Southern Bookman

Sylvia Plath, Joan Didion and other women found New York City sanctuary at Barbizon Hotel

If I could travel back in time, I'd sit in the lobby of the Barbizon Hotel.

Grace Kelly or Joan Didion might pass by, or a Katharine Gibbs Secretarial School student, wearing a hat and white gloves.

The Barbizon Hotel, at the corner of East 63rd Street and Lexington Avenue, was the sanctuary of young women seeking careers, or husbands, in New York City.

Occupying one floor, the Gibbs school offered charm classes and secretarial courses, along with lectures by academics such as Columbia poet Mark Van Doren.

A modeling agency signed young ingenues hoping to appear in department store catalogs and magazine advertisements. After years of discrimination, a resident started her own agency that protected models' rights.

Historian Paulina Bren in "The Barbizon: The Hotel That Set Women Free" tells the stories of the famous and anonymous women who called the hotel home from 1927 through the 1980s. The women enjoyed a variety of amenities, including a pool and beauty parlor. Men couldn't go past the lobby. The place was like one of those romantic Manhattan movies.

"The Barbizon: The Hotel That Set Women Free" is one of the few new books that entice me. According to so-far positive reviews, it evokes 1950s-era New York style and an age when women were gaining economic and social independence.

New Yorker writer Casey Cep in a review in the magazine's current issue praises Bren's colorful account and gives her own expansive history of the hotel.

Sylvia Plath, like Didion, was one of the college students selected by Mademoiselle magazine to live for a summer in New York City at the hotel and work as guest editors. The aspiring journalists also received etiquette training and met literary and political luminaries.

Plath based her posthumous novel, "The Bell Jar," on her depression-shadowed Mademoiselle experience, and Didion recalled the hotel in her essay, "Goodbye to All That."

Women have not yet achieved full freedom. Bren shines a beacon for the future in "The Barbizon: The Hotel That Set Women Free."

 

 

 

 

 

 

Emily Nemens leaves Paris Review editorship to pursue career as novelist

Paris Review editor Emily Nemens announced Wednesday that she's leaving, three years after being the surprise selection to take over George Plimpton's venerable literary journal.

Nemens, the author of the successful baseball novel "The Cactus League," said she's moving on to write a second book. Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, “The Cactus League” drew critical praise. 

In her farewell letter, published on the Paris Review's web site, Nemens cited the journal's record circulation, web site and podcast development, and publication of several anthologies during her tenure.

An accompanying announcement from Mona Simpson, head of the journal's board of directors, revealed no signs of displeasure with Nemens, who took over from disgraced editor Lorin Stein, who replaced Plimpton after his death. Simpson lauded Nemens' leadership and announced a search for her successor.

A native of Seattle and a graduate of LSU's MFA writing program, Nemens vaulted into the prestigious position after serving as co-editor of LSU's lauded Southern Review.

After her move to Manhattan, she maintained her Baton Rouge ties, recently recommending the rhythm and blues, swing and jazz programs of WBRH, the Baton Rouge High magnet school's public radio station.

Along with editing and writing, Nemens has also contributed illustrations to the New Yorker and other magazines.

While Nemens didn't rule out a return to editing, she's brimming with talent to develop a lucrative writing career in a  publishing industry more and more dominated by women authors.

Nemens' departure follows a flurry of national media turnover, including the retirement of Washington Post editor Marty Baron last week. The New York Review of Books recently announced editorial changes.

Paris Review aficionados will keenly wait to see who fills one of American literature's prime jobs.

 

 

Novelist Tim O'Brien's reckoning with Vietnam experience, late fatherhood

As the last World War II veterans pass away, the Vietnam generation enters its final years.

Tim O'Brien, as Norman Mailer did for World War II, defined the Vietnam experience in his novels "The Things They Carried" and "Going After Cacciato" and his memoir, "If I Die in a Combat Zone: Box Me Up and Ship Me Home."

At age 74, O'Brien is aware of his mortality not only because of his Vietnam service. He's the father of two teenage sons born when he was in his mid-50s, and he's haunted by the fear that he won't live long enough to know his children as adults.

How O'Brien's war experience and late fatherhood shaped his life are examined in the documentary "The War and Peace of Tim O"Brien,"  which will be streamed on cable TV's on-demand service beginning Tuesday.

Previewing the film, 'Fresh Air's" Terry Gross interviewed O'Brien Wednesday in one of the show's most entertaining episodes recently.

O'Brien told Gross that he's not haunted by the Vietnam War, echoing a claim he made to her in a 1980 interview.

Gross played an excerpt from the earlier conversation, and it was striking how much aging has changed O'Brien's voice. It's clear that the war shadows him.

After the birth of his sons, O'Brien stopped writing for several years to help his wife, Meredith Baker, raise them. In the 2019 memoir "Dad's Maybe Book," O'Brien recounted the lessons he learned as their father.

O'Brien disclosed to Gross that he is writing again, desperate to finish new books and share his sons' lives.

In an amusing/harrowing segment, O'Brien was taken aback by Gross admonishing him for not stopping smoking, although his lungs have been ruined by two serious bouts with pneumonia, one of them almost fatal. O'Brien says he fears he won't be able to write if he gives up cigarettes, admitting the irrationality of his stance.

The interview was conducted soon after the announcement that former Senator, presidential candidate and World War II veteran Bob Dole is suffering from advanced cancer.

Dole, who received life-threatening wounds as a young soldier, is one of the last members of a generation extolled for defeating Fascism.

In contrast, O'Brien's generation faced years of condemnation. O'Brien in his "Fresh Air" interview said that he's not proud of his Vietnam service because he opposed the war, like so many of his contemporaries.

When drafted, O'Brien considered fleeing to nearby Canada, but chose to go to Vietnam because he knew his small Minnesota town would disparage him as a traitor. He believes going to Canada would have been a more courageous decision.

That's "One of the Things They Carried" as O'Brien elaborates in the interview. May the title of the documentary prove true, and O'Brien find peace at last.

 

 

 

 

Farewell, Lawrence Ferlinghetti

City Lights Bookstore shone through the fog and darkness of the San Francisco night, a beacon that made me think I was dreaming.

That was my first of several visits to Lawrence Ferlinghetti's fabled bookstore in the city's North Beach neighborhood. Each time, I felt a special sense of reverence and grandeur, as if at a World Heritage site.

Ferlinghetti, who co-founded the bookstore in 1953 as a mecca of free expression, died Monday at 101 at his home in San Francisco. His City Lights Publishing Co. gave the world "Howl" and other revolutionary literary works.

The cause of Ferlinghetti's death was interstitial lung disease, a scarring of the lungs, rather than Covid. But Ferlinghetti's the latest exemplar of American freedom and creative spirit lost during the pandemic. The covid era has brought a devastating toll on American culture. 

Associated with the Beat generation, although Ferlinghetti called himself the last of the generation of Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams, Ferlinghetti was arrested for publishing Allen Ginsberg's "Howl," after Ginsberg's electric reading of the poem at San Francisco's Six Gallery in October 1955.

Ferlinghetti's City Lights Publishing won a court case upholding "Howl's" literary value,  a landmark for freedom of expression.

An acclaimed poet, novelist, travel writer and painter, Ferlinghetti was a major culture figure whose death deserved front-page recognition in The New York Times rather than display at the back of the Business section.

Ferlinghetti's "Coney Island of the Mind" is one of the few poetry books to achieve best-seller status. Last spring, he published a charming memoir, "Little Boy," capping a multitude of works written during his career. He also was a tireless activist for progressive causes.

The Times' obituary, while noting his Navy service during World War II, shamefully neglected to mention that he was a veteran of D-Day. It also failed to note that he visited Nagasaki after the United States' nuclear bombing of the Japanese city at the end of World War II. Seeing Nagasaki's destruction inspired Ferlinghetti's lifelong pacifism.

When the pandemic threatened City Lights' survival last spring, supporters rallied with contributions to keep the bookstore and publishing company going.

In his later years, Ferlinghetti lamented the high-tech industry's corporate forces ravaging his beloved San Francisco. Soaring housing prices, income disparities and gentrification sapped the social freedom and economic diversity that first drew him to the city.

Ferlinghetti's gone but the soul of San Francisco will keep beating at long as City Lights shines on Columbus Avenue.

 

 

 

 

 

John Keats' poetry lives on, 200 years after his death

Young American tourists like me, clutching their copies of "Europe on $5 a day," packed the Spanish Steps on a splendid midsummer morning.

I was the only visitor to the Keats-Shelley Memorial House next to the Roman landmark where the young backpackers gathered like a flock of birds above Bernini's Barcaccia fountain. 

Adjacent to the Spanish Steps, the two-room apartment where John Keats died on Feb. 23, 1821, was faithfully recreated, down to a replica of Keats' deathbed. After the 25-year-old poet's death from tuberculosis, Italian authorities had burned everything that remained.

When I entered, a severe English woman stroking a cat held in her arms came out from a back room, looked me over, and retreated.

All alone, I inspected the impressive collection of rare Romantic and Victorian books and artifacts, and stood for a moment beside the tiny bed in Keats' room before exiting into the brilliant sunshine and my contemporaries' palpable erotic energy.

In hopes that the warmer climate would improve his condition, Keats had traveled to Italy from England in the fall of 1820 on the Maria Crowther. After the ship docked in Naples, Keats was quarantined before making an arduous journey to Rome.

English artist Joseph Severn, who had nursed Keats during his final three months, drew a death portrait. Severn, in one of history's most encouraging humanitarian gestures, had agreed to accompany the dying Keats to Italy, although he'd barely knew him in London.

After a successful career as an artist and diplomat, Severn died in 1879 at age 85, and was buried next to Keats in Rome's Protestant Cemetery.

I was at the same age at which Keats died when I visited Europe. Now, 50 years have passed away. An epidemic has cost the lives of 500,000 Americans in 51 weeks. At times, it feels as if the world has made little progress in the 200 years since Keats died. Humans have ravaged the natural world that Keats celebrated in his poems. Those 200 years have been marked by endless wars. along with amazing accomplishments. Keats' poems are everlasting.

As Notre Dame English professor Ian Newman said in a recent essay, Keats' death shouldn't overshadow the cheerful, vibrant young poet of  his marvelous letters, a personality so intellectually and artistically aware.

In the winter of Keats' death, let us remember the glorious spring and summer of 1819, when he wrote some of the English language's greatest poems.

 

 

 

 

 

Mark Harris gives in-depth portrait of Mike Nichols in major biography

Mike Nichols presided over some of the greatest successes and most spectacular failures in American film and theater history.

Film historian Mark Harris' "Mike Nichols: A Life" exhaustively details Nichols' work on each production from start to finish.

While the testimony of actresses, actors, producers, playwrights and others grows repetitive, Harris makes Nichols' triumphs and disasters compelling.

On the set of each production, he's a dynamic captain either bringing his ship safely home or wrecking it on the rocks.

Nichols, who came to America from Nazi-ruled Germany as a young boy speaking no English, was a Gatsby-like, self-invented personality.

After a reaction to a childhood vaccine, he was unable to grow hair and donned wigs and false eyelashes until the end of his life. His immigrant experience gave him an uncanny insight into American life.

While self-conscious about his odd appearance, Nichols enjoyed unlikely success as a lady-killer. He stole two of his wives from Robert Graves and John Osborne, and squired Gloria Steinem, Jackie Kennedy Onassis, Lillian Hellman and Rose Styron. 

Unlike many Hollywodd/theatrical mavens, he wasn't a serial sex abuser. Women collaborators from Meryl Streep to Julia Roberts, Natalie Portman and Emma Thompson testify to his empathy.

Portman says that Nichols was the only director who didn't make her "feel creepy" as a young actress. He mentored Nora Ephron in her film career.

Harris, a New York magazine writer and author of "Scenes From A Revolution: The Birth of a New Hollywood," gives an engaging account of how the aimless young Nichols moved from New York City to Chicago, where he met the equally adrift Elaine May.

They discovered an instant rapport, creating an improv comedy act that rocketed them to fame in the Camelot years of the Kennedy Administration. The duo ended up with a smash Broadway hit, "An Evening with Mike Nichols and Elaine May," before pressures of performing led them to quit at the height of their success.

After an brief separation, Nichols maintained a lifelong partnership with his brilliant, beautiful co-star. May directed several classic films and notorious bombs like "Ishatar" and gained renown as a script doctor and quirky actress. She also worked with Nichols on several projects, and they reprised their act several times.

Nichols after leaving the partnership landed immediate success directing Neil Simon's first hit, "Barefoot in the Park," with Robert Redford and Elizabeth Ashley, one of the few actresses who didn't wish to work with Nichols on new projects. Her husband, George Peppard, kept trying to sabotage the play. Nor did Redford seek to work with Nichols in the movies.

Insisting on the laughs coming naturally from the script rather than from the actors mugging for the audience, Nichols set a new standard for Broadway comedy.

Guiding Simon's "The Odd Couple" cemented Nichols' reputation for directing popular middle-class comedies. In making "The Odd Couple" a success, Nichols withstood the rancor of Walter Matthau and the fragility of the alcoholic Art Carney.

To counter his image as the master of superficial fare, Nichols later in his career took on more challenging plays, from Chekhov to Beckett, Miller and Stoppard. He apparently didn't care much for Shakespeare. 

Although he had no knowledge of the technical side of movie-making, Nichols in his first at bat scored a major hit with the film version of Edward Albee's landmark play "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf," pushing Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor to scorching performances.

Then, he directed "The Graduate," considered one of Hollywood's most accomplished films. As with Elizabeth Taylor, he persuaded Anne Bancroft to play a much older woman.

Still in her late 30s, suffering from cramps, Bancroft delivered a convincing Mrs. Robinson, seducing the young college graduate Benjamin, played by the then unknown Dustin Hoffman, accused of sexual harassment by co-star Katharine Ross.

In retrospect, "The Graduate" doesn't seem as revolutionary as it did when it burst upon the scene. Considered satirically fatuous and insensitive at the time, the pompous businessman's advice to Benjamin to go into plastics turned out to predict the future.

After the well-publicized failure "Catch 22," Nichols rebounded with the Jack Nicholson/Art Garfunkel/Candice Bergen rendering of Jules Fieffer's "Carnal Knowledge." From then on, Nichols had a steady film career of moderate successes and box office failures. His Broadway career also rocked along. Yet he never reached the heights of his earlier work.

At the top of his fame, Nichols suffered a major collapse brought on by a failing marriage to Annabel-Davis Goff, depression and addiction to cocaine and halcion. Harris, in a searing interlude from the production dissections, examines Nichols' despair and recovery.

Cocaine is a constant presence on Nichols' sets, as was the case with other Hollywood productions of the era. While the work is often brilliant, a sense of waste underscores those years.

Nichols kept going through a range of successes and failures, leading an opulent New York City/Los Angeles lifestyle. Tutored on how to live while rich by Richard Avedon, Nichols enjoyed fine meals, travel to exotic places, and social appearances.  Outside of the theater, his passion was raising Arabian horses. Avedon claims he had a sexual relationship with Nichols, but Harris expresses his skepticism.

Late in life, Nichols found joy and peace in a loving marriage to the TV news star Diane Sawyer. He finished with a smash of successes, most prominently the HBO production of "Angels in America," written by Harris' husband, Tony Kushner. Kushner is among those who give warm memories of Nichols, countering the withering criticism of others.

Nichols epitomized the Hollywood/Broadway legacy of white privilege, continually receiving new projects after failures that would have wrecked the careers of black and women directors.

In the exhaustive litany of actors and actresses who worked with Nichols, only one black is mentioned in the book: Morgan Freeman. He's maligned for lack of preparation in a failed production of Clifford Odets' "The Country Girl," which also starred Frances McDormand, one of the few actresses who didn't find bliss with Nichols.

Harris succeeds in restoring Nichols legacy, which had faded even before his death in 2014 at age 84. "The Graduate" was fresh and vital when it appeared in 1969, but falls short of movies like "The Godfather."

Unlike Woody Allen and Martin Scorsese, Nichols didn't contribute as a writer to screenplays, but built upon the scripts of others.  In the theater, he polished the work of Simon, David Rabe, Tom Stoppard, Eric Idle and other playwrights.

And, May is credited as the main creative force in Nichols and May, in which he already played more of a director's role. But his improvisations  displayed verbal inventiveness, and he showed strong acting talent in several roles.

At times giving a fractured portrait of Nichols, Harris at last reveals the depths of the showman's personality. Nichols' power to entertain comes through, in each of the nearly 600 pages.

 

 

 

Baltimore Sun escapes hedge fund's clutches

A white knight has arrived to save the Baltimore Sun from the rapacious Alden Global Capital hedge fund.

Wealthy hotel magnate Stewart W. Bainum Jr. has reached a deal to buy the Sun for $65 million, rescuing the Baltimore paper from Alden Capital's purchase of Tribune Publishing for $630 million.

Bainum's nonprofit Sunlight for All Institute will acquire the Sun, if Alden shareholders agree. The nonprofit will also publish the Annapolis Capital Gazette and other Maryland newspapers, according to a New York Times article.

Alden Capital, notorious for stripping assets and firing reporters at local newspapers, will buy the Chicago Tribune, New York Daily News, Orlando Sentinel and other once flourishing newspapers published by the Tribune company.

Chicago Tribune journalists have waged a campaign against the Alden deal, pleading for a local business leader like Bainum to save the newspaper.

Under the Tribune company, the Daily News has already suffered major staff cuts and the closure of its newsroom. Alden will cut whatever meat's left on the bones of the tabloid.

Alden's MediaNews Group gained notoriety for ravaging the Denver Post and other newspapers, laying off reporters and selling off assets. Journalists have complained about the lack of pens and notepads, and unheated work spaces.

Tribune newspapers outside of the Sun could also find a savior: Los Angeles Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong, a major Tribune stockholder, must approve of the deal with Alden.

But Soon-Shiong is unlikely to want to buy other newspapers after his at first promising ownership of the Times has hit rocky times with falling ad revenues and disappointing online subscriptions.

The Sun's long demise is one of the saddest stories in local journalism. The home of H.L. Mencken, the Sun in its heyday won 15 Pulitzer Prizes and had an extensive network of foreign correspondents.

Noted journalist Russell Baker, later a brilliant New York Times columnist, began his career at the Sun.

Baker in "The Good Times," the second volume of his memoirs, gives a memorable account of covering Queen Elizabeth II's coronation when he was the Sun's London correspondent.

William Manchester, famed for his accounts of the John F. Kennedy assassination and a major biography of Winston Churchill, sadly never completed, was another Sun reporter.

David Simon, who went on the create HBO's "The Wire," also worked for The Sun, along with his wife, the detective novelist Laura Lippman.

Simon devoted a season of "The Wire" to the decline of the Sun after the Tribune purchased it from Baltimore's Abell family, who had run the paper for years. In Simon's portrayal, the new owners weaken the newspaper by emphasizing soft features over hard news.

Bainum promises to bring the Sun to new vitality, although the nonprofit model is disheartening for those who remember when newspapers were thick with advertising. If saved from Alden, the Sun can keep giving Baltimore in-depth news coverage.

 

Christopher Hitchens' widow, agent seek to stop independent biography of writer

Christopher Hitchens is still stirring controversy, nearly a decade after his death.

In a hyped-up literary feud that Hitchens would have mocked, his widow and literary agent are seeking to halt a planned biography of the writer.

Carol Blue-Hitchens and Steve Wasserman sent an e-mail to Hitchens' associates asking them not to cooperate with author Stephen Phillips, who has a contract with W.W. Norton to publish "Pamphleteer: The Life and Times of Christopher Hitchens" in 2022.

The rarefied dispute gained momentum with a New York Times article Tuesday, following biographer David Nasaw's condemnation of Blue-Hitchens and Wasserman in a recent essay in the Nation.

Nasaw, the award-winning biographer of Andrew Carnegie and Joseph P. Kennedy, accused Blue-Hitchens and Wasserman of engaging "in a kind of censorship" and pointed out that efforts to control a subject's image through authorized biographies often backfire.

Calling Hitchens a significant figure of his times, Nasaw defended Phillips' effort to present opposing views of him.

A longtime writer for the Nation, Hitchens broke with his leftist colleagues over his support for the Iraq war and his increasingly misogynistic writing. A gifted raconteur, Hitchens frequently appeared on TV and as a public speaker.

As a leftist writer earlier in his career, Hitchens gained notoriety for books exposing Mother Teresa and Henry Kissinger. A noted atheist, Hitchens reportedly shunned religious conversion while dying of cancer in 2011.

The email by Blue-Hitchens and Wasserman sounds like something from a satirical novel by David Lodge or Richard Russo, or even Evelyn Waugh, if e-mails had existed during his life.

"Dear Family, Friends, Colleagues, Fellow Scribblers, Brothers & Sisters, Comrades:

We are aware that a self-appointed would-be biographer, one Stephen Phillips, is embarked on a book on Christopher. We read his proposal and are dismayed by the coarse and reductive approach. We have no confidence in this attempt at the man in full. We are not cooperating and we urge you to refuse all entreaties by Mr. Phillips or his publisher, W.W. Norton.

Feel free to contact us with any questions as you may have.

In solidarity,
Carol & Steve

Carol Blue-Hitchens, Executor of the Estate of Christopher Hitchens
Steve Wasserman, Literary Agent"

As The New York Times article pointed out, the email is self-defeating because it would silence those with the most favorable views of Hitchens. And those close to Hitchens are resisting; Hitchens' brother, Peter, a British conservative columnist, talked with Phillips, the Times article said

It's unlikely that Phillips can find many new revelations about Hitchens. He himself wrote the revealing and entertaining memoir "Hitch" before his death and has appeared in memoirs and a recent novel, "Inside Story," by his close friend Martin Amis. Former colleagues like Nation columnist Alexander Cockburn attacked Hitchens in print.

Phillips' title, "Pamphleteer," does seem limited. Hitchens was much more than that. But he wrote in the spirit of old-time pamphleteers like Thomas Paine. Perhaps the title is metaphorical.

Hitchens was a public intellectual who courted controversy. Blue-Hitchens and Wasserman's dubious campaign against Phillips runs counter to Hitchens' ideals.

Mary-Kay Wilmers stepping down as London Review of Books editor

Mary-Kay Wilmers has made the London Review of Books a literary beacon.

In nearly 30 years as the editor of the journal, which her family owns, Wilmers has discovered numerous writers and published a range of controversial articles.

Unlike other magazines, the LRB has kept running long, extensive pieces on complex subjects. 

In the LRB, writers give personal witness to world events such as the coronavirus epidemic, Brexit and Mideast and African politics.

The 82-year-old Wilmers recently announced her retirement as editor, although she will stay on as a consultant. She will be replaced by deputy editor Jean McNicol and senior editor Alice Spawls.

A member of London's left-wing literary establishment, Wilmers is one of the last of the old-time editors who made their publications extensions of their personalities.

Over the years, she made independent decisions such as the cover a few years ago with a headline announcing the demise of Britain. She also published Seymour Hersh's article that denied the Obama administration's account of Osama Bin Laden's killing.

Wilmers is also an accomplished essayist. Without the grind of daily editorial duties, she likely will devote more attention to her writing.

LRB fans hope that McNicol and Spawls keep the journal's unpredictability and feisty independent spirit.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Farewell, Hal Holbrook, known for uncanny portrayal of Mark Twain

Mark Twain was a central figure in American culture when Hal Holbrook began portraying him in the 1950s.

Holbrook, who won acclaim for a range of TV, movie and theater roles including "Deep Throat" in "All the President's Men," died at age 95 Jan. 23 in his Beverly Hills home, according to media reports.

His portrayal of Twain was a TV and theater sensation, bringing back to life for postwar audiences a 19th century cultural titan.

Twain, the author of "Huckleberry Finn" and "Tom Sawyer," was a superstar lecturer in the late 19th century, delighting audiences with his sardonic barbs exposing human frailties.

His witticisms endured for decades; educated Americans once knew a variety of Twain quotations, some falsely attributed to him.

Beginning in his 20s, much younger than Twain at the height of his fame, the World War II veteran Holbrook revived the writer's act, donning a wig, false moustache and white linen suit.

Holbrook went on to play Twain for more than six decades, winning a Tony award for a Broadway production. As Holbrook's New York Times obituary noted, he needed less makeup to perform the role as he grew older.

The five-time Emmy winner received an Academy Award nomination in 2007 for his performance in "Into the Wild." At the time, he was the oldest actor to receive an Oscar nomination. Along with Twain, he played Lincoln several times.

In one of his best-known roles, Holbrook shone as "Deep Throat," the long unnamed source for Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. "Deep Throat" was later identified as FBI official Mark Felt.

In "Magnam Force," Holbrook was the vigilante boss of police inspector Clint Eastwood. Holbrook also appeared in "Wall Street" as the old-school stock broker Lou Mannheim.

Familiar on TV commercials, Holbrook with his resonant voice was one of those American Dads who exemplified an honest and fair-minded but pragmatic American masculinity.

As Twain, Holbrook spawned a mini-genre of one-person theater. I myself have seen portrayals of William Faulkner, Dorothy Parker and Patsy Cline. Surely, someone has played Charles Dickens, and Lincoln.

Along with Twain's witticisms, the appeal was Holbrook's uncanny ability to realistically channel Twain. Twain acolytes after seeing the performance believed that the writer had come back to life. Wide cultural familiarity with Twain's work boosted Holbrook's renown.

But younger generations no longer know Twain's books. He's one of the deadest members of the Dead White Males club.

In recent years, "Huckleberry Finn," considered by Hemingway and others the first great American novel written in the country's vernacular language, has been removed from school reading lists.

As kids turn to video games and social media sites, they no longer read books of any kind, much less classics.

Although the young Huckleberry's friendship with the escaped slave Jim is a testament to their shared humanity, the book has been attacked as racist because of its frequent use of the word "nigger."

Black and liberal intellectuals condemn the account of Huck and Jim's raft journey down the Mississippi River as a totem of white supremacy.

Holbrook's portrayal of Twain was more than a novelty. Critics saw the performance as innovative theater. Holbrook in drawing upon the deep well of Twain's work was the show's playwright and actor.

In an endearing letter to the editor in The New York Times Wednesday, novelist Anne Bernays says that her late husband Justin Kaplan was inspired to write his celebrated biography of Samuel Clemens/Twain by watching Holbrook's performance.

It's doubtful that Holbrook's work would be produced now. Holbrook's death marks the fading of a generation that knew and revered Mark Twain.