Diaries 1969-1979_ The Python Years - Michael Palin [342]
Wednesday, August 1st, Sag Harbor
Al’s ‘guru’, the poet and writer Norman Rosten – has arrived. Like Jack Cooper, he is the sort of charming, slightly roguish, loquacious, salt-of-the-earth character that Al seems to attract to him. One of the Brooklyn writers’ group that included Mailer, Arthur Miller, James Jones, Joe Heller – a real group of literary giants.
Rosten is respected, but never achieved world status. He wrote a nice little book on Marilyn and he reminisces easily and unselfconsciously about her. His friend was Arthur Miller, and he remembers Miller going to meet Marilyn at the penthouse in the Barbizon Plaza. ‘He was scared stiff … I mean, Arthur was a good Jewish boy … he asked me to go up with him because he was literally afraid of going up there on his own.’
Rosten is wonderfully dry and self-deprecating and wittily observant. Marilyn really wanted to be a housewife, and she ended up with Miller and Di Maggio, both ‘very religious men’ – Rosten called them the two high priests, Jewish and Catholic, presumably to stress the irony of their association with a lady of such profane associations.
Rosten talks of Nixon’s revival – of his threatened return to active life and New York. R reckons Nixon one of the two ‘diabolic’ forces in America. I can’t remember the other one. Norman advises me to read DeTocqueville’s observations on America as providing some of the best insights on the US, albeit 140 years ago.
Thursday, August 2nd, Sag Harbor
Up at half past seven. Run along the quieter roads, full of a wonderful mixture of scents – musty, sweet, poignant, sharp – rising from the woods and gardens. It’s a very sticky, close morning again.
Rachel and I saw a middle-aged man wearing a T-shirt ‘More people died in Ted Kennedy’s car than at 3 Mile Island’.
Thursday, August 9th, Sag Harbor
Cooler, clearer sunshine on the way.
Am dripping with sweat on the patio after my fourth run this week when the phone rings. It’s Denis O’Brien, to apologise for his sudden indisposition and to renew the invitation to Fisher’s Island. Although he has fathers, mothers, children and hordes of relatives arriving and departing, he says we must come. ‘We’ll try and break house records,’ he promises cheerfully.
I take a call from Nancy. She has some request for the two Terrys and myself to go to Toronto during our film publicity in September. This ‘publicity binge’ rears menacingly close. God, it’s then I shall miss these superb, drifting, timeless, sunny days. This Thursday is near-perfect – sunlight bright, sky royal blue, all the countryside lit as if God was showing round prospective buyers.
Friday, August 10th, Sag Harbor
Shopped for presents, then took an early lunch and drove in search of Easthampton Airport. At the airport we waited for a single-engined Piper Cherokee Six to float in like a butterfly over the low surrounding woodland and taxi up to the little suburban bungalow with sun-deck, which served as the airport office building, refreshment room and control tower. This was our Yankee Airways flight to Fisher’s Island.
The entire Palin family filled the little plane, with one spare seat for the pilot. Weather was good and we turned north and then east in a circle to avoid some restricted area over Plum Island where ‘they do experiments on animals’ (said the otherwise taciturn pilot, darkly), then within 20 minutes we were turning over Fisher’s Island and down onto an overgrown strip surrounded by what looked like a scrap yard.
Brian, Denis’s ‘man’, who is from Huddersfield (with a Yorkshire accent tempered weirdly by fifteen years in Vancouver), meets us and drives us the length of the island (about six miles) to what he calls ‘The Castle’, but Denis calls ‘The Farm’. This confusion is understandable, the house on the point is a hybrid of Scottish baronial and French fortified farmhouse. Built in the middle of the Depression (1930) by a man called Simmons – a bed magnate!