Booknotes

Mr. JAMES THOMAS FLEXNER, AUTHOR, "MAVERICK'S PROGRESS: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY:" Well, I hope I did did get to know him. I would say it was somewhat of a lengthy process. I mean, he was a pretty complicated man, and I didn't the first time I met him, so to speak, I didn't understand him very well.

Mr. FLEXNER: Well, he he I began I was writing various books in the period of Washington's lifetime, and he began he kept appearing as secondary characters in these various things I was writing, and he never seemed to fit the Washington that I had learned out of legend. And I gradually built up out of that the idea that I ought to try to really do something new about him altogether, and yet as I have said, I wanted to get back to to the original material and pay no attention to anything that was published after his death, except, of course, if if it dealt with his earlier times. But the but there's been a whole there were thousands of biographies of Washington.

Mr. FLEXNER: Well, I wrote four volumes, and those were quite considerable sized volumes. And then I condensed them all into a single volume.

Mr. FLEXNER: Well, I was sound sound asleep, until my telephone began ringing, and my various of my friends called me and said, `Look in The New York Times.' And then this is really very funny, because then when I took my dog out for a walk and I know the whole community everyone had seen it and congratulated me. And when I went to my club, which has different political opinions, everybody attacked me.

Mr. FLEXNER: Because they didn't approve of Newt Gingrich. A lot of people don't, as you well know.

Mr. FLEXNER: I'm a not do not feel I was capable of an opinion because one thing that I did on this was I was very anxious to to keep it from getting involved with contemporary events, so that do writing about the past, I have not passionately kept up with what is going on from day to day.

Mr. FLEXNER: That's the Century Club. Yeah.

Mr. FLEXNER: Yes.

Mr. FLEXNER: That's what I consider I am.

Mr. FLEXNER: Well, the the story is very interesting. In the good old days when they when the cattle all out in the West they were all up put out together, the the various cattle were branded the cows branded by the owners. And the the a man by the name of Maverick, who was politically powerful, had it arranged that if there was no brand, it was his brand. So not only did that get him his own cows, but all the cows that escaped from being branded by others. And so the Maverick meant someone who ran with the herd that was not carrying anybody's brand.

Mr. FLEXNER: Well, that that's basically true. It was that wasn't exactly the wording. It it it did it did have a a G.W. This was done by the president of the club, who did needlework to keep amus keep himself amused. And he had George Washington's signature across the top of the pillow, and then he had that I slept there.

Mr. FLEXNER: Well, I haven't met the this Sleeping Eros, so I don't know how much I resemble him.

Mr. FLEXNER: I gather he was a female. I don't know.

Mr. FLEXNER: I do go there every day after lunch. Whether it's 25 minutes at all, I couldn't say.

Mr. FLEXNER: Well, after all, it was quite conspicuous. I'd say it was a very surprising thing, because it's the only place in the whole club where anyone could sleep, and how I happened to get I think it was because the then president of the club wan embroidered this pillow and then put it in there.

Mr. FLEXNER: Oh, yes. She was a cousin of mine.

Mr. FLEXNER: Well, I don't know. She she was a second; wasn't a first cousin, but there was some family connection. And we became good friends and got on very well together. She was a lovely woman. She was rather a wild woman. She was not not she had she was not a very handsome woman, but she was endlessly full of energy, and she could sound like a horse running down and I think she wrote good books, don't you?

Mr. FLEXNER: I didn't get on with him. I I've never I never got on with him. He by and large, I found it was of interest to write about people whom you didn't particularly like, because it widened what you could understand, if you come to understand them. But John Adams, I just couldn't get on with, so I think he kept all kinds of of theoretically revealing diaries, and then I discovered, as I was going through these and I was starting to write, that the really important thing that was happening in there was that he was getting interested in the woman he married, and What was her name? And he married her and she was a tremendously powerful figure in his life. But all these revelations didn't have in them what was obviously the most interesting thing that was happening. And that rather col cooled me down about going on with John Adams, because I felt that I didn't like him or unde really understand him to begin with. And then I decided that all this there were whole layers of camouflage which I couldn't find my way through.

Mr. FLEXNER: I was born on the corner of 62nd Street and Lexington Avenue in New York City, at home.

Mr. FLEXNER: And about 20 blocks from where I live now.

Mr. FLEXNER: That's right.

Mr. FLEXNER: Well, my father my father had an amazing career. He he came from a family more more or less impoverished Jewish family in in Baltimore, and they were having very hard times, and he proved to be the family dunce. And he was he fell went out of school when he was less less than in the eighth grade and was put in menial jobs to make to bring in a little money, which he wouldn't couldn't keep. And then he came down with typhoid fever and got separated off, and they had a little garden where he could sit, and it was the first time that he'd ever had any quiet in his life, and he was reborn. He appeared, got out and got a job in a drugstore, and from then went on to being, with the help of Mr. Rockefeller, a creator of what is now Rockefeller University. It was then called the Rockefeller Institute. And he was an amazing man.

Mr. FLEXNER: I can't re I can't really remember.

Mr. FLEXNER: Good many oh, more than that. He was considerably older than I was, and he died, I suppose, when I was in my 40s.

Mr. FLEXNER: That's right.

Mr. FLEXNER: That's right.

Mr. FLEXNER: Well, there were some ages I would prefer. All...

Mr. FLEXNER: I suppose it would depend on on what I was doing at the time. I don't think I didn't really think of myself as being different ages. I could tell you which of the projects that I worked on I got the most pleasure out of, but I would have a hard time telling you how old I was.

Mr. FLEXNER: Well, I think that obviously, George Washington was the thing that interested me the most. And, as you know, I wrote a good many books on the history of American painting, which were, really, path finding books. And, when I wrote them, the American painting was considered so inferior to the European, there wasn't a single professor of American painting in any American college. But now it's very much the rage.

Mr. FLEXNER: Well, my mother was was redheaded, at a time when when red hair was just beginning to come into fashion. She was a very quiet woman. She was was also a writer, and, what can you say? I mean, she was, I think, a lovely woman, and she and Father got along very well. They came from the different sides of the railroad tracks, because her family had been the leading family in Baltimore, and father's family had come in as very impoverished immigrants.

Mr. FLEXNER: Yes. Well, he he had married one of Mother's cousins. There was a branch of the family my mother's family moved to England, and through that, I had various interesting contacts. Most important to me was that Bernard Berenson, the art critic, was married to one of my mother's cousins, and that got me started on my interest with painting. I originally met him when I was 17, and we always got on very well.

Mr. FLEXNER: Bertrand Russell well, now that's a that's a very good question. He was a philosopher and a mathematician.

Mr. FLEXNER: Well, I met him very he was one of my mother's cousins whom I met only very casually. He didn't like he didn't put up with young with young boys. They were believed they should keep their mouths shut, while B B Bernard Berenson enjoyed very much his association with me.

Mr. FLEXNER: Oh, that was just very casual. He he appeared in my school and read a few of his poems in my English class because he was a friend of our English teacher. I I admired his poetry very much, but I didn't know him.

Mr. FLEXNER: Well, I have spent I have lived for various periods of time abroad. And also, I moved for a while. Wishing to live in the country, I moved and became a sort of a parasite on Yale; I needed a first class library and and wanted to live in the country, so I lived outside of Yale in Connec in Connecticut. But by and large, I'm a New Yorker.

Mr. FLEXNER: Oh, I love it dearly. I don't know it very well. I don't get around terribly much these days.

Mr. FLEXNER: Well, I think it is it it is a great center of culture and life and so forth and so on. It has a great thing I was a trustee of the New York Public Library, and that that was a wonderful place, and I'm fond of it. It's the place I was brought up, place where I walk my dog.

Mr. FLEXNER: Harvard.

Mr. FLEXNER: Now that I do remember: 1929.

Mr. FLEXNER: Well, I think it it it gave me a wonderful base. You mee you go to college, the four years, really, when you're moving from from being a boy to being a man, and it was a wonderful place for this to happen, because you are moderately well shut in, and at the same time, you were in a tremendously lively community. And Harvard was very, very good because it encouraged eccentrics, and I was pretty much of an eccentric.

On the other hand, I was allowed to address the Harvard commencement on what was really a radical speech on what should be the subject matter of poetry in a machine age, in which I argued that you couldn't really write a poem about dif daffodils these days because it was a poet away from the I think it I was a little extreme about this. But they not only did they let me deliver it at the commencement, but they printed it up and sent it out, as a college release, all over the country. Started my being a maverick and spoiling me.

Mr. FLEXNER: Well, for one thing, I've written books on every kind of subject. I mean, u usually, say if you were a good boy, you'd take a subject and you you stick to it. And I have written on many s many subjects always on my own. I never allowed anyone to see a manuscript of mine until it was finished. I never discussed it with anybody.

Mr. FLEXNER: Viking Press.

Mr. FLEXNER: Well, I stayed with them through three books, and then then they then they played the dirty on me. I can say that because, of course, it was an altogether different firm. I started doing for them "The History of American Painting," and they told me that a this was all people who are now dead and gone, so I'm not talking about anybody alive and they told me that they had showed it to a distinguished critic, and he told them my reputation would be ruined if it was published. And I happened to know him, so I asked him, and he said, `I've tried to get them to publish it, and they just wanted to get rid of it.' But, at the same time, I was not heartbroken, because Houghton Mifflin's editor in chief was mourning that Viking had it. So as soon as I got this letter, I called him on the phone and I said, `You know, I think I can get this away from Viking.' And they published it.

Mr. FLEXNER: I you know you know, I'm like the old woman who lived in a shoe. You I think I did about five or six books with them.

Mr. FLEXNER: Well, then then there was a sort of a chop suey of publishers. I had books published by one publisher and then they didn't like the next one. Of course of course, one of the things I did that was very unsuitable was I didn't continue writing on the same subject in the same way, so as soon as the publisher was sitting down and thinking, `Ah, we've got something nice here,' I'd give him something else, and then I'd have to find a new publisher who would sit down and say, `A ha!' But I didn't want to do the same thing over again. I tried tried to finish off with what I what I was doing and then find something else.

Mr. FLEXNER: It was published by Little, Brown, the whole the whole shooting match. And I didn't actually, I had signed the contract with them for one volume, and I very quickly realized that I couldn't possibly do it in one volume, and there was some difficulty on that. But finally, they decided to let me publish one a volume which on Washington's early career before the Revolution, and that was a great success. And so I went on and then we signed a contract for three, and then it that grew to four, and then I decided after all this, I could do it do it in one volume, by using the the four books as a sort of a base for it. And then I then I had great fun with it. I because I didn't have to do any research and I knew that I had to cut it down to one fifth, and one happy summer I sat in the garage in the country and did nothing but write. I didn't have to do any research at all.

Mr. FLEXNER: Oh, yes. Mt. Vernon was tremendously good and kind to me. By the time I went there I I started out by doing by doing a lot of research in books, because I and in what was printed in manuscripts, and one thing and another, because I thought that I would better understand. But I saw if I set out and would explore and when I went to Mt. Vernon, they could not have been more helpful. They realized that by getting to know the building and all the rest of it, and out in the environs they they put me, I could say that almost I could embrace the thing and say, `I slept with George Washington,' because they I wasn't allowed to sleep in the mansion house, but I was allowed to have the cabin right next door. And if during the night I wanted to go out and see what the moon looked like as as Washington had seen it, I would crawl up and get them to get the guard dogs in, and I was allowed to wander around. And I it was tremendously in in informing.

Mr. FLEXNER: Well, the this was all mixed up with my saying that the reaction of people to fathers. He was regarded as the father of this country, and to some extent, they revol revolt against a father was some something that they were deeply psychologically pleased with. But then, of course, Washington stood for certain things, and I was I also wrote, as I didn't by any means censor anything. I was afraid that I would be attacked from the right for having said things that were uncomplimentary about Washington.

Mr. FLEXNER: No. Now the amazing thing was I was attacked from the left.

Mr. FLEXNER: Because I had made Washington into a lovable human being, and they liked to look down on the Founding Fathers as a bunch of semicrooks who were undermining the American people.

Mr. FLEXNER: Well, now that was that that was that that was at that time that they they they wanted to tear down the Founding Fathers, you know. The whole question of the of the attitude of the a generation to its forebearers varies very much was what they want to do and want to get away with, and what they don't approve of, or whether whether they do. The and Washington is is and I also said in this book that he lived in every in everybody's mind, that he was a a a living ghost in the mind of every American. And whether they got on with him or whether they didn't was, to some extent, a personal reaction, and would tie up with, as you know, as I said, in this case, with the the the who the people who were more radical found Washington as a stuffy old guy.

Mr. FLEXNER: I'm no good on that.

Mr. FLEXNER: That's very possible.

Mr. FLEXNER: I think I spent about I forget something like six or eight years, but that produced the four volume big four volume, and the one the one volume.

Mr. FLEXNER: Well, they sold very well. The they also the the four volumes won a special Pulitzer Prize which is only given only been given about 10 times in the history of the Pulitzer Prize. And they so they didn't make me a vast fortune, but on the other hand, they supported me quite nicely.

Mr. FLEXNER: Yep. Well well, I was I I did act as consultant in various kinds of things, but these were just I helped for instance, I helped Colonial Williamsburg build a when they wanted to keep automobiles from their streets, they built a a large reception center. May have been there. It's some miles out of town, and then people were supposed to leave their cars there. And I helped in the creation of that with an interesting connection. They they got in some some very modern architects who were good at crowd control and so forth and so on. They were building a very modern building. And then they thought they had to put a get something in there that would prepare you for the 18th century con village, and I got in there to try and work out some ways of bringing these two together. And fortunately, the all of the architects were screwballs and mavericks even as I was, so we got on very well.

Mr. FLEXNER: Well that that took me quite a considerable amount of time. It took me about five or six years. I think it's partly because I had to make a great sorting, and you have an aw awful lot of memories, and you've got to sort out the ones that you think are important, and the ones that will go together and make an intelligent account of your life.

Mr. FLEXNER: Well, I think I just I think I just had to give you a simple answer, I concentrated on myself. I wasn't trying to sell anything. I was trying to actually, of course, it's also a very interesting thing as a introspection. I mean, I I wasn't trying to or I did the few things. For instance, if I mentioned any any women in any way that had gotten close to my life, I was very cl careful not to give any names.

Mr. FLEXNER: Right. But usually they, rather in fact, it was a choice. I mean, if the woman was dead, I felt that I could use her name.

Mr. FLEXNER: Well, Mari Mari was an amazing thing actually. She was a Welsh girl, an English in London connected with the Labor Party. Her father was the editor of the Daily Herald, which was the big Labor newspaper. And she was an absolutely wild fascinator and she fascinated crowds of people, which could be quite embarrassing. And she and I got on ve got on very well, and then things got too heat too heated. And she was she w she, fortunately, married a a a baronet, and there was a Burke's baronetcy. So I was able to look up and make sure that she was dead, and that she had no children. And then I felt I was able to write about her with her own name.

Mr. FLEXNER: Yes.

Mr. FLEXNER: Oh, she was had run for Parliament, but the L Labor Party can candidates were nominated in by the central group, and they would send out y youngsters to run in districts which was anti labor, so there wasn't wasn't any chance of their really winning. And she had run for Parliament. And then, very dramatically, I was in the United States sitting in a garden when a mysterious letter appeared. And out of it fell my last letter to Mari, and then a letter from her husband's secretary saying that she had that she had died. He had found this letter and he was sending it to me. I couldn't find out what it what she died of.

Mr. FLEXNER: Well, I that was important. I don't know about you, sir.

Mr. FLEXNER: You looked you look to me as if as if you were not immune or are not immune.

Mr. FLEXNER: Well I think it is always an interesting subject. Actually I was rather taken aback, although I was very grateful for the review in the Sunday Times that made a certain amount out of the my relations with the girls.

Mr. FLEXNER: I did. Yes, I I li I liked it. I was a little worried about it, but then I discovered that it pleased everybody. I haven't got a single criticism from anybody about the amount of discussion there was about my relations with women, which, of course, are very important in one's life.

Mr. FLEXNER: H her name is not in this thing. She was the daughter of of a major figure in Greenwich Village in the old days, and I don't don't I don't know even whether I gave her first name. But this didn't get very far. I was a freshman and one thing and another. The first real the first really, really, really one was this wild Mari, this w wild Welsh girl who had a great effect on my life.

Mr. FLEXNER: Well, I I say s I say this in the book so I can say it. I didn't trust that she, being as volatile as she was, that she ever would make a faithful wife.

Mr. FLEXNER: Well, she was very very passionate. One time this is this is a story that's in here. This was very f very funny. The Socialist Party in in America was presided over by a wonderful man by the name of Norman Thomas, who actually did a great deal of pre to proph who prophesized the New Deal. And she had the idea which the the British Labor Party had the idea that neither of the republic American parties amounted to anything. They were all in it in sort of a m in maybe just a mixture. And then if the Labor American Labor Party the American Socialist Party could build up to get a few a certain number, a thousand votes, why then, all the liberals in both of the big political parties would join up and they would have a party like the British Labor Party.

And she had the idea, although she was only 20 years old, that she would marry me and come over to America and organize this. And I would have would have enjoyed it, if I wouldn't have got involved, particularly if Norman Thomas was a friend of mine. What he would made out of this she was Welsh what he would made out of this Welsh fire brat. But I thought that was something I wasn't going to get mixed up in.

Mr. FLEXNER: Beatr was Agnes.

Mr. FLEXNER: Well, she I met her originally when she was at Bryn Mawr, and my brother was teaching at Bryn Mawr, and my family was very much involved with Bryn Mawr. The great creating president was my aunt, and i we got to know each other that way, and then we got married. And I was married to her for 10 years.

Mr. FLEXNER: Well, sh she began feeling that she wasn't realizing. It's all in there it's kind of that kind of question is very complicated to answer.

Mr. FLEXNER: She's as far as I know still alive.

Mr. FLEXNER: Four or five years.

Mr. FLEXNER: Mmm, 30, 40. I'm an old man, you know.

Mr. FLEXNER: Oh, she's theoretically at home at this moment along with her cat and my dog.

Mr. FLEXNER: Well, that now that seemed to me to be a very very interesting thing. I think coincidences that I wonder about. She when my first wife began getting unhappier and unhappier, and then decided that she would go to New Mexico to join some friends and decide what she wished to do. And I was walking back through Central Park rather disconsolately when I ran into a woman who I I hadn't seen for some time because she disliked my wife. And when she heard that my wife was away, she said, `I'm giving giving a cocktail party this afternoon.' And the first thing I saw when I stepped in there was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. And she was th a fat Frenchman was with her, and then, bless his little heart or bless his fat heart he got up and left left her behind.

Mr. FLEXNER: I, as a gentlemen, all I could do was take her out for dinner.

Mr. FLEXNER: Yes. She's...

Mr. FLEXNER: Yeah. Well, I'm short. And...

Mr. FLEXNER: I'm well, I'm about 5'6". I've lost a little bit in o in my old age. But, fortunately, I'm very heavily built. If I'd had been short and wi wispy, it would have been a great disadvantage.

Mr. FLEXNER: I cannot imagine.

Mr. FLEXNER: No, she was a sin she was a beautician and a singer. And we we got on, and but but we and then then eventually my first wife, still out in New Mexico, decided that she wanted a divorce. And so then my second wife and I got got on a little bit more intimately, shall we say.

Mr. FLEXNER: One.

Mr. FLEXNER: Her name is Nellie Helen...

Mr. FLEXNER: ...after my mother.

Mr. FLEXNER: She lives in London. No, she lives in England. She used to be. She has a house out in the country with her husband. He's a writer of a different sort. He is a a historian of m biographer historian of science, who has written a very successful book about Darwin. And he and I get on very well, but we we write very differently. He has a computer in his bedroom.

Mr. FLEXNER: I I I I write by with a typewriter.

Mr. FLEXNER: No.

Mr. FLEXNER: Well, I learned the hunt and peck method. I I've never learned the touch system. As a newspaper man, we have been brought up by you you ought and anyone who tried to use the the touch system on the good old typewriters at the Herald Tribune wouldn't get anywhere. You had to go after them with a bang.

Mr. FLEXNER: On on a very ordinary typ typewriter, electric, nowadays. But not on any kind of one that one of the modern machines.

Mr. FLEXNER: I don't believe in them. I think they make books t much too long.

Mr. FLEXNER: Well, almost always in libraries. My idea was that I would get out of get out of the house, and I would have my breakfast, and my fam my family would leave me a little al al a little bit alone, and then I would get and go to whatever library I had set set up myself a place in.

Mr. FLEXNER: Well, the New York Historical Society, New York Public, which I'm a trustee, and then when the years when I was in the country, at the Yale University Library.

Mr. FLEXNER: Yeah.

Mr. FLEXNER: Typewriter and and and with my notes.

Mr. FLEXNER: Well, the what I actually did was I I made pencil corrections. And m my theory was that I had to go over everything three times. And I tried to write as fast as I could the first time through, which had the advantage of a great deal of elan and vigor and rhythm. And I didn't bother as to whether I was getting how intelligent I was ge getting or not getting. And then I believed that I would se the second thing was to revise. And I made my revisions on the same page in as the first thing. And then I had to go through it a third time. And the third time I would have both of the the versions, the original dash off one, and the thoughtful one before me, and I would very often bring them together into what went on. And if at the end of the if a at the time of the third one I wrote something new, I had to still go through it again two times.

Mr. FLEXNER: Well, I no, I don't think so. I I well, for one thing, I was perfectly willing to recognize that that he was a much greater man than I was. And I felt that you could stretch up, but I never for one moment of course, I th thought he did some foolish things.

Mr. FLEXNER: Well, let's see if I can I if I can think of one at this moment. I'm afraid that I can't, but he...

Mr. FLEXNER: Oh, tremendously. I think he was one of the greatest men in the history of the world. And that I came to from the from a standing start. For one thing, he he managed to preside over this extremely revolutionary rebellion and not have it slip into a dictatorship the way all the others have. It was partly because he refused to he refused it.

Mr. FLEXNER: What do I say there? I didn't answer...

Mr. FLEXNER: Yes. Well, we had we put on some years after the books had been published. But what actually happened was that Washington had had never had very much of a history in in the theater or in television, because the Washingtons that were being produced were too woodlike to make a good subject.

And as soon as my books came out, then people began to think, `Here is something that we can do.' And I had two or three abortive invita questions. And then the General Motors decided in the first place, a producer decided that they would get a script together. And and the scriptwriter, I had the good fortune to get on with beautifully. And we cooperated. And then General Motors suddenly decided that they were g going to do it, and they spent, oh, millions of dollars.

But they were worried, because they felt that if something came out that about Washington, that it would raise hackles. It might destroy this sale of cause. So they came they really came to me, and they felt that my books were so well known that they could stand behind me. And they said they said, we they didn't try to make me putting Washington up, go into the the the sentimental image, but they said to me, `If you if there's ever anything in this thing that you disapprove of, you tell us, and we'll take it out.'

Mr. FLEXNER: Well, I I didn't do it that way. What I discovered was that that there were all kinds of barriers that had been built up between the sponsor and the actor. I think the sponsor had to, if he had something questioned, had to speak to his advertising his advertising agency. He had to speak to general CBS and then finally finally. But as I had no official position, I was able to just go anywhere I pleased. And if something was coming on that I didn't like or that I disapproved of, I could take it up myself with the director. And we got on very well.

Mr. FLEXNER: Well, that that was one of the most amazing things that I ever saw in my whole life. Ge the General Motors decided that they would send a what what would be a box to all the schools in the United States, which would contain information. It wou would one thing, kindly, it would contain a copy of my one volume book. It would contain reading for teachers and reading for children. And they got a group of I don't know what they were in in California to make a sort of a an indication as to what the thing should be, and when the thing came, it was a complete slander. It made Washington out a crook. It made it it made the went heavily into the maltreatment of women, the maltreatment of animals, the maltreatment of blacks. And I don't know where the hell where the hell they found these people. Of course, all I had to do was to blow the whistle, and the thing was thrown in the scrap basket, and we did something else.

Mr. FLEXNER: Oh, I think that was very true, and I went in I did go into that at some length. But e e exactly the the the woman What was what was her name? The very attractive girl who was cast as Sally Fairfax...

Mr. FLEXNER: Patty...

Mr. FLEXNER: Jackie Smith. When she asked me one thing that the producer allowed me to do was that I wa wandered the set, and I was very careful not to wander it too often. He le let the actors sit down next to me and talk to me. And she asked me whether I thought thought that Washington had gone to bed with Sally or not, who was married to his best friend. And I answered, `Well, I think it was questionable in any direction,' and that I thought it didn't make very much difference.

Mr. FLEXNER: Oh, a great many. I have no and and and they were translated all over the world. They were printed here and there. I have no idea. But they they did very well, and it's still it still brings me, in 20 years later, s some income. Not exactly enough for me to s su support myself on, but it's still there.

Mr. FLEXNER: Well, it it was the American Academy of Arts and Letters decided they wanted to have pictures of all their members and they got a photographer who was a hangover from the old Pach brothers P A C H brothers they were the great Victorian photographers. And he took this picture of me, I suppose about 10 years ago. And it it's a pretty fine picture. Maybe it doesn't it doesn't look like me, but it helps the book along.

Mr. FLEXNER: That was taken when I was in my ear in my late 20s or early 30s.

Mr. FLEXNER: Well, I worked there for a little bit more than a year, and I was very, very happy there, and they treated me very well. And but it was before the days of the the union known as the Newspaper Guild. And I was worked six days a week for as long as the city editor wanted me to work, and I had one day off, as I said. And I found that I couldn't my nerves couldn't take it. And and, of course, it's very, very, very nerve racking work, because every day you're doing something else. You're sent out on some kind of a situation and you come in cold and you have to try to, as far as you can, work out what the hell is going on there and with perpetual stretching of your brain. And I found that my nervous system wouldn't take it. And so I took a crazy job, which was I became executive secretary of the Noise Abatement Commission of the city of New York, which was at the age of less than 25. And it was my job to silence New York. And you can tell how successful I was.

Mr. FLEXNER: Well, I worked there a little more than a year, but then the Depression came along and everything that was that reduced noise cost money and the thing became impractical and the Noise Abatement Commission went out went out of existence. I didn't mind seeing it go. And then I put all my I never had a regular job after that.

Mr. FLEXNER: I have had, and I have it still, yes.

Mr. FLEXNER: Well, I get very nervous about things. When my wife is late in getting home, I'm upset and in general. I mean, it goes it comes and it goes. But it certainly was an important part of my life.

Mr. FLEXNER: Well, I think I've had it since I was a very small child. I had I got the idea tha tha that once as I was walking along in those days, I had a German governess through Central Park, it suddenly occurred to me and came in my mind that nothing that I saw around me existed and I was absolutely alone. And this was all just a mirage. And I had grabbed ahold of the governess' hand, although I didn't think it was there, and this kind of thing. It it's got a name psychological name, but I it when I I found it difficult to travel. This this came and went in some ways. I f found it difficult to go away from home for fear it woul wouldn't be there when I came back. And this was this was part part of ...

Mr. FLEXNER: About myself?

Mr. FLEXNER: Oh, sure. At the moment, this is well, this is rather more editing than writing. I'm doing a for the foreign University Press a sort of a what I call "Random Adventures," a collection of my various shorter writings down through the years.

Mr. FLEXNER: Yeah.

Mr. FLEXNER: Well, they it all started when they were doing a book on New York history and became interested in the book about my one of my that s su successful one about State Stockman, who was a Tory during the revolution. And then we got on and they have they have reprinted a great many of my books. And then when the time came and I did this, they were get we were getting on so well, I got them do it. And they have done a very good job.

Mr. FLEXNER: Well, one thing that's more difficult for me is I've had a difficulty hard now to read my own handwriting. You ever get that?

Mr. FLEXNER: Well, for one thing I I I do manage to read it. Also, I find it hard to ri hit the right keys on the typewriter. But I get around it. And, furthermore, the people that one of the ladies at Fordham who's right here can read my handwriting when I can't.

Mr. FLEXNER: Oh, I suppose I would I suppose I don't think very much i in in the serious sense, I can't think of anything. I spent perfectly happy with what I did, and it was very various, this maverick business. I mean, I wasn't held to any job. I wasn't didn't have to when I finished a book on one subject go on and do another one. I could write about anything I pleased and very often in my younger days, my publisher would be displeased. He would be pleased with a successful book in direction A, and instead of getting another book in direction A, he'd get one in direction B and but my publishers were not amused with this. So then I would have to find someone who was interested in B and then he wouldn't like it when I'd bring in C.

Mr. FLEXNER: It's it's I think I I think you would have to state it another way. It's more that I was I was worried about myself. I was dissatisfied. And I know when a book was finished, I it was finished. That's another thing. I I never went back and and revised a book. I felt when I'd done it, it's as far as I was concerned, it was finished and as y you noticed, they almost all the books that are print, but they when a new edition came along, I didn't feel that I wanted to tinker with it and do something else.

Mr. FLEXNER: I think I'd be impressed by him. I don't think he'd like me.

Mr. FLEXNER: Well, Benedict Arnold wouldn't like me at all.

Mr. FLEXNER: Well, the John Andre was the was an interesting figure, but I no, I truth was I didn't want to like or not like them, and one reason is I said that I gave up John Adams was because I disliked him. Didn't that that I didn't dislike Benedict Arnold and didn't mean that I wasn't able to think myself I'm boasting now think myself into his character. The reason I gave up John Adams was I wasn't able to think myself into his character.

Mr. FLEXNER: Thank you.