Robert Graves reads his own obituary

In July 1916, a few days before his twentieth birthday, Captain Robert Graves was seriously wounded by an exploding shell on the Western Front. While he was recovering in hospital his parents were told that he'd died and were given his personal effects. His obituary appeared in the Times. He would live another 70 years. The poet and novelist appears twice in A Book of Ages.

Another interesting bit of obituaria, from page 288. When Artie Shaw died in 2004, at age 94, his New York Times obituary appeared under the byline of a writer who'd died two years earlier.

Very Early Television

In July 1932, 29 year-old Clare Boothe was having an affair with married Wall Street moneybags Bernard Baruch and was invited over to his place to watch something his friend David Sarnoff called television. Not yet a playwright or married to Henry Luce of Time magazine, Boothe was an editor at Vanity Fair. She appears three times in A Book of Ages. Understudying Mary Pickford on Broadway, letting boyfriend Henry Luce "go all the way", and being nervous as her play "The Women" opens on Broadway in 1936. (Henry Luce appears twice.)

Bob Dylan at Big Pink

On July 29, 1966, Bob Dylan was seriously injured in a motorcycle accident near his home in Woodstock, N.Y. He was 25. A few months later he and The Band rented a house in West Saugerties that they called Big Pink. The recordings from Big Pink were never released, but would become coveted bootlegs in the late ‘60s. Mr. Dylan appears seven times in A Book of Ages, performing in Dinkytown coffeehouses, writing an anthem, dating Joan Baez and being compared to French poets, going electric (and being booed for it), and being "born again".

Hoist By His Own Petard

Maxmilien Robespierre was executed by guillotine on this day in 1794. He was 36. It was Robespierre who "popularized" this new form of public decapitation, turning it into a form of popular theater attended by thousands. The mob enjoyed it because the individuals losing their heads were all aristocrats. But eventually other revolutionaries began losing their heads, then people who disagreed with the ruling clique, people Robespierre suspected of plotting against the Revolution or against him. This was the period of the French Revolution that became known as The Terror. Robespierre appears only once in A Book of Ages, at age 36.

The Wollestonecraft-Shelleys

On July 27, 1814, Mary Wollestonecraft ran away to the Continent with the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. He was already married, which meant they had to wait until December 1816 for Shelley’s first wife to drown herself before they could marry. The original literary power couple appear twice each in A Book of Ages.

The Splendid Splinter

On July 25th, 1966, Ted Williams was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. He was 47. In his speech he made a point of paying tribute to all of the Negro League stars “who are not here only because they weren’t given the chance.” Ted Williams appears four times in A Book of Ages.

Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin

On July 25th, 1956, Jerry Lewis broke up with Dean Martin at the end of their tenth anniversary show at the Copacabana. He was 30 and suddenly solo. In 1966 he would launch his famous telethon. In 1984, at age 58, he received the Ordre Royale de la Legion d'Honneur in Paris, putting him amongst such immortals as Victor Hugo, Louis Pasteur and Dwight Eisenhower. Jerry Lewis appears six times in A Book of Ages.

Mary Queen of Scots (and son)

On this day in 1567 Mary Queen of Scots was deposed and replaced by her son James VI. James was a year old; Mary was 24.

Scotland had a thing for young monarchs. Mary herself had become queen when she was four days old. She married the king of France when she was 14. She had an eventful but unhappy life, shuttling between France and Scotland, spending the last 20 years of it imprisoned by her former subjects and then by her cousin Queen Elizabeth of England, who had her executed in 1587. Being high-born is no picnic. To most of the people she knew and trusted Mary Queen of Scots was either a convenience or a dangerous nuisance. She appears five times in A Book of Ages.

Her son, James VI of Scotland, would become James I of England, patron of Shakespeare and the King James Bible. He appears once in A Book of Ages.

Hard Boiled

Today is the birthday of hard boiled detective novelist Raymond Chandler. He was born in Chicago in 1888, but he moved to England as a boy and spent most of his childhood there. He went to the exclusive Dulwich College, where he was a couple of years behind a kid named Pelham Grenville Wodehouse.

Chandler spent most of his working life as an oil executive in Los Angeles. In his mid-forties he found himself out of a job, and he turned to writing stories for the pulp magazines. Atmospheric thrillers about smart aleck tough guys suspended midway between the underworld and an often corrupt police department. He was 51 when he published his first novel.

The Big Sleep was narrated by a world-weary but stubbornly romantic detective named Philip Marlowe, who had a knack for annoying people with guns, and described his mishaps in colorful similes. Humphrey Bogart played Marlowe in the film version. Chandler also collaborated with film director Billy Wilder on a script of the James M. Cain novel Double Indemnity. It was the first product in an entirely new artform called "film noir." He wrote another screenplay from a Patricia Highsmith novel for director Alfred Hitchcock, titled Strangers on a Train.

Raymond Chandler appears three times in A Book of Ages. My favorite anecdote is about his first meeting with fellow crime novelist Dashiell Hammett at a Black Mask dinner in 1936. Hammett, who was six years younger than Chandler, had written his last novel four years earlier; Chandler's first novel wouldn't be written for another three years. Similar novelists, different career arcs.

Eudora Welty

Eudora Welty died on July 23rd, 2001, at age 92. She lived in Jackson, Mississippi most of her life, much of it in the house her father built in 1925. She never married. She appears four times in A Book of Ages.

The Marlboro Man

Wayne McClaren, the ruggedly handsome cowboy in Marlboro advertising in the 1970's, died of lung cancer on this day in 1992. He was 51. He'd been a rodeo cowboy, a movie and TV actor of bit parts, and a model for the cigarette company's dream version of American individualism. He smoked a pack and a half a day.

At age 49 he was diagnosed with cancer. Shortly afterwards he began campaigning publicly against cigarettes. In response, Philip Morris denied McClaren had ever appeared in their advertising. They later backed off this claim and simply denied he'd been "the Marlboro Cowboy."

McClaren wasn't the only Marlboro Cowboy to die of lung cancer. David McClean, a more frequent face in Marlboro's advertising in the early sixties, died of the disease in 1995. There's no record of how many Marlboro Cowboys died of emphysema or heart disease or other forms of cancer connected with cigarette smoking. Nor should anyone infer that spokesmodels for other brands of cigarettes were immune to diseases related to smoking.

Wayne McClaren appears once in A Book of Ages.

Papa's Birthday

Ernest Hemingway was born on July 21, 1899 in Oak Park, Illinois. He learned to fish when he was 3. At age 12 his mother told him her dream was for him to become a concert cellist. At 18 he was serving as an ambulance driver on the Italian front in World War I, and was wounded saving the life of an Italian soldier. While in hospital he fell in love with his nurse, Agnes von Kurowsky, but she wouldn't marry him. At age 22 he moved to Paris, and a year later he ran with the bulls at the Feast of San Fermin in Pamplona, Spain.

It is hard to think of a manly, romantic, heroic, enviable thing that Hemingway didn't do a century earlier (and then write about for large sums of money.) Which is why his life remains a touchstone or a benchmark for our own. He is the reason most of the celebrated watering holes around the world are celebrated by anyone. Men still like to dress like him, grin like him. Tough guys talk like him, even in Paris. When we behave like fools we are doing it in imitation. Hemingway is why literary men feel the need to be amateur boxers. American novelists are still working in his shadow, even though his short stories are arguably his best form. An eighth grader turning in an essay shorter than the requisite 800 words can explain, plausibly, that Hemingway would have written it in fewer than 250.

Hemingway appears 16 times in A Book of Ages.

Our Man in Havana

In July 1941, Graham Greene became a spy. He was given the number 59200, the same number he later gave to Wormold, the vacuum cleaner salesman and spy in his 1958 satire Our Man In Havana. He was 36 years-old. Greene appears seven times in A Book of Ages.

What's My Line

In July 1962 Bennett Cerf went to Oxford, Missisippi for the funeral of William Faulkner. Both men were 64. The townspeople were sullen and unfriendly, and Faulkner’s relatives at the house treated the New York publisher with suspicion bordering on hostility, until one of them recognized Cerf as a panelist on the Sunday evening television program “What’s My Line.” Suddenly everyone wanted to be his friend. Among the other mourners was novelist William Styron, whose account of the funeral appeared in the July 20th issue of LIFE magazine. Faulkner appears six times in A Book of Ages, Cerf twice, Styron once.

Fitzgerald in Hollywood

In July 1937 F. Scott Fitzgerald traveled to Hollywood on a six-month contract with M.G.M. for a thousand dollars a week. He was 40 years-old, no longer famous, and deep in debt. He moved into the Garden of Allah, where he met gossip columnist Sheila Graham. Fitzgerald’s last story published in The Saturday Evening Post is titled "Trouble." It was Fitzgerald who said there are no second acts in American life. He would die before his own began. F. Scott Fitzgerald appears seven times in A Book of Ages.

Uncle Walter

For those of you who haven't looked at a paper today, the last great anchorman died yesterday. When I was a kid I thought Walter Cronkite and Walt Disney were the same man. Both were moustached, avuncular authority figures who appeared on TV. Everybody looked the same in suit and tie.

Cronkite appears four times in A Book of Ages. Joining CBS at age 33, reading a special bulletin on November 22, 1963, and then, in 1968, forever associating the words "Vietnam" and "stalemate," demonstrating the immense power of television news. Nobody was ever trusted like we trusted Walter Cronkite, except maybe Ronald Reagan, but Uncle Walter didn't fudge numbers or blame pollution on trees or confuse folklore with fact. Cronkite didn't joke about nuclear war into open microphones.

The last entry about Walter Cronkite in my book appears at age 88: Cronkite had an office and a consulting contract with CBS, but was seldom consulted. He was thinking about starting a blog.

Hunter S. Thompson

Gonzo journalist, anti-hero and role model Hunter S. Thompson was born on July 18, 1937 in Louisville, Kentucky. He appears seven times in A Book of Ages. Jailed for robbery at 18; later turning up as a Caribbean correspondent for Time magazine and El Sportivo; purchasing a mail-order doctorate; running for sheriff in Aspen, Colorado; showing up as a recurring character in Doonesbury; being arrested for possession of various drugs and various weapons, including a Gatling gun; and, perhaps most significantly, inventing shotgun golf (Olympic certification pending.) Measured against his achievements, most of our lives seem tame and uninteresting, but we are still living. Happy Birthday Hunter.

Death of the Maiden

Jane Austen died, unmarried and mostly unknown, in the early hours of July 18, 1817, and a few days later was buried in Winchester Cathedral. She'd published four novels; two others would be published within the year: all anonymously, although her obituary in The Gentlemen’s Quarterly mentioned the titles. She was 41. Austen appears four times in A Book of Ages.

On the Road

On July 17, 1947, 25 year-old Jack Kerouac set off on the road from New York to Los Angeles. He'd planned to hitchhike, but it was raining and nobody stopped to give him a ride, so he spent most of his money on a bus ticket as far as Chicago. From Chicago he hitched the rest of the way, surviving on a diet of apple pie and ice cream. He saw his first cowboy in Omaha. Jack Kerouac appears six times in A Book of Ages.

Ronald Reagan in the Enchanted Kingdom

On July 17th, 1955, Ronald Reagan hosted live coast-to-coast TV coverage of the opening day at Disneyland. He was 44. He'd spent his early career as a movie actor, playing attractive boyfriends and amiable sidekicks, but had recently begun earning an even better living as the amiable and attractive spokesmodel for corporations like General Electric. Ronald Reagan appears five times in A Book of Ages.

Catcher in the Rye

On July 16, 1951, J. D. Salinger published A Catcher In The Rye. He was 32. He'd created the character of Holden Caulfield ten years earlier, and The New Yorker was about to publish the first Holden story when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. Salinger would take part in the Normandy landings, fight in the Battle of the Bulge and meet Ernest Hemingway in Paris before he saw New York again. Salinger appears six times in A Book of Ages. I believe J. D. Salinger is the only American novelist to ever lose a girlfriend to Charlie Chaplin or to serve as a recreation director aboard a cruise ship.

The Shatterer of Worlds

At 5:30 A.M., Mountain War Time, on July 16, 1945 J. Robert Oppenheimer witnessed the explosion of the first atomic bomb, the creation of which he'd supervised for the previous three years. He was reminded of a line from the sacred Hindu epic, the Bhagavad-Gita: "I am become Death, the shatterer of worlds." He was 41. Oppenheimer appears twice in A Book of Ages.

Boeing, Boeing

On this day in 1916, William Boeing and George Westervelt formed a company which they called Pacific Aero Products. A year later it became the Boeing Airplane Company.

In 1960, 22 year-old Thomas Pynchon moved to Seattle and got a job writing technical documents about the Bomarc guided missile system that Boeing was manufacturing at the time. When not writing about surface to air missiles in the breezy, upbeat style of the corporate news service, Pynchon was also working on a novel (V) that featured a defense an aerospace behemoth called Yoyodyne, founded by a World War II veteran named Clayton "Bloody" Chiclitz. Early jobs provide rich material for novelists: obtuse superiors, bizarre systems, nonsensical rules, insane co-workers, and objectives that make the young hero complicit in crimes against humanity.

Thomas Pynchon appears five times in A Book of Ages.

Bergmanesque

On July 14, 2004, director Ingmar Bergman celebrated his 86th birthday by announcing his retirement from the stage. His last production was Henrik Ibsen’s Ghosts. He was far better known as a film director. The namesake of the mournful/intellectual quality known as "Bergmanesque", three time Oscar winner, nominated nine times, Bergman appears five times in A Book of Ages.

Bergman's most memorable image, from the 1957 film The Seventh Seal, is of a man on a beach playing chess with Death, which is something you see once in a while but only in Sweden. Woody Allen satirized this scene in his 1975 film Love & Death, except he had Death playing tennis, which I find more plausible.

The Smoking Gun

The original "smoking gun" was discovered on this day in 1973 when White House aide Alexander Butterfield revealed that President Nixon tape recorded every word spoken in the Oval Office. When the transcripts were finally delivered to the senate committee, America learned that quite a few of those words were profanities, mixed in with racist abuse, ethnic slurs, vindictiveness and offhand paranoia. More importantly, everyone learned that the Watergate break-in had been ordered and subsequently covered up inside the White House.

The crucial conversation appeared to have been lost during a moment of gymnastic transcription and erasure by Nixon's loyal secretary, Rose Mary Woods, which she subsequently demonstrated for press photographers.

Just a year earlier Nixon had been enjoying his great foreign policy triumphs, visiting China and the Soviet Union, and cruising toward re-election. At the same time, his secret team of former spooks were planning their inept invasion of the Watergate offices of the Democratic Party chairman. Nixon had risen fast, becoming a young vice president at 40, losing a close race to JFK at age 47, then rebounding to win just as narrowly over Hubert Humphrey when he was 55. Nixon is our own Richard III, the complex, fascinating villain and hero ultimately undone by his own proclivities. Watergate became his defining moment. Nixon appears 12 times in A Book of Ages. Rose Mary Woods appears twice, as does loyal henchman, enabler and muse Henry Kissinger.

Ladies and Gentlemen... the Rolling Stones

On the evening of July 12, 1962 a group led by guitarist Brian Jones performed its first gig at the Marquee Club in London. Bill Wyman and Charlie Watts would join the band in the coming year; Bill mainly because he had a good amplifier. The lead singer on July 12 was a skinny, androgynous 17 year-old named Mick Jagger. The Rolling Stones wore sport coats and ties and did not do lewd things with the mike stands or their guitars. The last song in the set was titled "Happy Home."

Mick Jagger appears five times in A Book of Ages: meeting Keith Richards, attending the London School of Economics, writing lyrics about his inability to obtain satisfaction, buying a chateau in France, becoming a grandfather, and getting a knighthood from the Queen. The sorts of things any striving working class bloke might aspire to. Keith Richards appears four times, Bill Wyman once.

The Duel

On July 11, 1804, Vice president Aaron Burr shot and mortally wounded Alexander Hamilton in a duel beside the Hudson River in Weehawken, New Jersey. Hamilton fired in the air; Burr didn't. Hamilton died the next day. Burr was 48, Hamilton 47. Burr completed his term as vice president, but never became president of the United States. Aaron Burr appears four times in A Book of Ages. Hamilton appears five times.

Arthur Rimbaud and Paul Verlaine

on July 10, 1873 Arthur Rimbaud was shot in the wrist by his friend Paul Verlaine. Verlaine received two years imprisonment. Inspired by all the hoo-hah, the 18 year-old Rimbaud wrote his domestic farce "A Season In Hell", a pioneering work in the Symbolist movement. A century after his death, his poetry would inspire some of the more louche poets of Rock 'n' Roll, notably Bob Dylan, Van Morrison, Jim Morrison and Patti Smith. Soon after the Verlaine break-up, Rimbaud gave up poetry altogether. He spent the rest of his working life in construction, sales and the armaments business. Arthur Rimbaud appears three times in A Book of Ages, Verlaine twice.

O. J.

Today is O. J. Simpson's 62nd birthday. Few people appear in so many categories of the popular imagination: star athlete, film actor, pleasant TV pitchman, celebrity, criminal defendant, armed robber, con (in both senses of the word.) Juice appears three times in A Book of Ages: winning the Heisman Trophy at age 21, running through airports for Hertz Rent-a-Car at 29, becoming a widower at 47. I doubt we'll ever drink another glass of orange juice without seeing his smiling face.

Che Meets Fidel

On July 8, 1955, Che Guevara met Fidel Castro. Che was 27, Fidel 28. The two talked the entire night and by morning Che had decided to join the “26th of July Movement” which hoped to overthrow the Batista government of Cuba. At first Che planned to be the group’s medical officer, but he soon discovered that he had a gift for warfare. Che Guevara appears five times in A Book of Ages, Castro twice.

Uncle Duke

Gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson reached another level of immortality as Uncle Duke in Doonesbury. Thompson was 36. The character made his first appearance in Garry Trudeau's comic strip on this day in 1974. Thompson appears seven times in A Book of Ages.

Running with the Bulls at Pamplona

On July 6th, 1923, Ernest Hemingway ran with the bulls for the first time at the Feast of San Fermin in Pamplona, Spain. He was 23. Hemingway appears 16 times in A Book of Ages.

John Meets Paul

On July 6th, 1957, John Lennon met Paul McCartney for the first time. John's skiffle band, the Quarry Men, was playing at a church fete in Woolton, Liverpool. Admission: thruppence. John was 16, Paul 15. A recording of two songs from the program still exists. John's instrument at the time was a Gallotone Champion guitar he'd purchased for ten quid. Lennon and McCartney each appear seven times in A Book of Ages.

Elvis Presley

On July 5th, 1954, Elvis Presley made his first recording for Sun Records. On the one side an up-tempo version of That’s All Right; on the reverse, Blue Moon of Kentucky. He was 19. On October 2nd, he made his first and only appearance at The Grand Ole Opry. One of the Opry’s people recommended that Elvis go back to driving a truck. Elvis appears nine times in A Book of Ages.

Novelist and Car Thief

On July 4th, 1919, John O'Hara, the fourteen year-old future novelist and writer of New Yorker short stories, stole his father's Buick.

O'Hara was a complex mixture of conventionality and rebellion. A sensitive soul, but an irascible drunk and a nourisher of grudges. He never got the Ivy League education he'd craved (it was withdrawn after a drunken episode on the eve of his prep school valedictory). It was a loss for which the Rolls Royces he drove, the impeccable tweeds and the address and the burial plot in Princeton could never compensate. The Nobel Committee never phoned, perhaps because his novels were trashy and sold so well. It is his short stories which endure. They provide the best picture we have of America at mid-century; sensitive, nuanced, vividly detailed. This quintessentially American writer appears five times in A Book of Ages.

Walden Pond

On July 4, 1845, Henry David Thoreau moved into a cabin on Walden Pond. He was twenty seven. Thoreau appears three times in A Book of Ages.

Fourth of July

On July 4th, 1825, the five year-old Walt Whitman was embraced by the Marquis de Lafayette who was visiting Brooklyn. The poet Whitman appears three times in A Book of Ages, Lafayette once.

A year later, on the half-centennial of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson, the author of the document, and John Adams, a signer, both died, Jefferson at home in Virginia, Adams in Massachusetts. In 1826 Adams was 91, Jefferson 83.

The two men had become bitter political rivals in the early years of the Republic. Jefferson had hired a pamphleteer to smear Adams while the two were running for the presidency in 1800. The pamphleteer was a man named James Callendar, and the smear, while untrue, was believed by enough people to win Jefferson the election. Callendar went to prison over the libel and emerged a year later angry with Jefferson for the unpaid bill. He got his revenge by publishing a true story about the sitting president: that he'd had an affair with one of his slaves, a woman by the name of Sally Hemings, and had fathered children by her. The story dogged Jefferson for the rest of his life.

After the inauguration in 1801 Jefferson and Adams would not speak or write to each other for another decade. The reconciliation, when it came, was a warm one. The letters between Jefferson and Adams comprise one of the most interesting correspondences ever written, describing the intelligent differences of opinion––religious, philosophical, practical, political––which formed our country. Jefferson appears four times in A Book of Ages, John Adams five times.

Begin the Beguine

In July, 1938, Artie Shaw recorded Begin the Beguine for the Bluebird label. He was 28. It quickly became an enormous hit and and Shaw became more and more annoyed when concert audiences began requesting it over and over and over and over and over again in concert halls and dance pavilions. What could he do? It was hummable and you could dance to it. Within a year he would be making $60,000 a week. Then, suddenly, he quit the music business and moved to Mexico. It was the first of several retirements and unretirements that came almost as frequently as his serial marriages to glamorous film stars. Artie Shaw appears four times in A Book of Ages, but none of the entries answers the question "Who was better: Artie Shaw or Benny Goodman?" (Hint: the superior clarinetist's initials are A.S.)

The Little Red-Haired Girl

In July 1950, Charles Schulz discovered that a petite red-haired co-worker he had proposed to had decided to marry someone else. He was 27 and just about to launch a comic strip. In the years to come this disappointment would achieve an immortality far greater than Dante's love for Beatrice, or Petrarch's for Laura. The creator of Peanuts appears 13 times in A Book of Ages, getting a dog, having his cartoons rejected by the high school yearbook, being grand marshal of the Tournament of Roses Parade, among other adventures. Petrarch appears in the book twice and Dante four times.

Amelia Earhart

On July 2nd, 1937, Amelia Earhart and co-pilot Fred Noonan took off from New Guinea headed for Howland Island in the South Pacific. They were never seen again. They had embarked on their round the world flight in their twin engine Lockheed Electra on June 1st. Earhart was 39. She appears three times in A Book of Ages.

Adolf Hitler, Celebrity Memoirist

Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf was published on July 1, 1925. The author, a malcontent and former draft dodger, was 36. Hitler appears 11 times in A Book of Ages.

While Rome Burned

Contrary to popular myth, Nero was actually out of town when Rome caught fire on July 1, 64 A.D. And despite subsequent accounts that he played his fiddle while the city burned, he actually rushed back to Rome and led efforts to put the fire out. In any case, he never played the fiddle; it was the lyre. Nero appears four times in A Book of Ages.