The Great Mistake by Jonathan Lee

New York : Knopf, 2021

Andrew Haswell Green was shot and killed in broad daylight outside his home in 1903 at the age of eighty-three. Jonathan Lee tells the story of Green—maybe the most important figure in the creation of modern New York City—someone who nonetheless remains relatively unknown. 

Green was instrumental in bringing together the boroughs of New York into what we now know as the modern city, a result dubbed by many as the great mistake. He was also instrumental in making possible such important public works as Central Park, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Museum of Natural History, and The New York Public Library. 

The Great Mistake opens with Green's murder. There is no question who committed the crime, so the focus becomes why the crime was committed. Told in alternating chapters, the novel follows Inspector McClusky's investigation of the murder while also supplying Green's back-story starting from his youth growing up on a farm in Massachusetts. The chapter titles are taken from the names of the gates for entry into Central Park—Boys' Gate, Children's Gate, Girls' Gate, Women's Gate, Engineers' Gate, Farmers' Gate, Gate of All Saints, Hunters' Gate, Mariners' Gate, Miners' Gate, Merchants' Gate, Naturalists' Gate, Woodman's Gate, Pioneers' Gate, Scholars' Gate, Warriors' Gate, Strangers' Gate, Inventors' Gate, Artisans' Gate, and Artists' Gate. Green insisted the gates be named for all those who came to New York to seek their fortune instead of naming them for the wealthy members of New York society. 

While Green was involved in very important work, that isn't the primary focus of the novel. What we learn in this novel is more about the man himself and his relationships. Recognizing his own homosexuality at an early age and then being shipped off to New York as an apprentice when his friend's mother perceives the situation, he learns to hide his desires. He repeatedly gets the message through the years that it's not acceptable—and it's actually quite dangerous—to be who he is. Even when he eventually meets his greatest friend and partner, Samuel J. Tilden, they seem unable to consummate their great love for fear of what it would mean if they were caught. It's the story of channelling the energy that might have gone toward that relationship into public works that were representative of the things they both valued—nature, the arts, and literature. It was important to Green, who grew up poor, to make all of these things available to everyone. These institutions stand as a monument to their great love.

Nature's Way by Herman Wouk

New York : Doubleday, 1958

Herman Wouk is most known for his military novels set during World War II; 1951's The Caine Mutiny, 1971's The Winds of War and 1978's War and Remembrance. While less remembered, he also published both plays and comic works.

Nature's Way is a comic play in two acts that premiered October 16, 1957 at the Coronet Theatre in New York.  Newlyweds Billy and Maggie Turk are living extravagantly off of the success of Billy's first musical and they are expecting their first child. Everyone seems to want a piece of their success. When their accountant announces a miscalculation in their taxes and that they will owe an additional $50,000, they don't know how they will pay it.

Vivian Voles, Billy's creative partner, suggests he and Billy spend a few months in Venice writing the next big show. With the right investors, Billy can get the money to pay off the tax debt. Maggie isn't a fan of Vivian, nor of his plan. It's clear that Maggie believes that Vivian is trying to break the couple apart. What isn't clear is whether she believes his motive is his own romantic interest in Billy.

Set in the theater world, there is both acknowledgement and a sense that we don't talk about Vivian's sexuality. The mild comments come from Maggie and her mother, Mrs. Fawcett, who aren't from that world. The humor in the play is even handed and doesn't make a clown of Vivian's character. In fact the humor is at everyones expense.

Bibliographies & Ratings: Cory (II); Garde (OTP b*); Mattachine Review (III); Young (4235)

The Christmas Tree by Isabel Bolton (Mary Britton Miller)

New York : Charles Scribner's Sons, 1949

As Christmas approaches, we often think about past holidays. Our memories usually begin with the good times, certainly our memories are of that perfect Christmas. But as we continue down this rabbit hole, thoughts of our family in general appear, quickly followed by memories of the myriad family disagreements and complications. It's easy to think that this is a new phenomenon—that Christmases of the past were perfect and everyone got along. The characters in Isabel Bolton's novel, The Christmas Tree suggest that families have always been difficult and tensions run high at this time of the year.

Opening in the days leading up to Christmas 1945, Bolton presents the members of a family who are scattered across the country. Each person's inner dialogue is unique but all conclude that this Christmas will be challenging, particularly if everyone shows up.

Mrs. Danforth, or Hilly, is in New York with her 6-year-old grandson, Henry. She plans to give Henry that perfect Christmas that she remembers from her own childhood, including a tree with real candles.

Henry's mother, Anne is in Reno obtaining a divorce from Hilly's son, Larry. In support of the divorce, Hilly supplied a deposition confirming her son's behavior in the marriage. While still in Reno, Anne immediately marries Captain George Fletcher, a pilot during the war. Due to heavy snow, Anne and George are to arrive by train from Santa Fe.

Larry is also in the military but served stateside during the war. He lives in Washington DC and is gay. Christmas at his mother's house seems to be just the excuse he needs to end his current relationship with Jerry. Larry arrives by train, but not alone.

Novels from the 1940s and 50s typically have a Freudian slant in their explanations of relationships in general and gayness in particular—overly close relationship with the mother, absent father, etc. The Christmas Tree is no different. However, in this case it's not subtext. It is couched in the specificity of Anne's experience with analysis and her doctor's explanation of who's to blame for Larry's gayness. The explanation provided is the glue that holds the family together, for better or worse.

Bibliographies & Ratings: Cory (IV); Garde (P78**); Mattachine Review (IV); Young (345*)

McCaffery by Charles Gorham

New York : The Dial Press, 1961

16-year-old Vincent McCaffery has grown up in the Irish-Catholic immigrant enclave of Yorkville on the upper east side of Manhattan. After his mother's death, for which he rightly blames his father, Vincent is lost. He's not old enough to take a 'real job' but is uninterested in the kinds of work that a boy might do. His friend Conny suggests a way for them to get some easy money — something he heard from his older brother who serves in the navy. 'What we oughta do is roll a faggot.'

What starts off as a simple way to get money — pick up a queer in the park and then when things get serious, knock him out with a rock and take his wallet — quickly escalates when Vincent finds that he enjoys beating the filthy queers. One can read Vincent's animus against gay men as coming out of his self-hatred and doubt related to his own sexuality. When they are picked up by the police, Vincent is only encouraged when the queer refuses to press charges. When the police warn McCaffery and Conny to stay out of the park, Conny ends his participation in the scam. Vincent is undaunted.

When he is later picked up by a man in a Cadillac who seems to know all about him, he is given an opportunity to make money under his protection. He is unsure he wants to commit to prostituting himself to both men and women but when he discovers his father forcing his aunt to have sex with him in much the same way he had forced his wife (leading to the pregnancy that killed her), he attacks him with a kitchen knife and leaves his childhood home forever.  He quickly moves into Easy Tiger's place in the Village and begins his new life. Although he is making money and living in comfortable surroundings he soon realizes that he has sacrificed his autonomy and all of his power to make his own choices.

While the gay characters of this novel are not central or well developed, the larger questions around blackmail, what would later be known as gay-bashing, and exploitation of teenage boys for prostitution are central. This is a dark story of money, power and poverty.

Bibliographies & Ratings: Young (1543)

Fritz Peters near Utica, 1950

"What are we thinking about when we drive so fast over some of the most lovely countryside to be found anywhere?" he asked himself.  "Where are we all going?"

While researching what was to become his third novel, The Descent, Fritz Peters visited with friends in Clinton, near Utica, New York. His novel of America's roads and highways, whose final cataclysmic scene takes place in New Mexico, started its life with Peters observing and interviewing travelers along Route 20 in New York. Richard H. Costa composed a portrait of the author with accompanying photos by Dante O. Tranquille for the December 10, 1950 Sunday edition of The Utica Observer-Dispatch. The original photo negatives used in the story and two candid shots of the subject and the author are now part of a private collection.

Costa was a columnist-reporter for The Utica Observer-Dispatch in the 1950s, taught at Utica College in the 1960s and was later a professor of English at Texas A&M University.

Tranquille was a central New York photographer who also worked for many years as the staff photographer for The Utica Observer-Dispatch. Two of his photos were selected for 1949's The Exact Instant, a show of the 100 best news photographs of the century at The Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Fritz Peters uses a wire recorder to make notes
November 27, 1950  [cat 3119-0008]

Fritz Peters in the kitchen
November 27, 1950  [cat 3119-0009]

Fritz Peters with American, English and paperback editions of his first novel,
The World Next Door
November 27, 1950  [cat 3119-0010]

Fritz Peters leaving cabin 5 to begin research
November 27, 1950  [cat 3119-0004]

Fritz Peters leaving cabin 5 to
begin research (detail)
November 27, 1950  [cat 3119-0004a]

Fritz Peters along Route 20, NY
November 27, 1950  [cat 3119-0003]

Fritz Peters along Route 20, NY (detail)
November 27, 1950  [cat 3119-0003a]

Fritz Peters along Route 20, NY
November 27, 1950  [cat 3119-0001]

Fritz Peters along Route 20, NY (detail)
November 27, 1950  [cat 3119-0001a]

Fritz Peters along Route 20, NY
November 27, 1950  [cat 3119-0002]

Fritz Peters along Route 20, NY (detail)
November 27, 1950  [cat 3119-0002a]

Fritz Peters interviews Mrs. James Erskine, proprietor of the
Madison Motor Court, NY
November 27, 1950  [cat 3119-0005]

Fritz Peters interviews Mrs. James
Erskine, proprietor of the Madison
Motor Court, NY (detail)
November 27, 1950  [cat 3119-0005a]

Fritz Peters correcting galley proofs of his second novel, Finistère
November 27, 1950  [cat 3119-0007]

Fritz Peters at the piano
November 27, 1950  [cat 3119-0006]

Fritz Peters and Richard Hauer Costa discuss The World Next Door
December 5, 1950  [cat 3899-0001]

Fritz Peters reads Richard Hauer Costa's notebook
December 5, 1950  [cat 3899-0002]

These images originally appeared in Gallery 2 on FritzPeters.info, December 21, 2006. 

The Blind Bow Boy by Carl Van Vechten

New York : Knopf, 1923

The Blind Bow Boy is a bit of a camp novel. Young Harold Prewett is summoned to see his estranged father. Having been raised by his Aunt Sadi since the time of his mother's death, his father was a virtual stranger. George Prewett's has hired someone to teach Harold about the world. Paul (sometimes Paulet) Moody is tasked with introducing Harold to the world. Soon Harold starts attending parties and jazz clubs in Harlem and becomes acquainted with a number of interesting characters such as the eccentric Duke of Middlebottom and Zimbule, a circus performer.

Campaspe's garden, which appears as the dustjacket and frontispiece image by Robert E. Locher, is in many ways the center of the story and is obviously the source of the novel's title.

     Campaspe's garden, at the rear of the house, was enclosed in high brick walls on which were trained espaliered fruit-trees. Dwarf shrubs forced their miniature trunks between the mossy crevices of the flagstones of various sizes and colours that paved the ground. Over these a quaint tortoise of considerable size and incredible age, named Algaë, wandered in a disconsolate manner. There were a few comfortable chairs and, in one corner, under the shade of a spreading crab-apple tree, a table. In the opposite corner rose a rococo fountain which Campaspe, entranced at first sight, had purchased in an antiquary's shop in Dresden. This fountain gave the atmosphere to the whole place. On a low pedestal, in the midst of a semi-circular pool, a marble Eros, blindfold, knelt. His bow drawn taut, the god was about to discharge an arrow at random. Beneath him, prone on the marble sward, a young nymph wept. The figures were surrounded by a curving row of stiff straight marble narcissi, the water dripping from their cups into the pool below, in which silver-fish played.

(1st Edition (1923), p.158-9)

A curiosity in the text is a lengthy negative commentary (p.159-165) by Campaspe regarding the writing of Waldo Frank, with specific reference to The Dark Mother, published 3 years prior to The Blind Bow Boy and discussed previously on this blog.  

Bibliographies & Ratings: Garde (OTP, d); Mattachine Review (I); Young (3900)

NYC, July 2015

Descent to LaGuardia - July 1, 2015

New York, 3AM - July 3, 2015

The Descent by Fritz Peters

New York : Farrar, Straus and Young, 1952

“All day Sunday on the road, and in spite of his absorbed self-analysis, he had been unable not to watch the travelers on the road. Where were all these people going? The relation of people-Americans-to their automobiles (the way he felt about his own car, the manner in which it seemed to endow him with special importance as a person as if it were an extension of himself, a necessary adjunct to his ego) intrigued him. It seemed to him-and again he felt a sense of discovery-that it was a material representation of enormous magnitude: the cult of the machine-the automobile-had replaced faith. The road, leading endlessly and relentlessly on, a pathway to the unknown, the unexperienced, the future, was capable of leading him anywhere. If there was a heaven for Americans, it would be on such a road, at the top of a rise; something that would be reached in a car."

-The Descent, p.182-3

FROM TOP TO BOTTOM:

[1] (Review Edition) New

York : Farrar, Straus and

Young, 1952 [2] New York :

Signet/NAL, 1953 [3] (As

Descent to Darkness) New

York : Berkley Publishing

Corp, 1959

While correcting the final galley proofs for Finistère, Fritz Peters was already hard at work on his third novel. While staying with friends in Clinton, New York, he had begun his research for a novel that takes place on the roads and highways of the United States. He began by observing and interviewing drivers traveling Route 20 in New York, asking the question "Where are we all going?"

The Descent tells the stories of people from all over the country, bringing them together at one crucial moment on a highway in New Mexico. Each individual's experience and choices brings them to this place and time.

Peter Wells is leaving Three Bridges New York, headed to California to be a screenwriter. He's unsure of why he is going and is worried about his father's ill health.

Steven Williams of New York feels smothered by his wife Marjorie, quits his job and begins a cross-country trip, headed toward Santa Fe.

Henry and Mabel Franklin are in a miserable marriage, where Mabel is in charge and believes that Henry is a miserable excuse for a husband. Each year, they take a vacation together, but this year may be the year that Henry finds his voice.

Bob & Mary Hume are on an extended camping vacation in the Southwest with their two children, Toby and Emily. Bob seems to be the only one enjoying himself, but will Mary say anything to him? The children have ideas about what they would like to do, but will their parents listen?

Caroline Pratt has picked up Tom Foster. She's a rich girl who wants to shock her parents by her reckless behavior of picking up a one-night stand. She is desperate to keep Tom around, though, and will do anything to keep him.

Richard Simms is an artist in Santa Fe. His wife Dorothy manages Richard's mother's properties, including the ones that she gave Richard to help support him. Richard begins to doubt his talent as a artist and the tension in the house increases.

Jim Curran, a veteran of WWII, has no job, but rents an apartment behind the Simms' house with his government check. Now that the United States is fighting in Korea, he feels people no longer care about the veterans of previous wars and his sadistic nature begins to emerge.

This post originally appeared on FritzPeters.info, February 1, 2009.