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Vice Blog

LITERARY - MY FAVORITE RICH KID

To be the godson of J.P. Morgan, one may argue, might have been better than being the Son of God Himself (provided He'd used his powers in better ways and avoided dying on a cross). Even though/if God doesn't exist, J.P. clearly had a much larger share of the money. So much of it that America had to borrow from him during the 1907 Panic. (History.)

So, Morgan was seriously flush, and that's interesting because money's fun, but his godson, Harry Crosby, who has been called "the beautiful result" of the Morgan family's reigning position in the country at the time, he was the real treat. He was, possibly, one of the very first "hmmm hmmm"s that supposedly just "died" and they had a panel about in LA. Or he was a lot like one. This was the first 30 years of the 20th century and Harry Crosby wore no hat, had tattoos on the bottoms of his feet, and always wore a black carnation in his lapel. He also drank and did drugs like a champ.

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Coolish sidenote: Crosby attended Harvard and kind of half-ass ran cross-country for them. They had a big race one day which he showed up to late and drunk. He just drove his car beside the other runners screaming at them to hurry up and that they were all a bunch of daisies. Somehow Harvard won that day, and at the celebration Harry stood up at the table, gave a speech about birds and light, threw up into the table's flower arrangement, and then passed out.

After fighting in the war, which fucked up his head, like it fucks up all soldiers' heads, he dedicated his life to writing, to the sun (kind of stupid), and getting absolutely shit-faced twenty-four hours a day. And because he was an embarrassment, the family thought it better to keep him over in France with the rest of the "artists." He did the Paris thing with Hemingway and all those guys. Started a small press and published Joyce, Eliot, D. H. Lawrence, and really anyone that was over there hanging out.

Boringish note for editor/lit types: Harry was printing some of the first bits of Ulysses, and the printer set the type and there was a widow on one of the plates (I guess printing was pretty primitive at the time for this to be such a big deal). The printer suggested that Harry ask Joyce for some more writing to fill the page. Harry scoffed like, "You can't just ask Mister James Joyce to write some more because you screwed up the typesetting!" That night, the printer went to Joyce's house, explained the problem, and Joyce said, "Sure. Here you go," and wrote out a page for him as he stood. How "In your FACE!" is that?

Crosby, known as a bit of a failed poet himself (I strongly disagree with that claim), as I said before, was devoted to worshipping the sun and was apparently the butt of many a joke from Hemingway. "How's the old sun god doing there, sport?" Harry liked to throw huge parties at his place outside of Paris that lasted for weeks and consisted of all the writers and artists from the city, flowing booze, cocaine, opium (which Harry called "the black idol"), and with everyone running around naked. Harry would smear himself in chicken blood and wore a bag of snakes around his neck that he would release into rooms to liven things up if he thought the party was beginning to drag. Sound familiar? I know! Love this guy.

Harry Crosby was the real tits. But I guess he kind of went overboard with it all. He was back in New York and had just stood up J.P. Morgan for lunch to go meet his mistress at an unoccupied buddy's pad for a shag instead. They got drunk and committed double-suicide. He shot her, two hours passed (I wonder about those two hours, like, all the time), then he shot himself. It's a beautiful story. Ezra Pound wrote that Harry's was "a death from excess vitality, a vote of confidence in the cosmos." James Dickey calls the biography, Black Sun, "The best biography he's ever read." It's by Geoffrey Wolff, brother of Tobias. I've heard Timothy Hutton owns the screen rights to this shit and keeps renewing them, so, all you aspiring screenwriters whose ears pricked up will have to deal with Timmy. But get the book.

GIANCARLO DITRAPANO