The late William Manchester was an internationally-acclaimed historian, and a well-known figure in Middletown and on the Wesleyan campus, where he was a professor. This month Vanity Fair's Sam Kashner reports on the story behind the story of the creation of Manchester's account of John F. Kennedy's assassination, The Death of A President.
H/T to Arthur Michael.
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I've always said that it would be William Manchester who would put Middletown "on the map"; WM and maybe John (& Mary Risley), too, at some point in the future when someone decides to write that story. With Wesleyan in the background of both stories, of course.
But I have it on first-hand account that Sam is missing a few details in his Vanity Fair article surrounding the day WM got the fateful phone call; in 1964 the Wesleyan Literary Press was located on Beech Street, where Liberty Bank is now; WM got his phone call from Salinger there, not in his office at Olin Library. Other WLP coworkers at the time, still with us, can also affirm that WM tried desperately to secure a leave of absence from his position at WLP for the rest of that fateful work week, and was essentially fired on Friday for having asked for more time off, as he had just recently returned from a 6 month leave of absence to complete his book, Shadow of the Monsoon, a book about northern India, which was a flop, making WM terribly nervous about leaving a steady-paying job, havng a family to support and all, and unsure of his own commercial abilities, post-flop.
And that when he announced to his office secretary, with every coworker eavesdropping nearby, that he'd received "the phone call", he ended his announcement with, "and I am not sure that I want to do that."
Just missing some little details, really.
I wonder how WM's painful story writing Death of a President might have ended differently if he had a steady job waiting for him to return to at home.
But I suppose that everything happens for a reason. That is, if you are a believer that way.
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