revolved around such matters as dogs, reading, and poetry. I had my own
dog, but I also caught every stray dog in the neighborhood, washed and
defleaed it, and anointed it with cologne (causing a great rumpus when
discovered by one of my sisters from whom the cheap scent had been
appropriated). My poetical labors were not properly appreciated by my
sisters, either, who would collapse into gales of laughter when I
interrupted their bathroom sessions of beauty culture to read them my
latest verses.
My father built me a study in the basement and I set up a program of
studies for myself: chemistry one week, physics the next, then
mathematics, philosophy, etc. It was a wonderful thing until I blew the
place up in the course of my chemical experiments. This ended my career
in the physical sciences.
One summer I painted our house—a complete exterior paint job utilizing
only a one and one-half inch brush. It took me from June to September,
and finally the neighbors were complaining to my mother about the way
she was working me. They didn’t know that I was in no hurry to finish
the job. It was not only a labor of love so far as the painting went,
but I was spending my time up there in a glory of memorizing poetry and
delivering noble dissertations.
I was seldom seen without a book, and nobody regarded this as
particularly odd, for the sight of young people reading on the streets,
on their porches, on a favorite bench in Douglas Park was common. It is
not common today. The only wonder is that I never toppled off a curb or
got killed crossing a street—one read as he walked and paid little
attention to the hazards of city living.
Furthermore, nobody told us, in school or elsewhere, what a child
between the ages of nine and twelve should be reading and what he should
read from twelve to fourteen, etc. We read everything that took our
fancy, whether we understood it or not, from Nick Carter to Kant and
_Penrod and Sam_ to Joyce. And when we became infatuated with some
writer, we stopped barely short of total impersonation. When I read that
Shelley had carried crumbs in his pocket, I started to do likewise and
practically lived on breadcrumbs for days.
All of us who grew up in the Depression years on the West Side remember
vividly the men out of work and the soup kitchens going on Ogden Avenue;
houses and apartments becoming crowded as married sons and daughters
moved in with their families. People stayed home and listened to the
radio: Wayne King playing sweet music from the Aragon Ballroom and Eddie
Cantor singing that potatoes are cheaper, so now’s the time to fall in
love.
I went to school with the heels worn off my shoes and sat in class with
my overcoat on because there were two holes in the seat of my pants.
When the teacher asked a question, I would reply with a sermon. I spent
my days fuming ... I hadn’t found myself. One day I encountered the
works of Schopenhauer and felt I had at last arrived at an idea of life
on a highly negative plane. A short time later I presented my whole
schema to a friend, who blew it up completely.
My formal education was quite diverse. I never went to school without
working to foot the bill and in the course of time did about everything,
it seems, except selling shoes. I was an usher at the Chicago Theatre (a
vast, gaudy temple of entertainment then featuring elaborate stage shows
as well as the latest movies), where I eventually became Chief of
Service. I was an errand boy and a newspaper boy (selling papers on the
corner of Wabash and Van Buren for a dollar a night, seven o’clock to
midnight). I worked in a grocery store, a hardware store, a department
store. I was a bus boy and a dishwasher. I sold men’s clothing, worked
at the University of Chicago, and wrote squibs for a neighborhood
newspaper. I went to Crane Junior College, to the old Lewis Institute,
and attended graduate courses at the University of Chicago. And during
all this, I took courses in every field that captured my imagination or
provoked my curiosity: neurology, philosophy, psychology, literature,
sociology, anthropology, languages (German, especially) ... everything.
One day, while I was still an undergraduate, a professor whose heart I
had captured through my ability to recite from memory the _Ode to the
West Wind_, took me aside and assured me that if I were to be a teacher
of literature, which he suspected would be my goal in life, a faculty
position in a college or university English department was not likely to
come easily to a man named Brodsky. Frankly, it was his suggestion that
Stuart Brodsky find another last name—at least if he wanted to become an
English teacher. “What name?” I said. “Any other name that seems to
fit,” he replied.
I took the suggestion up with my sisters. We thought Brent might do
nicely. Then I asked my father for his opinion. He told me that no
matter what I did with my name, I would still be his son and be loved no
less. It was settled. At the age of nineteen, my name was legally
changed to Brent.
Brent or Brodsky, I taught incipient teachers at the Chicago Teachers
College. Then I lectured on Literary Ideas at the University of
Chicago’s downtown division. The world took a nasty turn and I left
teaching to enter the Armed Forces. I spent twenty-seven months in the
army, becoming a Master Sergeant in charge of military correspondence
under Colonel Jack Van Meter. When a commission was offered me, I asked
for OCS training and got it. But toward graduation time, the prospect of
signing up for two more years as a commissioned officer was too much and
I rejected it. The war was over. I was on my way to the vagaries of
civil life and to becoming a bookseller.
The Seven Stairs was born, grew, died. I found myself a widower,
endeavoring to maintain my sanity and my household and fighting for
commercial survival on Michigan Avenue.
One day in 1956 a tall, pretty redhead named Daphne Hersey grew tired of
her job in one of the dress shops on Michigan Avenue and came to work
for me. She was a Junior League girl, but a lot else beside. Before I
knew it, we had three Junior Leaguers working in the shop, and I was
wondering whether the shop was going to be swept away in an aura of
sophistication that was incomprehensible to me. But my respect for
Daphne and her integrity remained limitless. And I had no notion of the
improbable consequences in the offing.
Nothing is easier than saying hello. The day Hope walked in to chat with
Daphne, the world seemed simple. She and Daphne had attended Westover
together. They had grown up in the same milieu. Daphne introduced Hope
to me. I was three years a widower, absorbed in my problems of family
and business. Hope was a young girl struggling to stay really alive,
teaching at North Shore Country Day School, living in the token
independence of a Near North Side apartment shared with another girl. We
chatted for a moment or two about books, and I sold her a copy of a more
than respectable best-selling novel, _By Love Possessed_.
Summer was coming. I was intent upon taking my children up to Bark
Point. I would spend a week or ten days with them, leave them there with
the maid and return for two weeks in the city. Then back again to the
Lake. This was my summer routine. But Daphne wanted a vacation, too, and
we were short of help. While we were discussing this dilemma, in walked
Hope. Daphne asked her what she was doing during her vacation from
kindergarten teaching. Nothing. And would she like to work here for
three weeks? Hope accepted. The next day I left for the Lake. When I
returned, Daphne would leave, and by that time Hope would have learned
her way around. Together with our other girl in the shop, we could hold
the fort until Daphne came back. It was as simple as that.
When, in due time, I returned, Daphne left and Hope and I were thrown
pretty much together. I loved working with her, and she seemed thrilled
with the bookstore. It was a courtship almost unaware, then a falling in
love with all our might. And the probability of a good outcome seemed
almost negligible.
There _is_ such a thing as “society.” It is not a clique or gilded salon
of arts and letters such as a Lionel Blitzsten might assemble, but an
ingrown family, far more tribal than what is left of Judaism. In point
of fact, the old West Side no longer exists—its children, our family
among them, are scattered to the winds. But the North Shore, beleaguered
perhaps, is still an outpost of the fair families of early
entrepreneurs, a progeny of much grace anchored to indescribable taboos.
The plain fact is, it calls for an act of consummate heroism to
withstand real hostility from one’s family. It is not only a matter of
the ties of love. It is a matter of who you are, finding and preserving
this “who” ... and you may lose it utterly if you deny your family, just
as you may lose it also by failing to break the bonds of childhood.
Even when people try to be understanding and decent, they can be tripped
by their vocabulary. In the protective and highly specialized
environment in which Hope was raised, anti-Semitism was as much a matter
of vocabulary as of practical experience. Even the mild jibes of pet
names often involved reference to purported Jewish traits. This
atmosphere is so total that those who breathe it scarcely think about
it.
This beautiful and vital girl with whom my heart had become so deeply
involved, brilliant and well-educated, loved and admired by family and
friends, could not possibly make the break that our relationship would
call for without the most terrible kind of struggle. Hope’s parents were
dead, but she had an aunt and uncle and a sister and brother. Their
reaction to my impending descent upon their world was one of violent
shock and bitter protest.
Hope’s relatives were vitally concerned about what she was getting
herself into. As if I wasn’t! I think if they had pointed out to her
that, in addition to being Jewish, I had three small children, that
there was an age difference involved, and that she herself might be
running away from some nameless fear, they would have stood a better
chance of prevailing. But the social impossibility of the case seemed to
be the overwhelming obstacle.
If it were all really a dreadful error, I could only pray that Hope
might be convinced of it. I was afraid of marriage. I couldn’t afford a
love that was not meant to be. I had to think not only of Hope and me,
but of the children—they couldn’t be subjected to another tragedy. There
mustn’t be a mistake.
To me, it was a terrible thing to have to remain passive, to ask Hope to
shoulder the whole burden of our relationship. We sought out a
psychoanalyst to help us—one I had never met socially or in a business
way (not easy; I knew nearly all of them on a first name basis) and who,
if at all possible, was not Jewish. I did find such a man and Hope
arranged to see him. He gave her the facts about the risks involved in
marrying me. He also gave assurance that she was neither neurotic nor in
need of analysis. And that threw the whole thing right back to Hope
again.
Hope left the city to hold counsel with herself. I stayed and did
likewise, on the crossroads of my own experience. We had a hard time of
it ... and love won through, feeding, obviously, on struggle, obstacles,
impossibilities, and growing all the better for it.
I am sure God was beside me when I married Hope. Since then, everything
I do seems right and good. We do everything together ... my life is
empty when she is gone even for a few days. Hope’s brother and sister
have learned that the “impossible” thing, social acceptance, does not
interest me, but that there are other areas of living equally important.
We are friends.
Life with love is not without struggle. The struggle is continuous, but
so is our love for each other and our family. With the addition of Amy
Rebecca, Lisa Jane, and Joseph Peter, the Brent children now number six.
It gives us much quiet amusement to hear parents complaining about the
difficulties of raising two or three. Hope is responsible for naming
Joseph Peter, our youngest. “He looks so much like you and your family,”
she said, “I think it would be very wrong if we didn’t name him after
your father.” And so we did.
11
My Affair with the Monster
Among the things I have never planned to be, a television performer
ranks pretty high on the list.
I have already mentioned that the unlikely person who initiated my
relationship with the new Monster of the Age was the wise and kindly Ben
Kartman. Ben by this time had left _Coronet Magazine_ and was free
lancing in editorial and public relations work. I had not seen him for
some months when he came into the shop with a public relations man named
Max Cooper. Except for having heard of instances in which they
purportedly exercised a dangerous power over gossip columnists, I knew
nothing about PR boys. I simply regarded them as suspect. Consequently I
should probably have taken a dim view of the idea they came in to talk
with me about—auditioning for a television program—even if I hadn’t been
opposed on principle to television.
At the time, it seemed to me that television was the most vicious
technological influence to which humanity had been subjected since the
automobile’s destruction of the art of courtship as well as the meaning
of the home. The novelty of TV had not yet worn off, and it was still a
shock to walk into a living room and see a whole family sitting before
this menacing toy, silent and in semi-darkness, never daring to utter a
word while watching the catsup run in some Western killing. I vowed that
I would never own a piece of apparatus which seemed so obviously
designed to diminish the image of man, enslave his emotions, destroy his
incentive, wreck his curiosity, and contribute to total mental and moral
atrophy. I didn’t think it would be good for the book business, either.
Ben and Max didn’t sell me on television, but they did make the audition
seem a challenge. What could I do? I had never taken a lesson in acting
or public speaking in my life. When I spoke extemporaneously, I often
rambled. In fact, that was my approach to talking and to teaching.
Sticking to the subject never bothered me ... or breaking the rules; I
didn’t know any of them. I just talked. All I had was a spontaneity
springing from a love of ideas and of people. I laid these cards on the
table as carefully as I could, but Cooper’s only response was, “You are
a raw talent. I’m sure you can make it.”
Make what? On the morning of the auditions, I arrived at the Civic
Theatre (an adjunct to the Chicago Civic Opera House which at that time
had been taken over as a television studio—this was while Chicago was
still active in the game of creating for the medium) and I was as
nervous as a debutante on the threshold of her debut. A hundred men and
women were standing in the wings, and the fact that I knew some of them
and had sold them books made matters worse. All at once, I knew that I
was at war with them all. I was competing for a role and I had to be
better than the rest.
We were instructed to come out on the stage at a given signal, peer
toward a camera marked by two red eyes, and talk, sing, dance, or
perform in our fashion for three minutes. By the time my turn came up, I
was ready to fall on my face from sheer nervous exhaustion. The red
lights blinked on, and I began to talk. I talked for three minutes and
was waved off.
I had had enough lecture experience to feel the incompleteness of such
an experience. No audience, no response, no nothing, just: your three
minutes are up (after all the tension and readiness to go out and
perform). I hurried out of the theatre and back to the store, where I
paced around like a wild beast. I was certain that I had failed.
Everything that I had been building up for seemed cut out from under me,
and I could only talk to people or wrap their packages in a mechanical
daze.
At five o’clock in the afternoon the spell was broken. Max came in along
with a towering young man of massive build who extended a huge hand
toward me, crying, “Let me be the very first to congratulate you. You
have a television program for the next thirteen weeks!”
At my total astonishment, he threw back his head and emitted a Tarzan
laugh. I liked him very much, but I could not place him at all. He was
Albert Dekker, an actor who has probably appeared in more Western movies
than any other star and who at that time was acting in a play in
Chicago. He was a friend of Cooper’s and subsequently a friend of mine,
frequently accompanying me to the television studio during the remainder
of his run in Chicago.
But at that moment I could only sputter and stutter and wheel around as
though preparing for a flying leap, and the next few minutes gave way to
complete pandemonium, as everyone shared in my sudden good fortune.
The show ran for more than thirteen weeks. It lasted a year. It was
sandwiched between a show about nursing and one about cooking. It was a
fifteen minute slot, but in the course of this time I had to do three
commercials—opening refrigerators and going into the wonders thereof,
selling cosmetics, even houses. It was a mess. During the entire year,
nobody ever evinced any interest in building the show, and when it was
finally cancelled, I was torn between hurt pride and recognition of an
obvious godsend. Now and then I had received a small amount of critical
acclaim, but on the whole, my first venture into television seemed a
disaster, financially as well as spiritually. And I hate failure.
Well, there was no use apologizing. I had had my chance, a whole year of
it, and I didn’t make the grade. The poor time slot, the overloading of
commercials were no excuse. I could lick my wounds and say, “Nothing
lasts forever. Television is television. They squeeze you out and throw
you out.” But in my heart I knew that the show had never had an audience
because it was not good enough. So it ended in failure, and along with
it, my relations with Max Cooper.
For two years, I was away from television entirely, except for an
occasional call from Dan Schuffman of WBKB asking me to pinch hit for
someone who was taken ill. Among those for whom I served as proxy was
Tom Duggan, a real good guy who developed considerable local fame by
getting into one scrap after another and finally, after getting into the
biggest scrap of all, practically being deported from Chicago to pursue
the same career in Southern California where he continues to be a
nightly success.
Although it seemed to me from time to time that glimmerings of
creativity could be detected in the television field, I no longer had
any serious interest in the medium. When, shortly after Hope and I were
married, we gave an autographing party for Walter Schimmer, a local TV
and radio producer who had written a book called, _What Have You Done
for Me Lately?_, the TV relationship was incidental to the objective of
boosting a Chicago writer. One of the guests at the party was the
station chief of WBKB, Sterling (Red) Quinlan. I had previously met him
only casually and was surprised to be drawn into a literary conversation
with him, during which he told me that he was working on a book, to be
called, _The Merger_. The next day, he sent me the manuscript to read
and I found it most interesting, particularly as it dealt with a phase
in the development of the broadcasting industry, about which Quinlan, as
an American Broadcasting Company vice president, obviously knew a great
deal. This was a period during which any number of novels with a
background of Big Business were being published. I thought Quinlan had
done an unusually honest job with it and wrote him a note to this effect
when I returned the manuscript.
Several weeks later, I received a phone call from Quinlan which sounded
quite different from the tough-minded executive of my superficial
acquaintance. “What’s wrong with my book?” he said. “No one wants to
publish it.” He really wanted to know where he had gone wrong.
I tried to explain the vagaries of publishing and of publishers’ tastes
and how it was a matter of timing and placement with certain publishers
who publish certain types of things. But I could see this made little
sense to Quinlan, because there is really not much sense _in_ it.
Finally I said, “Look, send the book over. You need a front runner.
Maybe I can break down a door for you.” I’m sure he didn’t believe me,
but he sent the book over anyway.
I sent the manuscript to Ken McCormick, editor-in-chief at Doubleday,
after phoning to tell him about it, and as luck would have it, Ken liked
the book and made an offer. I’m sure Quinlan thought I was some kind of
wizard, and of course I was delighted to have been able to help.
With Red’s book in the process of being published, I turned my mind to
other matters—mostly the sheer joy of living. Business was strong, Hope
and I were enjoying the best of good times, we were soon to have a
child, we were floating on a cloud and wanted no interference from
anything. I avoided phone calls and invitations and put away all
thoughts of becoming anything in the public eye. I just wanted to be a
good bookseller, earn a living, spend time with my family, and leave the
world alone.
It was in this frame of mind that I received a call one day from Quinlan
asking me to join him for lunch at the Tavern Club (a businessmen’s
luncheon club located near the WBKB studios). I was interested in Red’s
literary ambitions and was glad to accept.
Red Quinlan is more than a typical example of a “pulled up by my own
boot straps” success story. He is a fairly tall man with reddish hair, a
white, smooth face, and blue eyes that can change from pure murder to
the softness that only Irish eyes can take on. He knows every way to
survive the jungle and moves with the slightly spread foot and duck walk
of a man treading a world built on sand. One part of his mind deals only
with business; the other part is dedicated to a sensitive appreciation
of the written word and a consuming desire to write a good book. At the
beginning he may have wanted to make the best seller list, but his
concern is now with truth and craftsmanship and with what it means to be
a writer. He is a fascinating man who has done much for me.
Two other men joined us for lunch at the club. One was a heavy-set man
of Greek descent named Peter DeMet who controlled large interests in the
television world. The other was Matt Veracker, general manager of WBKB.
We ate a good lunch and talked in generalities until Quinlan asked me if
I had read any good books lately. I had just finished a collection of
short stories by Albert Camus and was particularly taken by a piece
called, “Artist at Work.” As I told the story, DeMet seemed suddenly
very interested. But the conversation went no further. We shook hands
all around and broke up.
Less than an hour later, Quinlan called me at the shop and asked me to
come right over to his office. I could tell as I walked in that
something was on the fire. Red came around the desk and sat down with me
on the couch. “Stuart,” he said, “we have an open half hour following a
new science show that the University of Chicago is sponsoring. How would
you like to have it?” This was in 1958 when astro-physics had burst upon
the public consciousness. Hence the science show.
“I’ve even thought of the name for your show,” Quinlan continued. “Books
and Brent.”
I still remained silent, caught in an enormous conflict. I _did_ want
the show ... to prove something to myself. But at the same time I didn’t
want to be bothered, I didn’t want to get caught up in the hours of
study the job entailed. And I no longer needed the money or a listing in
the local TV guides to bolster my ego. Yet I wanted the chance again.
Red noted my hesitation and, although slightly nettled by my lack of
enthusiasm, recognized that I was not giving him a come-on. He went to
the phone and said, “Ask Dan Schuffman to step in here.”
Danny took over the argument. The price was set, with promise of a raise
within twelve weeks. The show would run from September through June, no
cancellation clause, no commercials sandwiched in to break up the
continuity of my presentation. I had complete control over the choice of
books and what I would say about them. Everything was settled. Now all I
had to do was tell Hope!