Cover to Cover Covel to {OYER
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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? 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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.