The Kingdom and the Power

by Gay Talese

  Lester Markel was the son of a Lower East Side banker named Jacob Markel, another systematic man who was accustomed to being fawned upon in the world that he knew. Jacob Markel, whose father had been a banker in Germany, founded the Markel Brothers Bank at 93 Canal Street, in downtown Manhattan. There he hung a portrait of himself on the wall, sat back and considered the appeals of those who approached him for loans, many of these men being Middle European Jewish shopkeepers and peddlers who wished to send their sons to college or to purchase steamship tickets to bring their families to the United States.

  Lester Markel, the first of Jacob’s three sons, was born in a house on Madison Avenue at Ninety-fifth Street. But later Jacob felt that the boys should get out of the city and live in the “country”—which meant the Bronx. This borough still had many farms and pleasant woodlands in 1906, when the Markel family moved to 165th Street in the Morrisania section; but the Bronx was also in the early stages of a real-estate boom, a great uptown movement that included an influx of Jews into areas that had been largely German and Irish. It was here, at the age of twelve, that Lester Markel began to experience deeply the anti-Semitic insults of other boys, and sometimes they would chase him and throw rocks at him. Jacob Markel saw no reason to move. He seemed almost insensitive to his son’s harassment, being remote from it all day in his bank downtown, and perhaps being resigned to such conditions as part of a young Jewish boy’s education.

  As a young man growing up, Lester was humorless and shy. He attended Townsend Harris High School, where he was very studious, and then went on to City College and the Columbia School of Journalism. He had begun to write articles at eighteen for a small newspaper in the Bronx, and he discovered journalism to be suited to his temperament—being inquisitive but diffident, he now had an excuse for approaching strangers and seeking answers to his questions.

  He met Iphigene Ochs on the campus at Columbia, but he did not attempt to get a job on The Times after graduating from Columbia in 1914. He was only nineteen and required experience. He began first with the Bronx Home News, then he switched to the Evening Post, and finally got a reporting job on the New York Tribune, where he would remain for nine years. On the Tribune he met Garet Garrett, an editor who had worked on The Times and had known Ochs well. Markel also became acquainted with Franklin P. Adams, Marc Connelly, Robert Benchley, George S. Kaufman, and many others who would go on to better things; and when Adams switched to the World, he urged Herbert Bayard Swope to hire Markel. Markel had done a bit of everything on the Tribune—reporting, rewrite, copyreading; he had been successively the city editor, night editor, and, at the age of twenty-seven, assistant managing editor. Swope was impressed, and he sent for Markel, and he seemed eager to hire him until he asked: “How much do you make?”

  “Ten thousand,” Markel said.

  “That’s a lot of money,” Swope said, shaking his head—to which Markel asked, “How much do you make?”

  But two years later, in 1923, Adolph Ochs learned of Markel, and he invited him to spend the weekend in Atlantic City, where the publisher was relaxing with his wife, his daughter, and Sulzberger. Shortly after Markel arrived, Ochs took him on a two-hour ride in a rolling chair along the boardwalk. He questioned and evaluated the young man, and he liked most of Markel’s ideas for improving the Sunday edition of The Times, although Ochs was somewhat wary of Markel’s plan for a special supplement that would interpret the week’s news. Ochs thought that this would foster excessive opinion in the paper, and would also be repetitious of what had already appeared, and it was not until 1935, a few months before Ochs’s death, that Markel and Sulzberger were able to launch the “Week in Review” section, which would later earn a special Pulitzer Prize citation.

  It was said that Markel hit his full stride as an editor with the publication of the “Review” section, which had finally provided him with the proper format for news interpretation: the daily Times told readers what had happened, and Markel’s “Review” told readers why it had happened. The Magazine, too, kept pace with the news, with no article appearing without a “news peg”: if there was to be an article about a Broadway stage star, that star had to be appearing in a show that was either about to open, or was somehow in the news; if there was to be an article about a certain politician, or city, or country, they also had to be in the news. If there was a formula about Markel’s system, that was it—news interpreted, news explained, newsworthy personalities revealed. When Markel joined The Times in 1923, the Sunday edition’s circulation was 546,497 and the daily’s was 337,427; when Markel completed his twenty-fifth year on The Times in 1948, and had expanded his staff from five to fifty-five, the Sunday circulation was 1,106,153 and the daily’s was 539,158.

  In marking his twenty-fifth anniversary, a party was held in his honor on the eighth floor, and a few members of the staff presented to him a mock version of a “Review” devoted entirely to his own career. The reporting was very detailed, perhaps too detailed: it dealt with Markel’s mannerisms, his daily routine, his “system”—it told of his rising at 6 a.m., reading the morning papers, including the Daily Worker, and then taking a ten-minute sunlamp treatment while listening to the newscast from a portable radio perched on his stomach. While taking a shower, he kept a pad and pencil on a special hook within reach should an idea occur to him—he also kept next to his bed a pad that lit up when the pencil was withdrawn so that he could jot down ideas in the middle of the night—and the general tone of the profile was that Lester Markel was a restless machine who on weekends “relaxes intensely” and fiddled endlessly with his television set until he got a perfect image, then switched to another channel.

  Markel saw little humor in this profile, and he was displeased to learn later that several copies of the mock “Review” were in circulation around the building. There was also one copy in his personal folder in The Times’ morgue on the third floor, but there was also attached to it a memo written by Markel’s editor in charge of the “Week in Review”:

  NOTICE—NOTICE—NOTICE

  The material on the attached proof is not available for public distribution. The article was prepared for limited circulation. It is not to be considered as research material. It is not to be shown to any outsiders seeking information about Mr. Markel without the specific permission of Mr. Markel. And if such permission is obtained then each specific bit of information must be rechecked before it can be used.

  J. Desmond

  Sunday dept.

  While no part of the Sunday department was exempt from the pressure of Markel’s presence, the editor of the Sunday “Book Review,” Francis Brown, probably felt it less than did the other Sunday editors. This condition existed because Markel considered himself a newspaperman, not a littérateur, and therefore he did not try to influence the “Book Review,” except when he had a special interest in a certain book. Another reason for the relatively good fortune of the “Book Review” was Francis Brown himself—he knew how to handle Markel, had a way of humoring him, patronizing him without going too far, chiding him softly with a benign little smile: “Oh now really, Lester, you can’t be serious!”

  Francis Brown was a tweedy, stocky, gray-haired man with an impressive leonine face and the leisurely, mildly condescending manner of the academician that he was. He had taught at Dartmouth and Columbia, he had a Ph.D., and he was a friend of Orvil Dryfoos, another Dartmouth alumnus. Brown had come to The Times in 1930 at the personal request of Adolph Ochs’s brother, George Ochs-Oakes, who, at sixty-eight, was taking courses at Columbia University toward a Ph.D. He had met Brown while the latter was teaching in the Columbia history department. The two men became friendly, and Brown later accepted the offer to become an associate editor of Current History, a monthly auxiliary publication of The Times that Ochs-Oakes edited on the tenth floor of the Times building.

  In 1936, five years after Ochs-Oakes’s death and a year after Ochs’s death, Sulzberger sold Current History, and Francis Brown moved to the Sunday department, w
here he became one of the important men on Markel’s newly formed “Week in Review.” But in 1945, Brown resigned to accept a lucrative offer from Time. Markel regretted Brown’s leaving, and, after a few “Book Review” editors had left because they could not tolerate Markel, Francis Brown was offered the editorship of the “Book Review,” which he accepted in 1949. Markel did not want to lose Brown a second time, and so this contributed to their modus vivendi.

  Brown’s staff consisted of about twenty subordinates who helped him plan and edit the “Book Review.” Since only 2,500 of the 7,500 books sent each year to The Times by book publishers would be reviewed, it was a tight selective process from the start. Books by “name” writers would be reviewed, of course, as would books by new authors who had somehow received prepublication attention—either through serialization in magazines, or through the testimonials of other literary figures, or through the promotional skill of the publisher or the author, provided that the publisher or author was not regarded as merely a huckster or a hack and had not made enemies of influential people within The Times. As was often the case within The Times, “influence” was not necessarily the exclusive prerogative of top editors. Sometimes a clerk, on a busy day, could add a decisive little push that would determine whether or not a single piece of incoming mail—be it a book, a news feature, a photograph, a press release, or any of a hundred other items in the daily deluge—was taken from the pile and brought to the attention of the proper editor, or was ignored until it was too late. (Smart press agents who were especially anxious that a certain press release not be ignored by The Times would sometimes send a copy directly to Sulzberger’s office: they knew that Sulzberger himself would never see it, but they hoped that one of Sulzberger’s secretaries, in redirecting the release to the proper editor, might attach an “F.Y.I.” slip bearing Sulzberger’s initials; an editor receiving a press release with an “AHS” sticker was unlikely to ignore it.)

  Once a book had been selected for review, the next step was to designate a reviewer. There were hundreds of men and women around the nation—authors, educators, politicians, editors and journalists, critics from magazines and quarterlies—who reviewed books for The Times because of the prestige attached to it, and because, in the cases of some, they hoped that as regular Times reviewers they might receive the same courtesy that The Times almost always extended to its own staff members whenever they had published a book. Books by Timesmen were rarely panned and were nearly always given generous, if not extensive, treatment in both the daily edition and the Sunday “Book Review.” This was not necessarily the result of pressure on the part of anyone, it just happened that way, it was more or less a tradition—just as it had long been the practice that when a Timesman died, he received a longer obituary in the paper than he would have received had he not worked for The Times. Adolph Ochs had been a great believer in fine obituaries for Timesmen. Ochs had been awed by grand funerals, and when a senior Times editor died Ochs had wanted his executives to attend the funeral as a group, and then to accompany the body with a procession of carriages past the Times building; and Ochs had wanted to see all the other Times workers lined along the sidewalk with their hats off in tribute. Since Ochs had not appreciated harsh criticism of any sort in his newspaper, he did not expect to see the literary efforts of Timesmen condemned in The Times. This Ochsian expectation became traditional, and it was extended, too, to Ochs’s friends, to friends of The Times. (After Orvil Dryfoos had been named a trustee of Dartmouth College, there had appeared in The Times a complimentary “Man in the News” on Dartmouth’s president, John Sloan Dickey. James Reston had complained about this to Sulzberger, saying that it might seem that The Times was “buttering up” a friend. Sulzberger saw Reston’s point, and he regretted that the story about Dryfoos’ trusteeship and the profile on Dickey had appeared within such a short time. It had just happened that way.)

  The friends of The Times who wrote regularly for the Sunday “Book Review” were reviewers who greatly admired the paper, stood by its principles, and shared its traditional respect for the established order and solid middle-class values. While they regarded John O’Hara as a puerile writer and often dismissed his work, and were not overly impressed with Hemingway, they generally tried to find something favorable to say in each review. If they wrote reviews that were too derogatory there was always the possibility that the books would be deemed unworthy of the space, and thus the reviews might not be published—except in cases where the review dealt with such writers as O’Hara, that denigrator of the middle class. (In partial retaliation for Times criticism O’Hara was believed to have established a tradition of his own: he insisted that his publisher, Random House, schedule the publication of his books on Thanksgiving Days, a time readers had little to do except read the paper, and the one day the reviews of Orville Prescott, the daily Times’ rather prudish book critic, did not appear.)

  Adolph Ochs had wanted books to be presented “as news,” to be treated in The Times as other news items were treated; he did not want his reviews to become a precious literary forum for intellectuals and critics who were determined to display their erudition or superiority without telling Times readers what the books were about. While some of Ochs’s concepts were changed after his death, they changed slowly, and much remained unchanged as Francis Brown settled into the editorship of the “Book Review.” Most of the Sunday reviewers wrote as Ochs would have wished—they rarely seemed impassioned or scathing, their language was quiet and discreet. They were obviously respected members of their communities: professors from Princeton and Smith, lady novelists in Westchester, liberal editors from the South, venerable retired scholars in the Southwest; they were experts on Japanese art, the Civil War, anthropologists and social commentators, biographers of presidents. They were friends of The Times. When an anthology that Markel had edited arrived on Francis Brown’s desk, Brown selected a reviewer—and, when the review came in, it was favorable, very favorable. And this intramural delicacy between The Times and its reviewers went on for years, and Brown seemed to have one of the easier executive jobs on the paper. In spite of the hiring of a few new young editors with mildly radical ideas, the “Book Review” still covered books “as news”—and while it tolerated occasional diversions, the reviewers would feel the unseen hand of Markel responding instinctively to the ghost of Ochs if the review went too far. This was the experience of a new young reviewer named John Simon, a man with a reputation for being brilliant and tough as a film critic for The New Leader and drama critic for The Hudson Review. He had been approached by one of Francis Brown’s subordinate editors, Eliot Fremont-Smith, to review two books on the theater, one by John Mason Brown, the other by Walter Kerr.

  Simon was very pleased, it being his first opportunity to appear in The Times, and within a few weeks his review was completed and sent in. Simon had been very critical of both books, and in summarizing the flaws in the book by the Herald Tribune’s critic, Walter Kerr, John Simon added:

  All this would be less disturbing if Mr. Kerr were not the best of today’s daily reviewers: the only one whose collected articles can actually be read through and whose daily reviews can provide some guidance. But must we accept the one-eyed king?

  When Lester Markel read this paragraph, he decided that it would have to be rewritten or eliminated. Markel was not going to permit Simon’s left-handed compliment of the Herald Tribune’s Walter Kerr to dismiss The New York Times’ theater reviewers in such a cavalier fashion. This was embarrassing for those caught in the middle—Francis Brown and Fremont-Smith. Privately, they saw nothing wrong in publishing Simon’s review exactly as written, but Markel was unyielding—it would have to be changed. When Simon was told this he refused to change a word, even though he was also told that the elimination of the single paragraph would not destroy the validity of the review, and there was also the hint that the Simon review was being considered for the lead position in the Sunday “Book Review,” or, in any case, near the front of the sect
ion.

  Unappeased, John Simon replied that if the review were not printed as written that he would like to have it returned, and would try to sell it elsewhere. Simon was upset, and there was always the chance that Simon’s displeasure would be relayed by him to other young new critics outside The Times as an example of censorship—a situation that Francis Brown hoped to avoid.

  Weeks passed, nothing happened. Telephone calls and notes between Simon and The Times’ “Book Review” did not produce a happy compromise on either side. Then finally The Times did run Simon’s entire review—not on the cover or near the front, as he had been told, but in the back of the “Book Review,” displayed as inconspicuously as possible. And later, when John Simon’s own book, Acid Test, was published, The Times’ Sunday “Book Review” did not review it.

  12

  Long before Catledge knew exactly what to do, he knew that something radical had to be done about the lethargy of the New York staff. But when Theodore Bernstein suggested that Catledge replace the city editor with A. M. Rosenthal, who was then, in 1962, The Times’ correspondent in Tokyo, Catledge vacillated. Rosenthal, who was thirty-nine, had no experience as an editor, had not lived in New York in nearly a decade, and might be intimidated by the enormous task of running the New York staff and trying to change it. Catledge also debated the logic of removing from the reportorial staff a by-line that Times readers looked for: stories “by A. M. Rosenthal” from Tokyo, and before that from Poland and India, had possessed a special style, a warmth and readability and sensitivity to the nuances of politics and people. Rosenthal had won a Pulitzer Prize after his expulsion in 1959 from Poland, where, in the government’s opinion, he had “probed too deeply” into its internal affairs. One of the Magazine pieces that Rosenthal had written in Poland for Markel—an article based on a visit to Auschwitz, the Nazi concentration camp in which millions had died in gas chambers during World War II—became a journalistic classic: