Genius in Disguise

by Thomas Kunkel

4. He didn’t refuse to discuss it. He discussed it quite openly and fully after he got started, which was almost immediately. Would kill this, and also suggest that, since I (as an example) have no idea whatever what is meant by that radio serial the next sentence might well go, too.

  5. Have no idea at all what throwing everything up for grabs means; never have heard the expression. Advocate clearer wording, unless this is a recognized expression.

  6. He wouldn’t find out she was asleep after he switched off the lights, presumably; couldn’t see her. Suggest might just cut as marked, and duck the matter. These people seem to have bedside lights. The woman has a bedside table, it has been said.

  7. This piece is slugged Anytime, but summer is the vacation season. Suggest that if this piece not used in summer (which unlikely) this be made to read “He’s gone away for three weeks.”

  8. Think would be effective to italicize as marked. Later De Vries does this, in similar circumstances. And the that is definitely cluttery.

  9. Don’t think fast as I could quite right, for the robbery was during the day and he hasn’t got around to the Ford agency until around 9 p.m., which has been established as the closing time. Would word as marked, or some such. The man would naturally be tied up with the police quite a while, etc.

  10. Later, 10a, next galley, Meeley puts the coat back on, so it should be taken off here.

  11. Gun includes rifles, shotguns, and everything else. Would make it a hand-weapon here, first mention. Revolvers are out of date and the word pistol hardly used any more. Think automatic the word, but maybe there’s another.

  12. Seems to me might be more effective if first part last clause went in Roman, as marked. Would emphasize the last part more.

  13. Repeat here with drove on at start of paragraph.

  14. I think a dash here. It’s a self interruption.

  15. Slander better, seems to me. The man would say it, not print it. Libel is printed slander.

  16. Why not simplify the thing and keep it rational by having the letters from Mrs. T? It isn’t logical that this fellow would keep around incriminating letters that he had written whereas there is a little logic of his not destroying her letters.

  17. I wonder if something more definite than do this would be better here: do away with you, or some such. There has been no specific statement either by Disbrow or the author that D. is going to kill Meeley, and maybe should be clinched here. It is true that they are headed for a ravine for, presumably a killing, but only D. and the reader know that. Meeley doesn’t. Or, might be made more specific earlier. Might have D. tell M. that they’re headed for the ravine, back at (a) Galley 2. M. would then draw the conclusion that he is going to be bumped off, and this would make the do this here stand up.

  18. I don’t get any picture from sitting stretched out.

  19. Would duck this said here somehow; two others in the quotes.

  For Deb—

  and her little women

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  AND A NOTE ON THE SOURCES

  Not long ago I came across a line in a book review about another of journalism’s flamboyant figures that I regard as equally appropriate to my subject. The review—in The New Yorker, as it happens—was of a biography of British press mogul Lord Beaverbrook, and the line read, “This isn’t the first life of Beaverbrook, but it’s the first real one.”

  Dale Kramer’s 1951 book, mentioned in Chapter 15, is the only other straightforward biography of Ross, and it suffered from all the shortcomings The New Yorker attributed to it at the time. James Thurber’s memoir The Years with Ross, written serially for The Atlantic Monthly and published as a book in 1959, is a delight. As biography, however, it is dubious, and a reader could be forgiven for carrying away the impression that Ross helped Thurber make The New Yorker rather than the other way around. A 1968 memoir by Jane Grant, Ross, The New Yorker and Me, demonstrates similar myopia, without benefit of Thurber’s style or wit. And Brendan Gill’s otherwise charming 1975 memoir, Here at The New Yorker, gives Ross a real bruising.

  All these books helped cement in the public mind a picture of Ross as a perpetually confused hayseed, a naïf, an uncouth provincial who succeeded almost in spite of himself. I hope this book, in some small way, counteracts that impression. Still, each of these previous works provided much insight and information about Ross and The New Yorker, and where appropriate I have tried to credit them in the text and notes.

  Of the hundreds of people who touched this project, I must single out several for special thanks. Patricia Ross Honcoop, who appears to have inherited all her father’s best qualities, was unfailingly gracious and helpful. New Yorker writer and editor Roger Angell responded warmly to a stranger’s query and set me off in the right direction. New Yorker mainstays Philip Hamburger (you too, Anna), William Maxwell, and Louis Forster more or less adopted me, spending countless hours keeping me on the trail and making sure I didn’t go hungry. I thank them not only for their generosity of spirit but for their valued friendship. From their unique vantage point, New Yorker editor Tina Brown and her predecessor, Robert Gottlieb, were kind enough to share their thoughts on Ross and the magazine, and made available its formidable resources to me.

  The man they succeeded, William Shawn, spoke with me briefly on two occasions before he died. He was characteristically reticent about cooperating per se, but he told me my hypothesis was sound, and he was personally encouraging. What he said of Ross—“He was an extraordinary man, and in every way remarkable”—was just as true of Ross’s heir. Cecille Shawn was giving of her time and memories, and told me much about her husband that I suspect he would never have volunteered himself.

  I want to thank the late Peter Fleischmann, son of the cofounder, Raoul Fleischmann, and his successor as publisher of The New Yorker. Though in ill health, he made time to see me and was most gracious, as was his wife, Jeanne.

  The happiest aspect of this project was the opportunity to meet and get to know so many longtime New Yorker staffers, who proved as charming as I imagined them to be and who, to a person, were free with their time and reminiscences. My only regret, and it is a heavy one, is that some of these lovely people did not live to see the book finished. So I thank New Yorkers present and past Joseph Mitchell, Gardner Botsford, Edith Oliver, Emily Hahn, Edward Newhouse, Leo Rosten, John Bainbridge, Mary D. Kierstead, Brendan Gill, E. J. Kahn, Jr., Dorothy Lobrano Guth, Eleanor Gould Packard (generally, and specifically for saving hundreds of Ross’s invaluable query sheets), Albert Hubbell, Harriet and William Walden, Berton Roueché, Wolcott (Tony) Gibbs, Jr., Thomas Whiteside, Peter De Vries, Marcia Davenport, Clifton Fadiman, William Mangold, Burton Bernstein, William Steig, Mischa Richter, Arthur Getz, Andy Logan, Dana Fradon, Lee Lorenz, Arne Gittleman, Peter Matthiessen, Bruce Bliven, Jr., William Buxton, Charles McGrath, Bill Fitzgerald, Sheila McGrath, Edward Chase, Helen Stark, Richard McCallister, Barbara Nicholls, Charles Baskerville, and Edith Iglauer Daly. Also such friends and family as Joel White (son of E. B. and Katharine), Peggy Day (widow of Clarence), Maude Chasen, Rebecca Bernstien, Mrs. Milton Greenstein, Daphne Hellman Shih, Jane Ellen Austin, James and Sara Gilson, Robert Gilson, Charles Porteous, Helen Hayes, Elizabeth Paepcke, Phyllis Cerf Wagner, and Al Hirschfeld. My thanks also to Augustus and Margery Hallum, Ronnie Clint, Barbara Ragland, Tony Cichielo, and fellow writers Linda H. Davis, Roy Hoopes, Steve Oney, Joan Walker Iams, Bruce Berger, and Tom Philp.

  Of the many special collections consulted for this book, six proved indispensable. For their help and encouragement, and for permission to use their material, I would like to thank Mary B. Bowling and Francine Tyler at the New York Public Library’s Rare Books and Manuscripts Division, which houses The New Yorker’s vast archival material, as well as H. L. Mencken’s correspondence with Ross; Patricia Willis at Yale University’s Beinecke Library, which houses the New Yorker–related papers of James Thurber, as well as Rebecca West’s correspondence with Ross; Victoria Jones at the University of Oregon Library, whic
h has Jane Grant’s papers; Leo M. Dolenski at Bryn Mawr College’s Canaday Library, which has Katharine S. White’s papers; James Tyler and Lucy Burgess at Cornell University’s Kroch Library, which has the papers of E. B. White and Frank Sullivan; and Charles Niles at Boston University’s Mugar Library, which maintains the Ralph Ingersoll collection.

  I likewise acknowledge the Library of Congress, and the libraries of the University of Wyoming; Ohio State University; Hamilton College; Syracuse University; Penn State University; Harvard University; the University of Florida; Columbia University (Oral History collection); New York University; and Princeton University, as well as the New-York Historical Society; the Aspen Historical Society; the Utah State Historical Society; the State Historical Society of Wisconsin; the California State Library; the Museum of Television and Radio; and the New York State Public Service Commission. Thanks as well to Leigh Baker Michels at The Advocate in Stamford, Connecticut, and to Linda Amster and David Jones at The New York Times, for making old newspaper clippings available to me.

  I would like to thank my agent, Peter Matson, of Sterling Lord Literistic Inc., and my editor at Random House, who eschews acknowledgment but who is widely known for his skill, for his compassion, and for smoking too much. Had I not stumbled into their sure hands, I cannot imagine this project ever happening. Virginia Avery copy-edited the manuscript with intelligence and sensitivity, and Lawrence LaRose helped me with countless details.

  Most of all I would like to thank my wife, Debra, who aided me in untold ways with this book, and all my family and friends for their good humor, support and encouragement through what must have seemed a mystifying, even masochistic, process.

  The aforementioned are largely responsible for whatever good things are contained herein. The errors, sadly, are mine alone.

  Thomas Kunkel

  August 15, 1994

  NOTES

  Abbreviations used in these notes:

  HR Harold Ross

  JG Jane Grant

  KSW Katharine S. White

  EBW E. B. White

  JT James Thurber

  WG Wolcott Gibbs

  FS Frank Sullivan

  RI Ralph Ingersoll

  RW Rebecca West

  TNY The New Yorker

  Prologue: A Hell of an Hour

  1 “In no other country”: The New York Times, 1/7/50.

  2 “Prominent persons”: Edmund Wilson to Morton D. Zabel, 4/28/50.

  3 “I danced with Harriet”: John Cheever to Polly and Milton C. Winternitz, 3/6 [1950].

  4 Mencken and Ross at the Ritz: From “Mr. Mencken, Mr. Ross,” an unpublished monograph by St. Clair McKelway, 1958.

  5 “like a movie film”: HR to RW, 3/21/50.

  6 “In retrospect I am”: EBW to FS, Sunday [December 1951].

  7 “The main satisfaction”: Charles W. Morton to HR, 3/30/50.

  8 “I guess we’ve made”: HR to Morton, 4/3/50.

  9 “All that remains”: Richard H. Rovere, Arrivals and Departures, p. 62.

  1: The Petted Darling

  1 George Ross—Ida Martin courtship: Jane Grant, Ross, The New Yorker and Me, p. 34.

  2 “everybody in town”: Current Biography, 1943, p. 634.

  3 “I may well have been the boy”: HR to Margaret Case Harriman, quoted in Harriman, The Vicious Circle, p. 175.

  4 “didn’t have much of a chance”: HR to RW, 10/4/49.

  5 The story about Ross overhearing his mother and friends talking about the madam is from an interview with Elizabeth Paepcke, 8/12/92.

  6 “violent anti-Mormon”: HR to Frank I. Sefrit, 1/16/50.

  7 “At some time an impressive”: RW in The Sunday Times (London), 7/19/59.

  8 “a buxom old Roman emperor”: This and the entire Pillar of Fire segment is from a letter from Joseph Mitchell to JT, 8/24/57.

  9 Ross’s fascination with Frederick Palmer: Dale Kramer, Ross and The New Yorker, p. 6.

  10 Ross playing hooky in the library: Grant, p. 39.

  11 “Jesus Christ, kid”: Shelley Armitage, John Held, Jr.: Illustrator of the Jazz Age, p. 4.

  12 “I had accumulated”: Salt Lake Tribune, 10/6/35.

  13 “But the real trouble”: Ibid.

  2: Tramp

  1 “The re-navigating”: This and next passage, Marysville Appeal, 3/28/11.

  2 “If I stayed anywhere”: Charles W. Morton, It Has Its Charms …, p. 208.

  3 “clear, hard, classical”: RW in The Sunday Times (London), 7/19/59.

  4 “Someone had to edit”: Salt Lake Tribune, 10/6/35.

  5 “He’s got them convinced”: Dale Kramer, p. 11.

  6 “It so happens”: HR query notes on “Dry Run,” 6/25/51.

  7 “at the lowest pay”: HR to Marjorie Roehl and Barbara Selby, 4/9/46.

  8 New Orleans saloon story: Henry F. Pringle, “Ross of The New Yorker,” ’48 Magazine, March 1948.

  9 “the police did what they always do”: This and subsequent passages, San Francisco Call and Post, 6/23/15.

  10 “Usually these pieces”: Steve Oney to author, 9/21/93.

  11 “Being of that vast”: Atlanta Journal, 7/20/13.

  12 “a picture-chaser”: Cyrus LeRoy Baldridge to JT, [1958].

  13 Ross and Polynesian chieftain: Grant, p. 46.

  14 “The generation that acclaimed”: Richard Hofstadter, Social Darwinism in American Thought, p. 34.

  15 Ross and W. Averell Harriman: Dale Kramer, p. 9.

  3: The Stars and Stripes

  1 “He and a pal had put one”: Cyrus LeRoy Baldridge to JT, 4/16/58.

  2 “There were 2,600 troops”: San Francisco Examiner, 9/14/17.

  3 “By way of comfort”: HR to parents, [1917].

  4 “I was too flip”: Grant, p. 49.

  5 “For two hours we hunted”: HR quoted in Squads Write! by John T. Winterich, pp. 289–90.

  6 “Without saying goodbye”: Dale Kramer, p. 20.

  7 “military son of a bitch”: HR to Samuel Hopkins Adams, Tuesday [1945].

  8 “May the private have”: Dale Kramer, p. 25.

  9 “a human owl”: Samuel Hopkins Adams, A. Woollcott: His Life and His World, p. 87.

  10 “Where’d you work?”: Grant, p. 51.

  11 “trundling along in some exposed:” S. H. Adams, p. 87.

  12 “Far off to the left”: Winterich, p. 14.

  13 “more than almost any individual”: Alfred E. Cornebise: The Stars and Stripes, p. 124.

  14 “In the cover of the bushes”: HR, quoted in Winterich, pp. 147–48.

  15 “The Americans were in it strong”: HR to parents, 7/23/18.

  16 “At home I was always”: New York Tribune, 5/11/19.

  17 “I was standing with my mouth open”: San Francisco Examiner, 4/29/18.

  18 Ross and the Ferris wheel: Marc Connelly, Voices Offstage, p. 95.

  19 “a rough guy”: Interview with Charles Baskerville, 3/24/93.

  20 “As I peered at him”: Grant, p. 21.

  21 “I haven’t laughed much”: HR to JG, 2/27/19.

  22 “brave and fearful”: Grant, pp. 32–33.

  23 “In a restaurant today”: HR to parents, 11/14/18.

  24 “Oh, I can’t do that”: The money-order story is from “The Life and Death of the Lafayette Publishing Co.” by John T. Winterich, The New Colophon, September 1949.

  25 “although my stock of shirts”: HR to parents, 5/6/19.

  26 “the most widely known private”: San Francisco Examiner, 6/3/19.

  27 “stood out so conspicuously”: Cornebise, p. 16.

  28 “Clad in these”: Alexander Woollcott to Brigadier General Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., 1/14/43.

  4: New Yorker

  1 “an early manifestation”: HR to Samuel Hopkins Adams, Tuesday [1945].

  2 “Goddammit, it’s a pretty howdy-do”: Grant, p. 123.

  3 “Don’t you ever buy”: Ibid., p. 114.

  4 “his words hit the listener”: Dale Kramer, p. 35.

  5
“Each embraces New York”: E. B. White, Here Is New York, p. 18.

  6 “It was an intimate world”: Interview with Charles Baskerville, 2/18/93.

  7 “Aw, why don’t you two”: Harriman, p. 139.

  8 This account of the formation of the Round Table is largely based on that of James R. Gaines in Wit’s End: Days and Nights of the Algonquin Round Table. His version is generally corroborated by Grant, and by Ross in various correspondence.

  9 “I was there a lot”: HR to H. L. Mencken, July 27 [year unknown].

  10 “Fine, this is the first time”: Howard Teichmann, George S. Kaufman: An Intimate Portrait, p. 202.

  11 “At least I’m not a writing soldier”: Harriman, Vicious Circle, p. 241.

  12 “a sort of adopted child”: Frank Case, Tales of a Wayward Inn, p. 65.

  13 “Frank, I feel so wonderful”: Harriman, Vicious Circle, p. 51.

  14 “teamsterlike snorts”: Ben Hecht, Charlie: The Improbable Life and Times of Charles MacArthur, p. 97.

  15 “He looked at you as if”: Interview with Rebecca Bernstien, 1/14/92.

  16 “daring felicity of phrase”: Julie Goldsmith Gilbert, Ferber: A Biography, p. 110.

  17 “To J. Toohey’s”: Franklin P. Adams, The Diary of Our Own Samuel Pepys, Vol. 1, p. 248.

  18 “So to our inn”: Ibid., pp. 455–56.

  19 “a cowhand who’d lost”: Harpo Marx, Harpo Speaks!, p. 173.

  20 “I remember having dinner”: Russel Crouse to JT, 9/4/57.

  21 “It was Anna Case”: HR to S. H. Adams, Tuesday [1945].

  22 “We adored Aleck”: Harriman, Vicious Circle, p. 115.

  23 “I agree with you”: S. H. Adams, p. 131.

  24 “He carried a dummy”: James Thurber, The Years with Ross, p. 304.

  25 “How the hell could a man”: Hecht, p. 141.

  26 “That’s the trouble”: Corey Ford, The Time of Laughter, pp. 112–13.

  27 “Some of them didn’t really”: Harriman, Vicious Circle, p. 180.