Clifford Browder's Blog, page 45

140. Norman Mailer: Wife-Stabber, Brawler, and Man of Many Wives

Norman Mailer in 1988.
MDCarchives     Who was the reporter who was doing such brilliant reporting of the 1967 Pentagon march and the 1968 conventions?  Photos show a man with a massive frame and an impressive head with tousled hair and memorable features – an overgrown teddy bear, you might say, or a lionlike head, albeit with wrinkles and bags under his eyes: the head of an aging lion.  One thinks of Norman Mailer as a man in his middle years with a somewhat worn look, never young, and one who surely took himself very seriously.  There are pictures of him as a boxer, and in those he is taking himself very seriously indeed.  No spoofing in these photos, never a wink of complicity at the rest of us.  He admired boxers, liked their courage, discipline, and aggressive self-assertion, and when drunk – and Mailer was often drunk – he was quite ready himself to take a swing at someone, even a friend.  But if he had a boxer’s aggressiveness and courage (or at least a drunken bravado), he totally lacked the discipline.
     His antics were notorious.  In November 1960, while drunk at a party in New York, he stabbed his second wife, Adele, with a penknife, just missing her heart, and then stabbed her again in the back.  As she told it later (his women had a way of publishing tell-all memoirs), when someone tried to help her as she lay on the floor bleeding, Mailer blurted out, “Get away from her.  Let the bitch die.”  Adele’s wounds required emergency surgery, but she did not press charges.  After seventeen days in Bellevue Hospital under psychiatric observation, Mailer was released, only to be indicted by a grand jury for felonious assault; later he pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of third-degree assault and received a suspended sentence.  It has been suggested that this event kept him from later receiving a Nobel Prize.  Adele divorced him in 1962.
Gore Vidal in 1948.    But the favorite target of Mailer’s drunken ire was author Gore Vidal, whose critical review of one of Mailer’s books incensed him to the point that, just before they were to appear on Dick Cavett’s TV show in December 1971, Mailer head-butted Vidal backstage, then during the show traded insults with him and the host.  But this was just the prelude.  At a New York dinner party in 1977 attended by the cultural elite, Mailer evidently threw a gin and tonic in Vidal’s face and bounced the glass off his head.  The distraught hostess exclaimed, “God, this is awful!  Someone do something!”  But another guest told her, “Shut up!  This fight is making your party.”  Vidal’s reaction to these assaults: “Once again, words fail Norman Mailer.”  An elegant WASP known for his wit and urbanity, Vidal was a natural target for the rough-hewn Mailer, the son of immigrants, whose physical attacks failed to dent Vidal’s patrician aplomb.
     Mailer had been born to a family of Jewish immigrants in New Jersey and grew up in Brooklyn.  After graduating from Harvard he served in the Army during World War II, then came back to write The Naked and the Dead.  His next two novels garnered negative reviews, and after a frustrating period as a screenwriter in Hollywood he returned to New York in 1951 and lived at various addresses on the Lower East Side.  Several acquaintances got him to invest in and help launch the iconoclastic Village Voice, an alternative weekly that first appeared in October 1955.  Steeped in liquor and drugs, he began a short-lived column that was meant to be outrageous, and reaped volumes of hostile fan mail as a token of his success. 
     In 1969 he launched another venture that was not just outrageous but quixotic, entering the Democratic mayoral primary and calling for a “hip coalition of the right and the left” to rescue the crime-ridden and debt-burdened city.  Columnist Jimmy Breslin ran with him for City Council President, and feminist Gloria Steinem ran for Comptroller.  “No More Bullshit” and “Vote the Rascals In” were their slogans, as they proposed to make New York City the 51st state.  Their other proposals: reduce pollution by banning all private cars from Manhattan; expand rent control; return power to the neighborhoods; legalize heroin; and offer draft exemptions to those enlisting for short-term service in the police.  Though Mailer and his colleagues wanted to be taken seriously, the newspapers found the idea of a Mailer-Breslin ticket preposterous, and Mailer seemingly confirmed their opinion when, during a fund-raiser, he railed drunkenly at his own supporters, calling them “a bunch of spoiled pigs.”  It was no surprise to observers – and perhaps a great relief -- when embattled Mayor John Lindsay easily triumphed in the primary and then went on to get himself reelected.
     Mailer’s fourth novel, An American Dream, was published in 1965.  A friend once told me that, after reading it, he gave up on Mailer as a novelist.  When I read it years later, I understood why.  In a drunken rage the book’s supremely successful protagonist strangles his estranged wife, then has sex with her maid, who has no knowledge of the murder; after that, to make the wife’s death look like suicide, he throws her body out a window.  Later that same night, after being questioned by police detectives, he initiates an affair with a night-club singer who, he learns later, once had an affair with the wife’s father.  All this, and much more, including two more murders, within 24 hours.  Even if the writing is impressive – the account of his questioning by detectives is quite convincing -- the overburdened plot doesn’t just strain credibility, it shreds it.  From then on I viewed Mailer as a brilliant journalist but a failed novelist.
     The wife-stabbing incident, and its fictional reprise in the strangling in An American Dream, hardly endeared Mailer to the feminists; there was in fact an ongoing war between them.  He was the very image of the brawling, boozing, womanizing super macho male, and as such an inevitable target for feminists.  This was fine by him, for he relished the fight.  Women’s writing, he opined, was “fey, old-hat, Quaintsy Goysy, tiny, too dykily psychotic, crippled, creepish, fashionable, frigid, outer-Baroque” – and so on, to which he added, “a good novelist can do without everything but the remnant of his balls.”  Was he dead serious or just being deliberately provocative?  When he suggested that women “should be kept in cages,” his last wife Norris insisted that there was a twinkle in his eye.  If there is a trait in him that I esteem, it is his refusal to be politically correct no matter what the cost.
     In 1977 Mailer received a letter from convicted murderer Jack Abbott, offering to give an accurate account of prison life.  Mailer agreed, and in 1981 In the Belly of the Beast, comprising Abbott’s letters to Mailer, was published with an introduction by Mailer and became a bestseller.  In Abbott Mailer probably saw an example of the hipster outlaw eulogized in his essay “The White Negro.”  Mailer and others had been supporting Abbott’s appeals for parole, and in June 1981 he was released, despite the misgivings of prison officials who were worried about his mental state and considered him dangerous.  Coming to New York City, Abbott was hailed by the literary community.  Six weeks after his release, Abbott got into an argument with a young actor working as a waiter in a restaurant and stabbed him to death.  I remember the shock of this news, and the widespread condemnation of Mailer that followed.  Abbott fled the city but was later arrested in Louisiana, tried for murder and convicted of manslaughter, and given a sentence of 15 years to life.  Mailer, who attended the trial, later admitted that his advocacy of Abbott was “another episode in my life in which I can find nothing to cheer about or nothing to take pride in.”  When the parole board rejected another of his appeals, Abbott committed suicide in a New York State prison in 2002.
     I shan’t linger here over Mailer’s other works, some of them unworthy of him, being written in haste to make money (as he accumulated ex-wives, he also accumulated alimony claims), and some of them significant.  The year 1980 was eventful for him: he finally got a divorce from his fourth wife;  married his fifth wife, a jazz singer, thus legitimizing their daughter, then flew to Haiti one day later and got a quickie divorce; and three days after his return married his sixth and last wife, Norris Church, who in spite of his many affairs stayed with him to the end.  All of which was, for Mailer, no small accomplishment, for how many men could boast of having been married more or less legally to three different women within the space of one week? 
     As for Norris, who was from Arkansas, in her memoir she claimed to have had a brief earlier fling with Governor Bill Clinton.  When an acquaintance later said to her, “I guess he slept with every woman in Arkansas except you, Norris,” she replied, “Sorry, I’m afraid he got us all.”  A 1983 photograph of her with Mailer shows a mature but attractive woman in a frilly pink hat and pink scarf, but I suspect that she was a lot tougher than frilly pink might suggest.  To live with Mailer she would have to be.
     Mailer and Norris lived together in a brownstone at 142 Columbia Heights in Brooklyn Heights, just across the East River from Manhattan.  Their fourth-floor co-op apartment overlooked the Brooklyn Heights Promenade with a sweeping view of the harbor and the Statue of Liberty.  Mailer had bought the building in 1960 and moved into the top-floor apartment in 1962.  His extensive renovation raised the roof and remodeled the apartment as a light-filled multilevel nautical curiosity; to access the “crow’s nest” where he wrote, you had to climb ladders, traverse catwalks high above the living room, and walk a narrow gangplank.  All this because he had a fear of heights and was determined to conquer it.  The apartment witnessed many 


celebrity-studded parties, as well as meetings to plan his 1969 mayoral campaign, and his and Norris Church’s wedding.  In 1980 a costly divorce from his fifth wife forced him to rent out the lower floors of the building.  But Mailer, who fancied himself a sailor, wanted to be closer to the sea.  So in 1986 he and Norris bought a spacious beachfront house in Provincetown, Massachusetts, and spent part of the year there.
     What do I finally make of Norman Mailer, a much published author, provocative, outrageous, perennially drunk, who married six wives in turn (thus matching Henry VIII) and by them had eight children and adopted a ninth, his last wife’s son by another marriage?  Though a gifted writer, he was a child who never grew up.  He totally lacked the very thing that my grade school teachers preached to callow minds endlessly: self-control.  He yielded to impulses, with dire results for both himself and others.  Brilliant at times, but a child.
     Mailer’s health failed in his later years, when he suffered from arthritis and deafness and had to walk with two canes.  He underwent lung surgery at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York and a month later, on November 10, 2007, at age 84, died of acute renal failure.  That he lasted that long, given his heavy intake of drugs and alcohol, is remarkable.  He is buried in Provincetown.
The noble sport goes back to the Minoans.
Marsyas     Personal aside #1: Me and Boxing.  Since Mailer idolized boxing and boxers, and I present myself as his opposite, it may be surprising that I once also found myself boxing.  It was the second semester of my first year in college, and all male students were required to take a semester of either boxing or wrestling, and I, with great misgivings, chose boxing.  (My father had always lamented the failure of American youth to engage in bodily contact sports, even as he overprotected me.)  The head coach presided, but he immediately introduced a bruiser named Kelly, tall and massive with a steel-like chin, who had boxed professionally and would therefore be our instructor.  At the mere sight of him I was nervous, and so were plenty of others.  
      With a resonant voice Kelly told us that knowing we could hold our own in a boxing match would build self-confidence, but added with emphasis, “It takes a gentleman to walk away from a fight.”  Daily lessons followed.  “Bloody Monday!” was Kelly’s hearty greeting at the start of the week, though in truth not much blood was spilled.  Unaggressive by nature, I wasn’t out to land a forceful punch.  Instead, I saw boxing as a kind of dance, since footwork was involved, and a game where you tried to touch your opponent’s face or shoulder.  Once a friend walked right into one of my gentle punches and, dazed, had to leave class at once.  I hadn’t punched hard, but all my friends kidded me about knocking out a partner.  Then one day Kelly picked me to show how he could get past my defenses to touch my shoulder, which meant he could have punched me in the face; finally I started to dodge.  Again, my friends kidded me afterward for “taking on” Kelly.  On another occasion one of the guys did get hit hard in the midriff and was moaning in pain; Kelly had him lean his head against his massive shoulder, while he assured the rest of us that in a short while the kid would be all right – not too convincing at first, with the kid moaning and groaning, but in time he was. 
     In spite of this memorable incident, the dreaded class turned out to be bearable.  On the last day the head coach had all of us box for him, so he could award the grade.  My partner confessed that he wasn’t keen on boxing, so I told him I wasn’t either, but added, “Let’s give them a good show and get out of here.”  We did.  After several sluggish matches by others, we came on like fury, trading gentle punches vigorously, and the whole class gathered round and cheered us heartily on.  “I want to box with you!” several friends told me afterward, but I just smiled: it was the last day of the class, no chance.  So ended my career in boxing – not the total fiasco I had anticipated.  As for Kelly the bruiser, we saw him play a Christian convert in Shaw’s Androcles and the Lion and play the role very well, demonstrating that he wasn’t just a bruiser; he was an actor, too.  So “Bloody Monday!” wasn’t the whole story; there was more to him -- a lot more – than that.
     Personal aside #2:  What famous writers would I want to avoid, and which would I want to hang out with?   I know I wouldn’t have wanted to know Norman Mailer.  Which prompted a piquant thought: who else would I want to seek out or avoid?  Let’s start with those I’d want to avoid (which has nothing to do with their value as writers):

·      All the drunks.  (There goes half of American literature.)·      All the egomaniacs.  (There goes the other half.)·      Milton.  (Too sure of himself, little sense of humor.)·      Dante.  (He might put me in hell.)·      Sartre.  (Too fiercely intellectual.)·      André Breton, head of the Surrealists.  (Too severely judgmental.  I should know, having done my thesis on him.)·      Alexander Pope.  (He might skewer me in a satire.  A nasty little man, keen and vicious, though in print amusing.)·      Rimbaud.  (Another nasty one; look how he savaged Verlaine, who had his reasons for shooting the kid.)·      Jonathan Swift.  (Too fiercely satiric.)·      Allen Ginsberg.  (He’d want me to take my clothes off.  And I wouldn’t want to see him naked either.     NOT  INVITED
John Milton.  For small talk he'd probably talk
theology.   Alexander Pope.  A deft and savage satirist.
No thanks, why take a chance?
Jean-Paul Sartre.  Brilliant, but too intellectual. Allen Ginsberg.  I remember him
with a beard and too much hair,
 but no matter.  At least he
has his clothes on here.
Ludwig Urning
That’s a lot of avoidances.  No women, interestingly enough.  So how about those writers I’d like to know, maybe find myself sitting next to at a dinner party? 
·      The Roman poet Horace.  (At the top of the list.  Gifted but modest, all for simple living, likable, a sense of humor, a supremely good conversationalist.)·      Chaucer.  (Great sense of humor – sometimes a bit ribald, but that’s okay.  Loved people, very observant.)·      Benjamin Franklin.  (Charming in society, could relate to almost anyone.  Witty, informed, good sense of humor.)·      The early Whitman.  (The fervent lover of the Calamus poems, not the later “good gray poet” who seemingly repudiated his gay self for the sake of his patriarchal image.)·      Victor Hugo.  (As healthy and upbeat as they come, a perennial optimist.)·      Voltaire.  (Witty, irreverent, humane, sociable.)·      Rabelais.  (If I’m in a mood for the boisterous and bawdy.)·      Shakespeare.  (Seems to have been modest and gentle, but let’s face it, we hardly know anything about him.)·      Byron.  (Could be charming, though at times a poseur.)·      Colette.  (Sensitive, observant, deeply human.)·      Dickens.  (Sociable, knowledgeable, congenial.)·      Jane Austen.  (Sociable, to judge from the novels, and full of good sense, though I don’t know much about her personally.)·      Madame de Sévigné.  (Warm, sociable, and witty, to judge by the famous letters.)
IINVITED
Ben Franklin.  Bright and witty, a charmer. Voltaire.  Ah, that sly smile, hinting at
a wicked wit. Lord Byron.  To add spice to the party;
bisexual, with appeal to both sexes. Colette.  Worldly, observant, shrewd.
 She'd write a canny account
of the gathering.     Lots of great names fall between the two camps – Goethe, Chekhov, Wordsworth, Emily Dickinson, Baudelaire, Proust -- not to be avoided but not among my top choices for dinner table companions.  I’m looking for those who would be friendly and open, easygoing, unpretentious, with no need to shock, and as willing to listen as to talk.  In other words, well balanced and not broody moody.  Among great writers I’m lucky to find any at all.
     Coming soon:  Hell House, the Latest Form of Christian Terrorism.  “Christian terrorism?” you may ask.  Yes, it’s an old tradition in this religion of love and compassion; I’ll trace it back via the Middle Ages to the Gospels.  And a Hell House here in secular New York?  Yes, once, back in 2006 in Brooklyn.  After that: Is bigger better?  MOMA and the Frick: museums and their lust to expand.  And after that: What do Elmo, Mickey Mouse, squeegee men, fake nuns, and Revolutionary War veterans have in common?   
     ©  2014  Clifford browder

139. Norman Mailer and the Chaos in Chicago

Mailer in 1948

     I never knew the man, never even glimpsed him, know him only from his works, only some of which I have read.  Nor was he someone I would have cared to know.  Why then this post?  Because he’s huge and inescapable, and because sometimes we feel a morbid attraction to our opposite.  And he was certainly my opposite.  Consider:


·      He was macho, I am not, nor have I ever felt the need to be so.·      He was straight, I am gay.·      He loved attention, craved it, wallowed in it, regardless of whether it was favorable or not, whereas I don’t need it, would prefer to fade away like a flounder into sand.·      He liked to box and made a big thing of it, whereas I don’t.  (See the personal aside below.)·      He was drug- and booze-ridden, out of control; I am not.·      He was capable of physical violence, whereas I, to the best of my knowledge, am not.·      He was a successful writer, I am not.  (Published, yes, but hardly successful in the usual sense of the word.)·      He was a womanizer and went through six wives and any number of mistresses, whereas I am by nature monogamous, have been in one gay relationship for 46 years.
And so on and so on.  But by defining this renowned egomaniac in contrast with myself, I risk making this post as much about myself as about Mailer.  And this from someone who claims not to be an egomaniac himself!  Well, we’ll see.
     I first heard of Mailer – as did most people – when his war novel The Naked and the Dead was published to great acclaim in 1948, though I didn’t read it until years later.  It’s a good novel, though  I’d hardly call it his best work, as some critics do; but it launched him, at age 25, into fame and notoriety, which he reveled in and would enjoy for the rest of his life.
     It was in the 1960s, and as a journalist, that Mailer really came to my attention, gripped me, impressed me.  I read his essay “The White Negro: Superficial Reflections on the Hipster,” first published in 1957, though I read it a little later, when I was flirting with Beatnik culture and in a mood to break away – for a while – from the safe middle-class life I was living and experiment with peyote.  But I was hardly a hipster, wasn’t into jazz, which Mailer associated with apocalyptic orgasm (he was always big on orgasm) and with living for instant gratification.  (For instant gratification and mindless escape I’ve always preferred dancing – wild, crazy dancing, and I don’t mean the waltz.)  Especially controversial in the essay was Mailer’s citing the murder of a white candy-store owner by two 18-year-old blacks as an example of “daring the unknown.”
The march on the Pentagon     Then came the Vietnam War, which Mailer vigorously opposed, and his award-winning book The Armies of the Night (1968), recounting his participation in the march on the Pentagon by tens of thousands of war protesters on October 21, 1967.  He is of course the center of the account, but hardly glamorized.  He sees the stars of the demonstration as the novelist, the poet, and the critic: himself, Robert Lowell, and Dwight Macdonald (though there were plenty of others, too).  What does Lowell really think of him as a novelist? he wonders, then reflects that Lowell may be wondering what he, Mailer, thinks of Lowell as a poet.  Does Mailer perhaps prefer Allen Ginsberg?  The goals of the march are gradually whittled down by what the authorities will allow, but the march does take place, with Mailer, Lowell, and Macdonald conspicuously in the lead. 
     Mailer knows he risks arrest, and thinks longingly of the party that awaits him afterward, if he is free to attend, a party that promises to be tasty (perhaps not quite the word he used, but close).  When they get to the Pentagon, they are met by ranks of National Guardsmen.  Mailer is confronted by a young Guardsman who is obviously nervous but tells him to go back.  Mailer presses on and gets arrested.  Reporters ask him about the arrest, and he replies that it was done quite correctly; there was violence elsewhere, but he did not experience or witness it.  He spends a night in jail with hundreds of other protesters.  Some of them approach him, but he spurns them as mindless; finally he is released. 
     What I esteem in Mailer’s account of the march is his honesty: the compromises, the self-doubt, the need to create a public image of the protest and the calculations that went into it.  He is totally convincing.
     Again, I find him at his best in Miami and the Siege of Chicago (also 1968), his account for Harper’s Magazine of the tranquil Republican convention and the turbulent Democratic convention of August 1968.  Irving Howe once observed that there were two Norman Mailers: a “reflective private Norman” and a “noisy public Norman.”  True enough, and the noisy one often obscures the reflective one, but in his journalism the reflective one prevails.  At Miami, where he always refers to himself as “the reporter,” he is admitted by mistake to a Republican Grand Gala from which the press has been excluded, and senses in the wealthy and powerful Republicans present an enduring faith in America as “the world’s ultimate reserve of rectitude, final garden of the Lord.”  Following that he describes with intelligence and understanding the “New Nixon,” a Nixon chastened by recent political setbacks that could easily have ended his career.  His take on Nixon at his only press conference, prior to his winning the nomination on the first ballot: still uneasy with the press, guarded and unspontaneous and devoid of charisma, but showing the kind of gentleness that ex-drunkards acquire after years in Alcoholics Anonymous, and fielding questions with a newfound dignity and modesty.  And this from an observer who admittedly up till now had always been hostile to Nixon.
Nixon and supporters, 1968
     Memorable as well is the reporter’s observations on Nixon’s reception for delegates, this again prior to the nominations.  Here Nixon and his wife greet patiently the long line of followers eager for a few seconds with their revered candidate, who shakes the hand of each and gives them a few precious seconds of greeting.  And who are these followers back in that distant pre-Tea Party time?  Not the biggies present at the Gala, but the little Republicans: small-town druggists and bank tellers and high school principals, widows with a tidy income, retired doctors, minor executives, farmers who own their own farm, salesmen, librarians, and editors of the local newspaper – older Wasps from the Midwest and Far West who lead quiet, orderly lives and adore their candidate in a way to deep for applause.  These are Nixon’s people and he knows it and is at ease with them, as he never quite is with the press.  This is sensitive reporting from a reporter for whom these people have to be aliens, since he is the Brooklyn-raised son of a Jewish immigrant father and now hobnobs with (and sometimes head-butts and punches) literary lions and the elite of the urban intelligentsia.
     (A personal aside:  They are my people too, or were, since I grew up in a middle-class suburb of Chicago that was quietly but staunchly Republican, my father a corporation lawyer, and our neighbors Chicago businessmen, local merchants, university professors, the night editor of a Chicago newspaper, and a dentist -- good, solid, orderly folk for whom the name of Roosevelt was anathema and who surely voted for Nixon, as for Eisenhower and Dewey before him.)
     A further surprising conclusion of the reporter:  Too long a damned minority, perhaps it is time for the Wasp to come to power again.  The Left, he opines, lacks a vision sufficiently complex to give life to America; it is too full of kicks and pot and orgy, the howls of electronics and LSD.  And again, this from a man steeped in booze and drugs, ever ready for an altercation or a fight.  As for Nixon, in his acceptance speech he pledged “to bring an honorable end to the war in Vietnam,” proving once again that, for all his faults, politically he was no fool.
     What a contrast were these tranquil scenes in Miami with the riotous events of the Democratic convention in Chicago later that same month of August!  There, in the wake of the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy earlier in the year, all the furies of the war protest movement converged, joined by anarchists and Yippies and Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and other groups, for a dramatic confrontation with Mayor Daley’s police and National Guardsmen.  Bearded, balding, and spectacled, Allen Ginsberg showed up prepared to calm the Yippies’ Festival of Life with his meditative chant of OM.  With him came Beat author and heroin addict William Boroughs, and French author and ex-thief Jean Genet, both of whom Esquire magazine had commissioned to cover the convention.  Whatever their stated motives, in counterculture circles Chicago promised to be a rich stew of protest that no one wanted to miss out on.
     To understand the two conventions in August 1968, one needs to understand the events preceding them in that eventful year.  Here is a brief chronology:
·      January 16.  The first manifesto of the newly organized Youth International Party announces that the Yippies will be in Chicago in August for a Festival of Life, coinciding with the Democratic convention, which they label a Festival of Death.  The threats of LBJ (President Johnson) and Mayor Daley will not stop them, they insist.·      January 31.  The North Vietnamese launch the surprise Tet Offensive throughout South Vietnam, catching the U.S. and South Vietnamese forces off guard; even the U.S. embassy in Saigon is briefly invaded.  The attack is repulsed, but, contrary to statements by the Pentagon and the Johnson administration, it proves that North Vietnam is far from defeated in the war.·      March 12.  Senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota, an opponent of  the war, wins 42% of the New Hampshire primary vote to President  Johnson’s 49%, surprising everyone by the strength of his support.  He is now the hope of the antiwar movement.·      March 16.  Senator Robert Kennedy of New York announces his candidacy, splitting the antiwar movement.  McCarthy’s supporters denounce Kennedy as an opportunist and Johnny-come-lately for having entered the contest only after McCarthy showed the strength of that movement (an opinion that I at the time shared).·      March 31.  Aware of his growing unpopularity, Lyndon Johnson stuns the nation by announcing he will not seek reelection.  The race to succeed him is now wide open.·      April 4.  Martin Luther King is assassinated in Memphis.  Black ghettoes in many cities, including Mayor Richard Daley’s Chicago, erupt in riots.  Daley, who rules Chicago with an iron hand, tells the police to shoot to kill any arsonist or anyone with a Molotov cocktail in his hand.  Reported in the press, this order causes a sensation and becomes highly controversial.·      April 23.  To protest university administration policies, Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and militant black students occupy buildings on the Columbia University campus and seven days later are violently evicted by police.  These events are emblematic of campus unrest throughout the nation, as students rebel against authority, and young men threatened by the draft burn their draft cards and vow, “Hell no, we won’t go!”·      April 27.  An antiwar march in Chicago organized by the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam ends with police beating many of the marchers. ·      April 27.  Vice-President Hubert Humphrey, a longtime liberal, announces his candidacy.  A supporter of Johnson’s policies, he gets the backing of the Democratic establishment.·      June 5.  Robert Kennedy is assassinated In Los Angeles.  His supporters are in disarray, disliking both McCarthy and Humphrey.·      August 8.  The Republican convention in Miami Beach nominates Richard Nixon as their presidential candidate.·      August 10.  Urged on by many Kennedy supporters, after some hesitation Senator George McGovern of South Dakota announces his candidacy only two weeks before the Democratic convention.  Long an opponent of the war, he is backed by many Kennedy followers.·      August 26-29.  The Democratic national convention in Mayor Daley’s Chicago, with antiwar demonstrators out in force.  Daley has vowed that “No thousands will come to our city and take over our streets, our city, our convention.”  The stage is set for a violent confrontation.
Robert Kennedy in 1963.  He knew
how to reach people.      Mailer liked Chicago, quickly realized that Chicagoans resembled the people of Brooklyn he grew up among: simple, strong, warm-spirited, sly, rough, tricky, and good-natured.  (With most of this I agree, having grown up in a Chicago suburb.)  But he was there for other reasons.  Like many, he mourned the loss of Robert Kennedy and for an antiwar candidate found himself stuck with Eugene McCarthy, whom he remembered from a cocktail party in Cambridge soon after Kennedy’s death.  At the party McCarthy had looked weary beyond belief, his skin a used-up yellow, as he tried to answer the inevitable idiotic questions of others.  McCarthy was not a mixer, Mailer concluded, and a man too private for the mixing required in politics, seeming less like a presidential candidate than the dean of the finest English department in the land.  (I had reached a similar conclusion from the fact that he was also a poet.  A poet in the White House? – no way!  In some countries, perhaps, but in this one, never.) 
Eugene McCarthy.  Too much of a thinker
to be President?
     When McCarthy arrived now at the airport in Chicago and was welcomed by five thousand enthusiastic supporters, he seemed full of energy and happy.  But when he addressed the crowd for a few minutes, he spoke mildly with a certain detachment; they wanted fire, he gave them ice.  When Mailer encountered McCarthy with some friends a few days later in a restaurant, the senator, no longer a serious candidate since Humphrey had been chosen, seemed relaxed and in good humor.  Yet when Mailer looked across the table at the senator, he saw a toughness in his face.  A complex man, probably too complex to be President.
Hubert Humphrey, with the famous smile 
that helped win him the name of the
Happy Warrior.     For Hubert Humphrey, Mailer has less to say.  In sharp contrast to McCarthy, he arrived with almost no one to greet him at the airport, just a handful of his staff.  He would then go against political common sense and forfeit any chance of winning by remaining Johnson’s boy, afraid to face the collective wrath of the President and the military-industrial establishment by coming out against the war. 
     But while a divided and turbulent Democratic convention was proceeding inside the International Amphitheatre, on the city’s south side near the stockyards, outside in the streets an even more turbulent drama was unfolding.  Mayor Daley had decreed that no one would be allowed in the parks after 11p.m., so thousands of protesters decided to remain.  And since Daley had decreed that the protesters would not be allowed to march, they vowed to march whenever and wherever they wished.  Daley had massed thousands of police and National Guardsmen, but there were thousands of demonstrators, making violent clashes almost inevitable.  And clashes there were, night after night.  When not fighting the police, the young demonstrators shouted “Dump the Hump!” (meaning Humphrey), sang “We Shall Overcome,” and called out “Join us!” to bystanders, some of whom actually did.
Mayor Daley (left) with President Johnson.
     Witnessing some of these events and getting reports about others, Mailer provides vivid descriptions of many. He himself, being Mailer, manages to get arrested twice by the National Guard, but is released when brought before the officer in charge.  Here are some of the highlights of his reporting, which he supplements with firsthand Village Voice accounts of events that he missed:
·      Allen Ginsberg in Lincoln Park chanting OM and tinkling his finger cymbals peacefully, with William Boroughs and Jean Genet close by, when huge tear-gas canisters come crashing into the center of the gathering, sending people running and screaming in all directions, while a line of police advance, swatting at stragglers and crumpled figures on the ground, until angry fugitives swarm into the streets, blocking traffic, fighting plainclothesmen, setting fire to trash cans, and demolishing police patrol cars with a rain of  missiles.
·      The police tear-gassing protesters in Grant Park, with the wind blowing the gas across Michigan Boulevard into the Conrad Hilton, a huge looming structure housing the Humphrey and McCarthy headquarters, many delegates, and much of the press, who suffer smarting eyes and burning throats, and from their windows see the drama unfolding below.
·      A delegate, addressing the kids in the park, calls up to the delegates and campaign workers in the Hilton (his voice presumably amplified), “If you are with us, blink your lights,” and lights begin to blink in the Hilton, ten, then twenty, then fifty, till  whole banks of lights at the McCarthy headquarters on the 15thand 23rd floors flash on and off, and the crowd of bruised and bloodied kids, in spite of the sour vomit odor of the Mace that has been used on them, in spite of everything, cheer.
·      While Mailer watches safely from his 19thfloor window in the Hilton (he admittedly has no appetite for tear gas or Mace), the police chase demonstrators, beat them, bloody them, only to find them reforming their ranks to taunt and challenge them again, till the police, in what becomes an out-and-out police riot, charge a crowd of bystanders watching quietly from behind barriers in front of the Hilton, crushing the bystanders against a plate glass window that shatters, tumbling the people into the hotel bar, where the police follow to beat the occupants, including some who had been quietly drinking at the bar.
Police attacking demonstrators outside the convention.·      Demonstrators, reporters, and McCarthy workers, along with doctors beaten by the police when they tried to help wounded demonstrators,  stagger into the Hilton lobby, blood streaming from their wounds, amid the stench of tear gas, and of stink bombs hurled outside by the Yippies.
·      In the convention hall Senator Ribicoff of Connecticut nominates George McGovern, saying that with him as President “we wouldn’t have those Gestapo tactics in the streets of Chicago,” at which point Mayor Daley leaps to his feet, shakes his fist at the podium, and shouts insults that most of those present can’t hear, but that TV lip-readers throughout the country interpret, rightly or wrongly, as “Fuck you, you Jew son of a bitch!”  The incident provokes roars from the floor and a buzz from the gallery.  (Ribicoff was indeed Jewish.)
George McGovern
     When the balloting began, there were no surprises, for Humphrey was nominated on the very first round; masterminding events from his ranch in Texas, where he was safe from the rowdy welcome his appearance in Chicago might have provoked, LBJ had managed things well.  But thanks to the TV cameras, the world had witnessed what went on inside and outside the hall, and the bruised and bandaged protesters knew it, shouting “The whole world is watching,” and considered the whole riotous event a victory.  There were excesses on both sides, but far more on the side of Daley and his goons.  Mailer reflects on the thin line that divides the police from criminals, observing that the mass of policemen are a criminal force restrained by their guilt, and by a sprinkling of career men working earnestly for a balance between justice and authority.
     Watching the televised events in Chicago, the nation decided, I suggest, that it needed someone safe and sane in the White House, someone speaking with a voice of moderation: Richard Nixon.  And so it came to pass.
     Note:  This post has focused on Mailer the journalist in Chicago and leaves out much else that happened there; anyone unfamiliar with the story should read a comprehensive account, including the subsequent trial of the Chicago Seven, leaders of the antiwar demonstrations who were charged with conspiracy and inciting to riot.  The next post will tell how Mailer stabbed his second wife, assaulted Gore Vidal twice, ran for mayor of New York, helped get parole for a convicted murderer still capable of murder, and managed to be legally married to three different women sequentially in the space of one week.  Plus two Mailer-inspired personal asides: one on me and my brief career in boxing (Mailer fancied himself a boxer; I did not), and one naming which famous deceased writers I would want to avoid (Mailer being one of them) and which ones I would like to hang out with.

     Coming soon:  More Mailer, as indicated above.  Then: Hell House, the Latest Form of Christian Terrorism.
     ©  2014  Clifford Browder

138. Gentrification and the West Village: Good or Bad?

     Gentrification is a term that raises hackles.  Usually it means trading one thing for another: gutsy for genteel, old neighborhoods with human-scale buildings for luxury high-rises; low rents for high rents; working class and bohemia for solid white-collar middle class; mom-and-pop stores for boutiques; charm for soulless modernity.  But things aren’t always that simple.  How about Greenwich Village, especially the West Village, where I have lived since the early 1960s?  What has happened to it? 
     I have just finished John Strausbaugh’s epic 624-page chronicle The Village: 400 Years of Beats and Bohemians, Radicals and Rogues: A History of Greenwich Village, which I highly recommend to anyone interested in the subject.  It ends with an Epilogue where survivors of another time lament the recent gentrification of the Village and the loss of a wild, radical, anything-goes spirit, funky and creative, that pervaded it back in its low-rent days.  Yes, that spirit is gone, along with the low rents that once attracted young writers, artists, and enterprising theater people who made, or tried to make, wild things happen.  But even they represented a kind of gentrification, for the Village, as Strausbaugh demonstrates, has undergone a series of gentrifications.
     When I came to the Village in the 1960s, another young writer I got to know, very WASP, told me how his Italian landlady was learning that she could rent safely to newly arrived non-Italians, who could be counted on to pay their rent.  So the arrival of people like him and me – the very ones who diluted the working-class Italian population that Tammany boss Carmine DeSapio had counted on at election time (see post #135) – constituted a wave of gentrification, even though the streets and buildings of the Village didn’t change.  And I recall a vignette in the neighborhood weekly The Villager, which was delivered free to everyone’s doorstep, briefly describing two girls, barefoot, eating ice cream cones, and observing, “Isn’t that what the Village is all about?  Two barefoot girls eating ice cream cones.”  Which said nothing about the influx of gay people, Off Off Broadway, the jazz scene, and the prevalence of drugs and booze.  The Villager, of course, was where you went for news of the PTA and what the Girl Scouts were up to, and not much else.  So back then, obviously, there were many Villages, perhaps as many as there were Villagers. 
     In the early 1900s political radicals and free lovers flocked to the low-rent Village.  The Irish and Italian working-class residents, who considered the Village theirs, looked askance at men with long hair and even more at women with short hair who drank and smoked openly in the company of these outlandish males.  (Generation after generation, the Village has always lured a fresh version of the New Woman, to the fascination of the press and public.)  Wild politics and wild art followed.  But by the early 1920s the radicals were lamenting the passing of the Golden Years, as bars and restaurants and boutiques opened to accommodate the weekend tourists who flocked to the Village via the recently extended IRT subway line, eager to see the Village’s weird bohemian denizens and be shocked and fascinated by its New Women, who necked freely at parties and wore bobbed hair.  Locals complained that this wasn’t the Village they grew up in, and some artists moved out, unable to afford the rising rents.  (Sound familiar?)
     Prohibition brought speakeasies, and the Depression brought real and imitation proletarians and Communists, among the latter none other than a Harvard dropout named Pete Seeger, whose radicalism took the form of music.  And the WPA kept many a Village artist and writer from foundering in poverty.  No, this wasn’t the Village of the Roaring Twenties, least of all after the Mafia moved in.  But it was still different: 14th Street was the dividing line between uptown and downtown.  Uptown meant money, power, elegance, and class; downtown meant hip, artsy, scruffy, and wild.  For all its changes, the Village was still the Village.
     Which brings us to my time in New York.  In the 1950s I was far uptown at Columbia University, but weekends meant subway trips to the Village and its gay bars, trips that left studies and a pretense of heterosexuality behind, and generated a kind of freedom, partial and temporary, but freedom even so.  And friends of mine began moving down to the Village, which planted in my mind the notion of doing the same.  And in 1959, I did, giving up a spacious two-room apartment near the campus for a crummy one-room apartment on West 14th Street with a teetering table, one dingy window with a view of nothing, and a ravaged ceiling with a bare light bulb and peeling paint. 
     But oh how that ceiling astonished me, becoming a cratered lunar landscape, then pocked skin whose blemishes were entrancingly beautiful, when I stared at it high on peyote!  And how that bare light bulb overhead obsessed me, becoming the life-giving sun to whom I of all mortals was chosen to offer my seed in a consummation on which the fertility of the whole world depended.  (A consummation that I had to fake, since being high gives visions but leaves your dingus limp; I did my best, not wanting to let the universe down.  For the whole crazy story, see post #62, Abnormal and Paranormal Adventures.)  
     So there I was, indulging in my one and only experiment with drugs, and in less exalted moments sticking my middle-class nose into the Gaslight Café on MacDougal Street, to hear second-rate Beatniks spout their sometimes amusing but never brilliant stabs at poetry.  All this because I had read Allen Ginsberg’s Howl and been transported by it.  (I still am.)  Yes indeed, a weekend tourist (I had a weekday job) having a go at playing bohemian, unaware that in so doing I was participating in an old Village tradition that went back decades at least.  And this in the Village of barefoot girls gobbling ice cream cones!
     In 1961 I returned from a year and a half in San Francisco and got an apartment on Jane Street, then in 1968 quit my teaching job and met my partner, Bob, also a Village resident.  And in June 1970 we moved into the rent-stabilized apartment on West 11th Street where we still reside (once in a rent-stabilized apartment, one moves out only feet first).  Which brings us to the threshold of the Golden Years (the Village has had many Golden Years) that the survivors in Strausbaugh’s Epilogue remember with nostalgia.
     Yes, something of that time has been lost today, but let’s see what else gentrification has wrought besides high rents.  The heart of the Village hasn’t changed outwardly, being an officially recognized Historical District, though the commercial fringes are fair game for developers, with resulting ugly glass boxes looming here and there, though distant enough to leave the human-scale old buildings and quiet side streets intact.  So what has changed and what do I regret?
     How about the Women’s House of Detention, that depressing twelve-story monolith of a prison looming smack against my local library where Sixth Avenue and Greenwich Avenue converge?  Do I miss it, half Bastille and half Bedlam, and the stories it inspired of cockroach-ridden cells, wormy food, and abuse of inmates by other inmates and staff?  Do I miss the volleys of obscenity issuing from it in the evening when inmates called down greetings to their friends, lovers, and pimps on the sidewalk, who shrieked answers laced with obscenities?  No, not much.  Least of all when the monstrous thing was torn down and replaced with a charming little park where I have often strolled.  Score 1 for gentrification.

The Women's House of Detention in the 1930s, with the Sixth
Avenue El in the foreground.The Jefferson Market Garden     Or do I miss the abandoned and crumbling Hudson River waterfront, where gay men went at night for quick anonymous sex, often with multiple partners, in smelly parked trucks, or in rat-infested, rubble-strewn sheds on the piers, in a darkness lit only by the glow of an occasional cigarette?  Today the waterfront has been cleaned up, most of the moldering piers removed, a few of them turned into parks with trees and lawn, and the whole riverside converted into a long ribbon of greenery with a bike path and a walk for pedestrians, dog runs and tennis courts and other facilities.  Yes, it’s middle-class and well scrubbed and respectable, but so what?  People go there to cycle and walk, to sunbathe, to play ball with their kids, to read, even at times to dance.  It’s safe, it’s healthy, it’s fun.  Score 2 for gentrification.


The Hudson River Park, looking south from Christopher Street to Pier 40.  I often walk here.
     By the 1970s the Village had become a sexual playground, and gay men, far from hiding their sexuality, flaunted it.  I recall the meatpacking district in the northwest corner of the Village near the Hudson when it was a sparsely populated commercial area with shabby streets given over to wholesale meatpacking; passing by, I often saw butchers and meat cutters in blood-stained aprons, graffiti-ridden walls, and rows of carcasses dangling from hooks outside the meatpacking establishments.  But by the 1970s the neighborhood had become wild with gay sex clubs and leather bars with enticing names like the Mineshaft, the Anvil, the Ramrod, the Cock Pit, and (I’m not inventing this) the Toilet.  At the Anvil at 14th Street and Tenth Avenue drag queens performed on a runway, and naked go-go boys pranced up and down the bars and did amazing gymnastics, and patrons resorted to the dim basement for sex.  The Mineshaft at Washington and Little West 12th Street was even wilder: in a dim back room men had sex in cubicles, others submitted to anal fisting, and still others knelt in a bathtub for the fun of being urinated on.  And to enjoy these delights, one had to adhere to a strict dress code: no colognes or perfumes; no suits or ties; no designer sweaters; no disco drag or dresses.  Preferred dress included leather and Western gear, Levis, jocks, action ready wear, and uniforms.  As for action, according to witnesses the nearby Toilet was even worse.


Gansevoort Street in the Meatpacking District, 2007.   Still shabby in places.

Juliana Ng
     This scene passed me by, for I wasn’t into leather or anonymous sex; being in a relationship, I didn’t need the joys of the Mineshaft or the Toilet.  The most that Bob and I did was dance at the Goldbug, a Mafia-run disco with the traditional thug at the door, a male go-go dancer, and ear-splitting music – wild for us, but tame by the standards of the day.  And when I read a letter in the press by a Village resident telling how, when she and her family walked the Village streets, “liberated” gay men eyed her twelve-year-old son brazenly, I shared her indignation and yearned for the good old days of clandestine gay life, when heterosexuals weren’t intentionally molested.  If this was gay liberation, I wanted no part of it.  


A new kind of spook house, thanks to the Christian fundamentalists.
     In the 1980s the wild phase of gay liberation came to an end because of AIDS, which the Christian right hailed as God’s punishment on these sinful degenerates.  A young man dying miserably of AIDS was a standard scene, along with Satanic rituals, bloody abortions, and teen-age murders, in the lurid Hell Houses sponsored by various churches in an effort to dramatize the wages of sin.  But I saw, and still see, the AIDS epidemic as nature's way of rebalancing, its mysterious and often cruel way of curbing excesses.


Closed until further notice.
     Today the meatpacking district is full of pricey restaurants and boutiques, gourmet food retailers, and nightclubs where on weekends trendy people sip overpriced drinks three-deep at the bar.  The district is even promoted as  “glamorous” and a “must-see,” and there are walking tours for the uninitiated.


The Meatpacking District today: a girl go-go dancer dances on the bar at the Hogs n' Heifers.
A scene for the well-scrubbed and young.
David Shankbone.

     The Gansevoort Meatpacking NYC, a new luxury hotel at 18 Ninth Avenue, offers breathtaking panoramic views of the city and sunsets over the Hudson, and a rooftop swimming pool with underwater lights.  And at Ninth Avenue and West 14th Street there is even a glass-walled Apple store where I have gone several times to have my computer looked at by a “genius.”  The Toilet, I’m informed, is now a fancy restaurant, a transformation that I can’t regret.  Score 3 – or maybe 3, 4, 5 – for gentrification.  No need to keep score any more; my point is made. 


My Apple store at Ninth Avenue and West 14th Street.  No go-go dancers, just geniuses.
AchimH     Of course the Village in those days was more than screaming women at the House of Detention and gay men having anonymous sex indoors and out.  There was jazz, theater, and cabaret, all of them with a wild side at times.   The funky creativity of the time seemed to involve self-destruction as well, and drugs and alcohol took their toll.  But as the rents went up, the really wild side – Beats and hippies, artists and musicians -- moved to the East Village, leaving what became known as the West Village relatively quiet.  I remember crossing Third Avenue into the East Village and sensing at once a different, shabbier, wilder atmosphere.  Above all on Saint Mark’s Place there were head shops, often incense-ridden, stepping into which was like embarking on a drug-induced adventure.  They offered everything but drugs themselves (though drugs were probably available close by): drug paraphernalia of every kind including pipes and water pipes, psychedelic posters with glaring colors and ornate lettering, and dim, weird lighting that reminded me of my peyote fantasies.  I didn’t mind savoring this atmosphere briefly, but it always kindled  in me a keen longing for the outdoors and normal air and light. 



Saint Mark's place today: less shabby, less psychedelic, less wild.
Beyond My Ken
     Today the 14th Street boundary between uptown and downtown seems to have vanished, and Village rents are often higher than on the Upper East Side.  Bleecker Street near where I live is lined with designer clothing stores – Marc Jacobs, Brunello Cucinelli, Ralph Lauren – that I never enter, and right downstairs is the Magnolia Bakery of Sex and the City fame, sought out by busloads of tourists, and foreign visitors with guidebooks, who click photos of one another in front of the fabled bakery and sit on my doorstep gobbling delicious cupcakes that I, a good vegan, shun. 



 Even in winter they line up.  I'm four flights above.joe goldberg
     Do I hate the tourists and the cupcake gobblers and the patrons of the pricey stores?  No, not at all.  They don’t threaten me or anyone else, and if sometimes they leave a little litter – mostly crumb-filled cupcake wrappings and crumpled paper napkins – at least it isn’t used condoms or drug stuff.  And they show that today’s Village, however gentrified, still has vitality, albeit a vitality different from that of the Golden Age of yore, whichever Golden Age one has in mind.  And not all the restaurants are overpriced; when I go out with friends for lunch, within walking distance we can eat Irish, Indian, Chinese, or Mexican and stay within our budget.  Nor is this a gated WASP-only community; running errands I may hear four or five foreign languages and see a sari, or even a burka veiling a Moslem woman from head to foot with only two thin slits for her eyes. 
     Someday a new batch of survivors will look back to a Golden Age when foreigners with their noses deep in guidebooks flocked to the Village, and people lined up in front of the storied Magnolia Bakery, mouth watering at the mere thought of the scrumptious little cupcakes within, and cyclists zoomed for miles along a riverside bike path with great views of the Hudson, and sunbathers baked their skin stretched out on the real or fake grass of a pier jutting out into the river.  Ah, those were the days!
     A note on the East Village:  The New York Times of April 6 last announced that outlaw artist Clayton Patterson was finally leaving the Lower East Side where he has lived for 35 years, most of it in a storefront home at 161 Essex Street.  A photo shows him as a stocky man with unkempt long gray hair topped by a baseball cap embroidered with a grinning skull, his beard in a double braid tumbling down his chest: the very image of the rebel artist, backed up by a phalanx of admiring musicians, sinister-looking types in leg-clinging jeans and dark jackets, all staring at the camera defiantly.  And why is he leaving?  Because the wildly creative East Village he knew and loved is being invaded by luxury apartments, corporate chain stores, overpriced parking meters, and pretentious restaurants – in short, gentrification. 
     “There’s nothing left for me here,” he told the Times reporter.  “The energy is gone.  My community is gone.  I’m getting out.  But the sad fact is: I didn’t really leave the Lower East Side.  It left me.”
     The moment the Canadian-born artist arrived in New York in 1979, his world had been the Lower East Side’s squatters, anarchists, tattoo artists,  drug-ridden poets, and skinheads, the outcasts and the down-and-outers he photographed repeatedly, and whose brutal ousting from Tompkins Square Park by the police in 1988 he recorded on tape.  One crucial event determining his departure was the eviction at age 88 of artist and actor Taylor Mead from his apartment on Ludlow Street (see post #91), following which Mead died within a month.  “No one gave a damn about Taylor Mead,” he declared, and admitted that he feared the same fate here for himself. 

Graffiti on an East Village telephone box advertising a 2012
reunion of survivors of the 1988 Tompkins Square Park riot.
David Shankbone
     So where is this last of the bohemians going?  To a chalet in the Austrian village of Bad Ischl, in the Alps.  Why there, of all places?  Because a creative community of writers, artists, tattoo designers, and musicians is flourishing there, and because he is “big” as an underground photographer in Austria, far more so than back here.  His friends see in his departure further evidence of the cultural decline of New York, which they insist is becoming a playground for money and sterilized housing.  Yes, even the outlaw East Village is succumbing, and maybe the loss there far outweighs the gain.
     Coming soon:  In two parts:  Norman Mailer, acclaimed author, womanizer, wife-stabber, drunk.  His brilliant coverage of the 1967 Pentagon March and the chaotic 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago, including a police riot and plenty of tear gas and Mace.

     ©  2014  Clifford Browder


  

137. Roy Cohn, Attack-Dog Lawyer and AIDS Denier, plus Outing

      I first heard of him when, studying in France in 1953, it was reported that two twenty somethings, members of Senator Joseph McCarthy’s staff, had been sent to Europe to investigate waste and mismanagement in U.S. Army bases, embassies, and offices of the U.S. Information Service, and see if there was any – heaven forfend! -- Communist or left-leaning literature available there.  This was, after all, the early days of the Cold War, and the rabidly anti-Communist senator from Wisconsin stretched his sinister shadow as far as Western Europe.  The two peripatetic staff members were Roy Cohn and David Schine, though at the time their names barely impinged on my psyche.  Their 18-day whirlwind tour, highly publicized, earned them the label “junketeering gumshoes” from a disgruntled U.S. employee in Germany whom they accused of having once signed a Communist Party petition, a charge that later cost him his job.
     But this was mere prelude.  I returned that year to the U.S. and began graduate studies in French at Columbia, which brought me to New York.  By the summer of 1954 I was busy writing my master’s thesis, but not so preoccupied that I didn’t find time every evening to join a thong of students in the campus TV room watching the Army-McCarthy hearings.  The hearings had been provoked by Roy Cohn’s excessive demands on the Army to give special privileges to his friend David Schine, who had been drafted into the Army but, in Cohn’s opinion, merited nightly passes while in basic training, exemption from onerous kitchen duties, and respect such as few draftees ever received.  So oppressive had Cohn’s interference become, climaxed by a threat to “wreck the Army,” that Army Secretary Robert T. Stevens brought formal charges against McCarthy and Cohn.  Extensive Senate hearings followed, and it was the daily evening summary of those hearings that I and twenty million others watched obsessively.
     The hearings revealed to us and the public at large the heavyset McCarthy’s obnoxious manner, and Roy Cohn’s heavy-lidded eyes, deep tan, and knowing grin, and above all his aggressiveness; they were not people you would care to meet.  Climaxing the hearings was Army counsel Joseph Welch’s passionate response, when McCarthy questioned the loyalty of one of Welch’s aides: “Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?  Have you left no sense of decency?” -- a query that provoked applause from the gallery.  Indeed, it was a turning point in McCarthy’s career; from then on his support steadily eroded.  In December 1954 he was formally censured by the Senate on a number of grounds.
McCarthy (left) and Cohn at the hearings.
     Among the students watching the hearings, and not just the gay contingent, it was commonly assumed that Cohn and Schine were lovers; how else could you explain Cohn’s fanatical insistence on special favors for his friend?  And how else explain certain innuendoes that spectators elsewhere may not have caught, as for instance when McCarthy asked Welch for a definition of “pixie,” a word that Welch had used casually in a question, and Welch replied that a pixie was a close relative of a fairy.  Or when Senator Flanders, Republican of Vermont, sauntered into the hearings one day to suggest that the relationships of those involved should be further explored. 
     The going Washington rumor of the time about McCarthy, as I knew indirectly from an uncle who was a PR man there, was that the senator had a babe stashed away in a hotel.  And since McCarthy had an abundance of enemies, savvy Washingtonians wondered why no one had leaked this to the press.  The explanation: everybody else probably had a babe stashed away also, and didn’t want to open that particular can of worms.  But there were other rumors, too, as I told the cousin who had passed this on to me: McCarthy, still a bachelor in his early forties, was gay.  But in 1953 he married a researcher in his office and four years later they adopted a baby girl.  His homosexuality was never established, but what also went unreported was his alcoholism, which contributed to his death in 1957.
Cohn in 1964.  Did he ever smile?  Certainly not
in a courtroom.     The hearings made Roy Cohn famous, but who was he?  He was born in 1927 in New York City to a nonobservant Jewish family, his father a judge with considerable political clout in the Democratic Party.  Raised in a Park Avenue apartment, he proved to be a bright student, attending local schools and then Columbia Law School, and was admitted to the bar as soon as he reached the age of 21.  Appointed to the staff of the U.S. Attorney in Manhattan, he impressed others as precocious, brilliant, and arrogant, qualities that would characterize his whole career.  He was soon making a name for himself prosecuting subversives, including Julius and Ethel Rosenberg in 1951, and was transferred to Washington to serve as special assistant to the Attorney General.  In 1953 he went to work for Senator McCarthy, and got his friend David Schine, the son of a multimillionaire real estate mogul, a job as consultant; their 18-day junket to Europe soon followed.
     Cohn’s work with McCarthy ended in 1954, but his career had barely begun.  Returning to New York, he joined the New York law firm Saxe, Bacon & Bolan, brought it numerous high-paying clients, and moved into the East Side townhouse that housed the firm’s offices, which made for a minimal commute.  His professional and private life were so intermixed that his colleagues were not surprised to see his doting mother wandering about the office, as she often did.  An only child, he was close to her and, following his father’s death in 1959, moved into her seven-room Park Avenue apartment.  After she died in 1969 he moved into a 33-room townhouse at 39 East 68th Street (presumably the same one already housing his law firm’s offices), though he also had a house in Greenwich, Connecticut, and in the summer went to Provincetown.
     Combative by nature, he became known for his aggressive courtroom technique, intimidating prosecutors, flustering witnesses, and impressing jurors with his photographic memory, so that he rarely referred to notes.  “My scare value is high,” he once boasted.  “My area is controversy.  My tough front is my biggest asset.  I don’t write polite letters.  I don’t like to plea-bargain.  I like to fight.”  No, not a fellow you’d care to know, but maybe just the attorney you need, if you’re involved in serious litigation and have a lot to lose.  Esquire magazine called him “a legal executioner”; the National Law Journal, an “assault specialist.”  His clients over the years included a juicy mix: real estate mogul Donald Trump; Mafia bosses Tony Salerno, Carmine Galante, and John Gotti; the owners of the popular New York nightclub Studio 54; the New York Yankees; Cardinal Spellman; and the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York.
     Short and light of weight, he was almost fragile in appearance (an impression well masked by his aggressive demeanor), with thinning hair and blue eyes often bloodshot from his late hours at fashionable discotheques. Socially active, he gave lavish parties where the guests included many celebrities.  All his life he had a penchant for the rich and powerful, and given his legal ability and political connections, they had a penchant for him.  Among his friends were President Ronald Reagan, Norman Mailer, Bianca Jagger, Barbara Walters, Rupert Murdock, William F. Buckley, Jr., William Safire, and numerous Democratic and Republican politicians at every level, from the obscure nether depths to the shining heights.  Who, indeed, didn’t he know?
Logo of the IRS, his nemesis.     Not that he was free of troubles.  To keep his income tax to a minimum, he had his law firm pay him a modest salary of a mere $100,000 a year, while giving him all kinds of perks that wouldn’t be taxed: a rent-free apartment, partial payment of the rent on his Greenwich, Connecticut, home; a chauffeured Rolls Royce and other limousines; and his bills at chic restaurants – perks said to total a million dollars a year.  From 1973 on he paid no income tax at all.  But the IRS, no doubt mindful of his sumptuous life style, audited his tax returns for over twenty years and collected more than $300,000 in back taxes, a mere fraction of what he finally owed them. Their pursuit of him would continue even after his death.
     Cohn’s courtroom tactics were condemned by many in his profession, and three times – in 1964, 1969, and 1971 -- he was tried in federal courts on charges ranging from conspiracy to bribery to fraud, but was acquitted each time.  In 1976 a federal court determined that he had entered the hospital room of a dying client and, by misrepresenting the nature of the document, got him to sign a codicil to his will that would have made Cohn one of the man’s executors.  Cohn’s reaction to these incidents?  A smear: the authorities were out to “get” him.  And get him they finally did: on June 23, 1986, when he didn’t have long to live, he was disbarred by the unanimous decision of a five-judge panel of the Appellate Division of the New York State Supreme Court for unethical and unprofessional conduct, including misappropriation of clients’ funds, lying on a bar application, and the 1976 matter of pressuring a client to amend his will.
     Cohn always claimed that his friendship with Schine involved nothing sexual, and some biographers have come to that conclusion.  But by the 1980s he was obviously in poor health.  A friend once asked him, “Roy, you don’t have AIDS, do you?”  To which Cohn replied, “Oh God, no!  If I had AIDS, I would have thrown myself out the window of the hospital.  I have liver cancer.  There would be no reason to stick around and live if I had AIDS.”  And that was his story to the end: liver cancer, not AIDS.
     But Roy Cohn was gay and he did have AIDS.  In 1984 a routine visit to his doctor had discovered malignant growths on his body.  His young lover Peter Fraser later said that Cohn cried only a tear or two and then dealt with the situation practically and began writing his memoir longhand on yellow legal pads.  Peter and a law partner of Cohn’s were the only ones who knew for sure that Cohn had AIDS, and for as long as he could, Cohn tried to live normally, which for him involved lunching, partying, water skiing, traveling, and of course doing deals in politics and business.  On December 31, 1985, he gave his traditional New Year’s Eve party in the second-floor foyer of his townhouse; among the hundred guests were Carmine DeSapio and Andy Warhol (a fascinating juxtaposition; see posts #135 and #108).  Cohn received them in a white dinner jacket and red bow tie with sequins, said he looked forward to seeing them all again next year.
President and Mrs. Reagan, 1981.     Being Cohn’s lover, however clandestinely, was fraught with adventure.  Raised on a farm in New Zealand, Peter Fraser had left there at age nineteen with only a pack on his back to see the world.  Blond and attractive with a sinewy body, he met Cohn at a party in Mexico and was immediately swept up into Cohn’s opulent life style: lavish parties with celebrity guests, visits to the rich and powerful, trips hither and yon to the most fashionable places; he never rode the New York subway until Cohn died.  Once Peter went to the White House as Cohn’s “office manager,” the same label used for his predecessors.  “Why don’t you come meet a friend of mine?” Cohn suggested.  As Cohn led him across the crowded room, Peter scuffed his shoe and the sole came off,  so he dragged his foot on the floor so he “wouldn’t go flop-flop.”  Then Cohn said, “I want you to meet the President and Mrs. Reagan.”  Peter reported that Reagan was very warm, probably thinking that this poor boy dragging his foot was handicapped. 
     On another occasion a New York socialite hosting a luncheon introduced Peter, to his astonishment, as Sir Peter Fraser.  The next day a society columnist mentioned, among the luncheon guests, Peter Fraser, the Prime Minister of New Zealand.  But when Americans, remembering the Army-McCarthy hearings, asked him how he could be associated with a man who did those awful things back in the 1950s, Peter, who was in his twenties, could reply honestly, “I don't know about any of that.”
     While almost nothing is known of Cardinal Spellman’s final days and death (post #136), Roy Cohn’s ending is well documented.  When diagnosed with AIDS, Cohn thought he had six months to live, but it turned out to be two years.  He was taking shots of Interferon, which sapped his energy and disoriented him; becoming aware of this, he panicked and then became depressed, since he had always prided himself on his intellect.  Troubled breathing and short-term memory loss followed, and he tried the experimental drug AZT, which many thought did more harm than good.  Rumors circulated about Roy Cohn’s having AIDS, about his dying.  
     The dementia intensified.  “The six senators who were here this afternoon,” he told Peter, “I’m going to talk to them, and you are all going to be sorry.”  Or he would accuse Peter of trying to kill him, and only after much persuasion became convinced that Peter was his friend.  When he got back from a stay in a hospital, telegrams came wishing him well, one of them from President Reagan.  Looking gaunt and wasted, he was interviewed by Mike Wallace on TV, denied being homosexual or having AIDS.  He flirted with the idea of suicide, tried one night to get his bottles of sleeping pills open, couldn’t cope with the childproof bottles, finally at Peter's insistence went back to bed. 
     When he invited other boyfriends to come for a last visit, Peter raged with jealousy. 
     “What’s he coming in for?” he would ask.
     “I’m dying, goddamit!” Cohn would shout.  “It may be the last time I see him.”
     “You said that the last four times!”
     When the New York State Bar Association began disbarment proceedings against him, he would go to the proceedings in his red convertible Cadillac, top down, and swagger into the closed hearing room.  But in June 1986, when a reporter phoned with the news that he had at last been disbarred, he announced, “I couldn’t care less,” then went to his room and cried, and wouldn’t eat unless Peter forced him.  His once fiercely resonant voice, the terror of witnesses, became a whisper, then fell silent.  He died in a hospital in Bethesda, Maryland, on August 2, 1986, at age 59; Peter was there, holding his hand.  The hospital announcement made it clear that he died not of cancer but AIDS.  In his coffin he wore a tie bearing President Reagan’s name, though the Reagans did not come to the memorial service held in October.  He was buried in Queens.  Though he left his property to Peter and a longtime law partner, the IRS froze his assets; he still owed them millions.
     Roy Cohn had many friends, many enemies.  The gay community condemned him for not telling the world he had AIDS and using his contacts to raise money to fight the disease.  In Tony Kushner’s play Angels in America (1991) he is portrayed as a closeted, power-hungry hypocrite who to preserve his reputation denies that he has AIDS, and as he is dying of it is haunted by the ghost of Ethel Rosenberg, whose execution for espionage he had helped bring about.  Personally, having never faced him in a courtroom, I could overlook a lot, but I can’t forgive him using his lawyerly wiles for years to avoid paying income tax; this I find reprehensible. 
     Asked by a friend if he ever resented Cohn, Peter Fraser declared with tears in his eyes, “He was wonderful to me.”  I confess I am rather taken with Peter.  It was the most unlikely of circumstances, that a kid off a farm in New Zealand should become the lover of one of the most controversial – and many would say obnoxious – figures in twentieth-century American politics, and that he would be whirled off to Provincetown or Palm Beach or Monte Carlo, meet the President of the United States, and when the bad days came, stick through to the end. 
     But what then became of him?  A cousin of Cohn’s tells how Peter gave him a last look at the townhouse, now in need of repair.  On the fourth floor Cohn’s office was locked tight.  “The firm wants to keep me out,” Peter explained.  “They think I’m going to steal things.”  The firm was letting a friend stay in Cohn’s third-floor bedroom.  “I don’t even know who he is,” said Peter with disgust.  The Rolls Royce that Cohn had been chauffeured in was for sale; Peter was about to move all his belongings out.  After that I lose track of him.  Presumably he dropped back into the obscurity that Cohn had plucked him out of years before.  I wish him well.
Outing
     The story of Roy Cohn, like that of Cardinal Spellman (post #136), raises the question of outing.  Outing, a term first used in the 1980s, is the act of revealing the sexual orientation of a gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgendered person without their consent.  After the Stonewall riots of 1969, champions of gay liberation began shouting, “Out of the closets, into the streets!”  Encouraged by a growing social tolerance, more and more homosexuals began voluntarily revealing their sexual inclination, but many others held back. 
     In February 1989 several gay activists, angered by Senator Mark Hatfield’s support of antigay legislation proposed by Senator Jesse Helms, declared that Hatfield was gay; in spite of this, Hatfield won reelection in 1990.  Then in March 1990 gay journalist Michelangelo Signorile outed the recently deceased Malcolm Forbes, publisher of Forbes magzine; his column “Gossip Watch” in the gay publication OutWeek became famous – or infamous – for outing the rich and famous, and Signorile was either hailed as heroic or decried as revolting and infantile.  Obviously, right from the start outing had both supporters and detractors.
    In 2004 gay activist Michael Rogers launched a blog to out closeted gay politicians who actively opposed gay rights.  He began by outing Edward Schrock, a Republican congressman from Virginia, claiming that Schrock used a phone sex service to meet other men for sex.  Schrock didn’t deny the charge and did not seek reelection.  Rogers’s motivation: to punish Schrock for his hypocrisy in opposing gay marriage by voting for the Marriage Protection Act and signing as a cosponsor of the Federal Marriage Amendment. 
     In 2006 Rogers reported sexual liaisons between Idaho Senator Larry Craig and unnamed individuals in Union Station, Washington, D.C.  Craig denied the report, but nine months later Craig was arrested in the Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport for allegedly soliciting an undercover police agent for sex in a men’s restroom. Craig’s explanation that he simply had a “wide stance” was played for all it was worth by late-night TV comedians, and later he pled guilty to a misdemeanor charge of disorderly conduct and paid a fine.  His attorneys then filed a motion to withdraw the guilty plea, but the motion was denied.  After that he served out his term but did not run for reelection.
      Rogers has outed others as well, but the pattern is obvious and doesn’t bear repetition.  The practice has been both praised and blamed in homosexual as well as heterosexual circles.  Is outing ever justified, and if so, when?  My personal take:  The right to privacy should protect us all, except in very special circumstances.  But if a public figure, especially a politician, is conspicuously active in antigay causes, as for instance supporting antigay legislation, then I think, with care, that outing is justified.  But otherwise, outing a living person is reprehensible.  Why some people choose to remain closeted in this more tolerant age may seem baffling to others, but personally I consider it their privilege. 

     What's the matter with Kansas?:  The Republican governor of Kansas lowered taxes, promising that a boom would follow and everything would be hotsy-totsy.  The result: no boom, no hotsy-totsy.  State revenues have declined, making it hard to provide basic services, and the state's credit rating has been lowered, so that borrowing money will cost more.  I suggest less ideology, more common sense.

     Our dear governor:  Governor Cuomo, a Democrat, came into office vowing to clean up the state government in Albany, which is notoriously corrupt.  He appointed a commission to investigate, but then disbanded it.  Now it turns out that, while the commission was functioning, he squelched any initiative that might have touched his office, his cronies and associates.  That settles it for me.  I'll never vote for him again.  He mouths reform but squelches it.  Just another political hack.

     Coming soon:  Gentrification: Good or Bad?  Does the West Village miss the Women’s House of Detention, crumbling piers, the Mineshaft, and the Toilet?  What price low rents?  In the offing: Norman Mailer, literary bad boy.


     ©  2014  Clifford Browder
     

136. Francis J. Spellman, the Controversial Cardinal

Cuddly and cherubic?  Appearances
deceive.     He was born to an Irish American family in Massachusetts in 1889, as a child served as an altar boy, graduated from Fordham in 1911, decided to study for the priesthood, and was sent to pursue those studies in Rome.  Ordained in 1916, he returned to the U.S. and did pastoral work in Massachusetts, but was unable to become a military chaplain during World War I because he failed to meet the height requirement.  Other posts followed, including U.S. attaché of the Vatican Secretariat of State in 1925.  He was in Rome from 1925 to1931, where he made useful contacts in the Curia, and in 1927, during a trip to Germany, he began a lifelong friendship with Eugenio Pacelli, then the papal nuncio to Germany.  Named Auxiliary Bishop of Boston in 1932, he had strained relations with his superior, Archbishop O’Connell of Boston, but did further pastoral work in Massachusetts, and in 1936 helped arrange a visit by Pacelli, now the Vatican’s Cardinal Secretary of State, to these shores, where he countered the influence of the Detroit-based Father Coughlin, whose popular nightly radio broadcasts were harshly critical of President Roosevelt.  But the real reason for the visit was to meet secretly with the President and discuss establishing diplomatic relations between the U.S. and the Holy See; Spellman was present at the meeting, though no formal diplomatic ties resulted at this time.  It should be clear by now that Francis J. Spellman had a genius for making the right connections almost from the start of his career.

     In 1939 Pope Pius XI died, to be succeeded by Pacelli as Pius XII.  One of the new Pope’s first actions was to make Spellman Archbishop of New York and vicar of the U.S. armed forces, just in time for World War II.  The new Archbishop moved into the archiepiscopal residence, a handsome neo-Gothic structure at 452 Madison Avenue, at the corner of 51stStreet, adjacent to Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, where he would reside for the rest of his life amid oak paneling, thick red carpets, ornate furniture, priceless antiques, and a quiet almost unheard of in busy midtown Manhattan.
     Spellman was soon exerting great influence in religious and political matters and hosting prominent figures of the day like Joseph P. Kennedy, the Wall Street speculator turned Securities and Exchange Commission chairman turned Ambassador to Great Britain (and, incidentally, another Massachusetts-based Irish Catholic), and financier and presidential adviser Bernard Baruch.  Clearly, he had a genius for relating to the rich and powerful.  Once the U.S. entered the war, His Eminence supported the war effort vigorously.  In 1943 President Roosevelt sent him as his agent to Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, where the peripatetic Archbishop covered 16 countries in 4 months, rivaling the whirlwind tours of American tourists of the postwar era; he met with Franco in Spain, the Pope in Rome, and Churchill in London, and on his return to the U.S. helped arrange to have Rome declared an open city and thus spared further bombing.  Roosevelt’s death in 1945 diminished his influence in higher circles, but after the war Pius XII made him a cardinal in 1946, just in time for the Cold War.  As always, Spellman’s timing – or was it just dumb luck? – was flawless.  And he was impressive to behold in his scarlet cardinal’s robes.
          In the years that followed – the years when I first became aware of him – Cardinal Spellman showed that, much as he loved the red of the cardinal’s  robe, he loved the red, white, and blue just as much.  “A true American can neither be a Communist  nor a Communist condoner,” he declared.  “The first loyalty of every American is vigilantly to weed out and counteract Communism and convert American Communists to Americanism.”  Needless to say, he was a fervent supporter of Senator Joseph McCarthy, who without offering hard evidence had the public believing that there were Communists in every nook and cranny of the government, and that -- as I heard the Wisconsin senator say once on television, ever so convincingly – the world was going up in flames.  The politics of fear, always effective.
     In 1949, when the gravediggers of Calvary Cemetery, a Catholic cemetery in Queens, went on strike for a pay raise, he called them Communists, labeled their action an immoral strike against the innocent dead, recruited seminarians as strikebreakers to dig graves, and set them a vigorous example in that worthy activity.  In that same year he locked horns with former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, when in her newspaper column “My Day” she opposed federal funding to parochial schools.  He accused her of anti-Catholicism and “discrimination unworthy of an American mother,” though in time he met with her and made peace.  But peace was not his prime concern; he was too busy denouncing immoral Hollywood films and, in time, comedian Lenny Bruce, who had often satirized the Cardinal. 
Arrested in 1961, one of his many arrests.     The irreverent comedian, who was no stranger to obscenity, sometimes imagined Christ and Moses returning to earth to observe people in East Harlem crammed 25 to a room, and then notice the Cardinal’s ring, worth ten thousand dollars.  Or the two visitors would enter Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, followed by lepers whose flesh was falling on the polished floors, causing His Eminence to phone Rome in a panic and tell the Pope to put the holy duo up, since he was up to his ass here in crutches and wheelchairs.  Admittedly, Bruce was breaching the limits allowed to comedy in America; jibes at religion were risky, and out-and-out obscenity taboo.  No wonder the Archbishop encouraged the D.A., another Irish Catholic, to charge Bruce with obscenity.  Bruce was convicted after a controversial and widely publicized six-month trial in 1964 and sentenced to four months in a workhouse, but was set free on bail pending an appeal.  He died of an overdose in 1966 before the appeal had been decided, and in 2003 received a posthumous pardon, the first in New York State, from Governor George Pataki.
     The Cardinal that I knew from photos at the time showed a portly, spectacled, jowly prelate whom some thought cherubic and humble (I would have said a cuddly, well-fed little porker), a man with a ready smile but perhaps not too bright.  But behind this façade was a shrewd, almost ruthless player on the world stage who had no qualms about fighting, and fighting hard, to get what he wanted.  A longtime Jesuit friend and his official biographer described him as “fearless, tireless, and shrewd, but at the same time humble, whimsical, sentimental, incredibly thoughtful, supremely loyal, and, above all, a real priest.”  A complex individual, then, a seeker and wielder of power whom others playing the same game had to take into account and respect.  But also  a tireless worker, a skillful administrator, a shrewd negotiator of real estate deals, and an excellent fund-raiser – in short, a first-rate businessman.  And a poet and novelist, his novel The Foundling coming out in 1951.  But not one to admit error or to give up an opinion, no matter now outdated or unpopular; prudence was unknown to him.
     A participant in the 1958 papal conclave that elected Pope John XXIII, Spellman, though a conservative, was in some ways progressive, insisting on a declaration on religious liberty, yet in the long run he was critical of the new Pope’s liberal and reformist leanings.  “He’s no Pope,” he reportedly said.  “He should be selling bananas.”  In the following year, during a visit to Central America, he disobeyed the Pope’s instructions by appearing in public with Anastasio Somoza Garcia, the right-wing dictator of Nicaragua, of whom President Roosevelt had once allegedly remarked, “He may be a son of a bitch, but he’s our son of a bitch.”  (There is some doubt as to which Latin American dictator he was referring to.)
     In the 1960s the escalation of the Vietnam War, and the eruption of antiwar protests on college campuses across the country, brought new opportunities for the zealously patriotic Cardinal and his critics.  So outspoken was His Eminence’s support of the war that protesters labeled it “Spelly’s War.”  He spent the Christmas of 1965 with the troops in South Vietnam, said Mass in Saigon, sprinkled holy water on B-52 bombers and blessed them just before they departed on a mission, and described the war as “Christ’s war” and a “war for civilization.”  This did not go over too well with the Vatican, since Pope Paul VI had urged negotiations and an end to the war; sources made it clear that the Archbishop spoke only for himself, not for the Pope or the Church.  Back home, where humorous buttons were now all the rage, one saying  DRAFT  CARDINAL  SPELLMAN  was popular, and in January 1967 war protesters disrupted a Mass in Saint Patrick’s Cathedral.
University of Wisconsin, Madison, 1965.
uwdigitalcollections
     In 1966, when Pope Paul initiated a policy whereby bishops would retire at age 75, Spellman, then 77, offered to resign, but the Pope asked him to remain at his post.  He died in December 1967, of what has not been disclosed.  His funeral was attended by President Lyndon Johnson, Vice President Hubert Humphrey, New York State Senators Robert Kennedy and Jacob Javits, Governor Nelson Rockefeller, Mayor John Lindsay, and others, and he was buried in the crypt under the main altar of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, alongside other deceased archbishops and cardinals.  No question, he went out in style.  His 28-year tenure as Archbishop is the longest to date in the history of the Archdiocese of New York.  A New York City high school bears his name.
Cardinal Spellman's coat of arms.
Sequere deum = Follow God.
SajoR
     And now we come to the crucial question: Was Cardinal Spellman gay?  Rumors then and now have abounded.  A friend informs me that in the standees line at the Metropolitan Opera in the 1950s gay jokes about “Franny” Spellman were rampant, especially among standees with a Catholic upbringing, though all the ones he remembered are too bawdy to bear repeating here.  I’m always skeptical about such stories, until conclusive evidence appears.  Some elements of the gay community commonly assert with conviction that this or that world leader or celebrity is or was screamingly gay, without offering any such evidence.  Long ago a dapper Brooks Brothers-clad East Sider who had been in the military in the Pacific during World War II assured me that reports of General Douglas MacArthur’s homosexual escapades had constantly surfaced and of course had been vigorously suppressed.  I didn’t believe him then and I don’t believe him now, since I know of no reliable confirmation of his story.  But the case of Cardinal Spellman isn’t that simple.
     One of Spellman’s biographers, John Cooney, whose work The American Pope: The Life and Times of Francis Cardinal Spellman appeared in 1984, mentioned four interviewees who stated that Spellman was indeed homosexual; Cooney offered no direct proof but was convinced that the allegations were true.  “I talked to many priests who worked for Spellman and they were incensed, dismayed, and angered by his conduct.”  Not surprisingly, Monsignor Eugene V. Clark, Spellman’s personal secretary for fifteen years, promptly labeled Cooney’s accusations “utterly ridiculous and preposterous,” adding that "if you had any idea of [Spellman's] New England background and his Catholicism, you would know it was a foolish charge."  (Interestingly enough, Clark, an arch-conservative who was notoriously anti-gay in his pronouncements, had to resign as rector of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral in 2005 when, at age 79, he was named as the “other man” in a divorce case.)
Signorile
David Shankbone     Reinforcing Cooney’s claim is gay author and journalist Michelangelo Signorile’s online article “Cardinal Spellman’s Dark Legacy” (2002), which labels Spellman “one of the most notorious, powerful, and sexually voracious homosexuals in the American Catholic Church’s history.”  According to him, the closeted Cardinal was known as “Franny” to assorted Broadway chorus boys and others, but the Church pressured Cooney’s publisher, Times Books, to reduce the four pages on the Cardinal’s sexuality to a single paragraph that only mentioned “rumors.”  Signorile also asserts that Spellman was involved in a relationship with a dancer in the Broadway revue One Touch of Venus, whose original production ran from 1943 to 1945; Spellman would have his limousine pick up the dancer several nights a week and bring him to the archiepiscopal residence.  And if a portly prelate might seem lacking in sex appeal to a frisky chorus boy, his status as the Cardinal Archbishop of New York probably enhanced his image considerably.  All of which prompts a titillating nocturnal fantasy: the young man exiting the limousine discreetly and slipping into the neo-Gothic mansion, with its ornate furnishings and uniformed servants, for a most clandestine tryst.  When he asked Spellman how he could get away with it, His Eminence allegedly answered, “Who would believe that?”  It should be noted that Signorile has made a name for himself by “outing” public figures whom he claims are closeted homosexuals, a practice that is highly controversial and will be discussed in the next post.
     Further complicating the picture is Curt Gentry’s biography J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets (1991), which alleges that Hoover’s files had “numerous allegations that Spellman was a very active homosexual” (p. 347).  Still, these are only allegations.  Surprisingly, thanks to a Freedom of Information Act request, the FBI’s declassified file on Spellman is available online and I have looked at it.  Unsurprisingly, what are probably the most informative and juicy parts are blacked out.  So what do we learn?  Here is a sample from the 1940s:

·    A letter of June 16, 1942 to Hoover (signature deleted) giving him the names of all those attending a luncheon at the Archbishop’s residence on June 11, 1942, with all those names blacked out.
·      A letter of June 21, 1942, to Hoover from Spellman’s office (signature deleted) saying that the sender is glad he enjoyed the luncheon, and that the Archbishop has confirmed his standing invitation to Hoover to lunch at the Archbishop’s residence whenever he is in New York.··      A letter of November 30, 1942, from Spellman to Hoover congratulating him on “your twenty-five years of devoted, patriotic, successful service to the country in the Federal Bureau of Investigation,” and Hoover’s appreciative reply on December 10, 1942.
·      A letter to Hoover from Rome (signature deleted) of February 7, 1946, noting that Spellman will arrive in Rome on February 14 to be consecrated a cardinal by Pope Pius XII.  The writer believes it will be of interest to the Bureau to know that there is speculation in Vatican circles and the Roman public at large regarding Spellman’s perhaps being appointed Papal Secretary of State, a position giving the recipient a better than average chance of being elected Pope.  Feeding the speculation is the fact that Pius XII is said to be tubercular and in poor health generally.  [Spellman was indeed offered the position but turned it down.]
     So what have we learned?  About homosexuality, nothing; if there are any files mentioning it, they must still be classified.  The letters show Spellman and Hoover exchanging cordialities, and His Eminence and others keeping the Director well informed about Spellman’s activities and a possible significant appointment.  Spellman was careful to maintain friendly ties with Hoover, and Hoover was keeping track of Spellman’s career.   Which shows how powerful people deal with one another, and that in itself is hardly surprising or shocking.  

     But does this exchange of cordialities mask another game?  If Hoover reportedly had a file on President Kennedy's sexual escapades and was quite willing to use it as blackmail to get what he wanted from the Kennedys, he would surely have had a similar file on His Eminence's escapades, if such there were.  If so, this unclassified file shows the Archbishop making nice with J. Edgar for the best of reasons: to flatter him and lessen the chance of any embarrassing revelations from that quarter.  In 1972, when Hoover at last relinquished his position and power through death, many a public figure must have clandestinely sighed with relief.
     Certainly it is in the Church’s interest to squelch, whenever possible, even rumors or allegations about His Eminence’s sexual proclivities.  After all, what would happen if the charges turned out to be true?  Would the Cardinal Spellman High School have to be rechristened?  Would His Eminence’s remains have to be disinterred from under the main altar of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, and if so, where should they go?  Messy, messy, messy.  But if he made a full confession on his deathbed, probably it wouldn’t be necessary.  Who among us has not sinned?  Still, messy in the extreme.
     So what do I conclude?  Was Cardinal Spellman gay?  Possibly.  Monsignor Clark's argument citing Spellman's New England background and Catholicism doesn't impress me, since I have known, and known of, gay men raised in a very traditional Catholic environment who, but for their sexuality, would have been classic conservatives in life style, politics, and religion, and who sometimes, with great anguish but without success, tried to be so anyway.

     Is Spellman's homosexuality absolutely certain?  No.  Is it probable?  I haven’t quite decided.  What would nudge me toward “probable”?  If one or several ninety-year-old ex-chorus boys surfaced and announced, “Yes, I had sex with His Eminence back in the 1940s,” that might do the trick.  In the meantime I’ll only say, Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.  But given the specificity of the charges, the more I ponder, the more I edge toward “probable.”  Yes, he probably was.  

      So what is one to make of all this?  I don't share the opinion of Michelangelo Signorile, who labels Spellman "the epitome of the self-loathing, closeted, evil queen," for no known facts substantiate the statement.  We have no glimpse into the inner workings of the archbishop's mind.  Perhaps his sex life was high drama or even tragedy, perhaps it was comedy laced with farce, perhaps it was something in between; we will probably never know.
     Contact with the rich and famous, luncheons with J. Edgar, a confident of three presidents, a strike-breaking gravedigger, a white-hot patriot who went against papal pacifism to bless departing bombers, and posthumously the subject of a passionate controversy – what a career!  They don’t come like that very often. 


     A Spellman quote:  “There are three ages of man – youth, age, and ‘you’re looking wonderful.’ ”  So he did have a sense of humor.

     Coming soon:  Roy Cohn, attack-dog lawyer and AIDS denier.  Also: Is outing a closeted homosexual ever justified?  Followed a week later by: Gentrification: Good or Bad?  With a look at the many lamented lost Golden Years of Greenwich Village, and featuring such vanished amenities as the Women’s House of Detention, crumbling piers the scene of wild doings, and The Toilet.


     ©  2014  Clifford Browder     

135. Carmine DeSapio, the Last Tammany Boss of New York

      Tall, deft, sophisticated, courteous and smooth-talking with an imposing manner and a winning smile, he was the very antithesis of the stereotypical big city boss, promoted himself as an enlightened modern reformer.  He favored well-tailored dark business suits and striped or patterned ties, his wavy black hair always meticulously trimmed and neat, his nails manicured.  Because of a chronic eye condition he wore dark glasses that in the opinion of some made him look like a gangster, the very image he meant to scrupulously avoid.
     Living modestly with his wife and daughter in an apartment on Washington Square West, he began his long workday with phone calls before breakfast, and while still in pajamas and bathrobe received favor-seekers who lined up on the sidewalk outside, awaiting their turn.  Then, having dressed and breakfasted, he sortied, sleekly and immaculately groomed, to visit his various offices – one for each of his many titles – attend fund-raising events for charities, give speeches, appear on radio and TV, and maybe attend a late-night political dinner.
     Such was Carmine DeSapio at the height of his power in the 1950s.  Born in 1908 to a family of Sicilian immigrants in Greenwich Village, he got his start in politics as a teenager running errands for the Tammany machine, delivering coal and Christmas turkeys to poor immigrant families in winter, blocks of ice in the summer, and turkeys on Thanksgiving, thus assuring that the recipients would vote Democratic in the next election.  By the 1930s he had his own club in a rented hall on Second Avenue, helping blue collar Villagers find jobs or deal with their landlords, and receiving ambitious lawyers eager to get Tammany-appointed positions and judgeships.  And in 1949 he became the first Italian-American to be elected leader of Tammany Hall.
     DeSapio’s rise signaled the end of Irish-American dominance of the machine, just as, in his native Village, the Irish were yielding in numbers to the Italian immigrants.  His power base was the South Village, where Italian immigrants lived in crowded tenements, did their shopping locally, and had little contact with the rest of the city.  There were pushcart men on the streets, and ragmen and watermelon vendors and icemen, all Italian.  The kids played games on the sidewalk, and the boys formed gangs that fought other gangs, but knew that to trespass on another gang’s turf was to risk getting beaten up.  It was a tough, raw working-class world, a world that DeSapio knew and courted for votes.
     By now he wore many hats: leader of the assembly district including Greenwich Village; chairman of all the assembly districts in Manhattan; grand sachem of Tammany; and chair of the Democratic National Committee.  All of which, in overwhelmingly Democratic New York, gave him significant power – power that he knew how to use.  His influence was conclusive in getting Robert Wagner elected mayor of New York in 1953, and Averell Harriman elected governor in 1954; he became Harriman’s secretary of state.  So respected now and feared as a kingmaker was he, that at fund-raising dinners those seeking favors would brush by the governor and mayor to shake his hand.  In 1955 his face appeared on the cover of Time magazine, and the Washington columnists Joseph and Stewart Alsop opined that he could name the next president.
     His success marked a resurgence of Tammany, which had long been in decline, but he sought to give Tammany a modern, progressive image.  He shunned secretive deals in smoke-filled back rooms, preferring to work through consultations and consensus-building, and announced his decisions to the public.  A self-proclaimed liberal, he helped minority politicians obtain important posts, supported progressive legislation, rent control, and lowering the voting age to 18. 
     But try as he did, for many he never quite scraped off the taint of the old, corrupt Tammany machine.  In time it became clear that he was staffing the city government with clubhouse hacks, selling judgeships, and awarding lucrative city contracts to a company later found to have cheated taxpayers of millions of dollars.

Costello testifying before the Kefauver Committee.
A man you wouldn't want to know, or at least, you
wouldn't want it known that you knew him.     Worse still, rumors circulated of his ties to Frank Costello, New York State’s most powerful mobster, who controlled a vast nationwide gambling empire.  When Senator Estes Kefauver of Tennessee held hearings in 1950 and 1951 to investigate organized crime, Costello became the star attraction, watched by millions on TV.  DeSapio of course always denied any connection to the mobster, but the Mafia had long since infiltrated Tammany, and Costello stated that he knew DeSapio “very well” and had done Tammany leaders “personal favors.”
     DeSapio survived these rumors for a while, but in 1957 a taxi driver found an envelope on the back seat of his taxi containing $11,200 in worn and dirty $50 and $100 bills.  Taking it to the police, he described his last passenger as a tall, well-dressed man wearing dark glasses, which strongly suggested DeSapio.  DeSapio admitted taking the taxi but denied that the money was his, and when no other claimant appeared, a year later the money was given to the driver.  But the incident raised more questions.  If the envelope wasn’t his, how could DeSapio not have noticed it?  And if it was his, why did he deny it, and what was the money for? 
     Meanwhile DeSapio’s Greenwich Village base was changing, which boded ill for him.  Moving into the neighborhood were reform-minded younger Democrats like the people I came to know when I moved here in 1961: editors, writers, teachers, white-collar office workers, and people with steady jobs in theater and the arts.  These middle-class professionals wanted no part of a Tammany politician, no matter how well-groomed and slick, who might have links to the mob and denied leaving a bundle of cash in a taxi.  The Village was no longer dominated by the old immigrant groups that Tammany could count on; reform was in the air.  Founded in 1957, the Village Independent Democrats (VID) launched a campaign to unseat DeSapio, whom they saw as a traditional back-room boss.  They found a powerful ally in Eleanor Roosevelt, who resented DeSapio’s talking her son Franklin, Jr., out of running for governor in 1954, so he could promote Averell Harriman for that office.  Slowly, year by year, the campaign against DeSapio gained ground, and Democrats who had once hailed him began to denounce him as an old-fashioned Tammany boss.
     In 1961 Mayor Robert Wagner won reelection as a reformist candidate who denounced his former patron as corrupt.  In that same year DeSapio lost the district leadership of Greenwich Village, a post he had held since 1943; clearly, he was on the way out.  “We tried and we lost,” he told his supporters.  “Don’t let’s get sick about it.”  Hearing of his loss, Eleanor Roosevelt is said to have announced, “I told Carmine I would get him for what he did to Franklin, and get him I did.”  If true, this shows that the globe-trotting former First Lady, known and respected the world over, was quite capable of personal venom and skilled in the nasty infighting that practical politics often requires.
Loudmouths sometimes win.     In 1963 and again in 1965 DeSapio tried to regain his position as Village district leader, running against an upstart who had, a little belatedly, joined the reformist camp: Ed Koch, who was his polar opposite.  DeSapio was smooth; Koch was jagged.  DeSapio spoke softly; Koch was a loudmouth.  DeSapio was deft, courteous, urbane; Koch was in-your-face.  A gangly bachelor from Brooklyn with less than stellar looks, Koch, blunt and balding, had only recently moved to the Village.  When the polls closed on September 23, 1965, Koch seemed relaxed and self-confident in the VID clubhouse, but with a huge turnout reported in the South Village, which was considered DeSapio territory, his backers were preparing a concession statement.  At 10:20 p.m. the returns began coming in.
     “The thirtieth election district,” the club president shouted, “Koch 113, DeSapio 65.”
     Cheers from Koch’s supporters, but this was reform territory and not a good indicator.
     “The tenth election district, Koch 60, DeSapio 162.”              Groans.  But this was an Italian-American neighborhood.
     Next, the sixth election district: Koch 65, DeSapio 243.  But the results were still too fragmentary to be meaningful.   As more results came in, there were groans and cheers, as DeSapio took the South Village districts and Koch prevailed in the others.  Tension mounted, and only Koch seemed cheerful and unperturbed.  Then, at 11:00 p.m., DeSapio appeared on television. 
     “I’m behind by seven hundred votes,” he announced.  “It would be difficult, if not impossible, to catch up.”  And he conceded.
     Tumult in the clubhouse, as weary campaign workers hugged each other and shouted, and swirled around Koch, who beamed a quiet smile.  DeSapio had lost his home district, his power base; his political career was practically over, whereas Koch’s had just begun.
     From then on it was downhill for DeSapio, the acclaimed kingmaker of only a few years before. In 1969 he was convicted by a federal court for conspiring to bribe a former water commissioner, and for getting kickbacks on lucrative city contracts from Consolidated Edison.  His moving fifteen-minute plea for leniency failed to sway the judge, who declared the evidence “overwhelming.”  He could have been sentenced to 15 years in prison, but the judge, taking into account his age and his record of public service, gave him only two.  Upon release he kept shy of politics but supported various charitable and civic causes.  He evidently accepted his final defeat with dignity and without bitterness.  If he met Ed Koch, by then mayor, who lived not far from him, they exchanged friendly greetings.  “He is a crook,” Koch remarked later, “but I like him.”  Many did.  DeSapio died in 2004 at age 95.

     Happy Bastille Day!  Yes, that will be tomorrow and I want to acknowledge it because France is the only foreign country where I lived for any length of time.  As we all know, on July 14, 1789, an armed mob lay siege to the Bastille, a royal prison in Paris, and when the marquis in charge there agreed to surrender on condition that the lives of the defenders be spared, the mob poured in, freed the handful of prisoners, and massacred the garrison, parading the marquis’s severed head through the streets on a pike.  Ah, they don’t make revolutions like that any more … or do they?  Anyway, our signing of the Declaration of Independence seems tame and sane by comparison, and we honor our national holiday with the same patriotic fervor that the French honor theirs; we do barbecues and munch wienies, while they forgo the Marseillaise (I can handle the first verse, I’m proud to announce) but shoot off fireworks and dance in the street.  (I once saw the fireworks shooting off from the medieval walls of Carcassonne – unforgettable; it was as if the whole old city was aflame.)



     Ever since Yorktown or soon thereafter, we and the French have enjoyed an enduring love/hate relationship, summed up in an American tourist’s cliché comment to me on the ship coming back (yes, this was back when one still went by ship): “Loved the country, hated the people!”  (Granted, he and a bus full of American tourists had been ripped off by a greedy bus driver who demanded an additional handout during a nationwide strike, when there was no other way for the tourists to get back to Paris.)  And to this day the French resent our superpower status, which they now lack, even when that status – to their gleeful satisfaction – seems to be fast eroding.  They think us primitive and adolescent, and at times a nation of cowboys, and we think  them overcentralized, overcivilized, even decadent.  There’s some truth in both assertions, but things are far more complicated than that. 
     Today the French government seems a bit decapitated (or should I say guillotined?), given presidential failings and scandals, but with our own government supremely dysfunctional, who are we to criticize?  And the city of Paris, as I noted recently, is replacing its ancient gas mains, which we are not doing over here, with resulting explosions in our cities.  French economist Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-first Century is now #3 on the New York Times nonfiction best-seller list, and has taken the world by storm. 
     Finally (as if there could be a “finally”), the French, who aren’t afraid of government intervention, have just passed an “anti-Amazon” law prohibiting online booksellers from offering free shipping on discounted books.  So determined are the French to encourage diversity in books, booksellers, and publishers, they already have a law preventing booksellers from offering a discount of more than 5% off the cover price of new books.  The French buy books – mostly in bookstores – and actually read them.  Their government classifies books as an “essential good,” along with electricity, bread, and water.  A Times op-ed piece reporting this recently noted that the author, strolling through central Paris, counted seven bookstores within a ten-minute walk of his apartment.  The French aren’t going to let Amazon or any monopoly put those stores out of business.  If this is overcivilization, maybe we primitives could use a bit of it.  Be that as it may, Happy Bastille Day to all from a confessed Francophile!
ChrisO
     Coming soon:  Cardinal Spellman, friend of Presidents and kingmaker.  But shh … was he or wasn’t he?  We’ll explore it.  And after that, one of the most controversial -- and many would say obnoxious -- figures in U.S. politics, Roy Cohn, friend and consultant of Presidents, and the question of outing: is it ever justified, and if so, when?  Juicy times ahead.

This is New York

Crunkitoonz

     ©  2014  Clifford Browder

134. Our Crumbling Infrastructure, or Where Can I Vacation?

     When I go out on errands in my West Village neighborhood, the sidewalks are fine, but the street crossings are a patchwork of potholes and patches over patches, lumps and bumps from one curb to another.  And often Con Ed is busy repairing who knows what underground, with huge construction vehicles advancing and backing up, and barricades forcing pedestrians to make detours, some of them out in the street inches away from traffic surging past.  If I ride a bus, it’s bumpity bumpity bump bump bumpity bump bumpity.  And if I venture into a subway car, I hang on to a pole for dear life, since the train will start with a lurch and stop with another lurch, sending any unprepared passenger onto the floor or into the lap of a stranger.  But these daily inconveniences are trivia, compared to what I will now chronicle.

A pothole on Second Avenue, big and deep enough to
hold a traffic pylon and several bags of garbage.
David Shankbone
Damage after a water main break at 106th Street
in 2011.  Workers pumped out 10 feet of flood
water on subway tracks below.
Metropolitan Transportation Agency of the
State of New York     At 12:30 a.m. on Wednesday, January 15, 2014, a water main at East 13th Street and Fifth Avenue in Greenwich Village broke.  Water surged onto Fifth Avenue and made the pavement buckle, turned nearby streets into rivers, and gushed through sewer gates to flood subway tracks below, disrupting service in three boroughs for most of the morning rush hour.  It took hours to shut off the right pipes, find the one that had burst, and stop the flooding.  Fifth Avenue was closed between 12thand 14th Streets, and bus service in the area was rerouted.  Nearby parking garages were also flooded, and five buildings nearby were without water.  By 6 a.m. the water had receded below street level, leaving a layer of sludge that would require several days to clean up.  The main that broke dated from 1877.

     On the afternoon of Monday, January 27, 2014, a weather-related transformer fire blew a manhole cover in Park Slope, Brooklyn, sending flames into the air, causing another fire down the block; then, an hour later, a water main burst.  Buildings along 21st Street between 5th and 6thAvenues lost power and many residents were without water, power, or heat through a bitterly cold winter night.  Then, shortly after midnight, a 140-year-old water main ruptured at the intersection of Greenwich and Clarkson Streets in the West Village, causing several street closings, and another main burst open in Corona, Queens.  The city’s aging water mains were giving way under the subfreezing temperatures of an unusually harsh winter.

Street damage after the water main break at 106th Street in 2011.
Metropolitan Transportation Authority of the State of new York
     Would the coming of spring bring relief?  Shortly before 11 a.m. on Thursday, May 22, 2014, a water main broke on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, flooding East Houston Street and suddenly creating a huge sinkhole in front of Katz’s Delicatessen that blocked traffic in both directions.  Water broke through the wall of the famous delicatessen to flood its basement, causing an estimated loss of $100,000 in ruined food, supplies, and equipment.  Water was shut off to five commercial and eight residential buildings in the area while repairs were being made.  The main that broke dated from only 1959. 
     The explanation of most of this mayhem?  Over 1,000 miles of New York City’s water mains are more than 100 years old, causing 370 breaks in 2012 and 403 in 2013.  Some are so old that, should there be a break in Lower Manhattan, engineers wouldn’t even be able to locate it.
     But water main breaks only cause flooding; casualties are rare.  But at 9:31 a.m. on Wednesday, March 12, 2014, a gas leak caused an explosion in the East Harlem neighborhood of Manhattan, leveling two five-story buildings on Park Avenue just north of 116th Street, killing 8 people and injuring at least 70 others.  Entire buildings nearby shook as if an earthquake had struck, and their windows were blown out.  More than 250 firefighters rushed to the scene.  Bricks and wood from the explosion landed on the adjacent Metro-North Railroad tracks, suspending service to and from Manhattan on this essential line for most of the day, while crews worked to clean up the debris.  The following morning rescuers using spotlights and  cadaver dogs were still searching the smoldering ruins for victims.  The gas main responsible dated from 1887.
The East Harlem gas main explosion of March 12, 2014.
Adnan Islam      Of course there have been other such explosions, but why repeat?  Underneath New York City, unseen and rarely noticed until an emergency arises, lie 6,302 miles of pipes transporting natural gas, more than half of them installed before 1940 and therefore over 70 years old and made of leak-prone materials.  In 2012 alone 9,906 leaks were reported, more than half of them considered hazardous, meaning they posed a danger to people or property.  But not all leaks make the headlines and the evening news on television.  In 2013 a Bronx wife woke up in the middle of the night to detect a pungent odor of gas.  Her husband investigated, smelled nothing unusual, lit a cigarette; suddenly there was a flash of fire that burned his face.  Some such incidents may not even get reported.
     To the above can be added these depressing facts: 30.4% of the city’s roads are in only “fair” or “poor” condition, up from 15.7% in 2000.  Every day 2.7 million cars drive over bridges rated structurally deficient.  And since 37% of the city’s subway signals have exceeded their useful life, trains move less rapidly, and maintenance workers have to improvise replacement parts that manufacturers no longer make.  Also, the average age of the gas mains is 56 years; the bridges, 63 years; the water mains, 69 years; the sewer mains, 84 years; and the subway machine shops and repair yards, 90 years.  (Source: “Caution Ahead,” a March 2014 report by the Center for an Urban Future.)  To put it bluntly, the city's infrastructure -- the stuff we rely on in our daily lives -- is decrepit.
      Depressing, isn't it?  Not the kind of tidings likely to bring visitors flocking to the City That Never Sleeps.  As for us who live here, well, one can always get out of town.  How about a vacation?  Maybe San Francisco, since I lived there once when it boasted Beatniks and cheap rents; it would be fun to see the old town again, ride the cable cars, and register the changes.
     In September 2010 a gas explosion in San Bruno, a suburb of San Francisco, sent a plume of flame a thousand feet into the air, killed eight, injured nearly 60 others, created a massive crater, and ignited fires that gutted dozens of homes.  Of course I wouldn’t be in San Bruno, but the thought of a plume of flame a thousand feet high puts me just a bit off.  So maybe the City of the Angels, to see if ladies in black are still putting red roses on Valentino’s grave.
Devastation in San Bruno after the 2010 gas explosion.
Brocken Inaglory     In January 2010 a steel water main dating from 1914 broke in Los Angeles, flooding dozens of homes and businesses and sweeping cars down Ventura Boulevard.  Maybe I wouldn’t be anywhere near Ventura Boulevard, but why take a chance?  Then how about the Pacific Northwest?  I passed through it once, marveled at the forests and mountains.  And they say Seattle is a beautiful town well worth visiting, and a perfect base for expeditions hither and yon.
     On May 23, 2013, a section of a bridge over the Skagit River 60 miles north of Seattle collapsed when hit by an oversize truck.  Fortunately, there were no deaths and only three injuries, but the year before the Federal Highway Administration had declared the bridge “functionally obsolete.”  So maybe I’ll skip Seattle and the Pacific Northwest.  Well, why not Detroit, to see that financially stressed city’s fabulous art collection before they sell it all off, as may well happen?
The collapsed Skagit River bridge.
kdingo
     In May 2014 heavy rain caused a water main to burst under Detroit’s IndyCar racetrack, which then buckled.  I didn’t have indycar racing in mind, but even so…  Okay, Philadelphia.  They have a splendid Fine Arts Museum and lots of Rodin as well, and of course dear old Independence Hall.
     In June 2014 a water main in North Philadelphia sent a surge of water down Master Street and created a gaping hole that closed the street to traffic.  And another break in South Philadelphia flooded several streets and made residents move their parked cars to avoid damage from the rushing waters.  So good-bye Philly, hello Houston.  Because there must be something there I ought to see.
     In August 2011 the city of Houston, in the grip of a record-breaking heat wave, experienced 700 water main breaks a day, as old pipes were pressured by increased water use.  Are you kidding – 700 a day?  Well then,  Massachusetts, a state I’ve often vacationed in, charming, quiet, quaint, if you get away from the hurly-burly of Boston, though I love that city, too.
     In Taunton, Massachusetts, in 2005 only quick action by engineers avoided a major disaster when heavy rains threatened to break the 173-year-old wooden Whittenton Pond Dam.  And in the spring of 2010 a crisis likewise precipitated by heavy rains at the Forge Pond Dam in Freetown led to the evacuation of downstream residents so an emergency breaching could be performed; the dam was over 200 years old.  The state, I now learn, has no less than 2900 dams, many between 100 and 200 years old.  So I won't be vacationing downstream from any of them, and since they seem to be everywhere, I won’t be vacationing in Massachusetts at all.  In fact, it looks like I won’t be vacationing anywhere in the U.S., at least not safely, since there’s no escaping our crumbling infrastructure.
     But is it really that bad?  Every four years the American Society of Civil Engineers releases a Report Card assigning letter grades to each type of infrastructure in the nation.  So what does the Report Card for 2013 say?  Aviation, D; bridges, C+; dams, D; drinking water, D; energy, D+; levees, D-; ports, C; rail, C+; roads, D; transit, D.  The highest grade they give us is C (mediocre); no F’s (failing), but not one B (good), much less an A (excellent).  So we aren’t quite flunking, but we’re close to it.
     It wasn’t always this way.  For perspective, allow me a brief digression.  Let’s zoom back to the year 1951 when, just out of college and back home in Evanston, Illinois, I was studying classical Greek at Northwestern while hoping for a Fulbright Scholarship to France.  Back then I worked afternoons in a local insurance company’s filing department, retrieving files needed by the agents upstairs: a brainless job that passed the time and brought in a little bit of money.  My boss, Mr. Minick, had just retired and taken a job there while waiting for the completion of his new home in a residential community in Florida, so he, like me, was marking time.  Mr. Minick was small, neat, soft-voiced, and likable, his world limited to the tranquil Midwest, with anticipation of retirement to a warm, sunny clime.  A quintessential white-collar Republican, he deplored the fact of Harry Truman in the White House and thought Senator Robert Taft “a good safe man for the country” (unaware of the coming “I like Ike” groundswell that would carry Eisenhower into that same White House).  The soul of order, every Friday afternoon, just before five, he would announce, “We’re in good shape,” meaning that all the requested files had been delivered, none were missing.  And when the subject of my learning Greek or getting a scholarship to France came up, he would state with passionate conviction, “The best that ever was is right here!”
     There was smugness in that statement, but this was soon after World War II, from which we, unlike the other participants, emerged fat and prosperous and powerful, the very image of Success.  Certainly we were the envy of the world, and if Republicans and Democrats squabbled over the usual differences of opinion, they agreed wholeheartedly with Mr. Minick that we were the best ever, that nothing like us ever was, an attitude that I have since labeled Minickism.
     Now let’s fast-forward again to the twenty-first century.  In contrast with New York’s bumpity-bump bus rides and screeching, jolting subways, certain cities of Europe, I’m told, have trains and buses that glide smoothly along without a single jolt.  And for longer trips?  In China glistening white bullet trains with large windows, looking like long white snakes, speed along at 200 to 300 kilometers an hour, shrinking from 15 to a mere 5 hours the 746-mile trip from Beijing to Shanghai.  They are free from the hazards of weather, traffic jams, and bad roads, and have comfortable seating as well.  In Japan shark-nosed bullet trains race along a network of lines, providing safe, fast, punctual service.  And in France a train à grande vitesse (TGV) or high-speed train from Paris can reach Lyons in 2 hours 10 minutes, about a third of the time the old trains took years ago when I made the exact same trip.
A bullet train in Japan.      And in this country?  Plans for high-speed trains go back to the High Speed Ground Transportation Act of 1965.  And today, 49 years later?  There will be high-speed service in California, the Midwest, New England, Florida, Texas, Pennsylvania, the Pacific Northwest, Colorado, New Mexico, and the Southwest … someday.  Promises, promises.  In this region Amtrak hopes to have 94-minute high-speed service between New York and Washington … by 2030.  That’s right, 2030.  Because the initiative requires a whole new system of track and stations.  So by 2030 we can hope for high-speed trains on our busy Northeast Corridor route, the equivalent of what trains in China, Japan, and France have already achieved long since.  In the meantime, while their trains race smoothly to their destinations, ours just creak along, often interrupted by fallen trees, signal failures, police activity,  collision with a vehicle, downed power wires, a derailed freight train, anticipation of a winter storm, or a pedestrian fatality, to cite the interruptions of Amtrak service here over the last few months.

Power lines down at Valhalla, halting Metro-North service on the Harlem Line in 2011.
Metropolitan Transportation Authority of the State of New York
     Now I don’t mean to be an alarmist.  This country has many fine things going for it -- video games, high-speed Internet, NASCAR auto races, Coke and Pepsi, stunning baton-twirling drum majorettes, Walmart and Google, vampires and werewolves, and pornography at your fingertips – so we have much to be proud of.  But not, alas, our infrastructure.  We fight futile foreign wars, and it crumbles.  Congress (approval rating 7%) launches an investigation (the fifth, I believe) of the Benghazi attack, and it crumbles.  Or the House votes, once again, to repeal the Affordable Care Act, and it crumbles. 
     But I repeat: I don’t mean to be an alarmist.  This blog is meant to inform and entertain, not to provoke or debate or agitate.  Our infrastructure overall is rated D+, just short of C-, so there’s hope.  And what happens in San Bruno, California, or 60 miles north of Seattle, or along Ventura Boulevard in the City of the Angels is pretty remote from New York.  I don’t really need a vacation; I’m much too busy here.  Yes, we have water main breaks and gas main explosions in New York, but usually off in some other borough, or at the other end of ours, and not in our immediate vicinity.  Let’s look at the bright side of things.  How about a luscious cupcake at the Magnolia Bakery just downstairs?  Gooey gobblers sitting on my doorstep assure me that they are scrumptiously delicious.  On this happy note I’ll sign off.  And next time I’ll try to be perky and upbeat.  How about a post on the environment?
Finger-lickin' good, and right downstairs from me.
Andy C

     A note on the Fourth:  So what did you do on the Fourth, fellow Americans?  (Ukrainians and other foreign visitors are not required to answer.)  As for me, I did nothing special.  How many of us took time off from backyard barbecues or acquiring a deeper tan at the beach to read the Declaration of Independence?  Not many, I suspect.  But here's what Tammany politician George Washington Plunkitt had to say about Tammany on the Fourth in the early 1900s, when reformers would run off to Newport or the Adirondacks.
     "The very constitution of the Tammany Society requires that we must assemble at the wigwam on the Fourth, regardless of the weather, and listen to the readin' of the Declaration of Independence and patriotic speeches....  The great hall upstairs is filled with five thousand people, suffocatin' from heat and smoke.  Every man Jack of these five thousand knows that down in the basement there's a hundred cases of champagne and two hundred kegs of beer ready to flow when the signal is given.  Yet that crowd stick to their seats without turnin' a hair while, for four solid hours, the Declaration of Independence is read, long-winded orators speak, and the glee club sings itself hoarse....  Sometimes human nature gets the better of a man and he begins to nod, but he always wakes up with a hurrah for the Declaration of Independence."
     Of course it didn't hurt that many of the Tammany crowd were Irish Americans and therefore eager to celebrate America's breaking away from Great Britain, which Ireland at that time had yet to do.  But it can't be denied that Tammany, for all its faults, was red, white, and blue to the core.  And us?  Hmm...  The Times printed the complete Declaration on the Fourth; I have taken a vow to read it, and soon.


This is New York

Stinkie Pinkie
     Coming soon:  Carmine DeSapio, the Last Tammany Boss.  In the offing: Cardinal Spellman, arch patriot, supporter of Joseph McCarthy and J. Edgar Hoover (who had a file on him), friend of Presidents, etc.  And the crucial question: Was he or wasn’t he?


     ©  2014  Clifford Browder

133. Ree Dragonette and Anais Nïn: Two Remarkable Women

Ree Dragonette
     Short, lean, almost gnomelike, her hair cut short with a lock hanging down her forehead over her sharp features, she could be friendly, humorous, gossipy (she loved gossip, repeated it with relish), let astrology influence her friendships, had a way of focusing attention on herself.  Her poetry was hard, chiseled, concise, studded with original and striking imagery, never expansive, never effusive.  When I told her that none of mine was inspired by a personal relationship, she marveled, noting that every poem of hers was rooted in just such a relationship.  I respected her as a poet but couldn’t decipher her poetry.  Consider for instance the opening lines of her volume Parable of the Fixed Stars (Allograph Press, 1968), of which she gave me an autographed copy:

Curtained with rain,legibleunsolved as is the verb to be;nonvolatized and forbidden:leafless at consummation of here and now.
Rayedas with growing ferns.
Neither you nor I heavy,stirredon the anterior premise of wind;or agile down turnpikes of passion.

     Fresh language without a hint of cliché, but where, oh where, is the feeling?  I sense a true poet at work but am baffled by what results.  A love poem, presumably, but who, what, where are the lovers?  Leafing through the volume, I am impressed by the novel use of words, often scientific and technical, and by the images, but always the meaning teases and then eludes me.  Certainly I agree with Anaïs Nin (more of her anon), who is quoted in the blurb: “New imagery.  Interesting fusion of old myths with new symbolism taken from science.  A modern poet – adventurous, original.”  Exactly what I would have said, if pressed for a quote, while stifling my reservations.  And yet, the moment she took the stage and began reading her poems, they came alive and drilled right into you, and she registered as a commanding presence, a driving force.  Which is why a mutual friend of hers and mine acknowledges that today she is being forgotten; without her dynamic presence to project it, her poetry on the printed page doesn’t really work.  Perhaps for some, but not for him or for me.
     Yet back in the 1960s, when I knew her, Ree Dragonette was well known in avant-garde literary circles, and beyond.  She read her poems in poetry workshops, bookstores, and Greenwich Village coffee houses, on college campuses, and on radio stations like WBAI, and was the recipient of the 1960 Village Voice Poetry Award.  She appeared in poetry and jazz concerts with various groups, was published in a number of literary magazines, and conducted a poetry workshop at Greenwich House, located then in the West Village, where it offered social services and cultural programs. 
     I met Ree through my friend Vernon, also a poet, and read with her once at Greenwich House, and on other occasions heard her read.  Always interested in combining poetry with music or dance, she once gave a reading while a dancer performed simultaneously, her movements careful synchronized with Ree’s  poetry.  An adventurous undertaking, but for me it didn’t work: you’re going to focus on either the dancing or the poetry, but not both.  This was likewise my reaction when I heard a poet in San Francisco read to jazz; either the poetry eclipses the jazz or, more likely, the jazz eclipses the poetry.
     Who was she and where was she from?  There is almost nothing about her online, not even a photograph, apart from information about her printed works and the jazz groups she read with; the woman herself eludes me.  She was born Rita Marie Dragonetti in 1918 in Philadelphia to an Italian immigrant family and was writing poetry by age seven.  At some point, whether in Philadelphia or New York, she married an Italian-American with Mafia connections named Consiglia who became the father of her children.  According to Vernon, who must have got it from Ree, she found him beaten up in a gutter, the result of some Mafia falling out, and took him in and nursed him back to health. 
     When I knew Ree in the 1960s she lived with three teen-age children in an apartment just north of West 14thStreet, though they had lived at other addresses in the West Village before that and would later live in Westbeth, the West Village artists’ residence.  The eldest child, Juanita, was closest to her mother.  Of the two younger sons, John and Ralph, one (I forget which) was taking his high school work seriously, while the other was already a dropout and drifter who, as Vernon put it, had “a rich street life.”  There was no sign of the husband, nor did I ever hear her mention him, though they were evidently still in touch. 
     Ree and Juanita took astrology seriously.  When they learned my birth date, they assured me, an astrology ignoramus, that Libra on the cusp of Scorpio was about as good as you could get.  (I can’t say that my life then or since gives evidence of it, but no matter.)  And when Ree was one of a panel of interviewers on a new TV show in the planning stages, she explained her antipathy to one of the interviewees in terms of their opposed astrological signs.  I saw the first episode of the show at her apartment, and her antipathy, masked by a steely reserve, wasn’t hard to detect.  The show never really took off, one reason being that it was supposed to be oriented toward the interviewees, whereas Ree wanted it oriented toward the interviewers in general and herself in particular.  She couldn’t help it; it was just in the nature of things – her things – that she should be the center of attention.
     She often had anecdotes about other literati.  Attending a reading once by the Dominican monk Brother Antoninus, an acclaimed San Francisco poet, she was puzzled and annoyed to see him glance at the audience, then pace up and down on the stage, as if deciding whether or not to acknowledge the presence of these intruders.  “Oh, come on!” she exclaimed loudly, though I don’t recall if any kind of personal exchange followed; but he did finally read to the audience.
     Vigorously opposed to the Vietnam War, she met other activists, among them the poet Robert Lowell, whom she esteemed highly for participating in protests.  On one occasion he announced to others of the intelligentsia, “It’s time we gave this little lady the recognition she deserves!”  A nice sentiment, the sort of thing poets say of one another, but nothing came of it; storming the Pentagon probably monopolized his attention.
     I lost touch with Ree for a while, being preoccupied with things other than the rarefied world of poetry, and some years later Vernon told me he had met her by chance on the street.  She confided in him that she had a tumor on her breast and was scared sick – too scared to go see a doctor.  He urged her to do so, and when he informed me of this, I announced with great concern that by delaying she had probably signed her own death warrant.  She died, presumably of cancer, in 1979.  Her children still live in the city.  A remarkable woman, a cultural live wire in her time, even if mostly forgotten today.
Anaïs Nin
     Unlike Ree Dragonette, author Anaïs Nin (last name pronounced neen) is well remembered and well recorded today, so I shall chiefly give my personal impressions of her.  Born in France in 1903 to a Spanish-Cuban father who was a pianist and composer, and a mother of French and Danish descent who was a singer, she grew up in Europe and then came to New York with her mother.  Though she wrote novels, essays, short stories, and even erotica, she is best known for her voluminous journals, which cover her life from age 11 until close to her death.  Prominent in the journals is an account of her relationship with Henry Miller and his wife June in Paris in the early 1930s, and a merry threesome it was, with her passionately and sexually involved with the husband, while feeling an attraction to the wife as well.
The Anaïs Nin I knew.Elsa Dorfman     I met Anaïs Nin in 1968 through Ree Dragonette, who sponsored an informal talk by Nin in the Village and then invited the audience to accompany them to a nearby restaurant for coffee and further discussion.  Then in her mid-sixties, Nin was petite, birdlike, and exquisitely feminine. She had dark hair and was carefully made up with dark, arching eyebrows and mascara-outlined eyes, and spoke softly with a high, thin voice.  Of her talk I remember just two details.  First, she defined poetry as being quintessential, which describes Ree’s poetry perfectly, though hardly Milton’s or Whitman’s.  And she told how years before, when her banker husband opposed her publishing her writing, she was so depressed that she went walking along a railroad track, planning to throw herself under a train, a suicidal attempt that failed because she had never been able to read a railroad timetable and therefore had no idea when a train would be coming.
     En route to the restaurant afterward I told Nin that I had done my dissertation on the French poet André Breton, the founder and arbiter of Surrealism.  This kindled her interest, for she had known Breton and the Surrealists in Paris in the 1930s.  When we reached the restaurant, she and I continued our conversation, sublimely unaware of the others who, as I remember, kept their distance as we chatted on.  She asked me if I didn’t think that Breton, fierce ideologue and vigilant gatekeeper of the movement who decided who was in and who was out, hadn’t in the end been a limiting influence on Surrealism, and I heartily agreed.  He inspired, but he also judged and excluded, which his why those banished from the movement decried him as the pope of Surrealism, flic and curé (cop and priest).  Though I’ve always been one to steer clear of celebrities, including literary ones, I was completely at ease with her and she with me; if she was already a literary icon difficult of access, as some would have it, I, a total innocent, was unaware of it.
     The result: a few days later she phoned to invite me to a party that she and her husband were giving in their apartment; surprised, I was delighted to accept.  When I saw Ree shortly after that and told her of the invitation, she announced, “Yes, my dear, we’ll all be there!”  (Of our mutual acquaintances, the “all” really included just me and herself.)  I went in jacket and tie, because in those days that’s how one dressed for cultural events, except in hippie circles, and this was definitely not an excursion into hippiedom. 
     She lived in a spacious apartment in the New York University apartment complex on the edge of the West Village, an easy walk from my own digs on Jane Street.  There was a mix of guests there, including Ree, and I met Nin’s husband, Ian Hugo.  I remember chatting briefly with many people but can’t recall anything of interest, which suggests that neither they nor I were effusing brilliance.  But I did inform Nin that I now considered her my white witch.
     “Any color will do,” she replied with a smile.
     “Oh no,” I insisted, “it was to be white.  Black witches are evil, white witches are benign.  You are certainly benign.”
     (Here a personal aside is in order.  The year 1968, a year of riotous student protests and a turbulent presidential election, was a signal year for me personally, especially the spring, since, almost simultaneously, I quit teaching once and for all, met Anaïs Nin, and also met my longtime partner, Bob.  The coincidence of the first two explains my proclaiming Nin my benign white witch, capable of white, as opposed to black, magic.  As for quitting teaching, for me, usually a prudent bourgeois, it was a rather bold move, since I had no immediate prospects of a job and planned to devote my time to playwriting, an absurdly futile commitment that requires acerbic comment on some other occasion.  My friend Ken, also a teacher, gently pronounced my move immature and foolish, but since Ken himself hated, loathed, and detested teaching, his pronouncement weighed lightly on my psyche.)
     The high point of the evening came when the lights were lowered and Ian Hugo showed a brief film of his own making, quite plotless, being mostly a succession of cityscapes with juxtapositions of signs and scenes.  Some of the juxtapositions were so deliciously absurd that I often felt an impulse to laugh, but no titters, no sounds of blatant merriment, were forthcoming from the rest of the audience.  Afterward I mentioned my reaction to Hugo, wondering if it was appropriate; he was delighted that at least one person present “got” it, since the juxtapositions were definitely meant to amuse.
     Ree’s reaction to the evening, I soon learned, was seasoned with annoyance since, while the film was showing, one of the older gentlemen present had made unwelcome physical advances in the darkness.  Her reaction to Anaïs Nin was likewise mixed, even critical.  They were recent acquaintances, and Nin was apparently quite taken with her.  During a recent visit to Nin in her apartment, Nin had exclaimed, “If only I had known you earlier!”  She said this with a glance at the open door to her bedroom, which Ree found a bit off-putting.  Personally, I can see how Nin, who had something of the fragile doll about her, might have been attracted to Ree, a decidedly dominant personality. 
      Ree’s later final comment on Nin was decisive: “She doesn’t have the soul that Marguerite Young has” – a comment that I thought needlessly judgmental.  Marguerite Young, another West Village resident and a friend of both Ree and Nin, had catapulted into fame of a kind in 1965 with the publication of her 1198-page novel Miss Macintosh, My Darling, 18 years in the writing.  A publicity photograph of her hugging the hefty manuscript had convinced me that I didn’t have to read it, nor was I the only one.  Nin proclaimed it “an epic American novel written in a poetic style,” but reviews were more negative than not, and the New York Times would later proclaim it “one of the most widely unread books ever acclaimed.”  Still, it developed a cult following, and Young became known as a colorful Village eccentric, walking its streets in a serape, getting drunk with Dylan Thomas at the White Horse Tavern, amassing a huge collection of dolls in her Bleecker Street apartment, and claiming to encounter Emily Dickinson, Edgar Allen Poe, Henry James, and other deceased literary luminaries on misty nights in the Village.  If mental flights are an indication of soul, Marguerite Young had plenty of it.
     I showed some of my poems to Anaïs Nin, who called them “subtle” and in exchange sent me a paperback copy of her novel A Spy in the House of Love (a title that I find catchy).  After that we drifted apart.  That was probably inevitable, since there was no chance of a closer relationship.
     Only now, in researching this post, did I learn that in 1955 she had acquired a second husband, Rupert Pole, 16 years her junior, without bothering to divorce Ian Hugo (real name Hugh Guiler) or even inform him: a bit of duplicity requiring two checkbooks, one for Anaïs Guiler in New York and one for Anaïs Pole in Los Angeles, and a “lie box” in which she kept a written record of her many lies, so she could keep them straight.  Her marriage with Ian Hugo was obviously an open one, but in 1966 she had her marriage with Pole annulled, because of legal complications from both husbands claiming her as a dependent on their federal tax returns.  Though she never broke with Ian Hugo, she spent her final years with Pole and named him as her literary executor.  She died of cancer in Los Angeles in 1977 and was cremated, and her ashes scattered over Santa Monica Bay. 
Not the Anaïs Nin I knew.

     Of all these marital adventures (and the nonmarital ones as well), and the lush eroticism in the journals published later, I was totally unaware when I knew her, and I doubt if Ree knew much of it either.  For me, she was simply an accomplished writer, deep, sensitive, wonderfully feminine.  And why do we know so much about her today?  Because she, like André Gide, was a diarist, and diarists are notorious tattle-tales about both themselves and others.
     Yes, Anaïs Nin, now hailed as a liberated woman and sexual pioneer by feminists, was certainly a remarkable woman.

     A note on trivia:  Waiting to pay for the Times at my neighborhood deli, I discovered three products, displayed conspicuously on the counter, that I had never noticed before: HI CHEW, FIVE-HOUR ENERGY, and DREAM WATER.  There are three of our most vital needs attended to: the need to chew, the need for energy, and the need to dream.  And right there at my deli.  Marvelous.

This is New York

DVIDSHUB
              Coming soon:  Our Crumbling Infrastructure, or, Where Can I Vacation?

     ©  2014  Clifford Browder

132. Yul Brynner, Montgomery Clift, Rudolph Valentino: Famous New York Deaths

     The last post on famous deaths in New York (#126) focused on famous women celebrities of Hollywood who lived for a while and died here, so this one will have a look at some of the men.  And quite a bunch they are!  Though never much concerned about celebrities, I can’t deny that they exert a certain fascination when you look at the later stage of their careers, discover their vulnerabilities, and see them through to the end.


Yul Brynner
     We knew him above all as the brilliant but demanding and supremely virile King of Siam in the long-running Rodgers and Hammerstein musical The King and I,in which he gave 4,625 performances over the course of 30 years, fusing so completely with the character that we couldn’t imagine anyone else in the role.  And his dynamic presence proved that one could be both completely bald and sexy, a notion that gave hope to multitudes of aging males the world over.  But who was he and where did he come from?
     He was born Yuliy Borisovich Briner, allegedly on Sakhalin Island off the coast of Siberia to a Mongolian mining engineer and his Romanian gypsy bride.  Yes, it sounds like the plot of a nineteenth-century operetta  and has since been debunked, for he loved to shroud his origins in mystery.    He was born in Vladivostok to a Swiss-Russian mining engineer and a Russian Jewish mother, the daughter of a doctor, though his paternal grandmother was partly of Mongol ancestry.  Early in his career he sang gypsy songs, but there is no hard evidence that he had gypsy blood. 
     Yul Brynner gave his birth date at various times as 1915, 1917, 1920, or 1922, so we won’t pursue that further.  His father left his mother for another woman, so Yul spent his childhood with his mother in Manchuria and then in Paris, where he dropped out of an exclusive lycée to become a circus acrobat, then a singer and guitarist and actor.  Coming to the U.S. in 1940 with minimal English, he  landed an acting role with a touring company and appeared on Broadway.  His screen test for Universal Pictures in 1947 brought a rejection for looking “too Oriental.”  Then, in 1951, his exotic features with intense eyes and high cheekbones helped him get the role of the King in The King and I, for which he shaved his head, and the rest is history.
With Gertrude Lawrence in The King and I (1951).
    I won’t dwell on his superstar career in film, usually bald but occasionally in a wig (the wigs didn’t work; we wanted him bald), or his four marriages, or his long affair with (among others) Marlene Dietrich, 19 years his senior, interesting as all that may be.  Or his renouncing his U.S. citizenship in 1965 to avoid bankruptcy because of tax and penalty debts.  More to the point of this post, he had begun smoking heavily at age 12.  He quit smoking in 1971, but appeared with a cigarette in publicity photos after that, and was found to have inoperable lung cancer in 1983.  The radiation therapy that followed hurt his throat and his ability to speak and sing, but after a few months he was able to resume touring as the King.
     In January 1985 the tour reached New York for a farewell Broadway run, as he knew that he was dying.  In an interview on Good Morning America he discussed the dangers of smoking and said he would like to make an anti-smoking commercial.  He died of lung cancer in a New York hospital on October 10, 1985.  A few days later he appeared on all the major U.S. TV networks in a public service announcement sponsored by the American Cancer Society and declared, “Now that I’m gone, I tell you: Don’t smoke.  Whatever you do, just don’t smoke.  If I could take back that smoking, we wouldn’t be talking about any cancer.  I’m convinced of that.”  No question, he went out with style.  He was cremated and his ashes were buried in France.

Montgomery Clift
     Born in Omaha in 1920, Montgomery Clift came to New York with his family in the 1930s and first appeared on Broadway at age 15.  His mother managed his acting career even after he became an adult, and supervised his dating of girls as well.  He studied at the Actors Studio and continued his stage career in New York for 10 years, rejecting many Hollywood offers before finally yielding.  In Hollywood he appeared in many films while rejecting many others, and by the 1950s was one of the most sought-after leading men in film, rivaled only by Marlon Brando.  It didn’t hurt that he was remarkably good-looking, not in an exotic way like Brynner, but in a classical Wasp sort of way in the somewhat androgynous vein of Robert Taylor and Tyrone Power.  But he had much more than looks, getting deep into his roles and projecting inner strength, anguish, and sensitivity.
     I saw Clift playing opposite Olivia de Havilland in The Heiress (1949), which was based on a play based in turn on Henry James’s novel Washington Square (1880), whose psychological subtleties were well captured on both stage and screen.  I have always considered it one of the most flawless films of all time, and am now surprised to learn that Clift, a brooding Method actor, had differences with most of the cast and criticized de Havilland’s performance, which I thought brilliant and convincing.  By now he had a large female following, so de Havilland got a host of angry letters for rejecting the Clift character in the final scene – a rejection that is totally justified and constitutes her bitter revenge for his having deserted her years before.
     Another triumph for Clift was A Place in the Sun (1951), where he played opposite Elizabeth Taylor in a story based on Theodore Dreiser’s 1925 novel An American Tragedy, whose final pages, showing the male protagonist in prison awaiting execution, are, as I can testify, riveting.  To prepare himself for those closing scenes, Clift spent a night in a real state prison.  The movie was a great success, and Clift and Taylor were hailed as the most beautiful couple in Hollywood.  They became, in fact, close friends.
     Clift was unpopular among the film industry elite for refusing to publicize his private life, attend premieres and parties, or give interviews.  And for good reason: he was gay.  Feeling guilty about his sexuality, he made every effort to conceal it, and the studios saw to it that his friendships with women celebrities like Taylor were well publicized.  When in New York he made discreet forays to the gay meccas of Ogunquit, Maine, and Fire Island, but concealed his sexuality even from close friends.  So it was in America in those days.
     His life changed drastically in 1956 when, leaving a dinner party at the Beverly Hills home of his friend Elizabeth Taylor and her second husband, he drove down a twisting mountain road and smashed his car into a telephone pole.  Hearing of the accident from another departing guest, Taylor rushed to the scene, found the car a total wreck and its doors jammed, crawled in through the rear window, hauled herself over the bloody seat, found him lying motionless beneath the steering wheel, pulled him up onto the seat, cradled his head in her lap, and extracted two teeth from his tongue to keep him from choking and so may well have saved his life.  When an ambulance and photographers finally arrived, she shielded him from the photographers and forbade them to photograph his bloodied face.  Clift was then rushed to a hospital for an immediate operation.  He had suffered a broken jaw and nose, and several facial wounds that required plastic surgery.  He had the best plastic surgery then available, but his looks were altered, especially the left side of his face, which was partially paralyzed.  Still, audiences flocked to see his films, so as to compare “pre-crash” and “post-crash” Monty.
     Clift never recovered physically or emotionally from the accident.  Already relying on alcohol and pills for relief from an earlier ailment, he became obsessed with drugs, had long talks about them with his pharmacist, became alcoholic, staged tantrums in restaurants and on film sets, and often  stayed secluded in his bedroom with the blinds drawn for days.  He still made films, but when he costarred in The Misfits with Marilyn Monroe in 1961, she described him as “the only person I know who is in even worse shape than I am.”  Few were the directors now willing to cast him in a film.  Playing a mentally impaired victim of Nazi sterilization in a brief scene in Judgment at Nuremberg (1961), he struggled to remember his lines, until the director told him to improvise, which he did successfully.
In Judgment at Nuremberg.
     After that he came back to New York, where he had bought a four-story townhouse at 217 East 61st Street in 1960.  Living with him was his personal secretary and companion, Lorenzo James.  At 1 a.m. on July 23, 1966, James went up to say goodnight to Clift, who was still awake and sitting up in his bed.  Clift said he didn’t need anything, would stay up a while longer to read or watch TV.  When James asked if Clift wanted him to watch The Misfits on television with him, Clift replied emphatically, “Absolutely not!”  James then went to his own bedroom and went to bed.
     Rising at 6:30 a.m., James went to awaken Clift, but found his bedroom door closed and locked.  He knocked, got no answer.  Alarmed and unable to force the door open, he ran down to the back garden, climbed up a ladder to the second floor, and entered Clift’s bedroom through a window.  He found Clift in his bed, undressed, lying on his back, eyeglasses on, fists clenched, dead.  James phoned the police at once.  An autopsy at the city morgue attributed Clift’s death to a heart attack brought on by coronary artery disease, but found no evidence of homicide or suicide.  Drug addiction may have led to his death, but there were other health problems as well, including an underactive thyroid that might have made him seem drugged or drunk when sober.  Clift was buried in the Quaker Cemetery in Prospect Park, Brooklyn.

Rudolph Valentino
     Born Rodolfo Alfonso Raffaello Pierre Filibert Guglielmi di Valentina d’Antonguolia in Italy in 1895, he can hardly be blamed for shortening his name to Rudolph Valentino.  His mother was French, his father Italian, a veterinarian who died when he was 11.  Reportedly a spoiled and troublesome child, he did poorly in school, managed to get a degree from an  agricultural school in Genoa, and in 1913, unable to get employment in Italy, came to the U.S.  In New York he found odd jobs such as busboy in restaurants and gardener, then even as a taxi dancer.  In 1917, when a woman friend, an heiress with whom he may or may not have had a relationship, fatally shot her ex-husband, he feared being called as a witness and abruptly left town with a traveling musical that took him to the West Coast. 

     Valentino finally ended up in Los Angeles, where he taught dancing, developing a doting older female clientele who let him borrow their luxury cars.  Then he began applying for screen roles, got bit parts as “heavies,” became dissatisfied with these roles, and returned to New York, where he thought of settling permanently.  But then, nudged by an influential screenwriter, Metro Picture’s New York office hired him for a lead role in The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1921), a silent film epic that became  a spectacular box-office success, and history was made.  In the film Valentino plays a young Argentine who with a partner dances a spectacular tango, then later joins the French army, fights heroically against the Germans, and dies in battle.  Overnight Valentino, ex-busboy and taxi dancer, became a star, the quintessential Latin lover, mysterious and forbidden, virile yet sensitive, who provoked in women sighs, flutters, quivers, and tingles.  “Women are not in love with me but with the picture of me on the screen,” he later observed.  “I am merely the canvas upon which the women paint their dreams.”  He became all the rage, and so did gaucho pants and the tango. 
[edit] In Four Horsemen.

     Valentino’s next success was The Sheik (also 1921), which grossed over a million dollars in ticket sales, confirmed Valentino’s image as a male sex symbol, and made him an international superstar.  More films followed, not all of them commercial successes, and there were squabbles with his studios and financial ups and downs.  An unconsummated first marriage with a lesbian ended in divorce, and a second marriage brought a charge of bigamy, since he hadn’t been divorced from his first wife for a full year; in time a legal marriage followed, to likewise end bitterly in divorce.
     Was Valentino gay?  In his lifetime the question never came up, though male filmgoers found him unmanly and preferred Douglas Fairbanks; women, however, found him triumphantly seductive, compared to whom the average husband or sweetheart seemed tame.  When his masculinity was challenged in print, Valentino would challenge the accuser to a boxing match, since dueling was illegal; one such match actually took place, and Valentino won.  Boxing heavyweight champion Jack Dempsey, who had trained Valentino in boxing, said the actor was decidedly virile, a lucky guy to whom women were drawn like flies to a honeypot.  The consensus today is that he was definitely heterosexual.
     On  August 15, 1926, while in New York to attend the premiere of his latest film, Valentino collapsed in the Hotel Ambassador.  Rushed to a hospital, he was diagnosed with appendicitis and gastric ulcers; surgery followed, but he developed peritonitis, inflammation of the inner wall of the abdomen.  His doctors gave an optimistic report to the media, but on August 21 he developed severe pleuritis in his left lung.  Though the doctors now knew he couldn’t recover, they let their patient think otherwise.  Early on August 23 he chatted briefly with them about his future, then lapsed in a coma and died a few hours later, at age 31.
     The news was a thunderbolt to the public.  Some 10,000 people lined the streets outside the Campbell Funeral Home at Broadway and 66thStreet, waiting to view the coffin.  Suicides of fans were reported, and windows were smashed as mourners tried to enter the funeral home, followed on August 24 by an all-day riot.  All available police reserves were called out to restore order.
     Inside the funeral home, the drama was even more intense.  Polish-born film star Pola Negri, who claimed that she and Valentino were gong to be wed, collapsed in hysterics at the coffin.  Four Fascist Blackshirts, an honor guard supposedly sent by Mussolini, turned out to be actors hired by the funeral home, and rumors circulated that the body on display was a decoy, which the funeral home vigorously denied.




     On August 30 a funeral mass was held at Saint Malachy’s Roman Catholic Church on West 49th Street, following which the body was sent by rail to California, where a second funeral was held in Beverly Hills.  He is buried in a crypt in a mausoleum of the Hollywood Forever Cemetery (no, I didn’t make that name up, honest).  His time of glory had been only five years, but he was the first international male film superstar and is remembered as such today.
     But that’s not the end of the Valentino story, for Hollywood legends don’t die easily.  For many years a heavily veiled Lady in Black was seen coming to his grave on the anniversary of his death to silently leave a single red rose.  It has been said that this was a publicity stunt devised by a Hollywood press agent.  But in 1947 a woman named Ditra Flame (pronounced flay-may) plausibly claimed the honor, saying Valentino had visited her in a hospital when she was deathly ill at age 14, bringing her a red rose and assuring her that she would outlive him by many years.  Other Ladies in Black, sometimes throngs of them, have also appeared at the grave, and a fan of Valentino’s continues the tradition to this day, while others leave quantities of roses there as well.

     Valentino’s legacy?  Most notably, in 1930 the Sheik condoms appeared, another tradition that persists to this day; any pharmacy and many a deli has them.



This is New York

Joe Mabel

     Coming soon:  Two more remarkable women, both of them Villagers, and both of whom I knew: Ree Dragonette and Anaïs Nin. 

     ©  2014  Clifford Browder

131. Ayn Rand, High Priestess of Egoism

     When I told my friend John that I was going to do a post on Ayn Rand, he immediately denounced her “hideous right-wing ideology” that opposed government intervention and would let corporations do whatever they wanted.  Yes, she is controversial; if you know anything about her, you either love her or hate her.  But you don’t have to love her, or even like her or agree with her, to call her remarkable; the force of her ideas is enough.  In announcing a series of posts on Remarkable Women, I promised some luscious subjects.  But Ayn Rand is not luscious.  “Luscious” suggests ripe fruit, sweet and succulent, with an enticing aroma that makes you want to gobble.  That is not Ayn Rand.  Her personality and her ideas are lean, hard, angular, and dry.  But they have left their mark.
Beginnings
     She was born Alisa Zinovyevna Rosebaum in Saint Petersburg, Russia, in 1905, to Jewish parents.  Her father, a successful pharmacist, was an agnostic, her mother only nominally observant.  She taught herself to read at six, was writing from an early age.  The Russian Revolution occurred when she was twelve, inaugurating what she would later call “the stifling, sordid ugliness of Soviet Russia.”  Already harboring notions of heroism and individualism, she knew that this was no place for her, and when, in the early 1920s, she saw American movies with shots of the city of New York, this alien city with clusters of tall buildings “seemed completely incredible.”  From then on, America beckoned.
     In 1926 she left, ostensibly to visit relatives in Chicago and study the film industry, so she could return and work in that same industry in Russia, but really with no intention of ever returning to the land of Soviet collectivism.  Here in the citadel of capitalism – indeed, in the joyous tumult of the Roaring Twenties – Ayn Rand (such she now christened herself, to protect her family back in Russia) found work in Hollywood as an extra, then a screenwriter and a clerk in wardrobe.  But these Hollywood years were a mere prelude to her glory years in the Empire City, though they saw her marry a handsome actor named Frank O’Connor and, in 1931, become a U.S. citizen.
     In 1934 she and her husband moved to New York City, to which she had always felt drawn.  There she had a play produced on Broadway, and a novel published, only to go soon out of print.  Promising beginnings, but beginnings only.  Then, significantly, she began work on The Fountainhead, the novel that would, in time, bring her recognition and success.
The Fountainhead
     Published by Bobbs-Merrill in 1943, after twelve other publishers rejected it, The Fountainhead, which the author would later describe as a mere overture to Atlas Shrugged, is, as overtures go, a pretty hefty bit of work; in my paperback edition it runs to 694 pages, and believe me, those pages have small print.  But if one is going to read her – perhaps, as I did, to learn what all the hullaballoo is about – this is the place to begin.  I will only give a brief, rough sketch of it here, since to do otherwise would swell this post to epic proportions.
     Based in part on Frank Lloyd Wright, Howard Roark, the architect hero, has an inner vision of his trade that goes against the mainstream ideas of his time.  Expelled from his architecture school because of his nonconformist attitude, he in time opens a firm of his own in New York and slowly, in spite of slander against him, finds the rare clients who appreciate his talent and hire him for significant projects.  When he finds that the design of one of his buildings has been altered in his absence, he dynamites the building.  At the trial that follows, Roark speaks eloquently of the value of ego and the need to remain true to oneself, and the jury acquits him.  He triumphs in the end, and even gets the girl in the story.  The novel’s title comes from Roark’s statement that “man’s ego is the fountainhead of human progress.”
     By way of contrast Peter Keating, another aspiring architect, wins initial success by catering to the wishes of others and conforming to the beliefs of the establishment.  His ruthless ambition causes him to manipulate and abuse others; unlike Roark, he has no true inner vision, no strong, determining self.  In the end he fails, knows himself to be utterly mediocre.
     The Fountainhead pits egoism, guided by mind, against what Rand calls “second-handers,” those who are guided by the opinions of others.  It is the egoists like Roark who do, think, and produce; the world will be far better off if it lets them do their thing.  Roark is her first literary portrait of the ideal man (her heroes are always men), the creative egoist.
     I won’t deny that the novel – all 694 pages of it – is a good read, if one has a stomach for long and complicated stories, with characters who are literary abstractions rather than portraits of real flesh-and-blood people.  Rand always portrays ideal types, with all the simplifications required.  Her heroes are rarely stricken with self-doubt, any more than she herself was; they hold true through thick and thin.  But if you want powerful ideas powerfully expressed, and writing that makes you think, then Ayn Rand is the author for you.
     The Fountainhead received mixed reviews.  The New York Times reviewer called it “masterful,” whereas another reviewer declared that “anyone who is taken in by it deserves a stern lecture on paper-rationing.”  Offensive to some was a scene where Roark forces himself sexually on the woman he eventually marries, Dominique.  Feminists have called Rand a traitor to her sex in making her women characters subservient to men, though Rand denied that the scene in question involved true rape, insisting that it was “rape by engraved invitation,” since Dominique really wanted it to happen.  Be that as it may, the novel sold well and by 1945 was on the New York Times bestseller list, and it continues to sell well today.  In 1949 the film The Fountainhead was released, starring Gary Cooper and Patricia Neal; inevitably, Rand disliked it.
     And today?  Here is a sampling of reader reviews from Goodreads, the world’s largest website for readers and their book reviews.  These are not the complete reviews, just brief selections from them.
·      Ultimately it's easy to see in novels like this one why Rand is so perfect for late teenagers, but why she elicits eye rolls by one's mid-twenties; because Objectivism [Rand’s philosophy] is all about BEING RIGHT, and DROPPING OUT IF OTHERS CAN'T UNDERSTAND THAT, and LET 'EM ALL GO TO HELL AS FAR AS I'M CONCERNED, without ever taking into account the unending amount of compromise and cooperation and sometimes sheer altruism that actually makes the world work. Recommended, but with a caveat; that you read it before you're old enough to know better.·      I'm far from a Rand worshipper. I can't get onboard with her whole way of life, from the personal to the political level. I will say, though, that I think her attitudes, when applied to the creative arts, are important.·      THIS HORROR STORY IS TO SCARY FOR ME IT HAS A CREEPY GINGER KID AND HE RAPES ANN COULTER BECAUSE SHE WANTS HIM TO!!1! THEN THEY HAVE A LOT OF TICKLE FIGHTS AND BUILD SUM HOUSES THATS ALL i REMEMBER.·      As literature, I found the book dry, predictable, and overwrought. As philosophy, I found it circular, wholly unfounded, and completely contradicting reality.·      This book is a big epiphany-getter in American high school and college students. It presents a theme of pure, fierce dedication to honing yourself into a hard blade of competence and accomplishment, brooking no compromise, ignoring and dismissing the weak, untalented rabble and naysayers as you charge forth to seize your destiny. You are an "Army of One". There is undeniable sophomoric allure to this pitch.
Obviously, the novel is still being read, and taken seriously enough to be praised – within limits – or reviled.  Of how many books published in 1943 can you say that today?
Atlas Shrugged
     Who was the author who was now achieving eminence?  She was only 5 feet 4 in height, but to my eye, judging by the many photos of her, a handsome woman in a mannish sort of way, devoid of frills and flounces.  She kept her brown hair cut short, framing her face, as if long hair down to the shoulders would have been too feminine, too loose and free, too sensual.  She spoke with a Russian accent and had dark, penetrating eyes that lit up whenever conversation turned to philosophy.  Prizing mind and its workings over everything, she gave little attention to clothes, wore ready-to-wear outfits or casual ones thrown quickly together.
     Believing strongly in her own ideas, she was not one to tolerate fools, a category that for her included just about anyone who disagreed with her.  Ideas were to be either passionately embraced or rejected with scorn; there was no middle way.  Which explains why she exhibited extremes of joy and anger, and why even favorable reviews of her work were apt to displease her; few were those who, in her opinion, truly understood what she was trying to say.
     Those who have read The Fountainhead are inclined to feel that they have climbed a mountain.  But in the context of Rand’s oeuvre, The Fountainhead is a hillock; Atlas Shrugged is the Matterhorn.  Or maybe Mount Everest.  And brave are those who venture on its slopes.
     The basic idea of this magnum opus (1,069 pages in my paperback edition) is simple:  What would happen if all the truly creative people went on strike against a collectivist and overregulated society that refuses to recognize their worth?  What if, one by one, they vanished mysteriously into a remote valley in the Rocky Mountains, leaving society to the would-be altruists, to the bureaucrats and bumblers?  The answer, of course, is that the industries they run would collapse, followed by the government.  And so it comes about in this novel.  At the end John Galt, the leader of the strike, announces that he and the other exiles will now reorganize the world. 
     This, of course, is the barest outline of the plot.  When I read it – yes, all the way to the bitter end – I made a list of no less than 29 recurring characters in an attempt to keep them all straight.  Need I add that in my opinion the book is grossly overwritten, stating and restating its ideas time after time.  When, near the end, John Galt delivers a long radio broadcast to expound the author’s theme and philosophy – some 40 pages in this later edition, reduced from the original 70 – I skipped it entirely and didn’t miss a thing.
     The title comes from a passage in the novel when one character asks another what he would say to Atlas, the giant who holds the world on his shoulders, if he saw him with blood running down his chest, his knees buckling, his arms trembling, but still trying to hold up the world, which bears down on him heavier all the time.  When the second character doesn’t know, he asks the questioner what he himself would tell Atlas.  The answer: “To shrug.”  Presumably, the creative people in the novel are the atlases of this world, and by going on strike they shrug off the weight of the world.
     The world that Rand describes in her novel, while set at an unspecified time, may seem quaint today, in that it reflects a society where railroads, industry, and radio are prominent.  I don’t blame her if she didn’t anticipate the growing importance of air travel and television, much less computers and the Internet.  But her story is both anachronistic and timeless.  Once again, but more comprehensively, she expresses through her characters the concept of ethical egoism, of rational selfishness, whereby human reason functions as humanity’s basic tool of survival.  There is much else in the novel as well, but I can't discuss it all here.
     Atlas Shrugged was on the New York Times bestseller list for 22 consecutive weeks, but it was assailed by critics generally.  Catholics and religious conservatives detested its atheism and egoism, while liberals denounced the glorification of laissez-faire capitalism.  “An homage to greed,” “shot through with hatred,” “sophomoric,” and “godless” were among the verdicts pronounced.  And just about every critic dismissed it as blatant propaganda.  But her allies counterattacked, and the book kept right on selling.
     Again, let’s see what recent Goodreads reviews have to say:
·      Ayn Rand makes my eyes hurt. She does this, not by the length of her six hundred thousand word diatribe, but rather by the frequency with which she causes me to roll them. ·      This book really makes you take a good hard look at yourself and your behavior, which is why I think a lot of people don't like this book. It's a lecture and most people don't like to get lectured. I loved it. It gave me a good swift kick in the ass. ·      As Ayn Rand's immortal opus, Atlas Shrugged, stands as a tome to a philosophy that is relevant today as it was in her time. Basically, the major moral theme is that there are two types of people in the world: the Creators and the Leeches.·      The best way to understand Rand's message in this book is to simply close it, and beat yourself over the head with it as hard as possible. This is essentially what Rand does throughout its ridiculous length.      Obviously, readers continue to either love her work or hate it.
The Cult
     In 1951 Ayn Rand and her husband moved permanently to New York, where they lived for many years at 36 East 36thStreet.  New York was the city she had longed for ever since seeing glimpses of it in American movies in the 1920s, yet she never really got to know it.  She never traipsed its sidewalks, talked to its residents, or immersed herself in its diversity.  Her New York was an abstraction, a place where she could vent her ideas, and where her fictional characters could interact and show her philosophy in action.  Her writing and her ideas preoccupied her; the juicy, gritty, real New York did not.
     What did interest her in the 1950s were the enthusiastic letters she received from young people who had read The Fountainhead.  Often she would invite them to come to New York and meet her, and in this way she soon gathered around her a select group of admirers whom she invited to weekly meetings in her apartment to discuss her ideas and hear selections from Atlas Shrugged as she worked on it.  This inner circle she christened, with a touch of irony, “the Collective.”  They were her social life; the vast society outside these confines she ignored, convinced that most of it would be hostile to her ideas. 
     Inevitably, perhaps, in 1954 one of the young male acolytes was conscripted to be consort to Genius, the Genius being Ayn Rand.  The chosen one was Nathaniel Branden, 25 years her junior, who, like Rand, was married, but the relationship developed with the knowledge and reluctant consent of their respective spouses.  This was known to the inner circle, but not to her other followers.  With Rand’s editorial assistance, Branden gave a lecture on her philosophy of Objectivism in 1958, and in 1962 established the Nathaniel Branden Institute, Inc. (NBI) to offer courses on Objectivism and related topics taught by members of the Collective. 
     With the publication of Atlas Shrugged, Rand felt that she had fully expressed herself in fiction and from then on devoted herself to further expounding and promoting Objectivism.  Stated briefly and in the simplest terms possible, Objectivism believes that reality exists independent of the consciousness of those perceiving it.  It is a real and tangible hard fact, and not the projection of our mind.  Beyond what we perceive, reason is our only source of knowledge, our guide to action, and our means of survival.  To survive, we must think.  And our survival depends not on altruism but on rational self-interest.  Objectivism embraces laissez-faire capitalism, insisting that the only justified role of government is to protect our individual rights; beyond that, it should keep hands off.
     Throughout the 1960s Rand promoted her philosophy through public and private speeches, TV and radio appearances (especially on WBAI), and in a series of essays.  Slowly she found a wider audience and was invited to participate in forums and symposiums.  Yet the intellectual establishment never accepted her, calling her philosophy an ideology, her novels “philosophical soapboxes,” her ideas “simplistic,” and her personality “authoritarian.”  But the public kept on buying her books.
     By the late 1960s NBI was a flourishing organization, offering courses in 80 cities that were attended by thousands.  But by now Branden’s sexual interest had evidently (if you’ll pardon the expression) petered out and, separated from his wife, he was in love with a younger woman.  But  disengaging oneself from Ayn Rand was not easy, since her needs were fierce.  Fearing Rand’s explosive anger, Branden and his estranged wife kept his new involvement secret from her, but in time she learned of it.  Intellectual and business issues now compounded their differences as well, and in 1968 their association ended not with a whimper but a bang.  In the May issue of her monthly periodical, The Objectivist, Rand broke publicly with Branden, accusing him of a series of deceptions, including his failure to practice the philosophy – hers, of course – that he was teaching his students, as well as unresolved psychological problems.  He countered with a lengthy letter to the NBI mailing list denying her numerous accusations and attributing her denunciations to his unwillingness to engage further in a romantic relationship with her.  This break, shocking to many of her followers, put an end to NBI, which Branden dissolved.  He and others later denounced the NBI for intellectual conformity and excessive reverence for Rand.
     Rand was still active in the 1970s and was even invited twice to the Ford White House, but in 1974, after decades of heavy smoking, she was diagnosed with lung cancer, and surgery to remove part of one lung left her in a weakened condition.  Despite initial objections, this vehement foe of government intervention allowed herself to be enrolled for Social Security and Medicare.  Meanwhile Frank O’Connor also required medical care and her constant attention.  In these last years she listened to music, watched TV, and collected stamps, but her preferred recreation was still discussing philosophy with friends who came to her apartment, now at 120 East 34th Street. 
     In 1979 Frank O’Connor died, ending their fifty-year marriage; for a while she was plunged into the depths of depression.  Invited to address a monetary conference in New Orleans in November 1981, at age 76 she went in a private rail car, assailed businessmen who financed universities advocating the destruction of capitalism, then announced that she was writing a TV adaptation of Atlas Shrugged that she would produce herself.  At this surprise announcement the audience rose in a body and cheered.
      Returning from New Orleans, she fell sick and continued ailing throughout December.  In January 1982 she was hospitalized with pulmonary problems, then returned to her apartment and died there on March 6, 1982.  Eight hundred people waited in line to enter the funeral home where she lay in state, with a six-foot floral dollar sign by the coffin.  She was buried beside her husband in Kensico Cemetery in Valhalla, New York.


Legacy
     The Passion of Ayn Rand, the first full-length biography of Ayn Rand, was written by Barbara Branden, the former wife of Nathaniel Branden; published in 1986, it revealed Rand’s affair with Branden.  It received positive reviews and was made into a film of the same name in 1999.
     Rand’s books have continued to be widely sold and read both in the U.S. and abroad.  In 1991 a Book of the Month Club survey asked club members to name the most influential book in their life; no. 1 was the Bible, and no. 2 Atlas Shrugged.  It doesn’t hurt that the Ayn Rand Institute, founded in 1985 to promote her philosophy and works, donates 400,000 copies every year to Advanced Placement high school programs.  The Institute is the keeper of the flame, and in those hallowed precincts the flame burns bright.
     Several prominent businessmen have told how Rand’s ideas had a positive influence on them in their early years, and one of the first Collective members, Alan Greenspan, served as Chairman of the Federal Reserve from 1987 to 2006; in a 2010 interview he reaffirmed his faith in laissez-faire capitalism.  In 2009 her name and John Galt’s appeared on signs at Tea Party protests.  To this day she is controversial, provoking much praise and blame.  Chances are she always will be, and that would no doubt suit her fine.

A 2009 Tea Party demonstration in Chicago.  The face of the
man holding the sign has been effaced to protect his identity.
HKDP
     I have known only one person who proclaimed herself a follower of Ayn Rand, a lesbian librarian of my partner Bob’s acquaintance who was surely not typical of Rand’s followers.  Evelyn was so taken with her mentor that she donated generously from her modest salary to the Ayn Rand Institute.  Like Rand, she was a secular Jew, hard, lean, angular, and dry, and very intelligent.  Unlike Rand, who had little time for the arts, she was a great appreciator of Rubinstein playing Chopin, and had a collection of Austrian bronzes, figurines of animals delicately wrought.  But if Rand was capable of explosive anger, Evelyn showed no feelings whatsoever; she was all mind.  She pushed this to the point that she never, to my knowledge, uttered the words “please,” “thank you,” or “excuse me”; such amenities would have been a surrender, a needless betrayal of … of what?  Of mind?  Of self-possession?  Of integrity?  A strange woman, fascinating in her way, combining keen intellect with a total lack of warmth.  A tight fist that refused to open.
     Ayn Rand appeals especially to people who are adrift and in need of guidance.  For them, it is vastly reassuring to encounter a guide so confident, so possessed of ideas and principles that she pronounces with vigor and clarity, an authority who speaks without hesitation or doubt.  Which is why she appeals to young people … for a while.
     I admire Ayn Rand from a distance, for she knew who she was and what she believed in, expressed herself clearly, and left her mark.  If I have never been tempted even momentarily to fall under her spell, I attribute it to certain aspects of her personality:
·      Total self-assurance, not a smidgen of self-doubt.·      No ambiguity, no irony, without which I couldn’t begin to cope with the world I live in.·      No sense of humor, none.·      The delicious fact that, ardent foe of government intervention though she was, in the end she let herself be enrolled for Social Security and Medicare.
     High Priestess of Enlightened Egoism, flayer of altruism, Atlas of the Mind who never shrugged off the world but stayed to lecture, chastise, and correct it, may she rest in peace.

This is New York

Rod Waddington
         Coming soon:  Famous New York Deaths: Yul Brynner, Montgomery Clift, Rudolph Valentino.  (Did Brynner really have Mongol and gypsy blood?  Did  Elizabeth Taylor save Clift's life?  Was Valentino gay?  Who was the Woman in Black who every year put a red rose on his grave?  All shall be made clear.)  In the offing: How Great Cities and Great Nations Decline.  And two more Remarkable Women: Ree Dragonette and Anais Nin.
     ©  2014  Clifford Browder