How I Got The Idea For Banquet Before Dawn

This was my second novel. During my early years in Washington when I was in the Public Relations business, I ran a campaign for a man seeking to fill a Congressional Seat in Maryland. This was back in the early seventies. The country was in ferment. Neighborhoods were changing radically. Race riots had occurred in the late sixties in Washington and Baltimore. I witnessed them at first hand. At the time I owned a radio station in Baltimore.

The station studios were in the Penthouse of a building directly across the street from the Armory. From my window I could see National Guardsmen in uniform and armed. In the parking lot was an assortment of military vehicles. One had the sense that law and order was breaking down and the politicians could not control the government.

Not long before I had attended a veterans convention in Boston and an incident occurred that added to those elements that together triggered the idea for this novel. My wife and I entered a restaurant in downtown Boston with two friends, both representatives of the government, a state department official and military officer. There weren’t many patrons in the restaurant and we were enjoying a few rounds of drinks before dinner.

One of my friends began a conversation about Mayor Curley who had run Boston with an iron hand and had been recently convicted of corruption and was serving time in prison. Curley was an icon, especially to the Irish community, which at the time was the power elite that ran the city. Loyalty to Curley, despite the corruption scandal was still endemic. The Boston Irish loved Curley with an emotional fierceness that brooked no criticism.

My friend, buoyed by the booze was particularly virulent in his distaste for Curley and voiced his criticism loud enough to attract attention in the nearly empty restaurant.

As we talked, a policeman arrived and sat down in a conspicuous spot directly in our site line. He proceeded to unbutton the leather holster at his side displaying the handle of his firearm. We interpreted this action as a direct attempt at intimidation to answer the insult my friend had apparently made to his political hero.

The policeman sat there, staring at us throughout the meal. I recall being reminded of the book by Frank O’Connor titled “The Last Hurrah” a fictional account of Mayor Curley’s last campaign, a brilliant book that was made into an equally brilliant movie with Spencer Tracy playing the Mayor. Although it is hard to pinpoint the exact eureka moment when the germ of the idea for Banquet Before Dawn popped into my mind, but I am certain that it was these elements and memories that became the ingredients for the stew that nourished my imagination and created the story.

After all, the book is about an aging Irish politician from a Brooklyn district that was once predominantly Irish and the Congressman had always been a shoo-in for re-election. His district has undergone a swift and radical change, from Irish to Black. Not only had the racial content changed radically, his Irish base had disintegrated and he was suddenly confronted by the realization of his irrelevance. Although brilliant in his social skills and political savvy, he cannot relate to the new people and the new alliances. His political appearance at a traditional event in a Brooklyn hotel results in disastrous consequences and closes the coffin on his political career.

It was never optioned for a film, but one of my acquaintances the late Jason Robards, a superb actor of Irish ancestry read the book, loved it, related to and wanted to star in it if it was ever sold the movies. One day, perhaps, it may make it to the silver screen.

The Next New Thing

Remember the title of that play “Stop the World, I Want to Get Off”? Sorry folks, its too late. The Internet has made our planet spin too fast. If you let go, you’re a dead duck and if you manage to hold on you never know where you are.

The days of leisurely contemplating and observing our world through the morning and evening newspapers is long gone. Even the broadcast media, at their fastest cannot keep up.

It is only on the Internet that we can be, for a nanosecond, slightly ahead of what is coming next. Turn away for a nanosecond and we are behind. That is the true definition of spin.

I am talking about what is commonly known as “news”, which means new information. News happens all the time. It is pervasive and ubiquitous. It has always been thus.

Once it was doled out through the strainer of agencies like newspapers, wire services, broadcast and other media who employed a vast network of truth checkers. Soon no one will be checking. Few are checking now. All strainers are being junked. There is no time. Attention must be squeezed into the nanosecond. Can the human brain move that fast? One wonders.

If I’ve lost you, try below.

Something momentous occurs on the planet, Antarctica, Saigon, Baghdad, Cleveland, Washington, wherever. It is instantly reported by somebody somewhere. It travels around the world in nanoseconds. It sets off an avalanche of opinions, analysis, by a vast army, uncounted millions, who crowd the blogosphere and social networking sites convinced that others are entitled to their opinions.

But before they can finish typing the first letter of their blogs and postings another event occurs, travels at warp speed around the world, making their thoughts instantly obsolete. The mortality of their opinions is instant. A happening is barely a blink.

The accuracy of this fast moving information is impossible to assess as to its truth or validity. There is no longer any mechanism to find out. Only opinions, conjecture, and words, words, words spinning relentlessly.
A case in point.

Swine flu. It is a new strain. Someone on the Internet says it has jumped from pigs to humans. Someone suggests pandemic. Someone blogs about the 1918 flu which killed millions. The Internet is flooded with opinions, suggestions, and dire predictions. A Vice-President warns people not to take public transportation. People become uneasy, frightened, demand government intervention. Governments intervene. It may or may not be the right thing to do. I am not taking sides, since I am also uneasy. The point I am making is that the speed of the information comes in nanoseconds.

Hard on its heels is other news. The Chrysler bankruptcy and its implications, the dire news from Afghanistan, the economy, a supreme court justice resigns, a senator changes parties, the Taliban threat in Pakistan, the crisis in Darfur, the crisis in Sri Lanka, the nuclear threat from North Korea and Iran, bombings in Baghdad, and ever onward. All these events are followed by battalions of bloggers, squadrons from the Huffington Post, (huffing and puffing) from Politico, from the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times and its ancillary opiners, and the twitterers and their related herd, millions of them, pontificating, arguing, hating, insulting, approving.

Tell me you know who to believe and I’ll call you a liar. No one knows. Few, if any have checked. Gossip rules. Rumors swirl. Many insist they know for sure. We are all buried under an ever-growing mountain of bullshit.

Things happen so fast, that one can barely remember what has gone before. And even if the bloggers, the posters, the talking heads, the politicians, the pundits, anyone who who is plugged into the Internet, of every age, sex, race, religion or whatnot is shouting his or her words on the fast spinning planet, they will all be quickly deleted and everyone will begin again, shoveling you know what against the tide.

Indeed, we are living in a totally new paradigm. Master that perpetually spinning paradigm for your own personal ends and you are a genius.

The best example of this genius is our President Barack Obama. I mean no disrespect. I am in awe of his achievement. He is the essence of the truly successful modern man. Nor is this in any way a political judgment. Whatever he advocates is irrelevant to his navigational skills.

In his two memoirs, he has envisioned himself. With extraordinary talent, he created the way he wanted to be perceived. Comfortable with his natural gifts for charm and oratory, his story and his natural persona, he found his niche and with astonishing speed convinced people that he had the right skills and intellectual muscle, the best tone, the greatest story, to become the man he had envisioned himself. His timing was pristine. He had found the perfect moment.

He pushed all the right levers. He understood the essence of the Internet and its touchstone, the next new thing. He embodied it.

Think of this. With the exception of his two extraordinary books, he wrote nothing more of note. He didn’t have to. We knew little about him except what he told us. Aside from that he had no record to speak of, no other writing, no long career in politics, no foreign experience.

His life story as he has told it is an anomaly. It touches every experience that social scientists point to as the prime cause for failure in life. Despite his white mother, he is perceived as racially black. He comes from a broken home. His father abandoned him when he was an infant. His mother died early in his life. He was raised by grandparents. His name suggests foreignness. Such a background is common in the impoverished population.

He is absolutely correct as recorded in the new book by the majority leader of the Senate Harry Reid who quotes Obama as saying. “I have a gift.” Indeed, above all else, he has the gift of self-awareness and believes in his soul that he is worthy of his role and qualified to pursue it. Without such confidence nothing is achieved. He has single handedly convinced others who he believes he is and has climbed the pinnacle of world politics. It is an extraordinary achievement.

Having found the secret of getting there, he must now discover the secret of staying there. Will the same Internet model work? Can he continue to be the next new thing again and again? Like the rest of us he can’t stop the world. And he can’t get off. Besides I don’t think he wants to do either. He knows how to live in the environment of spin. He is at home.

He is in sync with the vast pool of people who have mastered the relentless spin of the Internet. He knows the secrets of multi-tasking and the limits of attention span. He is addicted to his blackberry. He knows his audience and they know him. They are his people. They are in the multi-millions. Like the Internet, they cross borders. That is why you see vast crowds cheering him overseas.

When you are multi-tasked, agile minded, and have trained yourself to live with spin, you can believe that all things are possible. Hope never runs out. You know that there will always be the next new thing.

In the midst of the primary campaign, I met a journalist who adamantly predicted that Obama would win the presidency. I asked him why he was so dead certain.
“Because Obama is the next new thing,” he told me.
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“You’ll see,” he said.
I saw.

There are those who say that as President he is overexposing himself. No way. He is using the Internet model exactly the right way, presenting himself as new every chance he gets. Before the bloggers can blog one thing he is on to another.

Actually, I believe these multiple burdens and crises afflicting the country and the world, will, in the long run, be a boon to his presidency. He will be able to thrust and parry, act and react, proceed to the next new thing, relentlessly, cautiously, cool and purposefully. The new next thing is the essence of optimism.

As we go forward in time, he will offer the next new thing over and over again. If the next new thing is faulty, there will be yet another next new thing and people will not remember the once new thing because it will be supplanted by the new next new thing.

I’m sure you’re confused. Not the President. He is an expert in the next new thing.
It sure works for him. Will it work for the rest of us?
I hope so.

We Must Save The Old Bitch

There is nothing sadder than watching something beloved and essential to one’s comfort level and well being decline. No, I’m not talking about the human aging process with its relentless surge of decrepitude and eventual oblivion. I’m talking about something that has always been there in my life for decades, stalwart, steady, exciting, frequently aggravating, but the most enduring stimulant to starting one’s day, more potent than its accompanying coffee eye-opener.

I am talking about The New York Times, once the immortal grey lady, now slowly morphing into a stripped down version of a retrograde teenager showing off in a desperate attempt to be noticed or, in this case, stay noticed.

Nevertheless my love affair with the old grey lady continues since I can still see vestiges of her classic beauty that keeps me interested, perhaps more out of nostalgia and habit than necessity and utility. The fact is that if the New York Times did not arrive at my front door in the morning, I would be bereft. A huge gap would open in my life that could never be filled with whatever the vast cloud of the internet could provide.

Strangely, the Times has morphed into a bizarre version of ideological schizophrenia. It has become the impassioned champion of its non-readers whose eyeballs would hardly matter to those advertisers who seek to sell goods and services to its ever declining readership. On the other hand, it does satisfy the ideological demands of many of its readers, whose “save the world” mentality protects them from the guilt of plenty and extreme comfort that punctuate their lives.

One would think that such breast beating would actually increase the readership of its paper. Then again, perhaps this ideological pose is the least important reason why people read the Times. It has, far and away, the best arts coverage of any mass media paper, probably in the world. Its feature stories, always well written, imaginative and often surprising in content, offer a marvelous potpourri for curiosity hounds like yours truly. I am often astonished by the imagination of its editors in ferreting out wonderful sidebars to international, national and city life that have often been neglected elsewhere. And, their sports coverage is darned good.

There is enough non-ideological material to make up for the obvious bias. Some star op-ed columnists are almost universally nasty. For example, Frank Rich, a pleasant fellow in person, seems to be running a close race with Maureen Dowd as to who will win the nasty prize. Frank, who single-handedly nearly ruined the live theater business when he was the drama critic for the Times, maintains a sniggling self-righteous nose-in- the-air superiority that makes one shudder with inferiority anxiety.

As for Maureen Dowd, her column must attract a large readership of psychiatrists to observe her love hate relationship with her own gender. I read them both avidly, proving the theory that nastiness has great entertainment value for people of my ilk.

Then there are the self-righteous op-ed lecturers on the subject of the way the world should be run, meaning Tom Friedman, Nicholas D. Kristof, David Brooks and Paul Krugman whose economic views offer even more fodder for the Times’ non-readers. Let’s throw in Bob Herbert for racial sensitivity. No racial slight, real or imagined, goes unwritten.

Their “how-to’s” have spawned for these writers an entire ancillary personal profit industry with ever burgeoning contracts for book writing, speaking tours and talking head babbling on the boob tube. More power to them. Talking to non-readers puts them in an income category that makes them wealthy enough to buy the goods advertised in their flagship distributor.

Kristof, who sheds tears for third world atrocities is quite eloquent on the depressing treatment of females in many of these abominable countries. One wonders why his exposes don’t send ardent feminists into violent protest mode along with the rest of us allegedly caring humans. Or does it indicate that Times readers are mostly armchair activists who prefer to bleed privately and leaving the dirty work to its non-readers.

As for the editorial pages, here is classic umbrage taking to satisfy the most hardcore “progressive.” The page screams with “down with the rich” and “republicans are neanderthal” indignation, offering a perfect magic bullet right into the heart of its readership which is mostly “upper middle class and comfortable to very rich” and, without a doubt “democratic or faux independent.” I suspect the target audience is themselves, the privileged guys and gals who run the editorial end of the business.

I keep wondering how many readers of the Times live in subsidized housing or how big a circulation the Times has in the borough of Queens, statistically the most multi-culturally geographical designation in New York City and probably the world. As the Bible for political correctness, the Times has a world-wide franchise on this transforming vocabulary in which evil doings are deliberately scrubbed clean of vituperation. Indeed, it won’t be long before the Times will describe terrorists as “wayward youths.”

I’m sure the right of center crowd, if any remain, are left with heartburn and rising blood pressure if they read the Times editorials, undoubtedly with masochistic fervor.

As for the Jewish readership, which is probably a healthy statistic, the paper’s anti-Israel stance may have little to do with a decline in circulation, since the paper acts as a bellwether of bias and a record of Israel baiting, both obvious and subtle, that offers a proper standard for the many Jewish organizations to attack. How could they keep score if they didn’t read every word of this outrageously anti-Israel biased coverage?

On the other hand, the United Nations personnel must revel in such coverage and surely provide a heavy statistical bump to its circulation figures.

Whoever selects the Letters to the Editor also takes its marching orders from the same folks who put together the editorials and approve the stunningly subliminal and brilliantly biased headlines embedded in the news coverage. And their so-called ombudsman tries desperately to prove that he is not a toady to those who write his paycheck.

I’d give the live theater and movie critics so-so reviews. The theater guys try hard to impress us with their broad range of knowledge and often forget to review what is on the stage, so caught up are they with their own intellectual narcissism. But hey, at least they cover the whole turf. The movie reviewers are less snobby and, in my experience, more on the money. But then, the job has to be very dreary these days with most popular movies mimicking big screen video games.

I hope I’ve left out no area or target of insult. Nasty can be fun. Bottom line is I love the old bitch and despite all my huffing and puffing I could not imagine not having her greet me in the morning. In fact, I find myself rising at least an hour earlier to cadge the paper before my wife gets the front section. Indeed, this is the only serial disagreement in our otherwise tranquil married life.

And I pity poor “Punch” Sulzberger, the heir to the Sulzberger-Adler family alliance that built the Times into what was once the most powerful and influential newspaper in the world. I sincerely hope he doesn’t fall into that shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves cliché that signifies the beginning and end of good fortune. That rumble you hear is those venerable newspaper builders rolling over in their graves as their golden boy heir fights to take the lady off life support.

I, for one, will stand by the paper and defend it to my very last breath.

And no, in the interest of fair revelation, I am not a descendant of those Adlers. I wish I were.

The E-Book Revolution- Part II

When I was advising Sony executives when they began the groundwork for creating the Sony Reader, I implored them to keep the device pure, meaning to create a comfortable user friendly alternative for paper books. I argued against tarting up the device with calendars, telephonic communications, e-mail, video or any multi-tasking that would inhibit the reader’s concentration on content.

My argument was based on the presumption that a truly dedicated reader approached the book as an entry into an intense parallel world that required deep, trance-like concentration to fully appreciate and absorb the author’s intention which, on his or her part, required a similar singular focus.

As a pioneer and evangelist for the e-book alternative to the paper book, I was simply reacting to what seemed obvious, that digital technology was moving at lightning speed into the mainstream, that reading on screens was a generational certainty as new generations began their screen “reading” long before they could actually read, that the use of computers, while not quite replacing oxygen to sustain life, was on the verge of becoming ubiquitous and as common as underwear.

I was, of course, reacting to my own bias as a reader and a writer. When I opened a paper book I did so with the expectation of the privacy and isolation required to absorb the full scope of the author’s intent. I wanted no distractions, nothing to inhibit my concentration. I knew that the author was crying out for rapt attention so that the reader would buy into the one-on-one communication system that is inherent in the process.

Admittedly, because I am an author of works of the imagination, I have a certain reverence toward books and the hard work of creating a coherent narrative. I am certain that writers of informational material, like text books, self-help, spiritual, instructional, and other categories feel the same way. Why spend countless hours creating such material if there was not an audience of even marginal interest out there waiting to read it? Which brings us to the most salient point of all, why would a publisher acquire a book if not to monetize its potential?

I am well aware that no business is going to invest the huge sums of money required for disseminating such a device without the possibility of maximum returns. The dilemma, of course, is whether multi-tasking is a necessity for the dedicated reader or that the add-ons will compete for attention and downgrade reading as its primary intent. On the other hand, purchasers of these devices might like the possibility of switching conveniently to other tasks while pausing in their reading.

There are lots of ways to argue the point, but in the end the bottom line will probably determine the outcome of how these digital readers will be configured. Then there is the dire statistical news about the decline of reading which, if true, might further inhibit dedicated reader devices.

My own views are not stubbornly biased in favor of the dedicated reader, the human version, nor do I look pessimistically at the future of reading, despite the gloomy statistics. The power of reading and its pleasures, for example, in the realm of story telling in providing insight entertainment and wisdom needs no defense. In fact, the worldwide expansion of literacy makes the point moot.

With all these new readers coming into the market, some percentage will certainly drift toward book reading as a prime content provider and will opt for the convenience of digital readers. The pool of potential readers is expanding not declining and many are sure to discover the joys and advantages of reading.

The advent of the Kindle offers a step-up in the competition since it cuts the umbilical chord of the computer and, at least at first, has managed to get some publisher’s consent to lower its offering price. This may not continue as publishers see it as a growing challenge to its paper book pricing. It is unlikely that they will be able to succeed in such tactics as more and more people opt for digital readers.

While it might seem jingoistic in favor of the English language, I inject this interesting statistic. America is only the third largest national market for English language material. China with its vast population is number one in English literacy, followed by India. Thus, for a writer in America, the chances are pretty good that the authorship of digital material in English has a good shot at expanding his or her audience without the inconvenience and expense of translation and paper book distribution.

I know these arguments will be stubbornly resisted by those who believe that the dedicated reader will lose the monetary competition to movies and videos in the marketplace.

In my opinion, as an avid consumer of movies, I believe books trump movies in this realm. Movies are a passive story telling device requiring not much brainpower or even concentration and a suspension of belief that the characters acting out the story are merely mimicking real people in their actions.

On the other hand, the characters in books and their pursuit of narrative goals somehow seems more true when filtered through the human imagination. We can spend lifetimes debating this point, and I cite the Bible as one example where words have created an enduring narrative that has been sustained for more than three thousand years with far more impact than any movie ever made. I am well aware I am pushing the point to extremes and risk everlasting calumny for what might seem like heresy. Remember I am talking story, not religion, if that is possible in any discussion of the Bible.

As you can see, I vote strongly in favor of the dedicated reader without any of the bells and whistles of distraction. I’m not balking at an audio add-on, since that process satisfies the requirement of privacy and isolation required for the absorption of content, although I wonder whether it can compete totally with the eye-to-word experience. We are talking here of the delivery of reading content and the future of this process.

In this age of massive revolutionary change on all fronts technological, financial, international and ideological it’s probably not wise to make long term bets. I made the author’s digital bet because I believed that this new technology would prevent books from ever going out of print. It was prudent for a living author to have publication rights reverted and to create a website as a way to promote his or her titles and continue to keep his or her authorial name alive as long as possible, on and on into the unknowable future.

With Google’s promise to digitize all books out of print I may have to refine my strategy, although just having the books available as digital fodder may have no effect at all like paper books moldering on shelves in libraries.

Things are changing so radically in shorter and shorter time frames and a subject like delivering reading material might not engage many interested parties. But in this age of fractionalism, I like to think that there are enough people to care about books and reading to make this take on the problem relevant. At least I hope so.

All of Warren's books are available for the Sony Reader and Kindle

How I Got the Idea For Fiona FitzGerald

It was the early eighties and the mass media consensus on gender was undergoing a massive change. Women were on the march and the emphasis was on both upward mobility and equality on all fronts, especially in the workplace.

In the culture of imaginative fiction, the concept of the heroic figure was being “genderized” and the notion of the female cop, soldier, firefighter, construction worker and other jobs once considered male turf was swiftly disappearing.

Although I had never tackled the mystery genre which was growing in popularity, my agent persuaded me to take the plunge and since I lived in the metropolitan Washington area, I decided to use the police department that covered the nation’s capitol as my venue. In casting around for a knowledgeable female who could give me some insight into the inner workings of the department and her own psyche I was lucky to find an experienced female homicide detective, Judy Roberts, who led me deep into the entrails of the mindset and procedure of police work as seen through the female perspective.

Thus was born Fiona FitzGerald, a brilliant young white woman, working with a largely black dominated police force. Because I was familiar with the political and social circles of the power elite in Washington, I conceived the idea of Fiona working only on those cases that involved that segment of the Washington upper crust.

The first book in the series, “American Quartet,” dealt with a failed politician whose twisted mind conceived of the idea of staging a replication of the assassinations of our four American Presidents. It was cited that year by the New York Times as being one of the most outstanding mystery books of that year. The series was born, although the background of Fiona was to undergo a profound change after the second book “American Sextet” was published.

In the first two books, Fiona’s father was a New York cop and she had grown up in that city.

As with all of my books, the movie people beckoned and I found myself discussing film projects with a number of producers. One of them suggested to me that instead of making Fiona, the daughter of New York cops, it might be more interesting to make her the daughter of a prominent Senator who had grown up in Washington.

The idea appealed to me for many reasons and I made the change, immersing her in a culture that I knew a great deal about. She was now ensconced in the heady precincts of elite Washington with many contacts in that world, social, political and media which allowed me the opportunity to expand on all the possibilities inherent in that milieu.

In the five books that followed, she was assigned to investigate murders that related to the power elite. It was a world I knew well. Readers addicted to the series would unfortunately be confused by the sudden change of background from daughter of New York cops to daughter of a prominent late New York Senator. I took the plunge and got few complaints.

A new publisher, founded by an experienced former executive of a major publishing company, decided to take on the series and I consented to move Fiona to his new company. This gave me the opportunity to fix Fiona’s background in the first two books and make her uniformly the daughter of a Senator. I rewrote parts of the first two books to fix this situation and saw in this new publisher a chance for Fiona to go on indefinitely solving murders among the players in the power structure.

Alas, it was not to be. The new publisher went bankrupt before he could launch the full series and I was forced to continue with the original publisher. Thus, in the first two books, Fiona remains the daughter of a New York cop, although in the subsequent books she had been transformed into her new incarnation.

Nevertheless, the movie and TV people continue to pursue the idea of starring Fiona. Two film companies have optioned the Fiona books. NBC has optioned the material twice, once for movie of the week and once for a series. Scripts have been commissioned, including one by yours truly and another prominent television writer, but so far, she hasn’t found her television or movie legs. Nevertheless the books continue to be in play and there is some optimism that Fiona will once again be on her way to movie or television stardom.

In the meantime there are always the seven books and she has a growing fan club.

I Love a Parade

I’m not sure why it is but I often cannot watch a parade without my eyes welling up and, at times, tears run down my cheeks. Perhaps it is a mixture of nostalgia and some powerful feeling of pride and kinship, but when I see the American flag fluttering in the breeze as it passes by, followed by people marching in lock step to the rhythm of a drumbeat timed to brass trumpeting or a piper’s tempo, I go all queasy inside.

I’ve been marching in parades since joining Boy Scout Troop 157 in Brownsville, Brooklyn when I was 12 years old. These experiences began during World War II, and our scout troop Drum and Bugle Corps participated in the commemoration of the raising of plaques to the boys in the service in scores of neighborhoods. It was a matter of deep patriotic pride among the neighbors whose sons had enlisted or were drafted to serve in the Armed Forces.

I was both a drummer and a bugler and not very good at either but passable enough to march and play. We held band practice in PS 183 a few blocks from our headquarters in the finished basement of the Silverman house on Strauss Street. Later, as the war progressed, the band played again at the same sites when gold stars replaced the blue ones.

The most memorable parade I ever participated in was the Victory Parade down Fifth Avenue after World War II was won. I’ve been in a number of parades since then, but nothing surpasses that event. I played the bugle in that parade and can still hear the cheering and see the vast crowds that lined the avenue. It was a glorious heart stirring moment. It was America at its pinnacle.

As a parade watcher, there is one parade that sticks in my mind and just recalling the images of that day sends chills of patriotic pride down my spine. It was, as usual, up Fifth Avenue, and for some reason I found myself at a high floor along the parade route. It was the celebration, if I remember correctly, of the first group of troops to come from Europe after their victory in World War II.

It was led by one of the youngest Generals in that war, General James Gavin who was the Commander of the 82nd Paratroop Division. Imagine, a single soldier, this ramrod straight young general in his shined paratrooper boots and perfectly groomed uniform, a single symbolic American solder leading the victorious Army that had brought down a cruel monster, the demonic Adolph Hitler and his evil attempt to shackle the world to his brutal idea of the master race. Behind him marched the men of the 82nd, proud men in a division that had taken enormous casualties and who still retained the pride of belonging as they strutted in perfect sync down the most famous thoroughfare in America. You don’t have more stirring images than that to quicken the pulse and appreciate the meaning of sacrifice and victory.

Whenever I can, I attend the greatest annual parade of all, the St. Patrick’s Day parade, where those of Irish ancestry, men, women and children, proud of their heritage, swagger up Fifth Avenue with all the pageantry and regalia they can muster to proclaim their pride and glory of having come from the Emerald Isle and become part of a great new country. It is an inspiring event, seeing those wonderful Irish faces marching together in a parade that lasts more than six hours and sometimes longer.

It is a spectacle worth attending, not only for its pageantry, but what it says about the big-hearted melting pot that is America. These days the parade is speckled with people of all races who are part of the vast network of Irish beneficence that welcomes all people to celebrate with them. Considering that the Irish immigrants were once reviled as low class drunken troublemakers by the powers that then were running America in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, the St. Patrick’s day parade illustrates the upward mobility that our way of life portends for those who come to our shores to ply their dreams.

I find it inspiring to see people celebrating themselves and the native culture that has stitched them into the American fabric. Indeed, Fifth Avenue is the route of choice for ethnic groups of all varieties to exhibit their traditions, their music and their pride in being Americans. To celebrate Columbus’ landing in the New World, both the Spanish who claim him as a native son and the Italians who make a similar claim organize a parade on different days, a double whammy.

There are parades celebrating the heritages of Germans, Puerto Ricans, Greeks, Jews commemorating Israel Independence day and other groups who wish to memorialize their native roots. The time and effort that goes into these activities is awesome but the results offer a profound perspective on the vast patchwork quilt of the American experience.

Nostalgia must strike something deep inside me to be so stirred by watching parades. Perhaps it has something to do with my father who would carry me on his shoulders on what was called Armistice Day to see the bands and doughboys of the peacetime Army along with veterans of what was once called the Great War, march down Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn during that bygone holiday many years ago.

In those days lampposts were festooned with wreaths, and red poppies were offered for sale as a reminder of that brutal war and the men who were left behind on the bloody battlefields of Europe. When I sometimes think of the American blood shed to protect our European allies from their enemies and the ingratitude of their progeny, I often cannot control a trill of anger.

Indeed, I am often angered by people who cite the hostility to America from people of other countries as proof that somehow America is a land of arrogance, selfishness and greed. Worse, I grow livid with rage when our own citizens rant about our imperfections and imagined cruelties as if we are motivated by sinister forces with evil intent, condemning us as a nation without a soul or a sense of humanity. By no means are we a perfect populace and we often make monumental mistakes in our choice of leaders, and it is true that there are many among us who are corrupt and greedy or afflicted with other evils of the human condition. It is also true that we do terrible things to each other, but not because we are Americans. Rather because we are Homo sapiens with built-in evil traits that, at times, dominate our actions with awful consequences.

But I contend that we Americans are a lot less worse than other organized governments on this planet, more enlightened, and, by and large, more big hearted, generous and decent than perhaps all the others. We are always striving to improve and have an enormous capacity and talent for self-correction.

As a soldier during the Korean War, I marched in military parades and always felt a sense of profound participation, part of something bigger than myself. During that war I was ordered to the Pentagon to become the Washington Correspondent for Armed Forces Press Service. In that role I was able to provide important information of concern to the average Joe who served in all the branches of the American military.

It wasn’t combat, of course, but it gave me insight into the inner workings and psychology of the American military, which I found to be mostly decent, dedicated and talented professionals who have the awesome responsibility to defend us and run our wars. I found them to be compassionate and deeply concerned as they tried their best to weigh the price to be paid in American lives for every move planned to bring a victorious end to whatever hostilities they were engaged in.

To many, especially those who have not been involved in such experiences, my ebullience might sound jingoistic or emotionally naïve or an aberration of aging memories. I make no apologies for this feeling or my sometimes tearful sense of joyous pride watching a parade organized by my fellow citizens, and I am stirred to gratitude for my astonishing good luck in being an American.

How I Got The Idea For The Sunset Gang

I’m not sure my father graduated from High School. He never told me. I think my mother graduated from Girls High in Brooklyn, but I’m not certain. She had come to New York in the hold of a ship from Russia with her mother, my Grandmother, who had six children in tow. My mother was three years old. My Grandfather had come a few years earlier to save enough money to bring them to the United States. It all happened in the waning days of the nineteenth century. That was the way it was done.

My father came to New York from London’s East End when he was ten years old. He was, I think, born in Poland and had come to England with my grandparents when he was eight months old. He rarely talked about his early childhood in London, but when he did he cited merely the names of boys with whom he had played. He never went back.

That is the sum total of knowledge that I gleaned from my parents about their early days. It represents a huge gap in my education. Perhaps it was my fault. I never asked. But they never told me. I didn’t miss this lack of knowledge until a few years ago. Now I hunger for it. Not only about their history but about the whole line of ancestors that came before me.

This is not how I got the idea for the Sunset Gang, but it is an element of memory that clearly connects with the idea and might be one of the subconscious reasons why I wrote these stories.

Late in life my parents retired to Florida. Somehow, after a life of hard economic knocks, they managed to scrape up enough money to buy a one-bedroom condominium for $13,000 in Century Village in West Palm Beach. My father had been a bookkeeper, mostly expendable and mostly unemployed throughout the great depression. Half our lives were spent in a small three-bedroom house in Brownsville, Brooklyn bought for my mother’s parents, my grandparents, by their sons who supported them. We moved in whenever we were thrown out of our apartment for not paying the rent. It was called being dispossessed.

My grandparents had no social security, no pension, no means of support except by their children. The house became a refuge for us and those of my aunts and uncles and cousins who had lost the means of their livelihood because of hard times. There were eleven of us who lived in this tiny house with one bathroom. I slept with my kid brother. My parents slept somewhere downstairs in the dining room.

I have no memories of deprivation or unhappiness. I loved my childhood and loved that house, but that is another story I will write someday.

Oh yes, the idea of The Sunset Gang. Century Village in West Palm Beach is a sprawling community which was populated in the seventies and eighties by mostly lower middle class people, many of whom were Jewish, who had found Valhalla after lives of tough sledding in New York City and other northern cities. It’s probably much changed these days. Most people who lived there then were, like my parents, immigrants. With their children grown, they trekked to the new promised land. Florida! This became the magic destination, with sunshine, perpetually blooming flora and fauna, swimming pools, a giant clubhouse for entertainment, vast areas for card playing, old comedians doing their Catskill shtick, cycling clubs, lectures, classes and, above all, gossip.

Gossip had always been the coin of the realm among these immigrants who had come to American as children. They had always lived in close quarters, always watching and listening to the people who lived around them. They were always observing each other, talking about each other, criticizing, commenting, bragging. They were a living pulsing version of today’s tabloids. They knew who was cheating on whose husband or wife, who was lying about their past lives, who was exaggerating about their children’s achievements, who was richer or poorer, who had been a crook or a gangster, who was in bad health, who was dying, which widow was on the prowl for a man and vice versa. Above all, they knew who had secrets and they passed them around to each other in strict confidence. “You shouldn’t tell” meant spread the word. They were more efficient communicators than today’s Internet.

The principal conduits for this word of mouth knowledge were the women. The “Yentas”. Yenta is a Yiddish word for busybodies, a term of derision and mild contempt.
My mother would have been appalled if she was referred to as a Yenta. In fact, no woman would ever admit she was, at heart, a Yenta. “Me a Yenta. Are you crazy?”

The men, too, were a form of male yenta, although I never heard them referred to as such. To them yenta was the ultimate put-down, a troublemaker, a female gangster. “Watch your mouth. The Yentas could be listening.” was the ultimate danger signal of all the men who I met at Century Village on my periodic visits to my parents.

This said, I must confess that all of the ideas that became the short stories in my books, The Sunset Gang and later with more stories added “Its Never Too Late for Love” came from the Yentas of Century Village, including my mother. I owe them a profound debt of gratitude.

I began this little essay with some background about where my parents came from. I am, after all, a child of their experience and their genes flow in the blood of my body and my brain. I know in my gut that these stories come from that fount, that milieu.

God, how I miss them.