E-Book, Englisch, Band 1, 410 Seiten
Part I: The Launching of a Conservative Author
E-Book, Englisch, Band 1, 410 Seiten
Reihe: Enough Light to See the Darkness
ISBN: 979-8-3509-3172-3
Verlag: BookBaby
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)
Autoren/Hrsg.
Weitere Infos & Material
How Famous was Taylor Caldwell? I intend the anecdotes below to give a flavor of just how famous was TC in the period from the early ‘50s through the early ‘80s. There is, of course, no surer test of fame than notoriety. Peggy’s writing covers that territory sufficiently. She can’t document the public adoration of TC because Peggy – without giving the reader much of a hint about this – doesn’t go out into the public. So, these are four examples of me going out into the public. Let me, however, guarantee in the first three stories, I have yet to find out how the three women who respond to my being Taylor Caldwell’s grandson knew, for I surely wouldn’t/couldn’t have told them. In the 4th, the woman doesn’t know I’m TC’s grandson, at first. I. Summer 1961, and Marlice Korber from the far end of the block on which resides 67 Hendricks (the home of Gerry and Peggy): After finishing at Michigan State University at the end of my 2nd year, during this Summer, I worked at Allied Research Associates in Boston. This was under the guidance of Ted Goodman, my Aunt Judy’s 2nd husband. He figures prominently in Part III Chap. 16: The Death of Judy. He was an aeronautical engineer. My degree was in electrical engineering. I lived in Brookline and went to work on the M(assachusetts) T(ransit) A(uthority) subway system, known to many from a famous Kingston Trio song of the time. There were stresses. I was younger than others working at this aerospace company and more telling, everyone else among the younger people went to school at Harvard, MIT or Brandeis.4 Midwest universities would have had no cachet with them, and they showed it. Still, there was a great positive: I made $800 a month, a considerable sum for someone my age in 1961, and more than you might guess without an inflation calculator to assess that from so long ago. My first expense, outside food and rent, was driving lessons. Near the end of summer before Labor Day, I paid $125 for a car: a humped-back, green, dependable 1951 Chevy. On the Friday I completed my lessons and passed the Massachusetts – written and driving – test, I took off for Buffalo. This was 467 miles away through the Massachusetts Turnpike and then the NY portion of Interstate 90, still under construction once you got past Buffalo. It took most of the night to make that trip, my first trip going over a few city blocks, arriving at 67 Hendricks early Saturday morning. Gerry let me in, and I slept until the early afternoon. My goal was to find Kent Korber, who played golf with me on the Amherst High School team, for a round of golf. When, however, I got to his house, it was not Kent, but a budding 15-year-old Marlice – previously just his little excitable sister – but now an exciting young lady. “Mike,” she greeted me, “Kent’s not here. But let’s go visit your grandmother.” It was amazing looking at her. So I was fishing for some way to make the unlikelihood that Taylor Caldwell would let me bring Marlice into her house sound like an attempt to make it happen. I asked what she knew about my grandmother, and she mentioned paperbacks she had gotten from a local drugstore. I didn’t know it then, but during that visit, I found that any drugstore in Buffalo had at least one – I mean, serious, whole magazine-type – rack dedicated just to Taylor Caldwell novels. The only bookstores I knew about were on College campuses, like the Harvard Coop at Coolidge Corner in Brookline. Most people, however, then bought books at drugstores. So, off in my 1951 green Chevy went Marlice and I to my grandmother’s house. Indeed, although I knew its approximate location, at Audley End, it was still an adventure since driving anywhere was so new to me; it must have taken half an hour to make the no-more-than eight-minute trip, with the last 10 minutes the result of a lassitude based on my having no plan for what to do when we arrived. The housekeeper/secretary, however, recognized me by name. Here is an embarrassment, for I do not know her name. She was American, a comely woman, likely young, but not to me at the time. I cannot identify her with anyone mentioned in Peggy’s autobiography. Probably, that meant she was there only a short time. Yet, she knew who I was. She asked why I had come. I nodded at Marlice, who was beaming, and ventured, “Marlice is a Taylor Caldwell fan, the sister of a friend of mine, and ...” The housekeeper sized the situation up, suggested I show Marlice around the living room and library, an area I had seen before, and let us in, saying: “I will tell your grandmother you are here. She will be getting up soon.” That was well into that Spring afternoon. So, I, a tour guide with no planned agenda or script, told Marlice the house was new to me, too. We noted a painting of TC – in the style of a Sargent from the early part of the century – and then the reference books and large globe in the library. Not long after, I could hear the klaxon voice of TC, though not her words.5 Then, that voice approached the top of the stairwell, in the foyer, from which there issued: “Michael, I forgot to give you your birthday check.” A slowly circling check floated from the top of the stairwell to where I could easily reach before it hit the landing. That 25-dollar check was the only gift that I personally ever got from Taylor Caldwell. Did I cash it? You bet, but with Gerry, who said he would take it to the bank. In return, he gave me $25. Marlice and I went to Baidel’s, a well-known Amherst High hangout at the corner of Main and Eggert, for banana splits. II. Spring 1971, Betty Bromberg, cousin of James Simons Chair of the Stony Brook, Long Island, Math. Dept: James Simons was the chair of the first department of Mathematics to which I belonged, State University of Stony Brook on Long Island. I’ll tell you about Simons. He and I were not friends, though he was a rare chair who advertised well to the people in his department, even me. He was also not friends with James Ax, who brought me to Stony Brook, but they were long-time associates. Ax, who had recently won one of mathematics’s big prizes, chose to take me for a position granted him at Stony Brook. I mistakenly agreed to that instead of taking an offer of tenure to the University of Chicago. Officially, I was at Stony Brook for eight years but left after four. In January 2009, the US Senate put five CEOs of monstrous Hedge Funds through a gauntlet. On TV, Simons was the character who did most of the talking.6 The money Simons has made puts TC’s terribly fought over royalties in perspective. He was a game player who manipulated far beyond anything TC had done. There was a party at Simons’ house, and I attended, but without my wife from whom I was on the cusp of separation – if we were ever really together. I was talking to a graduate student in the living room. Barbara Simons came up behind me and tapped me on the shoulder. “Have you met my cousin Betty? You’ll want to.” She pointed to where her cousin sat in the dining room, surrounded by many males in attendance, making her difficult to see. “Go ahead, talk to her,” continued Barbara. A little later, I did so. It was clear what the buzz was about once I was close enough. How hard was it for me to talk to Betty with all those guys around her? Answer: Not at all. She saw me on her own, cleared away a space, beckoned with her eyes, and sat me in front of a pile of three books: all thick TC paperbacks she had carried with her on the Long Island Railroad. Yes, this was a setup, but why? After talking to her, it was clear the point was for her to meet someone who wouldn’t be intimidated by her confident presence. Young women like her had troubles most women would die for. III. Spring 1972, Clarissa, the personal secretary of Pearl Buck, Centerreach, Long Island: A phone call from Clarissa, one early morning while I was in the 2nd marriage to my first wife, to our home in Centerreach, LI. She says she has heard about me – from where? – and would like to meet and talk. She had been Pearl Buck’s secretary and wanted to compare notes on Taylor Caldwell versus Pearl Buck. What did they have in common? Did they drive people mad, like she, Clarissa was driven mad? I’m an unusual personality, and I’m sure that you are, too. Still, neither of us is as unusual as was Clarissa. That, at first, must have been what encouraged Pearl Buck to take her as a secretary. When I met her, Clarissa said, “I’m fat, grey and fifty-two.” She left out the piercing grey eyes and the lingering from when she was younger of a spectacular presence. Clarissa continued: “Everyone says,” ‘That’s alright, Clarissa,’” to which Clarissa said she gave this response: ‘Sure, it’s alright when I’m fat, grey and fifty-two, but when you’re fat, grey and fifty-two, you’ll be the scurvy of the world, the crud, the scorn of everyone’s eye.’ Clarissa sometimes said, ‘You can’t talk now; I say everything because I feel like I know everything: everything! But I’m getting tired, and I’ll be completely silent in a few days.’ This all felt manic-depressive. It was a hardship on her two sad-eyed children, who went everywhere with her even though they were young adults. Clarissa said she started yelling (in a hoarse, deep voice) about three years before I met her. At the end of her tenure with Pearl...
