Joe, Priscilla, and I ordered, and then there was a little editorial business to discuss, including the John Simon matter. I reported on the lunch with our distinguished movie reviewer and Chilton Williamson, the author and our back-of-the-book editor. John had been most adamant about continuing to require the extra space for his reviews (they were running at about 1500 words), insisting that shorter reviews would make him just that, a "reviewer" rather than a "critic." A troublesome dilemma for an editor, on the one hand facing the possible loss of so fine a writer and critic, on the other having to attend to basic editorial architecture.
I had mulled over the problem and now pulled out of my pocket a copy of the letter I had already sent to John, which Priscilla and Joe read and pronounced the only thing to do under the circumstances:
"Dear John: I'm afraid that on the matter of extra space the magazine cannot be flexible. The reasons why are not new to you and so I shan't restate them. Nor do I need to restate the pleasure I take from your work, or the admiration I feel for it. But there must be somebody, that semianonymous authority, who decrees that the pillars outside St. Patrick's can rise no higher, or that the dimensions of a canvas designed for a particular (finite) area cannot exceed the designated size. I know how deeply you feel in the matter, and therefore can only hope that you will undertake the adjustment. If not, I understand, and will go into mourning."
John never answered; but then he didn't quit either.
We arrived at the theater just as Pat did, as ever imposing, beautiful, elegant; followed, a few minutes after we were seated, by Doria Reagan, young, slight, especially pretty in the white dress she wore. The invitation to her and Ron came about as the result of an amusing effrontery. A few months earlier, Nancy Reagan had invited me and Pat and her son and daughter-in-law and Jerry Zipkin, an old friend, to go with her to the theater to see Sophisticated Ladies. Everything about going to the theater with a First Lady is somehow made enormously easy—no tickets to buy, or crowds to thread through; and so as we sat waiting for the lights to go out I flicked through the pages of that day's New York Times culture pages and came on the full-page ad for the great Nicholas Nickleby. The play would run for fourteen weeks beginning on October 4, eight and a half hours of theatergoing (four before dinner, four and one-half after dinner). I poked Nancy, pointing at the Nickleby ad, and said, "Let's take that one in too, while we're at it!" Nancy laughed and, getting into the spirit of it, I said, "I think when we go it would be nice if you also invited Ron and Doria." More laughter. And, at dinner later (it was a matinee), I told Ron that since his mother obviously hadn't taken my hint seriously, he and Doria would come as my guests; and here she was.
The play began at two and would run until six; then we were to be back at seven. Pat had scouted about and been told that a handy restaurant where quick service was available was Broadway Joe's, a block and a half away. I had no idea then that it was owned by Sidney Zion, who greeted us at the door. I had first met him at an editorial lunch thrown by Victor Navasky, a founding editor of the short-lived humor magazine Monocle, now editor of The Nation (Vic peaked too early). Sidney is a gentle soul, a lawyer by training, and not quite responsible. He left the Times and co-founded Scanlan's Monthly, a radical mag, during the tail end of the wild period (1965-73). I remember his calling me in great indignation to tell me that Scanlan's printers had refused to publish the current issue because it had in it a diagram on how to make a home-grown hand grenade, or perhaps it was an atom bomb, I forget. I told Sid I could understand his abstract point, but that my natural sympathies were, really, with the printers. He never seemed to mind, no more did he mind it when I said to him, in some exasperation after a New York Times editorial lunch when he was arguing somebody's innocence, "Sid, the trouble with you is that you find everybody innocent." Well, Sidney proved not entirely innocent, that evening; he gave away our privacy, because sure enough, when we filed out, there was a newspaper photographer.
Ron arrived about five minutes late, dressed as if he had just left a ballet rehearsal, which is what he had just done.
... I remember when all that happened. It was Thanksgiving time, 1976, and Ron had matriculated at Yale as a freshman in September. It was arranged that the senior Reagans would come in from California, with Ron coming in from New Haven, to spend Thanksgiving with us. Thanksgiving Day (I had warned the Reagans) was traditionally reserved for my senior family, at Sharon. There the Reagans joined us, at about noon on Thanksgiving, where we would lunch with my aged mother, and brothers and sisters, at the family home. There was a wonderful scene in the patio with my senescent mother who, with her ineffable charm, was listening to a story from Nancy Reagan. The final, key words of the story Nancy was telling were, "You're not going to tell that to the Reagans/"
There was general laughter, including my mother's, at which point she turned her gentle, pretty face to Nancy, leaned toward her and whispered affectionately, "Tell me, darling, who are the Reagans?" Nancy's diplomacy was impeccable. I knew then she would go far.
After lunch we went to the area where traditionally we play touch football on Thanksgiving, and I asked Ron Sr. whether he would consent to referee. He looked at me most wistfully and said, "Can't I play?" I laughed and made him quarterback on my team, while my brother, the sainted junior senator from New York, acquired Ron Jr. The play was spirited, but I noticed with more than merely casual interest the extraordinary nimbleness of young Ron.
Because just before lunch, Nancy had drawn Pat aside, and Ron Sr. had taken me into another room: and each of us was told of their awful experience the night before. Their son had arrived in New York on Wednesday night to announce that he had decided to leave Yale University and study ballet! Such a decision is not easily received in any household. In their household, it was received with True Shock.
"Who am I to object?" the father said to me, pacing the floor of the music room. "I mean, I ought to know about show business, and the ballet is great stuff. But so few people make it. And pulling out of college ... In the middle of a semester . . Reagan does not act excited, but one can sense when he is excited. He was thinking out loud.
He paused. And said that he was determined that his son should finish out the semester, because that way his record at Yale would be clean—"if he comes out of it. You know, if he doesn't make it."
It was perhaps my imagination but, an hour or two later, seeing his son jump six feet into the air to grab the football had me thinking of—a ballet dancer.
The multilateral conferences on the subject of Ron continued throughout the weekend, at our home in Stamford, to which we repaired after the football. Ron Jr. meanwhile told me that most ballet students begin at fourteen, and here he was at eighteen, so there wasn't a moment to lose, no, not even the months of December and January. And so his career began.
Now, at the restaurant, we reminisced happily about our day and night at sea a couple of months earlier. It had been August, and Ron was on vacation, and came first to us. I own a small sloop which sleeps four, and our date was boat-centered, so that in the late afternoon the Reagans and the Buckleys set out to cross Long Island Sound and spend the night at the little harbor in Eatons Neck. The journey was not quite typical because there were seven or eight gentlemen from the Secret Service superintending our departure and, to my great amusement, four of them squatted in an open Boston Whaler, trailing us by about three hundred yards'. The wind was menacingly stiff that afternoon, and the combined knowledge of boating among the four of us was what I knew—period. So that when one of the boat's fenders (which I had, carelessly, failed to stow) slipped off the leeward deck, unwilling to lose it I announced I would come about: which I did, with my crew, or rather passengers, grabbing at lines I more or less pointed to, and more or less doing what I told them to do.
I made our way back a couple of hundred yards and brought the bow upwind, while Ron lay on the deck reaching out to scoop up the fender.
But he missed it; meaning that, in a 20-knot wi
nd and building seas, we'd have to do the whole maneuver all over again. It was then that I thought to hail the thoroughly mobile Secret Service, who were unencumbered by sail; which I did, pointing to the fender, assuming that they would divine the message. But they did not acknowledge our signal. Ron then said brightly: "I know what'll bring 'em. I'll throw myself into the sea!" We laughed, and Doria looked just a little nervous. Finally the Secret Service zoomed up, and I communicated the message orally. They went back and fetched up the fender, while we resumed our southeasterly journey.
It was dark when we arrived, and I did not argue when the Secret Service vessel, with its weary, windswept, and probably seasick crew, volunteered to escort us in through a twisting channel I have known since 1952. It was a fine evening in the quiet little harbor, the anchor lights of a half-dozen other pleasure craft about us, the steak, wine, onions, salad, music, conversation, midnight swim. I teased Ron about that swim because seven or eight years earlier, spending a night with the Reagans at their beach house, I had announced I would swim before turning in, and Ron and his father accompanied me to the beach. But they thought me clearly mad to mingle at night with the sharks. I promised Ron that if there were sharks in the harbor tonight, I'd report them to the Secret Service, who lay a couple of boat lengths away as we slept, in that particular snugness that only a sailboat, anchored in the night, can radiate.
At dinner we did our best to brief Ron on the first half of Nickleby, and returned to the theater for what was surely the most captivating theatrical experience I've ever had. No one at first thought it could work. Of course it did, and the robust, ingenious kindliness of a sophisticated author was made to flower in a performance so intricate in pacing and choreographical arrangement as to leave one in awe for those reasons alone. Going out, I asked one of the Secret Service agents, who had also been in Stamford that summer, what he thought of it, and his comment was that it would have been easier to spend the four and one-half hours sitting down. There had been no empty seats. We said good night, and plighted our troths to see David Copperfield together, if ever the Royal Shakespeare Company does to David what it so wonderfully did to Nicholas.
Four
THURSDAY
I have the whole morning clear, which is good, because there is a speech right after lunch at the Waldorf, which has to be thought through, as the occasion doesn't permit a regular lecture. I am to speak for only twenty minutes. I look at the assignment and calculate the time it will take to prepare for it—say a half hour, leaning on familiar material.
I have found that one can work with special concentration when hard up against that kind of a deadline. I have time left to attack the briefcase.
I had a very nice telegram from Walter Meade, the head of Avon Books, which has acquired the paperback rights to my novel Marco Polo, If You Can. I had been warned by Sam Vaughan of Doubleday that the market in paperback sales was way down, and that I mustn't be disappointed that the paperback auction fetched for Marco Polo less than it had for Who's On First. When Avon bought Who's On First, I persuaded Walter to purchase the preceding two novels (Saving the Queen and Stained Glass) from Warner Books, my prejudice being that the same publisher should have all the titles, to expedite multiple sales. Now I thank Walter for his warm telegram, and encourage the idea of a meeting with him, both because of the pleasure of it "and to discuss ways in which we can sell more of the softcover works. It seems to me that they have not done as well as they should have done, given the general [hardcover] reception to them. It may be that my name is unhappily associated with difficult material (long words, that sort of thing). We might consider how to undermine that rumor. In any event, it would be swell to see you.
Every time I bring out a novel, I feel compelled to play my little .45 rpm record which can be compressed into a single sentence: What is the point in personally advertising the availability of one of my novels, when all but a very few interviewers will dwell on political subjects?—which means that I will end up by alienating the majority of prospective book purchasers? Sam Vaughan smiles when I play my little record, and changes the subject; but it seems to me that my point is very strong. Take, for instance, the Donahue show, in which Phil (he is very good on this matter) will flash the book in front of the audience, but will resist (he is very good at this, too) conversation about the book—"because," he will tell you after the show is over, "after all, they don't know what's in it." One despairs of suggesting that that might be the very point in your appearing. But I have written about the general problems of book promotion for Esquire (my proposal: A compact among authors—fifty percent of TV and radio interviewing time has to be devoted to the book); but as often happens with my public proposals, no action has been taken.
Someone has sent me an account by Tony Castro, a columnist for the Los Angeles Herald Examiner, of an appearance in Los Angeles by Gore Vidal. Columnist Castro began the column by reproducing the well-publicized exchange between Vidal and me in 1968, which in due course resulted in a lawsuit. I decided, some time after writing what I considered a definitive piece on Mr. Vidal for Esquire (reproduced in one of my collections), not again (I am searching for a value-free word) ... to write about him. Mr. Castro's column suggests the problem:
[Los Angeles Herald Examiner, Nov. 12, 1981, p. A3] Thirteen years later, novelist, playwright and potential U.S. senatorial candidate Gore Vidal has not forgiven William F. Buckley Jr. for his personal attack in the nationally televised emotional outburst whose venom matched the Chicago street violence at the Democratic convention.
Vidal today remains in pain. He hurts so deeply still that the mere mention of Buckley's name rushes the blood to his head and sends him into fits of hemophilic hatred, bleeding freely with vengeful anger and finally causing intellectual blackouts.
How else do you explain why Vidal can preach reason as a solution to America's problems, as he did yesterday in a lecture at Cal State-Los Angeles, and then lose touch with his own rationality in declaring Buckley a "criminal" and "a man who should be in prison."
It was no slip of the tongue. A writer of Vidal's rank doesn't trip over his words. But the only crook that came out of his performance yesterday appears to be Gore Vidal himself.
It is sad, especially when you have admired Vidal and even pulled for him in those tete-a-tetes with Buckley. But it's a bad worm that eats away at Vidal's insides. All you have to do to upset the man is mention the name Bill Buckley and you set him on a near-hypnotic state in which he destroys himself and his own credibility.
For what Gore Vidal proved yesterday was that he can be trusted no more than the "professional politicians" against whom he intellectually and cleverly ranted.
Vidal has a problem of taking as many liberties with the truth as he does with the facts in his historical novels. For certain, William F. Buckley Jr. triggers these fits, but who knows what else can get under the thin Vidal skin so as to rob him of so much reason that he can sink to Richard Nixon's understanding of American law and justice?
It was former President Nixon who, long before Watergate, committed the widely publicized major gaffe, especially for a lawyer, of publicly declaring Charles Manson "guilty," even though at the time Manson had yet to be tried on mass murder charges.
Vidal showed that he could plunge to that depth yesterday when a student asked him whether William F. Buckley Jr. was "a real person."
Vidal answered by telling a packed theater audience that an article in the latest issue of Time magazine indicated that the recent Buckley family business problems with the Securities and Exchange Commission are severe enough that "it appears a real prison door may be opening for the Buckleys."
"Whether William F. Buckley Jr. is a real person, I don't know," he said, "but Lewisburg Penitentiary is real."
The students, already in awe of Vidal, took his word as fact. They had no idea he was lying to them, or, in his vernacular, being an intellectual crook because this is not at all what the Time article either said or implied.
The third paragraph in the Time article even states that "the most illustrious Buckleys were not named in the 43-page (SEC) civil complaint."
Neither William F. Buckley Jr. nor his brother, former Sen. James Buckley, who Vidal also said is possibly prison-bound, were cited in the SEC action, which because it is civil—not criminal—would carry no prison penalty at all, even if the famous Buckley brothers had been included.
Later, pressed about the accuracy and ethics of labeling Buckley a "criminal" on the basis of a civil matter, a visibly frustrated Vidal countered:
"You don't have to be convicted by a court to be a criminal."
Somehow, you expected something better from Gore Vidal, something broader-minded, something a little less frightening than the way the crypto Nazis once carried out justice.
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