Michael Davidow's Blog: The Henry Bell Project, page 4
March 27, 2013
Mad Man
“That doesn’t sound like you talking. That’s not Yale, and that’s not Mad Ave. That sounds like Walton talking.”
The first thing many people ask me, when they learn about SPLIT THIRTY, is whether I watch the AMC television show, Mad Men. I tell them honestly that I never have. I wrote the first draft of SPLIT THIRTY years before Mad Men existed. It was actually being represented by a literary agent when AMC made its first splash. I recall asking him if this new television show would help or hurt my prospects. He never answered me. Then he quit. And I put this story aside for a long time, before taking it out to finish.
In those years, too, I stayed away from that program. It irked me, that another writer had succeeded with an idea so similar to mine. I also did not want to be influenced by someone else's vision.
Since starting to market SPLIT THIRTY, though, I’ve become aware of how far Mad Men has gone, and how many people like it. I’ve also seen that some overlap between my work and their work is almost impossible to avoid. We’re looking at adjoining eras, after all, and the same industry. I’ve learned that its writers have made references to Nixon, Rockefeller, Antonioni, and more too, I’m sure.
Thankfully, it was the ’68 campaign that rocked Madison Avenue the most; Nixon’s ad-men being the subject of Joe McGinness’s famous book, The Selling of the President 1968. So maybe they’ll stop before they hit ’72.
And rest assured, in the meantime, the only television show based on advertising that matters to Henry Bell is Bewitched -- because Pooch has a thing for Elizabeth Montgomery.
The first thing many people ask me, when they learn about SPLIT THIRTY, is whether I watch the AMC television show, Mad Men. I tell them honestly that I never have. I wrote the first draft of SPLIT THIRTY years before Mad Men existed. It was actually being represented by a literary agent when AMC made its first splash. I recall asking him if this new television show would help or hurt my prospects. He never answered me. Then he quit. And I put this story aside for a long time, before taking it out to finish.
In those years, too, I stayed away from that program. It irked me, that another writer had succeeded with an idea so similar to mine. I also did not want to be influenced by someone else's vision.
Since starting to market SPLIT THIRTY, though, I’ve become aware of how far Mad Men has gone, and how many people like it. I’ve also seen that some overlap between my work and their work is almost impossible to avoid. We’re looking at adjoining eras, after all, and the same industry. I’ve learned that its writers have made references to Nixon, Rockefeller, Antonioni, and more too, I’m sure.
Thankfully, it was the ’68 campaign that rocked Madison Avenue the most; Nixon’s ad-men being the subject of Joe McGinness’s famous book, The Selling of the President 1968. So maybe they’ll stop before they hit ’72.
And rest assured, in the meantime, the only television show based on advertising that matters to Henry Bell is Bewitched -- because Pooch has a thing for Elizabeth Montgomery.
March 13, 2013
The Third Way
Why the hell did he feel so desolate. Now, of all times. Like dust in a sunbeam, once noticed, never gone; part and parcel of the light itself. Walton’s heart hardened yet more.
“It’s Easter,” Joe Cocker reminded his audience, during his Mad Dogs and Englishmen tour, “if you’re living by the days.” “Don’t get hung up on Easter,” Leon Russell replied.
Don’t get hung up on Passover, either, even though it arrives early this year (by the end of March). But a key scene in SPLIT THIRTY borrows a phrase from the Passover liturgy, so I thought I’d mention it, in timely fashion: that “hardening of Walton’s heart,” while he waits for the Kahn spot to finish for its audience.
It was Pharaoh’s heart, that hardened in the telling of Exodus-- when Moses demanded freedom for his people. And per the text, that hardening was ordered by God himself. I think that fact bothered the early commentators. They did not want Pharaoh to be punished for something that was not his fault-- the hardening of his heart, as ordained by God. They therefore decided that it was Pharaoh himself who had hardened his own heart to begin with, but once he started doing so, God had fashioned his heart such that each of its actions then assured the next action. So had Pharaoh been a good man, for example, he would have grown more and more good, each time he exercised his goodness. I’m not sure about that, but it’s an interesting concept.
Tradition speaks of four ways to read Torah: in literal fashion, in allegorical fashion, in historical or exegetical fashion, and finally in mystical fashion; at which point one returns to the starting line again: reading the words literally.
SPLIT THIRTY can be read at different levels, too. You certainly don’t need to know anything about Passover to understand Walton’s heart hardening. The words speak for themselves. If you know the reference, however, you also see this section as part of this book’s biblical framework. And if you know the debate behind this quote, you can even garner some sympathy for Walton. He is a sad young man. He is trying to not be sad; but he doesn’t know how. And each step he takes compounds his problem.
Whether any fourth level of meaning exists in this section, is hardly for me to say. If I have any critics-- if I even have any readers-- I will let them make that decision. I would rather take Leon Russell’s advice, and quit while I’m ahead.
“It’s Easter,” Joe Cocker reminded his audience, during his Mad Dogs and Englishmen tour, “if you’re living by the days.” “Don’t get hung up on Easter,” Leon Russell replied.
Don’t get hung up on Passover, either, even though it arrives early this year (by the end of March). But a key scene in SPLIT THIRTY borrows a phrase from the Passover liturgy, so I thought I’d mention it, in timely fashion: that “hardening of Walton’s heart,” while he waits for the Kahn spot to finish for its audience.
It was Pharaoh’s heart, that hardened in the telling of Exodus-- when Moses demanded freedom for his people. And per the text, that hardening was ordered by God himself. I think that fact bothered the early commentators. They did not want Pharaoh to be punished for something that was not his fault-- the hardening of his heart, as ordained by God. They therefore decided that it was Pharaoh himself who had hardened his own heart to begin with, but once he started doing so, God had fashioned his heart such that each of its actions then assured the next action. So had Pharaoh been a good man, for example, he would have grown more and more good, each time he exercised his goodness. I’m not sure about that, but it’s an interesting concept.
Tradition speaks of four ways to read Torah: in literal fashion, in allegorical fashion, in historical or exegetical fashion, and finally in mystical fashion; at which point one returns to the starting line again: reading the words literally.
SPLIT THIRTY can be read at different levels, too. You certainly don’t need to know anything about Passover to understand Walton’s heart hardening. The words speak for themselves. If you know the reference, however, you also see this section as part of this book’s biblical framework. And if you know the debate behind this quote, you can even garner some sympathy for Walton. He is a sad young man. He is trying to not be sad; but he doesn’t know how. And each step he takes compounds his problem.
Whether any fourth level of meaning exists in this section, is hardly for me to say. If I have any critics-- if I even have any readers-- I will let them make that decision. I would rather take Leon Russell’s advice, and quit while I’m ahead.
March 8, 2013
Surf's Up
An hour watching surfers, an incongruous but friendly interview with some kids in the back of a station wagon, one with a St. Christopher medal tied around his neck, one with a shark’s tooth, and one with an Iron Cross; fond stories of the cat himself, Mickey Dora of Malibu, mooning the judges at a competition, showing up barefoot for a Hollywood premiere, taking Bell on an outrigger once and tipping him over at Rincon; then Bell leaned against his rental car’s hood to pour sand from his battered wing tips onto the parking lot at Carlsbad Beach.
They made fun of Dick Nixon for walking on the beach in his business shoes; but they made fun of Dick Nixon for nearly everything. Bell had better cause to walk on the sand, anyway. Market research, for Golden Gate Sports.
By the end of SPLIT THIRTY, though, Bell ends up with grudging sympathy for his soon-to-be embattled president, and not just because they both wore wing tips. Rather, it was because Nixon’s politics seemed sensible to Bell-- even if his style did not. Or, as he tells Pooch, “he could be a lot worse” (Neil Young likewise felt that “even Richard Nixon had soul”; The Campaigner, ’76). After all, putting aside his lack of executive morality (a problem easy to ignore in 1972, to the extent it was known at all), this was the man whose economic policies mirrored those proposed by RFK in 1968; who had opened the door to Red China; who had tried (at any rate) to wind down the Viet Nam War; who had imposed wage and price controls, started the EPA, and funded urban renewal. No less a liberal than Hubert Humphrey himself appreciated how successfully Nixon controlled his party’s various factions. And though famously disrespected by the first modern Republican president to accomplish that trick, he also proved to be that president’s greatest heir in that respect; and what came to Dwight Eisenhower easily, by grace of his heroic stature, only came to Richard Nixon by dint of unceasing effort.
His critics never forgave Nixon for breaking that sweat; they faulted him for it, which seems unfair. We can’t all be swans. Not even grimy ones.
Speaking of which, in real life, I doubt that Miki Dora (sic; “Miki” was short for “Miklos”) (I misspelled it in the book, to avoid confusion) ever acted as any company’s spokesman. He was a great surfer, but a rotten businessman. In his later years, he ran afoul of the law. But in his younger years, Malibu Beach belonged to him and his friends, and for Bell to have signed him in the first place would have been a real coup. Incidentally, you can catch a few glimpses of him (Dora; not Bell) in Bruce Brown’s "true motion picture," The Endless Summer.
They made fun of Dick Nixon for walking on the beach in his business shoes; but they made fun of Dick Nixon for nearly everything. Bell had better cause to walk on the sand, anyway. Market research, for Golden Gate Sports.
By the end of SPLIT THIRTY, though, Bell ends up with grudging sympathy for his soon-to-be embattled president, and not just because they both wore wing tips. Rather, it was because Nixon’s politics seemed sensible to Bell-- even if his style did not. Or, as he tells Pooch, “he could be a lot worse” (Neil Young likewise felt that “even Richard Nixon had soul”; The Campaigner, ’76). After all, putting aside his lack of executive morality (a problem easy to ignore in 1972, to the extent it was known at all), this was the man whose economic policies mirrored those proposed by RFK in 1968; who had opened the door to Red China; who had tried (at any rate) to wind down the Viet Nam War; who had imposed wage and price controls, started the EPA, and funded urban renewal. No less a liberal than Hubert Humphrey himself appreciated how successfully Nixon controlled his party’s various factions. And though famously disrespected by the first modern Republican president to accomplish that trick, he also proved to be that president’s greatest heir in that respect; and what came to Dwight Eisenhower easily, by grace of his heroic stature, only came to Richard Nixon by dint of unceasing effort.
His critics never forgave Nixon for breaking that sweat; they faulted him for it, which seems unfair. We can’t all be swans. Not even grimy ones.
Speaking of which, in real life, I doubt that Miki Dora (sic; “Miki” was short for “Miklos”) (I misspelled it in the book, to avoid confusion) ever acted as any company’s spokesman. He was a great surfer, but a rotten businessman. In his later years, he ran afoul of the law. But in his younger years, Malibu Beach belonged to him and his friends, and for Bell to have signed him in the first place would have been a real coup. Incidentally, you can catch a few glimpses of him (Dora; not Bell) in Bruce Brown’s "true motion picture," The Endless Summer.
March 4, 2013
Science Matters
Early morning metaphysics, Bell still drunk, dreamy and dim. If two atoms, once separated, ever recombine again, falling back to their prior status of miniature chemical bliss, you could say that time itself reverses in that system; time itself being nothing but a very sure bet that things disintegrate and do not reconstitute of their own inconstant volitions; a Paula minus a Henry was a Paula that belonged to a different reality.
It’s only fitting that a story so indebted to the work of Thomas Kuhn tip its hat to the broader field of science, and this one does so, whenever it can -- up to and including the laws of thermodynamics.
In fact, SPLIT THIRTY embraces the physical world. Bell pounds Manhattan’s sidewalks, for miles at a time, and his memories are informed by physical details (both for good-- “Paula’s happy iris, darting from place to place,” and her hair “smelling like chemicals from her salon” -- and for ill -- “Marble cleaves when cut. It does not pill.”). For his part, Pooch seems positively drawn to the earth (“I finally passed out, right in the middle of Central Park. I think I was on a tennis court, because I kept getting my feet caught in these horrible big nets.”); and Tasha is nothing if not physically real (in spite of her constant changes). Only Walton dislikes this aspect of existence, finding it inimical to his needs. When he hits the limits of his work with Bell, the act of learning them “hardens his heart.” (“Like dust in a sunbeam, once noticed, never gone.”)
It is Kahn’s peculiar genius to find no contradiction between his science and his faith, allowing each to give shape and meaning to the other; and it is Bell’s great strength, to find no excuse for inaction, while also accepting this world’s ambiguous construction.
To the contrary. Bell expresses himself in action; his is the poetry of motion. And it is only incidental that his tools are hard cash and the occasional tossed rock.
It’s only fitting that a story so indebted to the work of Thomas Kuhn tip its hat to the broader field of science, and this one does so, whenever it can -- up to and including the laws of thermodynamics.
In fact, SPLIT THIRTY embraces the physical world. Bell pounds Manhattan’s sidewalks, for miles at a time, and his memories are informed by physical details (both for good-- “Paula’s happy iris, darting from place to place,” and her hair “smelling like chemicals from her salon” -- and for ill -- “Marble cleaves when cut. It does not pill.”). For his part, Pooch seems positively drawn to the earth (“I finally passed out, right in the middle of Central Park. I think I was on a tennis court, because I kept getting my feet caught in these horrible big nets.”); and Tasha is nothing if not physically real (in spite of her constant changes). Only Walton dislikes this aspect of existence, finding it inimical to his needs. When he hits the limits of his work with Bell, the act of learning them “hardens his heart.” (“Like dust in a sunbeam, once noticed, never gone.”)
It is Kahn’s peculiar genius to find no contradiction between his science and his faith, allowing each to give shape and meaning to the other; and it is Bell’s great strength, to find no excuse for inaction, while also accepting this world’s ambiguous construction.
To the contrary. Bell expresses himself in action; his is the poetry of motion. And it is only incidental that his tools are hard cash and the occasional tossed rock.
February 28, 2013
The City Scene
Thursday, September 28th, therefore found him at the northwest corner of 57th Street and Madison Avenue, staring from the sidewalk at a masonry monolith, dull grey stone, vintage beaux-arts.
The old MCA building still stands. I believe there are luxury goods on sale at street level, now. I don’t think Bell’s old office will ever be used again, though. Because there is no seventeenth floor at that address.
You could make a nice walking tour of New York City, following Bell’s footsteps-- Hunter College, Central Park, St. Patrick’s Cathedral, and the Graybar Building. You could eat well, too, if so inclined. The Plaza Hotel, where he asked a bartender for career advice; “21,” where he met with Peterson and Walton; The Grill Room at the Four Seasons, where he met with Walton and Pooch ("He turned his head and he stared at a dessert cart, then at the wood paneling behind it. They matched."); you can even still go to the Brasserie, his favorite midnight haunt for steak and fried potatoes (even if it has changed beyond all recognition), and the Shun Lee Palace, too, still serving its famous dinners on East 55th Street (between Lexington and Third). The Cedar Tavern is gone, though (Paula might miss it more than Bell); and a few of his other favorite places are also distant memories by now. You can’t eat lunch at Schrafft’s anymore; you can’t buy a tie at Rogers Peet; and you can’t find a dress on the sale rack at Peck and Peck, either.
Which is fine, in the end. Because Bell himself is gone, too. And those inclined to mourn him can start at East 29th Street, the Church of the Transfiguration, aka the Actor’s Church, aka the Little Church Around the Corner; where a certain young ad-man married his beloved. “She had arrived with a hat box and one plaid suitcase.” Possessions that sufficed, so long ago; and Episcopal rites, for propriety’s sake.
The old MCA building still stands. I believe there are luxury goods on sale at street level, now. I don’t think Bell’s old office will ever be used again, though. Because there is no seventeenth floor at that address.
You could make a nice walking tour of New York City, following Bell’s footsteps-- Hunter College, Central Park, St. Patrick’s Cathedral, and the Graybar Building. You could eat well, too, if so inclined. The Plaza Hotel, where he asked a bartender for career advice; “21,” where he met with Peterson and Walton; The Grill Room at the Four Seasons, where he met with Walton and Pooch ("He turned his head and he stared at a dessert cart, then at the wood paneling behind it. They matched."); you can even still go to the Brasserie, his favorite midnight haunt for steak and fried potatoes (even if it has changed beyond all recognition), and the Shun Lee Palace, too, still serving its famous dinners on East 55th Street (between Lexington and Third). The Cedar Tavern is gone, though (Paula might miss it more than Bell); and a few of his other favorite places are also distant memories by now. You can’t eat lunch at Schrafft’s anymore; you can’t buy a tie at Rogers Peet; and you can’t find a dress on the sale rack at Peck and Peck, either.
Which is fine, in the end. Because Bell himself is gone, too. And those inclined to mourn him can start at East 29th Street, the Church of the Transfiguration, aka the Actor’s Church, aka the Little Church Around the Corner; where a certain young ad-man married his beloved. “She had arrived with a hat box and one plaid suitcase.” Possessions that sufficed, so long ago; and Episcopal rites, for propriety’s sake.
February 27, 2013
The Searchers
The end of the television’s night-owl show came on, a movie with John Wayne, a rocking chair, horses, and a pretty young woman who had gotten herself raped; Bell drank more liquor, and he closed his eyes.
So John Ford’s film actually appears in SPLIT THIRTY; Bell watches it from his room at the Mayflower Hotel. By then, however, it has already served its real purpose in this narrative: as a patent influence on Bertie Kahn, who is nothing if not aware of Walton’s predilections (“Nixon as cowboy. Bell finally smiled...”). Anybody wishing to film SPLIT THIRTY might therefore start with Monument Valley.
Besides which, there’s plenty of common ground: three men in search of a woman; one of them fickle, one of them a war veteran, and one of them a half-breed. A story that opens with a door to the horizon; a story that closes with that same door closing. A question of who remains and who must leave. And violence as the thread that holds it all together… (“Frontier mother rescued all before the carnage could get started, though; calico-skirted, fringe-booted, her hair in a shining braid.”)
Which is not to maintain that this story is a western; nor Henry Bell any sort of cowboy (“A man can’t live in this country, without being haunted. Right exactly where we’re standing, this very place, an Iroquois brave shot an arrow into a big buck, and he spilled its soul all over this floor.” “What did you do, Henry?” “Do about what. When I shot that arrow?”). So readers might want to keep in mind Kahn’s second source of visual inspiration, too: Michelangelo Antonioni, whose brooding blondes were spending summers by the seashore ten years before this story opens.
So John Ford’s film actually appears in SPLIT THIRTY; Bell watches it from his room at the Mayflower Hotel. By then, however, it has already served its real purpose in this narrative: as a patent influence on Bertie Kahn, who is nothing if not aware of Walton’s predilections (“Nixon as cowboy. Bell finally smiled...”). Anybody wishing to film SPLIT THIRTY might therefore start with Monument Valley.
Besides which, there’s plenty of common ground: three men in search of a woman; one of them fickle, one of them a war veteran, and one of them a half-breed. A story that opens with a door to the horizon; a story that closes with that same door closing. A question of who remains and who must leave. And violence as the thread that holds it all together… (“Frontier mother rescued all before the carnage could get started, though; calico-skirted, fringe-booted, her hair in a shining braid.”)
Which is not to maintain that this story is a western; nor Henry Bell any sort of cowboy (“A man can’t live in this country, without being haunted. Right exactly where we’re standing, this very place, an Iroquois brave shot an arrow into a big buck, and he spilled its soul all over this floor.” “What did you do, Henry?” “Do about what. When I shot that arrow?”). So readers might want to keep in mind Kahn’s second source of visual inspiration, too: Michelangelo Antonioni, whose brooding blondes were spending summers by the seashore ten years before this story opens.
February 26, 2013
Who Reads What
“A hit. A very palpable hit.”
Bell’s friend at the Graybar Building is quoting Shakespeare, of course; and for no other reason than he likes to quote Shakespeare. There are no glosses on Hamlet in this book (in spite of its focus on father-son relationships). There are, however, multiple characters who are simply very literate, and who quote their favorite authors for the sheer fun of doing so.
To start with, there’s Bell himself, whose best friends in the army were “Brother Lead and Sister Steel,” borrowed from Siegfriend Sassoon’s The Kiss; then there’s Walton, taking his cue from Kipling’s Danny Deever, using the terms “color sergeant” and “Files-on-Parade” to describe Bell’s job for Rockefeller; then there’s Pooch, whose “chiz, chiz, moan, groan” invokes Geoffrey Willans’s (and Ronald Searle’s) Molesworth, in a conversation that also includes a self-comparison to Paddington Bear.
By happenstance alone, those are all British authors, but American writers appear, too; sometimes in ghost form, sometimes on the page. If people wish to recall Sal Paradise as they read the story of Sal Pacinetti, they can do so; if they wish to recall the name of another famous ad-man (“We keep them clean in Muscatine”) in the name of Chandler Scott Peterson, they can do that, too. If they take actual notice of Buckminster Fuller and Alvin Toffler in these pages, they are correct. And we can end this line of inquiry in Hell’s Kitchen, at midnight, where “it felt fine for them all to be tight together, and for Kahn to be nowhere in sight.” Words that echo Hemingway in not just diction, but also theme; because even though Hemingway never wrote about Bertie Kahn, he wrote about Robert Cohn, instead, in a book called The Sun Also Rises-- his title, a direct quote from Ecclesiastes.
Bell’s friend at the Graybar Building is quoting Shakespeare, of course; and for no other reason than he likes to quote Shakespeare. There are no glosses on Hamlet in this book (in spite of its focus on father-son relationships). There are, however, multiple characters who are simply very literate, and who quote their favorite authors for the sheer fun of doing so.
To start with, there’s Bell himself, whose best friends in the army were “Brother Lead and Sister Steel,” borrowed from Siegfriend Sassoon’s The Kiss; then there’s Walton, taking his cue from Kipling’s Danny Deever, using the terms “color sergeant” and “Files-on-Parade” to describe Bell’s job for Rockefeller; then there’s Pooch, whose “chiz, chiz, moan, groan” invokes Geoffrey Willans’s (and Ronald Searle’s) Molesworth, in a conversation that also includes a self-comparison to Paddington Bear.
By happenstance alone, those are all British authors, but American writers appear, too; sometimes in ghost form, sometimes on the page. If people wish to recall Sal Paradise as they read the story of Sal Pacinetti, they can do so; if they wish to recall the name of another famous ad-man (“We keep them clean in Muscatine”) in the name of Chandler Scott Peterson, they can do that, too. If they take actual notice of Buckminster Fuller and Alvin Toffler in these pages, they are correct. And we can end this line of inquiry in Hell’s Kitchen, at midnight, where “it felt fine for them all to be tight together, and for Kahn to be nowhere in sight.” Words that echo Hemingway in not just diction, but also theme; because even though Hemingway never wrote about Bertie Kahn, he wrote about Robert Cohn, instead, in a book called The Sun Also Rises-- his title, a direct quote from Ecclesiastes.
Old School
She tried to remember the different things he had described to her in the past few days. Upright kneeling. Motionless dance.
Kahn is actually quoting someone; he is quoting Menachem Mendel of Vorki, who had been asked about the essential practices of Judaism. In fact, Rabbi Mendel cites another one as well: “silent screaming.” But that did not suit my needs, so in true rabbinical fashion, I left it out. Mendel’s complete reply can be found in Martin Buber’s Tales of the Hasidim; a book which Kahn would have known well. (“He knew it by this. His master’s voice.” RCA’s slogan, and more.)
SPLIT THIRTY has many such references to religious texts. Ecclesiastes, of course, is everywhere; people either refer to it by name, or quote it pretty consciously (“And the sun goeth down on Pooch. Any day now,” warns Chan Peterson). Other references are also fairly obvious; when Paula weeps for her children, for instance, with “lamentation, on the Upper East Side.” She is playing Rachel, as described by Jeremiah. And some references are real, but hidden. Consider Kahn telling a model how she can “make a new name for herself” with a film shoot, and how that film shoot eventually takes place by the Hudson River; Jacob also made a new name for himself, by wrestling with an angel, by the banks of a different river.
My favorite textual incident, however, has nothing to do with plot at all, and only a little to do with character: it’s when Bell finds himself “standing by a city sycamore,” thinking through a conversation he has just had with Walton. There is no more to it, than that fact. But it was the prophet Amos, scourge of the northern kingdom, champion of justice, and protector of the downtrodden, who made his living as a “dresser of sycamore trees.”
Something Bell might have remembered, as he planned his next steps.
Kahn is actually quoting someone; he is quoting Menachem Mendel of Vorki, who had been asked about the essential practices of Judaism. In fact, Rabbi Mendel cites another one as well: “silent screaming.” But that did not suit my needs, so in true rabbinical fashion, I left it out. Mendel’s complete reply can be found in Martin Buber’s Tales of the Hasidim; a book which Kahn would have known well. (“He knew it by this. His master’s voice.” RCA’s slogan, and more.)
SPLIT THIRTY has many such references to religious texts. Ecclesiastes, of course, is everywhere; people either refer to it by name, or quote it pretty consciously (“And the sun goeth down on Pooch. Any day now,” warns Chan Peterson). Other references are also fairly obvious; when Paula weeps for her children, for instance, with “lamentation, on the Upper East Side.” She is playing Rachel, as described by Jeremiah. And some references are real, but hidden. Consider Kahn telling a model how she can “make a new name for herself” with a film shoot, and how that film shoot eventually takes place by the Hudson River; Jacob also made a new name for himself, by wrestling with an angel, by the banks of a different river.
My favorite textual incident, however, has nothing to do with plot at all, and only a little to do with character: it’s when Bell finds himself “standing by a city sycamore,” thinking through a conversation he has just had with Walton. There is no more to it, than that fact. But it was the prophet Amos, scourge of the northern kingdom, champion of justice, and protector of the downtrodden, who made his living as a “dresser of sycamore trees.”
Something Bell might have remembered, as he planned his next steps.
The Velvet Background
“We heard he was retired, mostly,” Walton made known. “We were thinking, wouldn’t this be something. We were thinking, how about it. Get Bertie Kay back to Madison Avenue. Give him something different to work on. Pooch thinks so, too. Pooch worked with him once.”
“Did Pooch?”
“On a cola spot,” Pooch confirmed. “The guy’s a real nut.”
“A cola nut?”
“Hah!”
“Sing a song in that one? The sound-man loves music.”
“No song, Henry. Wait a minute. You’re right, we did sing a song!”
“Did Pooch?”
“On a cola spot,” Pooch confirmed. “The guy’s a real nut.”
“A cola nut?”
“Hah!”
“Sing a song in that one? The sound-man loves music.”
“No song, Henry. Wait a minute. You’re right, we did sing a song!”
SPLIT THIRTY is filled with music; from Bell’s Ko-Ko-Kraut jingle (which Ella Fitzgerald once sang at “some concert she gave in Montreal”), to the rock and roll band whose lead singer flicks her hair into Bell’s eyes at the bar in Hell’s Kitchen, to the “cockney voice singing the blues” that Tasha finds on a car radio, driving north on the New Jersey Turnpike. But more than that-- music makes the scene for these ad-men and their friends. Consider that Tasha cuts her hair with bangs, to look like a singer in a downtown band; consider that Selma Kahn decided to cut her own hair into a pixie after dancing at St. Mark’s Place, circa 1966 (her “Edie Warhol” look, per Bell; “Andy Sedgwick,” Paula corrects him); consider that Pooch’s wife used to visit Boston to see her favorite band, the same time she was using heroin; consider even Bell’s choice of lunch on his first day of work, the same thing that Kahn likes to eat: canned tomato soup. Add the tennis trophy next to Tasha’s bed, from the Longview Meadow Country Club, which wasn’t an actual country club at all, but a sister restaurant to Max’s Kansas City; and Pooch’s holding out hope that life can be “saved by rock and roll music.” . . .
It would appear that some of that music, at least, belongs to the Velvet Underground.
