by Blake Bailey
“I can’t sleep nights”: CJ to Leland Hayward, July 15, 1945, Rauner.
“ah, there!” he noted of the last: CJ to Brackett, Aug. 21, 1945, Rauner.
“I believe it’s the only movie”: CJ to Henry Ginsberg, Jan. 21, 1946, Rauner.
accosted him “for a good two hours”: CJ to Brackett and Wilder, May 7, 1946, Rauner.
agreed to a “drastically altered” version: Sam Boal, “Britain Censors ‘Lost Weekend,’ ” Paris Post, Sept. 11, 1945, 1.
“a praise binge for The Lost Weekend”: Lally, Wilder Times, 160.
According to a 1936 study: Norman Jolliffe, “The Alcoholic Admissions to Bellevue Hospital,” Science, March 27, 1936, 306–9.
“the best and most disturbing”: Bosley Crowther, “A Study in Dipsomania,” New York Times, Dec. 3, 1945.
“pretty consistently gratified”: James Agee, “The Lost Weekend,” The Nation, Jan. 22, 1946.
“credit to their smallest bit-player”: CJ to Rinehart, Jan. 27, 1946, Rauner.
“for the reason of your omission”: Brackett to CJ, March 11, 1946, Rauner.
“quiver[ing] with pleasure”: DS-Show, 85.
Chapter Eleven • THE FALL OF VALOR
“I remember your telling me”: CJ to Elling Aannestad, July 12, 1945, Rauner.
“Well that sort of thing”: CJ to RBJ, April 21, 1944, Rauner.
“perverted sense of values”: RBJ to FSJ, April 10 (1946), Rauner.
“You’re the guy who knocks drinking”: Leonard Lyons, “The Lyons Den” (syndicated column), July 15, 1946.
“Though I never did see much”: CJ to Leonora Schinasi, Feb. 28, 1945, Rauner.
“chic beyond Vogue’s wildest dreams”: CJ to RBJ, July 18, 1944, Rauner.
“My story MONEY did not sell”: CJ to FSJ, April 11 (1952), Rauner.
Hillyard, “in desperate need”: EC, 95.
“I’ve many times seen you raise”: CJ to Nila Mack, April 24, 1945, Rauner.
“bundle of nerves”: Bennett Cerf, “Trade Winds,” Saturday Review, Feb. 2, 1946, 18.
“spout quotes by the yard” CJ to Katharine Hepburn, Jan. 18, 1946, Rauner.
“ ‘The counterfeit presentment’ ”: Jackson’s daughter Kate kindly provided me with old 78 recordings of his Information, Please! appearances.
“I got sixty eight letters”: CJ to HJ, Jan. 18, 1946, Rauner.
“authors … less than dirt”: CJ to Stark Young, Jan. 19, 1946, Rauner.
a writer “should never be called on”: CJ to Victor Wolfson, Oct. 9, 1945, Rauner.
“after the talk has got started”: CJ to Ingrid Hallen, Aug. 7, 1946, Rauner.
“one of the most distinguished books”: Quoted in LN.
reminiscent of “WAR AND PEACE”: CJ to Carl Brandt, Jan. 26, 1946, Rauner.
“in plain English”: CJ to Mary McCarthy, July 16 (1945), Vassar.
“the best novel published in America”: CJ to FSJ, Oct. 8, 1945, Rauner.
“To hell with The Lost Weekend”: CJ to Klaus Perls, Nov. 5, 1945, Rauner.
“Greek in it’s [sic] bigness”: CJ to Stark Young, Jan. 19, 1946, Rauner.
“Brother, you don’t know”: CJ to Brandt, Jan. 26, 1946, Rauner.
“If you think I’m worth any dough”: CJ to Perls, Jan. 20, 1946, Rauner.
“in view of [his] unusually fine”: Henry Ginsberg to CJ, Feb. 19, 1946, Rauner.
“If you are still interested”: CJ to Billy Wilder, May 7, 1946, Rauner.
“All I want to do now”: CJ to FSJ, March 10, 1946, Rauner.
“the will to survive in a hostile world”: “Psychiatry in Harlem,” Time, Dec. 1, 1947.
“I take a rather serious view”: Frederic Wertham to Sven M. Gundersen, Feb. 9, 1946, D-HH.
“Patient admitted in a greatly fatigued”: Patient Notes, March 13, 1946, D-HH.
“practically in a state of collapse”: CJ to Lee and Ira Gershwin, March 11, 1946, Rauner.
“Nobody ever perpetrated”: CJ to Brackett and Wilder, March 13, 1946, Rauner.
“Anybody else in these United States”: CJ to Brackett and Wilder, May 7, 1946, Rauner.
“Who packed the bags”: RBJ to FSJ, April 10 (1946), Rauner.
“optimistic about the whole situation”: Wertham to CJ, May 16, 1946, Rauner.
“out, impossible, verboten”: CJ to Wertham, May 17, 1946, Rauner.
“This is neither Munich”: Quoted in CJ, “Noted Author Delivers Some Caustic Comments on His Wealthy Neighbors,” Manchester Union Leader, Aug. 1, 1946.
“I pray that God Almighty”: Quoted in LN.
Jackson “moved back to the city”: “City vs. Country,” Life, March 17, 1947, 95.
“what time [his] light went out”: “Would You Rather Live in a Small Town or a Big City?” Town Meeting: Bulletin of America’s Town Meeting of the Air, Dec. 26, 1946, 21.
“After a week or two”: Ibid., 9.
Warren himself felt “proud again”: John Pillsbury, “Orford May Hold Forum, Invite Jackson to Speak,” Manchester Union Leader, Aug. 3, 1946, 3
“test the validity”: “Charles Jackson Sees Bigotry and Intolerance in Neighboring Orford,” The Dartmouth, Sept. 9, 1946, 1.
“but the third novel is about syphilis”: CJ to McCarthy, July 13, 1945, Vassar.
“novel of marriage”: CJ to Roy Myers, Aug. 10, 1946, Rauner.
“cause as much tongue-wagging”: Bennett Cerf, “Trade Winds,” Saturday Review, undated clipping (c. summer 1946), Rauner.
“Empty ninety percent of this year’s novels”: Wertham, “The Tragedy of Deviation from the Norm,” unpublished review of FV, Rauner.
“I’m afraid this letter”: CJ to FSJ, Sept. 10, 1946, Rauner.
Reviews of The Fall of Valor: R. E. Kingery, in Library Journal, Sept. 15, 1946, 1207; Charles Poore, in New York Times, Oct. 3, 1946, 25; Clifton Fadiman, in New York Herald Tribune Weekly Book Review, Oct. 4, 1946, 7; A. C. Spectorsky, in Chicago Sun Book Week, Oct. 6, 1946, 3; Harrison Smith, in Saturday Review, Oct. 5, 1946, 12; Edmund Wilson, in The New Yorker, Oct. 5, 1946, 118; Robert Gorham Davis, New York Times Book Review, Oct. 6, 1946, 8.
envisaged “another sensational hit”: Thomas Mann to CJ, Oct. 5, 1946, Rauner.
“In your Lost Weekend style”: P. Wylie to CJ, July 16, 1945, Princeton.
“a dull story, about dull people”: Edward Weeks, “The Atlantic Bookshelf,” The Atlantic, Dec. 1946, 150.
“the style and spirit”: Quoted in Patience Ross to BB, Febuary 18, 1947, Rauner.
Jackson, “outraged,” changed publishers: BB to Ross, March 5, 1947, Rauner.
“a slow tumid emotion”: Quoted in Ross to BB, April 9, 1947, Rauner.
“I have become awfully hard boiled”: CJ to Isabel Leighton, Feb. 14, 1946, Rauner.
“$150,000 just to have them”: Irving Lazar to CJ, Feb. 16, 1946, Rauner.
“GABLE’S BACK”: Quoted in CJ to Roy Myers, Aug. 10, 1946, Rauner.
“downright lunacy”: W. R. Wilkerson, “Trade Views,” Hollywood Reporter, Aug. 13, 1946, 1.
The “homosexual angle”: Thomas R. Pryor, “Jerry Wald, the Big Idea Man,” New York Times, Jan. 19, 1947, X5.
“It is difficult to exaggerate”: Quoted in CJ to Rinehart, April 1, 1948, Rauner.
“the problem of homosexuality”: CJ to KWJ, Aug. 1, 1964, JFC.
“a place of utmost honor”: Richard Amory, “Charles Jackson’s ‘The Fall of Valor,’ ” Vector, April 1972; posted at http://home.earthlink.net/~richardamory.com/id3.html.
“If you see a photograph”: Harrison Kinney, ed., The Thurber Letters: The Wit, Wisdom and Surprising Life of James Thurber (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002), 405.
“I longed for some ice-cold beer”: Joseph Kessel, The Road Back: A Report on Alcoholics Anonymous (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1962), 151.
“What do you know, I’m drinking again”: CJ/AA-59.
“It took him five years”: Richard R. Peabody, The Common Sense of Drinking (Boston: Little,
Brown & Co., 1931), 123–24.
“brilliant actress who finds it easy”: Marjory Adams, “Charles Jackson Amazed by Legends Now Surrounding Him,” Boston Daily Globe, June 20, 1945, Amusements 14.
Intermezzo • BOOM IN MALAGA
“[Flew will] be dreadfully”: R. Hamlet to FSJ, n.d., Rauner.
“It is enchanting to be back”: Monroe Wheeler to FSJ, March 31, 1947, Rauner.
“You can be sure Reggie”: CJ to FSJ, Sept. 7 (1941), Rauner.
“just crazy about Boomer”: Author int. Barbara Peech Streeter, June 28, 2009.
“you may expect [as a gift]”: CJ to SJP, Sept. 18, 1958, JFC.
“Boom was Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle”: Author int. Pepa Ferrer Devan, April 10, 2009.
“But how terrible, the language”: FSJ to SJP, Aug. 4, 1966, JFC.
whinging about “sick headaches”: F&W.
“given [her] a home”: CBJ’s genealogy, JFC.
“rub her eyes in the most corny”: CJ to FSJ, Oct. 8, 1945, Rauner.
“I have gotten where I am afraid”: SWJ to FSJ, Sept. 28, 1945, Rauner.
“I often think that Sal”: CJ to CBJ, Jan. 13, 1954, Rauner.
“I don’t know when I have felt”: SWJ to FSJ, Oct. 25, 1949, Rauner.
“My Gosh, Fred,” Bob wrote: CBJ to FSJ, Aug. 12, 1956, Rauner.
“Well, Boom was off somewhere”: Author int. Barbara Peech Streeter, June 21, 2009.
“Foolish woman or not”: EC, 112.
“I don’t seem to enjoy anyone but you”: James M. Gates to FSJ, July 31, 1946, Rauner.
“Jim is still out of control”: RBJ to SJP, March 22, 1972, JFC.
Chapter Twelve • THE OUTER EDGES
“It’s about time I stopped dishing”: CJ to Ted Amussen, May 13, 1946, Rauner.
“As the outline stands”: BB to CJ, Feb. 20, 1947, Rauner.
“which ain’t hay, even by Texas standards”: CJ to Adelaide Getty, June 19, 1947, Rauner.
“The novel is a horrible headache”: CJ to Herb F. West, Aug. 26, 1947, Rauner.
“It wasn’t the same old Lazar”: CJ to Lee and Ira Gershwin, June 19, 1947, Rauner.
“Nothing could make me”: LN.
“a book I know you always deplored”: CJ to RBJ, June 6, 1968, Rauner.
“He’s a terrible addict”: RBJ to FSJ, July 3 (1947), Rauner.
“On May 28, 1947, you filled”: Gundersen to Caswell-Massey Co., July 9, 1947, D-HH.
“Only when his speech thickens”: RBJ to FSJ, Oct. 18 (1947), Rauner.
“he was what was called”: e-mail from Arthur Laurents to author, Nov. 23, 2009.
“Persons habitually or occasionally”: Quoted in Michael Paller, “The Couch and Tennessee,” Tennessee Williams Annual Review no. 3 (2000); posted at http://www.tennesseewilliamsstudies.org/archives/2000/3paller.htm.
“I respect the book completely”: Lawrence S. Kubie to Laura Z. Hobson, Sept. 17, 1946, Rauner.
“I said, ‘Larry, how come’ ”: Reminiscences of Roger W. Straus, Jr., Jan. 11, 1978, on page 363 in CUCOHC.
“A choice of a partner”: Quoted in Georges-Michel Sarotte, Like a Brother, Like a Lover: Male Homosexuality in the American Novel and Theater from Herman Melville to James Baldwin (Garden City, NY: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1978), xi.
“as either normal or neurotic”: Quoted in Kenneth Lewes, The Psychoanalytic Theory of Homosexuality (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1988), 130.
“unraveled the Kinsey report”: “Dr. Kinsey’s Misremembers,” Time, June 14, 1948.
“That I had a deep psychological aversion”: CJ, “The More Social Disease,” unpublished ms., Rauner.
“The only effective way of fighting”: Edmund Bergler, Homosexuality: Disease or Way of Life? (New York: Hill & Wang, 1956), 302.
the psychoanalyst “must be merciless”: Quoted in Paller, “The Couch and Tennessee.”
“I never knew if he were”: CJ to DS, March 29, 1951, Rauner.
“give Kubie a wide berth”: CJ to Strauses, Nov. 14, 1953, Rauner.
“This is the kind of thing”: Quoted in CJ to Alice Morris, June 12, 1952, Rauner.
he was “over-drugged”: CJ to KWJ, Aug. 1, 1964, JFC.
“Crime and Punishment, Junior”: Quoted in Bennett Cerf, “Trade Winds,” Saturday Review, Nov. 29, 1947.
“I think you listened to too many”: Charles Brackett to CJ, Aug. 12, 1946, Rauner.
“self-portraiture at its best”: Brackett to CJ, May 10, 1948, Rauner.
“How does it feel to be famous?”: “Authors’ Ordeal: Five writers get a full dose of lionizing from Richmond booklovers,” Life, May 17, 1948, 157.
“It was an interesting idea”: The MGM reader’s report, dated Jan. 2, 1948, is among CJ’s papers at Rauner.
“very much interested”: A. H. Weiler, “Random Notes about Pictures …, ” New York Times, June 27, 1948, X3.
“I couldn’t be happier about it”: CJ to BB, Aug. 15, 1949, Rauner.
Reviews for The Outer Edges: Alice Hackett, in Publishers Weekly, May 15, 1948; Nash K. Burger, in New York Times Book Review, May 27, 1948, 23; William DuBois, in New York Times, May 30, 1948, 5; Lee Rogow, Saturday Review, May 29, 1948, 16; Sterling North, New York Post, May 27, 1948; Lewis Gannett, New York Herald Tribune, June 4, 1948; J. M. Lalley, The New Yorker, June 5, 1948, 101; John Woodburn, New Republic, June 7, 1948, 25; “The Lost Effort,” Time, June 21, 1948, 108.
“very bad book year”: BB to RBJ, Aug. 3, 1948, Rauner.
“upon the sad, sophisticated”: Angus Wilson, “New Novels,” The Listener, April 6, 1950.
“[holding] an audience of about ten”: CJ to RBJ, Aug. 13, 1948, Rauner.
“Only after a long time”: CJ to RBJ, July 14, 1944, Rauner.
His “poems, which I love”: CJ to DS, Jan. 27, 1965, JFC.
“Cured, I am frizzled, stale”: Robert Lowell, “Home after Three Months Away”; posted at http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15285.
only “great originals”: CJ to Brackett, Sept. 14, 1954, Rauner.
fell over “dead of shock”: CJ to RBJ, Sept. 13, 1948, Rauner.
“to eat strange foods”: CJ to RBJ, Aug. 20, 1948, Rauner.
“all childish stormy ego”: CJ to RBJ, Aug. 24, 1948, Rauner.
“nothing less than a pig”: CJ to RBJ, Sept. 14, 1948, Rauner.
A copy of Jackson’s script: Found among CJ’s papers at Rauner.
“which will earn me (I truly know)”: CJ to Roy Myers, Aug. 20, 1946, Rauner.
“When I meet the guy I’ll know”: Quoted in CJ to Fanny Brice, Oct. 13, 1948, Rauner.
“Jackson was about to start”: Leonard Lyons, “The Lyons Den” (syndicated column), Nov. 30, 1948.
“We would retrench in every way”: CJ to Gershwins, Dec. 2, 1948, Rauner.
“I felt really sorry for him”: Interview with Norman Katkov; posted at http://www.classictvhistory.com/OralHistories/norman_katkov.html.
Chapter Thirteen • WHAT HAPPENED
tempted to “chuck everything”: CJ to BB, March 23, 1945, Rauner.
“a character sketch merely”: CJ to “Stan [Rinehart], Bernice, and Company,” Feb. 27, 1948, Rauner.
“ultimate wordage” … Tolstoy: LN.
“If a man could ever set down”: CJ, A Letter from Home, radio script, Rauner.
“True Confessions”: CJ to DS, Feb. 2, 1951, Rauner.
“Who was Charles Jackson?”: DS-Show, 76.
“not long-term debt at all”: RBJ to BB, Nov. 20, 1948, Rauner.
“spending so riotously”: CJ to Gershwins, Dec. 2, 1948, Rauner.
“My errors of three and two years ago”: CJ to BB, July 11, 1949, Rauner.
“to keep him bucked up”: LN.
“I’m quite sore about their silence”: CJ to Leonora Schinasi, June 20, 1947, Rauner.
“In all my experience”: CJ memo to Rinehart & Co. (c. Feb. 1948), Rauner.
“just allowed [The Outer Edges]”: RBJ to BB, July 29 [1948], Rauner.
“There is more advertising to come”: BB to CJ, July 8, 1948, Rauner.
“The very thought of Rinehart”: CJ to Walter Pisole, Aug. 5, 1948, Rauner.
“battled for [The Lost Weekend]”: John Farrar to CJ, March 1, 1946, Rauner.
“the practically unheard-of royalty”: CJ to Gershwins, Dec. 2, 1948, Rauner.
“By Saturday noon I thought”: CJ to BB, April 4, 1949, Rauner.
“In spite of his meticulous grooming”: DS-Show, 77.
“a proper, important, medium-sized”: Ian Parker, “Showboat” (profile of RS), The New Yorker, April 8, 2002, 58.
“members ex-officio of his family”: DS-Show, 78.
“I’d be so happy”: CJ to DS, Dec. 28, 1949, Rauner.
“puckish, penetrating, opinionated”: Max Wylie, “Charles Reginald Jackson,” Serif 10, no. 3 (1973), 31.
“unshaven, wild-eyed” appearance: DS-Show, 81.
“I’m willing to share a bath”: CJ to RS, Dec. 24, 1953, Rauner.
“Truly, darling Dolly”: CJ to DS, Jan. 2, 1951, Rauner.
“Levin so often just misses”: CJ to DS, Nov. 19, 1951, Rauner.
“I am embarked on a world Masterpiece”: CJ to DS, Jan. 27, 1965, JFC.
“I do not know what literary rank”: DS-Show, 83.
“an excuse to describe everything”: CJ to BB, Dec. 11, 1948, Rauner.
“she thought it tedious, verbose”: CJ to BB, Dec. 15, Rauner.
“Nobody who reads the magazine”: BB to CJ, May 4, 1949, Rauner.
deplored the “namby pamby”: Margaret Cousins to BB, April 15, 1949, Rauner.
“Really it seems as though”: CJ to BB, July 20, 1949, Rauner.
“I am of the era of Ethel Nicholoy”: Luceine Heniore to CJ, June 25, 1949, Rauner.
“the elementary mistake”: Review of The Sunnier Side, Times Literary Supplement, Nov. 10, 1950.
“a wonderful short story”: CJ to BB, Aug. 15, 1949, Rauner.
abidingly “astonished”: New York Herald Tribune Book Review, unpaginated clipping dated March 5, 1950, Rauner.
“The Sunnier Side” “says so much”: Cousins to BB, Nov. 2, 1949, Rauner.
“I do not know whether”: Cousins to CJ, Nov. 15, 1949, Rauner.