Overdrive (4 page)

Norman Mailer, I would learn on the program, was greatly impressed by candidate Carter—which, given the record of those who have politically impressed him, makes his judgment consistent. We breakfasted after the program at my apartment, after which, while I was standing with him at the street corner to flag him a taxi, we were almost run down by Daniel Patrick Moynihan being driven in a station wagon. That very day, Mr. Moynihan would unseat the sainted junior senator from New York, my brother Jim. Now he leaned out the window of the car, wearing his usual tweedy Irish walking hat, and said, "Damn, I could have gotten you both with one swipe!" I replied that Norman had already been killed once that morning.

More correspondence. Clif White writes to thank me for writing an introduction to his book, which is an account of his labors over a lifetime on behalf of political candidates (he managed Goldwater's presidential primary race, and my brother's successful 1970 race). . . . Robert Malda, Esq., solicits my approval (as co-executor of Harry Elmlark's estate) to reimburse Harry's son-in-law for expenses in connection with the schooling of Harry's grandson Kevin. I wonder, is it the executor's responsibility, in such situations, to act as he thinks the benefactor would have acted? I am afraid to ask myself that question too rigorously, because Harry could be very tough in money matters. The boy's mother (Harry's only child) is dead, the father remarried. Or should the executor use his own judgment? Probably the soundest course of action is to decline to act as executor in the first place, if your temperament is like my own. But with Harry, I like to think I never refused to do anything he asked, which was very little. The last time I saw him, at the hospital a year ago, I told him I was leaving the following morning for the Caribbean. Lying on his back he asked, expressionless, in a faint voice reduced to hoarseness, When would I return? He had no measure of time anymore, so I said, "In a few days." His thin arm clutched mine, and he said nothing.

In the event his grandson isn't living at age twenty-one, Harry specified that his money should go to my son, Christopher.

I spoke about Harry, that enterprising newspaper syndicator, at the memorial ceremony three weeks later:

In Harry's will, in the draft he wrote in 1975, he specified that there should be no religious element to these services, and that I should serve as the eulogist. He revised that will in 1977, specifying that a rabbi should be asked to say a few words, and, again, that I should serve as the eulogist. I conclude that between 1975 and 1977 Harry discovered that I was not capable, all by myself, of doing the Lord's work. However, as a eulogist he had me under contract, and, as was Harry's wont, the termination date of contracts he wrote tended to be vague. Unless you noticed, Harry was unlikely to notice that at a specified moment in history you were, in fact, free. That part of the Constitution did not make up Harry's bedtime reading. And so I exercised what little authority I have, in common with Mr. Ira Cohen [the co-executor], to invite others to whom he was personally or professionally close, who gave him such pleasure, to share the burden, which burden is a great joy, because knowing Harry was a great joy. A vexatious joy, to be sure; but such are, finally, the most enduring joys. If Harry had not been, in his own way, difficult, he would certainly not have been Harry; and he would not have passed through our lives with so singular an impact on each one of us—each relationship somehow different. No two people knew exactly the same Harry, and although I know how fully he satisfied, in different ways, different people, I would not exchange the combination of qualities I experienced for any other mix. One day, two or three months ago, he told me three times, within a twenty-four-hour period, a witticism he had uttered to Helen [a friend]. Finally exasperated, I told him that he had already three times told me his
bon mot
, to which he replied that three times was insufficient to do justice to it, so deep were its reserves of wit and eloquence. I told him to call Mary McGrory and tell it to her, and he replied that he already had, but come to think of it, he would call her again, and say it again. Harry.

I wrote once (it was in my book,
Cruising Speed)
about our first conversation. It was over the telephone, and this proved prophetic, because our relationship was primarily telephonic, and even as such—perhaps because it was such—proved profoundly satisfying. I had physically to go to him when he first learned that his wife, Lillian, would die; had to go to him when he learned that she had died; I had to see him in the hospital bed, during those final days, when we exchanged platitudes, because we knew what we were feeling, and knew that a platitude is a great and noble convention for sparing pain. But, for the most part, it was the telephone; and I suppose if I said we spoke two thousand times, I'd be underestimating the number. In this matter he was, however, remarkably disciplined. He would speak as long as you wished; but if you said you had to cut off, he would stop instantly: the man of affairs, recognizing other priorities, other obligations. When he called and you were occupied, he would not call again. "I always know you'll call me back," he said to me once; and it is a sadness very nearly disabling to know that I cannot call him back again.

That thought crowded my mind yesterday afternoon, when with Christopher, and Pat, and Marvin Liebman, I poured his ashes into the sea, in front of my house on Long Island Sound. The wind was northwesterly and bitingly cold, and the tide was falling, so that his remains fell and drifted out into the currents, whence, I do not doubt—like the leaves that rustled in each other's company, from the tall boughs of the two great trees into which the god transformed Philemon and Baucis—I do not doubt that the remains of Harry, and of Lillian, who also elected to be put to sea, will come upon each other; and that a union consecrated by God, so tragically interrupted in 1973, will resume.

Christopher and I, who believe in life after death, sought diligently not to take sectarian advantage of our role yesterday; but one cannot travel far with the psalmists without coming upon that hope which sustains the Old and New Testaments alike. So that I found myself reading, as Harry's ashes rested, those final seconds, in the urn, above the sea, "Behold, He that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep. The Lord is thy keeper; the Lord is thy shade upon thy right hand. The sun shall not smite thee by day, nor the moon by night. The Lord shall preserve thee from all evil: He shall preserve thy soul. The Lord shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in from this time forth, and even for evermore." And Christopher, as I let fall the ashes into the water, summoned the words spoken over the ages when men are buried at sea. "Unto almighty God we commend the soul of our brother departed, and we commit his body to the deep in sure and certain hope of the resurrection unto eternal life through our Lord. The Lord bless thee and keep thee. The Lord make His face to shine upon thee. The Lord lift up the light of His countenance upon thee and give thee peace."

We bid goodbye to Harry. We promise not to miss our deadlines. We are confident he has not missed his final deadline.

It is because of Harry, I reflected, that this morning (and Wednesday morning, and Friday morning) I opine for syndication my views on this-or-that. It was nineteen years ago that Harry induced me to write a regular column.

Ralph Davidson, board chairman of Time Inc., sounded confused when I told him at one of those charity affairs last week that I was sorry I couldn't go to
his
affair on February 10, as I'd be in Switzerland. He was obviously confused, and it was foolish of me to forget how incessant is the use of useful names in the business of organizing charity dinners. He writes, "Actually I am devastated that you can't come on February tenth! When you threw the date at me last night I must confess that I did draw a blank. For God's sake, anybody who spends eight weeks in the Swiss Alps ought to be able to find more than an hour and a half a day in which to ski. I'm going to send Killy over to whip up your enthusiasm." That was the pleasantest encounter with
Time
magazine I had all week.

I had made a note that a formal protest must be made to Doubleday. "Sweet Betty [Prashker]: Would you be so kind as to direct the enclosed to the offending party? Love, Bill." Important to make it clear to Betty that you know
she
is not to blame. "Dear Sir/Madam: I was appalled to see [in the final, uncorrectable galleys] that the dedication in
Marco Polo, If You Can
was jumped over onto the copyright page. For sheer tastelessness this one is hard to beat. The casual reader will believe the book is designed to be stowed in the Hugh Kenner [to whom the book was dedicated] Wing of the Library of Congress. Except in mass paperbacks, and then only very seldom, the publisher does not begrudge an entire page to the person to whom the book is dedicated. And, of course, it should happen to perhaps the supreme arbiter of literary taste living today. Yours. . ." With a blind copy to Hugh Kenner.

There are several matters pending at the office, at which Jerry drops me along with my clerical baggage, taking Olga and Rebeca uptown to the apartment. I walk up the two flights, turn right, open the door, passing by Rick Brookhiser's little office (once it was my secretary's, before that Whittaker Chambers', before that it was shared by my two sisters Maureen and Priscilla). We have occupied these offices since the second year of our existence, and I am reminded that that, now, was quite a while ago. Indeed, a young journalist recently observed that since no national magazine in 1955 was being edited by the same person who edits it today, save here, at
National Review
, that makes me the senior editor in the United States, if you count only longevity. Meaning? Oh, that your wife, the counterpart of the wife of the Guatemalan ambassador, gets to sit to the right of the Secretary of State if he has a dinner for editors, or that you're the one who says, "Thank you, Mr. President," calling an end to a press conference. The opportunity was perfect for me to answer in the style of George Bernard Shaw when asked did he know that in the English language only two words containing the letters "su" required that those letters be pronounced, "shoo," namely,
sumac
, and
sugar?
To which Shaw observed, "Sure, I know." To the journalist's observation I was able to comment, "Sure. And William Shawn?" The editor of
The New Yorker
has been in the saddle since 1952. Nice try, though.

I remember that when I put out the offering circular, seeking to raise the capital to begin
National Review
, I committed myself to ten years' service to the enterprise. My father frowned on this, deeming the obligation excessive. He was a strict constructionist respecting any commitment, personal or professional.
National Review
continues to be the center of my professional life, and I once calculated that it takes up about forty percent of my time, even though I am reliably in the office only three days every fortnight, during which we take an issue to press. The balance of the work for
National Review
is done elsewhere, in automobiles, or over the telephone, or aboard airplanes, or at home. The magazine was conceived as a vehicle for responsible, informed, and inspired conservative thought, and it has been exactly that, playing a not insignificant role, I am quick to inform its patrons if caught with their zeal flagging, in its influence on charter-subscriber Ronald Reagan. So, through the corridor opening the door to my own office, greeting Dorothy McCartney, the young and resourceful head of research, who has the office on the left, and Susan Stark, equally young and pretty, who helps with research and correspondence, in the office on the right. The incomparable Frances Bronson's office is adjacent to mine, and the door is now open, so I greet her (probably we have spoken ten times already today over the telephone). She tells me that Bill Rusher is waiting for me.

Bill Rusher keeps a little appointment book, and no computer is programmed with greater exactitude. When our appointment is for three o'clock, I used to amuse myself by telling whoever was in the room that if he was curious as to when it would be 3:01, he had only to wait until the intercom rang. At 3:01 Bill advises me that it's after three. In the twenty-five years of our association Bill Rusher has made no effort to change these little habits, and there are three explanations for this. The first and least interesting is that in his case it would be like trying to forget he was right-handed—that, simply, is the way he is (he once told me that if he opens the door to the bathroom and finds the light accidentally already on, momentum will cause him to turn the light
off
, before ratiocination sets in, to advise him that if the objective is illumination, and the light is already on, then you shouldn't touch the switch at all). The second explanation is that having associated so long with persons of informal habits (I am probably the worst of the sinners, though one or two of
National Review's
editors are not far behind), he feels the need to compensate for us by watching the clock, and living according to its beat. The third explanation is that, having come to be accepted as something of an eccentric, he rather cultivates the idiosyncrasies, which are annoying for the first ten years or so, but finally grow endearing.