Authors: Jamaica Kincaid
Talk Stories (10 page)
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At a luncheon the Dorman Cheese Company gave the other day, at the Sky Garden Roof of the St. Moritz, in honor of Mary Anne Krupsak, the Lieutenant Governor of New York; Carol Bellamy, the New York City Council President; John Lindsay, the former Mayor of New York City; Lewis Rudin, an influential New York real-estate man; Alan King, the comedian; and Sandy, a dog and a star in the Broadway musical
Annie
âbecause the Dorman Cheese Company thinks they are all good New Yorkersâhere are some of the people and things we saw and heard:
Annie
âbecause the Dorman Cheese Company thinks they are all good New Yorkersâhere are some of the people and things we saw and heard:
Alan King wearing a brown herringbone sports jacket. Carol Brock, a food columnist for the
News
. Avram Dorman, the president of Dorman Cheese. Carol Dorman, the wife of Avram Dorman. William Dorman, vice-president of Dorman Cheese. Phyllis Dorman, William Dorman's wife, wearing a roomy maroonish dress. Jeff and Ned Dorman, their sons. Carol Bellamy wearing a smartly tailored blue suit. Alice
Weiss, Phyllis Dorman's friend from Scarsdale. Carol Bellamy sipping water. John Lindsay buttering bread, then eating the buttered bread. Sandy the dog wearing a black bow tie and lapping up water from a water glass. Phyllis Dorman saying, when she saw Sandy the dog lapping up the water from the water glass, “Oh, my God!”
News
. Avram Dorman, the president of Dorman Cheese. Carol Dorman, the wife of Avram Dorman. William Dorman, vice-president of Dorman Cheese. Phyllis Dorman, William Dorman's wife, wearing a roomy maroonish dress. Jeff and Ned Dorman, their sons. Carol Bellamy wearing a smartly tailored blue suit. Alice
Weiss, Phyllis Dorman's friend from Scarsdale. Carol Bellamy sipping water. John Lindsay buttering bread, then eating the buttered bread. Sandy the dog wearing a black bow tie and lapping up water from a water glass. Phyllis Dorman saying, when she saw Sandy the dog lapping up the water from the water glass, “Oh, my God!”
Also: Phyllis Dorman saying to a woman she had just met, “I am from Charleston, West Virginia. I married Billy twenty-seven years ago, and today is our anniversary.” Phyllis Dorman saying to a man, “Herman, is Susie here?” Phyllis Dorman saying to the people at her table, “Could we make some room for Herman? Move over a little.” Sandy the dog barking. Sandy the dog wearing a white napkin. Sandy the dog looking sad-eyed, the way all dogs look when they are around people eating. Phyllis Dorman calling out from her table to Alan King, who was sitting on the dais, “Alan, is your speech going to be better than Sandy's?”
Also: Alan King staring across the room past Phyllis Dorman's head. Phyllis Dorman's friend Alice saying to Phyllis Dorman, about the first-course antipasto, “This should be the whole lunch. It's so much and it's so good.” Alice, as she watched Sandy eat up a large slice of cheese, saying, “Kay Thompson's dog ate pasta like that in Florence.”
Also: William Dorman handing out awardsâbronze wedges of Swiss cheeseâto the good New Yorkers. Carol Bellamy sipping more water. Phyllis Dorman saying to her friend Alice, “Billy and I are going to Wimbledon on Sunday.” Alice saying to Phyllis Dorman, “We played tennis with Jack Paar at
his house in Connecticut. He has a little TV camera on the court that tapes the game as you play, and later he shows the tape. It's fun to see yourself.” Phyllis Dorman saying, “Ugh, I can't bear to watch myself.”
his house in Connecticut. He has a little TV camera on the court that tapes the game as you play, and later he shows the tape. It's fun to see yourself.” Phyllis Dorman saying, “Ugh, I can't bear to watch myself.”
Also: Carol Bellamy, Alan King, John Lindsay, Lewis Rudin, and Sandy posing, with their awards, for photographers. John Lindsay leaving after lunch. Mary Anne Krupsak arriving after lunch. William Dorman telling an after-lunch joke about how much he hates photographers telling him to say “cheese” when they are taking his picture. William Dorman telling the roomful of people that it was his and Phyllis Dorman's twenty-seventh wedding anniversary, and then saying to Phyllis Dorman, “Here's to my big cheese,” and holding out to her an award similar to the awards that the honored New Yorkers had received. Mrs. Dorman clasping her hands over her mouth and then saying, “Oh, that's so sweet.”
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July 3, 1978
July 3, 1978
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A letter from a young woman we know:
When I decided that the place I was living in was too small for me, I told everyone that I was moving. I would just say, “I am moving.” I didn't know where I would move to, but I would say it anyway. I said it to my landlord. In a note to him, I said, “Dear Herb”âI can call him by his first name like that because he is a likable man and we are on good termsâ“I am moving. The place here is too small.” Weeks later, he called, and when he found out that I didn't have a place to move to after all, he rented me some spaceâmuch bigger and cheaper than what I had before. Only, it is in a funny part of town. I am now living in the spice district.
Two things women I know say are hard to find: a nice place to live and a nice man. Two things men and women I know say are hard to find: a good job and a good place to live. Two things a lot of people I know say they hate to do most, of all the things they hate to do: look for a place to live and then move into it.
My friend Rudy said that I should go to the liquor store at the end of the day and ask the people there for some of the boxes they keep in the back until the rubbish man comes. He was perfectly sure about it. He said that's how it always is at liquor storesâat the end of every day they have a lot of empty boxes waiting for the rubbish man. Then he gave me these instructions: Take four boxes and stack them up one on top of another and tie them together with a thick piece of string. Repeat with four more boxes. Pick them up and go home. Four boxes in each hand, eight boxes at a time. He said, “It will make you look like an old-time coolie.” I went to the liquor store twice and brought back, altogether, sixteen boxes. Rudy went to the liquor store six times and brought back forty-eight. That added up to sixty-four: it took sixty-four boxes to hold all the things I own. Most of the things I own should be thrown away, but I can never throw away anything unless I am drunk.
It took Rudy three Monday nights, three Thursday nights, and two Saturday nights to put all my things in the sixty-four boxes. At the end of it, he said, “There. I hope you feel better now.” Rudy works at a movie theatre where it costs a dollar to see a show. I used to go see films there, but that was before he told me in quite alarming detail about the mice who live there and what a racket they make during the shows. I think that if I go to the theatre the mice will turn out to be as big as people, and will want to sit next to me.
How miserable everything seemed. So it must be true what they say about moving, after all. I hated the woman who
would be moving in after I moved out. I hated her even though I knew nothing about her to hate. She would call up and ask if she could come over to measure for curtains, bookshelves, space for pieces of furnitureâthis, that. Then I found out that she was a cellist, and out of work, too, so I softened. “How nice,” I said. “A cellist.” But still. The woman who lived there before me lived there for forty years. She moved out when she died. When I was getting ready to move out, I hated so many things. I hated the way some of the women I knew dressed up as if they were old men, in men's clothes that were baggy on them. I hated the way some of the women I knew dressed up as if they were little girls, in ankle socks and wearing their hair in little plaits, with schoolgirl ribbons at the ends. I hated everything around me.
would be moving in after I moved out. I hated her even though I knew nothing about her to hate. She would call up and ask if she could come over to measure for curtains, bookshelves, space for pieces of furnitureâthis, that. Then I found out that she was a cellist, and out of work, too, so I softened. “How nice,” I said. “A cellist.” But still. The woman who lived there before me lived there for forty years. She moved out when she died. When I was getting ready to move out, I hated so many things. I hated the way some of the women I knew dressed up as if they were old men, in men's clothes that were baggy on them. I hated the way some of the women I knew dressed up as if they were little girls, in ankle socks and wearing their hair in little plaits, with schoolgirl ribbons at the ends. I hated everything around me.
As for the day I moved, everyone said what a cheery, sunny day it was, and what good, sound, careful, cheap movers I had. I didn't see it that way. I hated what I was doing, but here I was, doing it.
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September 11, 1978
September 11, 1978
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At the First International Soap Opera Exposition, held in the Statler Hilton some days ago, we saw many stout middle-aged women with cameras and many stout middle-aged women with children. We saw five men who were there because they liked and watched soap operas; all the other men we saw were connected with the exposition. We sat in a room filled with some of the stout middle-aged women with cameras and the stout middle-aged women with children. On a dais in the room were three actresses and an actor who play leading roles in a soap opera. In the middle of the room was a microphone. The women lined up in an orderly way to ask the actresses and the actor questions. The women called the actresses and the actor by their soap-opera names.
Among the questions that the women asked the actresses and the actor were these:
“Is there ever a time when you get into a part so much that when you get home you can't get out of it?”
“Did you get married on Valentine's Day?”
“How do you get along off camera?”
“If you had to pick a part other than your own on your show, which part would it be?”
“Why can't you be honest with Pete and tell him you don't love him?”
“What do you like to do with your free time?”
“You are all so lovely and thin. How do you maintain your weight?”
“Are you married when you are not on the show?”
“How do you prepare yourself when you have to cry?”
One of the actresses said that Louis Malle was considering a screenplay she had written about Henri Christophe, one of the eighteenth-century liberators of Haiti. Another said she liked to have fun. The third said she liked life to be a blast. All three actresses said they had to watch the amount and kind of food they ate. All three actresses said that when they had a particularly difficult and emotional scene to do they tried to think of particularly difficult and emotional scenes in their own lives. All three actresses said they were not married. The actor announced that he was appearing in an Off Broadway show. The actor said that the Off Broadway show was a very good Off Broadway show, and that he hoped the people in the audience would come and see it. The three actresses laughed with the audience and with each other. The actor seemed serious and standoffish.
Just before the interview session was over, a woman stood up and said, “I watch your show every day. It's like a religious thing with me.”
The whole room stood up and cheered.
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September 18, 1978
September 18, 1978
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Information gathered from press releases picked up at the World Plate Collectors Fair, recently held at the Statler Hilton:
“These are not plates to be eaten off, but to be admired, to be traded, to be acquiredâoften for surprisingly-large sums of money.”
“Plate collecting bids fair to become THE investment vehicle of the 1980s.”
“Between the two World Wars, the Christmas plate business waxed strong in Europe, and might never have spread to the United States had it not been for the returning G.I.s in 1945 and 1946.”
“Demand for plates really began in 1969, when Bing & Grondahl issued its now famous âDog and Puppies' Mother's Day plate.”
“What do artists Edna Hibel, Ted deGrazia, Mary Vickers, Dolores Valenza, James Wyeth, Leroy Neiman, Ole Winther,
John McClelland, and Prescott Baston have in common other than their oils, brushes, and canvas? They are all members of a revered pantheon of painters whose works are being bought up by plate collectors faster than you can say Leonardo da Vinci (who to the best of anyone's knowledge is not represented on any plateâyet).”
John McClelland, and Prescott Baston have in common other than their oils, brushes, and canvas? They are all members of a revered pantheon of painters whose works are being bought up by plate collectors faster than you can say Leonardo da Vinci (who to the best of anyone's knowledge is not represented on any plateâyet).”
“New plate issues don't âreact' to world events like another threat from OPEC the way new stock issues do.”
“John Wayne, Kate Smith, Muhammad Ali, and Betty Ford are avid plate collectors, as are 4.5 million other Americans.”
“Rarity: Is the edition tightly limited yet not too limited to create a market? If the edition is closed, are dealers bidding in the secondary market? Collectibility: Is it one, preferably the first, of a collectible periodic series or merely a single issue? Time of Acquisition: Can you get it at the right timeâat issueâor while the price is still rising? Sponsorship: Is it issued in association with a government or an official non-profit institution? Commemorative importance: Does it commemorate a seasonal event or a historic event? If so, does it bring new insight to the event? Or is it an event in the history of the artist or of the maker?”
We ourself saw plates with single flower, bouquet of flowers, old ships docked in Boston Bay, children playing in snow, woman holding child on knee, man holding child on knee, Judy Garland in
Wizard of
Oz dress, frog having dinner with a handsome man and a handsome woman, man mending clock, street scene in Paris, signs of the zodiac, Virgin Mary, Japanese women, ship caught in a fierce storm, blue jays resting on
a tree branch, cardinals resting on a tree branch, Vivien Leigh as Scarlett O'Hara.
Wizard of
Oz dress, frog having dinner with a handsome man and a handsome woman, man mending clock, street scene in Paris, signs of the zodiac, Virgin Mary, Japanese women, ship caught in a fierce storm, blue jays resting on
a tree branch, cardinals resting on a tree branch, Vivien Leigh as Scarlett O'Hara.
We saw no plates of incredible beauty, but we liked all plates that had illustrations by Norman Rockwell.
We can't see why people collect plates. Can't see why people collect anything.
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October 9, 1978
October 9, 1978
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The other day, Mayor Koch acted as host at a lunch for Merv Griffin, because Merv Griffin's new contract calls for him to tape six weeks of his
Merv Griffin Show
here each year for the next five years. The Mayor said that this was a good thing for New York and one more sign that New York was on its way back up. Before lunch, which was to take place in the Blue Room at City Hall, people gathered in an upstairs room for cocktails. Merv Griffin himself, wearing gray pants and a navy jacket, and looking almost too well fed, told stories about Las Vegas to people who are in show business and have probably been to Las Vegas. The Mayor himself, wearing a navy pin-striped suit, and looking just well fed enough, told jokes to the same people. Ethel Merman, wearing a double-knit maroon dress with matching cape, was there. Carol Bellamy, the president of the City Council, wearing a blue silk shirt, a brown skirt, and a soubrette hairdo, was there. Estelle Parsons was there. A man who is a big television-film-property
agent and who sometimes plays tennis with Jack Paar on weekends was there. Maureen Stapleton was there. E. G. Marshall was there. Celeste Holm was there. Shelley Bruce and Alice Ghostley, from the musical
Annie
, were there. Someone who looked just like Shirley MacLaine but wasn't Shirley MacLaine was there. When it was time to eat, the Mayor cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted “Come on down for lunch, everybody!” and at least three women in the room said “Oh, isn't he cute!”
Merv Griffin Show
here each year for the next five years. The Mayor said that this was a good thing for New York and one more sign that New York was on its way back up. Before lunch, which was to take place in the Blue Room at City Hall, people gathered in an upstairs room for cocktails. Merv Griffin himself, wearing gray pants and a navy jacket, and looking almost too well fed, told stories about Las Vegas to people who are in show business and have probably been to Las Vegas. The Mayor himself, wearing a navy pin-striped suit, and looking just well fed enough, told jokes to the same people. Ethel Merman, wearing a double-knit maroon dress with matching cape, was there. Carol Bellamy, the president of the City Council, wearing a blue silk shirt, a brown skirt, and a soubrette hairdo, was there. Estelle Parsons was there. A man who is a big television-film-property
agent and who sometimes plays tennis with Jack Paar on weekends was there. Maureen Stapleton was there. E. G. Marshall was there. Celeste Holm was there. Shelley Bruce and Alice Ghostley, from the musical
Annie
, were there. Someone who looked just like Shirley MacLaine but wasn't Shirley MacLaine was there. When it was time to eat, the Mayor cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted “Come on down for lunch, everybody!” and at least three women in the room said “Oh, isn't he cute!”
After lunch (Scotch salmon, blanquette de veau with rice, carrots, pear tart), the mayor proposed a toast in which he said that New York was No. I again. Then he said that he had been on a radio show taking calls from listeners and one person had called in to complain about a two-hundred-and-fifty-pound naked woman cooking in a shopwindow. He said that he told the person calling in that he would have someone look into the matter officially. He said that he would now read from an official report he had received on the incident. He read, “Memorandum. To: Edward I. Koch, Mayor. From: Carl B. Weisbrod, Director, Midtown Enforcement Project. Re: Squat Theatre, West Twenty-third Street. We have investigated the complaint regarding a production at the Squat Theatre on Twenty-third Street during which a two-hundred-and-fifty-pound woman was reported to have performed nude in a storefront window. [Mild chuckle from guests.] It is true that this performance did indeed occur as described. It was, however, part of a radical avant-garde theatre group's play entitled
Andy Warhol's Last Love
. [Loud laughter from guests.]
The play itself was not written by Andy Warhol. [More loud laughter.] Nor did Warhol have any connection with this production, which has been described as the reflection of recent immigrant experiences in America. [Really loud laughter.] The production was staged by an extended family group of Jewish Hungarian refugees who fled from Hungary because they were about to be arrested for not conforming to the standards of Socialist Realism of the East Bloc nations. [Loud, loud laughter.] The play ended its run here in New York on September 15th. It is currently in production in Amsterdam, Holland, where the group will be spending the fall season. [Loud laughter.] The scene involving the naked fat woman in the window was part of this group's theory about âinside' and âoutside' theatre. [More loud laughter.] They created a concept of performing before two audiencesâthe audience in the theatre and passersby on the street. The woman has been described as an authentic American witch who acts out a real witch's ceremony in the window. She was not cooking. [More loud laughter.] It is doubtful that her act would be declared legally obscene. [Mild laughter.] This play, supported with a grant from the New York State Council on the Arts [really loud laughter], was apparently very popular. It attracted an average of ninety per cent capacity audience. It received good reviews except from John Simon. [Loud laughter.] The theatre group, consisting of nine adults and five children, arrived in this country in June of 1977 under the aegis of the International Theatre Institute. It received an Obie for the play
Pigchild in Fire
, in 1977, and has been invited to represent the
United States at the Festival of Nations next spring in Hamburg, Germany. It is considered a serious group of artists who came to this country seeking freedom of expression through innovative methods. [Loud laughter and applause from guests.]”
Andy Warhol's Last Love
. [Loud laughter from guests.]
The play itself was not written by Andy Warhol. [More loud laughter.] Nor did Warhol have any connection with this production, which has been described as the reflection of recent immigrant experiences in America. [Really loud laughter.] The production was staged by an extended family group of Jewish Hungarian refugees who fled from Hungary because they were about to be arrested for not conforming to the standards of Socialist Realism of the East Bloc nations. [Loud, loud laughter.] The play ended its run here in New York on September 15th. It is currently in production in Amsterdam, Holland, where the group will be spending the fall season. [Loud laughter.] The scene involving the naked fat woman in the window was part of this group's theory about âinside' and âoutside' theatre. [More loud laughter.] They created a concept of performing before two audiencesâthe audience in the theatre and passersby on the street. The woman has been described as an authentic American witch who acts out a real witch's ceremony in the window. She was not cooking. [More loud laughter.] It is doubtful that her act would be declared legally obscene. [Mild laughter.] This play, supported with a grant from the New York State Council on the Arts [really loud laughter], was apparently very popular. It attracted an average of ninety per cent capacity audience. It received good reviews except from John Simon. [Loud laughter.] The theatre group, consisting of nine adults and five children, arrived in this country in June of 1977 under the aegis of the International Theatre Institute. It received an Obie for the play
Pigchild in Fire
, in 1977, and has been invited to represent the
United States at the Festival of Nations next spring in Hamburg, Germany. It is considered a serious group of artists who came to this country seeking freedom of expression through innovative methods. [Loud laughter and applause from guests.]”
â
November 20
,
1978
November 20
,
1978
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