Quite Enough of Calvin Trillin (18 page)

“What exactly do you mean by the high two figures?” I said.

“Sixty-five dollars,” Navasky said.

“Sixty-five dollars! That sounds more like the middle two figures to me. When I hear ‘high two figures,’ I start thinking eighty-five, maybe ninety.”

“You shook on it,” Navasky said. “Are you going to go back on your word right in front of your own wife?”

I looked at Alice. She shrugged. “Maybe Victor’ll buy a new suit,” she said.

I called for the check.

1982

For some years, I was worried about the possibility that
The Nation
was getting to be known around the country for being a bit pinko. I was born and brought up in Kansas City, and I wasn’t really keen on the folks at home getting the impression that I worked for a left-wing sheet. They knew I did a column for
The Nation
, of course—my mother told them—but most of them did not inquire deeply into
The
Nation
’s politics, perhaps because my mother was sort of letting on that it’s a tennis magazine. She was able to get away with that because
The Nation
is not circulated widely in Kansas City: In the greater Kansas City area, it goes weekly to three librarians and an unreconstructed old anarcho-syndicalist who moved to town after his release from the federal prison at Leavenworth in 1927 and set up practice as a crank. Still, I was concerned that
The Nation
’s political views could be revealed in the press.

My concern was not based on any notion that the people back home would react to this revelation by ostracizing my mother for having given birth to a Commie rat. Folks in the Midwest try to be nice. What I was worried about was this: People in Kansas City would assume that no one would write a column for a pinko rag if he could write a column for a respectable periodical. They might even assume that payment for a column in a pinko rag would be the sort of money people in Kansas City associate with the summer retainer for the boy who mows the lawn. Realizing that I had struggled for years in New York only to end up writing a column for lawn-mowing wages, they would spend a lot of time comforting my mother whenever they ran into her at the supermarket. (“There, there. Don’t you worry one bit. Things have a way of working themselves out.”) My mom’s pretty tough, but tougher people have broken under the burden of Midwestern comforting.

Without wanting to name names, I blame all of this on Victor S. Navasky. When
The Nation
provoked a public controversy by attacking a book on the Hiss case from a position that might have been described as somewhat left of center, I tried to be understanding. I figured that Navasky was trying to pump up circulation because he lacked some of the financial resources that most people who edit journals of opinion have. Traditionally, people who run such magazines manage financially because they have a wife rich enough to have bought them the magazine in the first place. It’s a good arrangement, because an editor who has his own forum for pontificating to the public every week may tend to get a bit pompous around the house, and it helps if his wife is in a position to say, “Get off your high horse, Harry, or I’ll take your little magazine away from you and give it to the cook.” I haven’t made any detailed investigation into the finances
of Navasky’s wife, but it stands to reason that if she had the wherewithal to acquire entire magazines she would by now have bought him a new suit.

No matter what his motives for running the Hiss piece were, Navasky’s cover was obviously blown—and so was mine. I could no longer answer questions about why I wrote for
The Nation
by saying, “It’s the closest magazine to my house.” Not long after that, while I was doing a promotional tour for a collection of
Nation
columns, a newspaper interviewer in Boston asked me if I could describe the magazine for his readers.

“Pinko,” I said, after some reflection.

“Surely you have more to say about it than that,” he said.

“Yes,” I said. “It’s a pinko magazine printed on very cheap paper—the sort of magazine where if you Xerox one of your pieces, the Xerox is a lot better than the original.”

1982

A secretly Xeroxed manuscript of Richard Nixon’s new book has, as they say in the trade, found its way into my possession. For years, I have been waiting for some carefully guarded document to find its way into my possession. In my mind, the phrase has always conjured up the vision of an important document wandering the streets of Lower Manhattan, confused and bewildered, until a kindly policeman on Sixth Avenue provides flawless directions to my house. I figured that a secret document would find its way into my possession if I simply waited around long enough at the same address, looking receptive. That is precisely what happened. I did not ferret out this document. I might as well admit that I hadn’t realized Mr. Nixon had produced another volume; it seemed only moments since the last one.

I had assumed, I suppose, that his literary output would have been
slowed up by the bustle of moving from San Clemente and by his previous difficulties with trying to buy an apartment in East Side co-ops that persisted in treating him as if he were Jewish or a tap dancer. Ordinarily, complications involving living quarters play havoc with a writer’s production; a writer I’ll call William Edgett Smith, whose procrastination devices are taught in the senior creative writing seminar at Princeton, once stopped writing for seven weeks in order to see to a leaky radiator. Mr. Nixon apparently suffered no such delays—although in Smith’s defense it should be said that he has to manage with no federally funded research or secretarial help to speak of. Despite the interruptions that accompany any move (“The men want to know whether those partly erased tapes in the cellar stay or go, Dick, and what do you want done with the crown jewels of Rumania?”), Mr. Nixon managed to turn out a volume for Warner Books called
The Real War
. I know because a Xerox of the manuscript found its way into my possession.

Although it is customary to refuse to divulge the source of any document that has found its way into one’s possession, I should say at the start that the person who gave me this document was Victor S. Navasky, the editor of
The Nation
. If anybody feels the need to prosecute or sue, Navasky’s your man. I feel no compunction about shifting the blame to Navasky, because he would obviously be the logical target of any investigation anyway, this being his second caper. At this very moment,
The Nation
is being sued by Harper & Row and
Reader’s Digest
for $12,500 for running an article based on a smuggled-out manuscript of Gerald Ford’s book, which was somehow published under a title other than
The White House Memories of a Lucky Klutz
. In an era when an unfairly dismissed busboy would never think of suing for less than a million, the purpose of suing
The Nation
for the price of a publisher’s lunch is obvious: The plaintiffs want to make Navasky out to be not just a thief but a small-time thief.

My involvement in this started innocently when Navasky said to me, “We’ve got a copy of Nixon’s book.”

“I hope you didn’t pay full price,” I said.

“Not that book. The new one. Smuggled out.”

Sticky Fingers Navasky had struck again. I was, of course, astonished.
It’s no joke to discover that you’ve been handing in copy to a recidivist. “If you put it back now, maybe they won’t notice that it was missing,” I said. Warner Books is part of the sort of conglomerate that is often described as “playing hardball,” and I figured that they weren’t above humiliating Navasky by suing him for something like eighteen dollars and carfare.

“Take it!” Navasky said, thrusting a bulky bundle into my arms. “Reveal something.”

I took it, and skulked out the door. The elevator man was reading the sports page of the
Daily News
as we descended. “Just some laundry,” I said to him, gesturing at the bundle I was carrying. “Shirts. That sort of thing.” He kept reading. So far, so good.

After what seemed like about an hour, I was startled by the jangle of the telephone. It was Navasky.

“Find anything yet?” he said.

I looked down at the manuscript. I was on page 4. “He says, ‘The next two decades represent a time of maximum crisis for America and for the West, during which the fate of the world for generations to come may well be determined.’ ”

There was silence on the phone. Then Navasky said, “Skip ahead.”

I skipped ahead to page 105, and started reading. “He says, ‘The final chapters have yet to be written on the war in Vietnam,’ ” I reported.

“Skip some more,” Navasky said.

“Well,” I said, “on page 287 he says, ‘The President has great power in wartime as Commander in Chief of the armed forces. But he also has enormous power to prevent war and preserve peace.’ ”

There was a pause. “Keep skipping,” Navasky said.

I read paragraphs on the advantages of summit conferences and on the difference between totalitarianism and authoritarianism. More silence. Finally, I said, “Shall I keep skipping?”

There was no answer. Navasky had fallen asleep.

What is the purpose of being willing to reveal the contents of a purloined manuscript if there is nothing in it that bears revealing?

“Let’s give it back,” I said to Navasky.

“Our source does not want it back,” Navasky said.

“I can see his point.”

“Maybe we should shred it,” Navasky said.

“All I have in that line is a Cuisinart,” I said. “I have a better idea. I’ll put it on Sixth Avenue. Maybe it will find its way into someone else’s possession.”

1980

When the editor of
The Nation
, the wily and parsimonious Victor S. Navasky, said he was going to double my pay, I did the only honorable thing: I resigned. Maybe I should start at the beginning. Here are some milestones in our relationship since the aforementioned Navasky asked me if I’d be interested in writing a column for
The Nation:

MARCH 18, 1978. The wily and parsimonious Victor S. Navasky and I have lunch in the Village to talk about his grand vision for transforming
The Nation
from a shabby pinko sheet to a shabby pinko sheet with a humor column and a large office for the editor. I pick up the check. I ask what he plans to pay for each column. He says, “Somewhere in the high two figures.”

MARCH 20, 1978. I refer the offer to my high-powered literary agent, Robert (Slowly) Lescher, together with instructions for the ensuing negotiations: “Play hardball.”

APRIL 8, 1978. Slowly gets him up to $100.

SEPTEMBER 5, 1978. The W. & P. Victor S. Navasky questions the authenticity of some quotations used in my column. He says, “Did John Foster Dulles really say, ‘You can’t fool all of the people all of
the time, but you might as well give it your best shot’?” I say, “At these rates, you can’t expect real quotes.”

MAY 14, 1980. Executive editor Richard Lingeman, who would probably be described by one of those hard-nosed post-Watergate reporters as “a longtime Navasky operative,” sends me a Table of Organization chart that gives me pause: It lists me under “Casual Labor.”

NOVEMBER 10, 1981. The W. & P. Victor S. Navasky says that although he would never try to exert any pressure to influence what I write, he might just point out that columns devoted to ridiculing him are less likely to be sold for republication in newspapers because they are considered “inside” and (although he doesn’t say this) perhaps a bit distasteful. I say not to worry: Since
The Nation
never gets around to paying me my share of the republication fees, I feel no pressure at all. To show there are no hard feelings on my part, I write a column revealing him to be a klutz on the basketball court. To show there are no hard feelings on his part, he continues to hold onto my share of the republication fees.

MAY 29, 1982. I receive a letter from a reader who asks, “Is it true that employees of
The Nation
are forced to sell flowers and candy in airports and turn the proceeds over to Victor S. Navasky?” I publish the letter in my column, along with my strongly worded reply (“Not exactly”).

OCTOBER 25, 1985. The wily and parsimonious Victor S. Navasky and I have lunch in the Village. He reaches for the check. I am instantly put on my guard. He says he is going to double my pay. I figure he has to be up to something. I resign. He tells me my share of the check is $13.38.

“I’ve quit,” I told my wife when I returned from lunch. “That’ll show him.”

“Why didn’t you just tell him you got a better offer from the newspaper syndication people?” she said.

“Because I prefer to resign on a matter of principle.”

“What, exactly, is the principle involved?”

“Worker solidarity.”

“Worker solidarity!” she said. “I never heard you talk about worker solidarity before.”

“I never got a better offer before,” I said.

“I think it’s terrible that all you can talk about, even now that you’re leaving
The Nation
, is money,” she said.

“That’s what the owners of the textile mills in Yorkshire in the nineteenth century used to say about the workers who complained that a family couldn’t be supported on two and six a day: ‘All they ever talk about is money.’ ”

“Aren’t you going to miss
The Nation
?” my wife asked.

Well, of course. It was sort of comforting to know that whenever I’d show up at the office the fellow we call Harold the Committed would ask me if I’d like to see civilization as we know it destroyed in a nuclear holocaust; it’s
The Nation
’s equivalent of having an elevator operator who can be counted on to say “Have a nice day.” And I do feel solidarity with my fellow workers. I feel kinship with the ancient bookkeepers who have been convinced by Navasky that 10 percent of their salary is going directly into a legal defense fund for the Scottsboro Boys. I feel comradeship with the college interns Navasky has managed to lure into
The Nation
’s slave/study program. I feel brotherhood with Richard Lingeman, who, finding himself in 1956 with a strong hand but no cash during a poker game in New Haven that included Victor S. Navasky, covered a raise by signing a paper for thirty-five years of indentured editorial service, and then failed to fill out his flush. For that matter, I feel a communal bond with all those
Nation
employees selling flowers and candy in airports.