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.)

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.

Fellow Travelers

In June 1943, 27 year-old Saul Bellow was fired from a film-reviewing job at Time magazine by fellow-traveler Whittaker Chambers. It’s said that Chambers disliked Bellow’s assessment of the poet Wordsworth. Bellow was able to find another job at Encyclopedia Britannica.

Saul Bellow appears six times in A Book of Ages. Whittaker Chambers twice, most famously at age 47 when he gives the House Un-American Activities Committee a tour of the pumpkin patch on his farm in Maryland.