Crazy Salad and Scribble Scribble

by Nora Ephron

  July, 1975

  The Making of Theodore H. White

  He was alone, as always.

  A man who finishes a book is always alone when he finishes it, and Theodore H. White was alone. It was a hot, muggy day in New York when he finished, or perhaps it was a cold, windy night; there is no way to be certain, although it is certain that Theodore H. White was certain of what the weather was like that day, or that night, because when Theodore H. White writes about things, he notices the weather, and he usually manages to get it into the first paragraph or first few pages of whatever he writes. “Hyannis Port sparkled in the sun that day, as did all New England” (The Making of the President 1960). “It was hot; the sun was blinding; there would be a moment of cool shade ahead under the overpass they were approaching” (The Making of the President 1964). “Thursday had been a cold day of drizzling rain in Manhattan, where Richard Nixon lived” (The Making of the President 1968). “I could see the fan of yellow water below shortly before the plane dipped into the overcast” (The Making of the President 1972). And now Theodore H. White looked at the opening line of his new book, Breach of Faith: “Wednesday dawned with an overcast in Washington—hot, sticky, threatening to rain—July 24th, 1974.” It had worked before and it would work again.

  White flicked a cigarette ash from his forty-sixth Marlboro of the day and took the last sheet of one hundred percent rag Strathmore parchment typing paper from his twenty-two-year-old IBM Executive typewriter. It was the 19,246,753rd piece of typing paper he had typed in his sixty years. He was tired. He was old and tired. He was also short. But mainly he was tired. He was tired of writing the same book over and over again. He was tired of being taken in, taken in by John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Robert Kennedy, General Westmoreland, Richard Nixon, tired of being taken in by every major politician in the last sixteen years. He was tired of being hornswoggled by winners. He was tired of being made to look like an ass, tired of having to apologize in each successive book for the mistakes he had made in the one before. He was tired of being imitated by other journalists, and he was tired of rewriting their work, which had surpassed his own. He was tired of things going wrong, tired of being in the wrong place at the wrong time; the night of the Saturday Night Massacre, for example, he found himself not in the Oval Office but on vacation in the South of France, where he was reduced to hearing the news from his hotel maid. He was tired of describing the people he was writing about as tired.

  We must understand how Theodore H. White got to be that way, how he got to be so old and so tired. We must understand how this man grew to have a respect and awe for the institutions of American government that was so overweening as to blind him to the weaknesses of the men who ran them. We must understand how he came to believe that all men in power—even base men—were essentially noble, and when they failed to be noble, it had merely to do with flaws, flaws that grew out of a massive confluence of forces, forces like PR, the burgeoning bureaucracy, television, manipulation and California. We must understand his associates, good men, tired men but good men, men he lunched with every week, men who worked at newsmagazines which had long since stopped printing run-on sentences with subordinate clauses attached to the end. And to understand what has happened to Theodore H. White, which is the story of this column, one would have to go back to earlier years, to the place where it all started.

  Time magazine.

  That was where it all started. At Time magazine. Not everything started at Time magazine—Theodore H. White developed his infuriating style of repeating phrases over and over again later in his life, after he had left Time magazine—but that is where most of it started. It was at Time magazine that White picked up the two overriding devices of newsmagazine writing. The first was a passion for tidbits, for small details, for color. President Kennedy liked to eat tomato soup with sour cream in it for lunch. Adlai Stevenson sunned himself in blue sneakers and blue shorts. Hubert Humphrey ate cheese sandwiches whenever he was in the midst of a crisis.

  The second was omniscience, the omniscience that results when a writer has had a week, or a month, or a year to let events sift out, the kind of omniscience, in short, that owes so much to hindsight.

  Until 1959, when Theodore H. White began work on the four-hundred-one-page, blue-bound Making of the President 1960, no reporter had written a book on a political campaign using these two devices. White did, and his book changed the way political campaigns were covered. He wrote the 1960 campaign as a national pageant, a novelistic struggle for power between two men. He wrote about what they wore and what they ate and what they said behind the scenes. He went to meetings other reporters did not even ask to attend; the participants at the meetings paid scant attention to him. And then, of course, the book was published, became a best seller, and everything began to change.

  Change.

  Change begins slowly, as it always does, and when it began, White was slow to notice it. He covered the 1964 campaign as he had covered the one before; he did not see that all the detail and color and tidbits and dialogue made no difference in that election; the political process was not working in the neat way it had worked four years before, with hard-fought primaries and nationally televised debates and a cliff-hanger vote; the 1964 election was over before it even began. Then he came to 1968, and the change, mounting like an invisible landslide, intensified, owing to a massive confluence of factors. The first was the national press, which began to out-report him. The second was White himself. He no longer went to meetings where he was ignored; he was, after all, Theodore H. White, historian to American Presidential elections. Had he been a student of physics and the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, instead of a student of history and all the Cicero he could cram into his books, he might have understood what was happening. But he did not. The change, the invisible landslide of change, eluded him. He wrote a book about a new Nixon, an easier, more relaxed, more affable Nixon. He missed the point. He missed the point about Vietnam; he missed the point about the demonstrations. Larry O’Brien used to be important; now it was these kids; who the hell were these kids to come along and take politics away from Theodore H. White? He missed the point about the Nixon campaign too. And so, in 1969, came the first great humiliation. A young man named Joe McGinniss, a young man who had gone to low- and mid-level meetings of the Nixon campaign, where the participants had paid him scant attention, produced the campaign book of the year, The Selling of the President, and even knocked off Theodore H. White’s title in the process. Then, before he knew it, it was 1972, another campaign, another election, and White went through it, like so many other reporters, ignoring Watergate; months later, as he was finishing the 1972 book, he was forced to deal with the escalating scandal; he stuck it in, a paragraph here, a paragraph there, a chapter to wrap it all up, all this sticking out like sore thumbs throughout the manuscript. That year, the best book on the campaign was written not by White but by Timothy Crouse, who had stayed at the fringes, reporting on the press. To make matters worse, Crouse’s book, The Boys on the Bus, included a long, not entirely flattering section on Theodore H. White, a section in which White complained, almost bitterly, about the turn things had taken. He spoke of the night McGovern won the nomination in Miami:

  “It’s appalling what we’ve done to these guys,” he told Crouse. “McGovern was like a fish in a goldfish bowl. There were three different network crews at different times. The still photographers kept coming in in groups of five. And there were at least six writers sitting in the corner—I don’t even know their names. We’re all sitting there watching him work on his acceptance speech, poor bastard. He tries to go into the bedroom with Fred Dutton to go over the list of Vice-Presidents, which would later turn out to be the fuck-up of the century, of course, and all of us are observing him, taking notes like mad, getting all the little details. Which I think I invented as a method of reporting and which I now sincerely regret. If you write about this, say that I sincerely regret it. Who gives a fuck if the guy had milk and To
tal for breakfast?”

  White sat in the Harvard chair given to him by the Harvard Alumni Association and looked with irritation at his new manuscript, Breach of Faith. Here it was 1975 and he had a new book coming out. What in Christ was he doing with a book coming out in 1975? He wasn’t supposed to have to write the next one until 1977. Theodore H. White shook his close-cropped, black-haired head. It was these damned politicians. He’d spent the best years of his life trying to train these assholes, and they couldn’t even stay in office the full four years.

  White stared at the title. Breach of faith. The new book’s thesis was that Richard Nixon had breached the faith of the American people in the Presidency; that was what had caused him to be driven from office. But deep down, Theodore H. White knew that the faith Nixon had breached had been his, Theodore H. White’s. White was the only American left who still believed in the institution of the Presidency. Theodore H. White was depressed. Any day now, he might have to start work on the next book, on The Making of the President 1976, and where would he ever find a candidate who measured up to his own feelings about the United States and its institutions? The questions lay in his brain cells, growing like an invisible landslide, and suddenly Theodore H. White had the answer. He would have to run for President. That was the only way. That was the only way to be sure that the political processes would function the way he believed they ought to. That was the only way he could get all those behind-the-scenes meetings to function properly. That was the only way he could get all those other reporters out of his story. White realized that something very important was happening. And so he did what he always does when he realizes something very important is happening: he called the weather bureau.

  It was forty-nine degrees and raining in Central Park.

  August, 1975

  Richard Collin and the Spaghetti Recipe

  It is generally agreed among the people who have any perspective on it at all—and there are only a handful who do—that the entire civic scandal of Richard Collin and the mysterious spaghetti sauce recipe could only have happened in New Orleans—which was, in fact, where it did happen—and for fairly obvious reasons. For one thing, New Orleans is one of the two most ingrown, self-obsessed little cities in the United States. (The other is San Francisco.) For another, people in New Orleans really care about food, care about it passionately, can spend hours arguing over whether Antoine’s is better than Galatoire’s or the other way around. What sets the people of New Orleans apart from the people of San Francisco in this respect is that in New Orleans, there is basically nothing to do but eat and then argue about it.

  All of which should have made Richard Collin a welcome addition to the New Orleans food scene. Richard Collin is a restaurant critic. He is New Orleans’s first and only serious restaurant critic. A professor of American history at the University of New Orleans, Collin, forty-three, began his career in food in 1970 as the author of The New Orleans Underground Gourmet (Simon and Schuster). A few months after its publication he was hired by the New Orleans States-Item to write a weekly restaurant column. In it, Collin employs an extremely elaborate system of stars and dots and parentheses and X’s which takes over five column-inches of space to explain each week. In addition, he uses an expression he coined to describe things he particularly loves; he calls them platonic dishes. “This is my own personal accolade,” Collin once explained. “The term is derived from Plato’s Republic. It simply means the best imaginable realization of a particular dish.” Collin’s style of criticism can best be described as hyperbolic; it can also be described as self-important and long-winded. But he works hard, and his guidebook is considered as reliable as any city restaurant guide in the country.

  In New Orleans, however, the question of whether Collin is reliable is not the point. The point is that he is critical—and in public. Arguing privately about the merits of various restaurants is one thing, but criticizing them publicly runs completely counter to the local spirit of boosterism. To make matters worse, Collin is not even from New Orleans; he is from Philadelphia and he is seen as an outsider who has stumbled onto a gold mine at the expense of local merchants. So when the episode of the spaghetti sauce recipe and the two thousand dollars surfaced a few months ago, the city fathers fell upon it as an excuse to ask the States-Item to investigate Collin. But I’m getting ahead of the story.

  The position of restaurant critic is a new slot at most newspapers; nonetheless, the job has a tradition and a set of ethics. The classic American restaurant critic is rarely photographed, makes reservations under a pseudonym, cannot accept free meals, and never reveals his identity to a proprietor. Some restaurant critics have gone to extraordinary lengths to preserve their anonymity; last year, for example, Jack Shelton of San Francisco magazine was subpoenaed to testify in a local trial, and he appeared wearing a mask.

  Prior to the publication of his book, Richard Collin followed traditional practices; in any case, it would have done him no good to reveal himself, since his name meant nothing. But the success of the book, the newspaper column (which ran a sketch of Collin alongside his by-line) and subsequent public appearances made Collin’s face and name well-known. By 1973, when the revised edition of The Underground Gourmet was published, Collin had moved into a slightly revisionist phase of behavior. He continued to pay for his meals, but he admitted that from time to time a restaurateur managed to force a free one on him. He continued to reserve under a pseudonym, but it became increasingly difficult to keep from being recognized. He began to metamorphose into a role he thought of as kindly godfather, but which might more correctly be defined as participatory journalist. He became a close friend of Warren Le Ruth, whose restaurant, Le Ruth’s, received Collin’s highest rating: four stars and ten platonic dishes. He gave advice to owners and to chefs. He seemed to regard himself as an impresario who was going to bring to New Orleans cuisine the acclaim it deserved. “I frequently introduce myself after the check has been paid,” he wrote, “especially in smaller restaurants that are doing well and that deserve to be encouraged. I also notify restaurants in advance when a favorable review is to appear in the Saturday paper so that the restaurant does not run out of food by six or seven in the evening, as has happened when the pending review was kept a secret. For this edition I have not been quite as anonymous as I was for the first edition. Many restaurateurs saw me on television or met me at speaking engagements around town. However, known or unknown, distant or friendly, I have continued to base my evaluations solely on the genuine merits of the food restaurants serve. I enjoy being a restaurant critic too much to allow my integrity to be compromised.”

  The trouble began in April, 1973, with what looked—to Richard Collin, at least—like a pure case of civic duty. Turci’s Original Italian Restaurant was about to close. Turci’s was a typical grubby neighborhood restaurant on Poydras Street in downtown New Orleans; it had sluggish service but a platonic spaghetti sauce. It also had a platonic veal parmigiana, but the important thing was the spaghetti sauce: it had a rich, tomatoey, almost burned flavor, and it was packed with meatballs, mushrooms and chicken. Collin had given the restaurant three stars and, with his customary enthusiasm, announced that Turci’s cooking was “unsurpassed in New Orleans or in Italy itself.” But times got hard for Turci’s, the neighborhood changed, and Rose Turci Serwich, the daughter of the original owners, decided she would have to shut down. Collin heard the news and wrote a column suggesting that someone raise the money to move Turci’s to a better location and save the restaurant.

  A New Orleans businessman named Joe Bernstein read the article. Along with two partners, he had just bought a building on Magazine Street and was looking for a ground-floor tenant. Bernstein called one of his partners, Ben C. Toledano, who occasionally wrote book reviews for the States-Item and knew Collin; Toledano called Collin and asked him to serve as intermediary in arranging the purchase of Turci’s. “It was an uncomfortable position,” Collin recalled recently, “but it was part of my responsibility to th
e community at large.” Collin went ahead and arranged for Turci’s to sell its name and good will for a reported ten thousand dollars and for Mrs. Serwich to sign an employment contract. A year later, the new Turci’s opened. It was beautiful. It was crowded. It was fashionable. And it was terrible. Everyone knew it—Joe Bernstein knew it and Mrs. Serwich knew it. Both of them were on the phone to Richard Collin to complain about restaurant personnel. Mrs. Serwich hated the chef. Mrs. Serwich had objections to the manager. Joe Bernstein was going crazy because of the tension between Mrs. Serwich and the chef and Mrs. Serwich and the manager. But most of all, there was the problem of the spaghetti sauce. “I couldn’t go to a cocktail party or go out on the street without someone telling me the sauce just wasn’t the same,” Joe Bernstein recalled. “I became frantic.” The problem with the spaghetti sauce was really a very simple one: there was no recipe for it, and there never had been. The old Turci’s spaghetti sauce had been a concoction made of tomato paste and leftovers. The new Turci’s had no leftovers, owing to a streamlined kitchen and cost accounting; the new chef had no idea what to do under the circumstances. In the midst of all this, Richard Collin dropped in to Turci’s for dinner.