Lucking Out - James Wolcott [14]
In those lax days that were soon to end sooner than anyone anticipated, the Voice had an idiosyncratic system for stocking the shelves of its review departments. Freelance reviews were left in a vertical folder for the arts editor, Diane Fisher. Because these reviews were unassigned, there might be three unsolicited reviews of the same rock concert or some new album trying to squeeze through the same tunnel, reviews of events and items that might have already been assigned to a regular. It was like playing darts in the dark, hoping to hit the board. It may not have been the most efficient system, but it was ego sparing. When something turned in on spec didn’t make the cut, I didn’t know if it had flunked because it wasn’t good enough, if it was a victim of column-space shrinkage, if one of the regulars had already called dibs, and so on. The pieces were never actually rejected, handed back with a skull and crossbones slashed in ink across the top, they just weren’t accepted, which enabled you to avoid discouragement but also left you dangling, until the next elimination dance. So I kept trying, trying to figure out the combination to the lock, find the elusive sweet spot.
Having intercepted a publicist’s phone call one day at the front desk, I zipped uptown to interview Groucho Marx, who was in town to promote a Marx Brothers festival. It was the last interview of a long day, and he was flagging but cordial (if a little puzzled), a cheery tam-o’-shanter perched on his head as he humored this obvious novice, his sharpest retort coming when I asked what he remembered most about working with Marilyn Monroe on Love Happy, and he said: “She had square tits.” His minder was Erin Fleming, who had played the NYU graduate with pretentious airs (“For me, Norman Mailer has exactly that same sort of relevance—that affirmative, negative duality that only Proust or Flaubert could achieve”) whose portal Woody Allen’s anxious sperm prepared to ford in Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex. Fleming was later sued and removed as Groucho’s legal guardian by his family, who accused her of pushing him into public appearances past the limits of elderly fatigue, resulting in numerous minor strokes. Falling by the wayside, Fleming eventually died of a self-inflicted gunshot, but nothing was foreshadowed on that late afternoon; she was charming and helpful, papering over awkward pauses with diplomatic interjections and bringing the interview in for a gentle fade so that Groucho could have a nap before the carousel restarted in the evening. The Groucho article didn’t run, but brief reviews I did of rock albums, downtown plays, and TV programs began to be published. Upon appearing in print, I realized that I possessed an asset that I had never reckoned on, something given to me at birth.
My name.
My byline, James Wolcott, it sounded so mature, so English, so litty-critty and stamped with authority. It was a byline that sounded as if it knew what it was talking about and had an extensive library for backup. That the impression my byline gave bore little resemblance to its owner didn’t matter, because no one could see me eating lunch at my desk. It would be years before people realized I was nowhere near as lineaged, assured, and stately as my byline suggested, one well-known editor from Knopf exclaiming upon meeting me, “And here I always thought you were a member of the fucking gentry.”
These small incursions not only bolstered my confidence but gave me something to clip from the paper as proof to my parents and other interested parties that I wasn’t just gazing out the window in the circulation department wishing the phone wouldn’t ring.
Then the everyday drift of events picked up speed and went over the falls into the thundering foam. In 1974, the founding fathers of the Voice were dethroned in a coup that sent Dan Wolf and the publisher, Ed Fancher, packing into exile, or as far as “exile