The Freaks Came Out to Write: The Definitive History of the Village Voice, the Radical Paper That Changed American Culture. Tricia Romano. Public Affairs: NY. 2024. 571 pages.
“In the Wall Street Journal, you’re writing about the Yankees, the first reference would be ‘Derek Jeter.’ And the second reference would be the very stilted ‘Mr. Jeter.’ If you were writing about Derek Jeter for the Village Voice, if would be ‘Derek Jeter,’ and then the second reference would be ‘Mariah Cary-banging motherfucker.’”
Such was the character of the Village Voice, unique in the annals of journalism, a start-up in the mid-1950s, a force of nature in the ’60s, ‘70s, ‘80s, then a gradual slide to capitalism and corporate ick that finally left it a shell of its glorious irreverent self in 2021.
The subtitle doesn’t overstate. The Voice was the first to write about Stonewall, to take seriously the rise of hip hop, to cover the AIDS crisis, graffiti as public art, the power-monger Robert Moses, the fraudulent businessman Donald Trump, underground arts and music and off-broadway and independent film, the New York club scene, including drag. Sought after week after week for its classifieds and apartment listings. (Springsteen found Max Weinberg, drummer for his E Street Band, through an ad in the Village Voice.) A newspaper that held landlords, judges and politicians accountable. A place for writers to experience freedom in the first-person style of the ‘new journalism’ or really to write however they wanted about whatever they wanted — the stuff we found professionally tantalizing in journalism schools in the 70s. (I remembered two classmates especially, Jim and Fletcher; the three of us pushing each other to be better before we all became something else.) Writers who wrote what they lived, attacked one another’s views (and sometimes one another) in print. Writers who defied conventional journalistic objectivity in favor of personal journalism — a satisfying kind of truth-telling, if you can pull it off.
But also photographers, editors, critics. And at least one Pulitzer prize-winning cartoonist.
It wasn’t paradise. Women and writers of color were the last to be hired and last to move up through the ranks. Several chapter titles hints at the hostility, to women especially. Rupert Murdoch, whose purchase of the paper in the late-70s caused staff to unionize, thought gay writers should go “back into the cupboard.” Writers and departments fought with each other, in something of a free-for-all very many times.
With very little money, no business or journalism experience, but a vision of a newspaper for Greenwich Village, Norman Mailer and a couple of friends made a plan. “We thought we were out of our minds. We were simply determined. We were gonna put a goddam paper out, and we didn’t know how. It was a religious thing.”
To be sure, there are way worse religious things. (See “Christian Nationalism takes over the country.)
The book is written in 87 short chapters, stories really, of some aspect of the Voice’s life, with titles like “Is this obscene?” and “Clay Felker was a celebrity fucker” and “Do you want to know about a really big fight that happened in the theater section?” and “They demanded that they take our Pulitzer away” and “If the National Organization for Women calls, just fucking hang up on them.” And finally: “Wayne couldn’t believe that Trump was winning,” about Wayne Barrett, the first guy to write about Trump the huckster, when all the other New York media were propping him up, in a book that is suddenly popular again (Trump: the Greatest Show on Earth).
The books begin with an alphabetical intro to all those interviewed or referenced, a formidable list, and a Voice timeline, to help you stay in the moment.
Tricia Romano spent eight years writing for the Voice and almost that long writing this book. It is structured as a conversation among Voice staffers, built from hundreds of interviews. Romano was inspired, she said, by a reunion of Voice staffers in 2017, including the last living founder, then 95 years old. It is entertaining, surprising. It is funny, sad, maddening. It is nostalgic and instructive.
It is also inspiring. I write for a living, sermons and essays and whatnot, and have wished to be more free. Especially in preaching. So I’m reading this as continuing ed and beginning a new era. Which makes me happy. We’ll see if it makes congregations happy…