CITIZEN COHN by Nicholas Von Hoffman

Finished Th 4/29/21

His name is 'Cohn', not 'Cohen'. I have been misspelling it dozens of times. 

This is one of my ancient paperbacks that I had never read. I am looking for biographies of 'American Villains', especially Robert Moses and Harry J. Anslinger, but Roy Cohn certainly belongs on that list.  

I read 3/4 of the book and skimmed to the end. 

Roy's parents had an almost 'arranged marriage'. His father, Al, was a judge without connections, and his mother was from a well connected family, but Dora was not very pretty and might never have married. 

Dora had absolute control over Roy. In his youth he went to a summer camp and his mother traveled to the camp and also stayed with him. I can only imagine how this went over with Roy's friends at the camp. Roy lived with Dora until he was forty. 

Roy first came to infamy where he played a prominent role in the 1951 espionage trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. The trial was shrouded in controversy and the consensus is that 'the Rosenberg's were guilty-and framed'. 

Then Roy was able to get the head of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover, to appoint him chief counsel to Joseph McCarthy. Cohn and McCarthy went on to smear numerous Americans with their 'Red Scare'. Rooting out American communists even though they were no more harmful than the Elks. 

'Lavender Scare'- The idea that gays in government could be blackmailed by communists, so homosexuals should be banned from government work because they could be compromised. 

And all during this time, Roy was traveling the world with David Schine. Roy might have had a platonic relationship with this man, but it was definitely not kosher. 

He made a lot of money in the early sixties in shady NYC deals, and during the early 70's he worked for Donald and Fred Trump to keep out people of color from their apartment buildings. 

Robert Murdoch was also a client of Roy Cohn.

Cohn was the grandnephew of the founder of Lionel model train company. By the mid 60's Cohn had run that company into the ground. 

Cardinal Spellman was gay? 

Barbara Walters was a girlfriend of Cohn's for many years. That was a real shocker for me. How could this woman not know what kind of guy he actually was? 

Cohn died of AIDS in 1986, but he claimed that he had liver cancer. He never did anything about the AIDS epidemic.

An interesting book, but I felt it was time to move on.  

MOBY- THEN IT FELL APART by Richard Melville Hall (Moby)

Finished We 4/29/21

This was an impulse buy that I got on Amazon. I got it free due to bonus points on my credit card, but it's one of the better Rock Bios that I've read.

He's only in his early 50's (born 1965) and this is his second autobiography. The first book was called 'PORCELIN' and the end of this book paves the way for another volume. It ends at an AA meeting in NYC and he declares that he is an alcoholic. The End. 

Up to that time he claimed that he was not alcoholic, but merely an alcohol enthusiast. 

Cisgender- denoting or relating to a person whose sense of personal identity and gender corresponds with their birth sex.

Moby is probably the poorest superstar I've ever heard of. He lived with his mother and his father was killed in a drunk driving accident when Moby was two years old. His grandparents were fairly wealthy and he lived part of the time with them in Darien, Connecticut. Moby and his mother lived on government assistance and food stamps.

'Play' and '18' were his biggest albums, but he has other punk and ambient stuff that I don't think I've ever heard. 

The theme of the book is that the success of 'Play' took him by surprise. He was mildly successful before that record, but when it hit, his career went through the roof. This probably added to his dependence on drugs and liquor because fame was not really what he wanted or needed. 

"Cannabis is a seasoning- Not a drug". 

GIRLS LIKE US by Sheila Weller

Finished Mo 4/19/21

I bought the book after I watched a YouTube bio about Joni Mitchell. The book is over 600 pages and is just about everything you could possibly want to know about these three fascinating women. 

Random Thoughts:

Carly Simon is the daughter of the man who started Simon & Shyster Publishing. Carly was brought up on New York's Upper Eastside. She spent the lion's share of her inheritance on  psychotherapy. 

I didn't realize Joni was involved with Graham Nash of The Hollies. The scene in Laurel Canyon in the mid 60's must have been something.  

James Taylor was with Joni and Carly. He must have been a real lady's man in his heyday. 

Gerry Goffin and Carole King produced some of the biggest hits of the sixties. They had a 'black sound'. This reminded me of the white musicians that backed many black artists at Muscle Shoals. 

Little Eva who sang King/Goffin's composition, 'Do The  Locomotion', was their babysitter. 

Carole King  is the most successful female songwriter of the latter half of the 20th century in the US, having written or co-written 118 pop hits on the Billboard Hot 100. King also wrote 61 hits that charted in the UK, making her the most successful female songwriter on the UK singles charts between 1962 and 2005.

Much was made of Joni Mitchell's mother. She was a strong willed woman and crucial to Joni's development. They were farmers in western Canada and Joni's mother was too busy working on the farm, and Joni's mother made up for her neglect by lavishing attention on Joni. 

Joni Mitchell uses intricate open tunings on her guitars. In concert, she is surrounded by numerous guitars and all of them in different tunings. Keith Richard also uses open tuning. 

Joni was a victim of childhood polio.

Joni wrote the song 'Woodstock', yet she did not attend the festival. She was to appear on The Dick Cavett Show and didn't want to miss this very important interview. 

Joni Mitchell's biggest flaw in her life was the birth of her first daughter. She was forced to give up the child and this bothered her for decades. Later, she reunited with her daughter.

Jaco Pastorious was the bass player in her band. 

Joni is afflicted with Morgellons Syndrome. This is a condition in which individuals have sores that they believe contain fibrous material. Morgellons is not well understood, but the general medical consensus is that it is a form of delusional parasitosis. The sores are typically the result of compulsive scratching, and the fibers, when analysed, are consistently found to have originated from clothings and other textiles.

Carly Simon Simon has amassed 24 Billboard Hot 100 charting singles and 28 Billboard Adult Contemporary charting singles. Among her various accolades, she has won two Grammy Awards, from 14 nominations. AllMusic called her "one of the quintessential singer-songwriters of the '70s". 

Carly Simon is terribly shy and as a child had a stammer or stutter.

Simon first sang professionally with her sister.- The Simon Sisters. 

Simon underwent a mastectomy, chemotherapy and reconstructive surgery for breast cancer during 1997 and 1998.

All three women were married multiple times and romantically links to numerous men. Obviously, the Sexual Revolution affected the women of the era too. 

I wonder why the book didn't include Lura Nyro. 

BLACK SUNDAY by Thomas Harris

 Finished We 4/14/21

I found this paperback on the shelves downstairs after reading 'HANNIBAL'. I was really surprised that Thomas Harris also wrote 'BLACK SUNDAY' and I remember seeing the movie in the late 70's.

The premise of the book is that middle eastern terrorists put together a plan to use something like the Goodyear blimp to explode above the stadium in New Orleans during the Super Bowl.

 The link to the book's page on Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sunday_(novel)

The plot of the novel from Wikipedia:

"Michael Lander is a pilot who flies the Aldrich Blimp over NFL football games to film them for network television. He is also, secretly, deranged by years of torture as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, a bitter court martial on his return and a failed marriage. He longs to commit suicide and to take with him as many as possible of the cheerful, carefree American civilians he sees from his blimp each weekend.

Lander conspires with Dahlia Iyad, an operative from the Palestinian terrorist group Black September, to launch a suicide attack using a bomb composed of plastique and a quarter million steel darts, housed on the underside of the gondola of the Aldrich Blimp, which they will detonate over Tulane Stadium during a Super Bowl between the Miami Dolphins and the Washington Redskins. Dahlia and Black September, in turn, intend the attack as a wake-up call for the American people, to turn their attention and the world's to the plight of the Palestinians.

American and Israeli intelligence, led by Mossad agent David Kabakov and FBI agent Sam Corley, race to prevent the catastrophe. They piece together the path of the explosives into the country, and Dahlia's own movements.

In a spectacular conclusion, the bomb-carrying blimp is chased by helicopters as it approaches the packed stadium."

The book was an easy read and compelling. 'The Best' for a beach read and all of Harris's books were made into excellent movies. 

I still am kind of astounded that Harris wrote this novel and the Hannibal Lector books. 

AMNESIA MOON by Jonathan Lethem

 Read to page 200 and skimmed to the end- Fr 4/9/21

A few lines form KIRKUS:

" Intriguing, to a point. But explanations are never forthcoming, and readers wanting substance rather than sheer weirdness, no matter how imaginative, won't be satisfied."

From the book's page at Amazon:

"In Jonathan Lethem's wryly funny novel, we meet a young man named Chaos, who's living in a movie theater in post-apocalyptic Wyoming, drinking alcohol, and eating food out of cans.

It's an unusual and at times unbearable existence, but Chaos soon discovers that his post-nuclear reality may have no connection to the truth. So he takes to the road with a girl named Melinda in order to find answers. As the pair travels through the United States they find that, while each town has been affected differently by the mysterious source of the apocalypse, none of the people they meet can fill in their incomplete memories or answer their questions. Gradually, figures from Chaos's past, including some who appear only under the influence of intravenously administered drugs, make Chaos remember some of his forgotten life as a man named Moon."

A customer's review that sums up my feelings about the novel:

"There are some really cool ideas that kept me intrigued, but I felt more obligated to keep reading as I had already started, than being excited to see where the story was going. To finish, there was no real culmination or wrap-up - the book sort of just ended. I was disappointed as this book had been recommended to me."..."This book has some really cool ideas that don't really ever get fleshed out or come together. Some stuff happens to the character, he meets some people, then it just sort of ends. I'm not sure what the point of the whole exercise was."

A link to the book's page at Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amnesia_Moon

I was drawn to reread this novel because I really liked 'MOTHERLESS BROOKLYN' and although 'AMNESIA MOON' didn't move me, I would definitely give Lethem another chance.

HANNIBAL by Thomas Harris

 Refinished Tu 4/6/21 

(After my yearly meeting with Dax. We have been shooting for a 6-8% increase per year, but in 2020 I did 63%! If averaged, I have been making $89,000 a year. I am the definition of  what 'wealth' actually means)

Hannibal Lector has been on the run for almost 7 years and he is in Florence, Italy near Plazzo del Vecchio where the statue of David is located.

A brutal recreation of the execution of Girolamo Savonarola is etched in my memory from the movie of the book, but the presentation in the novel is equally as good. A local policeman in Italy has stumbled upon Lector's real identity, but Hannibal pitches him off a balcony with his head in a noose and disembowels him as he falls to the town square.

Some reviewers said there was too much violence, but I can't help but wonder why would you read a book about Dr. Hannibal Lector and believe that you will not witness some grizzly shit. 

Mason Verger was one of Lector's ex-patients. Lector drugged him and then cut his face off. This guy is an evil abuser of children and he is driven to capture Lector and feed him to his boars- vicious wild pigs. 

The end is hard to believe, but Hannibal and Agent Clarice Starling are now a couple! Clarice and Hannibal eat the brain of Starling's boss, Krendler. 

An interesting review of the book:

http://tech.mit.edu/V119/N30/Hannibal.30a.html

The book's page at Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hannibal_(Harris_novel)

Anything by Harris is worth a look, and I was surprised to learn that he wrote 'Black Sunday'. That was his first novel and it was about a terrorist attack at the Super Bowl. I want to read 'Silence of The Lambs' and 'Red Dragon'. 

MOTHERLESS BROOKLYN by Jonathan Lethem

 Finished We 3/31/21

I had seen the movie when it first came out, and I heard a podcast with Edward Norton and decided to re-watch. I liked it so much that I ordered the novel from Amazon and got it on Fr 3/19/21.

The book and the movie are completely different, although I loved them both. The movie had more (nothing in the novel) about the legendary New York City real estate mogul, Robert Moses and I was kind of hoping he would be a subject in the book. This notorious land developer probably had more effect on the history of Manhattan than any other public official in history.  

From the book's page at Wikipedia:

"The story is set in Brooklyn, and follows Lionel Essrog, a detective who has Tourette's, a disorder marked by involuntary tics. Essrog works for Frank Minna, a small-time neighborhood owner of a "seedy and makeshift" detective agency."

"Lionel Essrog is a lonely private detective who doesn't let Tourette's syndrome stand in the way of his job. Gifted with a few clues and an obsessive mind, Lionel sets out to solve the murder of Frank Minna -- his mentor and only friend. Scouring the jazz clubs and slums of Brooklyn and Harlem, Essrog soon uncovers a web of secrets while contending with thugs, corruption and the most dangerous man in the city."

From the back of the book:

" Lionel Essrog is Brooklyn's very own self-appointed Human Freakshow, and orphan whose Tourettic impulses drive him to bark, count, and rip apart our language in startling and original ways. Together with three veterans of St. Vincent's Home for Boys, he works for small-time mobster frank Minna's limo service cum detective agency. Life without Frank Minna, the charismatic King of Brooklyn, would be unimaginable, so who cares if the tasks he sets for them are, well, not exactly legal. But when Frank is fatally stabbed, one of Lionel's colleagues lands in jail, the other two vie for his position, and the victim's widow skips town, Lionel's world is suddenly topsy-turvy, and this outcast who has trouble even conversing attempts to untangle the threads of the case while trying to keep the words straight in his head....totally captivating homage to the classic detective tale..."

A link to Slate's comparison on the book and the movie:

https://slate.com/culture/2019/11/motherless-brooklyn-book-movie-comparison-differences.html

***I would love to read a biography of Robert Moses and I would give almost anything to read a bio of Harry J. Anslinger, America's first and most notorious drug czar.

Odd Facts: The book says that there are two entirely different bakeries that make Oreo cookies. One of the characters is able to taste the difference between the two different styles of cookies. (p. 142).

Don Martin, the famous cartoonist from Mad Magazine is mentioned. 

If you are "pulling the tug" you are going against the grain- a phrase that Frank uses often.

"Tell it walking"- Frank says when he wants someone to hurry up with the explanation.

JOKE: A customer to a Buddhist hot dog vendor- "Make me one with everything".

I really liked the book and I even found Jonathan Lethem's first novel, 'Amnesia Moon' on the shelf in hardback. I can't wait to get into this one and I'll keep my eyes peeled for anything else by Lethem.