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LETTER FROM NEW

VISIONARY in his Heights studio. Inset, a New York Review of Books cover with a Levine . LEVINE IN WINTER For fourdecades, David Levine's acid-tipped portraits of everyone from Castro to Cheney gave TheNew York Review ofBooks its visual punch. Now that the greatest caricaturist of the late 20th century is going blind, is he owed more than a fond farewell?

BYDAVID MARGOLICK

hroughout the year 2006, a great drama unfolded in Levine's drawings-the latest crop around that time included f The New York Revieiv o Books. It didn't take place Jimmy Carter, George Soros, and Colin Powell, along with the in one of its famously erudite articles on politics and usual assortment of novelists, scientists, poets, potentates, and aca­ culture, nor in the characteristically splenetic ex­ demics, dead and alive-still appeared. His customary irreverence changes on the letters page, nor in a highbrow personal ad in the was also intact: Vladimir Putin in a king's robe; the lips of Justice back. Instead, it occurred graphically, in the of David Samuel Alito, fresh from his unenlightening confirmation hearings, Levine, which had graced the publication for the past 44 years. zippered shut. But to anyone familiar with Levine, something was

1 68 I VANITY FAIR I www.vonityfair.com PHOTOGRAPHS BY GASPER TRINGALE NOVEMBER 200B LETTER FROM NEW YORK

seriously off.The images were scarcer, cruder, more tentative. Even the course of it, more than anyone before him, Levine put together a his signature, the casually confident "DLevine" that always nestled facebook of human history, capturing everyone from Agnew and Al­ cozily at the bottom, was different: suddenly, it was crabbed and er­ bee to Zapata and Zola. Arguably, only , the indomitable ratic, even illegible. Sometimes it all but tumbled out of the frame. New York Timesillustrator who worked almost to the very moment of Few people may have noticed the change, because Levine's old­ his death, five years ago, at the age of 99, had so long a tenure or cast er, classic drawings for the Review-there were more than 3,800 of so lengthy a shadow, though his range was considerably narrower and them-still appeared in the magazine, not just amid the articles but in his work as apolitical as Levine's was politically charged. Some of various promotions and inserts: or Amelia Earhart, look­ Levine's early subjects, such as writer Lillian Hellman, had begged to ing reproachful or entreating, urging readers to re-up. In Manhattan be spared his often savage strokes. But then came a total switch, and and Cambridge and Ann Arbor having Levine go at you certi­ and Santa Monica, where calen­ fied your significance,no matter dars featuring Levine drawings how he made you look. still hung in their usual places, TIMEONCE In nearly three decades in it was as if he'd never left. But New York I'd never met or when the older work was jux­ seen Levine, nor did I know taposed with the newer, some­ CLAIMEDV THAT very much about him. But af­ times across the page, the con­ LE INE'S DRAWING OF L.B.J. DID ter years of savoring his work trast was stark, and sobering. every other week in the Review, Simultaneously, two more MORE TO UNDERMINE I felt he was a friend. When dramas were under way. One that work faltered, then van­ was on Henry Street in Brook­ HIS PRESIDENCY ished altogether, I wondered, lyn Heights, where Levine, THAN ANY PHOTOGRAPH. and worried, about him. Some­ now 81 years old, had long one told me he was ill, but I lived and worked. Gradually, neither heard nor read any­ his universe had grown darker and fuzzier. He could no longer see thing about it. Then, this past March, I attended a program hon­ very clearly without strong light and magnification, or rely upon his oring another journalisticiconoclast, the late I. F. Stone, and there hand: the lines that had always been his friends, the spare, crisp ones was Levine. He'd done Stone, of course-at least three times. One that defined someone's shape, and the elaborate cross-hatchings that version appeared on the cover of a collection of Stone's articles. gave him soul, he could no longer control. His ophthalmologist had ("The hardest job with drawing Izzy is that he already looked like put it bluntly. "Mr. Levine, you don't look your age," he said. "But a ," he says.) "David Levine!" I gushed, with awe and, your eyes do." His diagnosis: macular degeneration. Medications frankly,some relief, when we were introduced. "Where have you and injections didn't help. Levine worked on, but laboriously. He been? What's going on with you? I miss you! Are you all right?" abandoned pen and ink for pencil, which, as he puts it, "was more forgiving if I made a mistake." But the results were plain enough. A Lifetime's Work For the first time-except for those very few instances when it had f you want to know the sheer scope of Levine's work, just dip been too tart for the publication's taste-the Review rejected his work. into any of the shallow drawers in the antique architect's file in I his study, where his caricatures are arranged alphabetically. I eanwhile, at the magazine, long the flagshipof the American pulled the C's. There was Churchill: seen from the rear, identifiable liberal intelligentsia, there was the third drama: what to do only by his shape, his palette, and his cigar. Then, in no particular or­ M about David. First, it debated whether to run what he'd sub­ der: Cheney (Dick). Carmichael (Stokely). Le Carre mitted. Then it stopped sending him assignments: it was in April (John). Church (Frank). Carroll (Lewis). Castro (in 2007 when his last original drawing (of the novelist Howard several poses: as a baseball player in one, holding Norman) appeared. The Review now primarily uses the work a sickle in another). Caesar and Caligula. Cal­ of another artist, whose style resembles Levine's but displays houn (John C.). Cunningham (Merce). none of its wit. Still, the masthead lists Levine as "staff Connolly (Cyril). Cuomo. Chirac. Von a1tist"; to both the Review's co-founder and editor, Rob­ Clausewitz. Colette. Clifford (Clark). ert Silvers, and Rea Hederman, its owner and publisher, Chesterton. Cromwell. Chaucer. Clin­ any suggestion to the contrary is preposterous. "I think ton (Bill). Charles V. Califano (Joe). of him as someone who's done marvelous things for us Cheever. Carswell (G. Harrold). Colum­ and might do some again," Silvers says. bus. Child (Julia). Cullen (Countee). Clark But the ophthalmology texts don't list any­ (Ramsey). Chomsky. Chateaubriand. thing called "macular regeneration." Theoreti­ Callas. Curzon (Lord). cally, one of the electronic devices Levine has Because Silvers and his long­ tried will help him see the contrast in the pho­ time co-editor, the late Barbara tographs from which he works-the "scrap," Epstein, always wanted fresh in artists' lingo-well enough to resume work, images, Levine got to draw or, through practice, his pencil drawings will many people repeatedly, ever magically meet the Re­ refining and updating. He view's standards. It seems was at it long enough to en­ unlikely, though. All par­ grave wrinkles into W. H. ties concerned seem too Auden, follow Philip Roth's timid or gentlemanly or retreating hairline, trace Su­ PoUyanna-ish to acknowl­ san Sontag going gray. Ty pe edge the obvious: that one in any name at the "David of the most remarkable runs in the history of Levine Gallery" on the Re­ journalism and art is almost certainly over. In view's Web site and you can assem- l 7 0 I VA N I T Y F A I R I www.vonityfoir.com NOVEMBER 2008 LETTER FRO� t-lEW YORK

ble something sounding like an olde English Christmas carol. There uncannily right, undeservedly so in his estimation. "I was given are 66 Richard Nixons, 41 Lyndon Johnsons, 23 Ronald Reagans, a tremendous amount of credit for having unbelievable insights, 16 Sigmund Freuds, 14 Norman Mailers, 13 Charles de Gaulles, more than any known shrink could hope ever to have," he says. "I 12 Jimmy Carters, 11 Adolf Hitlers, 10 William Shakespeares, nine might have stumbled on something, but that really wasn't some­ Jean-Paul Sartres, eight Bertrand Russells, seven Menachem Be­ thing you could count on and call 'insight."' These days, though, far gins, six Ernest Hemingways, fiveMarcel Prousts, four Ayatollah from nailing his subjects, he has trouble summoning their names. Khomeinis, three Bernard Be- Over the years, Levine has rensons, two Elvis Presleys, and done a few images of himself, one ... well, there are hundreds THEREVIEW and he gave himself no more and hundreds of those.Review And breaks than anyone else. Da­ lots of what ran in the vid Levine's David Levines isn't even there, to say nothing REJECTED AN are heavyset, disheveled, and of what appeared elsewhere. IMAGE OF shambling, with a bulging gut, David Leopold, a curator hair matted and slicked back, who has spent the past three SPORTING WHAT MUST and an enormous, vent-like years cataloguing Levine's beak. In his bedroom hangs work, estimates that only half of HAVE BEEN THE WORLD'S one of rhis few self-portraits Levine's caricaturesReview. were actu­ SMALLEST PENIS. in oil, f om 1965. In contrast ally done for the Thus far to his finely wrought carica­ he'sEsquire, found more than 1,000Ttme, done tures, his face in it is abstracted for The Newalmost Yorke,; 100 for , and undefined-pretty much Rolling71 for Srone, Sports11/ustmted, and lots New of othersYork, for the way he sees everyone now. Without his work, he has lost Family Planning Perspectiveand a host of oddball pub­ the structure of his life-sometimes, it's hard for him to remem­ lications, such as (for which he once drew ber the day of the weekReview-and his chief means of self-expression. Margaret Sanger using a diaphragm as a trampoline).Review, The few people Levine believes the has tiredhim. In fact, for the rest of the he apparently never got around to drawing for the like Jacque­ year he remains under contract with the publication, which pays him line Kennedy, he invariably did for others (in Jackie'sReview case, HaqJer's). around $4,800 a month (down from the more than $12, 000 he once But so inextricably linked are LevineReview and the that, no matter earned), essentially for the use of his old drawings. Whether or not it is where Levine appeared, it was the that always came to mind. renewed, he receives neitherReview health insurance nor a pension. His friends feel vehemently that the owes him something better than that. be renowned French artist Honore Daumier drew politicians "He is the visualEsquire trademark of that magazine," said Byron Dobell, a T whom no one later remembered. But the durability of those former editor at and, for more than four decades, a member of Levine depicted, plus the unique insight with which he drew the weekly painting group Levine still runs with the portraitist Aaron them, guarantees the immortality of his works. "Nobody will want to Shi kier. "They fed off his drawings for years. Let's say he goes com­ publish a biography of any of the people he's done without includinge pletely blind .... They have no further obligations to him .. . ? It's as if one of his pictures," another prominent illustrator, , pr­ Disney decided, 'Let's throw Disney overboard. He's an old man. We dicts. "People will want to reproduce his stuffforever." Sometimes, don't need him."' A series of heart problems, with all the customary life resembled a Levine drawing. The writer Richard Elman recalled stents and bypasses and pacemakers, knocked Levine off stride even once encountering Hannah Arendt, Saul Bellow, Stephen Spender, before his eyesight did. "I haven't settled whether I am angry or I am Dwight Macdonald, and other literary luminaries at a party near Chi­ just saying, 'Well, it was time anyway,'" he says. He's much more fired cago. On hand was "a whole collection of animated David Levine up about the conditions of the poor than he is about his own. caricature faces, drinking, standing about, sitting on overstuffedsofas, Proud to Be a Red and smearing chopped liver onto crackers," he wrote. "There wasNew no faceYork inReview that roomofBooks. that" did not seem to recall a page out of the om in Brooklyn in 1926, Levine grew up in a proletarian, politicized world. His father ran a small clothing factory. On the wall in Levine's kitchen, on the bulletin board by the B His mother was a left-wing rabble-rouser, the type to ap­ telephone, hangs theReview David Levine calendar, which is sent annu­ proach the most menacing cop at a protest and say,Daily "Do Worker you ally to preferred subscribers. March featured a drawing know you're a Cossack?" Levine handed out the of Abraham Lincoln, one Levine doesn't much like: his Lincoln, by the Brooklyn docks and watched May Day marches around he feels, is smirking. "That one just got out of hand," he recalls. It Union Square. He had studio space adjoining that of Rudolf Abel, was a rare lapse; Levine was invariably credited for getting things the Soviet spy arrested in 1957 and eventually exchanged for the U-2

RIGHT IS WRONG From left: caricatures of Abraham Lincoln (1982), William F. Buckley Jr. { 1970), ond Toni Morrison { 1987). Levine has regrets about some of his and admits to going easy on underprivileged groups.

172 I VANITY FAIR NOVEMBER 2008 LETTER FROM NEW YORK pilot Francis Gary Powers. His friendly ties to Abel could explain those on politics, he grasped instantly and tackled with relish be­ why two F.B.I.agents showed up at Levine's house sometime in the cause of their comic possibilities. But he thinks himself uneducat­ 1950s (he was about to take his first trip to Europe, to study the art) ed-"{ didn't do anything in school," he says; "I studied volleyball"­ to inform him he wasn't going. He still considers himself a Com­ and found articles on musical theory or physics or poetry heavy munist; it was the Soviets who strayed. So Stalin (whom he drew at slogging. Still, he persevered, scouring the texts for ideas. Then he least 10 times) gets the usual Levine treatment: in one version, he's studied the photographs, looking for whatever element-nose, flanked by all the headless gener- eyes, chin, hair, glasses, head­ als he murdered. captured a person's essence. Levine began to draw as a kid, Sometimes, what most enthralled sketching the stuffed foxes and him emerged only as he drew. squirrels in the Brooklyn Mu­ Working in his studio over­ seum. After returning from the looking Pierrepont Street, the service, in 1946, he attended a EDITORS ONCE surrounding windows covered fine-arts school in Philadelphia. up to block out the harsh light, A fire in his studio in Brooklyn's DISCUSSED WHETHER he set pen (the point was Gilot Park Slope around 1968 de­ LEVINE SHOULD FILE DO,VN 102) to paper (Strathmore double stroyed most of his early, large weight). Never was there a cap­ works in oils; seemingly crushed NIXON'S FANGS. tion. "If I can't do it the way by the blow, he turned to smaller Charlie Chaplin did it, words paintings, along with watercolors are not going to help," he says. that some, like Edward Sorel, consider his finestwork of all. Hang­ Each illustration took him a couple of hours. Tu esdays, the mes­ ing fromand stacked against the walls of the apartment he shares senger would return to the Casino to pick up what he'd drawn. with his second wife, Kathy Hayes, is four decades of his output, mostly small paintings. Many are of his favorite subject: Coney Is­ Strokes of Genius land. What better way to study humanity than observing them half hat sets Levine's drawings apart is not just the technical nude on a beach, all posing for him? Many others are of garment artistry but also the wit. "He was the most brilliant visual workers: pressers and cutters and finishers, muscular and sweaty, punster that ever existed," says Sorel. Detesting much of W20th-century art-he is as conservative stylistically as he is radical beleaguered and dignified. All of the characters, even the women bent over their sewing machines, are really him, he says. Those politically-he drew Andy Warhol as Alfred E. Neuman, showed paintings are as tender and affectionate as his caricatures are Picasso dumping a truckload of Picassos, and made the top of withering-Levine reserved all of his respect and pity for com­ Claes Oldenburg's head a garbage-can lid. (After he depicted Jack­ mon folks-and of all his artwork are clearly what mattered, and son Pollock urinating squiggles onto a canvas, be says, the Review matter, to him most. The caricatures, by contrast, were commis­ stopped assigning him modern artists. Silvers replies: "Certainly sions. They paid the bills and, Levine says, gave him a chance not consciously," adding that most stories about artists were in fact to unload. Few of them hang at his house, though he's fond of illustrated by their own work.) Monica Lewinsky smokes a cigar. them too. "I love my species," he says. "I love looking at their Hemingway stands on an animal rug with a Hemingway head. Pat­ faces." ton is squirreled away in a giant holster. Kenneth Starr is an ayatol­ For a time, Levine survived on work from publications like lah. Osama bin Laden is a long, bushy beard. Dan Quayle is a puny Gasoline Retailer. In the late 1950s, he drew a line of unsuccess­ Sword of Damocles hanging over George H. W. Bush. ful Christmas cards. Then, in the early 1960s, he landed A caricature of Lyndon Johnson is probably at Esquire. Along with contemporaries like Sorel and Levine's most famous work of all: a takeoff on the , Levine helped revive a tradition of po- famous photograph of Johnson lifting his shirt litical illustration that had faded since the days of to show the incision from his recent gallbladder Daumier and . In 1963, while the surgery, which Levine transformed into the city's newspapers were on strike, Barbara Ep­ even more famous imageof Johnson lifting his stein recruited Levine for the newly hatched shirt to reveal a map of Vietnam. Ttme once New York Review ofBooks. He took to the task claimed that that drawing, which simultane­ quickly. The mostly playful marginalia he'd ously captured Johnson's crudity and how done for Esquire deepened, becoming indelibly the war had scarred both him and more ambitious and psychologically the country, did more to undermine his pres­ complex. idency than any photograph. Johnson biog­ And a remarkable ritual quick­ rapher Robert Caro says he is asked more ly developed. Pretty much every about Levine's depiction of Johnson than other Thursday for the next 40 years, any other topic. "The photograph assaulted a messenger from the Review would drop people, and the cartoon embedded it in the off an envelope at the Heights Casino, on American consciousness," he says. Montague Street, where Levine played If anything, Levine was even harder on Nixon, tennis, a few blocks from his apartment. In it and considerably more often. There is Nixon as were photographs of the people he was to draw Captain Queeg, steel balls in his hand, and for the next issue, Nixon with tapes spilling out of his trouser bottoms. There is Nixon as the Godfather, along with the articles SHADOW OF about them. Always, A DOUBT Nixon with Nguyen Van Thieu biting into Levine would read A 1972 illustration his leg like a terrier, Nixon with Spiro Ag­ the pieces before set­ of new and with Mao Zedong. There is Nixon ting pen to paper. as the Godfather. as a fetus, Nixon kissing Brezhnev, Nixon Some, particularly manipulating a Lieutenant William Calley

NOVEMBER 2008 www.vonityfoir.com I VA N I T Y f A I R I l 7 3 LETTER FROM NEW YORK

hand puppet. (The tally of 66 Nixon images does not count the nu­ whose fingers he almost imperceptibly wrapped a ballet slipper; at merous Nixons he did for other publications; Newsweek editors once the time, he explains, everyone was insensitive to gays. Rather than discussed whether he should file down Nixon's fangs.) For few char­ depict Eleanor Roosevelt as the usual ugly duckling, he turned her acters was Levine's distinctive cross-hatching better suited: with it, he into a swan. One woman be did not indulge was Margaret Mead. managed to add several hours to Nixon's famed five-o'clockshadow. He bared her breasts-to make up, he explains, for all those native women she exposed in various anthropological texts over the years. ritics praised Levine for resurrecting a moribund art and cap­ Predictably, whenever Levine strayed beyond the tolerant pre­ turing the Zeitgeist. "They are wickedly intelligent and shame­ cincts of the Review, he could expect trouble, even though these oth­ C lessly unfair," Hilton Kramer, of , wrote of er publications always came to him. The New York Timeskilled one an exhibition of his caricatures in 1968. "Funire historians of the six­ drawing of Nixon feeding papers into a shredder, and another of a ties will find in these images a re- nude Kissinger, his back side liable guide to the bitter feelings tattooed with bombs, a map and angry criticism that now fill of Vietnam, and a skull and every cornerof our political life." AMAZINGLY, crossbones, even after promis­ One week the previous January, ing a skeptical Levine it would Levine had drawn covers for both run whatever he submitted. In Time (L.B.J. as Lear) and News­ LEVINE'S 1982, Time spiked a drawing week (five Republican presiden­ CARICATURESAREl�'T SELLING. of Alabama governor George tial contenders). A host of would­ Y Wallace (then belatedly court­ be Levines appeared. "I have 'NOBODS BEEN ing black voters) with an Afro. never imitated Levine," one de­ Years later, says L�vine, The clared. "l have burglarized him." ASKING;' HE SAYS."MAYBE New Yorker killed a watercolor­ Levine believed that power I HAVE TO DIE FIRST." and-pencil drawing of George corrupts, and his scorn for any­ W. Bush wearing his famous one in authority was nonparti- night jacket and standing on san. So unflattering were his portraits of Ethel Kennedy's husband rows of flag-covered coffins. ( says Levine submit­ (whom he drew 6 times) and brothe,�in-law Jack (10 times) that she ted the work unsolicited. It later ran in the Review.) barred Levine from playing in the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial The New Yorker's handling of another piece of work, in 2005, this Pro-Celebrity Tennis Tournament. Levine had Lyndon Johnson one of Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas and then Israeli prime shedding crocodile-shaped tears, and crocodiles shedding Johnson­ minister Ariel Sharon sitting around a conference table, was more shaped ones. He accentuated Ronald Reagan's every crease and disturbing to him. At the magazine's request, Levine says, he placed crevice. He considered Bill Clinton (nine times) a liar and equivo­ sinister, hooded figures brandishing machine guns behind Abbas. To cator and wise guy and closet Republican, so he put his hand on a balance things ofT (at least in his own mind), he added some gigantic stack of Bibles, or had him eating waffles, or placed a hayseed be­ missiles alongside Sharon. When the drawing appeared, however, he tween his teeth, or gave him an elephant's trunk. was shocked to see that the missiJes had vanished: never before, he However pejorative his caricatures of politicians were, he main­ says, had his art been altered behind his back. After that, he goes on, tains that they were always designed to be constructive: by making he got no furtherassignments fromthe magazine. "David Levine is a the powerfulfunny-looking, he theorized, he might encourage some great political artist and kept on publishing with us after this, but all humility or self-awareness. (I asked him whether that had ever ac­ I remember about this was thinking that with Sharon being so omi­ tually happened. He said it had not.) But Levine also knew when nously huge in the drawing, the bombs were too much," says David to stop. As he often cautions young illustrators, caricature fails Rem nick, The New Yorker's editor. "More important, if the implica­ when people are distorte_d beyond recognition. He allowed himself tion is that we made the change for ominous political reasons, he is, an exception with J. Edgar Hoover (he did him four times), whom with respect, wrong. This article didn't pull punches on Sharon, to say he depicted once as an amoeba-like, cobwebbed blob. Then again, the least." Before long, though, the magazine did stop conunissioning Hoover was the man who seized Levine's passport. Levine: his new work required too much retouching. Conversely, Levine admits to going easy on anyone belonging to The Review was positively laissez-faire by comparison. When a group that had been historically disadvantaged, such as women he did encounter problems there, they sometimes concernedsexu­ and blacks. He still feels guilty about his rendition of Marilyn Mon­ ality. "The New York Review is a little bit straight-up Puritan," he roe, whom he drew with a baseball bat on her shoulder and puffy, says. "They have a hang-up about sex." Until the offending por­ overly painted lips, as if she'd just been beaten or expected to be. tion was cropped, the caricature that accompanied a piece on Gay He also rues one of his portrayals of Oscar Wilde, around one of Talese's ThyNeighbor's Wifeoriginally depicted the author with his

BACK TO THE FUTURE From left: Henry Kissinger ( 1979), novelist Thomas Wolfe (1987), and Susan Sontag (1992). The New York Times killed the Kissinger drawing after promising it would run whatever Levine turned in.

1 7 4. I VA N I T Y FA I R r www.vonityfoir.com NOVEMBER 2008 LETTER FROM NEW YORK

fly open. The turtleneck in which he once dressed Philip Roth was restraining him when, engrossed in a conversation, he had been changed when, at least as Epstein saw it, it too closely resembled a about to walk into traffic near his home in Brooklyn Heights. foreskin. But it was his images of Kissinger that ran into the most Afterward, though, Mailer apparently could think only about trouble. The Review published at least JO of them, none especially all the unflattering portraits Levine had done of him. "Oh. It's kind. But it rejected a view of Kissinger's tattooed back side simi­ you" was the only thanks Mailer could muster. Others, though, lar to the one the Times had spurned, as well as a 1982 image of including Arthur Schlesinger Jr., actually appreciated what a naked Kissinger as Atlas, holding the world and sporting what Levine had made of them. "He was a particularly homely man," must have been the world's smallest penis. (It was later exhibited at Levine recalls. "He must have expected something much worse." Oxford's Ashmolean Museum and is now in private hands.) As much of a fixtureas he was in the Review, Levine was a stranger Two years later, the Review around it. He seldom visited its spiked another naked Kissinger, offices, and then only to pick up this one showing him beneath errant art books. Rarely did he an American-flag bedspread, THE REVIEWHAD see, or even talk to, Epstein ,or gleefully ravaging a woman. Silvers. "Every time I came in, Little of her is visible save her he was on the phone to Timbuk­ head, which also happens to LEVINE REMOVE tu," he says. Levine says that he be a globe. It "just didn't seem SWASTIKAS FROM was only occasionally invited to what we should do," Silvers Review events, and that that was says. Levine took it to Victor CLINT EASTvVOOD'SCLOTHING quite all right by him, since in Navasky, then editor of The Na­ his mind the editors considered tion, who published it. That in AND THE CLEFT OF hirn, quite literally, a hi.red hand. turn outraged feminists on Na­ GEORGEWALLACE'S CHIN. Not that he disagreed. "Intel­ vasky's staff, who complained lectuaUy I always felt they were that Levine had made the world well above me," he explains. a woman and, by showing her grabbing the sheets, suggested that At a party at Epstein's once, he recalls, the poet Robert Lowell said she might be enjoying herself. Navasky called a meeting and invited something to hin1. "I sort of stood there listening and then he moved Levine, who only inflamed things more. "I said, 'I wanted to say on," Levine recalls. "The next guy came along the line and said, 'Did that he was screwing the world, and as far as I know, approximately you understand a word he said?,' and I said, 'Not one."' 99 percent of the world screws that way,' " he recalls. Navasky was Levine's son, Matthew, who licenses the right to create products Levine's court of last resort; he also published a caricature of George featuring his father's caricatures and paintings through a company W. Bush handing out coat hangers-suitable for abortions-which, caUed D. Levine Ink, believes that the Review, knowing it would one once again, The New Yorker had refused to run. (It said the work was day have to wean itself offits aging illustrator, had used him less fre­ inappropriate for a story concerning campaigning more than policy.) quently and prominently even beforehis eyesight deteriorated. By the time retired Supreme Court justice Sandra Day O'Connor sat t times, the Review did ask Levine to tone things down. Once, for Levine's painting group, in October 2006, Levine saw her only as Epstein requested that he remove the frotharound Zbigniew a blur. Levine never really discussed his failing eyesight with Silvers Brzezinski's mouth-she said it was redundant-and another or Epstein, but at some point in 2006 the effects could no longer be A r time that he make Gore Vidal, with whom she was friendly, less ignored. Coming f om another illustrator, the new works, in pencil, obese. Then there were all those swastikas that Levine embedded would have been perfectly respectable; many of them, including one into his work, like Hirschfeld's "Nina"s. The Review had Levine re­ of Barack Obama, were used. But they move them from Clint Eastwood's clothing and the cleft of George lacked the lapidary precision and dev­ Wallace's chin. "We sometimes thought the swastikas were in­ astating eloquence of his old drawings: appropriate," recalls Silvers. "It was sometimes a question the struggle to pull off a decent like­ of detecting them. Someone would say, 'Hey, there's a ness also sapped him of his wit. Most swastika!"' A prostrate black man over whom Newt oftheRe,,iew's roughly 140,000 subscrib­ Gingrich leapfrogged in 1995 was airbrushed out of ers may not have noticed, but his fellow the finished product. (That was kinder than Levine's artists did. Following the decline in Levine's depiction of Gingrich as an elephant's rear end, the work from one issue to the next was to them anus doubling as his mouth, done for .) .bke watching another iron horse, Lou Gehrig, Erica Jong, , Christopher Isher­ suddenly faltering on the field. wood, and Sontag were all unhappy with Levine. Soon the rejections came, from the Re­ So was Philip Roth, whom Levine encountered view and other publications. "These drawings one day outside Bergdorf Goodman shortly are not what we have come to expect from after one of his nine caricatures of the au­ David Levine," Levine says Silvers told him. thor had appeared. "What did you do to (Silvers says he was far more delicate-that is, if he my sweet little goyish shtik [Chris­ said anything at aU. "I think we just didn't use them tian and small] nose? " Roth and said we were sorry,'' he complained. Truman Capote recalls.) Levine didn't argue. also feigned indignation. "I agreed that there was "You're the man who did something wrong and that a my dewlaps like this!" he problem had developed," he remonstrated, tugging at says. He subsequently tore up the excess skin around his most of the rejected pieces. neck. Levine says he may Levine nonetheless in­ have saved Norman Mail- sists that over time the quality of his work in pen­ cil would have improved. Some of his colleagues,

176 I VANITY NOVEMBER 2008 LETTER FROM NEW YORK

such as Jules Feiffer, agree. The Review's "callous disregard" been asking," says Levine. "Maybe I have to die first." Fearfulthat the for Levine, he wrote Silvers in February 2007, was "stunningly I.R.S. will soak his two children when he passes, he's half-facetiously at odds" with its long tradition of "intellectual conscience and advised them to burn everything. In fact, many Levine caricatures decency," and was tactically unwise to boot. "You are hand­ are already in museums and archives; the Library of Congress alone ing your enemies a gift," he warned. "What fun The Weekly owns 76. Tracking down the originals isn't easy; many, having been Standard, The National Review and The Wall Street Journal cared for haphazardly, are lost. One that is accounted for is the are going to have at your expense when this affair goes pub­ priceless caricature of Lyndon Johnson's belly, which belongs to lic." Certainly, he concluded, "the greatest caricaturist of the A. Whitney Ellsworth, the Review's firstpublisher. Ellsworth thinks last half of the Twentieth Century deserves better from you." he paid around $100 for it; Levine recalls giving it to him for free. Even friends who concede So cash is short; a $3,000 con­ that Levine's latest drawings traption that would heighten are no longer worthy of the the contrast of images so that Review criticize its handling of he could work from them more him, which they consider in­ "I MIGHTHAVE easily seems beyond his means. sensitive from the start. Levine "They could solve this whole neither asked for nor received STUMBLED ON thing with a pension," he says. any stock in the publication SOMETHING, BUT THAT REALLY Both Silvers and Hederman when he went to work there, for say they have always tried to instance, so that when Rea He­ vVASN'T SOMETHING pay Levine generously. Even derman bought it for$4.5 mil­ YOU COULD COUNT ON AND people who've written for the lion in 1984 he reaped none of "' Review from the outset do not the profits. Friends say Levine CALL 'INSIGHT get a pension, Hederman notes. never realized how indispens­ Silvers stresses that the Review able he was there, and was al- continues to work with Levine, most pathologically unable to stand up for himself. Levine agrees. noting his monthly payment, as well as Levine's role in picking the It goes with his fear of authority, he says. drawings to be use

I 7 8 I VA N I T Y FA I R [ www.vonityfoir.com NOVEMBER 2008