The freaks came out to write : the definitive history of the Village Voice, the radical paper that changed American culture

The freaks came out to write The definitive history of the Village Voice, the radical paper that changed American culture

Tricia Romano

Book - 2024

"You either were there or you wanted to be. The Freaks Came Out to Write is the definitive oral history of The Village Voice-a New York City institution. Roaming its cramped, chaotic halls were the people who had written the first stories about the Stonewall Riots and the gay rights movement; who had advocated for civil rights before it was mainstream. The Voice was the first to cover hip-hop, the avant-garde art scene, and the AIDS crisis with urgency and seriousness when other papers were dismissing it as "the gay disease." It invented new forms of criticism and storytelling, revolutionized journalism, and covered cultural and political moments, often long before big outlets like the New York Times did. The book features in...terviews with iconic voices from the paper's early years, such as Norman Mailer, who co-founded the paper in 1955, and Mary Perot Nichols, who battled weekly with the infamous Robert Moses, and whose writing in the Voice saved countless New York City landmarks from destruction. Wild tales are told by Robert Christgau, the self-appointed "Dean of American Rock Criticism," and Wayne Barrett, who in the 80's was the first reporter to uncover Donald Trump as a huckster and corrupt con artist. In The Freaks Come Out to Write, Tricia Romano, who worked at the Voice during the 90's and 2000's, pays homage to the Voice. She will tell the story of American journalism, American culture, and how the Internet (and Rupert Murdoch) killed the most famous alt-weekly of all time"--

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Subjects
Village voice (Greenwich Village, New York, N.Y.) > History.
Village voice (Greenwich Village, New York, N.Y.)
1900-2099
Newspapers > History > 20th century.
Newspapers > History > 21st century.
Manners and customs
Newspapers
Journalists > Interviews.
New York (N.Y.) > Social life and customs > 20th century.
New York (N.Y.) > Social life and customs > 21st century.
New York (State) > New York
New York (N.Y.) > Social life and customs.
BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Editors, Journalists, Publishers.
History
Genres
BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Editors, Journalists, Publishers
History
Published
New York, NY : PublicAffairs 2024.
Language
English
Main Author
Tricia Romano (author)
Edition
First edition
Physical Description
xxxiii, 571 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN
9781541736399
  • Author's Note
  • Cast of Characters
  • Timeline
  • Introduction
  • 1955-1970: "The writing came from the world itself"
  • Chapter 1. "We wanted a certain kind of newspaper"
  • Chapter 2. "We were amazed with how many writers walked into the Voice"
  • Chapter 3. Quickly: A Column for Slow Readers
  • Chapter 4. "He practically invented Off-Broadway theater"
  • Chapter 5. "The Voice was her weapon"
  • Chapter 6. "Just the fact that it was the '60s helped the Voice"
  • Chapter 7. "Jack Newfield really wrote about the things that he believed in"
  • Chapter 8. "What he was doing was very important for cinema and for the arts"
  • Chapter 9. "Is this obscene?"
  • Chapter 10. "I call him the first rock critic"
  • Chapter 11. "We were the hippie generation"
  • Chapter 12. "I was shocked by what I saw there"
  • Chapter 13. "I sure hope those people get their rights"
  • Chapter 14. Running Scared
  • Chapter 15. "Carter buying the paper didn't seem like a big deal"
  • 1970-1980: "There was a palace revolution"
  • Chapter 16. "Holy Mother Ireland. It's the women's liberation movement"
  • Chapter 17. "She was a woman talking from inside her mind"
  • Chapter 18. "Clay Felker was a celebrity fucker"
  • Chapter 19. "I was a little bit intimidated by Karen Durbin"
  • Chapter 20. "We're against gentrification, and we're for fist-fucking"
  • Chapter 21. "The music section was suddenly in flower"
  • Chapter 22. "A sitting state supreme court justice read the decision and broke down and cried"
  • Chapter 23. "We started writing what they call the New Journalism"
  • Chapter 24. "The Village Voice is an apocalyptic publication"
  • Chapter 25. "You knew that the city was going to erupt"
  • Chapter 26. "The feuds between Sarris and Kael are legendary"
  • Chapter 27. "How do you deal with hostility?"
  • Chapter 28. "We're very happy to give this to you, but please don't publicize this"
  • Chapter 29. "You should check out this young guy Donald Trump"
  • Chapter 30. "You're hiring all these Stalinist feminists"
  • Chapter 31. "I'm the greatest pimp since Duke Ellington"
  • Chapter 32. "The Obies are the only awards with integrity"
  • Chapter 33. "They thought the gays were taking over the Voice"
  • 1980-1990: "This is the dark secret that they never talk about"
  • Chapter 34. "One African American staffer in the editorial department-that's unacceptable"
  • Chapter 35. "They called it graffiti"
  • Chapter 36. "There's some music coming out of the Bronx called rap"
  • Chapter 37. "Greg was a fully formed genius"
  • Chapter 38. "The editors and writers were always going into his office and yelling at him"
  • Chapter 39. "They demanded that they take our Pulitzer away"
  • Chapter 40. "We were like a kumquat"
  • Chapter 41. "Certain deaths hit really hard"
  • Chapter 42. "We had a bomb scare once a month"
  • Chapter 43. "You must be Wayne Barrett"
  • Chapter 44. "I had a shoot-out with Nat Hentoff on the abortion issue"
  • Chapter 45. La Dolce Musto
  • Chapter 46. "I'm going to sell the paper to someone worse than me"
  • Chapter 47. "Those people at the Village Voice, they're animals"
  • Chapter 48. "Joe and I vowed that we would never go to a revolution that didn't have a swim-up bar"
  • Chapter 49. "L'affaire Karen Finley!"
  • Chapter 50. "A core of Black writers and editors began to build up"
  • Chapter 51. "Hiphop Nation"
  • Chapter 52. "Stanley was just red-eyed and ready to go"
  • Chapter 53. "Do you wanna know about a really big fight that happened in the theater section?"
  • Chapter 54. "The Voice Literary Supplement crossed pop culture and high culture"
  • Chapter 55. "We were filled with grief"
  • Chapter 56. "Christgau was hated by bands because he was so honest"
  • Chapter 57. "I got the sense I was almost being hired as an undertaker"
  • Chapter 58. "My goal was to make the Voice look like the New York Post on acid and run by communists"
  • Chapter 59. "We wanted to do things that were more global"
  • Chapter 60. "When the Tompkins Square riot hit, it was like somebody put a match to the flame"
  • Chapter 61. Do the Right Thing
  • Chapter 62. "The Central Park Five case was a big wake-up call"
  • 1990-2000: "There was some sort of cultural shift that we didn't understand"
  • Chapter 63. "The culture that we championed became part of the mainstream"
  • Chapter 64. "The art world is so peculiar"
  • Chapter 65. "Independent films were coming into their own during the '90s"
  • Chapter 66. "I've always called it BAJ, Black advocacy journalism"
  • Chapter 67. "Wayne was the first guy who wrote a biography of Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani"
  • Chapter 68. "I was very ignorant about trans people"
  • Chapter 69. "We were the brats who were kicking them in the shins every week"
  • Chapter 70. "Things got a little weird when Karen became editor in chief"
  • Chapter 71. "Hammer, Drano, a pillow"
  • Chapter 72. "It's like herding ocelots who are also attacking you"
  • Chapter 73. "Wicked Don Forst"
  • Chapter 74. "You should go do something big"
  • Chapter 75. "What's Craigslist?"
  • 2000-2023: "Wish You Were Here"
  • Chapter 76. "I'm from the internet, and the internet is coming!"
  • Chapter 77. "Stop the presses!"
  • Chapter 78. "You are choosing the winners!"
  • Chapter 79. "We have to utilize the web to stay relevant"
  • Chapter 80. "Slut Boy"
  • Chapter 81. "They had complete contempt for the paper"
  • Chapter 82. "The inmates were running the institution"
  • Chapter 83. "Donald Trump said yes!"
  • Chapter 84. "They love firing people"
  • Chapter 85. "If the National Organization of Women calls, just fucking hang up on them"
  • Chapter 86. "It wasn't my Village Voice anymore"
  • Chapter 87. "Wayne couldn't believe that Trump was winning"
  • Chapter 88. "The Voice can bring to bear a history"
  • Afterword
  • Acknowledgments
  • Bibliography
  • Index
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Former Village Voice nightlife columnist Romano debuts with a phenomenal oral history of the alternative weekly from its founding in 1955 through the 2018 shutdown of editorial operations. Drawing on more than 200 interviews with Voice personnel, Romano explores the many vibrant personalities, colorful stories, and heated disputes that defined the publication. Founding editor-in-chief Dan Wolf is remembered for championing young writers who "were actually living what byline was about," and cultural critic Greg Tate comes across as an erudite polymath whom features editor Lisa Kennedy credits for opening up "an incredible space for people to imagine writing whatever the fuck they wanted." There's no shortage of drama, such as when short-tempered jazz critic Stanley Crouch punched music writer Harry Allen over Allen's defense of hip-hop ("In the interest of talking against the promotion of thuggish behavior, I smacked him," Crouch says). Romano is unafraid to cast a critical eye, devoting a devastating chapter to the Voice's scant early coverage of the AIDS epidemic; editor Richard Goldstein recalls that "there was a reluctance on the part of people to do something that was so negative about sex." Brimming with riveting anecdotes and capturing its subject's rollicking spirit, this is a remarkable portrait of the "nation's first alternative newspaper." Photos. Agent: Betsy Lerner, Dunow, Carlson & Lerner. (Feb.)

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review

When readers see the name of the NYC newspaper the Village Voice, they may instantly recall its radical and important journalistic coverage of some of the most important issues of the day, such as the Vietnam War, civil rights, the AIDS crisis, and 9/11. Romano interned and worked at the Voice for eight years. Her book is an absorbing firsthand history of the publication, recounting its history and cast of characters (from Mailer to Musto to Dash), either through their writings or the more than 200 interviews Romano conducted. Chapters about each era of the Voice are short, and there is little analysis. Instead, readers are left to interpret the vibe and meaning of those periods of Voice history. VERDICT An exceptional resource in which readers get a real flavor of the exciting and troubling times throughout the Village Voice's run and the opportunity to draw their own conclusions about its rise (and fall in 2017). Recommended for academic libraries and comprehensive journalism collections.--Maria Ashton-Stebbings

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review

A chronicle of a famed publication. Journalist Romano makes a zesty book debut with a polyphonic oral history of the iconic Village Voice. Drawing from more than 200 interviews with writers, editors, photographers, proofreaders, interns, critics, artists, and activists, the author tells the story of the feisty newspaper, founded in 1955 by journalist Dan Wolf, psychologist Ed Fancher, and novelist Norman Mailer, to offer a forum for independent reporting. "Our philosophy," said Richard Goldstein, who served as editor, "was you do not hire an expert; you hire someone who is living through the phenomenon worth covering." Poets were hired as poetry critics, dancers as dance critics; Jules Feiffer became the resident cartoonist. From the outset, the Voice celebrated and encouraged personal journalism on issues that mattered to Greenwich Village and beyond, including civil rights, off-Broadway theater, jazz clubs, hip-hop, AIDS, gay activism, the women's movement, and independent films. Former editor Joe Levy notes that it "that took things seriously--small things, developing things, emerging things--that other places didn't." As Yippies co-founder Jim Fouratt comments, "At its very peak--the '60s, '70s, '80s--the Village Voice was the go-to place to find out what was happening in music, film, local politics, national politics, books, what was happening in the art world. The Voice had the cultural elite." Romano's interviewees reveal internal squabbles and rivalries, as well as changes resulting from a succession of owners: wealthy man-about-town Carter Burden, New York magazine founder Clay Felker, irascible mogul Rupert Murdoch, New Times Media, and billionaire Peter Barbey. "The Village Voice is an apocalyptic publication," one writer opined; "every four or five years they have another apocalypse." Now only an online publication, the Voice, Romano asserts, is evidence of a void in journalism created by "greedy, imperious, and/or incompetent and negligent management." Eyewitness testimony makes for a vibrant media history. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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