Host: George Dawes Green
[Uncanny Valley theme music by The Drift playing]
George: [00:00:12] From PRX, this is The Moth Radio Hour. The Moth is true, unscripted personal stories told in front of live audiences. I'm George Dawes Green, and I created The Moth, first in my loft on 17th Street in Manhattan, and then in taverns all around New York. In this hour, tales from those early evenings, tales told by some of the alpha males of the New York literary scene. They're not as well recorded as our stories are now, but I don't think you'll mind. These are classic stories, starting with the one raconteur who I wanted for The Moth from the very beginning. George Plimpton, the editor of the Paris Review, the author, the aristocratic actor, the adventurer.
I'd heard him tell stories at parties, and he seemed the very embodiment of a Moth raconteur because although he was successful at all sorts of things, he knew that great stories are never about success. They're always about failure. Sometimes comic failure, sometimes just human frailty.
[applause]
Here's George Plimpton at The Moth, one night in Brooklyn.
George Plimpton: [00:01:32] I'm still the fireworks commissioner of the City of New York and wrote a book about fireworks. Indeed, it's a great passion of fireworks. I was a demolition specialist in the Army, and I suppose that's what got me going on it. The marvelous thing about fireworks, particularly for writers, is that when you write, there's very rarely any acknowledgement that you've written anything. Sometimes you get a review, but you don't really see people. You don't get the sense that someone's reading your work. But in fireworks, you can put a match, a flare to a fuse, and this thing goes up into the air, and there's an enormous recognition. A great crowd goes, "Ahh!" And of course, the fireworks were made by somebody in Korea, but still there's an enormous satisfaction having sent this thing up, [audience laughter] getting this applause. And that's something that writers don't really ever get.
During the course of putting the fireworks onto the Brooklyn Bridge, the Brooklyn Bridge had a hundredth anniversary some years ago, and the Gruccis, this great fireworks family, was asked to put on this firework show. And part of the fireworks show was shot off the square tops of the Brooklyn Bridge. And being a fireworks [unintelligible 00:02:42] a member of their family, they asked me to come up to the top of the Brooklyn Bridge to watch them putting these mortars up there on the very top. It's a very arduous climb. You have to climb up this long cable, and at the very end you climb up a little ladder, and there you are on this sort of parapet. And it's way up above the river. You can look absolutely straight down. Not unlike this stage here, except much bigger. [audience chuckles]
And right on the very edge, I noticed that somebody had written, "You've come a long way, baby, [audience laughter] now let's see you fly." [laughter] Somebody had climbed up this extraordinary cable through the ladder, probably at night, and had written this amazing message at the very edge of this parapet. And I kept thinking about this, who could possibly have done that? And it occurred to me that it was very likely a writer, [audience laughter] a failed writer, [audience laughter] a writer with a girlfriend who had a poem accepted by the Paris Review. [audience laughter] And his poetry wasn't being accepted anywhere, his stories weren't going to be accepted anywhere. And so, one night, here in Brooklyn, he climbed up this thing at night and wrote this despairing message on the very edge of this parapet. And it got me thinking over here tonight, after a couple of drinks, [audience laughter] about despairing writers.
I was told earlier that almost 40 percent of this audience are writers. And it reminded me of something that happened some years ago when I got a call from a public television station in Philadelphia. And they asked if I would mind being put up as a prize on an auction they were going to have. “An Evening with George Plimpton," it was called. I said, "You're not going to get anything for that, but you're welcome to do it if you want to." Few weeks later, the public television station called up and said, "We have someone that bought you. [audience chuckles] He's a man called Spinelli. And Mr. Spinelli and his wife are going to come to New York. And all you have to do is give them dinner and give them an evening. And then they can come back to Philadelphia."
So, I talked this over with my wife, and we decided what to do, which was they would come to the apartment, and we would sit there for a while. And then we'd take them down to a restaurant very near Grand Central Station or Penn Station, so they get onto the train and get back to Philadelphia. [audience laughter] So, Mr. Spinelli and his wife arrived at my apartment. And there's a pool table there. So, Mr. Spinelli and I played this rather desultory game of pool. He was a shy man, didn't say very much. And my wife took Mrs. Spinelli on a tour of the apartment, which takes about one minute. [audience chuckles] But during the course of this tour, Mrs. Spinelli described what had happened, which was that Mr. Spinelli had been watching very late public television, and on had come this auction.
Mr. Spinelli was a writer. He had not had anything accepted anywhere. He thought since I'm the editor of a magazine and knew something about publishing circles in New York, that maybe it was worth buying this evening with George Plimpton that might get him going on his career. And so, when Mrs. Spinelli came back, my wife-- and he'd taken out everything they had in their savings account for this trip to New York. So, when my wife told me this, I realized that we could not go to Gallagher's next to Penn Station and put the Spinellis on a sensible train back to Philadelphia. We had to do something else. And I thought the only thing I could do was to take them to Elaine's, which is a restaurant on Second Avenue and 88th Street, which is a literary hangout-- publishers’ hangout, or used to be.
And I thought, maybe that's what we can do. And I said this to Mr. and Mrs. Spinelli. I said, "We're going to go to Elaine's to have supper." And he'd heard about this literary restaurant, quite brightened. And off we went. And I had to hope that Elaine's that night had its usual quantity of writers. And when we walked in, it was as if Madame Tussauds herself had arranged this long row [audience chuckles] of tables. We walked in, and there was sitting Norman Mailer and Norris, his wife, and Willie Morris, the editor of Harper's Magazine. And I walked over and I said, "Norman, this is Mr. Spinelli from Philadelphia [audience chuckles] and Mrs. Spinelli." “Mr. Spinelli, this is Norman Mailer, Willie Morris, and Norris Mailer.” We moved down to the next table. There were sitting Bruce J. Friedman and Kurt Vonnegut. [audience laughter] I said, "Bruce, this is Mr. Spinelli, the writer from Philadelphia." [audience laughter]
And Mr. Spinelli sort of brightened to be referred to as writer. We went down to the next table. There was Gay Talese sitting with his wife, Nan of Doubleday. "Mr. Talese, this is Mr. Spinelli, the writer from Philadelphia." We marched down this line. It was incredible. These tables had writers and editors sitting at them. We were approaching way at the end of the restaurant, the Woody Allen table. Woody Allen sits at this table. Always has, always will. And one of the cardinal rules about Elaine's is you do not interrupt Woody Allen at his table. He sits there eating Chicken Francese, and he never looks up. And he has his little circle is around him. And people go by on the way to the kitchen and way to the back room and so forth. And they always look to see if Woody Allen is there. But he never looks up. And it's an un-- it's a rule, you do not speak to Mr. Allen.
[00:08:39] We got closer and closer. We talked to Tom Wolfe sitting there with somebody rather. [audience chuckles] “Mr. Spinelli, this is Tom Wolfe. This is Mr. Spinelli, the writer, the writer from Philadelphia." On and on we went, closer and closer to the Woody Allen table. When we got there, I thought, I cannot do this, but I'm going to. [audience laughter] “Woody.” I said, "Woody, this is Mr. Spinelli, the writer from Philadelphia." And Woody Allen looked up from his Chicken Francese and he said, "Yes, I know." [audience laughter and applause] I don't know why he said that, but that's exactly what he said. And Mr. Spinelli-- we all went over to our table, and Mr. Spinelli was beside himself. [audience laughter] Completely different, man. He changed from this nervous pool player into this gigantic figure. He talked about Kafka. [audience laughter]
[00:09:35] And finally we stayed almost all night. We finally got him on our late train back to Philadelphia. About two months later, I got a letter from Mr. Spinelli. He said, "My boy's novel has been accepted by Houghton Mifflin." He said, "Give my best to the gang up at Elaine's." Thank you.
[cheers and applause]
[Lover Man from Charlie Parker playing]
George: [00:10:00] That was George Plimpton. George wrote dozens of books, but probably the most loved are the ones in which he tried his hand at various professional sports – Boxing, baseball, golf, football. He'd always wind up failing miserably, but he failed with such grace and wit that he seemed perpetually triumphant. To see a list of a few of our favorite George Plimpton books, go to our website, themoth.org. When we come back, we'll have the story of a cub reporter in the 1950s who has to deliver the bad news to a new widow. She opens the door and she's a knockout.
Jay: [00:10:45] Support for The Moth comes from Fox Searchlight, presenting Jackie from director Pablo Larraín, and starring Natalie Portman as the First Lady in the days following the assassination of JFK as she fights to cement her husband's historical legacy. Now playing. The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and presented by PRX.
[I’ll See You in My Dreams by Django Reinhardt Trio playing]
George: [00:12:16] This is The Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm George Dawes Green. Lewis Lapham was the editor of Harper's Magazine for nearly 20 years. Brilliant, passionate, tough as nails. He knows just about every writer and editor on the planet, and he has a story about all of them.
[cheers and applause]
This is Lewis Lapham, live at The Moth.
Lewis: [00:12:45] It's the autumn of 1957. I am 22 years old, and I have just come back to the United States from Cambridge University in England. I have my first job, which is as a cub reporter for the San Francisco Examiner. And I am sent to the Oakland City Hall press room. This is Oakland in the 1950s. This is before Mario Savio, before Haight-Ashbury, it is still the old world. The press room looks like something out of Front Page. Radios on the walls, barren desks, typewriters, Underwood upright typewriters of the kind that you still see in some of the movies of the 1930s. Everybody is wearing a hat. [chuckle] My tutor at Cambridge was C.S. Lewis and I am filled with poetic expectation. On driving across the Bay Bridge in the mornings, I memorize the Cantos of Ezra Pound. [laughter]
I'm a precious youth, [giggles] very out of tune with the press room, the Oakland City Hall. And my three mentors are Crowley of the Examiner, my own paper, Dougherty of the Chronicle, and Swann of the Call-Bulletin. These three gentlemen are in their 50s and they have reached the point in life when they all recline on couches lined against three of the walls. They never rise from their couch and they are cynical in the old sense of the word. And my first job as the cub in the morning is to produce a bottle of bourbon. [audience laughter] I have to arrive at 9 o’clock. Dougherty, Crowley, and Swann come in at 11:00. And on the desk, there has to be a bottle of Jim Beam. And I have to extort this from one of the city officials that inhabit the Oakland City Hall.
The Oakland City Hall. In those days it was not only the police department, it was also the courts and it was the mayor's office. Every official of any pretension to office was in the building. And the night before, Crowley or Dougherty or Swann would leave a small piece of paper on the desk with just a single name. And the name would be Milstein or Bethune or simply the Lady in Red. And I was to take the name and present it to the official. And this was supposed to strike terror in the heart of the official because if the judge or the cop didn't come across with the bourbon, Dougherty or Swann or somebody would publish a story in the paper that would leave him for dead.
If I wasn't given the bottle of bourbon, I had to buy it myself because no matter what, the bottle had to be on the table. Three times out of five the official would look at me and come across with the bourbon. And it was wonderful and it was all well understood and so forth. And that was my primary task. Once the bourbon was produced, I was then dispatched. The Examiner was the richest of the three papers in those days and we actually had a photographer and a radio car. The photographer's name was Seymour Snaer and Seymour was the original dirty old man. I mean, he was about five foot six, sharkskin suit, hand-painted tie, dark glasses, very oily hair and thought about nothing except women. It was the only thing that ever came into Seymour's mind.
And we would drive around Alameda and Contra Costa County listening to the police radio and try to get to the scenes of the crime before the local police arrived. And Seymour had a competition with a photographer at the Chronicle, which was the other big paper in the San Francisco Bay Area. His name was Ainsworth. And the question-- these were the days of the Police Gazette photograph. This is before Playboy magazine. Seymour had a Speed Graphic camera with which is one of those, big kind of cameras and a hat. And whenever went on a story that involved a woman, Seymour would try to get her to take her clothes off so he could photograph her and then compete with Ainsworth of the Chronicle as to who could collect the best portfolio. And Seymour was never squeamish about these things. I mean we would walk in.
I can remember once walking into a murder scene of the man, who was not yet dead [audience laughter] and we had arrived before the police. We happened to be very close by when the call came in on the radio and the girlfriend was in some degree of-- it wasn't clear how the man had died. He had four gunshot wounds. But nevertheless, whether she had shot him or he had shot himself or somebody who had left rather abruptly had shot him, none of this was clear. But Seymour was trying to get her to pose in a negligee standing over the dying man. And to my amazement he succeeded in this enterprise [chuckles] somewhat.
Some days later, we're driving around in our radio car. I've provided the bourbon. Everybody is calm back at the city hall and the word comes in from the office in San Francisco that a very prominent citizen of Oakland has been run over by a truck on Route 1 somewhere north of Marin County. And this is a man of 65 years old, a pillar of the community. Large mansion in Piedmont up in the Berkeley hills. And it's going to be an eight-column headline in the afternoon edition. But we have no photograph of him. So, the call comes in from San Francisco. Seymour and I are dispatched to get the photograph, also by the way to inform the widow that she is a widow. [audience laughter] And we drive up to this mansion in Piedmont, long, long wonderful gravel drive, huge house, fountains, marble.
And we get to the front door and I say, "Seymour, you know how to do these things. I mean I just got back here from Cambridge. I mean this is not my kind of thing. I'm a sensitive person and I don't want to have to do this." And he's back of the hand. I mean, I'm a fool and a kid from the East. And I've got to learn the business somehow and go in there and tell a lady that her husband's dead and get the photograph and don't give me a hard time. So, I walk around the house three or four times. I really did not want to do this. I ring the doorbell. The maid comes to the door. I explain that I'm from the Examiner and that I have very bad news. And the-- she ushers me into the living room, a very large living room, least as large as this bar, furnished with mirrors and expensive furniture.
The deceased is 64 or 65 years old. The woman that comes into the room is maybe 30. And is one of the most beautiful women I think I've ever seen in my entire life. [audience laughter] And I explained to her the situation. I said, "Your husband has been run over by a truck. And what we're asking for is a photograph because he's a very important person and we'd like to put his picture on page one of the Hearst newspaper tomorrow morning in San Francisco." "I understand what you mean," she says, and leaves. And she says, "I'll get you a picture."
Twenty minutes pass. She returns and she has changed into a nightgown much like one that you would see in an old Carole Lombard movie. I mean, it's got feathers and it's white satin. She's got a bottle of champagne and two glasses. And she says to me, "This is the happiest day of my life." [laughter] And she said, "We are going to fuck for three hours." [audience laughter] And I understood that I was a recently returned from London, Cambridge. And I understood that it was good manners to comfort the widow, which I did. [audience chuckles] And the three hours later I went out to the car. Seymour was asleep with his hat on the head of the wheel. And we drove away. And he said that I was somewhat slow coming back with a picture. I said that was true. And then he asked me what happened.
And I didn't have the heart to tell him. I couldn't say this to Seymour, and I tried not to. But eventually he wrung the story out of me and never spoke to me again. Because I explained that whoever had walked through the door, that was the way it was going to be. “It could have been you, Seymour” I said. He never forgave me for this. Meanwhile, back at the Oakland press room, the refinement in those days was every Friday afternoon, there was a showing of stag movies that were collected by the vice squad raids. [audience chuckles] And these are the old movies. This is before pornographic movies have become common on HBO. I mean, people are wearing blue socks and brown shoes. It's an old kind of film, but nevertheless, it was a big hit in the press room. And they put it up on the wall. We didn't have a screen, but we had a white wall. And the vice squad that provided this every once a month. The vice-captain also provided a woman who he was having an affair with, who was a nymphomaniac, who was married to another very prominent citizen of Oakland. And she would present herself on Dougherty's couch every Friday afternoon-- I mean once a month to again the favored officials. I was not eligible for this. I was too young. Also, I wasn't sufficiently sophisticated because although very beautiful, the woman only had one leg, which was-- I wasn't up to that at the 22. [laughter]
Finally, this is once a month on Fridays. And then one terrible day, the word comes in from the courts that the vice squad captain has been named as correspondent in a divorce proceeding brought by the husband of the one-legged woman who is now accusing the vice-captain of destroying their marriage and he is the nominee. There were many others that could have played the part, but it was the vice-captain whose name was in the court document. And the document came into the press room. And this is when I was inducted into the last and greatest mysteries of the American newspaper business because for the first and only time, I saw Dougherty, Crowley, and Swann actually get off their couch and shuffle toward their typewriters to write the editorial that would appear in the next day's paper Examiner and the Chronicle and the Call-Bulletin. And their words were as heavy as stones. "The moral fabric of Oakland has been torn to shreds. [audience laughter] Women are not safe in the streets. How can such things be?" On the magnificence of their hypocrisy was a lesson that I have never forgotten. [audience laughter] I mean, a few days later I was reassigned to San Francisco, but I had an insight into the American news media that has stayed with me lot of these many years. Thank you.
[cheers and applause]
George: [00:27:42] That was Lewis Lapham. I recently asked Lewis about what it was like telling a story in those early days of The Moth.
Lewis: [00:27:51] I thought The Moth was a wonder to behold and a pleasure to take part in. There was a generosity of spirit. What it managed to establish was an understanding between the teller of the tale and the listener to the tale. They were both hoping for the best.
[Roland Kirk's Message from Charles Mingus playing]
George: [00:28:19] In a moment, we'll be back with the story of a world champion boxer and what he learned from fear.
Jay: [00:28:27] The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and presented by PRX.
[Roland Kirk's Message from Charles Mingus continues]
George: [00:29:36] You're listening to The Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm George Dawes Green. One night, George Plimpton brought his friend Jose Torres to The Moth. Torres was the great light heavyweight boxing champion from Puerto Rico. And I was a little worried that he'd tell some boilerplate story about victory and courage because he had so many victories and he clearly had so much courage. But he was a friend of George Plimpton's, so we should have known. The story that Jose Torres told at The Moth that night wasn't about the necessity for courage in the boxing ring, but the necessity for fear. Here's Jose Torres live at The Moth.
[applause]
Jose: [00:30:33] I want to talk to you about something very serious in boxing, and that is that when I was growing up in Puerto Rico was during the World War II. And my heroes were the American soldiers that were stationed near my house. They had the best-looking girls. They were always in the street. They were protecting us. And we always spoke of them as the greatest people in the world, the American soldier. [applause] And--. Oh, thank you. Is that a Puerto Rican there? [audience chuckles] So, I remember that all I wanted to do when I was growing up was to become a soldier. And at 17, I forged some signature and said that my mother was sick and that she signed, but that I was 18. But I was only 17 and I went as a volunteer into the Army.
Two weeks after I was in the Army, I realized that that had been the worst decision of my life. [audience chuckles] I disliked the Army passionately. And I began to shake. And I was getting sick. It was depression. And then someone told me that if I joined sports, I would feel fine and very happy. And I went to special services and I said, "I want to become a baseball player," because I played baseball in high school. And they said, "The season is over." I said, "Well, then I want to become a basketball player." And they said, "The season is over." I said, "Okay, track and field, 400 meters." [audience chuckles] "The season is over." I said, "Which season is on?" They said, "Boxing." And I was so unhappy by being a soldier that I said, "Okay, I want to be a boxer."
And a few weeks later, I started to learn how to box. And the only thing I had done while I was in Ponce, my hometown, was to street fight. So, I applied the same kind of method in which I just was a natural good puncher. So, in my first fight, I knocked the guy out. Second fight, I knocked the guy out. Third fight, I knocked the guy out. And I became very happy in the Army. [audience laughter] So now we're going to fight for the Antilles Championship, the Armed Forces. And I had two fights and I knocked both guys out. Then we flew to Panama to fight for the Caribbean Armed Forces Championship. I was a welterweight, 147 pounds. And I went there and I won.
When I got to Panama, for the first time in my life, I saw my opponent and I began to shake. I was shaking and shaking, and eventually I learned that there was fear out of control. I was shaking and I went to my trainer and I said, "I cannot beat this guy. I'm sorry, I don't know why, but I cannot beat this guy." My trainer got very angry and he cursed me and he thought that I was the best fighter pound for pound in the world, that I should not be talking that way. And I said, "I'm sorry. This guy, I can't beat him. Look at my hands." And I was shaking all over the place. The fight night came very soon, sooner than I expected. I was so scared.
And then I was walking into the ring and I turned to my trainer and I said to him, "Listen, don't be concerned. I'm going to do my best and I'm going to lose doing my best." He says, "You know something? That's what I want to hear. Just do your best." I went in there and I was still shaking. And the first punch the other guy threw was a right hand that hit me right on the bottom. And I felt like 10 million ants enter my whole body. But I was very scared. And then I hit the guy with a shot, and then he refused to take advantage of my condition and the bell rang.
And when I came to the corner, my trainer says, "You know, you lost this round, but you won the last 10 seconds of the round so you have the momentum, [audience chuckles] so you have to continue that in the second round." Second round, I continued to fight and I began to lose the fear. And at the end of the third round, I had won the fight. Pure skills, none. I mean, it was nothing mental, it was all physical. And I came out of that fight thinking this guy was in awe of me, my trainer, thinking that even though my mind was telling me that I was going to lose the fight, I still won the fight. And he was talking about mind over matter. It was the opposite. It was matter over mind.
In other words, I was so good physically that I did not have to use my mind to win this fight. And, of course, eventually I came to New York. There's this man that Mr. Plimpton knew very well. His name was Cus D'Amato. And I explained to Cus what had happened to me. He put me back in the amateurs. I won the New York Golden Gloves. By the way, in the Army, after that fight, I went into the Army and I won the Second Army Championship, the All Army Championship, the All Services Championship. Then I went to the Olympic Games, and I won the silver medal in the Olympics, losing by one point the gold medal to a Hungarian by the name of László Papp, who had won the '48 Olympic gold medal, the '52 Olympic gold medal, and then '56. He beat him at one point. He was very controversial. But I thought I lost, even though I lost by one point.
In any event, after all that, I came to New York, and Cus D'Amato began to explain to me all those experiences that I had in the Army. And he discovered-- I mean, the reason why I was so scared in Panama. He asked me, “Whom did I fight on my first fight?” And I said to him, "Oh, it was a guy from Puerto Rico." And who did you beat in the second fight?” And I said, "Oh, there was a guy from St. Thomas." And who did I beat in the third fight? I said, "Another guy from St. Thomas." And then my first four fights, I beat Puerto Ricans or blacks from St. Thomas.
And when I went to Panama, I faced the first hero of my youth, the American, the white American soldier. And the reason why I was so scared was because I thought that they were superior to me. And Cus D'Amato brought that out. And I began to understand about fear much better than I ever did. And then in that fight-- his name was Billy Priest. In that fight with Billy Priest, we became friends later. In that fight with Billy Priest from Boston, a blonde guy, very good-looking guy, strong, I discovered the equality of the colors and race and ethnicity. And it was a great thing except that when Cus began to teach me about fear, I discovered once that Cus D'Amato was afraid of flying.
And I began to question him. I said, "Wait a minute. How can you teach me about fear if you are so afraid to fly? You never flew in your entire life." And I said, "You know, when your number comes up." And he says, "You know, you have to be smarter than that, Jose. I don't mind when my number comes up. But I would mind when the pilot number comes up and I am in the plane." [audience laughter] So, he persuaded me that he was right. It was okay for him to have fear and to have understanding about fear. Then I learned, of course, as a professional fighter, that fear was something that you must have if you wanted to be a champion. Because fighting and having that fear, but not allowing the fear to get the best of you, but to use fear to help you, that is one of the best qualities of champion. You must have fear in order for you to understand when the guy is going to throw a punch before he throws a punch. When you are able to anticipate what the other guy is going to do before he does it, that is all triggered by fear. So, I established myself through experience taught by Cus D'Amato, who was afraid to fly. I learned with him that one of the best friends that a champion had was fear. Thank you.
[cheers and applause]
[Lover Man by Charlie Parker playing]
George: [00:40:07] That was Jose Torres. Jose was the light heavyweight champion of the world in 1965 and '66. He was also an author who wrote acclaimed biographies of Muhammad Ali and Mike Tyson. He died at his home in Puerto Rico in 2009.
One night, Lewis Lapham brought Christopher Hitchens to The Moth. When Hitchens first got up there, he seemed a little unsteady. And right away he warned the saxophonist not to keep time on him, that he'd be following his own rules. But then he did what he always did. Chased away the fog and brought all his faculties to bear and mesmerized his audience.
[applause]
The great Christopher Hitchens, live at The Moth.
Christopher: [00:41:07] Believe me, I hope you've all got drinks and cigarettes [audience chuckles] and lots of food. It takes a lot more than a fucking saxophone to stop me when I've got there. [cheers and applause] Now various people mentioned. "Well, it should be an actual story. Something really happened to you." I say, "Okay, I'll tell you quickly.” No, I won't at that. I'll tell you elaborately how it once happened to me that I was both-- because this is my quarrel with Brodsky, among others, about religion. How it once came to me that I was deified and how it once happened to me that I killed somebody. And I'd ask you to settle down and take that look off your face [audience chuckles] and stop smirking why I do so, because this is all true.
You may, if you've ever looked at the map, have noticed there's an almost beautifully perfect teardrop shaped island off the south coast of India. Used to be called Ceylon, now called Sri Lanka. It has the shape beautifully of a tear. Most countries don't look good in profile, as you know. The United States looks like a buffalo hide with which somebody has wiped their ass. The United Kingdom looks like a penis that's had suffered the most appalling diseases and depredations. France looks like-- I don't know what the hell it looks like actually. Ceylon is a beautiful teardrop shaped island, and on this island, there's been a terrible civil strife for several years.
And I went with a group of Tamil people all the way across the island on a famine relief mission where I noticed that before we even set out, they stopped at a temple and smashed some coconuts and made various propitiations and offerings at a temple, an elephant temple, a Ganesh temple, just to bless our journey, short one. But the fear was that it wouldn't be a safe one. And we were crossing, I now realize they were perhaps too kind to tell me or too prudent or too cynical, I never know now which was, territory that was very hostile to them. Anyway, that may be why they drove the car at great speed. I sat in the front. The Tamil driver sat behind the wheel.
I'll never forget, as long as I live, the moment when barreling through a village in the middle of Sri Lanka very near the great Buddha temple at Polonnaruwa where the most titanic and beautiful ruins still are in the dawn. Barreling through this village, an old fool ran out right in front of us, in front of the road and the car began to screech, but I already knew far too late, the bonnet, the hood hit him, up into the air he went, fell with a terrible thud right on the hood, right up on the windscreen. I could see his face looking at mine through the glasses as if watching someone drowning in an aquarium up onto the roof with another terrible thud.
And then as the car stopped skidding down onto the tarmac and dust in front of us and then the wheels went over him again and I thought, "I think we've killed him." And everybody stopped. Dead, if you'll pardon, you should pardon the expression. We had no choice. And from everywhere came villagers who I instantly realized did not welcome the presence of the Tamil minority in their village under any circumstances, let alone this one. Also there came Ceylonese, Sri Lankan police and militiamen fingering their weapons. I had to think quite quickly as I looked at my-- because if you go to Northern Ireland, if you live there long enough, you can tell who's Catholic, who's Protestant. You can just tell. The Catholics are a bit shorter, a little swarthier. [audience laughter] Call me old fashioned, if you will. The same roughly, roughly.
You don't have to stay in Sri Lanka very long to realize that they don't just not look the same to outsiders, they don't look the same to each other. The faces were suffused with the most terrified panic. If I was not there, the fat Englishman with his stupid-- I was wearing a white suit, kind of ridiculous Graham Greene ice cream concession cut. [audience laughter] They were going to be lynched. So, I put on-- I crammed on my straw hat and stood up towering over the locals and said, "Well, can I help you, officer?" And they backed off a little bit and by showing a press card that said Scotland Yard on it, I worked in London in those days, I persuaded them I was a policeman and that they couldn't lynch these people right then and right there.
So, when we got through the moment which was, I still think the nearest I've got to being humiliatingly killed myself, to seeing others humiliatingly killed and certainly is the nearest I've got to having someone killed by a car that I was in. We drove on slowly and carefully and they made camp towards the evening and lit a fire. We were nearly at the other side of the island where they were again in Tamil territory. And they said, "Do you know what we were doing when we broke those coconuts at the beginning of the journey? And we offered their sacrifices." And I said, "No, it didn't occur to me to ask." They said, "Well, we all believe in Sai Baba. Anyone here ever been a Sai Baba fan? Remember Sai Baba?" He was the man who could produce magic ash on video and claimed to raise people from the dead in South India. He was a big deal in the cult world. In the cult religious world, in the inane Western imitation of pseudo eastern religion that still goes on, was a big thing then.
He said, "But we now realize that you are Sai Baba." [audience laughter] This was a bit of a facer. I mean, they hadn't even cooked my dinner yet or brought me my things. But they said, "No, from now on we're going to carry you everywhere [audience chuckles] and we're going to bring your things. Was it Johnnie Walker Black?" "Yes," I said. "I mean, so that--" I said, "Okay, all right." "Was it Rothman's Blue?" "Certainly, it was Rothman's Blue, but you don't have to carry me everywhere. I mean, we chaps feel we've got over all that." "No, no, we insist. You are divine. It was only your-- It was--." "Well, I've been told that before, but though you might not think it'll look at me?" "It was only your intercession, your personal intercession that saved us from being lynched. You are to us the God, and you have saved our lives."
Now, I'm not one to repudiate a compliment, and certainly not when rammed home, if you'll pardon the expression, with a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black and a sleeve of Rothman's Blue. But what I said was, "What about-- shouldn't we check on the road back when we get back to that village?" Because the last we saw, that guy was being dragged out of the road and put on a stretcher by the police. And the one reason we were let go was he wasn't dead yet. "Shouldn't we check to see if God saved his life? I wonder what happened, in the words of the old Noël Coward song, I wonder what happened to him." And there isn't another road. So, we had to take the other road back. And we did go back through that stricken village where we were probably the only excitement that had been in that part of mid Sri Lanka for some time. And we did make a courtesy stop.
And since they were under my protection and since I was divine, [audience chuckles] it was okay to call at the police station and at the hospital and we found that the man that we'd run over and hit and who I'd seen, I'll never forget his face even now, writhing, squirming, panicked, through the windscreen of that car, then down under the wheels, having bonked on the roof of the car, who did turn out to have been the town drunk, for which I even now willing to raise a glass, that he was as dead as Dickens says about Marley, dead as nail indoor. And I thought, "Well, why doesn't a man who can produce magic ash from his palm and proclaim that he can raise people from the dead and intercede in human affairs as a divine one? Why didn't Mr. Sai Baba save him and not us?"
So, these were both my mentors and protectors and my tormentors in very good company, I must say. They all were. But they taught me what I already knew, which is that all stories about eternal life, all stories about divinity, all stories about divine intervention are entirely false. And that was a lesson absolutely worth learning. [audience chuckle] And with or without the Johnnie Walker or the Rothman Blues, I feel I can still drive it home. Thank you.
[applause]
[Billie’s Bounce by Charlie Parker playing]
George: [00:50:17] That was Christopher Hitchens. Christopher was a passionate advocate of Nabokov, Proust, Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, and the shattering of superstition and the annihilation of all sorts of tyranny and bullying. He died on December 15, 2011 and some believe he rose to take his place on the right hand of God where he judges the living and the dead. Sadly, we couldn't play all of Christopher Hitchens story on the radio, we'd have been arrested. But you can hear it all, all of Hitchens splendidly bodied aggressions on our website, themoth.org. While you're there you can also pitch your own story and learn about our other programs. All of the stories you've heard this hour are available at the iTunes store. Just search for "The Best of The Moth." That's it for this episode of The Moth Radio Hour. We hope you'll join us next time. And that's the story from The Moth.
[Uncanny Valley theme music by The Drift playing]
Jay: [00:51:35] Your host this hour was George Dawes Green. George is the founder of The Moth and the Unchained Tour and the author of the novels Ravens, The Juror, and The Caveman's Valentine. The stories in this hour were directed by Joey Xanders. The Moth's directorial staff includes Catherine Burns, Sarah Haberman, Sarah Austin Jenness, Jenifer Hixson, and Meg Bowles. Production support from Jenna Weiss Berman and Brandon Echter. Moth Stories are true as remembered and affirmed by the storytellers. Moth events are recorded by Argot Studios in New York City, supervised by Paul Ruest. Our theme music is by The Drift. Other music in this hour from Django Reinhardt, Charles Mingus and Charlie Parker. The Moth is produced for radio by me, Jay Allison at Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, with help from Viki Merrick.
This hour was produced with funds from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, committed to building a more just, verdant and peaceful world, The Moth Radio Hour is presented by the Public Radio Exchange, prx.org. For more about our podcast and for information on pitching your own story and for everything else, go to our website, themoth.org.