Piecework

They also have a complex sense of time. They can surrender to the moment, forcing everything they know into one painting, one song, one dance. The moment is always charged by the lessons of the past. But they also seem capable of imagining a limitless future, full of things not tried, not even dreamed. The actor longs to play Lear, the politician wants to be president. They don’t talk about retiring. Not even the athletes. They have the World Series ring or the championship belt. They want more. To go on and on. To be remembered.

I’m aware that all but one of the subjects in this section are men. I wish that were not so. I wish I’d gone to see Rebecca West while she was alive, and had talked with Martina Navratilova while she was one of the greatest of all champions. I wish I’d somehow found my way to the doors of Katherine Anne Porter, Martha Gellhorn, Flannery O’Connor, or Dorothy Parker. In the early 1960s, before she became a star, I did a piece on Barbra Streisand for the Saturday Evening Post; we’ve remained friends and she, of all people, should be in this company. Over the years, I’ve written profiles of Jeanne Moreau, Sophia Loren, Brigitte Bardot, Linda Ronstadt, among other accomplished women; that they aren’t here is because of me, not them; my work just wasn’t worth preserving.

The pieces here are not briefs for the prosecution. In each case, I admired the subjects of my attention. In general, I wasn’t interested in showing that they also had feet of clay; every human being does. Besides, there is now an abundance of literary prosecutors abroad in the land to do that work. I’m glad I was around to see these gifted human beings exercise their talents. In the case of Bob Fosse, I was blessed by his friendship and will miss him all my days.

JFK

I.

That day I was in Ireland, in the dark, hard northern city of Belfast. I was there with my father, who had been away from the city where he was born for more than 30 years. He was an American now — survivor of the Depression and poverty, father of seven children, fanatic of baseball — but he was greeted as a returning Irishman by his brother Frank and his surviving Irish friends, and there were many Irish tears and much Irish laughter, waterfalls of beer, and all the old Irish songs of defiance and loss. Billy Hamill was home. And on the evening of November 22, I was in my cousin Frankie’s house in a section called Andersonstown, dressing to go down to see the old man in a place called the Rock Bar. The television was on in the parlor. Frankie’s youngest kids were playing on the floor. A frail rain was falling outside.

And then the program was interrupted and a BBC announcer came on, his face grave, to say that the president of the United States had been shot in Dallas. Everything in the room stopped. In his clipped, abrupt voice, the announcer said that the details were sketchy. Everyone turned to me, the visiting American, as if I would know if this were true. I mumbled, talked nonsense — maybe it was a mistake; sometimes these things are moved on the wires too fast — but my stomach was churning. The regular program resumed; the kids went back to playing. A few minutes later, the announcer returned, and this time his voice was unsteady. It was true. John F. Kennedy, the president of the United States, was dead.

I remember whirling in pain and fury, slamming the wall with my hand, and reeling out into the night. All over the city, thousands of human beings were doing the same thing. Doors slammed and sudden wails went up. Oh, sweet Jesus, they shot Jack! And They killed President Kennedy! And He’s been shot dead! At the foot of the Falls Road, I saw an enraged man punching a tree. Another man sat on the curb, sobbing into his hands. Trying to be a reporter, I wandered over to the Shankill Road, the main Protestant avenue in that city so long divided by religion. It was the same there. Holy God, they’ve killed President Kennedy: with men weeping and children running with the news and bawling women everywhere. It was a scale of grief Pd never seen before or since in any place on earth. John Fitzgerald Kennedy wasn’t “the Catholic president” to the people of the Shankill or the Falls; he was the young and shining prince of the Irish diaspora.

I ended up at the Rock Bar, climbing to the long, smoky upstairs room. The place was packed. At a corner table, my father was sitting with two old IRA men. They were trying to console him when he was beyond consolation. For the immigrants of his generation, Jack Kennedy was always special. After i960, they knew that their children truly could be anything in their new country, including president.

“They got him, they got him,” he said, embracing me and sobbing into my shoulder. “The dirty sons of bitches, they got him.”