The New Issue: Leo Lerman
SP: Another thing that I learned from doing this [project] – it was very much for me a lesson in intellectual modesty. Leo was – as an editor – Leo was an autodidact and read an enormous amount. It took a long time – in a way, it’s a good thing the project was as long as it was – because it took me a long time to realize how much of that [knowledge] he brought to bear when he wrote. In the beginning, I sometimes took a heavier hand when I was transferring. I would say, “Well, this isn’t right, this doesn’t mean anything,†but as it went on, I would go back, I’d see that in fact the reference meant something. He was alluding to things that had literary connections or artistic connections. The amount that he brought to bear at any given moment was pretty amazing.
GF: It was. It’s true, he had no education except high school. I never in my life met anyone who had so many books. When we first moved in, we couldn’t use this room because it was all books. They were everywhere! They’d move around. Sometimes we couldn’t use the dining room. Sometimes we couldn’t use the upstairs!
SP: I was the one who sorted out all of the books.
Photo credit: (c) Duane Michals.
This book is terrific!
Thanks for that…and yes, read the book.
I loved the current pictures too!
STB
What’s pretty extraordinary about Lerman’s journals — aside from the thoughtful writing and personal honesty — is his first-person candid commentary about still-fascinating cultural figures such as his buddy Marlene Dietrich (who tells LL that she doesn’t like sex, but since men seem to expect it from a sex symbol, however old she’s getting, Dietrich just gives in to get it over with) and Maria Callas (who spills the beans about Ari Onassis’s preference for anal sex and how Jackie O refused to go that far). It’s like an insider’s guide to the realities behind 20th-century culture.