by Gay Talese
Catledge saw Khrushchev standing in a large, crowded room, a jovial, smiling porcine man encircled by Japanese diplomats and journalists. Catledge also noticed in another part of the room the stocky figure of Nikolai Bulganin, president of the Soviet Council of Ministers, standing near several long tables on top of which were dirty plates, empty and overturned bottles, used glasses, and rumpled linen from what had obviously been a grand feast. Bulganin was also surrounded by people, but it was a smaller crowd than Khrushchev’s, although Bulganin too was smiling, bowing to the Japanese, and behaving no differently, Catledge thought, than a Kentucky colonel at an after-Derby party.
Catledge’s bureau man, Jorden, who spoke Russian and a bit of Japanese, led him toward Bulganin’s circle and made the introductions. Bulganin bowed low, extended his hand, and welcomed Catledge to the Soviet Union. After a few more pleasantries, Bulganin proposed a toast. He turned around looking for a bottle, but the liquor had run out. Then an aide came running with another bottle of vodka, and Bulganin and Catledge raised glasses to mutual happiness and health. At that moment, Khrushchev appeared, bouncy and red-faced, and Bulganin introduced him to Catledge. This led to another toast. Catledge did not make his bid for the interview at this time, but it was a propitious beginning, and it was followed later in the week by more of the same. At one party, a Soviet official toasted Catledge by saying, “Here’s best to The New York Times,” adding, “Of course, what I think is best for The New York Times and what you think is best for The New York Times are greatly different. But here’s to the difference.”
After watching the May Day parade, and after sightseeing trips to Kiev and Leningrad, Catledge was informed that his request for an interview had been accepted by Khrushchev, who asked that Catledge appear at the Kremlin on Friday afternoon, May 10. Catledge went to bed early the night before. He already had a list of questions that he had previously prepared with the help of Salisbury and Daniel in New York, and Jorden in Moscow. Catledge arrived at the Kremlin at the appointed hour with Jorden and a press official from the Soviet Foreign Ministry. As they were ushered into Khrushchev’s office, Khrushchev bounced up from behind his desk, extended his pudgy little hand, and led Catledge to a long wooden table, seating Catledge in a chair next to himself.
Catledge, through an interpreter who sat at the head of the table, began by saying that he had not come to Russia to argue about anything, but rather to obtain Khrushchev’s views and to pass them along to readers of The Times. Catledge explained that he was in charge of the “factual” side of The Times, and had nothing to do with the “editorial” side, a distinction that Khrushchev could not understand, and he indicated somehow that it was a crazy way to run a newspaper. But he motioned for Catledge to proceed with the questions, and the interview lasted for two hours. It was characterized by a friendly tone toward the United States, a hope for coexistence, a reminder of Soviet strength; it was a reaffirmation of Khrushchev’s demonstrated anti-Stalinism, which, through The Times, he was conveying directly to the capitalists on Wall Street and the politicians in Washington.
As the interview continued, Khrushchev seemed to warm up even more, gesticulating freely, giving long answers; and while Catledge waited for the translation, he lapsed into reflections. Catledge tried to remind himself of the importance of the occasion—to impress upon himself that he was at this moment sitting at the very center of the international Communist conspiracy, in the presence of the chief engineer of the apparatus, a powerful little man who could influence the preservation of peace or the destruction of the world. Catledge could convince himself of this intellectually. He accepted this as a fact. But he simply could not feel it. Perhaps it was the lack of distance. This face-to-face meeting with communism’s number one man left nothing to imaginary free play, journalistic interpretation, televised hallucination, the whole gambit of informational gadgetry that could produce games of panic—that did during the McCarthy days cause national suspicion; that did during the bomb scare chase optimists into fallout shelters and others out of cities; that did during the Eastland hearings agitate the equilibrium of The Times itself. But in the Kremlin, where Catledge could hear Khrushchev’s breathing, could see his blue eyes and ruddy face and neck and workman’s hands—and know that, with proper attire, Khrushchev could fit that Saturday-afternoon scene in the courthouse square of some Mississippi town—here the menacing specter of Communist aggression that Catledge had been hearing about for years did not alert him, fascinate him, pacify or move him in any way—he could feel nothing, he had hit an emotional dead-spot; and months later, he would still be trying to analyze this lack of reaction.
As the interview ended, Khrushchev stood, shaking Catledge’s hand again and wishing him well. Khrushchev said he would like to continue the interview, but that he now had to go out to meet the Mongolian delegation. He did mention the possibility of visiting the United States, but added, with a chuckle, that he could not come as a tourist without being fingerprinted, and he did not like that. Catledge quickly pulled out his Defense Department Accreditation Card to show his fingerprints on the back of it, explaining that no one in America took offense at being fingerprinted for such documents.
“Then you must be a criminal,” Khrushchev said with a laugh. Then Khrushchev walked with Catledge and Jorden and the Soviet press aide through the outer office into the main corridor, and there he left them, tipping his little hat as he waddled away, saying, “Off to see the Mongolians.”
While visiting other Times bureaus on his way back to New York, Catledge was quickly reunited with the reality of his own regime. One Times correspondent, an old friend, reminded Catledge of a promised raise in salary, a substantial raise, and Catledge said that he had not forgotten it. But the correspondent, suspecting perhaps that it would be a long time before he would again have the managing editor’s undivided attention, pressed the issue—and, after a few more drinks with Catledge, the conversation became very direct and personal, with the correspondent charging that Catledge, his old friend, had greatly disappointed and failed him. Then a rather unexpected thing happened, one that might have been triggered by Catledge’s travel fatigue or the liquor or other inexplicable factors—but tears now came into Catledge’s eyes, and there was a sudden release of open emotion, honesty, hostility, the admission of frustrations that he had felt in New York. The reason that the raise had not come through, Catledge said, was that the budget had been frozen by the publisher’s office. It seemingly was not Sulzberger’s decision so much as it was that of Orvil Dryfoos, who, at forty-four, had become president of The New York Times Company. Sulzberger was still the publisher, but he had not been feeling well this year, having some of the symptoms of the series of strokes that would follow; and, at sixty-five, he had decided to delegate more authority to his son-in-law and successor.
The Times was still making an annual profit—in fact, the company had been in the black each year since Ochs had bought it. But the rising cost of newspaper production, and the recession in 1957, had cut into The Times’ profits, which were never as large as outsiders generally presumed, since the Sulzberger family had followed Ochs’s policy of reinvesting most of the profit back into the business. It had become one of the corporate jokes within The Times that most of the money earned did not come from publishing the greatest newspaper in the world but from the 42 percent interest that Ochs had bought in 1926 in a paper-making mill in Canada—The Times made more money producing paper without words than paper with words. The Spruce Falls Power & Paper Co., Ltd., of Toronto, which supplied two-thirds of The Times’ paper, had accounted for about 53 percent of The New York Times Company’s total profit in recent years. The rest of the company’s earnings came largely from advertising, although in 1957 this income had decreased, largely because of the recession, which caused a 24 percent loss in revenue from the help-wanted ads. Between 1956 and 1957, there was a $624,245 drop in profits, which meant that The New York Times’ net income after taxes had been only $1,462,814—an
amount that The Times’ correspondent overseas could not accept as justification for withholding his raise, but Catledge was powerless to do anything about it now.
While Catledge’s relationship with Dryfoos was cordial, it was not to be compared with the friendship enjoyed by Reston, or by a vice-president of The Times named Amory H. Bradford. Bradford was a lean, lanky New Englander, the son of a Congregational minister and a graduate of the Yale Law School, former intelligence officer who had married Carol Warburg Rothschild—an altogether formidable man. When Amory Bradford addressed the other executives on the fourteenth floor, he seemed to know everything that was going on within the building, seemed to have even the most infinitesimal facts at his fingertips, and Dryfoos was pleased to have such a man on his staff.
Catledge did have a fine relationship with Arthur Hays Sulzberger’s son, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger—known as “Punch”—but Punch Sulzberger had little power, and if he had any ability or promise, he had so far concealed it. He had a reputation within the office as a playboy, and Dryfoos would often complain that Punch did not even read The Times. At thirty-one, Punch Sulzberger held the title of assistant treasurer, although nobody in the news-room knew precisely what he did. They knew only that he had done badly in the schools he had attended, had joined the Marines, had been married and divorced, and that he was an amiable young man who often ended up in Catledge’s back office late in the afternoon, after the news conference, when Catledge was mixing drinks for some of his Times cronies.
But Catledge himself seemed at loose ends now, and he had been out of the office so much that many staff members assumed that Theodore Bernstein was running the department—although this assumption required adjusting later in 1957 when Catledge promoted Clifton Daniel to the rank of assistant to the managing editor, a position from which Daniel could peruse the daily practices and prerogatives of Bernstein.
After Catledge had returned from Russia, he was off again to San Francisco to attend a convention of the American Society of Newspaper Editors. It would turn out to be a fortunate trip. One editor at the convention introduced Catledge to a fine-looking, dark-haired woman from New Orleans who appealed to Catledge very much, and when he returned to New York he seemed more refreshed and decisive than he had been in a long time.
One of the first items on his schedule was to hire a new food editor; the woman who had held the job for years had just resigned because her husband’s business required that he be transferred out of New York, and the applicant for her job that Catledge was to see on this day was a man—a somewhat shy, blushing man with a round, smiling face and rosy cheeks who, upon entering Catledge’s office, introduced himself as Craig Claiborne.
The idea of a man holding the food editor’s job had never occurred to Catledge, because, in addition to making the rounds of restaurants and writing knowledgeably about them, it was also important that The Times’ food editor be able to cook well, to compile recipes, and to feel comfortable while working within a circle of lady journalists in the Women’s-news department on the ninth floor.
“Where did you go to school, son?” Catledge began, after Claiborne had sat down.
“Mississippi State, suh,” Claiborne said.
Catledge nodded approvingly. Then he asked, “Where did you live down there?”
“Polecat Alley,” Claiborne said, referring to a somewhat run-down row of student quarters on the campus.
Catledge smiled.
“So did I.”
When Catledge asked if Claiborne felt qualified for the job on The Times, Claiborne said that he did. He had, after leaving Mississippi State, obtained a journalism degree from the University of Missouri; and in 1953, after his release from the Navy, he had graduated from the Swiss Hotelkeepers Association in Lausanne, which some gourmets consider to be the best cooking school in the world—although Claiborne did admit that The Times’ food editor’s job was an awesome assignment, one that no cooking school could entirely prepare him for. He also said that he had heard that Mr. Markel already had someone in mind for the job.
Catledge reddened in anger.
“I do the hiring and firing around here, son,” he said.
Then, calm again, Catledge asked Claiborne to tell more about himself, and Craig Claiborne, relaxing as Catledge seemed to relax, proceeded to tell something of his personal life, although not too much, for there were parts of it that made him uneasy, even petulant at times, emotions that he usually concealed nicely behind his smiling friendly face.
His mother had run a boardinghouse in the small Mississippi town of Indianola, and she was a fantastic cook. There had been an article in Liberty magazine years ago about her cooking, and even after he had returned from school in Lausanne he still made use of the manuscript cookbook that she had once given him. She had been born Mary Kathleen Craig in Alabama, a veritable Southern belle when she was younger. But though her family was prosperous, there had been drinking problems bordering on alcoholism not only among her kin but also among some of their friends—and as a result, she would never allow whiskey in her own home except at Christmas time, when she made eggnog heavily spiked with bourbon, and she was not above soaking bourbon into the fruitcake. Craig Claiborne remembered that in order to get the bourbon, his mother would give money to one of the boarders and ask that a bottle be obtained from the bootleggers. Like many good Mississippians, she condoned bootlegging but loathed whiskey.
She had married a man fifteen years her senior whom she always referred to as Mister Claiborne—even, Craig suspected, in bed. Mister Claiborne was a quiet man, an accountant by trade who might have done better as a minister. He never missed the Methodist church services on Sunday mornings, or the prayer meetings on Wednesday evenings. As a boy he had gone to tent meetings with other zealously religious members of the Claiborne clan across the border in Tennessee, where he had been born, and he had a sister who had served as a missionary in China and had known Henry Luce when he was a boy. Until her dying day she believed that Luce was the founder and editor of McCall’s.
Mister Claiborne’s failure to make money was the main reason that his big rambling white house eventually took in boarders; but he seemed not to notice them, nor was he distracted or influenced by their habits. He read his Bible, and milked the cows each morning, raised chickens and grew vegetables that were served at the table, and he never drank anything stronger than Coca-Cola, which he called “dope,” and the only time he was heard to say “damn” was when the pickup truck that he was driving collided with another car. Though the boarders tried often to entice him into a game of cards on Sunday afternoons, he always smiled softly and shook his head. Then one Sunday, someone opened the door to his upstairs bedroom—and there he was, playing solitaire.
Young Craig Claiborne learned whatever he learned about the facts of life from Negro nurses. His mother, when she was not cooking or otherwise supervising the house, was usually playing bridge. At Indianola High School, he was shy and unathletic, and the football coach—who was also the mathematics instructor—called him “sissy” in front of the class, and even now Craig Claiborne cannot cope with arithmetic. During World War II he enlisted in the Navy, then reenlisted during the Korean War, finding in this shifting existence a marvelous escape from the sense of suffocation that he felt in the house dominated by his mother, whom he alternately adored and despised, and with whom he would ultimately compete—and surpass.
He can remember precisely the moment when he felt the culinary calling. It was in 1949 while he was a passenger aboard the Ile de France, about to see Paris for the first time, and at dinner he was served fillet of turbot princesse—turbot with a white-wine-and-mushroom sauce—and, as he later described it to a friend, it was a little like getting religion, or more exactly, it was the dépucelage of a palate.
Previously he had done much of his own cooking, but now he had savored cooking as an art, and he began to contemplate a career that would somehow combine cooking and writing and earning a living. It was with th
is in mind that he went to Lausanne in 1953, and he graduated eighth in a class of sixty. Settling in New York, he tried to get a job on Gourmet magazine. When there were no openings at first, he took an interim job as a bartender and continued to call Gourmet until there was an opening as a receptionist; he accepted this, and eventually worked up to an editorial position. He had meanwhile met the woman who was The Times’ food editor, having called her one day shortly after returning from Lausanne suggesting that a story be written about himself: “How would you like to interview a young Mississippian who’s just graduated from the best cooking school in the world?” She wrote the story, and the two became friends. Thus he knew in advance about her plans to resign in 1957, and at her suggestion he applied to The Times; and one morning he was called to appear in the office of Turner Catledge. It was a perfect time for Claiborne to apply. Catledge had not had an easy or uncomplicated decision to make in a long time, and the appearance of a young man from Mississippi wanting to become the food editor appealed to Catledge’s fancy. And when Claiborne mentioned that Markel had someone else in mind for the job, that cinched it—“I do the hiring and firing around here, son”—and Claiborne was hired.