Lucian as I've said many times before.... yours is THE one email that I truly look forward to!
This is the article that led me to your writing sir. All the best for a happier 2025. Its so very hard for this aged hippie plumber to picture with the coming administration.
But I do have hope, a tiny amount & will continue to look forward to your writings.
Bless you again for this amazing article. What a story & what an incredible life you've lived. There's a movie in here somewhere mister!
I know a lot of fellow USMA grads who had interesting careers including a couple guys who were the catalysts for AOL. But you by far are the Forrest Gump of so many key moments in our history. Thank goodness you have kept your notes and articles and write so well about your life and memories. Keep it up. We will need your experience and courage to get us through the next four years!
And thank you Lucian for telling me thirty years later that I had stood by Winston Groom’s elbow for thirty minutes never knowing who he was, or what he wrote or would write.
I now count that half hour as a milepost in my mystifyingly Gumpacious passage through this life.
This is a classic! What a fantastic capture of the time! Living upstairs from Dylan's studio being ordinary. Finding that chair on the street and stashing it so you could listen to him through the paper-thin wall -- perfect New York touch. And all the writers gathered at Mailer's - and banging at the door of the Bitter End to get something to eat. It's all so delightfully in tune with my memories of the time and place. A moveable feast! Happy New Year. Thank you.
Lucian, I just loved reading this story again! Last night, I watched an interview with 60 Minutes’ Ed Bradley and Bob Dylan from 2004. In that interview, Dylan stated he did not want to be called a prophet or a pop star. He just loved music. He spoke of the dissolution of his marriage and said Sarah wasn’t prepared for the fame and the onslaught. Of course not! She was raising three kids practically by herself. But I digress…then I watched another interview that Dylan with a TIME magazine writer where eviscerated him and the mag. That really was a pleasure to watch. https://youtu.be/3hkv8i0D254?si=bQhi_wz6iXoMSeB1
I was 19 and going through my first major breakup and heartbreak just then, the winter of 1974, when Blood on the Tracks came out. I love his mid-60's stuff too, but that record has special meaning to me. You've had a blessed life, Lucian, to be so close to the creation of that phenomenal art as it was happening.
I shunned the drug scene like the plague. I instinctively understand my limits in “a man’s world!
Patty Smith broke the “coke-bottle ceiling” without so much as a nosebleed. She continues to manage a dacades-long devotion to her art and still kept her boots on, and her family intact.
Kudos to those who kept on track or knew when to change trains!
In my line, l keep away from the mainline and out of courtrooms as much as l possibly can. When Harry gave his prosecutorial summations, l was in the gallery, out of harm’s way.
I always knew whose flesh and to what effect.
At 76 I’m still intact, trying to beat the clock till Whenevuwary strikes and says: “Dianu”( Hebrew for “It is enough!” recited at Passover, in gratitude for Freedom from slavery)!
Sigh. Lovely piece, redux. There were some geezers in NY in 1960, when I got there, who remembered, with great fondness but little detail, the city, especially the Village, in the 1920s. Here we are, you remembering with great fondness but far better detail, the city in the early 70s, when the letters before "ho" were "No" and "So," not all-encompassing "Bling." Thanks for the memories, even if I'm hearing in my mind's ear Bob Hope's voice singing those words.
I think a lot gets lost to "Maybe you had to have been there." I never knew any old Village bohemians back then who reminisced. Reaction when they failed to do it well may have been why. Lucian has a genius for setting up a scene with just a few details. Like that, you're in.
A few of my Italian immigrant neighbors had fabulous local gossip. Like my widowed ancient super, whose husband was said to have stabled a horse in their walk-up one winter, leading the animal up and down three flights.
From Flaubert to Truscott: "Le bon Dieu est dans le detail." Yes, God is in the details, and having mucked the stable where my daughter's horse lived, my mixture of admiration and astonishment imagining anyone keeping a horse in their apartment is considerable.
I don’t know if “epic” is a grand enough word for this moment you brilliantly describe.
Lucian as I've said many times before.... yours is THE one email that I truly look forward to!
This is the article that led me to your writing sir. All the best for a happier 2025. Its so very hard for this aged hippie plumber to picture with the coming administration.
But I do have hope, a tiny amount & will continue to look forward to your writings.
Bless you again for this amazing article. What a story & what an incredible life you've lived. There's a movie in here somewhere mister!
I know a lot of fellow USMA grads who had interesting careers including a couple guys who were the catalysts for AOL. But you by far are the Forrest Gump of so many key moments in our history. Thank goodness you have kept your notes and articles and write so well about your life and memories. Keep it up. We will need your experience and courage to get us through the next four years!
And thank you Lucian for telling me thirty years later that I had stood by Winston Groom’s elbow for thirty minutes never knowing who he was, or what he wrote or would write.
I now count that half hour as a milepost in my mystifyingly Gumpacious passage through this life.
Later, he was so drunk, he sat down on the floor and fell asleep leaning against a wall.
Bummer
I’m glad I missed that part
Wow what a story. What a gift for the new year.
This is a classic! What a fantastic capture of the time! Living upstairs from Dylan's studio being ordinary. Finding that chair on the street and stashing it so you could listen to him through the paper-thin wall -- perfect New York touch. And all the writers gathered at Mailer's - and banging at the door of the Bitter End to get something to eat. It's all so delightfully in tune with my memories of the time and place. A moveable feast! Happy New Year. Thank you.
Lucian, I just loved reading this story again! Last night, I watched an interview with 60 Minutes’ Ed Bradley and Bob Dylan from 2004. In that interview, Dylan stated he did not want to be called a prophet or a pop star. He just loved music. He spoke of the dissolution of his marriage and said Sarah wasn’t prepared for the fame and the onslaught. Of course not! She was raising three kids practically by herself. But I digress…then I watched another interview that Dylan with a TIME magazine writer where eviscerated him and the mag. That really was a pleasure to watch. https://youtu.be/3hkv8i0D254?si=bQhi_wz6iXoMSeB1
“Over there stood Jackie O. With a single breath she took up half the oxygen in the place.”
A thousand yard kill shot. Beautiful.
I, too, adored that phrase!
Reading this for the second time was worth far, far more than the minutes spent.
Thank you for taking me back with you. Manhattan in the late 60s and 70s was a magical place as I recall it too. This is next level though.
So true...I've been to the Bitter End, but never to a party at Mailer's! with Jackie O in attendance, no less!
You can't run this too often. Improves with every reading and every sighting of Bobby's enraptured reaction to Patti goofing off in that snap.
We are so lucky to have lived as long as we have and seen what we have seen.
Every reminder is a new thrill.
You had me at 1974
It’s like second day spaghetti…even better!
I was 19 and going through my first major breakup and heartbreak just then, the winter of 1974, when Blood on the Tracks came out. I love his mid-60's stuff too, but that record has special meaning to me. You've had a blessed life, Lucian, to be so close to the creation of that phenomenal art as it was happening.
As a native NYer and a woman,
I shunned the drug scene like the plague. I instinctively understand my limits in “a man’s world!
Patty Smith broke the “coke-bottle ceiling” without so much as a nosebleed. She continues to manage a dacades-long devotion to her art and still kept her boots on, and her family intact.
Kudos to those who kept on track or knew when to change trains!
In my line, l keep away from the mainline and out of courtrooms as much as l possibly can. When Harry gave his prosecutorial summations, l was in the gallery, out of harm’s way.
I always knew whose flesh and to what effect.
At 76 I’m still intact, trying to beat the clock till Whenevuwary strikes and says: “Dianu”( Hebrew for “It is enough!” recited at Passover, in gratitude for Freedom from slavery)!
I am 78, and I hear you!
Words cannot describe how much I love this. Could not love it more will have to suffice!
Sigh. Lovely piece, redux. There were some geezers in NY in 1960, when I got there, who remembered, with great fondness but little detail, the city, especially the Village, in the 1920s. Here we are, you remembering with great fondness but far better detail, the city in the early 70s, when the letters before "ho" were "No" and "So," not all-encompassing "Bling." Thanks for the memories, even if I'm hearing in my mind's ear Bob Hope's voice singing those words.
I think a lot gets lost to "Maybe you had to have been there." I never knew any old Village bohemians back then who reminisced. Reaction when they failed to do it well may have been why. Lucian has a genius for setting up a scene with just a few details. Like that, you're in.
A few of my Italian immigrant neighbors had fabulous local gossip. Like my widowed ancient super, whose husband was said to have stabled a horse in their walk-up one winter, leading the animal up and down three flights.
From Flaubert to Truscott: "Le bon Dieu est dans le detail." Yes, God is in the details, and having mucked the stable where my daughter's horse lived, my mixture of admiration and astonishment imagining anyone keeping a horse in their apartment is considerable.
Good literary company LKT is keeping—all attentive to detail—Flaubert to Mailer to Nobel laureate Dylan