We'll start the day with the NYT obit on the writer Tom Wolfe, who has passed away at 88. Or maybe stopped breathing is a better description of his corporeal state, because with the sendoff he's gotten he will not be forgotten anytime soon.
Front page, right at the fold, two bylines, because I suspect William Grimes wrote the advance obit, retired, and was followed by Deirdre Carmody who relieved in the late innings to finish the game. TWO pages inside, and Wolfe's not Russian! For the Times, this is big sendoff for an American.
Huge picture of Wolfe as a younger man inside leaning against a traffic post in NYC, 1968, Lindsey-era photo when his writing was as big as the bus in the background. He looks like an adult version of a Vienna Boys choir member who's grown out of the sailor suit. What will the Times do for one of their own, Gay Talese, when he shuffles out of his splendid wardrobe?
I never read the guy. Although I will admit I've always read about him. I will now look into a collection of his essays. My attention span can handle essays.
I remember the book reviews that came out when he published The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, The Right Stuff, and The Bonfire of the Vanities. I had a boss who said Bonfire was a story about how the jury system in the Bronx was charged with the redistribution of wealth. Certainly ahead of Mayor Bill de Blasio's thinking.
And Radical Chic. I certainly read about the reaction to that! I love the term, just like I love the term Limousine Liberal. Says so much. Who better to skewer them than someone who travels in their circles. Sharks circle their prey as well.
Any writer who can use the word "gadrooned" silver trays is someone you know you will pay attention to. Didn't know the guy had a Ph.D. Also didn't know he was a pitcher in college at Washington and Lee University who was good enough to at least get a major league tryout. Although that didn't go well enough to discourage Tom from writing.
In one of the many tributes that keep popping up in the paper after Wolfe passed away was the one that at some point Tom was on the Washington and Lee campus, well after he had written The Right Stuff, and was teased by a coach who was still there that he remembered Tom and knew, even then as a college pitcher that he had The Wrong Stuff.
I love reading anything that makes a reference to the long-ago defunct NYC paper The Herald Tribune, sports, comics and news. Still my favorite paper, and they haven't been around for 50 years. New York magazine of course came out of the Sunday magazine supplement New York that accompanied the paper in those days. And New York magazine is still with us.
The NYT obit carries a great photo of the staff of New York magazine in the early days.
The offices of New York magazine were then on 32rd street, North side, between Third and Second Avenues. I know this not because I ever worked there, hardly. We played roller hockey in the schoolyard next to their walkup. It was always Sunday, so I never saw anyone coming or going from the building. Just the famous logo on a sign in front.
I read of his feud with Norman Mailer, John Irving, and John Updike, writers who were good once, with Mailer eventually becoming a drunken windbag who staggered around at anti-war protests. And I'm sure he liked that he outlived two of his Three Stooges.
Wolfe was the quintessential New Yorker—he was born in Richmond, Virginia and came here to stay. The best New Yorkers can be those who weren't born here. Their eyes are open and not dulled by a formative public school education that doesn't take them out of the neighborhood.
It was nice to read that his daughter, Alexandra Wolfe, writes for the WSJ. I read that paper and I'm sure I've read her articles without even wondering if they were related. The most recent was a Weekend Confidential piece on capitalism and Ken Langone, co-founder of Home Depot. Yes, that Langone, as in NYU Langone Medical Center. Aside from the medical center, have you ever been in a suburban Home Depot? I was in one on Monday, and still cannot get over what's inside one of those stores.
Busy day. Two obits worth mentioning. Never heard of Mary Sansone, described as a community organizer of New York who passed away at 101. I have to attribute that to not ever having much to do with Brooklyn. Queens and Manhattan were my "beat" if you will.
Mary apparently was a community organizer from the time she was 8 years old and accompanied her father who was making labor speeches in Manhattan's Union Square park. The park was famous for its "Speaker's Corner" fashioned after London's Hyde Park Speaker's Corner.
I remember those guys. They stood on a crate, had an American flag in the background (following the ordinance for an outdoor assembly, they had to show the flag) and lectured whoever stood in front of them, usually pounding their fist. They were decidedly "lefties," and I don't mean pitchers. I remember someone heckling one of the speakers as being so left he could turn around. I still look into that part of the park and see those guys.
Mary's photos in the obit show to me what seems like a strong facial resemblance to Fiorello La Guardia, the mayor all NYC mayors would like to aspire to be, but never really can. There was only one Mozart, and one Beethoven. And only one La Guardia. Mary and Fiorello were cut from the same cloth in their desire to help people. All people.
Mary Sansone ran an organization called CIAO, Congress of Italian-American Organizations. a statewide social service federation. She was the opposite of mafia leader Joseph Colombo's Italian-American Civil Rights League that tried to create Italian solidarity in the city by appealing to all the pizza places in the city to close on Italian Appreciation Day. They did. Once. No slice for you.
Joseph Colombo was too out in the open for his Italian mafia partners, so Crazy Joey Gallo contracted a black inmate he spent time with in Sing Sing to fire shots at Colombo as he was speaking at a rally in Columbus Circle. The shots hit Colombo, but didn't kill him. They did take him out of circulation by leaving Joseph in a vegetative state that he remained in for decades. The Italian-American Civil Rights League went away as well. Message delivered.
The shooter didn't get to remain in any state other than deceased, as the mob had guys put two in the back of his head after he fired at Colombo. Did he really think he was going to collect on his fee?
The older the New Yorker, the more memories I have.
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