Fallen Idols (lacrimae Rerum)

Book excerpt: Fallen Idols is a memoir that begins in the radical sixties in Greenwich Village. The author, the young Leonard Schulman, is living on West Fourth street, just two blocks away from the young emigre from Duluth, Minn.. Bob Dylan.... The author of this charming and engaging memoir, already knows of the young genius, Mr. Dylan, having been exposed to early Dylan by his first love at Brooklyn College. The songs and life of Dylan are to affect our hero in curious ways. In the course of this book he comes to know two photographers--David Gahr and Barry Feinstein--who were close to Mr. Dylan. They tell him stories unheard of before the the great bard. Schulman comes to know other important people too--mostly through his work at Time magazine. How a Brooklyn street kid, got the job and his work at the magazine (for nearly 30 years) is a big part of the book. In the course of his life he meets many people whom he comes to see as 'fallen idols." One of the most important is James Wilde, Time magazine's most intrepid war correspondent. Mr. Wilde becomes a friend and mentor. In the nineties he travels to work for Wilde in Time's Nairobi office as a stringer. Here many adventures occur (worthy of a movie). There are other fallen idols. Too numerous to enumerate. But let me mention at least one--Vittorio Fiorucci--the monstre sacre and great Montreal artist. The creator of Juste Pour Rire's little green man. The book follows in the great literary tradition of Kerouac and Cormac McCarthy as he (Schulman) traverses--over a lifetime--wide areas of the globe--seeking and finding moments of joy and passion and nirvana. It is a journey that will excite you with the tears of things, as he seeks to find, along with all of us--permanence and love. (Another of his fallen idols is Norman Mailer and. . . oh, you'll just have to read the book.) But reader beware, Mr. Schulman's book is not for the faint of heart. So be careful. . . this book may knock you out. Like Hamlet advised "t'were as if a mirror were held up to nature." Human nature, that is. And it ain't always pretty.