A few months before he died in a car accident, David Halberstam published a droll, melancholy homage to his colleague and friend Marshall Frady, who lost a prolonged battle with cancer in 2004. The essay appears as a new introduction to two books by Frady that Simon & Schuster has reissued: Billy Graham: A Parable of American Righteousness (1979) and Jesse: The Life and Pilgrimage of Jesse Jackson (1996). Halberstam wrote elegantly about a luminous interlude in his career, 1967-1971, when he—along with Frady, Larry L. King, and John Corry—was a staff writer at Harper’s under the celebrated editorship of Willie Morris, who transformed a stodgy magazine into an exhilarating one that printed works by Norman Mailer, William Styron, Gay Talese, and others.
When he took over Harper’s in 1967, Morris was already acquainted with Frady’s work for Newsweek and The Saturday Evening Post. Morris considered Frady “a genius of the language” and hired him when he was twenty-eight. The two men, southern boys transplanted to the glittering literary salons of Manhattan, had an affectionate bond: Frady called Morris “Sire” and sometimes “Boss.” But Morris was manning the helm of a foundering vessel: Harper’s bled $150,000 a year, and in 1971 Morris was forced out by the ruling Cowles family. “It all boiled down to the money men and the literary men,” he lamented in his resignation letter. “And, as always, the money men won.”
Morris’s departure jolted the literary world. Mailer, Styron, Talese, Bill Moyers, and Tom Wicker declared that they would boycott Harper’s as long as the Cowles family owned it, and the four staff writers hired by Morris—Frady among them—resigned in solidarity with him. Toward the end of Halberstam’s essay, we see Frady lurching through the 1970s, writing for magazines, and, in search of financial stability,...
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Splendidly written. Sherman has captured the essence of Marshall Frady both as an author and a man. Having known Marshall personally, I can attest to the fact that his writing was often as complicated as his personality. Intimidating as it was, Marshall posessed a commanding presence both with his pen and and his demeanor. Nearly four years after conducting his funeral service, I am still processing whether that confidence flowed out of his writing or the writing eminated from his confidence. Perhaps, the two indistinguishably intermingled - both shaping and revealing the author and the man who was Marshall Frady. With grattitude for a gracious and accurate tribute to the life and work of Marshall,
Dr. Kevin Steele,
Augusta, Georgia
Posted by revnkevin
on Fri 4 Jan 2008 at 02:22 PM
I first knew of marshall frady circa 1958. he flooded nearby greenville high school with a flyer that they were not red raiders, but pink poopers. he was rumored to have treked with castro a la 1959. our high school and college classmates realiized marshall was leaps and bounds ahead of the rest of us. marshall was very bright, smart, insightful, but he acted very ordinary. emory univ should sponsor a symposium on the achievements and travails of
marshall frady. he surely died before his time.
-john rouse, ballstu, muncie, in. 11/25/09.
Posted by john rouse on Wed 25 Nov 2009 at 07:01 PM