Lowery: Cover to Cover COVEl TO {OYER

The Gadfly Michael Herr turns the tables on America's greatest gossip.

Walter Winchell: A Novel hack, second-string dancer and singer in the slang, Yiddish, and wiseacre. "Don't be By Michael Herr '61 waning days of vaudeville, as he scrambles ridic," Walter says. "Rita [Hayworth] ISS pp. New York: Alfred A. Knopf $18.9S. to survive. After receiving scant applause, wouldn't wipe her shoes on that shmegegge. the young Walter watches from the wings He fed me a wrongo a few weeks ago, and ood evening, Mr. and Mrs. "with a look of pure hatred on his face" as an he's working off the penalty. Five or six free America and all the ships at act of chimpanzees on rollerskates is items, and I'll start plugging his clients sea ... Let's go to press." cheered. again." G Thus began the staccato ra­ Winchell parlays his phenomenal nosi­ Herr writes in the preface that he intends dio broadcasts of gossip ness-and unerring ability to uncover gossip the novel to be "an entertainment in the columnist and journalistic demagogue Wal­ on fellow performers-into a one-page Hollywood biopic tradition, with the under­ ter Winchell (1897-1972), who almost sin­ sheet he posts on backstage call boards. This tones of history spreading beneath the jokes gle-handedly fostered the American leads him to gossip columns, nationwide in various bitter shades of dark." obsession with celebrity. syndication, radio, an abortive stab at televi­ By the early 1960s, as the Beatles played In Walter Winchell, a fictional treatment of sion, and show-biz hegemony. on archrival Ed Sullivan's show and his life that originated as a screenplay and is Herr paints Winchell as a petty, capricious Winchell's brand of journalism became written in that form, Michael Herr charts the tyrant, perpetually eager to settle scores, passe, Winchell retired to Florida, where he arc of Winchell's life in brief scenes com­ flaunt his power, crush his enemies. If was consigned to an unimaginable fate: he plete with camera directions. crossed or slighted, he was apt to launch an was forgotten. As the novel opens, Winchell is at the undying vendetta until the object of his In 1978 Herr published a book of Viet­ zenith of his career in the late 1940s. He is wrath was professionally and personally an­ nam War reportage, Dispatches, which John installed at Table SO in the Stork Club, nihilated. Le Carre called "the best book I have ever where he holds forth, gathers items, social­ Yet when Winchell looked with favor-on read on men and war in our time." Dispatches izes with Damon Runyon and Ernest Hem­ a starlet, a play, or a nightclub-he imparted became an international best-seller and led ingway, and receives supplicants. success, glamor, and a measure of fame. But Herr to write narration for the film Apoca­ Winchell's daily newspaper column and by and large those in his orbit feared and lypse Now. He also co-wrote the Vietnam weekly radio broadcast reached SO million loathed the sting of this poisonous gadfly. film Full Metal Jacket with the director Stan­ people when the U.S. population was 140 Like its protagonist, the novel is not with­ ley Kubrick. million. He made and broke careers, raked out humor. Herr captures Winchell's quick, Herr first encountered Walter Winchell muck, crusaded against communists, and caustic wit, his mastery of throwaway while writing The Big Room: Portraits From extolled the merits of his friends J. Edgar lines-"I don't get paid to write a column," the Golden Age, a book about American Hoover and Franklin Roosevelt. Walter says. "I get a salary for being polite to celebrities. Herr flashes back to Winchell's days as a pests" - and his signature hodgepodge of -GEORGE L OWERY

4 • S YR AC U S E UN I V E R S I TY M AG A Z I NE Published by SURFACE, 1991 1 Syracuse University Magazine, Vol. 7, Iss. 3 [1991], Art. 3 MOVING? SAVE THIS AD North American Van Lines will reduce your interstate moving cost 30% if you are a Syracuse University Alumnus. Listen To Your Body Language Maven Strikes Again For information or free estimate By Ellen Michaud and Lila Larimore Anastas '62 By William Safire '51 call David Feldman '77 at my 488 pp. Emmaus, Pennsylvania: Rodale Press. 419 pp. New York: Doubleday. $22.95. agency, Paper, $14.95. Fumblerules: A Lighthearted Guide to 1·800-633-MOVE or 914-4 71-1504 Grammar and Good Usage This reference book, subtitled A Head­ By William Safire ARNCDFF to-Toe Guide toMore than 400 Symptoms, Their 153 pp. New York: Doubleday. $15.00. MOVING & STORAGE, INC. Causes and Best Treatments, covers such top­ ics as what symptoms signal an emergency, A collection of his New York Times lan­ northAmerican, how to recognize when a symptom is seri­ guage columns, Language Maven Strikes (= ous and when it's not, and self-help treat­ Again includes Safire's witty retorts to ar­ ments and how to use them. cane grammatical queries from his readers. II there's a pain in Language Maven covers such subjects as your chest, be a Margaret Atwood: Conversations tycoonese, computerese, and portmanteau Edited by Earl G. Ingersoll G'63 words like televangelist and Draconomics pain in the neck. 241 pp. Princeton, New Jersey: Ontario Review (Safire's plan for the economy). Press. $19.95. In Fumblerules, Safire offers SO do's and Conversations With James Thurber don'ts for good English usage, followed by Edited by Thomas Fensch G'77 brief, humorous articles. Among them: 119 pp. Jackson, Mississippi: University ofMis­ Never, ever use repetitive redundancies. sissippi Press. Don't use capital letters without GOOD REASON. Don't use no double negatives. Atwood, the Canadian author of The If I've told you once, I've told you a thou­ Handmaid's Tale and Gat's Eye, is inter­ sand times: Resist hyperbole. And, Take viewed by 21 journalists from 1972 to 1987. the bull by the hand and don't mix The book includes a chronology of At­ metaphors. wood's life and works. Ingersoll is a SUNY Sa fire, former senior speech writer in the Brockport English professor. Nixon administration, has won a Pulitzer Thurber, the humorist and author of The t. Prize for distinguished commentary and is a Secret Life of Walter Mitty, recalls his literary American Heart Association popular novelist. 0 apprenticeship in Europe, the early days of The New Yorker, and the effect of his increas­ ing blindness on his perception of the world in this anthology of interviews conducted from 1939 to 1961 . F ensch is a professor of journalism at the University of Texas.

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In the Blue Light of African Dreams By Paul Watkins G'88 310 pp. Houghton Mifflin: New York. $18.95. This adventure story of a pilot attempt­ ing a Paris-to-New York flight in 1926 fea­ tures vivid aerial scenes, exotic African lo­ cales, and an attractive hero. T his is the third novel by the 26-year-old Watkins, whose previous are Night Over Day Participating high school students choose one of the following precollege programs: Over Night and Calm at Sunset, Calm at Dawn, Architecture, Drama, Engineering, Law, Liberal Arts, Management, the latter a winner of England's Encore Public Communications, or Visual Arts. Contact Syracuse University, Division of Summer Prize for the year's best second novel. Sessions, Suite 230, 111 Waverly Ave., Syracuse, NY 13244-2320,315-443-5400 for details.

M ARCH 1 99 1 • 5 https://surface.syr.edu/sumagazine/vol7/iss3/3 2