I flashed on George Trow’s exit from The New Yorker when I scrolled through Roseanne Barr’s tweets for Trump. (“If you support HRC who stayed married to a rapist, funded ISIS, robbed starving Haitian children, you deserve xtreme horrors of her globalism”) Back in the day, when Roseanne was a phenomenon not a has-been, Trow resigned in protest from The New Yorker after celeb-mongering Tina Brown had Barr guest-edit an issue of the magazine. At the time, Trow’s gesture seemed locked into a class-bound, liberal artsy terrarium. And there’s a risk of making too much of his elite dudgeon. (I’m not putting him on a pedestal with Tommie Smith and John Carlos!) Looking back, though, Trow’s protest hints at how he was always alive to sketchy alliances that threatened to pollute the American air. As per John Irving:
More than [Trow’s] words, it is his face I remember from Exeter. As I was a slow and struggling student, I used to feel that there was something arrogant or smug in George’s smile; I occasionally felt that George Trow was smirking at me. Now I realize that he was simply more alert and more aware than I was. What I mistook for smirking was instead something prescient in his smile; it was as if the unfathomable powers of precognition were already alive within him.
The satiric movie scenario posted below provides further confirmation of George Trow’s power of precognition.
Trow sent it to me in 1999 around the time First printed “Is Dan Mad”–another piece of prophecy (the last Trow would publish before his death) that nailed Dan Rather as a “Bad Vector” destined to kill “the authority of News Delivery.” The following jokey piece of extreme writing was sparked by Bill Clinton’s impeachment, which Trow came at through the “very secret diary” of Harry Truman. His jape amounted to a diss of arrivistes in the White House.
Trow sensed it wasn’t publishable, despite a measure of currency. It surely wasn’t right for First when we were in startup-from-under mode. And, on the real side, Trow’s hauteur (whether born or made) will always be above us. Yet in this moment, his extended joke–complete with uncanny “pussy” punchline–seems right on time. Turns out Bill Clinton wasn’t the perfect object of Trow’s disdain, but Trump is ripe for it. “Wonder was the grace of the country,” Trow once wrote. And his high-low concept below should make you wonder again at his all-American knack for prophecy. B.D.
George W.S. Trow and Hunt Stromberg
Present
The Independence/Boss Prendergast
Production of
HARRY TRUMAN’S VERY SECRET DIARY
(The Story That Asks The Question: If Things Are Always The Same. Why Are Things Very Different?)
Open: Independence, Missouri, July 31, 1998, Harry S. Truman, an older man of some 120 years life experience, sits rocking on a sweet old wooden porch. A wind stirs an eddy of autumn leaves. A mischievous gust catches a copy of the Independence Clarion: which has been resting in President Truman’s lap and blows it across the porch. WE SEE Headlines: “Bubba in the Hamptons…Spielberg…Bassinger…Baldwin.”
President Truman, with the acceptance that comes with age, does not bestir himself, but rather, allows the paper to blow into a nearby gutter, where it decomposes before our very eyes.
TITLES:
GOWNS………………………………………….By Adrian
Makeup Supervision…………………Perc Westmore
Set Design……………………………….Cedric Gibbons
Hold On: President Truman’s hands. He holds an old, but well-oiled leather volume
President Truman: (Voice Over) I remember…
Camera goes toward old leather volume; pages flip…
Saturday
Well, Bess and I are the Greenbriar in West Virginia, a state I thought I never wanted to see again, but this isn’t like West Virginia at all. It’s just like Gone with the Wind, and you’ve never seen so many really top people all in the same place, like Bob Young, who runs The New York Central Railroad and Bob Hope, who is the nicest guy, (not to say Bob Young isn’t,) and Bob (Hope, not Young.) promised me that this afternoon we could play golf with–
(Dear Very Secret Diary, imagine me, your own little Harry, writing this.)
The Duke of Windsor.
Bob says not to worry, just call him “Sir,” (I don’t have to call him “Your Majesty” because I’m an American,) and then he might ask me to call him “David,” and I said “just don’t call him late to dinner,” which Bob thought was very funny, and had never heard it before.
Bob has the nicest life I ever saw anybody have, and, Very Secret Diary, I can tell you that I wish we — you and I — had a life just like it — with just one or two teeny differences — and maybe we can — but don’t tell anybody.
One reason Bob and I made close friends so fast is that he really respects the Military, and, after all, I pushed the button the Japs, which he for one doesn’t forget. I almost told him about the “H” bomb, and so forth, but Tom Dewey would probably have a Special Prosecutor after me on that one too (however that works, damn Tom Dewey anyway,) so I just said “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet,” which he thought was very funny, and had never heard before.
Monday (On Bob Young’s Private Train)
Well, it’s all over, and we have to go back to Washington. Bess and I just sat like two sad children watching all the ticky tacky houses people have and thinking the same thing. (Thank God, Bess and I always think alike, and there is never any distance between us, even when there is some little difficulty that comes up that no one could help it’s coming up, and anyone would overlook in a friend.) So Bess said, wasn’t the Greenbriar lovely, and I said it sure beat the pants off Independence. And she said imagine Dorothy Draper ever coming out to a place like Independence to do over a house–huh! She said “huh” real loud in a way that I completely understood because there is no distance between Bess and me even when some problem comes up that’s the most natural thing in the world for a man. (I hear the Deweys have a terrible marriage.)
But sometimes I think I’m the luckiest man in the world. Dear Very Secret Diary, and that my luck’s never going to run out because just then Dorothy Draper herself came by (she was on Bob Young’s Private Train too,) and she stopped by and chatted and was just the nicest, friendliest person, even if she is the biggest interior decorator in New York, and knows people even Bob Young doesn’t know.
P.S. Over the weekend, Bob (Young–not Hope) told me all about the railroads, which was very interesting. He promises to tell me about other industries too.
Wednesday
Well, of all the hell-fool things. Marshall was just in here, and just as Bold as Brass tells me we have to Rebuild Europe. I told him, that they could damned well pull themselves up by their own bootstraps just the way a certain young man from Independence, Missouri did to the point where’s he’s just been at the Greenbriar Resort, which has just been completely redone by Miss Dorothy Draper, in case he didn’t know, and went down and came back on Robert Young’s Private Train. I could tell I got him with that one, because he just stood there and stared like a Cigar Store Indian, didn’t have one word to say to that at all except he would mention it another time.
Wednesday (The next one.)
Well here I am at Hank Luce’s Media Conference, Dear and Very Secret Diary, and I might as well tell you how I got here. Yesterday I come into the Oval Office, just like always, ‘tho a little bored to tell you the truth, and wondering if maybe Dorothy Draper would like to come down and see if there’s anything she could do with it, when one of the Dewey Crowd comes in Bold as Brass and sets out to hand me one of those subpoenas, and I tell him “fine my F&F file hasn’t been getting a work-out lately,” and he just stands there like a Cigar Store Indian because no one ever told him that “F&F” means “File and Forget,” so he didn’t even get the humor. (That’s why the Deweys have a terrible marriage; can’t take a joke, and don’t understand a simple natural thing that a ten year old kid would understand and forget about–well, maybe not ten, but a fourteen year old kid would.)
And then, Dear and Very Secret Diary, because as you well know, I’m a foxy article and quick on my feet, I said right back at him, “Besides I have to go to Hank Luce’s Media Conference at Exclusive Sun Valley,” the which you probably haven’t even heard of, I almost added, but didn’t.
So here I am, and I must say it sure is swell, and makes Independence look like Bombay, India, but it isn’t a patch on The Greenbriar, I have to admit.
All the top people are here, like Bob Young of the New York Central Railroad, and Juan Trippe of Pan Am whose friends (of whom I am one now,) call him “Juanito.” Juanito was explaining that there are too many airlines which makes it dangerous, and that we should do something about it and I said sure. Some of them (the airlines) he explained, are run by upstarts like Tom Dewey who are in for spite, and to make things look bad for the real men who aren’t afraid to take chances like drop the Big One on the Japs.
Then things got really busy and noisy, and I lost track of Bob and Juanito, and Hank Luce introduced me to a Madame Chang woman who told me there was Funding in Formosa, but I couldn’t get any details because guess who was there–Lana Turner.
Thursday
Dear and Very Secret Diary, and my Only True Friend, and the reason I say that, Dear and Very Secret Diary, is that after last night I don’t know about Bess, and as for Our Other Friend (and you know the one I mean,) I’m not sure he’s on my side anymore.
The Hard Thing about these Media Conferences, Dear and Very Secret Diary is there’s pussy all over, and Our Friend (you know the one I mean,) can’t handle it. And the worst of it is, Dear and Very Secret Diary, I got in trouble following Bess’s advice that if I had to, at least do it with one of our own Social Class.
I think I told you Lana Turner was here. I just casually mentioned to Bob Young, who is head of the New York Central Railroad, which is an American Institution you can trust, and can never go out of business unlike some fly-by-nighters, that I wouldn’t mind the chance of meeting her, as she is a person who raised herself up by her bootstraps, like myself, to be one of my own social class. He said sure, and over she comes, and Our Friend says a Big Hello, and Bob sits down with Lana, and says that Lana is an old and dear friend, and someone you can talk in front of, and U.S. Steel wants to take over Bethlehem, and can I square it with Sherman. I say sure, and if he doesn’t play ball I’ll fire the bastard, and I can tell Lana is real impressed, which, to tell you the truth, my One and Only Friend, is what I had in mind. So Bob leaves, and I ask her if she would please slob on my knob because under circumstances at present I have to stick to my own kind and not go catting around with everyone. She said no, but that isn’t all. Five minutes later up in a special room reserved for just the creme de la creme, what do I see but Lana doing the bellboy. But that isn’t all. I got mad as hell, which I’m known for,
and which has always worked in the past, and hit the bellboy, who is not of my own social class, and although I think I can get Marshall and them to square it with the House Detective and so forth, and while Miss Turner is a person of the highest status like myself, like I say, I don’t think I can square it with the bellboy.
Thursday (The next one.)
Well, I was wrong. Bob Young got him a job as Conductor on The Twentieth Century Limited, which is an American Institution that can never go out of business, unlike some, so everything’s O.K.
Friday
Well, the trouble is I couldn’t square it with Sherman, so U.S. Steel can’t do what it wanted to do with Bethlehem Steel, which is O.K. because both of them are American Institutions that can’t go wrong no matter what they do. Called Bob Young to explain Sherman is an Act not a guy, and Bob Young said any fool knows it’s an Act not a guy, and I said if he was guy I would have fired him before I let him talk back to me. I was feeling a little blue, so I called Miss Turner bur a foreigner said she was “indisponible.” I made her spell it out so I could ask Marshall what it meant. Called Marshall and asked him if “indisponible” was code for something and could he look it up in the code book. He said a Spanish dictionary was more like it, and it meant “not available.” I called Bob Young just to chat but he had to go out of town. Feeling a little blue, but at least I’m not some buttoned up twerp like Tom Dewey whose never been to the high spots like the Greenbriar with good friends like Bob Young and Miss Turner, although that was out west. Plus he’s got a terrible marriage where there isn’t any mutual understanding about silly little things that are completely natural to a man.