asked me to step out of the room for a few minutes, probably so they could appraise the case candidly, and then let me back in. For two long hours I watched from the doorway as they tried to resuscitate him, giving him an injection to stimulate his heart, and trying every other trick they knew of. And this in the muggy heat of August; the air-conditioner in the living room was on, but with the door to the room wide open, itdid no good. After one hour of this, Jacques and I knew it was useless. After two hours, the medics gave up.
Two policemen had arrived by now, and when the medics left, they remained. A medical examiner was notified, but she couldn’t come immediately, having many other calls to make. Then two men in suits arrived: a short, thin one and a tall, stocky one, both with a very professional, deadpan, down-to-business look. The medical examiner? No, that would be a woman. The short one took a quick look at Bob, now replaced on his bed and wrapped up like a mummy, though with his face visible, mouth agape. The visitor then talked briefly and quietly with the two policemen, following which he and his companion left. “Detectives,” said one of the cops, who then told us that, since Bob’s death was in no way suspicious, the medical examiner wouldn’t be coming. There were now two possibilities: we could notify a funeral home to come collect the body, or Bob would be taken to the morgue at Bellevue. They urged us to notify a funeral home, since getting the body to Bellevue would be long and complicated.
Bob and I had long since made arrangements with the Neptune Society to be cremated, with the ashes to be scattered at sea. So I dialed Neptune, learned that it had morphed mysteriously into the New York Atlantic Funeral Services, and informed them of the situation. Since they were out on Long Island, it would take the hearse an hour and a half to come. The two cops told us that they couldn’t leave until Bob did, so Jacques was able to leave at 8 p.m., but the three of us settled in for a long wait.
While the two young cops waited, and I sat at my computer informing friends by e-mail of Bob’s death, I could hear the cops’ police radio reporting other situations: a man lying flat on his face in his apartment on 14thStreet; a woman raging about in her apartment on 10th Street, probably delusional; and so on.
“Boy,” I said, “our stuff here seems dull. You guys must get some pretty wild cases.”
“In a city of nine million,” said one of them, “we get anything that can happen.”
I nodded. “That’s exciting. For all its faults, I love this city."
“I love it, too,” said the officer. “Our job is never dull.”
I managed a quick snack in the kitchen, while one of the policemen went out to get both of them a bite to eat. An hour passed, then an hour and a half; still no hearse. Used to a bedtime at eight, I resigned myself to a long, sleepless night. A phone call: the driver of the hearse explained that a highway accident not involving him was causing delays; it would be more than an hour and a half. The cops asked if I would want a few minutes alone with Bob to say good-bye; I declined. That mummified thing on the bed wasn’t Bob, just some pitiful remnant of the Bob I had known; Bob was somewhere else. Finally the hearse arrived, and two burly guys strapped Bob to a stretcher and took him down the stairs.
“That’s how I’ll leave this place, when the time comes,” I told the two cops. “Horizontally, not vertically.” Four flights or not, who would give up a sun-drenched, rent-stabilized apartment with four rooms?
The cops smiled, shook hands with me, gave me a sheet with their names and the number of the case, and left. They had been great; all honor to the Sixth Precinct. At 11 p.m., exhausted, I finally fell into bed.
So ended the day of Bob’s passing. Not that anything had ended. There would be condolences by e-mail and telephone, a dozen beautiful white roses from a neighbor, and forms from the funeral home to be notarized and returned, so the cremation could proceed. And a will to reclaim from a safe deposit box, and initiating the mysteries of probate. One little problem: the death certificate should be done by Bob’s doctor, but he was vacationing in South Africa; without the certificate, the cremation could not proceed, nor much of anything else. So I would have to chase down the elusive colleague who was handling his cases in his absence. As for the apartment, after the to-do of eight strangers attempting resuscitation, the living room was topsy-turvy, with furniture and useful small items disarranged, and litter on the floor. Also, much to sort out, some of Bob’s things to keep and lots to get rid of. Things to do, things to do. The apartment was very quiet, a quiet that I rather liked. It was the beginning of a new chapter in my life.
Coming soon: Maybe the Way of Justice, with a friend's personal reminiscences of Dorothy Day.
BROWDERBOOKS
All books are available online as indicated, or from the author.
1. No Place for Normal: New York / Stories from the Most Exciting City in the World (Mill City Press, 2015). Winner of the Tenth Annual National Indie Excellence Award for Regional Non-Fiction; first place in the Travel category of the 2015-2016 Reader Views Literary Awards; and Honorable Mention in the Culture category of the Eric Hoffer Book Awards for 2016. All about anything and everything New York: alcoholics, abortionists, greenmarkets, Occupy Wall Street, the Gay Pride Parade, my mugging in Central Park, peyote visions, and an artist who made art of a blackened human toe. In her Reader Views review, Sheri Hoyte called it "a delightful treasure chest full of short stories about New York City."
If you love the city (or hate it), this may be the book for you. An award winner, it sold well at BookCon 2017 and 2018.
Reviews
"If you want wonderful inside tales about New York, this is the book for you. Cliff Browder has a way with his writing that makes the city I lived in for 40 plus years come alive in a new and delightful way. A refreshing view on NYC that will not disappoint." Five-star Amazon customer review by Bill L.
"To read No Place for Normal: New York is to enter into Cliff Browder’s rich and engaging sixty years of adult life in New York. Yes, he delves back before his time – from the city’s origins to the 19th Century that Ms. Trollope and Mr. Dickens encounter to robber barons and slums that marked highs and lows of the earlier Twentieth Century. But Browder has lived such an engaged and curious life that he can’t help but cross paths with every layer and period of society. There is something Whitmanesque in his outlook." Five-star Amazon customer review by Michael P. Hartnett.
Available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
2. Bill Hope: His Story (Anaphora Literary Press, 2017), the second novel in the Metropolis series. New York City, 1870s: From his cell in the gloomy prison known as the Tombs, young Bill Hope spills out in a torrent of words the story of his career as a pickpocket and shoplifter; his brutal treatment at Sing Sing and escape from another prison in a coffin; his forays into brownstones and polite society; and his sojourn among the “loonies” in a madhouse, from which he emerges to face betrayal and death threats, and possible involvement in a murder. Driving him throughout is a fierce desire for better, a persistent and undying hope.
For readers who like historical fiction and a fast-moving story.
Reviews"A real yarn of a story about a lovable pickpocket who gets into trouble and has a great adventure. A must read." Five-star Amazon customer review by nicole w brown.
"This was a fun book. The main character seemed like a cross between Huck Finn and a Charles Dickens character. I would recommend this." Four-star LibraryThing review by stephvin.
Available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
3. The Pleasuring of Men (Gival Press, 2011), the first novel in the Metropolis series, tells the story of a respectably raised young man who chooses to become a male prostitute in late 1860s New York and falls in love with his most difficult client.
What was the gay scene like in nineteenth-century New York? Gay romance, but no porn. Women have read it and reviewed it. (The cover illustration doesn't hurt.)
Reviews
"At times amusing, gritty, heartfelt and a little sexy -- this would make a great summer read." Four-star Amazon customer review by BobW.
"Really more of a fantasy of a 19th century gay life than any kind of historical representation of the same." Three-star Goodreads review by Rachel.
"The detail Browder brings to this glimpse into history is only equaled by his writing of credible and interesting characters. Highly recommended." Five-star Goodreads review by Nan Hawthorne.
Available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
4. Fascinating New Yorkers: Power Freaks, Mobsters, Liberated Women, Creators, Queers, and Crazies (Black Rose Writing, 2018).
Short biographical sketches of colorful people who lived or died in New York. A cardinal who led a double life, a serial killer, a baroness with a tomato-can bra, and a film star whose funeral caused an all-day riot.
Reviews
"Fascinating New Yorkers by Clifford Browder was like sitting down with a dear friend and catching up on the latest gossip and stories. Written with a flair to keep the reader turning the pages, I couldn't stop reading it and thinking about the subjects of each New Yorker. I love NYC and this book just added to the list of reasons why, a must read for those who love NYC and the people who have lived there." Five-star NetGalley review by Patty Ramirez, librarian.
"Unputdownable." Five-star review by Dipali Sen, retired librarian.
"I felt like I was gossiping with a friend when reading this, as the author wrote about New Yorkers who are unique in one way or another. I am hoping for another book featuring more New Yorkers, as I couldn't put this down and read it in one sitting!" Five-star NetGalley review by Cristie Underwood.
© 2018 Clifford Browder
August 19, 2018
369. Power: Reapers and Railroads, an Off-Key Diva, the Rio Puerco, and Scandals Galore
A Reader Views review of Fascinating New Yorkers by Paige Lovitt concludes: "Readers will enjoy Clifford Browder’s lively, descriptive writing. Fans of non-fiction and more recent history will really appreciate the research that he put into these pages. His writing will definitely captivate your interest as it did mine. 'Fascinating New Yorkers' is a pleasure to read and I look forward to reading more works by this author."
To get word of future reviews, giveaways, and other news, sign up using the form in the sidebar on the right.
The print version of Fascinating New Yorkers is available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Excellent reviews so far; see below. The e-book version is now available from Amazon with Kindle for $4.99.
For my other books, see BROWDERBOOKS following the post below.
Short biographical sketches of colorful people who lived or died in New York. A cardinal who led a double life, a serial killer, a baroness with a tomato-can bra, and a film star whose funeral caused an all-day riot. Plus Andy Warhol, Boss Tweed, J. P. Morgan and his purple nose, Al Sharpton, Ayn Rand, and Polly Adler, Queen of Tarts.
Reviews
"Fascinating New Yorkers by Clifford Browder was like sitting down with a dear friend and catching up on the latest gossip and stories. Written with a flair to keep the reader turning the pages, I couldn't stop reading it and thinking about the subjects of each New Yorker. I love NYC and this book just added to the list of reasons why, a must read for those who love NYC and the people who have lived there." Five-star NetGalley review by Patty Ramirez, librarian.
"Unputdownable." Five-star review by Dipali Sen, retired librarian.
"I felt like I was gossiping with a friend when reading this, as the author wrote about New Yorkers who are unique in one way or another. I am hoping for another book featuring more New Yorkers, as I couldn't put this down and read it in one sitting!" Five-star NetGalley review by Cristie Underwood.
THE WAY OF POWER
It has been said that in any population 5% want power, 5% want justice, and the other 90% simply want to get on with their lives. So this post deals with the first group, those who embrace the Way of Power.
Power means getting others to do your bidding, and having the ability to make things happen. When I think of those with power, I think immediately of that trio of dictators who flourished in the 1930s and for a while thereafter: Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin. And a rum bunch they were, causing the death of millions and, especially in the case of the first two, bringing disaster and ruin upon their countries and themselves. But why not add Genghis Khan, Tamburlaine, Julius Caesar, Augustus, Charlemagne, Louis XIV, Frederick the Great, Napoleon, Bismarck, the U.S. robber barons, J.P. Morgan, Kaiser Wilhelm II, Lenin, Putin, most of our presidents, and the Donald? Some of them brought ill, some of them did good, and most of them managed a bit of both.
But one can well ask, “Aren’t there men and women of power who for the most part did good?” I would nominate the two Roosevelts, Abraham Lincoln, and Mayor La Guardia of New York. I’m no doubt omitting names from other cultures that I’m not familiar with. And haven’t there been women with power? Of course. Cleopatra (though we know precious little about her), Elizabeth I of England, Catherine the Great of Russia, Margaret Thatcher, and maybe Queen Victoria, though she really lacked true political power.
But there is more to the Way of Power than rosters of famous people. Since I grew up in a suburb of Chicago, let’s look at the most famous moneyed clan of Second City and how they affected my family and myself. I mean, of course, the McCormicks. Virginia-born Cyrus Hall McCormick was the inventor in 1831 of the McCormick reaper, a horse-drawn contraption that let one man do the work of many. As farmers learned that the darned thing really worked, orders poured in, including many from the Midwest, where the farms were bigger and the ground more level than in the East. In 1847 McCormick moved to Chicago and, with help from his brothers, established a factory there that was soon turning out thousands of reapers. An army of salesmen went out into the field, farmers bought, money poured in, and since Cyrus finally got around to marrying and having children, Chicago had its first great moneyed clan of the Gilded Age. When Cyrus died in 1884, his sons and grandson took over, and the reaper, horse-drawn at first and then motorized, continued to reap prodigious profits, including even in Europe. In 1902 the eldest son, Cyrus Jr., teamed up with J.P. Morgan to create the International Harvester Company, and it was under this name that I first heard of it.
The McCormick reaper, circa 1910. And heard of it aplenty, for long before I arrived on the scene in 1928, my father, an Indiana-born lawyer who specialized in railroad law, had gone to work for the company in Chicago and remained in its employ till his retirement. During the Great Recession of the 1930s, my father got a steady salary from Harvester, so McCormick money saw us through. When my father went to Washington to plead a case before the Supreme Court, as he did more than once, he would bring my brother and me little bars of soap with the name of some impressive hotel. The cases he pleaded involved the baffling intricacies of railroad law and were not something the general public would hear about. Sometimes, when preparing a case, he would spread out on a card table in the living room the huge map of some urban location with railroad tracks and intersections indicated. We never asked him what was involved, since he lacked the ability to explain legal complexities in terms a layman could grasp, but it surely involved Harvester and/or the Illinois Northern Railroad. Harvester owned that railroad and my father was secretary of it. Secretary of a railroad – sounds great, doesn’t it? Real power! Alas, no. The Illinois Northern was a dinky little line with all of 2.38 miles of track within the city limits of Chicago. Its sole purpose was to link up the different railroads that converged on the city, so that cars could be shifted from one line to another. And what does this have to do with International Harvester? Two of its plants were close by and needed connections to ship their products by rail.
An International Harvester dealer, 1930s. Trucks as well as tractors.As a child I and my brother often visited my father’s office on the 18th floor of the spanking new Harvester building at 180 North Michigan Avenue, just north of the Loop. Everything about that soaring edifice said money and power. From the windows of my father’s office there was a magnificent view out past Michigan Avenue, showing the submerged tracks of the Illinois Central Railroad, whose trains crawled there like tiny toys, unseen from the avenue. Beyond those tracks lay the broad stretches of Grant Park and, beyond that, Lake Michigan. Like the building itself, that view said money and power. My father once took his sons to the treasurer’s office, where the treasurer showed us neat stacks of crisp, new ten-thousand-dollar and even one-hundred-thousand-dollar bills; our eyes popped. Like the building itself, the lakeside view and those bills said money and power, and it all had to do with the McCormicks.
Here speaks power. Who else would need such a denomination?A history buff, I studied them up and from my parents gleaned scraps of gossip. Cyrus Sr. had two sons of interest, Cyrus Jr., his successor, and Harold Fowler, whom my father described, without disparagement, as “sensitive.” In 1895 Harold married Edith Rockefeller, the youngest daughter of John D. Rockefeller. “The marriage of the century,” my mother called it, echoing the press of that time, for it united in holy matrimony a generous portion of the International Harvester millions and the Standard Oil millions. The richest couple in Chicago, they moved into a 40-room mansion on Lake Shore Drive that she fixed up like a French-style palace. But she and her father had had a stormy relationship, since her extravagance outraged his frugality, which hardly boded well for her marriage.
Harold and Edith, 1895. Her hat alone spells trouble.Indeed, Edith proved to be a troubled wife and mother, and a spendthrift as well, creating a lavish 300-acre country retreat for herself in Lake Forest, Illinois, that cost over $5 million and was rarely used, though it was kept fully staffed and ready, in case she should decide on a whim to show up there. Meanwhile she was buying jewels like crazy, including an emerald necklace with stones that had once graced the throat of Catherine the Great. But when two of her children died, and she had a long bout of tuberculosis, she sank into a depression and in 1913 went to Zurich to be treated by the psychoanalyst Carl Jung, a treatment then new enough to be the province of the wealthy elite. She stayed in Zurich for eight years, first as a patient and then as a patron of Jung's, and finally as a lay analyst herself. In 1918 James Joyce, a struggling young writer also living in Zurich, received a gift of 12,000 francs from an anonymous donor who turned out to be Edith Rockefeller McCormick. But when she urged him to be analyzed by Jung and he refused, she stopped her payments.
Edith stayed abroad for eight long years. Eight years for her three surviving children to have no mother. And eight years for her forsaken spouse, a great fan and patron of the opera, to transfer his interest to an aspiring singer by the name of Ganna Walska. Edith finally returned to America in 1921, and before the end of the year she and Harold had divorced. After that they met chiefly in court in lawsuits over the divorce agreement. Harold was certainly glad to be clear of her, all the more so since in 1923 she informed the press she had come to realize that she was the reincarnation of the wife of King Tutankhamen, whose tomb had just been discovered.
Edith's life post-Harold can be summarized in one word: grandeur. She lived in opulence, gave formal dinners with the menu in French and the servants in knee breeches, and entertained guests in her opera box wearing jewels worth millions. Every morning she walked Lake Shore Drive followed at ten paces by one of the six private detectives on her staff. But she was also a great patron of the arts and gave generously to worthy causes. She also acquired a paid boyfriend whom she put up in the Drake Hotel. Developing a taste for film, she and the boyfriend would go each afternoon in one of her plum-colored Rolls-Royces, escorted by detectives, to the cinema, where they saw as many as three films a day. When she died in 1932, her fortune was greatly diminished. Sold by her heirs, some of her jewels ended up adorning heiress Barbara Hutton's tiara, and others, Elizabeth Taylor's necklace.
A year after his divorce from Edith, Harold, age 50 and fortified by implanted animal glands to improve potency, married the Polish-born opera singer Ganna Walska in a quiet civil ceremony in Paris. It was his second marriage and her fourth. Many sources say that he then began promoting her career as an aspiring singer, but my father told me that he wasn’t sure that she even spent one night with him before taking off with a chunk of his money. This was probably gossip prompted by later developments.
Harold and Ganna, 1922. Spliced, I gather. (The photograph, I mean.)
La Walska, date unknown, but while she was Mrs. Harold McCormick. As for Madame Walska’s career, there was just one problem: she was a lousy singer. Try as she did, she simply couldn’t bring it off. Soon after the wedding she bought the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in Paris – with her own money, she insisted, and not his – but vowed not to appear there until she gained recognition as an artist. Recognition never came. Appearing in the opera Fedora in Havana, she was so persistently off key that the audience pelted her with rotten vegetables. (They must have come well prepared.) But at least she had flair. She used to drive about, they say, in a limousine the length of a city block. By the time she and Harold divorced in 1931, her career was just about over. Harold's promotion of that career inspired Orson Wells in his film Citizen Kane, whose Hearst-like protagonist similarly promotes the career of a young woman not equipped for opera (whereas I had thought the inspiration came from Hearst's promoting the film career of his mistress, Marion Davies). Flamboyant as ever, la Walska went on to marry two more husbands, and in 1941 purchased an estate near Santa Barbara, California, that she named Lotusland and turned into a world-famous garden that is open to the public today. Meanwhile Harold became chairman of the board of the Harvester company in 1935, married his third wife, Adah Wilson, a trained nurse, in 1938, and died, unflamboyantly, in 1941.
With the third generation of McCormicks I had a brief encounter. One day when I visited my father in his office and we were waiting for the elevator while going out to lunch, a well-dressed man greeted my father in the hall, “Well Clifford, with this mild weather, it’s time to get out those golf clubs!” My father then introduced me to Fowler McCormick, Harold’s son. “Glad to meet you, sir,” I said, and shook his hand. I was impressed, for he had greeted my father by his first name and knew that he played golf, which implied a more than casual acquaintance. In the elevator Fowler McCormick and my father exchanged a few more pleasantries and then we went our separate ways, Fowler McCormick to who knows what, and my father and I to a restaurant on South Michigan Avenue in the Railroad Exchange Building, the very name of which said power. (The Santa Fe and other railroads had offices there.) My father watched, delighted, as his younger son, usually a slow and picky eater, gobbled with gusto some juicy roast beef sliced very thin.
For me, it wasn’t the lunch that made the day memorable, but the brief encounter with Fowler McCormick. Well-groomed and well-mannered, with a resonant voice and an affable manner, he struck me as different, special, unique. Born to money and power, he had had all the advantages -- including, at his mother's insistence, a kindergarten where only French was spoken -- but they had served him well. He was, in the best sense of the word, a gentleman, and quite open to contact with his less privileged fellow citizens. And it must be said for the McCormick men, they weren't playboys; they helped manage International Harvester. But my family and hundreds like us were only on the fringe of power. We were not of that world, the world of Fowler McCormick, for we were very middle class and quite content to be so.
But there was more, much more, to the Fowler McCormick story than that. My father told me that all Harold McCormick’s children, Fowler and his two younger sisters, married spouses much older than themselves. They did this, he conjectured, in hopes of finding the attention and support that their mother, Edith Rockefeller, had been unable to give them. In Fowler’s case this meant involvement, however distantly, in a scandalous divorce case.
In 1921 James A. Stillman, president of the National City Bank of New York, filed for divorce, accusing his wife, Anne Urquhart Potter, of infidelity, alleging that her youngest child, Guy, was the son of a half-blood Indian guide with whom she had allegedly kept company in the Canadian wilderness. His wife – known to her friends as “Fifi” -- vigorously denied the charge and accused him of fathering an illegitimate child with a chorus girl, a charge that he later confessed to. A messy business, much reported in the press, even with a front-page headline in the sedate New York Times. Forthcoming were accounts of Fifi Stillman disappearing into the northern wilds with Fred Beauvais, with no telling where or how they spent the chilly nights. And the woodsman reportedly sent her letters addressed to "My Dearest Honey" and threatening to kill anyone "down there" who tried to make love to her. Since James Stillman had inherited $45 million from his father, a hefty sum was involved, which the youngest son might or might not inherit a portion of. But in light of the scandal, James Stillman had to resign as president of his bank.
As my father told it, Guy Stillman was dark complexioned, hence the husband’s accusation. He also told me that suddenly, to the surprise of everyone, Fowler McCormick showed up to give moral support to the wife. Though still a senior at Princeton, Fowler announced that he would marry Fifi, the mother of his college roommate, as soon as she divorced her husband. (Fred Beauvais's threats, if he knew of them, did not deter him.) Harold and Edith, his divorced parents, joined together to oppose the marriage, but Fifi, already the mother of four children, was an attractive and adventurous redhead, and an accomplished flirt whom young men found irresistible. When the court refused Stillman his divorce, Fifi in turn filed for divorce, but accounts differ as to what then happened. The husband in time acknowledged that he was Guy’s father, and in 1926 the couple, seemingly reconciled, are said to have sailed to Europe to receive counseling from Carl Jung. (Helping the reconciliation may have been the husband's gift to Fifi of a $400,000 necklace.) Another version, which I find more reliable, says that Harold and Edith induced Jung, for a generous sum, to come to America, where Fowler met him at the dock. (A family friend footed the bill, for Edith's finances were complicated, and Harold's were tied up with la Walska.) The eminent psychoanalyst then advised Fowler against the marriage, but to no avail. Leaving Fred Beauvais to the northern wilds, Fifi evidently began a liaison with Fowler that lasted until her divorce in 1931. Then, on the very day of her divorce, she married Fowler; she was 52, he was 33. Photographs show her even in her later years to be a well dressed, attractive woman. And when young Guy Stillman married in 1938, who should meet again in Chicago for the wedding? Fowler, now a V.P. with Harvester; a hefty but still stylish Fifi, who was now living quietly and accompanying her husband on business trips abroad; and her former husband, James Stillman, reinstated as president of his bank. All was smiley smiles, and they drank a toast to the bride and groom, who then took off for Niagara Falls.
Fifi and Fowler, now a happy couple.I almost worked for International Harvester, for I was interviewed for a possible summer job while in high school. Instructed by my father, I went in a jacket and tie, well scrubbed. The interviewer, a stern-faced older woman, called me “Mr. Browder,” which rather put me off, and advised me that the work, if an opening occurred, would be routine. That was fine by me, since I would be working for my father’s company, the fabled International Harvester. Alas, when an opening occurred, I was felled by some adolescent ailment and couldn’t take the job.
When I went off to college, my school was Pomona, in Claremont, a small town in southern California. By luck the Santa Fe line ran right through the town. Harvester must have given Santa Fe a lot of business, for my father, as a Harvester employee and a railroad man, got me a pass on the railroad. So for the next four years I traveled to and from college on the California Limited, the slowest train on the line, which took three nights and two days to get to California – one whole night and day longer than any other Santa Fe train. Limited indeed, and the round trip swallowed up half my Christmas vacation, but when you’ve got a free pass, you don’t complain. So eleven times I spent one whole day crossing the flats of Kansas, the only state that still had prohibition, where in every town a grain elevator loomed up like a medieval castle. And eleven times I spent another whole day in the arid Southwest, where the only grassy lawn in town graced the Santa Fe station, and I could feast my eyes on the sluggish, muddy windings of the Rio Puerco (Pig River). (No twelfth time? No, for one summer I avoided the trip by flying to Alaska to work in a kitchen on a military base. But that’s another story.)
The Rio Puerco today. Long ago I repeatedly experienced it, thanks to Harvester connections.That was not my last connection to Harvester. When, just out of college, I got a Fulbright scholarship to France, it was a Harvester employee who helped me get my passport. Time was short, but he had contacts where it mattered, for he was always getting passports for Harvester people going abroad. He got my passport, as told me with obvious satisfaction, in record time.
If I have lingered on the vicissitudes of the McCormicks and seemingly strayed from the subject of power, it’s to show that the Way of Power involves much more than giving orders and getting people to obey. It involves big new buildings with fabulous views; stacks of crisp new hundred-thousand-dollar bills; railroads both big and small; cases before the Supreme Court; affable, well-dressed heirs; ballyhooed weddings and scandals and divorces; and connections, connections, connections.
Obviously, this post has focused on that form of power so typical of capitalism: the corporation. “Corporations have no soul” proclaimed the young rebels of the 1960s, and Big Tobacco would seem to bear them out. But in its heyday International Harvester developed useful products, gave steady income to investors, and provided jobs for workers. Whatever their faults – and they are legion -- corporations know how to manage complex operations that often, though not always, benefit society. Before doing away with them, be sure that their elimination won’t create more problems than it solves.
When my father died, I inherited some International Harvester stock. It was a solid, dividend-paying blue-chip and well worth holding. But having been raised on Harvester money, I didn’t think I could be objective about it, so I sold it. When Brooks McCormick, a great grand nephew of the founder, retired from Harvester in 1980, he was the last McCormick involved in managing the company. By then Harvester had fallen on hard times. It was too big, too unwieldy. It failed to change with the times, and mounting costs brought years of losses. Finally it downsized, sold off its agricultural products division, and in 1986 became Navistar International, a manufacturer of trucks and buses. Its glory days were over. So it goes with the Way of Power; power doesn’t last forever.
Coming soon: Dying in the City. A personal take on a familiar but often troubling subject.
BROWDERBOOKS
All books are available online as indicated, or from the author.
1. No Place for Normal: New York / Stories from the Most Exciting City in the World (Mill City Press, 2015). Winner of the Tenth Annual National Indie Excellence Award for Regional Non-Fiction; first place in the Travel category of the 2015-2016 Reader Views Literary Awards; and Honorable Mention in the Culture category of the Eric Hoffer Book Awards for 2016. All about anything and everything New York: alcoholics, abortionists, greenmarkets, Occupy Wall Street, the Gay Pride Parade, my mugging in Central Park, peyote visions, and an artist who made art of a blackened human toe. In her Reader Views review, Sheri Hoyte called it "a delightful treasure chest full of short stories about New York City."
If you love the city (or hate it), this may be the book for you. An award winner, it sold well at BookCon 2017 and 2018.
Review
"If you want wonderful inside tales about New York, this is the book for you. Cliff Browder has a way with his writing that makes the city I lived in for 40 plus years come alive in a new and delightful way. A refreshing view on NYC that will not disappoint." Five-star Amazon customer review by Bill L.
Available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
2. Bill Hope: His Story (Anaphora Literary Press, 2017), the second novel in the Metropolis series. New York City, 1870s: From his cell in the gloomy prison known as the Tombs, young Bill Hope spills out in a torrent of words the story of his career as a pickpocket and shoplifter; his brutal treatment at Sing Sing and escape from another prison in a coffin; his forays into brownstones and polite society; and his sojourn among the “loonies” in a madhouse, from which he emerges to face betrayal and death threats, and possible involvement in a murder. Driving him throughout is a fierce desire for better, a persistent and undying hope.
For readers who like historical fiction and a fast-moving story.
Reviews"A real yarn of a story about a lovable pickpocket who gets into trouble and has a great adventure. A must read." Five-star Amazon customer review by nicole w brown.
"This was a fun book. The main character seemed like a cross between Huck Finn and a Charles Dickens character. I would recommend this." Four-star LibraryThing review by stephvin.
Available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
3. Dark Knowledge (Anaphora Literary Press, 2018), the third novel in the Metropolis series. Adult and young adult. A fast-moving historical novel about New York City and the slave trade, with the sights and sounds and smells of the waterfront.
The back cover summary:New York City, late 1860s. When young Chris Harmony learns that members of his family may have been involved in the illegal pre-Civil War slave trade, taking slaves from Africa to Cuba, he is appalled. Determined to learn the truth, he begins an investigation that takes him into a dingy waterfront saloon, musty old maritime records that yield startling secrets, and elegant brownstone parlors that may have been furnished by the trade. Since those once involved dread exposure, he meets denials and evasions, then threats, and a key witness is murdered. Chris has vivid fantasies of the suffering slaves on the ships and their savage revolts. How could seemingly respectable people be involved in so abhorrent a trade, and how did they avoid exposure? And what price must Chris pay to learn the painful truth and proclaim it?
Reviews
"A lively and entertaining tale. The writing styles, plot, pace and character development were excellent." Four-star LibraryThing early review by BridgitDavis.
"At first the plot ... seemed a bit contrived, but I was soon swept up in the tale." Four-star LibraryThing early review by snash.
"I am glad that I have read this book as it goes into great detail and the presentation is amazing. The Author obviously knows his stuff." Four-star LibraryThing early review by Moiser20.
Available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
4. The Pleasuring of Men (Gival Press, 2011), the first novel in the Metropolis series, tells the story of a respectably raised young man who chooses to become a male prostitute in late 1860s New York and falls in love with his most difficult client.
What was the gay scene like in nineteenth-century New York? Gay romance, if you like, but no porn (I don't do porn). Women have read it and reviewed it. (The cover illustration doesn't hurt.)
Reviews
"At times amusing, gritty, heartfelt and a little sexy -- this would make a great summer read." Four-star Amazon customer review by BobW.
"Really more of a fantasy of a 19th century gay life than any kind of historical representation of the same." Three-star Goodreads review by Rachel.
"The detail Browder brings to this glimpse into history is only equaled by his writing of credible and interesting characters. Highly recommended." Five-star Goodreads review by Nan Hawthorne.
Available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
© 2018 Clifford Browder
August 12, 2018
368. Faith: Stained Glass, Big Mama, Love, and the Petrified Heart of a Bishop
The good reviews of Fascinating New Yorkers keep coming in. The latest one, by Paige Lovitt for Reader Views, concludes: "Readers will enjoy Clifford Browder’s lively, descriptive writing. Fans of non-fiction and more recent history will really appreciate the research that he put into these pages. His writing will definitely captivate your interest as it did mine. 'Fascinating New Yorkers' is a pleasure to read and I look forward to reading more works by this author."
To get word of future reviews, giveaways, and other news, sign up using the form in the sidebar on the right.
The print version of Fascinating New Yorkers is available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble. The e-book version is available from Amazon with Kindle for $4.99. For more reviews, see below.
For my other books, see BROWDERBOOKS following the post below.
Short biographical sketches of colorful people who lived or died in New York. A cardinal who led a double life, a serial killer, a baroness with a tomato-can bra, and a film star whose funeral caused an all-day riot. And many more.
Reviews
"Fascinating New Yorkers by Clifford Browder was like sitting down with a dear friend and catching up on the latest gossip and stories.... A must read for those who love NYC and the people who have lived there." Five-star NetGalley review by Patty Ramirez, librarian.
"Unputdownable." Five-star review by Dipali Sen, retired Jersey City librarian.
"I couldn't put this down and read it in one sitting!" Five-star NetGalley review by Cristie Underwood.
THE WAY OF FAITH
This is the first of a series of posts about how we cope with this astonishing, baffling, exciting, and somewhat absurd phenomenon known as life. Here we are, tiny blobs of matter squirming across the face of the earth, most of us not knowing how we got here or what to do about it. We are haunted – some of us, at least – by the rich, immense, heartbreaking fragility of it all, and the prospect of leaving this life without having accomplished anything meaningful, of dropping into the void with a soft whish or a dry thud and vanishing forever. Think, in a city like New York, of those who die alone, their remains unclaimed by any next of kin, or sometimes even unidentified. They end up in cheap pine coffins, marked only with a number, on Hart Island in the Bronx, near City Island. On that small island convicts deposit them, coffin stacked on coffin, in the graves they have dug. Over a million bodies are interred on this forbidden island -- forbidden because it also harbors the crumbling remains of abandoned facilities, entering which is a threat to limb and life. And even if we will be duly claimed and appropriately buried elsewhere, or cremated in a black puff of smoke, the seeming meaninglessness can be devastating. But never underestimate the resources of the human mind. We have devised, by my count, seven ways to cope with this dilemma. Here now is the first, the Way of Faith.
Convicts burying coffins on Hart Island, circa 1890.The Way of Faith involves a religion. Any religion will do, but since I grew up in it, I’ll cite Christianity. It posits the existence of an all-knowing, all-wise, all-good God, who cares passionately about each and every one of us and welcomes us – on his terms – with open arms. No matter how trivial and frustrating our life may be, He – or She or It – sees us as worthy of his – or her or its – love and compassion. Yes, there may be certain terms involved – what they are depends on which variety of Christianity you are drawn to – but knowing that this God exists gives meaning to your life and the world you are trying to cope with. Skeptics can scoff, but the Way of Faith is embraced, and always has been, by multitudes. It injects meaning into the universe, heals despair, lifts us from the Slough of Despond.
Of course there are problems. My friend Ed was raised a Catholic in Denver and attended Marquette, a Jesuit university in Milwaukee. Ah, those Jesuits, I once worked for them and got to know those flowing black robes; they are a savvy bunch. But on coming to New York, Ed began to question the strait-jacketing faith of his upbringing, wrenched free of it at last, and joined the ranks of the unchurched, or perhaps one should say the de-churched.
Similarly, my friend John grew up in Minneapolis and was subjected by his mother to a church where the service was in Finnish, not a word of which he understood. The faith he was caught up in was Laestadianism, a fundamentalist branch of Lutheranism that forbade attending movies, consuming alcohol, and dancing. He lost his faith while at the University of Minnesota, and on coming to New York became a full-fledged atheist and remained one until the day he died. Clearly, the Way of Faith is not for everyone. But Ed had a quiet, somewhat restrained manner that reminded me of university students in France who had been to a Catholic collège, and not the secular lycée. They had that same polite, restrained manner, which other students noticed and commented on, though without disparagement.
My own story was a happier one. I grew up in Evanston, a suburb of Chicago, where I attended Sunday School at a very liberal Methodist church that imposed no catechism or other rigid doctrine. These gentle Methodists just taught us a few simple moral principles and urged us to be generous to “those less fortunate than ourselves.” I imbibed this readily and painlessly, and even participated in the well-attended annual Christmas pageant, which told dramatically the story of the Nativity. At the pageant's end, the high school and adult church choirs surged down the church’s aisles, bringing the spectators to their feet, as we robed choristers, electric candles held high, gave forth with resonance the triumphant strains of Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus. In that joyful blast of voices my own faulty vocalizing went undetected.
Only in my senior year at high school did I drift away from the church, preoccupied as I was with (1) going steady, and (2) my duties as a cadet major commanding a battalion in our local MTC corps, a distant cousin of the ROTC. (A cadet major – I kid you not. A dubious commitment, but that’s another story.)
My Methodist God was good-natured, somewhat distant, and not too demanding. In college, hoping to get a scholarship to study in France, I read Henry Adams’s Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres, and so, thanks to this scion of an illustrious WASP clan that had given us two presidents, I encountered that very Catholic presence, the Virgin. In conveying the meaningfulness and beauty of Chartres cathedral, Adams explains that this is her shrine, her home. She is there, in image and in spirit, surrounded by flickering tapers, and she understands. She can be approached, can be prayed to, can be enlisted on our side when her son judges us in the final and terrifying Judgment.
Later, when I got to France, I would visit that cathedral in the winter, when tourist crowds were absent. There I looked in wonder at the soaring Gothic arches, the spiritually infused sculpture at the portals, and the stained glass windows high above. Above all I stared in awe at the rose windows that in the faint wintry light seemed to detach themselves from the stone walls and hang magically in space. Yes, there was beauty here, and magic, that only the Way of Faith can produce. So began my Protestant flirtation with Catholicism. Any faith that could produce such marvels could not be dismissed lightly. One could almost forget the Pope and the male hierarchy, gobs of history, and the bundle of dogma that otherwise kept me off.
ChosoviThe Virgin, as represented in medieval and Renaissance art, was the most benign embodiment of the Big Mama that would haunt my writing in the years to come. She kept popping up, unsummoned, bearing such names as Madonna and Venus and Great Mother and Kali and Eve, sometimes sweet and enticing, sometimes monstrous and terrifying, always basic and inescapable. That her most benign form was venerated by Catholics was not the doing of the male hierarchy, who saw in Woman the confounding temptress Eve. Our Lady was forced upon them by the people, who needed a softened and compassionate female deity, a supreme Mother who could be swayed by prayer, who could embrace them with unjudging love. If you can’t lick ‘em, join ‘em, so the Church made room for her and, in time, the great Gothic cathedrals were built and dedicated to her, and in them she reigned supreme.
The south rose window; this only gives a hint.MMensler
In art she has often been sentimentalized, but I have seen her free from sentiment in certain works. In Matthias Grünewald’s Isenheim Altarpiece in Colmar, in Alsace, she grieves fiercely for the horrifying death of her son, whose hands, nailed to the cross, seem to clutch in agony. For me, the whole scene, uncluttered, has a haunting starkness. And in that other work of his, the Stuppach Madonna in Germany, in a scene as richly and joyfully cluttered as the Colmar Crucifixion is bare, she radiates a maternal blond beauty that I find quite moving. And this despite her being displayed in a parish church where one was allowed to see her only for a limited amount of time while, as I recall, some insipid music was played. I still prefer her to Titian’s overwrought Assumption of the Virgin in Venice, where she soars aloft watched by enraptured well-garbed apostles and a clutch of naked putti, inspiring in my skeptical mind the comment, “Boy, that is some assumption!”
The Virgin is in white on the left, with John the Baptist pointing on the right.The anatomy and proportions are way off, but who cares?
The Stuppach Madonna. This only suggests the radiance of the original.Gregorian chants are another aspect of Catholicism that inspires me; I am entranced by their simplicity and purity. To reconnect with them, recently I attended a a short Episcopal church service mostly in plainsong, a monophonic chant akin to the Gregorian. And for something more complex, more massively overwhelming, how about Bach’s Mass in B Minor? For inspiring the arts, Catholicism can’t be beat. Protestantism in its purest form has a touch of the ascetic; its suspicion of idolatry makes the visual arts suspect. But if sung by a really good choir, its hymns can be poignant and inspiring.
A few times in my life I have encountered a truly spiritual person and was moved by something indefinable that they seemed to radiate. One was Dr. Edmond D. Soper, who taught my Sunday School class my junior year in high school; he was gentle, he was knowledgeable, he was wise. Another was an English Jesuit, Father Martin D’Arcy, who visited the University of San Francisco, a Jesuit school where I was working in the library. A short man with an almost comical manner, he had a great sense of humor. In a talk he gave, he told of a woman, once a great beauty but now, as he put it, “all paint,” who in his presence insisted that she too could go to the communion rail. “Come off it, Gladys,” said her male companion. “He knows you’re living in sin.” It’s my experience that truly spiritual people have a keen sense of humor; they can laugh at both others and themselves.
What about Catholicism still holds me off? The smugness of certain Catholics – not all, by any means – that they have the Truth and can prove it, that anyone disagreeing with them is grievously and pitifully mistaken. Personally, I agree with a sign posted in my health foods store:
TRUTH IS ONEPATHS ARE MANY
If I can never be, in the strictest sense, a Christian, whether Catholic or Protestant, it’s because I can’t accept Christianity’s claim of exclusiveness. For me, it cannot be the only path to true faith and salvation.
Also troubling is Catholicism’s obsession with the physical, leading to the veneration of relics. I recall staring in wonder and bafflement at shadowy cases in some provincial church in France containing bits of hair and bone, presumably the remains of some martyred local saint. And in Puebla, Mexico, I remember seeing, on exhibit in the former secret convent of Santa Monica, the petrified heart of a bishop. More comprehensible for me were the baroque paintings there of suffering male martyrs, their tortured bare flesh well calculated to inspire in their female votaries a delicious mix of the spiritual and sensual. As for the need of a relic for dedicating churches in the New World, what a great business it was for the churches of the Old World, who could divvy up bits of bone and hair and sell them to their transatlantic confrères.
Reliquary of the Holy Thorn, Saint-Etienne.Jstribick
Worship of relics can easily be carried to extremes. Christ's blood, his crown of thorns, and splinters of the cross have been venerated. When contending cities fought for the remains of a saint, those remains were sometimes divvied up. Saint Catherine of Siena's body is enshrined in Rome, but her native Siena, thanks to a bit of body snatching and reputed spiritual hanky-panky, displays her mummified head and, in a separate reliquary, her right thumb. I find the head downright weird and morbid.
José LuizWhen I learned that some French nuns in the nineteenth century claimed to have discovered the Holy Prepuce, Jesus's foreskin, the only part of him left behind on earth, I was vastly amused and had to acknowledge that those girls never missed a trick. And when, later, I learned that in the Middle Ages anywhere from 8 to 18 holy foreskins were venerated in different European cities at the same time, I could only marvel at this miraculous multiplication. Today -- miraculously again -- they all seem to have disappeared. And to its credit, the Church in recent times has tried to evaluate such claims and reject the dubious ones.
Of course many devout Catholics scoff at the veneration of relics and cleave to the core of their religion. How can I argue with a friend of mine, a Sister of Mercy, who has told of awakening from three days of anesthesia, following brain surgery for removal of a life-threatening tumor, to experience a debilitated body and a soaring spirit, as she babbled on to visitors about overwhelming, healing, and all-embracing Love? From that moment on, her life was changed profoundly. She looked at nature with fresh eyes, and through Love was able to triumph over intense physical suffering and the recovered memory of childhood abuse. Such is the Way of Faith at its best. It is overwhelming, it is awe-inspiring.
Coming soon: A very different way of coping, embraced only by a few, but with consequences for all: The Way of Power.
BROWDERBOOKS
All books are available online as indicated, or from the author.
1. No Place for Normal: New York / Stories from the Most Exciting City in the World (Mill City Press, 2015). Winner of the Tenth Annual National Indie Excellence Award for Regional Non-Fiction; first place in the Travel category of the 2015-2016 Reader Views Literary Awards; and Honorable Mention in the Culture category of the Eric Hoffer Book Awards for 2016. All about anything and everything New York: alcoholics, abortionists, greenmarkets, Occupy Wall Street, the Gay Pride Parade, my mugging in Central Park, peyote visions, and an artist who made art of a blackened human toe. I
If you love the city (or hate it), this may be the book for you. An award winner, it sold well at BookCon 2017 and 2018.
Review
"If you want wonderful inside tales about New York, this is the book for you. Cliff Browder has a way with his writing that makes the city I lived in for 40 plus years come alive in a new and delightful way. A refreshing view on NYC that will not disappoint." Five-star Amazon customer review by Bill L.
Available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
2. Bill Hope: His Story (Anaphora Literary Press, 2017), the second novel in the Metropolis series. New York City, 1870s: From his cell in the gloomy prison known as the Tombs, young Bill Hope spills out in a torrent of words the story of his career as a pickpocket and shoplifter; his brutal treatment at Sing Sing and escape from another prison in a coffin; his forays into brownstones and polite society; and his sojourn among the “loonies” in a madhouse, from which he emerges to face betrayal and death threats, and possible involvement in a murder. Driving him throughout is a fierce desire for better, a persistent and undying hope.
For readers who like historical fiction and a fast-moving story.
Reviews"A real yarn of a story about a lovable pickpocket who gets into trouble and has a great adventure. A must read." Five-star Amazon customer review by nicole w brown.
"This was a fun book. The main character seemed like a cross between Huck Finn and a Charles Dickens character. I would recommend this." Four-star LibraryThing review by stephvin.
Available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
3. Dark Knowledge (Anaphora Literary Press, 2018), the third novel in the Metropolis series. Adult and young adult. A fast-moving historical novel about New York City and the slave trade, with the sights and sounds and smells of the waterfront.
New York City, late 1860s. When young Chris Harmony learns that members of his family may have been involved in the illegal pre-Civil War slave trade, he is appalled. Determined to learn the truth, he begins an investigation that takes him into a dingy waterfront saloon, musty old maritime records that yield startling secrets, and elegant brownstone parlors that may have been furnished by the trade. Since those once involved dread exposure, he meets denials and evasions, then threats, and a key witness is murdered. What price must Chris pay to learn the painful truth and proclaim it?
Reviews
"A lively and entertaining tale. The writing styles, plot, pace and character development were excellent." Four-star LibraryThing early review by BridgitDavis.
"At first the plot ... seemed a bit contrived, but I was soon swept up in the tale." Four-star LibraryThing early review by snash.
"I am glad that I have read this book as it goes into great detail and the presentation is amazing. The Author obviously knows his stuff." Four-star LibraryThing early review by Moiser20.
Available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
4. The Pleasuring of Men (Gival Press, 2011), the first novel in the Metropolis series, tells the story of a respectably raised young man who chooses to become a male prostitute in late 1860s New York and falls in love with his most difficult client.
What was the gay scene like in nineteenth-century New York? Gay romance, but women have read it and reviewed it. (The cover illustration doesn't hurt.)
Reviews
"At times amusing, gritty, heartfelt and a little sexy -- this would make a great summer read." Four-star Amazon customer review by BobW.
"Really more of a fantasy of a 19th century gay life than any kind of historical representation of the same." Three-star Goodreads review by Rachel.
"The detail Browder brings to this glimpse into history is only equaled by his writing of credible and interesting characters. Highly recommended." Five-star Goodreads review by Nan Hawthorne.
Available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
© 2018 Clifford Browder
August 5, 2018
367. Who Killed Carlo Tresca?
IT'S BARGAIN TIME: The e-book version of Fascinating New Yorkers is now available from Amazon with Kindle for .99 cents.
To get word of future giveaways and other news, sign up using the form in the sidebar on the right.
The print version of Fascinating New Yorkers was released on July 26 and is available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Excellent reviews so far; see below.
For my other books, see BROWDERBOOKS following the post below.
Short biographical sketches of colorful people who lived or died in New York. A cardinal who led a double life, a serial killer, a baroness with a tomato-can bra, and a film star whose funeral caused an all-day riot. Plus Andy Warhol, Boss Tweed, J. P. Morgan and his purple nose, Al Sharpton, Ayn Rand, and Polly Adler, Queen of Tarts.
Reviews
"Fascinating New Yorkers by Clifford Browder was like sitting down with a dear friend and catching up on the latest gossip and stories. Written with a flair to keep the reader turning the pages, I couldn't stop reading it and thinking about the subjects of each New Yorker. I love NYC and this book just added to the list of reasons why, a must read for those who love NYC and the people who have lived there." Five-star NetGalley review by Patty Ramirez, librarian.
"Unputdownable." Five-star review by Dipali Sen, retired librarian.
"I felt like I was gossiping with a friend when reading this, as the author wrote about New Yorkers who are unique in one way or another. I am hoping for another book featuring more New Yorkers, as I couldn't put this down and read it in one sitting!" Five-star NetGalley review by Cristie Underwood.
Who Killed Carlo Tresca?
It was January 11, 1943. The United States was at war with Germany, Italy, and Japan, and Stalinist Russia was our noble ally and bearing the brunt of the fighting in Europe, forcing Hitler’s troops back from the gates of Moscow in a hard-fought winter campaign. Longtime anti-Fascist and anti-Stalinist activist Carlo Tresca, an Italian immigrant with little command of English but editor of the anarchist newspaper Il Martello (The Hammer), had lunch with the novelist John Dos Passos. Tresca, age 68, was neatly mustached and bearded, with the look of a distinguished elder statesman. That evening he went to the office of his newspaper at 2 West 15th Street, near Fifth Avenue, for a meeting with members of the Mazzini Society to confer about exposing the few remaining pockets of Italian Fascists still present in wartime New York. But only one member showed up, his friend Giuseppe Calabi, so they went out for a glass of wine.
Carlo Tresca, 1910.It was 9:30 p.m. when Tresca and Calabi left the building by the West 15th Street entrance and crossed to the north or uptown side of that street. Suddenly a short, squat man in a brown coat jumped out of a black Ford that was waiting across Fifth Avenue with its motor running. He ran toward them, pulled out a handgun, and shot Tresca twice, one bullet lodging in his liver, and the other in the back of his head, killing him instantly. The murderer then ran back to the waiting car and jumped in, and the car sped off heading west on 15thStreet. In the wartime blackout Calabi did not get a good look at the killer. Tresca was lying on his back in the street with blood pouring out of him, when the police and passersby came running, and then a St. Vincent’s Hospital ambulance. Tresca was a familiar figure in radical and progressive circles, and his murder got a lot of attention. His funeral a few days later was attended by some 3,500 mourners; he was cremated at Fresh Pond Cemetery in Queens.
A small army of detectives were immediately assigned to the case. An autopsy revealed that Tresca had been killed by bullets from a .32 caliber automatic, but the gun was never recovered. Detectives found a loaded .38 caliber revolver behind an ashcan near the Fifth Avenue entrance to Tresca’s office building, suggesting that a second gunman had been posted there, in case Tresca left the building by the Fifth Avenue entrance. The gun bore no fingerprints, could not be traced. The murder, the police now concluded, was the well-planned work of professional criminals. The Ford was found abandoned on West 18th Street near Seventh Avenue, and the police were able to trace it to a hoodlum named Carmine Galante. They suspected Galante of being the hired killer, though he never confessed. And if this was the work of a hired killer, who had hired him? The suspects were many, for Tresca in his long career had stepped on a lot of toes.
Mug shot of Carmine Galante, 1943.Born in Italy in 1879, the son of an impoverished landowner, Carlo Tresca attended public schools and then studied at a seminary, but left it as an anticlerical atheist. From 1898 to 1902 he was secretary of the Italian Federation of Railroad Workers and editor of a socialist weekly. To avoid being jailed for his radical views, in 1904 he came to the U.S. and worked here as an Italian socialist, then embraced more radical views, In 1912 he joined the Industrial Workers of the World and became involved in strikes throughout the country, for which he was arrested several times. Always he championed labor against capital, and trade unions against the state. In the wake of the 1920 Wall Street bombing, he was interrogated often by the police. “They are nice boys,” he told reporters. “Whenever there is a bomb, they come to me. They ask me what I know, but I never know anything. So we have wine.” But in 1925 he went to prison for a year for having printed an ad for a birth control pamphlet in his new publication, Il Martello.
Tresca's attention next turned to the newly enthroned Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, whose attempts to organize Italian Americans into Fascist organizations he bitterly denounced and opposed, activity that earned him an attempted assassination by a bomb at a rally in 1926. Indeed, he often boasted of having been put on a death list by Mussolini himself.
As if this wasn’t enough to keep him busy, in the 1930s he declared war on Soviet communism and Stalin, and the Mafia as well. Roosevelt’s New Deal was now legislating for American workers, but this was hardly enough for a scrappy anarchist like Tresca, who was often at war with fellow Leftists as well. He was under surveillance by the U.S. government, for J. Edgar Hoover considered him suspect, though he took no action. Yet when Tresca celebrated his sixtieth birthday in 1939, he received telegraphed congratulations from John Dewey, John Dos Passos, Norman Thomas, Ernest Hemingway, Margaret Sanger, Emma Goldman, Leon Trotsky, and others – an impressive roster of the progressive Far Left of the time, barring Communists. When Roosevelt was elected to an unprecedented third term in 1940, Tresca approved, for the president was staunchly anti-Fascist. And when America entered the war in 1941, he heartily supported the war effort.
So what finally happened in the investigation of Tresca’s murder. In effect, nothing. Carmine Galante was presumably the hit man, but for whom was he working? For want of evidence, Galante was never prosecuted, but he was sent back to prison for a parole violation. Later he rose higher in the ranks of the Mafia, and in 1979 – 36 years after the murder of Tresca – he was gunned down in a Mafia hit in a restaurant in Brooklyn. The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York refused to allow a funeral mass, so he was buried in a cemetery in Queens.
Books have been written about the murder, with various conclusions. The Mafia and former Italian American Fascists are the most likely suspects, rather than Stalin’s secret police, the NKVD, but speculation still rages, and we will never know for certain. It seems like almost everyone wanted him dead, but solid proof is nonexistent. The scrappy little man led a fiery life and died a fiery death.
A footnote: Carlo Tresca's son, who Americanized his name as Peter D. Martin, chose a very different path. In 1953, while teaching sociology at San Francisco State College, he teamed up with poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti to found the City Lights Bookstore. The store's affiliated press published Allen Ginsberg's Howl in 1956, which a friend gave me a copy of soon afterward. In 1955 Martin sold his interest in the bookstore to Ferlinghetti and returned to his native New York, where he founded the New Yorker Bookshop at 250 West 89th Street.
Coming soon: A series of posts on how we cope with the amazing, improbable, and slightly absurd phenomenon known as life. Sounds pretentious, doesn't it? But these are just my personal thoughts on seven ways we get through the day, starting with the Way of Faith, to be followed by the Way of Power. Sounds too philosophical? I'll throw in the Hallelujah Chorus, the petrified heart of a bishop, and a juicy scandal or two to liven things up.
BROWDERBOOKS
All books are available online as indicated, or from the author.
1. No Place for Normal: New York / Stories from the Most Exciting City in the World (Mill City Press, 2015). Winner of the Tenth Annual National Indie Excellence Award for Regional Non-Fiction; first place in the Travel category of the 2015-2016 Reader Views Literary Awards; and Honorable Mention in the Culture category of the Eric Hoffer Book Awards for 2016. All about anything and everything New York: alcoholics, abortionists, greenmarkets, Occupy Wall Street, the Gay Pride Parade, my mugging in Central Park, peyote visions, and an artist who made art of a blackened human toe. In her Reader Views review, Sheri Hoyte called it "a delightful treasure chest full of short stories about New York City."
If you love the city (or hate it), this may be the book for you. An award winner, it sold well at BookCon 2017 and 2018.
Review
"If you want wonderful inside tales about New York, this is the book for you. Cliff Browder has a way with his writing that makes the city I lived in for 40 plus years come alive in a new and delightful way. A refreshing view on NYC that will not disappoint." Five-star Amazon customer review by Bill L.
Available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
2. Bill Hope: His Story (Anaphora Literary Press, 2017), the second novel in the Metropolis series. New York City, 1870s: From his cell in the gloomy prison known as the Tombs, young Bill Hope spills out in a torrent of words the story of his career as a pickpocket and shoplifter; his brutal treatment at Sing Sing and escape from another prison in a coffin; his forays into brownstones and polite society; and his sojourn among the “loonies” in a madhouse, from which he emerges to face betrayal and death threats, and possible involvement in a murder. Driving him throughout is a fierce desire for better, a persistent and undying hope.
For readers who like historical fiction and a fast-moving story.
Reviews"A real yarn of a story about a lovable pickpocket who gets into trouble and has a great adventure. A must read." Five-star Amazon customer review by nicole w brown.
"This was a fun book. The main character seemed like a cross between Huck Finn and a Charles Dickens character. I would recommend this." Four-star LibraryThing review by stephvin.
Available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
3. Dark Knowledge (Anaphora Literary Press, 2018), the third novel in the Metropolis series. Adult and young adult. A fast-moving historical novel about New York City and the slave trade, with the sights and sounds and smells of the waterfront.
The back cover summary:New York City, late 1860s. When young Chris Harmony learns that members of his family may have been involved in the illegal pre-Civil War slave trade, taking slaves from Africa to Cuba, he is appalled. Determined to learn the truth, he begins an investigation that takes him into a dingy waterfront saloon, musty old maritime records that yield startling secrets, and elegant brownstone parlors that may have been furnished by the trade. Since those once involved dread exposure, he meets denials and evasions, then threats, and a key witness is murdered. Chris has vivid fantasies of the suffering slaves on the ships and their savage revolts. How could seemingly respectable people be involved in so abhorrent a trade, and how did they avoid exposure? And what price must Chris pay to learn the painful truth and proclaim it?
Reviews
"A lively and entertaining tale. The writing styles, plot, pace and character development were excellent." Four-star LibraryThing early review by BridgitDavis.
"At first the plot ... seemed a bit contrived, but I was soon swept up in the tale." Four-star LibraryThing early review by snash.
"I am glad that I have read this book as it goes into great detail and the presentation is amazing. The Author obviously knows his stuff." Four-star LibraryThing early review by Moiser20.
Available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
4. The Pleasuring of Men (Gival Press, 2011), the first novel in the Metropolis series, tells the story of a respectably raised young man who chooses to become a male prostitute in late 1860s New York and falls in love with his most difficult client.
What was the gay scene like in nineteenth-century New York? Gay romance, if you like, but no porn (I don't do porn). Women have read it and reviewed it. (The cover illustration doesn't hurt.)
Reviews
"At times amusing, gritty, heartfelt and a little sexy -- this would make a great summer read." Four-star Amazon customer review by BobW.
"Really more of a fantasy of a 19th century gay life than any kind of historical representation of the same." Three-star Goodreads review by Rachel.
"The detail Browder brings to this glimpse into history is only equaled by his writing of credible and interesting characters. Highly recommended." Five-star Goodreads review by Nan Hawthorne.
Available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
© 2018 Clifford Browder
July 29, 2018
366. Weird Facts about the U.S. Presidents
IT'S OUT: Fascinating New Yorkers was released on July 26 and is available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Excellent reviews so far; see below.
The e-book version will be released in about a week and be available briefly at a bargain price. To get word of this, as well as giveaways and other news, sign up using the form in the sidebar on the right.
For my other books, see BROWDERBOOKS following the post below.
Short biographical sketches of colorful people who lived or died in New York. A cardinal who led a double life, a serial killer, a baroness with a tomato-can bra, and a film star whose funeral caused an all-day riot. Plus Andy Warhol, Boss Tweed, J. P. Morgan and his purple nose, Al Sharpton, Ayn Rand, and Polly Adler, Queen of Tarts.
Reviews
"Fascinating New Yorkers by Clifford Browder was like sitting down with a dear friend and catching up on the latest gossip and stories. Written with a flair to keep the reader turning the pages, I couldn't stop reading it and thinking about the subjects of each New Yorker. I love NYC and this book just added to the list of reasons why, a must read for those who love NYC and the people who have lived there." Five-star NetGalley review by Patty Ramirez, librarian.
"Unputdownable." Five-star review by Dipali Sen, retired librarian.
"I felt like I was gossiping with a friend when reading this, as the author wrote about New Yorkers who are unique in one way or another. I am hoping for another book featuring more New Yorkers, as I couldn't put this down and read it in one sitting!" Five-star NetGalley review by Cristie Underwood.
Published July 26. Signed copies are available from the author (i.e., me) for $20.00 (plus postage, if needed), but only three remain.
WEIRD FACTS ABOUT THE U.S. PRESIDENTS
I’ve promised weird presidential facts, but let’s start with some that aren’t particularly weird. Who are the most popular U.S. presidents of all time? According to a 2014 poll of 162 members of the American Political Science Association’s Presidents & Executive Politics section, the top ten are as follows:
1. Abraham Lincoln (1861-1865)2. George Washington (1789-1797)3. Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1933-1945)4. Theodore (Teddy) Roosevelt (1901-1909)5. Thomas Jefferson (1801-1809)6. Harry Truman (1945-1953)7. Dwight D. Eisenhower (1953-1961)8. Bill Clinton (1993-2001)9. Andrew Jackson (1829-1837)10.Woodrow Wilson (1913-1921)
This was a 2014 poll of experts, so the Donald was not included. Obama was, but I think it too soon to judge him objectively.
My comment: regarding the top three, no criticism. Lincoln held the country together at the time of its greatest crisis, and Washington for the most part stayed out of politics, so as to give the new nation a unifying figure. As for Roosevelt, his administration saw the beginning of Social Security and other vital New Deal legislation, and he saw us through World War II. I say this even though my father, a staunch Republican, raged incessantly against him and his four terms, insisting that polio had left the man slightly demented, as witnessed by the “Tinker Toys” – small objects he had accumulated over the years -- visible on his presidential desk.
FDR, just after signing the declaration of war on Japan. Why he's smiling I can't .imagine.Tinker Toys in the foreground.
And who should be added to the presidential likenesses on Mount Rushmore, joining Washington, Lincoln, Jefferson, and Teddy, the bumptious Roosevelt? Two-thirds of the scholars queried said Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Is there room for FDR?Teddy Roosevelt (#4) is controversial, since he was an avowed imperialist and something of a bully (“Speak softly but carry a big stick”), and a racist as well, believing in the superiority of the white race. On the other hand, after charging noisily up San Juan Hill in the Spanish-American War, as president he founded our national park system and busted a lot of trusts. Still, I have a personal gripe against him. Lamenting the fact that his younger son was a bookworm and not at all sports-minded, my father spoke glowingly of Teddy and how going out West and working there in the rough had made a man of him. Feeling no need to go out West or even, here in the sissified East, to throw a football, I nursed an ardent desire to get a photo of Teddy, so I could hurl darts into his toothy grin.
Here is Teddy, my dreamed-of target.I consider Bill Clinton (#8) too recent to be judged impartially, and acknowledge that Andrew Jackson (#9) has become controversial. He squelched South Carolina’s first attempt to secede, but was himself a slave owner and ordered the removal of all native peoples from their ancestral lands to barren reservations in the West. (Where, fortunately, some of them were located on land where oil was later discovered, to their sudden enrichment.)
And who did the scholars rate as the five worst presidents? James Buchanan topped the list.
1. James Buchanan (1857-1861)2. Warren G. Harding (1921-1923)3. Andrew Johnson (1865-1869)4. Franklin Pierce (1853-1857)5. William Henry Harrison (1841)
Buchanan rates #1 because, with Southern secession and the Civil War looming, he did nothing to prevent the catastrophe. Agreed, he only hoped to get out of office before it happened. But personally, I doubt if he or anyone could have prevented it.
Our worst president? I don't think so. Buchanan did no good, but little harm.Harding was a handsome man who, elected following World War I, preached “back to normalcy,” thus invented a noun that, because of its provenance, I refuse to use. (What’s wrong with “normality”?) His wife remarked memorably, “We’re just folks.” He was a good party man of no particular talent, interesting only because of his hanky-panky with a young woman who later told the world. More to the point, he was an honest man surrounded by crooks; because of the Teapot Dome scandal, two of his cabinet went to prison.
Warren G. Harding, looking fearfully thoughtful.Johnson was Lincoln’s successor, and that was a tough act to follow. He wasn’t up to it, and furthermore imbibed a bit too freely, but he had some mean characters to deal with, senators determined to make the defeated South pay for its disloyalty. A nasty time, all in all.
Pierce is one of my favorite presidents because he accomplished so little that one hardly remembers him. Uncontroversial, because in his in short term he did almost nothing at all. To date, the only Vermonter to make it to the White House, unless you include Vermont-born Calvin Coolidge, who pursued his political career in Massachusetts.
Franklin Pierce. Looking Napoleonic or just scratching?Finally, I argue that William Henry Harrison doesn’t merit this rating, since he caught a chill at his inauguration and a month later died of pneumonia. He simply wasn’t in office long enough (all of 31 days) to do anything at all.
To my surprise, the list does not include a president whom I have always rated at or near the bottom: Ulysses S. Grant, who, like Harding, was personally honest but surrounded by crooks. Good generals don't always make good presidents.
Who are the three most overrated presidents? According to the scholars:
1. John F. Kennedy (1961-1963)2. Ronald Reagan (1981-1989)3. Andrew Jackson (1829-1837)
Kennedy is probably included because of the enduring (and debatable) Kennedy mystique. How one feels about Reagan depends on your politics. And Jackson is included for reasons mentioned above.
And the most underrated?
1. Dwight D. Eisenhower (1953-1961)2. George H.W. Bush (1989-1993)3. Harry Truman (1945-1953)
Eisenhower and Papa Bush I’m not sure about, but certainly Harry Truman. As FDR’s successor he too had a tough act to follow, but he grew in stature and accomplished a lot as the nation transitioned from postwar euphoria to the onset of the Cold War. A feisty little guy and quite a scrapper, he astonished everyone by winning the 1948 election, trouncing Thomas Dewey, the Republican. Overconfident, Dewey thought he could win by making vague, glowing statements and nothing more. Meanwhile Truman barnstormed around the country by rail, speaking from an observation car and convincing ordinary people that he was one of them, which he was. The Republican Chicago Tribune, which I grew up reading, announced Dewey's victory ... prematurely, and Truman (on the left below) made the most of it.
I can't let go of this guy without including another famous photo of him as vice president in 1945. On top of the piano? Lauren Bacall.
These rankings are relative and can change from year to year, Here are the top 10 as rated by 100 U.S. historians and biographers in a C-SPAN survey in July 2018:
1. Abraham Lincoln2. George Washington3. Franklin Delano Roosevelt4. Theodore Roosevelt5. Dwight D. Eisenhower6. Harry Truman7. Thomas Jefferson8. John F. Kennedy9. Ronald Reagan10.Lyndon B. Johnson
The survey included the top 20, with Barack Obama coming in at #12, and Bill Clinton, as yet untroubled by the #Me Too Movement, at #15. Andrew Jackson is demoted to #18.
These surveys targeted scholars immersed in presidential lore. Why not ordinary citizens, you might ask. Their opinions would surely differ from the scholars’, but they could hardly be expected to appraise such distant political nonentities as John Tyler or Millard Fillmore or Chester Alan Arthur. So to include the full range of chief executives, it’s best to stick with the experts.
And now for Weird Facts 1 (another set will follow). History buffs know that Harry Truman had once worked as a haberdasher, and that Ronald Reagan had been an actor in Hollywood films, but what about these occupations? Which presidents held them before reaching the White House? (Answers below.)
1. Licensed bar tender.2. Apprentice tailor.3. Mule driver.4. Hangman.5. Toy maker (specifically, doll carriages).6. Shoe shiner and goat herder.7. Chicken plucker and carnival gaming booth.8. Lifeguard.9. Grocer and comic book salesman.
(Source note: For Weird Facts 1 I am indebted to an online article, “The 17 weirdest jobs of US presidents,” by Aine Cain, dated February 19, 2018.)
Answers to Weird Facts 1:
1. Abraham Lincoln. He and a partner ran a store and bar in New Salem, Illinois.2. Andrew Johnson. In his teens worked for his mother in this capacity. 3. James Garfield. As an Ohio farm boy he drove the mules hauling a cousin’s Erie Canal boat.4. Grover Cleveland. As sheriff of Erie County, New York, he personally hanged two criminals, rather than delegating the task to someone else.5. Calvin Coolidge. In high school he had a weekend job making toys for a local toy company.6. Lyndon B. Johnson. At age 9 he shined shoes during summer vacation and later worked as a goat herder on an uncle’s farm.7. Richard Nixon. He plucked and dressed chickens for a local butcher while visiting family in Arizona, and later worked a “Wheel of Fortune” gaming booth at a carnival.8. Ronald Reagan. For seven summers he had a summer job as lifeguard at Rock River, near Dixon, Illinois. In those seven years he saved 77 people from the river’s swift current.9. Bill Clinton. At age 13 he worked for a grocer in Arkansas, and persuaded his boss to let him sell comic books, too, and so raked in an extra $100.
And now for Weird Facts 2, which I have accumulated over the years from sources too varied and remote for me to recall. See if you can identify these presidents. (Again, answers below.)
1. Being broad of beam, he got stuck in the White House bathtub. 2. When his term ended, he refused to leave the White House until the staff found his missing galosh.3. His wife smoked a clay pipe in the White House.4. As president elect, his life was thought to be in danger in Baltimore, while en route to Washington, so they snuck him through Baltimore at night.5. Accused of having fathered an illegitimate child, during his election he was taunted by the chant “Ma! Ma! Where’s my pa? / Gone to the White House, ha, ha, ha!”6. His inaugural reception at the White House turned into a drunken brawl. 7. As a senator he had voted for Prohibition, but once it went into effect, he kept the White House well stocked with liquor.
8. The first language he spoke was not English.
For #8, does this help? Probably not.Answers to Weird Facts 2:
1. William Howard Taft, who weighed 350 pounds. Fortunately they got him loose, so he could go on post-presidentially to become Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. The story, however, has been challenged.2. Calvin Coolidge, who was notoriously frugal.3. Andrew Jackson, whose backwoodsy wife scandalized Washington society. Whether they were even properly married was questioned.4. Abraham Lincoln. In February 1861 the Pinkerton detective agency learned of a Secessionist plot to assassinate him in Baltimore, where he would change trains while on his way to Washington. So they had him secretly change trains in Baltimore in the middle of the night and so proceed on to the capital. 5. Grover Cleveland. As the Democratic mayor of Buffalo and governor of New York, he had implemented reforms and earned the name Grover the Good. But during the presidential election of 1884, when he was the Democratic candidate, it came out that he had fathered an illegitimate child with a widowed seamstress, a charge he did not deny, while insisting that he had helped the mother financially. Despite the Republican press’s taunting chant, he won the election in a close race, and the Democrats then gleefully recited the chant back at the Republicans. But today Cleveland’s account of the affair has been questioned; perhaps his conduct was less than honorable after all.6. Andrew Jackson, again. His White House reception for the public on March 4, 1829, was thronged by a lot of ill-mannered supporters from the West who guzzled liquor and destroyed furniture and china, causing their host to flee through a back door or a window. But what actually happened may have been exaggerated by Washington society and his political enemies, who feared rule by the rabble.7. Warren G. Harding. Technically he wasn’t breaking the law, since possessing and consuming alcohol was not illegal, just producing, importing, transporting, or selling it. But how did he get the stuff? Through an acquaintance who had a permit allowing him to obtain it for medical purposes; the acquaintance then passed it on to Harding. Were the authorities aware of this? Maybe, maybe not. Maybe they chose not to notice.
8. Martin Van Buren. He was born to a family of Dutch-speaking Dutch Americans in Kinderhook, New York, and learned English in school. The only president for whom English was a second language.
I must confess that Calvin Coolidge has a warm place in my heart. “The business of America is business,” he famously announced. A Vermonter who pursued a political career in Massachusetts, he was the epitome of the tight-lipped New Englander and became known as Silent Cal. A woman seated next to him at a dinner once addressed him, “Mr. Coolidge, you’re such a reticent man. I’ve bet a friend five dollars that I can make you say more than two words.” Replied Coolidge, “You lose.” He may have cultivated this image deliberately, since he told an acquaintance that the American people wanted a “solemn ass” as president, and he would do his best to be one. In 1933, when humorist Dorothy Parker was told that he had died, she reportedly said, “How can you tell?” They don’t make ‘em like that anymore.
President Coolidge, being presented with a statue of a Boy Scout. Fifteen hundred Scouts made a annual visit to the White House to meet the president.Coming soon: Maybe "Who Killed Carlo Tresca?" Never heard of him? Neither had I until recently. But the cast of suspects is astonishing. Few victims could lay claim to such a roster of killers.
BROWDERBOOKS
All books are available online as indicated, or from the author.
1. No Place for Normal: New York / Stories from the Most Exciting City in the World (Mill City Press, 2015). Winner of the Tenth Annual National Indie Excellence Award for Regional Non-Fiction; first place in the Travel category of the 2015-2016 Reader Views Literary Awards; and Honorable Mention in the Culture category of the Eric Hoffer Book Awards for 2016. All about anything and everything New York: alcoholics, abortionists, greenmarkets, Occupy Wall Street, the Gay Pride Parade, my mugging in Central Park, peyote visions, and an artist who made art of a blackened human toe. In her Reader Views review, Sheri Hoyte called it "a delightful treasure chest full of short stories about New York City."
If you love the city (or hate it), this may be the book for you. An award winner, it sold well at BookCon 2017 and 2018.
Review
"If you want wonderful inside tales about New York, this is the book for you. Cliff Browder has a way with his writing that makes the city I lived in for 40 plus years come alive in a new and delightful way. A refreshing view on NYC that will not disappoint." Five-star Amazon customer review by Bill L.
Available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
2. Bill Hope: His Story (Anaphora Literary Press, 2017), the second novel in the Metropolis series. New York City, 1870s: From his cell in the gloomy prison known as the Tombs, young Bill Hope spills out in a torrent of words the story of his career as a pickpocket and shoplifter; his brutal treatment at Sing Sing and escape from another prison in a coffin; his forays into brownstones and polite society; and his sojourn among the “loonies” in a madhouse, from which he emerges to face betrayal and death threats, and possible involvement in a murder. Driving him throughout is a fierce desire for better, a persistent and undying hope.
For readers who like historical fiction and a fast-moving story.
Reviews"A real yarn of a story about a lovable pickpocket who gets into trouble and has a great adventure. A must read." Five-star Amazon customer review by nicole w brown.
"This was a fun book. The main character seemed like a cross between Huck Finn and a Charles Dickens character. I would recommend this." Four-star LibraryThing review by stephvin.
Available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
3. Dark Knowledge (Anaphora Literary Press, 2018), the third novel in the Metropolis series. Adult and young adult. A fast-moving historical novel about New York City and the slave trade, with the sights and sounds and smells of the waterfront.
The back cover summary:New York City, late 1860s. When young Chris Harmony learns that members of his family may have been involved in the illegal pre-Civil War slave trade, taking slaves from Africa to Cuba, he is appalled. Determined to learn the truth, he begins an investigation that takes him into a dingy waterfront saloon, musty old maritime records that yield startling secrets, and elegant brownstone parlors that may have been furnished by the trade. Since those once involved dread exposure, he meets denials and evasions, then threats, and a key witness is murdered. Chris has vivid fantasies of the suffering slaves on the ships and their savage revolts. How could seemingly respectable people be involved in so abhorrent a trade, and how did they avoid exposure? And what price must Chris pay to learn the painful truth and proclaim it?
Early reviews
"A lively and entertaining tale. The writing styles, plot, pace and character development were excellent." Four-star LibraryThing early review by BridgitDavis.
"At first the plot ... seemed a bit contrived, but I was soon swept up in the tale." Four-star LibraryThing early review by snash.
"I am glad that I have read this book as it goes into great detail and the presentation is amazing. The Author obviously knows his stuff." Four-star LibraryThing early review by Moiser20.
New release; available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
4. The Pleasuring of Men (Gival Press, 2011), the first novel in the Metropolis series, tells the story of a respectably raised young man who chooses to become a male prostitute in late 1860s New York and falls in love with his most difficult client.
What was the gay scene like in nineteenth-century New York? Gay romance, if you like, but no porn (I don't do porn). Women have read it and reviewed it. (The cover illustration doesn't hurt.)
Reviews
"At times amusing, gritty, heartfelt and a little sexy -- this would make a great summer read." Four-star Amazon customer review by BobW.
"Really more of a fantasy of a 19th century gay life than any kind of historical representation of the same." Three-star Goodreads review by Rachel.
"The detail Browder brings to this glimpse into history is only equaled by his writing of credible and interesting characters. Highly recommended." Five-star Goodreads review by Nan Hawthorne.
Available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
© 2018 Clifford Browder
July 22, 2018
365. A Spotted Pig, the Chupi, Living Gray Water, a Beaux Arts Masterpiece, a $500 Perm, and an Art-Filled John.
Giveaways will resume after Fascinating New Yorkers is released on July 26. To get word of them and other news, sign up using the form in the sidebar on the right. And notice this blog's five most popular posts of all time below the sign-up form on the right. Four of the five are included in Fascinating New Yorkers. Coming soon: the release of the print book and, a week later, the e-book, the e-book to be offered briefly at a bargain price.
For my other books, see BROWDERBOOKS below.
A collection of posts from this blog. Short biographical sketches of people, some remembered and some forgotten, who lived or died in New York. All kinds of wild stuff, plus some stuff that isn't quite wild but fascinating. New York is a mecca for hustlers of every kind, some likable and some horrible, but they are never boring.
To be published July 26. You can order it here from the publisher and get a discounted price (plus postage), but it won't be shipped before that date. Also available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble, minus the discount but with the delay. Signed copies are available now from the author (i.e., me) for $20.00 (plus postage, if needed), but very few remain.
SMALL TALK
The AARP Bulletin of July/August is full of interesting facts, some of them even relevant. It is addressed to Golden Oldies and entices them with gizmos to make life easier, frauds to avoid, and ads featuring dynamic oldsters smiling radiantly as they cope -- triumphantly, of course -- with life's ravages. It also offers statistics, and this is what got my attention. To help retiring seniors find decent places to live, it lists the Most Livable Big Cities (population 500,000 and up), with New York in place #6. So who beats it? San Francisco, then Boston, then Seattle, then Denver, then Milwaukee. As for the Most Livable Small Cities 100,000 to 499,999), no. 1 is Madison, Wisconsin, followed by Arlington, Virginia, and St. Paul, Minnesota. (St. Paul? Well, be prepared for snow and cold weather.) Finally, the Most LivableTowns (25,000 to 99,999): Fitchburg, Wisconsin is no. 1 (I confess I've never heard of it), then Sheboygan, Wisconsin (I once cycled through it long ago), and La Crosse, Wisconsin. How the AARP arrived at these conclusions I don't know, but Wisconsin does seem to be "hot."
Just across the page from these lists the Bulletin offers The Heavenly Blessings Christmas Tree, 3 feet tall with 50 movable figures for a Nativity at its base: "Not available in any store. Act now!" In the heat of July I confess that I'm not remotely tempted.
But one other item caught my eye. Though oriented toward seniors, the Bulletin chronicled the unlikely but true adventures of a 20-year-old Colorado youth who managed to get bitten by (1) a rattlesnake, (2) a black bear, and (3) a tiger shark. Not all at once, to be sure, and in different locales: the snake in in Utah, the bear in Colorado, and the shark in Hawaii. The odds of this happening to one individual in a lifetime are calculated at one in 893.4 quadrillion, but it happened. The young man is described as an outdoors enthusiast. Maybe a little less enthusiasm is in order. As for me, I'll stick to quiet walks in Greenwich Village, as described below.
A Spotted Pig, the Chupi, Living Gray Water, a Beaux Arts Masterpiece, a $500 Perm, and an Art-Filled John
New York is inexhaustible, especially if, without a mobile device to distract you, you look about. I have walked down West 11th Street to the Hudson many times, but no two walks are identical. Recently I did the walk, going first along the south or downtown side of the street. Between Greenwich Street and Washington I noticed, once again, on the other side of the street, a row of small enterprises that I have always vowed to chronicle and somehow never did. Making mental note of this little mini mall, I promised myself to have a look at it on my return. I have always felt the odds were against them, since they are far removed from busy Hudson Street, with its constant stream of pedestrians. If the three most important things for a small business are LOCATION, LOCATION, and LOCATION, West 11th between Greenwich and Washington is far from ideal, though no doubt offering lower rents. Significantly, a nice ground-floor location at the corner of West 11thand Greenwich has remained vacant now for many months.
Going toward the river, I passed two restaurants. At the corner of West 11th and Greenwich, across from the vacant retail site, is the Spotted Pig, with a spotted pig hanging over the corner, and an array of flowering greenery in pots outside. It offers seasonal British and Italian food, using local ingredients whenever possible. I have never dined there, but in spite of the less-than-ideal location, it has always seemed to be doing a good business. Alas, the owner has been accused by ten women of sexually harassing them and maintaining a coercive and sexualized atmosphere in the restaurant. How this will all play out I have no idea, but the #Me Too Movement is leaving its mark even on my quiet West Village walk.
One block farther along, at the corner of West 11thand Washington Street, is another restaurant, Wallsé, offering Austrian food. I have never dined there because, like the Spotted Pig, it seems just a bit pricey. Though its menu is posted outside, on this walk and the previous one I found it closed tight, which surprised me, since it used to do a lively business on Sunday afternoons. Another crisis, matching the Spotted Pig’s? Not at all. It is now open on weekdays but closed on Sundays. The only thing I’ve ever held against it is its name, which I’ve never known how to pronounce. No matter, it enjoys an excellent culinary reputation.
No palazzo here. This is what you see at ground level. Elegant it ain't.Elisa.rolle
Crossing Washington Street, I left the Greenwich Village Historic District behind and passed below the monstrosity known as the Palazzo Chupi, the architectural folly of a self-styled Renaissance man who, on top of three drab floors of an old building, planted another eleven stories in Italian palazzo style whose Pepto Bismol pink, offensive to the eye, has gradually faded, making his inspiration a bit more bearable for the neighbors. Smack next to this monument is a small Greek Revival residence, fortunately landmarked, which, unlike the Chupi, is totally in keeping with the Village. Enough said of the Chupi, which I have chronicled before. Just beyond it, going toward the river, is a glass-fronted residential entrance at 366 West 11th Street, followed by several more elegant entrances, no doubt giving access to apartments with fantastic views of the river at fantastic prices.
And this is what you see, if you look up.Elisa.rolle
Ah, the river …! I sat on a bench near the water, watched the gray surface rippled by a gentle breeze, a vibrant, ever-changing pattern of gray that I had never seen before, perhaps because, on an overcast day, I had never looked for it; I christened it the living surface of gray. Manhattan was overcast, with the sun trying to burn through, while New Jersey was bathed in sunlight under a clear sky. The dancing dots of silver that I have often seen on the river’s surface were missing, on this cloudy day, but then I saw them, the tiniest I had ever seen, in the near distance, barely visible from where I was sitting. Next to my bench was another that I called the Lovers’ Bench, since one couple gently entangled there got up and left, and were almost immediately replaced by another. But I was looking at the river, and as the sun at last burst through, bringing light and heat, the river’s gray ripples acquired a faint tint of blue.
The Hoboken Terminal, as seen from a water taxi. I saw it from the Manhattan side of the river.Joe Mabel
Just across the river I could see, on the Hoboken waterfront, the old terminal of the Erie Lackawanna Railroad, now called the Hoboken Terminal, with a tall, thin tower fronted on all four sides by a clock and topped by a conical roof topped in turn by a spire. Here the old railroad’s trains stopped, transferring passengers to ferries that crossed the river to Manhattan. The railroad suspended service long since, but the terminal survived. Online research tells me that this is a Beaux Arts masterpiece dating from 1907. Over time the interior had deteriorated, but in 1997-1999 it was renovated, with restoration of its stained glass signage and a great skylight made of Tiffany glass. Online photos show that it is indeed an architectural masterpiece, and used today daily by some 50,000 commuters. For years I had thought it a neglected and decaying relic of the past, but now I know better, for it serves PATH, a number of local rail lines, a light rail line that I have used to reach Jersey City, and a diminished ferry service. I have traveled that way many times with PATH, but since the PATH tracks are underground, I never suspected that a Beaux Arts masterpiece loomed above me. Luckily, that masterpiece escaped the fate of Manhattan’s demolished and much lamented Penn Station.
The Hoboken Terminal's waiting room. Compare it to the Penn Station of today.Bob Jagendorf
Another view of the waiting room.King of Hearts
Returning from the river, I passed the series of shops that I had noticed earlier on the uptown or north side of West 11thbetween Washington and Greenwich. First, at 327 West 11th Street, was the 11th Street Café, which describes itself as a neighborhood coffee shop with coffee made in Brooklyn plus dairy from upstate, and fresh bagels, free wifi, and beer, wine, and mimosa. And also at #327 is SAVOR, a beauty salon offering “KOREAN BEAUTY RITUALS … in a New York Minute.” Online it promises “five-star attention for your gorgeous glow, inside out.” Who could resist?
Next, at 325 West 11th, is the Robin Rice Gallery, run by photographer Robin Rice. I discovered it late last winter, when it was displaying the subtly homoerotic photographs of Leonardo Pucci, whose work sometimes reminded me of Hopper’s urban scenes with only a small human figure or two somewhere in the work. I meant to attend the opening, but a winter storm prevented me. Later I learned that the opening had even so been well attended, and was given a tour of a back room and the john, the walls of both of them jammed with art. And also at #325 is Orient Express, a cocktail bar. Hey, guys, what better place to spend some time and money with your girlfriend, once the Koreans have fixed her up?
Next door, at 323 West 11th, is Turks & Frogs, a wine bar offering Turkish fare and an impressive wine list in an atmosphere heavy with antiques. Their window shows a big wicker-clad jug, the gaping mouth of what looks like the speaker of an old gramophone, and a big glass jar full of corks. (Wine bottle corks, I’m sure.) Also, in gilt letters, the one word WINE. Their online site shows a model sail boat next to bronze candle holders and other small decorative objects, suggesting a charmingly quaint, unique, and slightly oddball setting. I have never patronized Turks & Frogs because I pass it on Sunday walks following cheese and wine with Bob, followed by lunch, which leaves little room for more wine and a snack. The name intrigues me. “Turks” I can understand, but why “frogs”? Someday, I hope, I will be enlightened. And of course there’s another enterprise at #323: Garden, New York, a hair salon offering haircuts from $70 to $90, a bang trim for $15, a roots touch-up for $85 to $100, and for a smashing climax, a “Japanese Straight Perm” for $280 to $500. Well, I could manage a bang trim, but I don’t have bangs.
Finally, at 321 West 11th, one comes to my very own dear laundry, the Village Dry Clean Laundromat Service, whose sign WHY RUSH? suggests that clients leave their laundry in the morning and pick it up that night, which is exactly what my household does. This genial suggestion, and the sodden atmosphere of a laundromat, mark the end of my West 11th Street mini mall and a return to the humdrum and familiar, which is also reassuring, since it's nice to know one can, when necessary, get one's laundry done.
A spotted pig, a much deplored palazzo, the living surface of gray, a Beaux Arts masterpiece, a mini mall offering a café with bagels and free wifi, next to a skinny gallery with an art-crammed john, next to the winy pleasures of Turks & Frogs, next to a $500 perm – not bad for a short summer walk from Hudson Street to the river and back. New York is inexhaustible.
Coming soon: Weird Facts about U.S. Presidents. Which one got stuck in the White House bathtub? Which one executed people in person? Which one fathered an illegitimate child? And so on...
BROWDERBOOKS
All books are available online as indicated, or from the author.
1. No Place for Normal: New York / Stories from the Most Exciting City in the World (Mill City Press, 2015). Winner of the Tenth Annual National Indie Excellence Award for Regional Non-Fiction; first place in the Travel category of the 2015-2016 Reader Views Literary Awards; and Honorable Mention in the Culture category of the Eric Hoffer Book Awards for 2016. All about anything and everything New York: alcoholics, abortionists, greenmarkets, Occupy Wall Street, the Gay Pride Parade, my mugging in Central Park, peyote visions, and an artist who made art of a blackened human toe. In her Reader Views review, Sheri Hoyte called it "a delightful treasure chest full of short stories about New York City."
If you love the city (or hate it), this may be the book for you. An award winner, it sold well at BookCon 2017 and 2018.
Review
"If you want wonderful inside tales about New York, this is the book for you. Cliff Browder has a way with his writing that makes the city I lived in for 40 plus years come alive in a new and delightful way. A refreshing view on NYC that will not disappoint." Five-star Amazon customer review by Bill L.
Available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
2. Bill Hope: His Story (Anaphora Literary Press, 2017), the second novel in the Metropolis series. New York City, 1870s: From his cell in the gloomy prison known as the Tombs, young Bill Hope spills out in a torrent of words the story of his career as a pickpocket and shoplifter; his brutal treatment at Sing Sing and escape from another prison in a coffin; his forays into brownstones and polite society; and his sojourn among the “loonies” in a madhouse, from which he emerges to face betrayal and death threats, and possible involvement in a murder. Driving him throughout is a fierce desire for better, a persistent and undying hope.
For readers who like historical fiction and a fast-moving story.
Reviews"A real yarn of a story about a lovable pickpocket who gets into trouble and has a great adventure. A must read." Five-star Amazon customer review by nicole w brown.
"This was a fun book. The main character seemed like a cross between Huck Finn and a Charles Dickens character. I would recommend this." Four-star LibraryThing review by stephvin.
Available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
3. Dark Knowledge (Anaphora Literary Press, 2018), the third novel in the Metropolis series. Adult and young adult. A fast-moving historical novel about New York City and the slave trade, with the sights and sounds and smells of the waterfront.
The back cover summary:New York City, late 1860s. When young Chris Harmony learns that members of his family may have been involved in the illegal pre-Civil War slave trade, taking slaves from Africa to Cuba, he is appalled. Determined to learn the truth, he begins an investigation that takes him into a dingy waterfront saloon, musty old maritime records that yield startling secrets, and elegant brownstone parlors that may have been furnished by the trade. Since those once involved dread exposure, he meets denials and evasions, then threats, and a key witness is murdered. Chris has vivid fantasies of the suffering slaves on the ships and their savage revolts. How could seemingly respectable people be involved in so abhorrent a trade, and how did they avoid exposure? And what price must Chris pay to learn the painful truth and proclaim it?
Early reviews
"A lively and entertaining tale. The writing styles, plot, pace and character development were excellent." Four-star LibraryThing early review by BridgitDavis.
"At first the plot ... seemed a bit contrived, but I was soon swept up in the tale." Four-star LibraryThing early review by snash.
"I am glad that I have read this book as it goes into great detail and the presentation is amazing. The Author obviously knows his stuff." Four-star LibraryThing early review by Moiser20.
New release; available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
4. The Pleasuring of Men (Gival Press, 2011), the first novel in the Metropolis series, tells the story of a respectably raised young man who chooses to become a male prostitute in late 1860s New York and falls in love with his most difficult client.
What was the gay scene like in nineteenth-century New York? Gay romance, if you like, but no porn (I don't do porn). Women have read it and reviewed it. (The cover illustration doesn't hurt.)
Reviews
"At times amusing, gritty, heartfelt and a little sexy -- this would make a great summer read." Four-star Amazon customer review by BobW.
"Really more of a fantasy of a 19th century gay life than any kind of historical representation of the same." Three-star Goodreads review by Rachel.
"The detail Browder brings to this glimpse into history is only equaled by his writing of credible and interesting characters. Highly recommended." Five-star Goodreads review by Nan Hawthorne.
Available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
© 2018 Clifford Browder
