Gossip Central

Celebrating Gonzo

When Alex Gibney was cutting his documentary, “Taxi to the Dark Side,” the Academy Award winning investigation of the grim business of a simple Iraqi man tortured to death in Bagram Prison in Afganistan, he would go into the next room to work on his documentary on Hunter S. Thompson for comic relief. Now that film is about to open, appropriately for the 4th of July. Thompson, originator of gonzo journalism, investigated “the American Dream,” embedded himself with the Hell's Angels, reported on American politics for “Rolling Stone,” and wrote one of the funniest books in the language, “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.” Gibney's prismatic biopic (a high just watching), narrated by Johnny Depp and featuring interviews with Pat Buchanan, Jimmy Carter, a diverse who's who in contemporary American culture, reveals Thompson's development as a writer (he obsessively typed out “The Great Gatsy”) as well as the consuming fame that may have contributed to his suicide. Even talking about Hunter brings a tear to editor Jann Wenner's eyes, halting his tribute. Wenner as well as the film's producer Graydon Carter and a duly eclectic group including Meg Ryan, Arianna Huffington, Tom Wolfe, Gail Sheehy, Gay Talese, Lynn Nesbit, Dominic Dunne, Jimmy Buffett, etc. crowded into the hip Waverly Inn for a pre-screening party last week. Graphic designer George Lois who recently had a show of his classic Esquire covers at MoMA pointed out the Waverly Inn's mural, painted by New Yorker Magazine illustrator Edward Sorel: who could be Narcissus? asked Lois, reflecting on the literary/mythological conceit of the painting adorning the restaurant's walls. Norman Mailer is stretched out looking at his reflection in a pond. Near him, Jack Kerouac, a cigarette hanging out of his mouth works a surreal typewriter as Bob Dylan hovers above. Presidential historian and close Thompson ally Douglas Brinkley introduced me to Juan, the writer's son. “Gonzo,” for all its bravado, is also a warmly felt family portrait thanks to Juan and his mother, Thompson's first wife. Then William Kennedy and family piled into Sean MacPherson's jeep for a short trip to the Angelica theater for the screening. Brian Williams, the NBC newsman who sat in for the deceased Tim Russert on last Sunday's Meet the Press modestly explained the secret of a great talk show: get Joe Biden. And then he noted how great it is that Tom Brokaw volunteered to take on the awesome election season, calling from a cell phone, from a spot on his Montana ranch that's not a dead zone, to say he's in.
                  And speaking of dedication in media, Clay Felker, famed New York Magazine editor, has just died. You could say that gonzo is a branch of the New Journalism, the use of novelistic techniques in the reporting of news, much championed by Felker.

Regina Weinreich 

Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura

Gonzo (trailer)

The Doctor is In: Three on a Couch, Caroline's, 21, Gonzo 7

“3 on a Couch,” Carl Djerassi's comedy now in production at SoHo Playhouse, could be presented heavily philosophical, or light and slapstick. At a recent pre play dinner at Ama, Djerassi-who is Viennese and who in a previous life as a chemist invented the pill, (yes, that pill)-- told me, his theatrical work is influenced by Tom Stoppard and Harold Pinter, so he would have liked to see his play of ideas performed with a pinch of gravitas. He finds it mildly irksome that the director went more for the funny bone. As a result of Elena Araoz's efforts, though, sight gags and pratfalls convey the hilarious illogic of a man who fakes his own suicide, the brilliance of a woman who insists upon the uses of the mango fork, and the elastic Bill Irwin-type body of the doctor who treats them. I hope Dr. Djerassi won't mind my critique: his play best brings to mind Beckett's tragicomedy, “Waiting for Godot.”
     And speaking of laughs there were quite a few at Caroline's Comedy Club for the annual benefit for Autism Research when Audrey Flack and her Art Officials took the stage singing and strumming an original composition on the lives of Jackson Pollock and Caravaggio accompanied by banjos. Flack, a New York artist famous for her painting and sculpture knows from whence she speaks and it helped that she had a straight man (as in foil), a suit from the Smithsonian, Charles Duncan, to play off her smart lyrics.
    21 hosted a breakfast in celebration of a new book on the subject of men's aging. How timely! The early diners, many of them over sixty, definitely sexy, smartly dressed, and decidedly successful feasted on superb scrambled eggs and bacon-although some cautiously opted for granola-- while Dr. Robert Schwalbe explained his reasons for writing “Sixty, Sexy, and Successful: A Guide for Aging Male Baby Boomers.” He was noticing certain trends in men coming into his psychoanalytic practice. A handsome 64, he was also seeing some signs in himself. The smart crowd did not miss the nuance, as the doctor limned symptoms reminiscent of the bewildering case of our former governor Eliot Spitzer. The diagnosis: He could have used this book.
    And finally, in this election frenzy, a documentary on the life and times of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson will be released on the 4th of July. “Gonzo,” directed by Alex Gibney, this year's Oscar winner for “Taxi to the Dark Side,” arrives just in time to remind us what real American patriotism is all about. The provocative film, narrated by Johnny Depp who starred in the movie of Thompson's “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,” on the writer and inventor of Gonzo journalism who committed suicide in 2005, will inspire some thought about how Dr. Thompson might now be kicking butt with his in your face writing, that is, if he were in

Dr.Regina Weinreich 

Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura

PEN World Voices

The French Consulate was chockablock with A-list writers as France conferred upon American author Edmund White the insignia of Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters on Tuesday evening. Salman Rushdie joked it was the true kickoff to the six-day PEN World Voices festival even though many of the world renowned authors celebrating in the Fifth Avenue townhouse--among them Ian McEwan, Peter Cary, Michael Ondaatje, Francine du Plessix Gray, Francine Prose, and rocker/poet Patti Smith--attended the gala benefit the night before at the Museum of Natural History, presiding over tables of donors where over a million dollars was raised. The gala is a different matter, said Rushdie, describing how fitting it was to dine under the museum's great whale, where writers could unleash their inner Captain Ahab. Meanwhile, panels, readings, films, performances in venues all over the city and beyond mark the World Voices annual celebration of the written word. The French philosopher Bernard Henri-Levy arrived, his wife, a chanteuse in a black cinched leather corset, in tow. But soon we were off to the Alliance Francaise for a session devoted to Darfur. BHL, as he is known, had been traveling to this besieged region of the Sudan, as has the actress Mia Farrow and both presented words and pictures enlightening the packed house on their personal experiences interviewing victims of the genocide. The stories are more heart-wrenching than ones you've heard. The focus of many aid efforts is on China PEN delivered a petition to the Chinese Consulate in New York-100 days before the Beijing Olympics Opening Ceremonies-requesting the release of 38 jailed journalists and writers and seeking an end to restrictions on freedom of expression in China. In addition, we are all urged to take action against the selling of arms by China to the jingaweed, the murderers in Darfur. Go to www.darfurmetro.org and the NYC Coalition for Darfur: interfaitharts@gmail.com

Regina Weinreich            

Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura

Jellyfish and Other Surreal Tales

This year's excellent New Directors/New Films series, a yearly collaboration of the Film Society of Lincoln Center and MoMA that ended last week, had many films you will see in theaters in the coming months. One, “Jellyfish,” directed by Israeli fiction writer Etgar Keret and Shira Geffen, his wife and the movie's scriptwriter, is already out: in this fine, intimate film, the dislocation and suffering taking place in their home country among a group of recent immigrants is reflected in water, in places where it is welcome, healing and mysterious, as in the beach in Tel Aviv and unwelcome, as a rising flood in a young woman's apartment caused by a leak. At one point she stands mouth agape, water pouring down from the ceiling quenching her thirst. Such surreal images dominate Keret's fiction. His new book,   “The Girl on the Fridge” features a tale called “Crazy Glue” in which a girl is stuck on that substance “so pretty, and so incongruous, hanging upside down from the ceiling that way. . . . I climbed onto the pile of books and kissed her.” The image brought to mind lovers in a Chagall painting. The stories, some one-pagers, can be selected like bonbons out of a chocolate assortment, each offering a peculiar, offbeat yet surprisingly satisfying center. In the title story, a couple breaks up for no better reason than the girl liked being alone, as when in childhood, she stayed perched atop a refrigerator. Her lover even tried to fuck her there, to no avail. I asked Etgar Keret which he prefers, making film or writing stories. “Writing,” he said, “I have all the control.”

Regina Weinreich            

Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura

Jack Kerouac's Scroll at the New York Public Library

The scroll is still in town! The celebrated 120 foot manuscript of Jack Kerouac's most famous novel, “On the Road,” sits in its glass case, ushering visitors into the best exhibition about a writer I have ever seen. The credit goes to curator Isaac Gewirtz for his smarts and sensitivity in organizing the material now housed in the library's Berg Collection into this comprehensive show and its excellent well-researched companion volume. But the scroll won't be here for long--soon to be replaced by a fake for the rest of the exhibition, while the real thing tours like a rock star. On Thursday night, for the beat fellowship there to party, rocker and poet Patti Smith in her plaid Kerouac shirt and watch cap performed a tune especially for the occasion. “Jack, I never knew you, but I knew your friends. Allen Ginsberg tried to pick me up because he thought I was a pretty boy,” she sang to the tickled crowd including Debbie Harry, the Kerouac estate, scholars, publishers, filmmakers all supping on steak with horseradish sauce. Smith also sang duets with composer David Amram, who doubled as M.C. of this special night, and accompanied by Lenny Kaye she sang a tune called “Grateful” for our host, James Irsay, the man who woke up one morning in 2001, flew in to New York, to Christie's auction house and swooped up his literary prize for a whopping $2.43 million, the most ever paid for a manuscript. The owner of the Indianapolis Colts, Irsay is an unusual man, sharing with Kerouac a yearning for spontaneity. Wearing a light, well-starched suit, he said, sometimes suits get a bad name. “You are all artists. Your life is your canvas. I love waking up every day and not knowing what will happen.”

Regina Weinreich             

Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura

Grass, Mailer, and Irving

You have to give the Germans credit for their post-WWII mea culpas. Among Europeans who willingly, and sometimes gleefully, took part in the murder of the Jews, the German guilt trauma has been most keenly felt. Perhaps it is that Germans, with their   intelligence and sophistication could live with the dubious honor of having started it all-bringing to power one Adolf Hitler-there is a power to that. Negative, yes. But power after all. Novels by Gunter Grass and Heinrich Boll, The Tin Drum (1959) and The Clown (1963), respectively, brought home an idea of another kind of suffering: Witnessing, tolerating, aiding and abetting in genocide has its own misery.
          And so Gunter Grass's belated disclosure of participation in the Waffen-SS in his memoir, Peeling the Onion, at this late date in his life (he is 80) feels like he has crafted his career around his guilt, accepted a Nobel Prize, even though, had he told all before, he might not have qualified. (Boll, the first German writer to receive a Nobel Prize since Hermann Hesse in 1946, was so honored in 1972, and he had resisted joining the Hitler Youth.) In his own country, some say Grass should be stripped of his award.
          Grass came to these shores in June, to celebrate the American publication of his memoir and an exhibition of his art at the Steven Kasher Gallery in Chelsea. At the opening, on the 25th, he was surrounded by his drawings and a bevy of German-speaking women. When I asked him about the upcoming conversation with Norman Mailer at the New York Public Library, he shrugged, “What do two old men have to say?” Indeed. Mailer had just written a book about Hitler, so there's some commonality of subject. In a brilliant 1959 essay, “The White Negro,” Mailer had identified the post-WWII ethos, defined the hipster/ American existentialist as a logical outcome of the barbarity of this war that could now add the phenomena of genocide and the bomb to its arsenal of shameful inhumanity.
          In short, some time ago Mailer had guts.
          Among his many talents, Mailer is into boxing and so maybe he would spar with Grass, verbally of course. Paul Holdengraber, announced as he always does and often succeeds, that his aim for the program, Live at NYPL, is to make the lions roar, referring to the stone ones at the gate. After announcing that he is nearly deaf, Mailer ended up in a compassionate embrace of his German fellow octogenarian, “You had to live with that all these years,” he said meekly to Grass of the most cataclysmic, defining event of the 20th century. Writers are mixed on the Grass question. Novelist/essayist Cynthia Ozick refuses to share a stage with Grass, maintaining that the only Jews with whom Germans can empathize are dead ones. She would have been the best contender for Grass, if she would deign to share a stage with him. John Irving, in a recent NY Times Book Review front-page essay, claimed his indebtedness to Grass for years of personal artistic nurturing. An attitude of victims all passes for civilized response. But, why aren't those lions in the coliseum, tearing apart the gladiators? At least that popular pastime, however barbaric, had its cathartic pleasure. Where is the challenge, the real debate? The crowd at the forum is simply too polite to cry for blood.

                                                                                                   Regina Weinreich

Kurt Vonnegut

It’s been a few days since I was awakened by a phone call at 1 AM on Thursday morning telling me that Kurt Vonnegut had died. Since that sleepless night, I’ve been moved by the avalanche of tributes: by Verlyn Klinkenborg in the New York Times, by Roger Friedman on Fox News Online, on CBS Sunday Morning. Charlie Rose replayed some interviews with Kurt taped over the years. I can’t get enough. For some of a certain age, Vonnegut was THE landmark writer. For me, the book was Cat’s Cradle. I still identify random recurrences of people as part of my ‘karass.” Kurt’s brand of absurdity, humor, cynicism, and genuine interest in humanity always spoke to me—and to each successive generation. When I would ask students, who is your favorite writer, Vonnegut was number one; most often it was Slaughterhouse Five that resonated for them. Having survived the bombing of Dresden, he was acutely aware of war’s toll. In the wake of the current unrelenting Iraq War, when I taught at Columbia University, Kurt would say, please remind your students of the protests of the ‘sixties. Wake them up, he exhorted.

                I cannot say when I first met him in the ebb and flow of New York literary life. Maybe I first spoke to him at a memorial for Nona Balakian, a mutual editor at the New York Times Book Review who died in 1991 mid-writing a biography of William Saroyan. We chatted about her and her book; Kurt cared that an important work about an important writer was cut short, especially as people were not paying much attention to Saroyan these days. Over time, he told me wonderful stories about the writers and artists he knew or glimpsed: Jack Kerouac, and others. At the recent Saul Steinberg exhibit at The Morgan Library, on December 1, he recounted a conversation he had with Steinberg, both reflecting on age: “I’m a novelist. You are an artist. What’s going on, how do we differ?” Saul said, “One sees the world historically, the other sees the moment.” I think Kurt saw both.

                About a year ago, on March 30, 2006, invited by Kurt’s wife Jill Krementz, I attended a performance of his play, L’histoire du soldat, (A Soldier’s Tale) about the only American soldier to have ever deserted who was executed for treason. The evening brought together many of his preoccupations, the protest of war, the plight of the individual caught in a bureaucracy—and it had a whiff of the current muzzling of protest under the banner of The Patriot Act. All this to the music of Igor Stravinsky, preceded by jazz improvisations. I last saw Kurt at Robert Altman’s memorial service. He’d been looking withered for a while, so I thought he would just go on that way, smiling his sweet, sort of shy and sheepish smile.
                                                                                                         Regina Weinreich