William Landay

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Archives for 2010

Henry James, age 57

Henry James, ca 1900

Henry James, ca. 1900, age 57. From the collection of the George Eastman House on Flickr.

Not many photos of James exist, and none are as revealing as this. The most recognized image we have of “the master” is the iconic John Singer Sargent portrait of 1913, which shows James as the Great Man. And that is how I always pictured him — aloof, fusty, royal — until I stumbled across this amazing picture. Here James looks haunted and weary, as I imagine he must have been. A great man, of course, but still an artist who struggled, like the rest of us.

Losing LeBron

Cleveland Plain-Dealer - LeBron James

There is not much left to say about the LeBron James debacle. There is enough harrumphing already about James’s narcissism. (Good examples here, here, here or, well, anywhere you look today.)

But at least one good thing came out of it: this memorable front page of the Cleveland Plain Dealer. What a brilliant minimalist design. Great use of white space. Smart idea to position the image at the left margin to open up even more empty space in the center. The one-word, unbolded headline with a dainty little period to emphasize its brevity and completeness, set lower than an ordinary headline, in that sea of white. This is essentially a design for a poster, not a newspaper. It throws out all the usual rules for newspaper layout: no grids, no columns, minimal text. And it works beautifully. The simplicity eloquently captures what Clevelanders must have felt this morning — speechless. Here, less truly is more.

The only nitpick I have is the little arrow pointing at James’s ringless hand. (Click image to view full size.) The caption reads, “7 years in Cleveland. No rings.” Well, yes, but not exactly the whole story. LeBron is the best player on the planet at the moment, rings or no rings. But then, given Cleveland’s misery, maybe that bitter note expresses the city’s mood, too. When you get dumped, you feel hurt but also pissed off, betrayed, and sometimes you need to say stuff like this.

So bravo, Cleveland Plain Dealer! No amount of clever graphic design will save the dead-tree newspaper business in the long run, but who knows? Maybe sophisticated work like this will win readers in the brave new digital world.

Circadian Novels

Novels that take place in a single day, of which Joyce’s Ulysses (1922) and Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway (1925) are the Adam and Eve, are apparently called “circadian novels.” I have never heard the term before, but I’m happy to learn it today via novelist James Hynes’s wonderful blog. Hynes links to a very smart article about “circadian novels” by Jim Higgins. The Guardian also has a list of the ten best. Hynes’s own new novel, Next, follows the day-in-the-life formula. I can’t wait to read it — as soon as I get my own damn novel wrapped up and emailed off to my editor.

Man Out of Time: “The Disenchanted” by Budd Schulberg

F. Scott Fitzgerald is easy to iconize. His story so neatly tracks his times: in the Twenties, he had a Jazz Age party; when America crashed, he cracked up; in the Depression, he was down and out. In The Disenchanted, Budd Schulberg’s novelization of the Scott-Zelda tale, an older, lightly fictionalized Fitzgerald is painfully aware of the symmetry:

It seemed almost too damned easy to think of himself and the Twenties as going smash together, as if he were unconsciously acting out the Twenties in some ghastly charade, and yet here he was in the first year of the Depression with his money gone, his wife nearly gone, his reputation going. What had Hank said? He didn’t know how to keep his distance.

The Disenchanted is partly a response to all the images and associations that built up around Fitzgerald. It strips away the dreamy illusions and portrays instead an older Fitzgerald who is all too human. Not the glamorous idol of the twenties, but the broke-down, post-crackup Fitzgerald of 1939 — ravaged by alcoholism, forgotten by the reading public, near dead at 43 years old. Schulberg’s depiction is so unforgiving that Sheilah Graham, Fitzgerald’s partner at the end of his life, never forgave him.

But the novel is not just about Fitzgerald’s decline. It is also about young Budd Schulberg’s own disillusionment when he discovered the Fitzgerald myth was just that, a romantic fantasy. It turned out, Fitzgerald’s story ended the same way everyone else’s does. No Daisy or Zelda, no green light, no “riotous” parties. Just the inevitable grinding-down of time. Even Scott Fitzgerald grew up then grew old. To a 25-year-old Fitzgerald fan, there is no drearier news.

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West End Memories (continued)

Reader “Leonard in Florida” writes with another memory triggered by reading The Strangler:

My father played the numbers with a guy by the name of Brownie in the West End for years. He naturally had a formula for figuring the number. One night he came home with a paper bag with $4,000. He had hit a four-number hit, which I believe paid about $30 to the penny, whereas a three-number hit paid $30 to a nickel.

$4,000 in 1950 would be about $36,000 today, according to the inflation calculator. Not bad. (Leonard’s first contribution is here.)