The Art and Arts of E. Howard Hunt Gore Vidal
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The Art and Arts of E. Howard Hunt Gore Vidal From December 7, 1941, to August something of the Kapstein creative island story has this our embattled yet correspondent in the Pacific." Who', 15, 1973, the United Slate' has been writing method. I require the tyro still mightily sceptered realm owed to Who corroborates, "Movie script angl- continuously at am except fore brief, pen-oleo to copy out in long hand but one man...." er, editor March of Time (1942-43): too little celebrated interregnum. Be- some acknowledged world masterpiece. H. H. is a daydreamer and like all was corr. Life meg. 1942." Yet one tween 1945 and 1950 the empire Howie copied out-if memory serves- great dreamers II think particularly of wonders what movies he wrote and turned its attention to peaceful pur- Of Human Bondage." Edgar Rice Burroughs) he stirs one's what Arides he filed, and from where. suits and colored something of a own inner theater into productions of Limit of Darkness (Random House, golden or at leen (or us not too But until the Kapstein Connection is the most lurid morn, aerials from which 1944) was written during this period. brazen in age. The arts in perticulor made, I must search the public record dull fact must be rigorously ex- H. H.'s second novel is concerned with nourished. Each week new genius was for clues. The IWO locket of H. WS cluded-like the Random Hoop blurb? a novel air squadron on Guadalcanal in revealed by the press, and old genius first novel Letts us that he became a "In February, 1942, Howard Hunt was the SOI0M001. Was H. H. actually on decently boned Among the new novel naval enotan in May, 1941 -There detached from has ship and sent to Guadalcanal or did he use as source Leta of that far-off time were Truman followed merry months of active duty Boston." Now if the dates given on the book Ira Wolfert's just published Battle Capota (today a much loved television at sea on a destroyer, on the North jacket are accurate, he served as an for she Solomons? Possible clue: the performer) sod myself. Although we Atlantic patrol. protecting the life-line ensign for no more than nine months. character of war correspondent Fran- were cor.....4 (a wort! (het the late to :thlhattled P,1:1: Ss) Till( of tom Biro: month: .h X. 0'80.11Ori... r,at list girth. William Faulkner thought meant evil at a surrogate for H. H. who never casts the same hint as), we were unlike: himself In his boots as anything but a Cappto looked upon the gorgeous Wasp. O'Bannon is everything H. H. Speed Laud. as a Ulm tiger in the detests-a low-class papist vulgarian Capotean garden where l saw mere who is also-what else?-"unhealthily tambkin astray in my devouring jungle. fat and his jowls were pasty." The au- The mu thing that Capote end I did thor contrasts him most unfavorably have in common was a need for with the gallant Wasps to whom he dedi- money And so each of us applied to cate, the novel: "The Men Who Flew the Guggenheim Foundation for a from Henderson." grant; and cacti was turned down. They are incredibly fine, these Shocked, we compared notes, Studied young chaps. They ought to be with the hat of More who had received names like McRae, Cordell, Forsyth, grants 'VW you just look." moaned Lambert, Lewis, Griffin, Sampson, Truman. "at those 4kb-full pie-pull Vaughan, Scott-not a nigger, faggot, they keep giving oruh-nee tor Racer lake, or woo in the outfit. Just reel for the admirable Carson McCollers guys who say real true simple things like who got so many gran. in her day "a guy who's fighting just to get back that she was known as the conductress to the States is only half fighting ..." on the gravy train, the list of honored A love scene: "'Oh, Ben, if it only writers ins not to our minds disc would stop.' She put her face into the =Visited Typical of the sort of hollow of his shoulder. 'No,' he novelist the Guggenheims preferred to sad.... 'We haven't killed enough of Capote and me in 194-6 was twenty. them yet or burned their cities or right-year-old iproctleally middle-aged) bombed them to hell the way we Howard Hunt, author of Ear, of must. When I put away my wings I F.:wawa:I (Random House, 1943); want it to be for good-not just for a novel described by the publishers as few years.' " A key motif in the H.11. "probably the foss novel about this Oetivie the enemy must be defeated was by en American who actually more like it. My eyes shut: the ma. A could he have spent protecting Eng- once and for all so that man can live helped fight it." The blurb LI unusually cold foggy day. Slender, •trite H. H. land's embattled life-line? It tUa naval at peace with himself in a world where elicited. Apparently, H.14. "grew up arrives (by kayak?) at a secret rendez- career ends when he is "sent to United Fruit and ITT' know what'. .`. like any other American boy" (no vous with a British battleship. On the Boston, to lake treatment for an Injury best not only for their stockholders tap-dancing on a river boat for him) bridge u Admiral Sir Ledie Charteria. in a naval hospital." This is worthy of but for their customers as well "gomg to public schools and to college It's Walter Pidgeon, of count. the Great Anti-Semanticist Nixon him- An academic critic would doubtless (Brown University, where he studied "Thank God, you got through. I never self. Did H. H. dip a disk while taking make something of the fact that since under 1.1. Kapstein)." thought it possible. There's someone cholera shot down in the dispensary? the only had guy in the book is a fat, A clue. I slip iota Uriefie, Kapstein particularly WleLS to thank you." Then Who', Who merely records: "Served pasty Catholic newspaperman, H. H. will prove to be my Rooebud. The key out of the swirling fog items a altort with USNR, 194(1-42." might well be reproaching himself for to the Hunt mystery. But doe. Key. burly figure; the face h truculent yet . not having flown with the golden stein still H.? WIII he talk? Or f, he somehow indomitable (no, it's not I turn for Information to Mr. Tad gallant guys who gave so much of afreml I daydream. "Hunt ... E. How- Norman Mailer). In one powerful band Sault, H. it's principal biographer and themselves for freedom, to get the job ard Hunt ... ab, yet. Sit down, he holds a thick cigar. When He an invaluable source of reference. done. In their numinous company. Mr.... ash, Boxell? Forgive me .. this speaks, the voice is the very voice of According to Mr. Soak, H. IL worked H. FL may very well have fell like an lest stroke memo to have.... Where human freedom and. yea, dignity. "En- for the next two years "as a movie overweight Catholic-and all because of were we? Howie, Yes. I must tell you sign Hunt. seldom in the annals of our script writes sod, briefly, as a was that mysterious accident in the naval BOOKS REVIEWED Give Us This Day Maelstrom Be My Victin The Coven by Howard Hunt. by Howard Hunt. by Robert Dietrich. by David St. John. Arlington House, 215 pp., 57.95 Farrar, Simms & (firm., 1948 Dell, 1957 Weybrieht and Talley (1972l, ■ 159 pp., 54.95; The Berlin Ending Bimini Run End of Stripper Fawcett (1972), 159 pp.,1.95 (paper) by E. Howard Hunt. by Howard Hunt. by Robert Dietrich. Potions's. 310 pp.. 56.95 Dell, 1960 Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1949 Compulsive Spy: The Strange Macfadden-Bartell, 160 pp., Eon of Farmsell Angel Eyes Career of E. Howard Hunt by Howard Hunt. 5.75 (paper) by Robert Dietrich. by Tad Stoic. Random Howe, 1943 Dell, 1961 Viking, 179 pp, 55,95 A Foreign Affair Limit of Darkness A Gift for (to be published in January) by John Baxter. Goma. by Howard Hunt. by John Basler. Aron, 1954 Anismin's Dairy Random House, 1944 Lippincott, 1962 by Arthur H. Bremer, Stranger in MINI 1 Come to Kill Where Murder Wall Harper's Mapaine Press, by Howard Hunt. by Gordon Davis,. by Gordon Davis. 14? pp., 16.50 Random Howe, 1947 Fawcett, 1954 Fawcett (19651, 157 pp., 5.95 (paper) Pocket Hooka 51,51l The New lark Arnim worthy black retainer who could have weren't very clean. and after It was all hospital; In Its wry so like Homy fight for human dignity, this time in Green Pastures. A ones when 1 was down on the street James's often alluded to but never the skies. played De Lewd in quick resume of Fleming's career fol- again, walking home, I thought that precisely by the Master named dis- But aceopAng to Mr. Saute what lows. never wanted to see lies again." Ernest ability which turned out to have H. H. really joined was not the Air Incidentally, each of H. H.'s narra- would have added min to that sen- been—after years of petient literary Force bur the Office of Strategic tives U periodically brought to a halt tence, if not to the scene. detective work—chronic acumination.