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George Carle does hat moves too?

Yeah, his are, his is a hat like this and they have his own flavor. It's interesting, I was looking in the mirror thinking, in some ways we're kind of opposite. My character movement is very---a lot of it is down below, this low, and a lot of stillness up here, a lot of things going on down here. Or up here. He's very... about this tall, very short man. And his torso, in many ways stays very still, very, kind of, spree. I can't get this quality out. I've watched him twice.

Below the waist?

Well, it's a sprightliness even though he's... 20 years my senior. Maybe 10, 15 years my senior. I feel like in many ways he's got more bounce than I do in a lot of what he does.

When he's been working his hat so long, it's just gorgeous. He, looking dead ahead at the audience, towards everyone, goes---

[Inaudible]

Do people really watch him though? I mean after the strippers or?

[Inaudible]

You watch Caesar on Saturday Night Live?

Yeah.

Dude---

I saw most of it. I didn't think it was very good at all.

I thought it was very sad. That's crazy.

I just wanted to... I missed the first part, it was the first couple minutes. Actually, what had the most going was I thought the beginning of what I saw, is Caesar just talking to them, in some bit---he does this routine with now becoming then, now becoming was, becoming gonna be.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, it was his book, yeah.

It's a little sentimental, but there's something behind it. What I thought was sad was the rest of the show. He was a victim of that show. What, the writing was awful, and I would guess if he knew it...

Whoever, Mel Brooks or whoever, in other words.

Yeah, yeah.

Because you rely on your stuff, I guess.

He's also much less than a lot of people, but it's true. He is caught in his era. It's very hard to...

Although, on the other hand, you see those, some of the tapes or whatever, the broadcasting, you can say, it's still terribly funny.

Well, they're terribly funny. They're terribly funny, but I think one of the reasons they're funny is because their, the sort of sensitivity in watching transports you to that time. And you're seeing it in that context where it's largely because of the writing, but partly because he wasn't sure how to do it.

It seems like he did the silent movie and also the, there was The German Professor.

Yes.

Neither of which were funny at all, and yet both of those appear very frequently over there. In other words, if you're writing a silent movie, it's funnier. And the other actors have fun, I think, over there. I mean, you may be right about the, you know, frozen or victim of time, but I think maybe---in different circumstances---

Yes. Well, the fact that he would have benefited from different circumstances and the circumstance seems to be illustrative of the fact that he did that show. I tell you what I find the saddest and broke my heart. Watching those old shows and Caesar's Hour and the one that came before The Admiral... he would be on for nearly 90 minutes, and you never got the feeling that he was struggling or he seemed to be coming out, and there, on Saturday Night Live, and much as any other host I've ever seen, including those cute little girls... I mean that's something. It's an indictment of something.

Did he and Eddie Murphy do anything earlier on? I know some---

They should've done something.

They should've. Well, when I tuned in, Eddie Murphy was standing next to him, and the rest of the cast looked like they had just met.

I was very touchy with Eddie Murphy, wanted to embrace him at the end.

It's one of those shows where he gave me a warning that he wasn't gonna be that good. He's wearing his dungarees besides.

He is, right?

He's wearing his dungarees, it's like, his leisure suit.

Oh, yeah. Yeah.

You didn't see his opening monologue.

No.

[Inaudible]

There's a little bit, you know, having come through what he's come through in his life and found this sort of mellowness of center, it doesn't entirely jive with what he does best, which is essentially going to be manic.

I know the professor was kind of like he was a little sedated.

That's a funny thing. Well, basically someone else who I always admired a lot was Alan Arkin, who also through Zen or whatever else has reached a certain, I haven't seen him in some years now, but reached a certain balance in his own mind. And he hasn't been as funny. He was really crazy in the early years off-Broadway and on Broadway.

Actually, I didn't see the best of him.

It's like the Second City things he was doing.

Right.

The Russians are coming, the Russians are coming.

Sure, he was in a great movie, but he was really something.

And then that incredible part he played. Wait Till Dark. Bad guy.

[Inaudible]

It's not easy because they were working on this, the whole cast is involved in this film, and they can slowly see it and kind of go---

His best work, actually, was onstage, and at some point he decided he just was so terrified of working on stage, that he wouldn't do it anymore. He got physically sick at every performance. He couldn't do it. So you keep reading about him coming back.

He was coming back on stage.

That's what he said.

That's what he did best.

We've seen.

We've seen, yeah.

I saw him do something long ago, when, when, when, when Sesame Street first came out, when I was in college. I was kind of a fan of the show, it was new, something new to television. And he did a couple things with his wife, and they were not very good. It looked like they were trying to bring a Second City zaniness quality to a very packed, sentimental, scripted message piece. I was disappointed. It's a great disappointment to see somebody who you respect and admire do something less than, it's really scary. Scary to contemplate what to do next. Scary to contemplate disappointing people.

Caesar did a, we might have talked about it, a seminar over at the Museum of Broadcasting.

Yeah, you said about that. Did you go?

I couldn't get in. I did leave him a note.

I wonder how good that was, if you really verbalize it. Probably so much of what's good in the book really comes from Bill Davidson, prodding into the trivial. For all the fact that he was a member of his writing table, he's never really been a writer, or even a speaker. In fact, as he says, when he's himself he just can't verbalize anything.

You're right.

Perhaps if he did his lecture as a German professor, maybe that would be.

You know, when you talk about Arkin, I thought for a minute you were going to say Erwin Corey, who is somebody on occasion---I've never seen him live.

Somebody mentioned him the other day. Oh, it was the Caramansos.

Oh, yeah?

He came to see them in Brooklyn, I guess.

Really?

Yeah.

That's great.

They're talking about him.

I don't know. I thought some of his stuff was great. He got into Playboy Club bookings for a while. And one time I saw him on TV, looking Heffneroid. Although that may have been a projection of mine.

Going to a theatre-

And then he did stop

Yeah he did stop, of course

Anyway, the driver came at 7:30 in the morning? Or is coming at 7:30?

No, they came at 7.30. They, uh, went down to the Bowery at 7.30 this morning.

She wanted to know why 7:30, she told them to me last night

Well, I don't know who said 7.30. I didn't say 7.30.

Cause we went through this whole thing, and I said, I can't imagine anybody would-

And I asked the photographer, did you say 7.30? And he said, no! So there we were at 7.30, cold, windy.

Excuse me, what may I get for you?

May I have a vodka, Gibson, straight up, please?

Could I get a glass of white wine, please

Sure. Brutus Foussey, Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, Pinot grigio…?

I'll take the grigio.

And then there was a piece of shit. Who is this piece of shit?

You said vodka, right?

[Laughs]

Vodka, please.

Do give Bob my regards when you talk.

Could we have some water, too, please?

Cheers.

Cheers.

Here's to success.

Thank you.

I remember-- we'll get back to-- he and I have had a long relationship, but when he was editor of New York, he published some of my pieces, and we got along just fine. We did get along fine. But sometime after my Ed Albee biography came out, I got a good review everywhere except the New York Times.

Oh, my God.

And the Sunday Times gave it a pretty good review, but a small review.

An in-brief?

Well, not in-brief, it was two columns, but it was in the summertime, and I considered it a really long effort that I went through.

Yeah.

A couple weeks later, Simon and Schuster published the Esther Williams biography, and Bob reviewed it for the book review. A full page, or two pages, absolute rave review. And I ran into him sometime later, and I said, "Bob," I said, "Esther Williams?" And he said, "Well..." he said, "she's more important than Edward Albee." You know? Just dismissing it.

Yes, Bob is very interested in popular culture.

Yes. He actually turned down the book, and it got that review, after-

I don't know. I hope it's saying that they were, I mean, everybody is mythological in it to me. I mean, they were my gods when I was growing up, and I hope it's saying they were brave, they were quarrelsome, they were spectacular people, part of a spectacular generation. I hope it's saying I loved them, because I did. I loved them very much.

Including your father?

Not, not at the end.

No.

I'm not sure from reading the book, the extent you felt it-

Yeah.

Yeah.

I, I, I was very angry at him at the end. We were very angry at each other, and, and we clashed as we had clashed all my life. And, um, although when I was a kid, I adored him, you know, one of those things.

Yeah, and they were funny. I mean, everybody was funny in my family. We all laughed a lot when we weren't fighting.

When you weren't fighting?

Yeah.

Well, in my family now, there's, those sisters, sometimes for decades, some of them didn't speak to one another.

Yeah.

Some of the children didn't speak to the parents. One, one cousin, in fact, never knew his mother died. Because they hadn't spoken for 20 years.

Really? That's serious.

Wars!

That's really serious.

You had wars, too, obviously, or, or private battles among, the various relatives.

Yeah. Yeah. It's inevitable. And it happens in, in all families. And they're--

Well, large families, anyway--

In all large families, yeah. But I, I have, I have a friend who hasn't spoken to her sister in 15 or 20 years. So it happens even in small families. Two children.

I have this one cousin who stopped speaking to us when we didn't go to her husband's funeral. And then she got married two months later.

[laughs]

You know, it's typical.

Did you go to the wedding?

No, Neither one. Never liked me, anyway. No loss.

Yeah, right - never liked her anyway.

No loss.

As I said, Lily was one character that came across rather vividly, partly because she reminded me of my aunt Ruth. But the stories about her selling the negligees and things? Door-to-door to prostitutes?

Yes, it was in the Depression--

True story?

True story. True story. I, before my time. But I, I was told, all of these things are things I was told about.

Told in the family.

Told in the family. Yeah. They were family stories. Except for the times when I was present. Later on, when I got a little older, everything is, is hearsay.

Well, this is a question, though.

Is it true?

What?

I mean, it's true as far as you know, but are all stories true as, as told by families?

Oh, not literally, perhaps, true, but, but in their essence, I think, true. People embroider, people change details. But, in essence, I think, it's not whole cloth.

I'm wondering, I won't get back to my family too much, but my, my uncle, legend, always had it, was a, was a, a boxer at some point. He ended up was cutting cloth somewhere in the garment district.

Yeah.

But he was actually close to being a Golden Glove boxer.

Yeah.

I accepted that on faith. But I, I, I've never seen a picture of him in a boxing ring, y'know? He's long dead now. But, that was a family legend.

Well, if they told it to you, it was true.

Okay.

Maybe he wasn't as good as they said. Maybe he didn't get that close to Golden Gloves

Well, if they told it to you, there was a, a good measure of truth in it, you'd say.

Yeah. I think so.

I mean, it's a question of how many, how many sales, I suppose, Lily actually made.

That's right. But my, but my mother claimed, and my mother was not, would not have said that she, she took over Lily's route when Lily went to California. did pretty well. She made a good living.

What did you leave out?

[Laughs]. Well, I stopped at a certain point. I mean, I stopped, I think, I stopped when the last member of my family died, which was… I stopped with my family. I mean, I didn't go on, I did, you know, I did some of my own life, but not very much, and I didn't do anything about, I didn't go on to my marriage to Ben, and I didn't go.

You mentioned briefly an earlier marriage, but.

Yeah.

But I don't think I gave away too much for the store.

I left out --- what did I leave out?

Some great tragedy you left out of there

I don't think so.

I don't think so. I think I pretty much said what my family's life was about, and how, [sighs] and what… and what it gave me. Which is the title, of course.

Yeah, they're all gone. Maybe I could write it, now.

Tell Bob Gottlieb. Maybe he'd be interested. [Laughs]

Where is Bob Gottlieb these days and what is he doing? Not that I wish him well.

He's still just edits some books for Knopf and he writes about a dance for the Observer.

Right, he writes, this is an irony. A guy reviewed my book for the Observer on one page and on the back, on the other side of the page was Bob Gottlieb's reviewing some dance thing.

And he also writes these books, he's got a book about lyrics, Broadway lyrics, which got fantastic reviews in the New York Book Review- The New York Times Book Review, and other places.

Sorry to hear that. And plastic purses. Let's not forget the plastic purses.

Actually, speaking of my Aunt Ruth, my wife and I gave him a couple of her plastic purses.

You gave Bob her plastic purses?

Yeah, when I was writing profiles in the New Yorker, we were getting rid of Aunt Ruth's estate. She died in a nursing home, and she had all these great purses, so I thought, well, Bob's kind of a friend-

I'm sorry to hear that.

So he has two of Aunt Ruth's [laughing] plastic purses. I'll get them back.

Well, I think I probably will too, though in fact he did publish two profiles for me in the-

I know, that mitigates

Mitigates a little bit. And I like Maria Tucci, but that's okay.

Yes, you know Ben used to go out with Maria Tucci?

Really?

Yes. She was his girlfriend. For a while.

Wow.

Small world.

That's good.

I haven't seen him lately.

Right, exactly.

And actually, whenever he'd left the New Yorker, I'd stopped writing for them, so that's something I guess.

Yeah.

What do you think of it now? The New Yorker.

It's somewhat better than it was in Tina Brown's day.

Yes, I think so, too.

He's done a good job - though he doesn't want me to write for him, so-

it's a different magazine. It's a young journalist magazine. And he's got a few young, he's got a few good people. Journalists. I think Philip Grave, which is very good, I think. John Lee Anderson is very good.

Do you know Elizabeth Colbert?

No, I don't. She's got a piece in this new one? I think, I saw - I didn't read it yet.

Well, I'd like to write for them again, but he's not interested, I guess he's…

Yeah. Yeah.

How I Came Into My Inheritance. You know, I worked for Fan magazine. I'm extremely good on titles and blurbs. I can do them. They just come like that. It's my talent. My major coup for Fan magazine was, as I wrote in the book, when May Britt married Sammy Davis Jr. That was a touchy situation. And my title was, "Why I Married a Man Shorter Than I Am."

Why I Ma-- Say it again?

"May Britt reveals, Why I Married a Man Shorter Than I Am"

Shorter than I Am.

[Laughing] Yes.

Not Blacker than I am?

[Laughing] No.

So, while you were making that up, I was interviewing Sammy Davis Jr. in this - they bought a-

Is that true?

Yeah, true. They bought a townhouse uptown. He was two hours late in the interview. Yeah. I was furious. Yeah. It was the first time I heard about CPT, Colored People's Time, as he referred to it as.

He said, "Oh, sorry, CPT" ?

"Oh, sorry. Oh, sorry."

Oh.

It was a wonderful interview when we finally sat down and talked. He couldn't have been nicer. He was great, actually.

Yeah.

But it was literally two hours late. I was just -

Where were you waiting?

Outside his apartment. I finally left. I was going to leave. It was like close to dark-

Outside his apartment?

Yeah, I was just waiting. And he finally showed up. Breezing in. Had to do the story. And it was a very good story. That was when his autobiography came out.

Was he married?

Yes.

Did he hear married-

They were married and he had written, or, his autobiography had been written by this couple that wrote it. Called "Yes I Can."

Oh, yeah. I remember that.

What are their names? Their names…

Yeah, I remember that.

Sure. And he was actually a wonderful interview, in fact, but… Never waited longer for anything in my life, I don't think. Better to make it up.

[Laughing] Yeah.

So, then, I was interviewing for Newsweek at that very time.

They gave you interviews.

Real interviews, without bylines, so nobody knew I did it anyway, so.

Good.

That's definitely served me right.

Yeah.

They were, they were fun years?

Oh, they were so much fun. I never knew that work could be fun. It was my first inkling. And then from, and then, uh, and many people worked there. I mean, many, Mario Puzo worked there. Bruce [Jay Friedman] worked there. Um, there were-

Was Mario Puzo working on the Godfather at the time?

He was working, yes. He said, Jesus, I gotta make some money. You know, maybe this will make me some money. Because he'd already published a novel called The Fortunate Pilgrim, which had gone down a black - which was the best novel - gone down a black hole

which was one of his best novels. Talk about black holes.

Right. But he, um, he was working on it then. Yeah, "I got to make some money, got to make some money." He was a gambler, so he needed money.

You weren't working on a novel at that point, right?

Oh, no. No, no, never dreamed. I was working on nothing but interviews with movie stars, fake interviews with movie stars.

Well, it's fiction, so.

Yeah.

Same category.

How many times have you been married?

Twice? Three?

Uh - three.

Was Walter Goodman there then?

Yes. Yeah. Walter was there. And Sam Blum.

Don't know Sam Blum, but Walter was a good friend over the years. In fact, I always remember when I was at Newsweek, he was both at Playboy and Redbook, which I thought was one of the great double hitters. I used to write play reviews about Playboy without bylines. He hired me as a theater critic way back.

Walt- yes.

How he doubled on both and also wrote about the House Un-American Activities Committee-

You know how? We were professionals. That's how.

Yeah, right. You needed money, so.

Yeah.

No, he's it's great about that.

Yeah. We could write about anything. Once you had, once you began working in journalism, you could write about anything.

How is Walter?

I haven't talked to him in a few weeks now. Last time I did, he didn't seem well. He never- unlike Maxine[?] - he never wants to talk about anything. About any problems or illnesses…

Is he working at all?

At home. He hasn't been in the office in a long time. He had a couple of notebooks that haven't run, In fact. I can't remember what his last piece was.

Is he not well?

Well, he didn't look, it must be a good two or three months ago he came in because he did not look well. And as always, I try to get him talking about anything and he, you talk about, you know, meeting us at the theater some night and he hasn't.

I'm sorry to hear that.

And I surmised that he was not well, but he never verified that at all. I don't know.

I sent him my book and I didn't hear from him and I thought Walter must not be well.

But no, but he was, he is, I mean, he has been a very good friend for many years. Yeah. Both he and his wife. Quite often went to the theater and dinner together and I feel guilty now as we're talking because I haven't called him. Feels like I don't wanna call him.

Yeah. Give him my regards, please. I love Walter. He was terrific. He was a lot of fun and he was always, I knew him for many years and didn't know him maybe for this for the last 10, 15 years. I haven't been in touch with him, but he did call me once to go to the theater and I couldn't go and then he didn't ask me again. Vincent [Canby] never took me to the theater. He took me twice. Vincent, why won't you take me? You know, we saw Vincent - this has nothing to do with anything - We saw Vincent almost every day for the last two years of his life. He could bear just so much company, but he would go to Citarella to buy dinner and he would stop on his way either to Citarella or on his way back from Citarella and spend an hour with us and then go home and cook his dinner. He wouldn't eat. He refused to eat.

Huh... "tell me a little bit about yourself." Is he interviewing her, too?

What'd you say?

The guy said "tell me a little bit about yourself." At the next table. Is he interviewing her?

I don't know.

Thank you.

Say it again, what was that?

He said, "tell me a little about yourself."

Oh.

Would you sign my book?

Oh, with pleasure.

Thank you. Oh, that is you. No?

Of course it's me.

And that's your mother's father?

Yeah.

At the end here?

Yeah. And Sylvia Plachy took this picture.

Well, and before you knew you'd about that.

Yeah. [paging through the book] Do you have a pen?

Yeah.

[paging through the book] Yeah, that's me. Sylvia, at the time, was thinking she would do a picture about middle-aged children and their elderly parents; to do a series for somebody. That never worked out. But all these pictures I now have, are now on my wall. And I took this one.

That's very sad.

Yeah. Oh, it was awful. It was awful. The man was, and he was, he had a wonderful niece. Ridgely, I mean, at the end took over.

How is Ben [Sonnenberg] doing?

Well, at his memorial, she was just wonderful.

She was wonderful.

I've never met her, but was just

She was-

Just devoted to him.

Yeah. She loved him and she took over the management of the last year of his life. And there was no one else. If she hadn't done it, there would have been no one else.

Where was this taken, the picture?

It was taken at my parents' house in Golden's Bridge. [Turning pages]

Well, that's a sad thing.

In a sense, you know, without her, he would have died alone, I guess.

In the end, I guess I have to say: I didn't know him that well, I suppose, but it seems to me that after Penelope [Gilliatt], that was really, uh…

Yeah. Yeah. Penelope was just-

Was it

Was it, yeah.

I remember seeing them, we had dinner one night in London with the sister and Vincent, I remember

Yeah.

I had seen her and I was there.

Yeah. Ben was devastated. It was awful. I mean, they were, Ben, they were very close.

When I was writing, Vincent was alive, and he was coming down, stopping by almost every day. But, you know, he had absolutely no interest. I would talk to him about it. He was, cancer is a terrible thing. It made him, it makes everybody, it shrinks everybody into their own skin.

He's doing okay. I mean, he's doing the same. The disease is stable and, you know, it's plain -

He's still writing whatever he wants to write.

Yeah. Yeah. He's, yeah, he's writing. He doesn't have the energy really to concentrate for very long, but he's, y'know, he's writing short things.

He didn't want to know about the book? Is that-

No, he really, he and Ben would talk about movies.

And they would argue, and Vincent would be very testy.

I think Vincent was testy.

But, um, illness just shrinks you into a world of your own.

He was a darling man.

It was good they finally, slowly, somehow appreciated him at the Times, but I begrudge the fact that years ago when, you know, Martin Segal, his editor, pushed him for a Pulitzer Prize, and somehow the Times did not give any backing for it.

Really?

Yeah. They should have.

Yeah, they should have.

As a film critic, he - without question he should have won a Pulitzer.

And his daily reviews were outstanding. Somebody who has to do daily reviews is pushed to the wall, and Vincent came through all the time.

And you read some of them now, I mean it's just…

You think anybody would be interested in a collection?

Oh, I always said that, sure. Absolutely.

Well, is the Times going to do anything about it?

No, they'll never do anything about it. At one point, Marvin Segal's son, who was at the Modern Museum, had talked about maybe doing some sort of collection, "Vincent on Directors" or something like that. But he was - Vince was never interested in doing it, and he should have been. But someone still should, I think.

Yeah.

Because he really was very, very influential in terms of…

Yes, he was.

…film through those years.

Yeah.

But… somebody should.

Yeah.

Okay.

We're done?

Unless you have something else to say?

No [Laughing]

About your family?

No, I think I'm finished. I think I'm finished with my family.

Okay.

Okay.

Well, you know, this novel was born because in 1975, I went to the Dominican Republic for a film. And I stayed there almost eight months.

Um--Urania and her father are the principal invented characters, yes? Is that

The what?

Urania and her father.

Eel.

Well, I think it's a very, well, this is absolutely historic. It happens exactly like that. Pupo Roman was the chief of the army. The second in command after Trujillo, he was very powerful. He was married with Trujillo, no daughter, but a sobrina [interjection "niece"] a niece of Trujillo, Trujillo niece.

[inaudible]

Absolutely, there was no way to escape. But he tried to escape against all reason. A very pathetic, tragic case. Oh, I have respected. It's one of the episodes in which I have respected history more, you know?

What I try in the novel, because there is always a big danger when you write about a dictator. And it's that to present him not as a human being, but as a monster. Hitler was a monster. Stalin was a monster. Mao was a monster. Trujillo was a monster.

A [inaudible]

Or Hitler and you got the...

Well, I don't, well, it's difficult to answer this question because we don't know what is the real influence of literature in life.

You don't think that it causes revolutions, though at all so the literature will not....

Well, never bought, have never bought a book.

Well, but this was a very serious survey made by the Association of Writers. And half of the Spaniards have never bought a book. But there is something to add to these statistics.

Well, there is the important question, too. What people are reading?

Well, I am a novelist, but I do some.

I discovered that I am returning to certain situations probably because there is some kind or trauma or something that is deeply hiden--hide-hidden--hide-- hidden in my life, which is behind my literary vocation.

Well, in my case, there is never purely imagination. Even the novels in which I have been less, let's say, detached of personal experience to write, I think there is always a root with this in my memory and certain images that are the raw material are to fantasize, to imagine, you know?

And it's also true of Flaubert and Faulkner

Well, I'm reading a lot of books because the novel I am writing. I am writing about Flora Tristan and Paul Gauguin.

It came when I read. It came when I was young, a university student, and I read a book by Flora Tristan called Peregrinesiones de una Paria. Well, a French book, Peregrinesiones de un Paria. How do you say that? Pilgrims of a Paria?

Pilgrim of a Paria.

No, Peregrinaje.

Peregrinaje, pilgrim.

Pilgrimage of a Paria.

I never write a novel with the first idea. No, no. This is something that should be making its way in a very, how can I say it, spontaneous way.

And this creates a kind of malaise? A kind of malaise in the mind that can be the point of departure of critical attitudes.

But for the rest, he despised the literary fantasies of his wife. His wife published two books.

I have written about my fourth grade teacher who assigned a composition on the father of our country. And I worked very hard at it. And the next day, after turning it in, she appeared in class and she was glowing and she had one of the composition papers in her hand, and she said, "I'm going to read you something, starkly. It's like a poem." And she read my piece. And, and--the first sentence of which was, "George Washington was a tall, petite, handsome man."

It's usually a phrase, an image. It's a rhythm more than anything else. And I've always felt that poetry begins with sounds rather than with sense. And you ride on that rhythm until your own being takes possession of it. And really, the sound and the sense combine and then you have some sense of where you're going, aside from riding on that rhythm. But, to a large degree, I think the poem is more interested in perpetuating a flow of sound than it is of producing a meaning.

I came to the village immediately. And in fact I found a basement apartment on 9th street between 5th and 6th. I was paying $25 a month because I was in the back room with the basement and there was a noisy tenant in the front. The noise lasted all night, and one day I pounded on the door and, much to my amazement, the door opened and there was a bartender in his white jacket and he said, "Buddy, what's the trouble?" And I said, "I'm trying to sleep, that's the trouble." And I was working, and I had an office job. And he said, "Well, I don't know what I can do about the noise, but I tell you what: anytime you want a drink,"--this is a speakeasy, of course--"just come in. I'll be glad to give you anything you like." That was our agreement, and it worked out very well. And I slept better ever after.

When I was in the Army, World War II, my last year in the army, '45, I received a communication from the Guggenheim Foundation that they were giving me a grant. And I couldn't imagine, because I'd never applied for it, why I was getting a grant. Eventually, I plucked up my nerve and did inquire. It turned out that Marianna Moore had, on her own initiative, applied for me, while I was in the service. That was a dear gift.