488. Reviewers: They Lift Your Spirits, They Break Your Bones

BROWDERBOOKS

This post is all about my latest book and its reviewers.

          Reviewers: They Lift Your Spirits, 

                  They Break Your Bones

I learned long ago that a writer has to have the thickest of skins in order to survive reviews.  Not all reviews, of course, just. the bad ones.    My current offering, New Yorkers: A Feisty People Who Will Unsettle, Madden, Amuse and Astonish You, has amazed me by accumulating excellent editorial reviews, followed lately by a series of negative reviews such as no book of mine has ever before inspired. Among these negative reviews are some more good ones, but for me personally, the negative ones risk overshadowing the positive ones.  

I remind myself that if this book has received many bad reviews, it's in part because it has received more reviews in general than its predecessors.  Still, many of the bad reviews baffle me.  

Here is my favorite bad review, rating the book a single star, the worst rating possible.  It's a long review; I'll offer only what I consider the choicest parts.

Review by Janet G.

This book has fewer facts than anecdotes. And fewer anecdotes than unsubstantiated opinions. It also has a bigoted slant that set me on edge from the beginning. The author… speaks very highly of New York and New Yorkers, as to be expected. Not expected is his building up of New Yorkers by tearing down other groups…. Just as unexpected were his disparaging remarks about The Heartland and its Republican and WASP nature. Almost every group he extolls is paired with a group he reviles. Not even 20% into the book, he went on an extremely vile rant about our President. Without proof or even anecdotal evidence, he made vile claims that are his opinion only and not historical facts. That is the point I stopped reading this book.

Such is this reviewer's opinion of the book and its author.  She has misread me from start to finish.  The author is himself a native of the heartland and has often told his New York friends that the heartland is not, emphatically not, fly-over country. As for the "vile rant" about our President, I assume it refers to the second paragraph on p. 54, in the chapter on hustlers.  The passage in question declares that the jailed financial operator Martin Shkreli is "Donald Trump writ small," and calls the two of them stellar examples of the New York hustler. This is indeed my opinion, and I stand by it.

Here now are extracts from a five-star review of the book by "Mochalove," a fellow New Yorker.

This is not your typical cut and dry biography, providing dry facts; instead, the read is a heartfelt memoir of a man and the city he lives, loves, survives and works in. The narrative keeps you rapt in its pages with a winning combination of information gleaned from Mr. Browder’s unique standpoint, research, and experiences from his many years as a resident.... Part biography, part historical dive and part travel guide, this work offers a tantalizing vision of an exciting city overflowing with diversity in all respects.

Would you believe that these two reviewers are talking about the same book? Every seasoned author knows to expect diversity of opinion among reviewers, but I have never before known it to be so extreme.  And this is just one example among many. How potential readers will decide whether or not the book is worth buying, I cannot imagine.  

I wish them all good judgment and good luck.

©.  2020.  Clifford Browder

487. New York Mobsters Invade the Catskills

  

                  NEW YORK MOBSTERS 

             INVADE THE CATSKILLS

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Upstate New York, solidly Republican, has always thought of downstate New York -- New York City and its environs -- as a sink of sin, a swamp of corruption, and a nest of urban wiles.  By contrast, upstaters have thought of themselves as clean, honest, and upright -- the sort of citizens that form a solid base, calm and reasonable, for a functioning democracy.   (I discuss this at greater length in chapter 21, "Upstate vs. Downstate," in No Place for Normal: New York.)

So imagine this scene in the 1920s: The small town of Pine Plains in Dutchess County, some thirty miles north of Poughkeepsie.  Quiet farmland, and down a gravelly side road the hulking mass of a barn no  different in appearance from all the other large barns of the neighborhood.  An idyllic scene, rural, restful, remote, far from the crime, vice, and hurlyburly of the city.

Except for one disquieting fact: the hulking mass of a barn was one of the biggest, if not the biggest, illegal moonshine distilleries in the state.  This was the age of Prohibition, New Yorkers wanted their booze, and there were plenty of providers eager to supply them with it.  Liquor was pouring into the thirsty city from Canada, and from a flotilla of boats anchored offshore just outside the three-mile limit.  But resourceful entrepreneurs also saw the advantage of producing the stuff right there in the state, in a quiet rural neighborhood where such misdeeds would not -- at least for a while -- be suspected.  The barn in question was outfitted with cavernous bunkers for storage, and an elaborate tunnel system for escape.

And who was the mastermind behind this elaborate moonshine distillery?  None other than the notorious NewYork City gangster and bootlegger Dutch Schultz.  Or so it is thought, though hard evidence is lacking.  He was never seen in Pine Plains.

Where Mr. Schultz was definitely seen was the town of Phoenicia, fifty miles west of Pine Plains.  He appreciated the isolated location of the town, on a direct route from Canada to New York City.  Years later  locals recalled him in the town, sometimes buying people dinner at the Phoenicia Hotel and staying at a nearby lodge.

If Schultz was never seen in Pine Plains, local legend puts Legs Diamond, Schultz's rival, there.  Schultz may have controlled the booze distribution in Ulster County, leaving Dutchess County to Diamond.  Until 1931, at least, when Diamond was murdered, perhaps on orders from Schultz.

To spice up local legends, there is the story of Schultz burying a waterproof safe crammed with diamonds, gold, and a stash of thousand-dollar bills somewhere in the Catskills.  If he did, there is no record of it.  Rumor has it that other mobsters searched for it for years, though in vain, and even today treasure hunters meet annually to hunt for it.

In October 1932 the Pine Plains distillery was raided by federal agents, who found one of the most extensive and elaborate layouts in that part of the country.  And on October 23, 1935, Dutch Schultz and his bodyguards were killed in the Palace Chop House in Newark, New Jersey, probably on orders of Charles (Lucky) Luciano, another legendary New York mobster.

If Legs Diamond was murdered on orders of Schultz, and Schultz was executed on orders of Lucky Luciano, who ordered Luciano's killing?  No one.  At least, no one successfully.  He would be brought to justice by federal prosecutor Thomas Dewey, and later was released in exchange for providing the U.S. military with links to the Sicilian mafia when we occupied Sicily in 1943.  But that's another story, told in chapter 9 of my other nonfiction work, Fascinating New Yorkers.  

And how is the Pine Plains barn doing today?  Just fine.  Yes, it's still standing, and ironically, serving legal moonshine to the public.  ln 2014 Governor Andrew Cuomo in his infinite wisdom sponsored legislation easing regulations on farm distillers.  As a result, distilleries have sprung up all over the state, making New York second only to California in craft distilleries.  Revamped, the old barn now houses Dutch's Spirits, a restaurant/distillery whose patrons sit at outdoor picnic tables, sipping cocktails and munching pizza.  And inside, in a handsome fame, is a portrait of Dutch Schultz, and it isn't a mug shot.  He may never have set foot there, but his image presides.

Source note: This post was inspired by Devorah Lev-Tov's article, "Moonshine Made Here, and Now Legal," in the Metropolitan Section of the New York Times of Sunday, November 15, 2020; most of its content comes from that source.  

©  2020  Clifford Browder

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486. Joyous Queerdom

                            Joyous Queerdom

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Consider this scene, which has just come to my attention:

• Aerialists swinging upside down in the neon-colored air high above hundreds of enthralled partygoers;
• Glittering go-go dancers spinning in cages high above a crowded dance floor that pulsates to booming disco;
• Drag queens with flaring pink or platinum blond hair performing as pole dancers, fire breathers, stilt walkers, and clowns;
• A chaotic energy infusing performers and audience alike and proclaiming to the world that this scene of total freedom welcomes everyone.

Coney Island and the circus slammed together in a gay discotheque?  No, not really.  Or Bedlam mixed with Bellevue on a dance floor?  Wrong again.

So what is -- or was -- it?  The House of Yes, an evolved hippie/punk scene that became, pre-pandemic, a hugely successful slice of queer New York nightlife in a hangar-like space in a former industrial stretch of Bushwick, Brooklyn.  It was wild, it was crazy, it was stupendously and noisily creative, as only New York can be.

And today?  Zilch.  It was closed down by the city in March, as COVID-19 spread.  In July it reopened as a ghost of itself, serving food and drinks outside.  Then in August it was closed again because of violations of the state's mandate that food be served with every drink order.  Since then its creators have offered virtual dance parties and remote classes taught by resident performers, but whether it will ever be revived as the chaotic pre-pandemic scene of yore is problematic.

The House of Yes: the title intrigues me.  The word "no" in English has far more resonance than "yes," with its tail-end sibilant, but this "yes" was surely saying to the world that in this precious space everyone was welcome, and the weirder and wilder the better.  It reminds me of the triumphant "yes" of Mollie Bloom at the end of Joyce's Ulysses, a yea-saying that is far more than an acceptance of Leopold Bloom's proposal of marriage.  Mollie is saying "yes" to life, to the world: an upbeat ending to a masterpiece that might otherwise, in its totality,  seem depressing.

So if the House of Yes ever revives, will I go there?  Of course not.  My taste for wildness dates back to my younger days; I'm in a mood now for sanity and serenity, for reflection and calm.  Did I ever dance wildly?  You bet!  Long ago at the Goldbug in the West Village, where you had to get past a Mafia gatekeeper to immerse yourself in the deafening music and crowded strobe-lit dance floor where conversation was unthinkable; all you could do was dance, and believe me, it wasn't a waltz.  Long, long ago.

But I hope the House of Yes does in time revive, with all the wildness and weirdness of its former days.  They were an explosion of creativity and a fountain of joy.  I wish them vast success.

Source note: This post was inspired by Julia Carmel's article "Pining for a Brooklyn Club's Comeback," in the Metropolitan section of the  New York Times of Sunday, November 8, 2020.  The article is richly illustrated.

©  2020  Clifford Browder

485. Books Bound in Human Skin

  Books Bound in Human Skin

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Yes, it’s called anthropodermic bibliopegy, meaning books bound in human skin, and it really does happen.  And we aren’t alking about ghouls or psychopaths or Jack the Ripper; we’re talking about ordinary people, some of them even scholars or sensitive souls.

In 2014 the Houghton Library at Harvard University announced that its copy of Des destinées de l’âme (Destinies of the Soul), a meditation by the French novelist and poet Arsène Houssaye dating from the mid-1880s, had been subjected to tests and found to be bound in human skin.  The book had been acquired in 1934 and was one of three copies in the Harvard libraries that had been tested; the other two proved to be of sheepskin.  The book was an object of morbid curiosity, especially among undergraduates, and a reminder that this practice — binding a book in human skin — was once considered acceptable.

Houssaye had given a copy of the book to his friend Ludovic Bouland, a prominent Strasbourg doctor who had a specimen of skin from a woman’s back.  Knowing that Houssaye had written his book while mourning the death of his wife, Bouland thought such a binding appropriate.  The good doctor meant it as an act of compassion, but the skin had been taken without consent from a mentally ill patient who died in an asylum and whose body was unclaimed.  But Harvard’s possession of the item, once its story was known, provoked outrage.  Protesters declared it a macabre disgrace and urged the library to immediately get rid of it.

Not everyone agrees.  There are collectors eager to acquire any rare and controversial item, and that certainly includes books bound in human skin.  Such books are sold discreetly for undisclosed prices that are high enough to encourage the production of fakes bound in calfskin or pigskin, and detectable only through a process called peptide mass fingerprinting.  To date, 31 books have been tested, of which 18 have been confirmed as human skin books.  But dealers and collecctors are reluctant to have their books tested, since a negative result diminishes the book’s value; human skin books, real or fake, are sexy.  Nor are librarians eager to have their books tested, since a positive result courts outrage and notoriety.

Where does the skin come from?  From where you might expect: executed criminals whose remains were unclaimed, and the mentally ill who died in asylums.  But there have been voluntary donors, too.  Notably, George Walton, a notorious highwayman who died of tuberculosis in a Massachusetts state prison in 1837.  Dying, he asked the attending physician to remove skin from his back after death, so it could bind a book relating his story, which he had dictated to a cooperative prison warden.  The book, now at the Boston Athenaeum, has been tested and its binding is indeed of human skin.

Much more can be said on the subject, including its relation to tattooed skin, which in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century was preserved and colleccted by medical collectors, ethnographers, and criminologists.  The Science Museum archive in London has a collection of 300 specimens acquired in 1929 from a Parisian doctor who described them as taken from sailors, soldiers, murderers, and criminals of all nationalities.

I confess that I find this whole business eerie, to put it mildly, and degrading to the human body.  Marketing human skin books and pieces of tattooed skin reminds me of the Field Museum in Chicago, which once advertised its display of Egyptian mummies by boasting that, thanks to modern technology, you could now see their grotesquely preserved remains inside their sarcophogi.  “Bury the dead, you sick people,” was one resulting online comment; I’m inclined to agree.

Source note:  This post was inspired by Mike Jay’s article “The Hide That Binds,” in the November 5, 2020, issue of The New York Review of Books.  The article is a review of Dark Archives: A Librarian’s Imvestigation into the Science and History of Books Bound in Human Skin, by Megan Rosenbloom.  All the post’s content comes from Jay’s review.

Coming soon:  Sparklers in Lockdown: How Is the Diamond District Doing Today?

©  2020  Clifford Browder

484. What's Sexy and What Isn't

 

BROWDERBOOKS

I have just finished reading the page proofs for my forthcoming novel Forbidden Brownstones, which will be released early next year.  It will soon be available for preorders.  Set in nineteenth-century New York, it tells the story of a young black man who is fascinated by brownstones, where the white gentry live, and dreams of living in one himself and even possessing it.  This becomes an obsession, with hints of arson, theft, and murder.

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   What’s Sexy and What Isn’t

Long ago a social worker working with the homeless told me, “Homelessness isn’t sexy.”  Discouraged, she soon retired.  By “sexy” she meant new, vital, interesting.  Homelessness had become too vast, too familiar, and too hopeless to attract volunteers and donors.

Though we may not do it consciously, we often use “sexy” to indicate something new, exciting, and appealing.  So here is a list of things that I think sexy, and their unsexy opposites.  Feel free to disagree.

• Spike heels are sexy; flip-flops are not.  Spike heels suggest someone decisive and to the point, someone with energy and determiination.  Flip-flops are casual, passive, lazy.

• Shorts are sexy; sweat pants are not.  No comment necessary.

• Tomatoes are sexy; potatoes are not.  Being red when ripe, tomatoes were once considered aphrodisiacs; they can entice, excite.  Potatoes, especially when mashed, just lie there, a big, characterless blob.

•   Steaks are sexy; tofu is not.  Steaks were once alive and charged with energy; we like to think they fuel us, feed our gut.  And if labeled unhealthy, they smack of risk and danger.  Tofu is shapeless, tasteless; lacks character.  It’s healthy, but too often healthy is boring.

•   Sharks are sexy; goldfish are not.  Sharks are streamlined machines for killing, sensual in their movements, efficient, dagger-toothed, and dangerous. Goldfish are nice little things, decorative, harmless; they don’t excite or frighten.

•   War is sexy; peace is not.  War is exciting, dramatic, full of effort and achievement.  Peace, though desirable, is dull; it lacks the excitement of war.

• Folly is sexy; wisdom is not.  Except in high places, where it can do harm, folly can be absurd and make us laugh.  And it lets us feel superior.  Wisdom reeks of smugness, makes us feel inferior, even stupid (which maybe we are).

• God is sexy; his worshipers are not.  God is epic, powerful, profound; a blend of strength and mystery.  His worshipers — with exceptions — make a show of  certainty, of smugness; they glory in having a truth that others do not.  They’ve got it all figured out.

• Death is sexy; dying is not.  Death is the greatest adventure we will ever have.  It is cosmic, overwhelming, transformational.  Dying is painful, costly, either boring or laced with anguish, degrading, and humiliating.

Coming soon:  ???   Maybe something about anthropodermic bibliopegy.  Never heard of it?  Books bound in human skin.  No, I'm not kidding.  Or maybe diamonds.  How are they doing during the pandemic?

©   2020.  Clifford Browder