Lucking Out - James Wolcott [0]
Copyright © 2011 by James Wolcott
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
www.doubleday.com
DOUBLEDAY and the portrayal of an anchor with a dolphin are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Portions of this book previously appeared in Vanity Fair in somewhat different form.
This page constitutes an extension of the copyright page.
Cover design by Emily Mahon
Cover photograph © Serge Clément/Agence VU’
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Wolcott, James, 1952–
Lucking out: my life getting down and semi-dirty in seventies New York / James Wolcott.—1st ed.
p. cm.
Summary: “A memoir by Vanity Fair culture critic James Wolcott about coming of age in 1970s New York”—Provided by publisher.
1. Wolcott, James, 1952– 2. Authors, American—20th century—Biography. 3. Critics—United States—Biography. 4. New York (N.Y.)—Intellectual life—20th century. I. Title.
PS3573.O4575Z46 2011
813'.6—dc22
2011019494
eISBN 978-0-385-53499-4
First Edition
v3.1
To my parents and, as always, Laura
“We come into this world with our little egos equipped with individual horns. If we don’t blow them, who else will?”
—Addison DeWitt (George Sanders), All About Eve
“I love this dirty town.”
—J. J. Hunsecker (Burt Lancaster), Sweet Smell of Success
CONTENTS
Cover
Still from Blank Generation
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Epigraphs
PART I: Lucking Out
PART II: Like Civilized People …
PART III: Punk
PART IV: Bodily Contact
PART V: What Are You Doing Here?
Coda
Acknowledgments
Also by James Wolcott
PART I:
Lucking Out
So much is gone, stricken from the scene, but it’s still there, a landmark site in nobody’s mind but my own—the Latham Hotel, in lower-midtown Manhattan. On those rare occasions when I go by, I half expect to see my younger self exiting the lobby, eyebrows steadied for battle. Shelved at Twenty-eighth Street just off a motley stretch of Fifth Avenue, the Latham belongs to one of those square, unfabled pockets of Manhattan that never quite got around to developing a personality. I had discovered the Latham Hotel in a used paperback guidebook bearing the now-aching title of New York on $10 a Day. Catering to the frugal-minded, the Latham held the faint whiff of former glory that attaches to places that lodge permanent transients. It was there that I checked in after arriving from Maryland, my single-bed room offering an air-shaft view with the flapping and chirring of pigeons on unseen ledges. Street noises sounded distant and abstract, as on a Hitchcock soundtrack. Seedy hotel rooms were quieter then, more media-sparse, enabling guests to hear the ticktock beneath their own thoughts. Downstairs was no frantic beehive either, the hotel partly a way station for old people on pensions and Social Security, for some of them the last stop before the last exit. The women in particular suggested minor characters in Dawn Powell novels who had slipped down several rungs in life and were left with nothing but late-inning rituals and brief flurries of bother. I overheard one elderly lady remark to another about the gentleman lolling between them on a bench or sofa, his eyes shut, his head slumped sideways, and the flap of his tongue showing, “He was so lively this morning.” I shared the shower on my floor with a bent-double woman whose hunchback rose like a rock formation out of her thin robe. She startled me once, coming out of the bathroom as I was going in, but she was unaware of my double take, her head crooked floorward. The radio in her room was always on.
Next door to the Latham hunkers another low-profile holdover, the Prince George, which, before the gold medallions and furry testicles of disco descended, was a popular layover for flight crews whose trim blue uniforms and clippy stride made everybody else on the sidewalk look like clumps. During