John A. Williams: Case Fourteen

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Note: Case 21 contains audio and video clips.

Case Fourteen

FLASHBACKS (1973)

This was simply a collection of articles, most of which had been published previously. Perhaps the most interesting element was the inclusion of headnotes. These detailed how the pieces were commissioned and why, in my estimation, some were rejected. One editor, upset about my description of him, wrote a letter that was a veiled threat. Soon after, he became editor-in-chief of the New York Times Book Review. He failed to assign my next novel and had the one after that reviewed so late that it was worthless as a sales or publicity factor. For as long as he held the position, my work got the back of his hand. I've not done as many magazine articles since this collection was published, but quite enough, together with newspaper columns, to fill another book.

FLASHBACKS: A TWENTY-YEAR DIARY OF ARTICLE WRITING. Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Press/Doubleday (1973). First edition.

Williams, 1972.

MINORITIES IN THE CITY (1976)

There was some confusion about what this was to be, but it became, finally, one in a series of pamphlets, which, combined, made a book bearing the same title. The editor was George Groman, a former colleague at LaGuardia Community College, where I taught for five years.

scanned bookjacket for minorities in the city

MINORITIES IN THE CITY. New York: Harper and Row (1975). Signed by Williams, original wrappers.

scanned bookjacket for mothersill and the foxes

MOTHERSILL AND THE FOXES. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday (1975). First edition.

MOTHERSILL AND THE FOXES (1975)

I conceived this as a humorous book with quite serious overtones. It was a novel that wasn't much liked by anyone else but me. I consider the theme to be the innate vulnerability of men to women. One part of the book was based on a famous New York murder case in which two female Newsweek staffers were killed. Another incident, a "cloacal encounter," refers back to the first reporting of a congenitally absent vagina in 1758, and the literary case of Madame Recamier, referred to by Dumas as an "Involuntary Virgin."

THE JUNIOR BACHELOR SOCIETY (1976)

The Junior Bachelor Society was one of those books you have to get out of your system. A tribute perhaps to a better past, or to old friendships, or just a rush of recollection of a time not quite so close to the end of things. The spooky thing about this novel was that just as it was about to come out I got a call from a boyhood buddy in Syracuse. There was going to be a reunion of all the guys and their families that summer. Spooky because there was just such a reunion in the novel.

scanned proof of the junior bachelor society

THE JUNIOR BACHELOR SOCIETY. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday (1976). First edition, uncorrected proof copy.

scanned bookjacket for the junior bachelor society

THE JUNIOR BACHELOR SOCIETY. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday (1976). First edition.

THE JUNIOR BACHELOR SOCIETY. Original typescript, with author's corrections and additions. Uncollated sheets.

In 1981 this became an NBC-TV mini-series called "The Sophisticated Gents." I was, for the most part, pleased with it.

O'CONNOR, John J. "TV: Blacks on Way Up in "Sophisticated Gents," offprint from the New York Times. 29 September 1981.

Advertising brochure for the television drama "The Sophisticated Gents" (1981), adapted from The Junior Bachelor Society.

Promotional photograph showing the cast of "The Sophisticated Gents" (1981).

The Literature of Reportage, co-edited with Lori Williams. Unpublished.

Original typescript of collaborative effort by Williams and his wife, Lori. (1979)

Williams in Worcester, N.Y. (1976).

Contact sheet (clipped) of five original photographs of Williams with his son Adam, Teaneck, N.J. (1975).