Author: allen0997

When the Astors Owned New York

When the Astors Owned New York ~ A Capsule Book Review by Allen Kopp

When John Jacob Astor IV, age forty-seven, died in the Titanic disaster in April 1912, he was the wealthiest man (or one of the wealthiest) in the United States and in the world. His fortune was estimated at $100 million dollars (1912 dollars) that he inherited from his family. He was survived by his second wife, a nineteen-year-old debutante, and his unborn son, who would go on to become John Jacob Astor VI. (The reason his son wasn’t John Jacob Astor V was because that name was already taken.)

The name of Astor was known all over the world. J. J. “Jack” Astor wasn’t just a rich man, a playboy and a sportsman; he was also an “innkeeper,” a hotelier, a builder of fabulous and sumptuous skyscraper hotels in New York City, the likes of which the world had never seen. These hotels offered guests the latest conveniences and technological innovations, such as elevators, telephones and bathrooms in every room, running hot water and thermostats for controlling temperature. Anybody who was anybody (anybody with enough dough) “stopped” at the Waldorf-Astoria or another of the Astor hotels when visiting New York City. My dear, it was the place to be seen!

John Jacob Astor IV and his older cousin, William Waldorf Astor (1848-1919), were bitter rivals. They were different in temperament and style and they detested each other. William Waldorf Astor was also a builder of fabulous hotels. The two cousins together built six lavish hotels in New York City and had their imprint on many other hotels and businesses.

The Waldorf hotel and the Astoria hotel started off as two separate hotels, side by side, and later became the world-famous Waldorf-Astoria. William Waldorf Astor was responsible for the “Waldorf” part of the Waldorf-Astoria and John Jacob Astor IV was responsible for the “Astoria” part. It stood on the site where the Empire State Building now stands.

William Waldorf Astor was perhaps the most eccentric member of the Astor family. He was ashamed of the humble origins of his family, going back several generations, and concocted a distinguished lineage for himself. He gave up his American citizenship and became a British citizen. He became an English “gentleman” in almost every respect, refurbished an English estate to his own specifications, and bought his way into the British peerage. He died at age seventy-one, a lonely and reclusive multi-millionaire, estranged from most of his family.

The story of the Astors is not complete without mention of the “founder” of the Astor dynasty. The first John Jacob Astor was born in Baden, in Germany, in 1763, the poor son of a butcher and sausage maker. At age seventeen, he emigrated to the United States, to New York. He started out in a modest way as a trader of furs with the Indians. He eventually began buying up New York City real estate, and that became the source of his great wealth. At one time he owned five hundred properties in New York City, including tenements and slums, earning him the title of “slum lord,” which he unwittingly passed on to his heirs.

When the Astors Owned New York by Justin Kaplan is a fascinating nonfiction account of the life and amazing times of an American family of great wealth and fame. The Astors probably weren’t much different from any other American family, except that they were obscenely rich and were able to indulge their eccentricities in ways that most of us can only imagine. They were criticized in the press, of course, for owning slum and tenements and for their “inherited” (rather than earned) wealth. For wealth to be truly respectable, it seems, it has to be earned. Most of us would willingly take it any way we could get it.

Copyright © 2019 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997

Tomato Red ~ A Capsule Book Review

Tomato Red ~ A Capsule Book Review by Allen Kopp

Daniel Woodrell (b. 1953) is one of the best and most innovative of current American writers. His 1998 novel, Tomato Red, is set in the fictional town of West Table, in the Missouri Ozarks, in a poor section of town known as Venus Holler. Jamalee Merridew is nineteen years old, with hair the color of tomatoes. She has a seventeen-year-old brother named Jason Merridew, “the prettiest boy in the Ozarks.” (He has green eyes and full, pouty lips.) “Grown-up women,” Jamalee says, “throw their underpants at Jason with their phone numbers written on them in the grocery store.” Jason is a hairdresser; the fact that he is gay does not deter his female admirers.

Bev Merridew is Jamalee and Jason’s mother. She is about forty years old, is a whore and apparently has always been a whore. She lives in a shack in Venus Holler, next door to the shack that Jamalee and Jason live in. She drinks and smokes cigarettes and entertains men. “If she had all the dicks sticking out of her that she’s had stuck in her,” Jamalee says, “she’d look like a porcupine.”

Enter one Sammy Barlach, a decidedly trashy drifter, twenty-four years old. (The novel is told in Sammy’s first-person voice.) One night when Sammy is doing a little house-breaking in the expensive part of West Table, he meets Jamalee and Jason in a mansion-like home. He believes they live there, but soon discovers they are also house-breakers like him. He latches on to them and later their mother, Bev, as his adopted family. He refers to them as “the bunch that would have me.”

Jamalee, Jason and their mother Bev are constantly reminded that they are “trash” and “rednecks” because of where they live, their low socio-economic status, their drinking and their general all-around “no-goodness.” Many people around town are openly hostile to them.

When Jason fails as a pay-for-his-services stud for the ladies (he just doesn’t have it in him), Jamalee goes for an interview at the country club for a job as hostess, during which she encounters the meanness of the country club set toward her “kind.” When she is bodily ejected, she and Jason and Sammy (they have been waiting outside in the car for her) are drawn into an ugly and insulting brawl with some of the country club people that results in fists being thrown.

In retaliation for their rejection and humiliation, Jamalee, Jason and Sammy make a middle-of-the-night raid on the country club and do some serious and costly damage to the golf course. Their mischief may give them some temporary satisfaction, but it ends up having serious consequences for them. In a battle between “white trash” and the “country club set,” guess who is always going to win?

Tomato Red is an almost perfect contemporary American novel, with fascinating and believable characters, killer dialogue, and an unhappy, but completely satisfying and pitch-perfect, ending. I’ve read it twice and I might read it again before the curtain falls. Another novel I love, also by Daniel Woodrell, is The Death of Sweet Mister. It’s another fascinating foray into the world of trashy rednecks and a perfect companion piece to Tomato Red.

Copyright © 2019 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997