A brilliant piece of "fictional-fact."

It’s an interesting idea to write a novel almost as a screenplay. Herr was great at cutting any fat from his writing, so understandable he would love the sparseness of a script. Unfortunately, those hunting for the gems in Dispatches are likely to be disappointed. Winchell’s life and times are interesting but the book feels light.

Herr, of 'Dispatches' fame, semi-novelizes his unproduced screenplay about the notorious Winchell. Would that the author have committed himself more fully, for what he demonstrates is a fine feel for the times (20's-60's), scorching dialogue, and a pace akin to his subject's famous staccato. What's not there, and much missing, is subtext, something a bolder leap from journalist-screenwriter to bona fide novelist would have provided.

As Michael Herr intended, this novel based on Walter Winchell's life reads like a zesty thrill ride of wit. A night-and-day contrast with Herr's other book, Dispatches. Enjoyed it greatly; made me wanted to learn more about WW.

An evocation of the life and times of the journalistic demagogue who was also one of the most powerful men in America during the 1940s and 50s. Arrogant, ambitious, sentimental, cunning, loved and hated, Walter Winchell is brought to life in this novel.

This strange book makes a lot of sense as mass delusions of WMD and QAnon come to shape the first quarter of the 21st Century. How can so many people get the facts “wrong-o”?

Before writing this historical novel, Michael Herr covered the War in Vietnam, which was one of the most tragic chapters of the Cold War, based as it was on bad intel regarding The Gulf of Tonkin incident. Walter Winchell makes a similar error.

The speed with which Winchell pivoted from the pre-mature anti-fascism of the 30s to red-baiting as soon as WWII ended makes for a reversal that would strain credulity in straight fiction.

Herr’s introduction explains why the book reads like a screenplay. Walter Winchell covers more diegesis than a good bio-pic, but it lacks the central problem for a movie. In the right hands it could be a series like Fossee/Verdon. Both stories bring out the most brutal meaning of the idiomatic phrase “song and dance,” something lost in the roman à clef to Winchell in The Sweet Smell of Success (1957). Being the Ricardo’s (2021) uses Winchell as an offscreen catalyst for Desi & Lucy’s bio-pic.

Ultimately, an unproduced screenplay might be the most appropriate form for a mediocre song-&-dance man who became a toxic media personality. Herr quotes Winchell and other luminaries of The Stork Club so that I wanted to read the book aloud for much of the dialog. Some of Winchell’s lines, however, are poison, all the more tragic in the mouth of Winchell who lost sight of the enemy in his fight against anti-semitism.

Walter Winchell, A Novel by Michael Herr

What he describes as “prose fiction”, Michael Herr, has written a quick paced portrait of Walter Winchell, a unique figure who invented the gossip column to the newspaper business.

Winchell, as a teenager, started his public life as a vaudevillian song and dance man of limited talent who found a niche as a press agent promoting shows. This led to a column in a show business newspaper which evolved into a column of gossip about show business, gangsters and politicians. A strong supporter of FDR Winchell also was early in identifying the menace Hitler posed to the world at large. Following WW II his political interests morphed into an anti-communism and in association with Roy Cohen he became a mouthpiece for Joe McCarthy’s “red scare” program. At the height of his success, Winchell’s column was in over 1000 newspapers and his weekly radio show had an audience of 50 million listeners.

Ultimately this is a story of stark ambition, narcissism, name calling, reckless insinuations that ring true in this age of Trump. That both Winchell and Trump became enamored with Roy Cohen solidifies this connection. The story spans the life and times of America from the roaring 20’s to the rise and fall of Richard Nixon.

Herr creates this story in a staccato like fashion, dominated by dialogue, reminiscent of the great work of George V. Higgins who wrote crime fiction made up wholly of dialogue. Herr, famous for his great book about Vietnam, Dispatches, also contributed screen writing credits for both Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now and Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket. His talent for screenwriting is clearly on display in this novel.

I am in a used book store looking for a copy of Dispatches, a popular Vietnam War book from 1978, by Michael Herr. Instead, I find Walter Winchell, A Novel by Michael Herr published in 1989. I figure I’ll give it a try. It is a small hardcover, 158 pages. Nobody in GR notices this book although it is an interesting read, probably because it is rarely available.

If you are under 30 you have never heard of Walter Winchell (1897-1972) who was a well known newspaper columnist and radio commentator in the 1940s and 1950s. It is said that he invented the gossip column. His career is followed in this “novel” that seems to be fairly true to life based on the limited biographical details I found online, possibly best categorized as historical fiction. In a preface, Herr writes “Even though Walter Winchell is based on the life of a real man and often uses his actual words, it’s a fiction, and it’s in prose. So it must be prose fiction. You could call it a screenplay that’s typed like a novel, that reads like a novel, but plays like a movie. “

The cover notes reveal that Michael Herr was the coauthor of the screenplay for the Stanley Kubrick film Full Metal Jacket. According the Wikipedia, he also contributed to the narration of Apocalypse Now. So he is successfully practiced as a screenwriter.

Also from the book jacket:

Walter Winchell was brassy, ambitious, arrogant, sentimental, cunning, devastatingly sharp-witted, loved and hated, loving and hateful – as dynamic and complicated as the America that produced him. At the height of his fame, his daily newspaper column and weekly radio broadcasts commanded an obsessively loyal following some 50 million strong. From his personal headquarters – Table 50 at The Stork Club in New York City – Winchell ruled an empire of gossip, rumor, and influence, making and breaking reputations and careers and enthralling his audience with the “private” lives of those he deemed worthy of his attention, benevolent or otherwise. His own life is a story of rise and fall, rags to riches, fame to obscurity…

This book is worth the few hours it takes to read although it may not appeal to many beyond the radio and newspaper generation who remember the 1950s and 60s. It may also be that you will only stumble on Walter Winchell, A Novel when you are at a used book store looking for a copy of Dispatches. I found a copy at Amazon Marketplace for $70.30 and no place else. I’ll sell you my copy for $50!

I love it when I find a book that's been barely reviewed on goodreads. It gives me a nice feeling like I've stumbled on something a little rare, of course I like it better when it really knocks me out, and this was just enjoyable and quick.

The author describes it as "a novel with a camera in it". It pretty much is a screenplay.

Walter Winchell was a famous radio personality who was very influential in his day. He started out reading zippy gossip: "Flash! Lana Turner won't start barking till she learns it here, but those delicious canapes served the other evening at the Scotty Fields' soiree were made from dog food." (I never knew one of my favorite Onion columnists, Jackie Harvey, was inspired by Winchell) Winchell started in vaudeville, started writing gossip about the performers, became a newspaper man then a radio man who had a lot of powerful friends (gangsters and such) and then when he feared for his life left town for a little while and reinvented himself and got lucky propping up all the right politicians and became more political during the war. He was undone by his inability to transition to television (his old nemesis Ed Sullivan became a star).

Lots of funny exchanges, think Coen Brothers in 'Hudsucker Proxy' mode. Interesting look at a nearly forgotten historical figure, but a little wearying by the end since all these guys were such horrible, horrible bastards.