And cultural historian as many books include new york intellect, the unfinished city, and a nation of nations. These professor of history at new york university. Editor of sex, death and god and l. A. Reviewsys, articles, and interviews have appeared in vanity fair, the paris review, the New York Times, the , Los Angelesst times book review and various anthologies. What you please join me in welcoming david reid, to a spiegel of it was fecal about his book and of each other professor bender. And then be joined by professor bender. [applause] mr. Reid thank you, lily. Its a pleasure and honor to be here in connection with this distinguished series. This is a memorable occasion for me because it is my first powerpoint presentation. [laughter] so bear with me. I might be the only person in america who does not have experienced in this medium. Got thet clicking microphone adjusted. Great. Survey just a very brief of new york pictorially. We begin with this. Its a fantastic shot of the financial district in the mid1930s. Series, changing new york. Here you have the classic vista. The topless tower. The alabaster walls. The fortress of money. Out, they ship going steam rising above the landscape. Below this there was the beginning of the 1930s a stricken layout. The landscape of the early depression. It was worse to be down and out in new york and london or paris or any other great world city. One thing it seemed to be becoming was a cleptocracy. The mobs had seized the effective control of new york. This became more and more betweenin the interval the realization that Herbert Hoover was effectively helpless in the face of the depression and the coming of the new deal. In numerous novelty find people such as john ohara saying, what will governor roosevelt to . En he becomes president no one was quite certain. The mob ruled the street. This is one of his specialties. The demise of anemone gangster. Imminent gangster. Normally these would include a fedora, the signature of a late gangster. It was sometime suspected that he actually planted the fedora. And this one he is wearing one. The gangster is out of sight in the car behind the wheel. Skip the whole new deal era. We go straight from a stricken city of 1933 to the victorious city of 1945. The troops returning to new york and washington marching through washington square. We had a city that 12 years before seemed as if it were paralyzed, a city from which the that itse had written boxers with a quick is, its bankers for the richest, and now a giant of the city. Now new york stood at the summit of the world. It was dana Patrick Moynihan who said, the most step will place in the history of mankind. What did it actually look like . At street level it had changed surprisingly little. During the Great Depression the buildingcycloptian projects of the 1920s had been effectively stalled. There were the bridges built by the new deal order for which the socalled Master Builder robert moses is often given credit as if you were an independent force of nature, and perhaps he was. Would haveally been built without fdr who loathed him and laguardia. Here you see the celebration and the faces of a multicultural city. The italians of little italy on vj day. Living among scenes were effectively unchanged for the last halfcentury. Lovely to be remarkably altered and transformed by the suburban age that was approaching. Here is something entirely different, but these are exactly the soldiers you wouldve seen returning. S was still a nomination and urban nation. These counties including new york constituted a nation that won the war. Perhaps itme can be calculated now my computer. In 19 the winter of 1947 in 1948 United States went from having its largest proportion, and absolute terms the percentage of the population, kids are just its largest population of 100,000 or over in the process of suburbanization that began at that time. Here are the boys in the army. What were they doing . Reading books. The need for print was so extraordinary during the war tearrades would pair out signatures of a paperback book and hand them to a buddy. Books of poetry sold. Books of what amounted to very you areporn sold like my beloved with its vegetable analogies. But henry james and after F Scott Fitzgerald became popular in this time. Publishers wondered if he could last. With the boys and their wives keep reading books . An odd thing happened. They did. What they stopped doing was going to the movies. They retired to private pursuits like reading and procreating. In this matter was born the suburban nation that would to succeed the new deal nation. Here again we are talking about a city in print. Here is the newsroom of the New York Times. Lets not forget the New York Times had a rival, the Herald Tribune. A newspaper of the establishment. A newspaper of the wasps. A newspaper of the established rather than the striving. And a newspaper that published excellent prose. It was a saying among journalist that the weakness of the New York Times was sex. That is what was said. The weakness of the Herald Tribune was alcohol. Alcoholrelated better prose. To better prose. No press lord was more powerful than henry luce, shown with some carefully attentive newsmen hanging on his every word. At the end of the Second World War time life was something the most powerful media empire ever. Its magazines cover the earth. It was an oracle of intellectual authority. It attempted to do the same in the department of politics. It was ubiquitous. Life magazine actually more people were exiting advertising in life magazine alone been on any television or radio work. Those were the days to be involved with print. The future would lay elsewhere. Here we have edward r. Murrow representing the empire of the air. After the war radio and television ceased to just be a headline service and the consequences for those we all know. On the other hand you have the small magazines represented by artisan review which exercised an intellectual tendency out of correspondence with us very modest circulation. Never more than 10,000 or so. In this picture we see representing a certain part of the intellectual and expatriate writers. He was best known as being married to Mary Mccarthy. An exiled writer from italy. Married. Equently center looking slightly sque,kyeqaue Mary Mccarthys next to the poet and in front is kevin mccarthy, the actor. We have one type of the postwar writer as culture hero. They wore plaid shirts and represent it typical jewish moral earnestness, arthur miller. And his antitype, truman capote. He represented the author as a effite. Both had a long run. We had Leonard Bernstein, his debut was legendary and attractive the same kind of frenzy adulation as frank sinatra. Here we have the art world represented in the first of the exiled artworld. Salvador dali looking rather clean cut in his chalk striped suit. To the left his dealer, julian levine. Troupe have the ballet in 1942. Balanchinee george representing the european artworld and Lawrence Hart of hammerstein and heart. Here we have the kind of gathering of darlings of the gods. 54th street in 1950. She continued her career but no longer able to dance. A writer. Probably recognize Tennessee Williams and gore vidal. Here we have the irascible as they were characterized by the Herald Tribune. Abstract extraction is expressionist painters. You will probably recognize kuning, bosco, Jackson Pollock with a guarded hooded expression. Here we have their dealer, Betty Parsons who gave us the white walls, bare floor gallery. They give me paintings, i give them walls. Letter bynspired by a harry truman to his wife Margaret Truman in which he said that they had to declare the truman doctrine inaugurating the cold war that he was opposed only by crackpots like henry , his Vice President shown here among schoolchildren during his 1940 president ial run and Woody Guthrie who supported him. Here are the kind of immoral artists and writers of Greenwich Village, as harry truman called them. Are presented here by montgomery clift, jack kerouac, and unidentified man with a quizzical expression. Here are the avatars of the beat generation to come, jack kerouac and neal cassidy. Jack the two of them were present for Harry Trumans inauguration as president in 1949. Here we return to a classic vision of new york. The risen city of the postwar. Of the my mini tour decade and hope to learn more about it. Thank you. [applause] [applause] mr. Bender thank you very much for that visual run through. That was quite wonderful. I want to begin by saying if i were asked by a publisher to describe this book, what i would have said. Say this is a big book. If it were in print, it would be in all caps. Its a richly populated book with a wide range of new yorkers precisely captured in fine prose, many and various lengths. Some beautifully captured in a single phrase. A vast panorama of the arts, polish it politics in the lives of the many writers and artists. I think it shows a couple of skills, along with many others, but i want to make a point. First, an incredible range of the energy that radiates through the book of the many people and works. He talks about so many writers. He can capture in a few words a picture, a text. So many writers that i want to get to the index and literally count them how many this man has his capacity. Unfortunately i dont know. Booknk when you pick up a you might want to do that. The other thing is the second virtue. David reed is a writer. We academics and queer writers but we mostly are not think we are writers but we are mostly are not. Is anst real question obvious one. Here is a man that was in california, who has got to books on california. He writes a lot about california and other media. Why go to new york . Say d i would have to thank you for that extremely handsome and generous comment. I would have to say in part its writers like yourself a set me on this path. Day i canr the even name it. May 30, 1983. Book. Across this it has been moved to the despair of the editors to san diego. They have sawn that he had fond memories of being there during the war. You can imagine the desolation from new york to san diego. Its chiefly those of geography and intellect. The idea the history of new york an American Writer of any kind cannot escape new york one way or another. The Publishing Center is there. There is a terrifying line of in gunther for he says, the field of culture there is no definitive success in American Life unless it is ratified by new york opinion. I do not say this is a good thing. [laughter] i just say it is the case. The short answer is that many years ago my agent asked if i had a book i wanted to write. And did i have a proposal . I said i didnt have a proposal but i did have a book. He said all right. Write a letter, no more than two pages addressed to me. Write it so that it can be read by other eyes. What is he going to be about . I said it would be interesting about the period directly after world war ii. Thats when my generation came in. For another there was a great cultural glory. Film noir,e, the beginnings of television. Most of that was going on in new york. It was the undisputed cultural capital. That is how i got started. He sold the book and i was lashed to the mast. Mr. Bender ok. I want to pose another question about the book. The title. The brazen age. I thought i knew it brazen meant. I thought it was a nonchoice an odd choice. I went to my dictionary. The first part of the definition said marked by flagrant and insolent audacity. To then it had an asterisk go to a special box at the bottom of the page. Synonyms, shameless. Then it goes on to say, these attitudes there are a couple of others these additives apply to people and personal behavior that are in defiance of social and moral or priority and are marked by an old lack of shame. I think you just gave a different definition. [laughter] mr. Reid there is a lot of shame. That audacity is a strange thing. I diovered when i begin going online to see if it was getting any publicity [laughter] it was third or fourth or seventh title they came up. The first title they came up was my life in the brazen age, a book written by someone in london in the name the late 1600s. There is nothing new under the sun. One learns all kind of things about your first book online. If he gets a certain websites you can find out i wrote this book in a hiatus in my training as a navy seal. [laughter] i dont know why that is so funny. Fromitle actually derives a line by corgi dow gore vidal. When i wrote this note i quoted the line, the opening of the introduction in which gore vidal is writing in 1974 in the dark days of Richard Nixons presidency. He says from december 7, 1941 1974,august 14, presumably the day he was writing, the United States is in more or less continuously at war with the exception of a brief too little celebrated interval, 19451950, in which we enjoyed at least not to brazen and age. She said he realizes has to be your title. I subsequently realized that if you look at the poet you find you got me started. The poet talks about the golden age of being transformed into bronze by violence. Here you have the golden age at starts up with another war. Mr. Bender thank you. I got that. Said there are so many characters. You got some sense of the range of them on here. Sense of what was on the screen. The range of things. I guess im like to have you Say Something about the most individualroup or you had to deal with terms of getting it right. Maybe even the one you ended up feeling more and more uncomfortable with. And then the other side of that. The one that you either it was just a sense it was just a sinch. So when you understood in a very positive, significant way. Mr. Reid that is a fascinating question. I did in the course of writing this book continually find myself at this point my lover started falling in in a bizarre and perverse way with some of my characters. Some of whose direct relevance in the 1940s was not obvious to the most generous high eye. Editormy shattered they give you the kind of order by noting the bohemian to the arts and politics, these were spheres that was it was it was enough to encompass. The manuscript was once about twice as long as it is now. The say would happen group i became fascinated with for the early bohemians in Greenwich Village. Dell. A lot of people whose names are largely lost. Here was a new york dadaist i was both fascinated by them. I went to the library and have experienced many times. You are the first person to check out a book and 40 years and you wonder if it shows you are being scholarly or just too far off the beaten track. The thing is they were both fascinating and frustrating in equal measure because you cannot be sure youre getting them right. With ones contemporaries you have a reasonable sense of the background. At a certain point you are reaching your hand too far over the table. You wonder there is a terrifying line that christopher wroteood gore vidal historical novels and he said how terrifying them as be. You just wrote and the birds began to sing, and you wondered where their birds in the fourth century. [laughter] the early Greenwich Village bohemians was the answer to both questions really. Mr. Bender that is particularly interesting. One of theut them, things that struck me in the book was although it was yougedly a postwar period moved back and forth. Them, not start with although it does in some ways 350 therebut on page might be some return to a much earlier age. It may be for member something noble had written melville had written in the confidence man. It went like this. Describing the narrative that the reader is going to receive, the narrative goes forward and is backward as occasion calls. Circumference elastic you must have. You had a good predecessor in this thing. I dont know. I am one of those historians that goes down through chronological line and maybe this is misses some things by not breaking that. It seems to me you had a purpose orthe times when you did sometimes skip forward. Mr. Reid you put me in exalted company for which i am grateful. Certainly in the presence of an exalted phrase. This digressive this ressive digressiveness i pointed out there is a parallel to my conversation. I use one particular example. Nothing starts. There is no new moment or original moment in history. Sort ofa lot about the homosexual underworld of the 1930s. Much of it was not an underworld. During the war homosexuality came out to an unprecedented public visibility. It was literary themes. Capote. No one is going to mistake the symbolic swampland of other voices, other rooms for a literal transcription of reality but you get really is coming from. Suspected ofal, doing in artless documentary. There is always been a gay new york. Chompsky has an a classic study. To are inevitably drawn back explain that people are doing in the future. Particularly the elements of new york sociology is important to me. Mr. Bender there are stories that nearly require a restart. They are not sitting quietly. When i wrote new york intellect i had a little epilogue which was maybe a mistake. I did too much and too small of a space. One of the things i argued there was the culture of postwar theod, the 1940s onward to the eyethe culture of and the ear had diminished the written word. It is supremely the city of the[laughter] do we find ourselves at. Isagreement here i think you show your insight on images already. But yours is very heavily on the literary and end. Is a funny thing on the cultural end, but on writing this book. It isnt necessary, but fundamentally that you can change that in any given culture and there is a dominant medium, had cuneforms and clay tablets and then we go here and we can remember how heavy culture was, a