The New Issue: Leo Lerman
Leo Lerman’s pillow.
AB: What was it like for you, Gray, when he died? What was the process like?
GF: It was like cutting off your hands. I knew it was the end of a very large part of my life. There was a great emptiness inside. It was very difficult. I didn’t think I was going to get over it, but I was tougher than I thought it was.
AB: How did you get over it?
GF: “Time”. That’s what people are always saying. “Time makes everything better,†but it doesn’t. It still hasn’t. I’m going to carry this to the grave, wherever I am. I still feel him a lot. Every night. Or close to it. All the laughter! He had a wonderful sense of humor. Wouldn’t you say, Stephen?
SP: Yes. That is one of things I remember.
GF: He loved to laugh and to make other people laugh. He was always the comedian. He was jolly. He loved that. It was one of his biggest social successes.
——-
All archive pictures from private collection, unless otherwise noted. Contemporary shots courtesy Zach Golden. Header image by John Koch courtesy Photo National Academy of Design.
All excerpts from The Grand Surprise by Leo Lerman Copyright (c) 2007 by Leo
Lerman. Excerpted by permission of Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted
without permission in writing from the publisher.
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.