The Kingdom and the Power (46 page)

Adolph Ochs had wanted books to be presented “as news,” to be treated in
The Times
as other news items were treated; he did not want his reviews to become a precious literary forum for intellectuals and critics who were determined to display their erudition or superiority without telling
Times
readers what the books were about. While some of Ochs’s concepts were changed after his death, they changed slowly, and much remained unchanged as Francis Brown settled into the editorship of the “Book Review.” Most of the Sunday reviewers wrote as Ochs would have wished—they rarely seemed impassioned or scathing, their language was quiet and discreet. They were obviously respected members of their communities: professors from Princeton and Smith, lady novelists in Westchester, liberal editors from the South, venerable retired scholars in the Southwest; they were experts on Japanese art, the Civil War, anthropologists and social commentators, biographers of presidents. They were friends of
The Times
. When an anthology that Markel had edited arrived on Francis Brown’s desk, Brown selected a reviewer—and, when the review came in, it was favorable, very favorable. And this intramural delicacy between
The Times
and its reviewers went on for years, and Brown seemed to have one of the easier executive jobs on the paper. In spite of the hiring of a few new young editors with mildly radical ideas, the “Book Review” still covered books “as news”—and while it tolerated occasional diversions, the reviewers would feel the unseen hand of Markel responding instinctively to the ghost of Ochs if the review went too far. This was the experience of a new young reviewer named John Simon, a man with a reputation for being brilliant and tough as a film critic for
The New Leader
and drama critic for
The Hudson Review
. He had been approached by one of Francis Brown’s subordinate editors, Eliot Fremont-Smith, to review two books on the theater, one by John Mason Brown, the other by Walter Kerr.

Simon was very pleased, it being his first opportunity to appear in
The Times
, and within a few weeks his review was completed and sent in. Simon had been very critical of both books, and in summarizing the flaws in the book by the
Herald Tribune
’s critic, Walter Kerr, John Simon added:

When Lester Markel read this paragraph, he decided that it would have to be rewritten or eliminated. Markel was not going to permit Simon’s left-handed compliment of the
Herald Tribune
’s Walter Kerr to dismiss
The New York Times
’ theater reviewers in such a cavalier fashion. This was embarrassing for those caught in the middle—Francis Brown and Fremont-Smith. Privately, they saw nothing wrong in publishing Simon’s review exactly as written, but Markel was unyielding—it would have to be changed. When Simon was told this he refused to change a word, even though he was also told that the elimination of the single paragraph would not destroy the validity of the review, and there was also the hint that the Simon review was being considered for the lead position in the Sunday “Book Review,” or, in any case, near the front of the section.

Unappeased, John Simon replied that if the review were not printed as written that he would like to have it returned, and would try to sell it elsewhere. Simon was upset, and there was always the chance that Simon’s displeasure would be relayed by him to other young new critics outside
The Times
as an example of censorship—a situation that Francis Brown hoped to avoid.

Weeks passed, nothing happened. Telephone calls and notes between Simon and
The Times
’ “Book Review” did not produce a happy compromise on either side. Then finally
The Times did
run Simon’s entire review—not on the cover or near the front, as he had been told, but in the back of the “Book Review,” displayed as inconspicuously as possible. And later, when John Simon’s own book,
Acid Test
, was published,
The Times
’ Sunday “Book Review” did not review it.

L
ong before Catledge knew exactly what to do, he knew that something radical had to be done about the lethargy of the New York staff. But when Theodore Bernstein suggested that Catledge replace the city editor with A. M. Rosenthal, who was then, in 1962,
The Times
’ correspondent in Tokyo, Catledge vacillated. Rosenthal, who was thirty-nine, had no experience as an editor, had not lived in New York in nearly a decade, and might be intimidated by the enormous task of running the New York staff and trying to change it. Catledge also debated the logic of removing from the reportorial staff a by-line that
Times
readers looked for: stories “by A. M. Rosenthal” from Tokyo, and before that from Poland and India, had possessed a special style, a warmth and readability and sensitivity to the nuances of politics and people. Rosenthal had won a Pulitzer Prize after his expulsion in 1959 from Poland, where, in the government’s opinion, he had “probed too deeply” into its internal affairs. One of the
Magazine
pieces that Rosenthal had written in Poland for Markel—an article based on a visit to Auschwitz, the Nazi concentration camp in which millions had died in gas chambers during World War II—became a journalistic classic:

If Rosenthal were to be made the city editor his reporting days would be over. Rosenthal would have to devote all of his time and energy to solving the problems of the newsroom, and there was a chance that he would be unwilling to do this. The finest reporters, with few exceptions, were hungry for public recognition and acclaim, and they would not quickly trade this for the extra money and anonymous power of executive life. And yet there was a point of no return. After a reporter had won all the prizes, had been everywhere, had covered every imaginable type of story, he began to recognize a repetition about his work—the situations and places seemed the same, the shortcuts were learned, there were no new challenges. If a reporter could obtain a column, of course, as Reston had, then journalism could still be interesting. But if the individual was destined to remain a reporter for twenty or twenty-five years, it could lead to stagnation and frustration, which would exist until he quit newspaper work and tried something else—or, if he had an opportunity to become an editor, he might find that stimulating. Catledge had never missed reporting and by-lines after he had become an editor. The same had been true of Clifton Daniel. Maybe Rosenthal, too, could be won over. There was little chance of Rosenthal’s getting a column as long as C. L. Sulzberger was writing one on foreign affairs for
The Times
. Perhaps, at thirty-nine, Rosenthal had gone as far as he could go with his writing. But if Rosenthal had the desire and talent to become a great editor, if he could somehow inspire a sluggish staff in New York and transfer his technique to other reporters, then Rosenthal’s loss as a writer would be well worth it to
The Times
. Whether it would be worth it to Rosenthal was another question. But Catledge, as he thought more about it, was becoming intrigued with the idea of Rosenthal in the newsroom, and Catledge decided that during his forthcoming trip to the Orient he would spend time with Rosenthal, would sense his mood and see if he was tired of writing and living overseas and would like to come home and try something new.

In Tokyo, Rosenthal was having the time of his life. He was living with his wife and sons in a tatami-floored house with servants. He was enchanted with the Japanese people, their efficiency and industriousness, their vibrancy and verve in a racy, gaudy city of joyous confusion. Protected by the American military, the Japanese concentrated on their industrial expansion and prosperity, and they were endlessly fascinating to write about. The Japanese women were delightful and intelligent, and the men seemed to Rosenthal to be ever on the make—making money, making love, dancing, singing, enjoying themselves without a sense of sorrow. This is what most appealed to Rosenthal about the Japanese—he did not feel sorry for them. They were enjoying their prosperity, they knew how to live, they moved noisily through the night and woke up guiltlessly each day, and Rosenthal was soon influenced by their spirit. In Poland, Rosenthal had felt gloom, repression, and suspicion—as he wrote in
The Times
: “In Poland there is a strange daily sensation of seeing and hearing things that look and sound ordinary, but have a startling twist to them, like bullets coming out of a child’s popgun.” In India, where he had worked between 1954 and 1958, it had been different, and in many ways worse. Surrounded by street sights of unbelievable poverty, Rosenthal felt a nagging discomfort and guilt. He had not quite been prepared for what he found in India, even though he had been warned in advance by Krishna Menon at the United Nations one day, a tense day in which Rosenthal had provoked Menon’s anger by nodding casually while the Indian diplomat was discussing poverty—
“Don’t nod your head at me like that, young man! You don’t know what kind of poverty I am talking about!”

Menon had been right. Nothing that Rosenthal had known before could be compared with India, although Rosenthal as a boy in America had lived in poverty and had experienced inadequate medical care as a charity patient, had suffered the premature death of his father and four of his five sisters due to accidents or incurable illnesses or inferior care, and he had been
reared with the thought that the essence of life was the absence of pain. His mistrust of doctors was deep and perhaps permanent.

As a teen-ager he walked on crutches or with a cane, victimized by osteomyelitis that had forced him to drop out of school for two years. The hospital to which he had been assigned in New York was a squalid, ill-equipped place where the patients were all but ignored, sometimes being treated by an intern—the “doctor of record” rarely appeared—and sometimes being unable to reach either a nurse or an orderly. One operation on Rosenthal’s legs had been done in the wrong place, and during his recovery he was told that he would never walk again. Fortunately, one of his sisters had written to the Mayo Clinic, which accepted him as a charity patient, and successfully used sulfa drugs that eventually restored his mobility. The Mayo Clinic became his boyhood symbol of humanity in America, and he was able to return to school, although he would never be an active participant in sports. Shy, skinny, and intense, he became a reader of books, a young man of quiet determination.

Reared in the Bronx, he was the only son of a house painter, Harry Rosenthal, who had been born in Byelorussia. Harry Rosenthal’s real surname was Shipiatski; he had permanently borrowed “Rosenthal” from a maternal uncle whom he had visited in London after he had left Byelorussia and was en route to Canada. He was a rugged, very physical man with muscles that bulged from his shoulders, and when he arrived in Ontario, in the late Eighteen-nineties, he took a job laying railroad tracks. Later he worked on one of the early utopian farms, leading a wild and semipoetic existence that he elaborately described in letters home to his father, a somewhat rakish rabbi, letters that so excited his younger brothers that they, too, soon left Byelorussia for Canada, as did a girl friend whom Harry Rosenthal later married.

After leaving the utopian farm, where the utopianism had eventually bred inefficiency and tedium, Rosenthal became a fur trapper and trader in the Hudson Bay area, and of all the things that he did, he enjoyed this the most. With a sled and a team of huskies, he wandered far and wide, becoming enthralled with the open air and sense of freedom that he felt, and he hoped that someday his son, Abraham Michael Rosenthal—who was born in 1922 in Sault Sainte Marie, Ontario—would work in the outdoors, perhaps as a forester, which he considered the ultimate
of aspirations. But before the boy was old enough to work, the family had moved from Canada. The Depression was on, the fur business was in decline. After several trips back and forth across the Canadian border, Harry Rosenthal settled his family permanently in the Bronx and went to work as a house painter. He had done this on previous occasions and had disliked it. He disliked it now even more, and he came to hate New York, to wish that he were back in the open land and rustic freedom of Canada. One day while painting, he fell from a scaffold. As a result of his injuries, he later died.

Abe Rosenthal attended elementary and high schools in the Bronx. The death of his father had been preceded a year before by the death of one of his older sisters, of pneumonia; then, while young Rosenthal was a student at City College, a second sister died of cancer that had been misdiagnosed. A third sister died during postnatal care after a hospital had released her; and finally, several years later, a fourth sister died of cancer. Abe Rosenthal remembered the addresses of every apartment that he had lived in since leaving Canada, remembered how the apartments became smaller and smaller as there was less money and more death.