The Fun of It: Stories from The Talk of the Town (Modern Library Paperbacks)

by Lillian Ross

  “Delish,” we said.

  We were joined by a tall, bony maiden wearing a folksy native Austrian costume.

  “Here she is, back again! Help yourself, my dear!” Mr. Brown said, laughing heartily. “My Austrian neighbor from across the aisle!”

  “I come alvays für snocks!” the Austrian maiden said, snacking the salmon.

  “She can’t stay away from our salmon!” Mr. Brown called out.

  “You come to see me für vhite vine aftervard,” she said.

  “Thank you, my dear,” said Mr. Brown. “Let’s go right now.”

  We were greeted at the Weinland Österreich Booth by a tall young man, with a big, long face, who looked like the Austrian maiden’s brother.

  “Vhite vine,” she ordered, for Mr. Brown and us.

  “Aren’t you joining us?” Mr. Brown asked, graciously.

  “I prefer the red,” she said. “But they say the fish has to svim in the vhite.”

  “Vhite and red both, ve have had good response,” said her brother. “Austrian vines are very Austrian. Charming, light, and fresh. Spritzig.”

  “You said it. Wow, this is good!” said Mr. Brown.

  “Now ve go back for more salmon,” said the Austrian maiden.

  “O.K., my dear,” said Mr. Brown, and he gave us a hearty wave.

  We headed for the Twining Tea Booth and shook hands with the Englishman in charge.

  “Anything new?” we asked.

  “Our Twining tea bags are now packaged exactly like the loose tea,” he said. “We’re saying, ‘Twining Tea Bags are twins to our tins.’ ”

  “Who thought it up?” we asked.

  “Somebody in America, I believe,” he said. “More and more people in America are going in for good tea, you know. We’ve just come out with a new one— Indian Breakfast Tea. Made from Assam. On a hot afternoon, our Earl Grey is delicious. At night, when you’re weary, the Jasmine is good. But there’s nothing better in the morning than a good, strong cup of tea. It pulls you around.”

  We were still very thirsty, but Twining wasn’t offering samples, so we moseyed about, pausing at the headquarters booth of the Twentieth Annual National Fancy Food and Confection Show. The woman in charge told us the show was a big success. She was eating a hot dog on a bun, with sauerkraut, and sipping a sugar-free cola drink.

  “What’s the idea?” we asked, watching her take a big bite of the hot dog.

  “I got it out on the street, at the corner,” she told us, without apology. “Surrounded by all this glamour, I always get a yen for something more prosaic.”

  We went on, and made a few mistakes. Bean jelly with Japanese citrus, which some man from Tokyo told us was a very good dessert. Mistake. Some dried cuttlefish, which another man from Tokyo told us was great with beer. Mistake. Some salami Calabrese from Italy, which was supposed to be free of garlic. Mistake. (We get a garlic-free Genoa salami from a little place in Great Neck via our friend Lola Finkelstein, and that is perfect!) We wound up, happily, at the booth of the Vinton Popcorn Company, of Vinton, Iowa. (“It’s ALWAYS popcorn time! Enjoy VINTON popcorn. It’s the popping-est.”) An angry-looking fellow named Donley F. Jager was in charge, and we hung around with him and ate his popcorn, which he said was selected from his own varieties of seed.

  “We do not buy open-market corn,” he told us angrily. “We don’t aim for the movie business, because they are constantly driving you down on price. That’s point one. And point two is that our yellow popcorn pops forty-four to one and our white corn pops thirty-three to one. We recommend strictly our own coconut oil to pop with. It’s strictly clear. Colored oil burns out, has a bad smell, and it costs you extra. Now, do you want to eat something special?” he asked angrily.

  “Of course.”

  “Our parched, or toasted, sweet corn,” he said, sounding angry as hell. He handed us a sample package called Krunchy Nuggets of Sweetcorn. (“Krunchy Nuggets are a swell friend to keep company with. Especially when you’re just sitting around the fireside visiting with other friends and sipping your favorite beverage. Just put all these beautiful little golden nuggets in a bowl and you can’t help but reaching in to say ‘Hi’ to the tasty little Krunchy Nuggets.”)

  We ate some. “Delish,” we said.

  “We went through forty-eight varieties of corn to get the only three that are satisfactory, but don’t ask me how we make it,” he said. “We’ve got a secret formula.”

  “What are you sore about?” we asked.

  “Who said I’m sore?” he said angrily, and he ate some of his toasted sweet corn. “I’m from Iowa.”

  1974

  BEING PRESENT — Jacqueline Onassis

  THE newest museum in town is the International Center of Photography, which occupies the mansion that formerly served as headquarters for the National Audubon Society, on the northeast corner of Fifth Avenue and Ninety-fourth Street. The week before its recent gala opening, we talked with Cornell Capa, its executive director, and with Karl Katz, one of the moving spirits behind it. The Center will exhibit, teach, and publish photography, and will set up archives for the preservation of photographs. It grew out of the International Fund for Concerned Photography, founded in 1966 by Mr. Capa, who was one of the most eminent photographers for Life. Like the Fund, the Center has been dedicated to the memory of three photojournalists who were killed in the nineteen-fifties while on picture assignments: David Seymour (Chim), Werner Bischof, and Robert Capa (Cornell’s older brother). All this we learned from Mr. Katz, an ebullient man of forty-five, who is Chairman for Special Projects of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, while lunching with him in the staff dining room of the Met.

  “The Center will be concentrating on photography as a means of communication rather than as art,” Mr. Katz told us. “It is interested in committed photojournalism—in documentary photography, which no longer has an outlet, now that the big picture magazines have folded. Documentary photography could be said to fall into two broad categories.” Mr. Katz had brought a pile of books to lunch and had put them on the chair next to him. He reached for one, “The Concerned Photographer,” edited by Cornell Capa, and riffled through it. “Here. This says it better than I can. It’s from Cornell’s introduction.” He pointed to the lines “Lewis W. Hine, an early humanitarian-with-a-camera, may have stated it best: ‘There were two things I wanted to do. I wanted to show the things that had to be corrected. I wanted to show the things that had to be appreciated.’ ” Mr. Katz shut the book and continued, “Well, that’s what it’s all about. Now, at last, Cornell has a place of his own. It’s been a long time coming. This brilliant, absolutely lovable man, a Hungarian who murders the English language, has never had the recognition he deserves, because he hasn’t wanted it. He’s always doing things for other people. He has put together exhibitions for all the great museums—for the Library of Congress, the Jewish Museum, the Metropolitan. Any time those places want a guest photography exhibit, they call Cornell and he drops everything. And he’s done eleven books—some of his own pictures, and some he’s edited. Those books are the best. This guy’s been a friend, a father figure, a teacher to anyone who cares about photography. Some of us felt we couldn’t let him go on dispersing his talent, his energy. He had to have a place where he could teach, and where he could reach more people. Somehow we got a little seed money from foundations. Cornell found this lovely house. And now—Well, you’ll see.”

  Accompanied by Mr. Katz, we left the Metropolitan and walked up the Park side of Fifth Avenue in bright sunlight. We stopped at the corner of Ninety-fourth Street and looked across at the façade of what is still known as Audubon House, a six-story Georgian building of red brick, with shiny black shutters. Lovely it is. We crossed the street and looked at the metal plaque by the front door:

  LANDMARKS OF NEW YORK AUDUBON HOUSE

  DELANO AND ALDRICH WERE THE ARCHITECTS OF THIS GEORGIAN STYLE MANSION, COMPLETED ABOUT 1915 FOR WILLARD STRAIGHT. LATER OWNERS WERE JUDGE ELBERT H. GARY AND THEN
MRS. HARRISON WILLIAMS FROM WHOM THE NATIONAL AUDUBON SOCIETY PURCHASED THE PROPERTY IN 1952.

  PLAQUE ERECTED 1964 BY

  THE NEW YORK COMMUNITY TRUST

  We walked into a circular, marble-floored entrance hall. A young girl with long hair and glasses sat at a table, talking into a telephone cradled on one shoulder, and filling envelopes with both hands. As she talked, a second phone kept ringing. She greeted Mr. Katz with a smile, and we headed up a broad marble stairway. On the second floor, we emerged into a long, high-ceilinged, wood-panelled room with a fireplace at one end and a handsome parquet floor. This was once the Straights’ reception room and is now called Gallery 2. There we found a young man holding a metal rod. Mr. Katz introduced him to us as Bhupendra Karia, an Indian photographer, who had been working with Cornell Capa for two years and is now the Center’s associate director. As we stood talking, Mr. Capa walked in—a sturdy man of fifty-six, with bushy gray hair, bushy eyebrows, and a smiling face. “There you are,” he said. “The baby is about to be born. We will make it for the opening. Come. I want to show you everything.”

  Mr. Capa put one arm around Mr. Katz and the other arm around us, and began to steer us through. “We have put the house back exactly as it used to be,” he said. “When we moved in, there were many partitions, which we have taken down. See the panelling? We will never hurt it. We designed special boards to hang pictures from, with metal rods.” He pointed to the rod that Mr. Karia was holding. “A genius who was produced by Karl Katz thought these up. But, like all geniuses, he made the rods so that they wouldn’t fit the holes. Right, Bhupendra?” Mr. Karia smiled.

  Gallery 2 and a large wood-panelled room adjoining it were to be used for one of the opening exhibitions—“Apropos U.S.S.R. (1954 and 1973),” made up of photographs taken by Henri Cartier-Bresson on two trips to Russia. On the opposite side, the reception room opened into a wood-panelled library, which had a large number of folding chairs stacked against the walls, and three tall windows facing Fifth Avenue. “Here we will have lectures, audiovisuals, conferences,” Mr. Capa said.

  Mr. Katz looked at his watch and said he had to get back to the Metropolitan. Mr. Capa clapped him on the back, said goodbye, and then led us upstairs to a large panelled room on the third floor. We both sat down in directors’ chairs of red canvas, drawn up to a Formica-topped table. This room, Mr. Capa explained, was to be used for master classes. Some of the leading photographers would come here once a week and conduct seminars. He went on to say that the Center would be the only museum in the country devoted exclusively to photography, except for the International Museum of Photography at George Eastman House, in Rochester, which was established in 1947. “Modern Art and Whitney, they show photography, of course,” he said. “They buy a few negatives of the great photographers, but what happens to the rest? I became concerned about that when, around the same time, my brother and Bischof and Seymour died. All their negatives, all their life’s work—I could save them. But what happens with the other photographers? The family puts their photographs in the attic, and one day they get thrown out. All the history of the twentieth century will be in photographs—more than in words.”

  Capa stood up. “Come. I want you to meet some of the young people who are with me here,” he said. “Some of them come all the way from California. The door will be open from eleven in the morning till eleven at night—maybe later. Who knows, when a lot of photographers get going? There will always be coffee.”

  We went back down to the reception-room gallery. Capa introduced us to a baby, held by a pretty, dark-haired young woman. “This is Colin Burroughs, three and one-half weeks,” Capa said. “And his beautiful mother, Wendy. His father runs the slide machine and works in the darkroom.”

  Downstairs, in the entrance hall, the long-haired young girl was still simultaneously talking on the telephone and filling envelopes. A bearded young man was squatting on the floor beside her with another telephone and an open telephone book. He was introduced to us as David Kutz. He said, “Today a telephone operator, tomorrow an electrician, next day a carpenter, maybe one day a photographer.”

  We went back to Gallery 2. The Cartier-Bresson exhibition was being hung. On a wall between two windows was a 1954 photograph of young Russians dancing in a club under giant posters of Lenin and Stalin. Mr. Karia was staring at it. A young girl approached him with two labels for the picture. “They are chocolate-colored, with white writing,” she said. “Which color do you want— milk chocolate or bittersweet?” Mr. Karia chose bittersweet. Capa stood in front of the Cartier-Bresson photograph appraisingly for a moment, and then told us that Cartier-Bresson had recently given an interview to Le Monde in which he stated that painting, not photography, had always been his obsession, and that he drew every day and now considered his drawings much more important than his photography. The interview had caused an uproar in France. Le Monde had asked several French photographers to respond, and had printed the responses of, among others, Gilles Peress and Marc Riboud. “Cartier-Bresson treated Riboud like a son,” Capa went on. “He was his mentor, and now he tells him that photography doesn’t mean anything. So now everybody is responding. Bresson is like that. Psst, psst, psst—the steam gathers, then the lid blows off.” He smiled. “The whole thing is so French: love, hate, respect, misrespect, answers, re-answers. So now we have these vibrations crossing the ocean.”

  From the library we could hear a measured voice on a loudspeaker. It was Cartier-Bresson. “That’s the Master’s voice,” Capa said to us, pointing through the door. “You should go and watch his audiovisual. We will have it running all through his exhibition.”

  We went into the library and sat down on a folding chair. The room was dark and empty. Cartier-Bresson slides flicked on and off a screen, and Cartier-Bresson spoke, in almost unaccented English: “Sometimes people ask, ‘How many pictures do you take?’ . . . Well, there is no rule. Sometimes, like in this picture in Greece, well, I saw the frame of the whole thing and I waited for somebody to pass. . . . That is why it develops a great anxiety in this profession . . . always waiting. What is going to happen? . . . Quick, quick, quick, quick, like an animal and a prey. . . . I’m extremely impulsive . . . a bunch of nerves, but I take advantage of it. . . . You have to be yourself and you have to forget yourself. . . . And poetry is the essence of everything. . . . The world is being created every minute and the world is falling to pieces every minute. . . . It is these tensions I am always moved by. . . . I love life. I love human beings. I hate people also. . . . I enjoy shooting a picture, being present. It’s a way of saying, ‘Yes! Yes! Yes!’ . . . And there’s no maybe.”

  1975

  LEAVING MOTOWN — Jamaica Kincaid and George Trow

  ONE minor musical motif we follow involves talented people who an-nounce that they intend to “leave Motown,” the Detroit record company that superintended the most popular black music of the sixties. So far, The Spinners have left Motown and have had a great success; Gladys Knight and The Pips have left Motown and have had a great success; Martha Reeves has left Motown and has granted interviews. Motown producers like Lamont Dozier have left Motown; the management of Motown has left Motown (that is, Detroit); and there is no longer any trace in popular music of Motown’s regional idiosyncrasy or much evidence of the company’s former musical hegemony. Diana Ross, The Temptations, and The Miracles (all of whom remain on the label) have for the record-buying public an interest that is at least partly reminiscent; only Stevie Wonder and The Jackson Five, the last classic Motown act to develop, have continued with undiminished vitality, and last week, in an atmosphere that was—well, businesslike, the Jackson family announced that they had signed a contract with Epic Records (a subsidiary of CBS) and would leave Motown.

  The Jackson family announced their decision to leave Motown at a press conference in the Rainbow Grill. For the conference, ten high-backed black chairs were arranged behind a long, narrow table on a dais; dozens of other high-backed black chairs were arranged
to face the dais. Taken one by one, the black chairs resembled the chairs found in medium-priced dinette sets; massed together, they lent the room a sober quality such as one might find at the United Nations—at meetings of, say, the Trusteeship Council. Susan Blond, who works for Epic, selected the music that played while the press assembled. “I put on three Jackson Five, three LaBelle, three Jackson Five, three Harold Melvin and The Blue Notes—like that,” she told us as we sat in one of the high-backed black chairs. “I can tell this is a Jackson Five song playing now, because I know it isn’t LaBelle.”

  Eleven members of the Jackson family entered the Rainbow Grill and mounted the dais. Ten members of the Jackson family sat in the black high-backed chairs. One member of the Jackson family, Stacy, sat in the lap of her mother, Maureen, the oldest Jackson daughter. At the end of the dais, stage right, sat Joe Jackson, father of the family and manager of the group. He was dressed in a slick black suit. Ranged down the table were Jackie (green jacket, twenty-four years old), Tito (brown jacket, twenty-one years old), Marlon (white leisure jacket, seventeen years old), and Michael (black velvet jacket, plaid vest, sixteen years old). Not present was Jermaine Jackson (twenty years old), who is married to Hazel Joy Gordy (daughter of Berry Gordy, chairman of the board of Motown Records), and who has not yet decided to leave Motown.

  “There are a lot of little ones,” Susan Blond remarked to us.

  “But do they make up for Jermaine?” asked a young woman behind us.

  A reporter asked the Jackson family why they had decided to leave Motown.

  “We left Motown because we look forward to selling a lot of albums,” Tito Jackson answered.

  “Motown sells a lot of singles. Epic sells a lot of albums,” Mr. Jackson added.

  A reporter asked Michael Jackson, who is really the star of the group, how he thought the move would affect him.