The New Issue: Leo Lerman
Gray’s desk. The artist often says he put his career on hold to accommodate Leo’s party-loving lifestyle. He could never have known how guilty Leo felt.
April 12, 1985: Part of me considers: Have all of these years been worth all of the anguish? I know that the answer is yes, but I also know that the price of my weakness is Puss stopping his unique, beautiful work. That is what he had to give, but instead he has thrown it away and put me in my place. Kirk [Askew] knew that his would happen. (”If you stay together, Gray will eventually not draw a stroke.”) Question” Has Puss been a happier person this way, or would he have been happier, more fulfilled, if he had been true to his genius. I think the latter. This is the bitterness.
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.