Southern Bookman

New York Times special section gives dramatic new perspectives on World War II

The Sunday New York Times' special section commemorating the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II was truly overwhelming.

Reading "lesser known stories" about the war that illuminated larger themes moved me emotionally the way movies or music do.

Tom Hanks' excellent introduction emphasized the sacrifices average Americans made to win the war. During the Depression and war years, U.S. citizens coped with diminished prosperity and limited consumer goods.

Countering nostalgia about "the good war," Hanks also evokes the horror of battle. One of our finest actors, Hanks shows that he's also an outstanding writer.

The section looked at the liberation of the Nazis' concentration camps, the firebombing of Tokyo, the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Japan's colonization of Korea, the heroism of Indian and Nepalese soldiers in Britain's war effort, the horrible racism that black U.S. soldiers encountered when returning home, and the sickening internment of Japanese-American citizens.

Wonderful photos accompany the stories, and document the war's end and other major events.

My favorite stories were two uplifting ones: Ace Times sportswriter Jere Longman's profile of the Dutch track star Fanny Blankers-Koen, who won four gold medals at the 1948 Olympics in war-ravaged London, and writer Christina Brown Fisher's story about the Six Triple Eight, an American battalion of black women who diligently performed the duty of sorting mail for troops on the battle lines.

I've been a fan of fellow Louisianian and LSU alum Longman's work for years, especially when he's returned to his native state for stories.

A veteran of covering the Olympics, he displays his historical grasp of the Games in his piece on Koen, who dominated the first Olympics held since the 1936 Games in Hitler's Berlin. She competed in those Games too, drawing inspiration from U.S. star Jesse Owens, who also won four gold medals.

After the deprivations of the German-occupied  Netherlands during the war, the 30-year-old Koen, the mother of two children, won the 100-meter and 200-meter sprints, the 80-meter hurdles and anchored the Netherlands' gold-medal-winning 4x100 relay team.

Fisher's story focuses on the Six Triple Eight's dynamic leader, Charity Adams, and her skill in organizing the battalion's mail-sorting mission. The article highlights Adams' successful battles against racism and sexism. She truly is one of the war's unsung American heroes.

Another of my favorite Times writers, Tokyo bureau chief Motoko Rich, contributed a moving story about the 88-year-old  Katsumoto Saotome, a survivor of the Tokyo firebombing.

Saotome, who has devoted his life to documenting the horror of the bombings, carries no bitterness toward Americans. Rich's profile is a testament to the human spirit.

Rich, like Longman, is one of the veteran Times writers who have distinguished the newspaper's coverage for years. I first enjoyed Rich's stories when she covered the New York publishing industry before she moved on to general news. Rich is one of those rare reporters who can cover a range of stories, with outstanding writing ability as well as in-depth reporting.

The editor's introduction to the section says "these are tales that debunk the myths that have usurped the conflict's history, stories that haven't yet been enshrined in our collective memories."

That's overstated; the articles don't so much debunk myths as give deeper perspectives. And while stories like Koen's and the Six Triple Eight's are new, others re-examine well-known events, such as the fire-bombing of Tokyo.

While the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki have received more attention, the fire bombing of Tokyo and other Japanese cities has received extensive coverage through the years.

The Hiroshima and Nagasaki attacks have been castigated as morally questionable, but the bombing of Tokyo hasn't received the same moral scrutiny, even seen as heroic.

Serious moral questions are raised in the Times' re-examination of the bombings, particularly the American strategy of incinerating civilian areas.

Gen. Curtis LeMay's "Operation Meetinghouse" campaign shifted from the previous strategy of dropping high-altitude bombs targeting war-production facilities. 

In the revised campaign, American bombers dropped low-level devices loaded with napalm on residential neighborhoods of mainly wooden residences. LeMay later led America's bombing of Vietnam, an echo of the campaign against Japan. 

Another myth undermined is that American soldiers gave beneficial treatment to Jewish Holocaust victims. An article by Jennifer Orth-Veillon documents mistreatment of Jewish concentration camp survivors by U.S. troops.

The most heart-rending articles uncover the terrible abuses of Japanese-American citizens not only during their wartime internment, but after the war's end.

With the "Unsung History" section, the Times fulfills its promise to show how lesser-known stories give greater understanding of the war. The dramatic photos and typography demonstrate that print can have dramatic power unmatched by an online screen.

The section proves the validity of Hanks' message, "We are still living the legacy of World War II."

 

 

Farewell, Tom Seaver

Among the momentous events of 1969, Tom Seaver leading the "miracle Mets" to an unexpected World Series championship showed that sports could still unite a fractured nation.

The stocky, photogenic 24-year-old pitcher won 25 games to lead the Mets to the title, upsetting the heavily favored Baltimore Orioles in the 1969 World Series. Seaver sparked the Mets' late season surge to win the pennant, and their victory over Henry Aaron and Phil Niekro's Atlanta Braves in the National League championship series.

In the World Series, Seaver lost a pitching duel to the Orioles' Mike Cuellar, but bounced back to throw a 10-inning complete game for a 2-1 win over the American League champions, led by Frank and Brooks Robinson, Boog Powell, Paul Blair and Jim Palmer. The Mets took the series four games to one, and Seaver was named the national sportsman of the year.

Seaver died Monday at age 75 from Lewy body dementia, the same disease that led to Robin Williams' suicide, and Covid-19. The Hall of Famer and three-time Cy Young winner withdrew from public appearances in 2019. It was not reported how he contracted Covid-19.

Known for ineptitude since their start in 1962, the Mets won the 1969 title under manager Gil Hodges with old-fashioned teamwork, strategic baseball, defense and pitching.

Along with the dominant Seaver, they won with good but not great players like Tommy Agee, Ed Kranepool, Jerry Grote, Bud Harrelson and Cleon Jones. Their pitching was stellar, with Jerry Koosman, Tug McGraw and a raw Nolan Ryan supporting Seaver.

Baseball still held the top spot in American sports over rising pro football, and a star pitcher like Seaver was nationally admired. Over the years, baseball has declined in popularity, and even standout players are relatively unknown outside of their local fan bases.

The Mets' triumph matched the New York Jets' unexpected win over the Baltimore Colts in the 1969 Super Bowl. Seaver, along with his attractive wife, Nancy, was a New York celebrity on the same level as Jets quarterback Joe Namath.

A former member of the Marine Reserve and a committed family man, Seaver presented a wholesome image in contrast to the hedonistic Namath, who relished his swinging bachelor life, frequenting New York clubs and bragging about his sexual exploits. Despite his all-American image, Seaver generated headlines opposing the Vietnam War.

Those sports miracles came in the same year that Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, and the Woodstock Music Festival brought thousands of counterculture youth to groove in the mud at Yasgur's Farm in upstate New York.

It was the year Richard Nixon began his presidency, the Beatles broke up, the Charles Manson murders shocked the nation, the Vietnam War dragged on and violence marred the Rolling Stones' Altramont Festival. The Knicks would continue New York's sports dominance by winning the NBA title in the spring of 1970.

Newspapers remained powerful; Bruce Weber's obituary of Seaver in The New York Times related how the malevolent New York Daily News sportswriter Dick Young's derogatory columns so upset Seaver that he rejected a contract extension offer from the Mets, bringing his 1977 trade to the Cincinnati Reds, outraging Mets fans.

Seaver's autobiography was co-written by another New York City newspaper legend: Dick Schapp, who moved on to TV fame.

A power pitcher when young, the right-handed Seaver was known for his strategic pitching, extending his career when he lost speed on his fastball in his later years.

He was also a late bloomer; Weber's obituary noted that Seaver was not an overpowering pitcher in high school. He was not even considered a college prospect until success in an Alaskan independent league brought a scholarship from USC. Rather than following a scientific weight-lifting regimen, Seaver strengthened his body slinging crates for his father's food distribution company.

After signing with the Mets at a relatively old age, he advanced to the Mets fully formed after one year in the minors. He was not a teenage phenom like the Mets' later sensation Dwight Gooden, but he built a more durable career.

Seaver gave the Mets New York baseball glamour, stealing the spotlight from the lordly Yankees, then in a period of decline.  In an era when starting pitchers are lauded for going six innings, his endurance is amazing, although not that out of the ordinary in his day.

During the 1969 pennant chase, Seaver's record was 10-1 in August and September. He pitched eight complete games in a row in the closing weeks of the season. During September, he compiled a 6-0 record with an 0.83 earned run average, allowing five earned runs and throwing two shutouts.

As a non-playing member of the Boston Red Sox, Seaver witnessed the Mets' World Series win in 1986. With Seaver on the mound, the Sox might have overcome Bill Buckner's infamous error.

Seaver was an old-time baseball hero, tossing thunderbolts when kids still listened to the World Series on transistor radios brought to school and the games were played in the darkening shadows of daylight.

 

 

 

Farewell, Gail Sheehy

Gail Sheehy's "Passages: Predictable Crises of Adult Life" was a guide for anxious baby-boomers hitting the shoals of middle age.

The 1976 best-seller turned into a career project for Sheehy, who died Monday at age 83 in Southhampton, N.Y., from pneumonia complications.

Sheehy wrote several other "Passages" books as the self-important postwar generation tumbled toward old age. While derided by some for its glib generalizations, "Passages" was one of those books that capture the spirit of its era.

Before "Passages" brought her national fame, Sheehy was known in New York City as one of the stars of the old New York Herald Tribune and its successor, New York magazine. She was one of the few women writers who flourished at the Trib, whose lineup included Jimmy Breslin, Tom Wolfe and Dick Schaap in its glorious dying days.

In moving from the Trib's "estrogen" zone, the women's section, to the "testosterone" news department, Sheehy caught the attention of editor Clay Felker, the innovative co-founder of New York magazine. Sheehy and Felker entered into a torrid relationship that eventually led to a long-term marriage.

Along with influencing the New Journalism and inventing the city magazine formula of service articles, personality pieces, neighborhood reporting and investigative articles, Felker after leaving New York magazine bought Esquire and gave it new life. When his inventiveness lost favor with a new generation, he taught journalism at Columbia University.

Sheehy's "Daring: My Passages" is one of my favorite journalistic memoirs, an entertaining account of the high-powered New York cultural, social and political world. I particularly remember her recollections of the lavish dinner parties she and Felker hosted, whose guests ranged from Gloria Steinem to Henry Kissinger.

Along with the inspiration for "Passages," Sheehy recalls her journalistic career, from the heady days at the Trib through her work for New York and Vanity Fair.

One of her biggest New York magazine scoops was discovering the destitute relatives of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Edith Ewing Bouvier Beale and Edith "Little Edie" Bouvier, living in a run-down Long Island mansion. The article resulted in the "Grey Gardens" play and documentary.

She also discussed her article about going undercover to expose prostitution at the staid Waldorf Astoria. While she admitted in an introduction to the New York magazine piece that she'd invented characters, Felker deleted her disclaimer, according to her New YorkTimes obituary. Despite a wave of criticism that she had violated journalistic ethics, the article made a stir, and was turned into a movie.

For journalists, Sheehy repeated Felker's questions he asked a writer while producing an article: Why are things the way they are? (Sniff out the latest trend); What led to this? (history); How do things work? (who is pulling the strings or making the magic or making fools of us); How is the power game played in your corner of New York?

Sheehy's death came only a couple of weeks after that of Pete Hamill, another member of New York City's glorious journalistic era launched in the 1960s. A stellar generation is making its final passage. 

 

 

 

Informal study paid off for Elena Ferrante translator Ann Goldstein

Ann Goldstein's renown as the English translator of Elena Ferrante's novels began with impromptu Italian lessons.

A longtime copy editor at The New Yorker, Goldstein and some of her colleagues formed an evening group in the 1980s to learn Italian, according to New York Times writer Joumana Khatib's profile of Goldstein published in Monday's Arts section of the newspaper.

The group's purpose was to read Dante's "Divine Comedy" in the poet's original language.

From those informal lessons, rather than grad school studies, Goldstein gained the proficiency to be named Ferrante's translator by Europa Editions, Ferrante's publisher.

Building upon her fame as the translator of Ferrante's Neapolitan quartet, Goldstein translated Ferrante's new novel, "The Lying Life of Adults," which comes out Sept. 1.

A departure from Ferrante's "My Brilliant Friend" saga, the book tells a different story about a young girl growing up in Naples's poor neighborhoods.

Goldstein's translations are credited with boosting the popularity of Ferrante's "Brilliant Friend" quartet, the story of two women's lifelong friendship beginning with their childhoods in Naples.

Known as a "literal translator," Goldstein captures the essence of Ferrante's language.

The New Yorker's copy desk chief when she retired from the magazine in 2017, the 71-year-old Goldstein has translated a number of other Italian books. She supervised the translation of Primo Levi's three-volume complete works.

While most readers today limit themselves to Dante's "Inferno," Goldstein's group also finished "Purgatorio" and "Paradiso." Goldstein in The Times article recommends completing the entire "Divine Comedy, " which established Dante's Florentine dialect as  the standard Italian language.

Her immersion in Dante gave Goldstein a grounding in the language's complexities. As revealed in the wonderful HBO adaptation of Ferrante's novels, Italians speak colloquial and more formal versions of the language. Goldstein's translations show facility in both.

Goldstein learned Italian at a relatively mature age, and without undergoing a formal higher-education curriculum. Her story shows the benefits of lifelong education and intellectual curiosity.

 

 

 

Brian Kemp gets shivers over AJC's report on coronavirus failings

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp this week echoed predecessor Gene Talmadge's attacks on "them lying Atlanta newspapers."

Kemp expressed his anger at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution's article about a White House report that chastised Georgia for having the highest rate of covid-19 cases in the nation. Kemp accused the newspaper of playing "pandemic politics" and spreading panic.

"I will tell you that the media only focuses on the bad numbers," Kemp said. "They never focus on the good numbers."

Filling in for Talmadge nemesis Ralph McGill, AJC Executive Editor Kevin Riley noted that the newspaper mentioned a recent moderate decline in hospitalizations and new cases in Georgia, along with a reduction in positive tests.

But even with that improvement, Georgia led the nation in new cases, a Trump administration task force said, urging increased action to stem the disease.

"Though conditions in some areas of Georgia have improved modestly in recent weeks, the White House Coronavirus Task Force said Georgia remains in the red zone for severity of the outbreak as measured by rate of case growth and test positivity," the article noted.

After Kemp's blast at The AJC, Pulitizer Prize winner Mike Luckovich published a cartoon Friday depicting Kemp in a cemetery filled with Covid-19 victims' graves. Kemp's quote bubble says "why not focus on the good numbers?"

Kemp's feud with The AJC is one of the most heated between the state's executive and its most influential newspaper since the Talmadge years. In Talmadge's day, the Journal and Constitution were separate newspapers and bitter rivals, blasting Talmadge with different voices.

The merged newspaper has much less power, especially statewide, then it did in the era before TV and the Internet.

But the AJC's in-depth reporting on the Kemp administration's failures to control the coronavirus pandemic shows that strong local newspapers remain vital to American democracy.

 

William Styron's "The Confessions of Nat Turner" presaged today's cultural wars

Friday marks the 189th anniversary of the start of Nat Turner's rebellion, a four-day slave insurrection in 1831 that killed 60 white people in rural Southampton County, Va.

White novelist and Virginia native William Styron in 1967 published "The Confessions of Nat Turner," narrated by Turner, the revolt's leader.

Styron imagined much of Turner's character and the bloody events of the uprising, having little historical documentation beyond Turner's own confession in 1831 to prosecuting attorney Thomas Ruffin Gray, published a few years later as "The Confessions of Nat Turner: The Leader of the Late Insurrection in Southampton, Va."

While Styron's book won the Pulitzer Prize and initially received acclaim from predominantly white critics, black intellectuals protested his depiction of Turner, the blacks who joined the rebellion and white slave owners. They claimed that Turner was a heroic black figure and that Styron reduced him to a cultural stereotype. Styron indignantly responded that Turner was virtually unknown, even among the black community, and that as a novelist he had the right to re-imagine historical events.

The black anger culminated in the 1968 book "William Styron's Nat Turner: Ten Black Writers Respond." In Styron's "This Quiet Dust," a 1982   collection of his non-fiction writing, the author said that his book "was the first novel in the long annals of American publishing to evoke such an immediate, entirely hostile attack."

Such attacks have become more frequent in recent years, with authors accused of cultural expropriation if they imagine characters of a different race, gender or sexual orientation. Styron's daughter, Alexandra, in a recent Atlantic essay compared the outrage over her father's book with that engendered recently by the publication of Jeanine Cummins' "American Dirt." 

In the essay, Alexandra Styron wondered if her father's book would even be published in today's cultural climate. She concluded that it would be, if written by a major author such as her father. But a little-known writer likely would be censored.

She points out that William Styron's close friend James Baldwin encouraged him to write the book and assume the voice of Nat Turner. Ralph Ellison also praised the book, as did black historian John Hope Franklin in a review in the Chicago Tribune, the only one written by a black writer in the thousands of newspapers that then existed.

Historian Eugene D. Genovese's defense of "The Confessions of Nat Turner" in The New York Review of Books ended the attacks on "The Confessions of Nat Turner."  The Marxist historian was known for his examination of slave life, "Roll Jordan Roll, The World the Slaves Made."

It must be admitted that the defense of Styron in a review revered among his intellectual circle looks like a closing of the ranks. While leftist, The New York Review was an organ of mostly white New York intellectuals who despite their liberal views on race closed their doors to many black writers.

Alexandra Styron admits her father' lack of humility in battling his critics. He felt the need to justify "The Confessions of Nat Turner" 15 years later in "This Quiet Dust." The title article, first published in Harper's magazine in 1965, tells about his visiting Southampton County in an effort to retrace Nat Turner's path. He republished the essay to counter black claims that he did insufficient historical research for the book.

The essay, which captures Southern whites' condescension toward blacks, shows Styron at his best.

After fruitless attempts to find surviving signs of the insurrection, Styron comes upon the ruins of the house he believes to be that of Margaret Whitehead, the only white directly killed by Turner. One of the black intellectuals' most heated criticisms of Styron was his imagined flirtation between Whitehead and Turner. 

In the novel, Turner reluctantly murders her at the instigation of another slave seeking to take over leadership of the revolt. Another violent black stereotype, the critics said.

Styron went on to write "Sophie's Choice." Although Harold Bloom accused Styron of antisemitism, the book escaped the controversy stirred by Nat Turner and gained widespread popularity, one of the last "literary" American novels that united the country's readership.

Supported by Henry Louis Gates and Spike Lee, and buoyed by Styron's enduring posthumous reputation, "The Confessions of Nat Turner" retains a strong readership, although it's generally avoided on high school and college curricula.

No doubt overly sensitive college students would object to its inclusion on class reading lists. Soon, no books will be acceptable, and English classes will be extinct.

"The Confessions of Nat Turner" drew the first shots in a cultural war that fully rages today.

 

New York Daily News says drop dead to newsroom

I felt a stab of sadness when I read that the New York Daily News is closing its newsroom, although the newspaper vowed to keep publishing with a cut-to-the-bone staff.

After an enjoyable one-week tryout at the Daily News in the 1990s, I consider myself an alum of the plucky tabloid, known for its photos and classic headlines like "Ford to City: Drop Dead" and "Headless Body in Topless Bar."

The News staffers showed much more generosity than the supercilious apparatchiks at The New York Times during a tryout at the haughty Sulzberger domain. While The Times rejected me, the Daily News offered me a job, which I reluctantly declined.

Newspapers and magazines have been soldiering on during the coronavirus pandemic, with staffers working from home. The Daily News, in cut-throat competition with the more conservative New York Post, concluded that it could save money by doing without its offices in downtown Manhattan. The melancholy announcement followed the death of Pete Hamill, the legendary former columnist for the paper who also briefly served as its editor.

The newsroom's demise brought a lament in The New Yorker from journalist Tom Robbins, who recalled the heady days of the Daily News in the 1950s, when its circulation was in the millions. The tabloid chased scoops with two airplanes and a fleet of radio-equipped cars. During the '20s and '30s, the Daily News was credited with helping immigrants learn English.

But the popularity of TV, New York City's loss of population to the suburbs and changing demographics beset the newspaper, before the Internet arrived like the meteor that killed off the dinosaurs.

Even as the Daily News went through changing owners, heavy losses and declining readership, the paper had columnists like Hamill and Jimmy Breslin, hard-hitting investigative reporters and engaging sportswriters.

Robbins nostalgically remembers the chaotic newsrooms of old, which remained noisy and pressure-packed even when computers replaced typewriters and news people quit smoking and hiding bottles of booze in their desks. But the Internet slashed staffs, bringing a funereal quiet before Covid-19 emptied newsrooms.

As a former Daily News reporter told Robbins, crowded newsrooms also fostered collaboration in the development of story ideas and the mentoring of young reporters by veterans. The newsrooms also gave a sense of family to the social misfits who found a place working for newspapers.

When I had my tryout, the Daily News was located at West 33rd Street and 10th Avenue, in a nondescript office building that also housed New York City's public TV channel. I stayed at a horrible Howard Johnson's Hotel near Macy's and walked to work each day. The streets remained full of people when I got off at midnight.

The copy desk chief, an intense, serious and highly professional young woman whom I found was the mother of two children, allowed me to work on several stories each night, and I loved writing tabloid-style headlines, with clever turns of phrase.

Unlike at The Times, my colleagues were very cordial and helpful. One older fellow, an Irishman, reminisced about the days when New York City had seven dailies, and an editor unhappy at one paper could find a job at another the very same night. I also marveled at the editor whose full-time job was to write the daily "wood," the front-page headline. He sat there for hours, staring at the screen, waiting for inspiration.

When I worked there, the Daily News was already suffering staggering losses, and would eventually declare bankruptcy. As Robbins notes, the newspaper kept rising from the dead, its staffers burnishing buttons that said "The Daily News: Too Tough to Die."

That was at the dawn of the Internet era. Since then, the tab has survived several deep newsroom cutbacks, plunging circulation and a troubled transition to online publishing. Perhaps the newspaper will keep going, but the Daily News without its newsroom is like the Tinman without his heart.

Pete Hamill's death brings sorrow for lost era of American literature

Pete Hamill, who died this week at age 85, was the last lion of a great age of American literature.

Hamill and other writers who emerged in the 1950s and 1960s were known for their "new journalism," in which novelistic techniques were employed in the reporting of actual events. But they also wrote novels, short stories and essays, following Gore Vidal's dictum that writing is writing, and a good writer should be proficient in every genre.

The era brought abuses; New Journalism stars were accused of inventing scenes and dialogue in presenting situations believed to be factual. But, overall, the era raised journalism to a high literary level, and energized the novel.

Hamill, and his sometimes competitor, sometimes colleague Jimmy Breslin, raised the literary quality of New York newspapers, especially the now struggling tabloids The New York Post, founded by Alexander Hamilton, and the Daily News. Before owned by Rupert Murdoch, who ousted Hamill as editor, the Post was a literary liberal daily, owned by Dorothy Schiff. 

Before writing for New York tabloids, Breslin was a star of the old broadsheet Herald-Tribune, which despite its star writers succumbed to the New York City newspaper strike of the 1960s. That strike killed off a number of New York papers. For years a bastion of liberal Republicanism, the Herald-Tribune gave beneficial competition to The New York Times.

I was amazed at reading in Hamill's obituaries that he published short stories in The New York Post and Daily News, like Isaac Bashevis Singer contributing Yiddish stories to the Jewish Forward.

While the New York Times sometimes publishes fiction, it's hard to imagine a writer today finding a steady outlet for short stories in a newspaper.

Along with Hamill, like Breslin best known for his newspaper columns, the era gave us New Journalism pioneer and Herald Tribune stalwart Thomas Wolfe, novelist and ground-breaking journalist Norman Mailer, cultural critic Dwight MacDonald, jazz critic and free speech champion Nat Hentoff, political journalism chronicler Timothy Crouse, columnist Murray Kempton and the satirical gonzo malcontent, Dr. Hunter S. Thompson.

Along with courageous reporting on the Vietnam War, racial discrimination, economic inequities and American and international politics, a dazzling group of rock critics emerged: The Village Voice's Robert Christgau, Lester Bangs of Creem and Rolling Stone, and Rolling Stone co-founder Ralph J. Gleason who shifted from jazz to rock, especially covering the San Francisco psychedelic scene.

Along with Thompson and Crouse, Rolling Stone developed writers like Joe Eszterhas, Cameron Crowe and P.J. O'Rourke, who evolved into a compelling conservative/libertarian critic.

The scene was hetero-male-dominated, but Joan Didion, Nora Ephron, Mary McGrory, Eve Babitz, Vivian Gornick, Ellen Willis, Jill Johnston and others broke through the boys' club.

For those of us longing for literary glory in stifling Southern towns, magazines and newspapers from New York City were like oxygen tanks sent to those drowning beneath the sea.

Harold Hayes' Esquire, Jann Wenner's Rolling Stone, Willie Morris' Harper's, Clay Felker's New York magazine, Dan Wolf's Village Voice, I.F. Stone's Weekly and George Plimpton's Paris Review allowed us to claim membership in a hip, urban community.

While my conservative alma mater LSU swung to frat parties on football weekends and a general complacency, it offered outlets for European films, avant-garde music and literature beyond the bounds of our English course curricula. (My French teacher, a nice Southern lady, was shocked when I asked about Rimbaud.)

Vietnam Moratorium Day brought out a surprisingly large crowd, filling the Parade Grounds where compulsory ROTC cadets drilled in years past. Withstanding the taunts of flat-topped frat boys, many held small wooden crosses in support of anti-war speakers.

Even after the slaying of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy, and the election of Richard Nixon, those writers gave us hope for a better America. My sadness at Hamill's death is intensified by the knowledge that those dreams crashed. But even in these dark days, the heroic life of Hamill inspires us to keep the flame alive.

 

 

Pete Hamill's "A Drinking Life" a classic memoir

Pete Hamill, who died Wednesday at age 85 after a fall, is receiving acclaim as a swashbuckling newspaper columnist, editor and novelist.

His 1994 memoir, "A Drinking Life," deserves more recognition. I'm not that familiar with Hamill's other work, but I consider "A Drinking Life" one of the all-time best journalistic memoirs, along with Joe Queenan's "Closing Time" and Willie Morris' "North Toward Home."

As with James Joyce's Dublin, Hamill's Brooklyn comes alive with recollections of landscapes, places and vivid characters. The book moves from Hamill's rough boyhood in a poor Irish family to his finding fame and influence in Manhattan.

But his childhood memories show Brooklyn captured his heart. After years in Manhattan, he recently moved back to his native community, where he died at the same hospital where he was born.

Hamill was one of the last New York City newspaper columnists with widespread readership and immense power. He was also a fine novelist, essayist and editor. But for me, "A Drinking Life" is his pre-eminent work.

 

 

Isabel Wilkerson vs. Margaret Sullivan

Two prominent women journalists displayed jarring disparities in separate "Fresh Air" interviews this week.

Washington Post media columnist Margaret Sullivan, promoting her new book "Ghosting the News: Local Journalism and the Crisis of American Democracy," frequently used the embarrassing empty phrases "sort of" and "you know." An interview transcript revealed that she used "you know" in nearly every sentence and "sort of " often to unnecessarily qualify factual information.

The next day, black journalist Isabel Wilkerson delivered flawless English in promoting her new book, "Caste: the Origins of Our Discontents." A former Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and author of the acclaimed "The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration," Wilkerson conveyed complex information without faltering.

Sullivan's interview was conducted by "Fresh Air's" Dave Davies, who himself resorted to frequent "you knows." Here is one of Sullivan's statements, lamenting the loss of cultural critics at the Buffalo News, where Sullivan served as managing editor before a stint as The New York Times' readers' advocate and her job at the Washington Post.

"Our arts and our culture and, you know, sort of our society as a community, I think becomes less knitted together and weakened."

In contrast, here is a passage from Wilkerson, in response to Terry Gross' question about Wilkerson citing a Nigerian playwright who said there are no blacks in Africa.

"It's so shocking to our ears, because, of course, we say that there is an entire subcontinent of people who we would view as Black, but what she was saying was that until you come to the United States, they themselves do not see themselves as Black, they are Igbo ... or they are Yoruba or whatever it is that they are in terms of their ethnicity and identity.

It is only when they enter into a multilayered caste structure ... a hierarchy such as this, do they then have to think of themselves as Black. But back where they are from, they do not have to think of themselves as Black, because Black is not the primary metric of determining one's identity."

Sullivan is part of the white dominant caste that Wilkerson examines, yet showed less command of the language than Wilkerson, who fought to overcome racism as a member of an oppressed lower caste. Sullivan's vital message and impressive gathering of information were uncut by the verbal tics that made her sound more like a high school sophomore than a distinguished author.

While Gross and Wilkerson didn't discuss the discrimination against white and black women by the white-male dominated hierarchy, Sullivan unconsciously showed that even successful women lack full confidence. The "sort of" also denotes a need to qualify statements, a manifestation of the "on the other hand" objectivity now under fire in newsrooms.

Wilkerson gave some dismaying examples of how prejudice hampered her career. In one incident, a white male interview subject refused to believe she represented The New York Times.

Some blacks see the use of perfect grammar and spelling as sanctioning the white hierarchy. Academic debates are raging over "prescriptive" vs. "descriptive" linguistics.

Wilkerson, while exposing the devastation of America's caste system, eloquently uses the dominant caste's language, which has led to her success. "Caste" received a glowing review Wednesday from New York Times critic Dwight Garner,  a member of the white male establishment.

Sullivan's tics might be seen as minor. Yet, they undermined the authority of her arguments. Her "you knows" and "sort ofs" detracted from her alarming message about the decline of local journalism.

Wilkerson's perfect diction echoes the complaint that blacks have to perform better to succeed. As Sullivan promotes her important book, she should consult a voice coach to improve her speaking.