Guest Diary• BY:
Jill Krementz
We’re living in a new world. If there’s one thing we can all agree on it’s that we love our beds. More than a place to sleep, our beds are a place to read, to work, to watch TV, to share, or just stare at the ceiling. Horizontal is good.
I remember visiting the late Sonny Mehta’s Park Avenue apartment many years ago for a publishing party honoring the book of Nathan Englander, one of the many authors he published at Knopf.
“Where do you keep all your books,” I asked our host. “Under the bed,” he replied.
I daresay that during the COVID-19 lockdown we’re all spending more time, in or on, our beds. I know I am.
Here are some beds I’ve photographed over the years.
When the poet died in 1972, she left the contents of her Greenwich Village apartment to The Rosenbach Museum and Library annexed to her alma mater, Bryn Mawr College. Additionally, the museum’s Director Clive Driver, when wooing her, had brought along a small lamb from his family farm for her to cuddle while they negotiated the terms of the sale.
I enjoyed going through the archive containing my photographs as well as the program from her private service (which I attended) on February 8, 1972 at The Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church in Brooklyn. I photographed Miss Moore on nine different occasions; and visited her on a tenth. I remember the last visit vividly with Marianne begging me to eat the carefully prepared dinner sitting on a tray at her bedside so her nurse wouldn’t scold her for not eating.
Moore fans should reread her biography, Holding On Upside Down by Linda Leavell, The New Yorker profile on February 16, 1957, and the two collections of her poems edited by Grace Schulman.
At the time he lived in Queens with his wife, “the former Rosemary Dattolico,” as he referred to her in print, and their six children.
His novel and subsequent screenplay of The Exorcist earned the author accolades for being the foremost writer in a new hybrid genre: theological horror.
The novelist, best known for The Moviegoer, The Last Gentleman, and Love in the Ruins, preferred writing on his bed desk.
Whenever Joan was writing a novel and nearing the end — she felt that she had to sleep with it, literally, in the same room.
You can see her bed in the background.
Years later I saw her at Town Hall in NYC. She had spent the previous evening being honored at Drew University in Madison, New Jersey, where, coincidentally, I had an exhibition of my photographs, including this one.
“I hope that you enjoyed seeing my photo of you all blown up and mounted on the wall,” I said. She replied that she had indeed but then went on to say, ”It’s lovely Jill but I just wish you had let me make the bed.”
Of course it’s the unmade bed that makes the picture.
I had photographed Eudora Welty on several previous visits. This time she had written to me in advance saying there was “a wonderful young writer from North Carolina who would be coming to New York” and that I should take pictures of him.
Tommy is now 50 and the father of a daughter named Kai.
Nikki teaches writing at Virginia Tech telling her students that if they want to go to Mars they can’t smoke. A survivor of lung cancer, Nikki had a lung removed and explained that she is no longer eligible to go into space.
“Well, I can GO but I can’t come back because there is a rule that you can’t re-enter the atmosphere with a missing organ.”
After I had taken a variety of photographs of KAP in her living room she gave me a full tour which included her bedroom. “Oh, Miss Porter,” I exclaimed, “you look as though you spend a lot of time in your bed.” Her reply: “I only got out of it because you were coming over.”
She was delighted when I suggested she make herself comfortable once again and I was equally happy to linger a while longer. She opened a bottle of champagne pouring it into beautiful crystal glasses, one for each of us.
I complimented her on the long stemmed flutes. “I agree,” she replied in her Southern drawl. “When I made some money on Ship of Fools, I went out and bought a hundred of them.”
His coming-of-age novel A Separate Peace, set at a boys’ boarding school in New England during the early years of World War II, was long required reading for teenagers.
Henry Miller had replied to my letter asking to photograph him saying it would be fine if he could remain in his pajamas and bathrobe.
Prior to my visit I got in touch with both Anais Nin and Lawrence Durrell saying I would be visiting and it would be great if they could stop by. They did. But it wasn’t as simple as it sounds.
Anais was punctual and eager to pose with her old friend, admiring his paintings. I had pretty much given up on a visit from “Larry” as his friends called him and had called a car to take me to the airport. By then Henry Miller had retired to his bedroom, turned off the light and tucked himself in for the night.
There was a knock on the door. I thought it was my taxi. Much to my surprise it was Mr. Durrell. We said hello and he headed for his old friend’s bedroom. That’s where he jumped under the covers with his pal saying “Take a picture of us in bed together — it will be such a scandal.” It was the first time I ever found a light switch and took a photo simultaneously.
I had spent a few days with the Millars in Santa Barbara, California while working with Brad Darrach on what ended up as a six-page spread for the second issue of People Magazine. It’s hard to imagine that happening in today’s celebrity-obsessed culture.
In 1979 I visited them again, this time with my husband Kurt Vonnegut on our honeymoon.
Above the headboard are photographs of Tammy and George and their baby Georgette. The surprise triptych was installed by George when Tammy came home from the hospital after their baby’s birth. The proud father also wrote lyrics for a new song for their little girl.
I’ve rarely met a man who was into dust ruffles and Heller was no exception.
She is holding a black Raggedy Ann doll named Baby.
“For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When The Rainbow is Enuf” was the sleeper Off-Broadway hit in the summer of 1976. Shange, 27 at the time, was hailed as the new poet laureate of black womanhood.
Their suitcases, packed for their honeymoon, are on the foot of the bed.
Arthur died in 1993 at the age of 49. The annual U.S. Open is now underway and I’m guessing Jeanne is there, masked, and greeting players at the Arthur Ashe Stadium which honors the legacy of her late husband.
Generally up until 6 AM hobnobbing with her night crawling clientele, Kaufman would lounge in bed until noon.
”First I talk with my fishmonger, then I usually chat with Bobby Shields from Le Club because he’s home during the day. And I talk with Bobby Zarem.”
When Elaine died at the age of 81, the woman who started out as a waitress from the Bronx was as famous as most of her clientele.
Shortly after my photograph was published I heard Senator Dole being complimented on TV for helping his wife make the bed. “You don’t know the half of it,” he quipped. ”If the photographer hadn’t been there my wife wouldn’t have been in the room.”
Back in 1987 when Joe Biden was preparing a run for the presidency I spent some time photographing him, at his request, at work and at home.
The Senator commuted between Wilmington, Delaware and the Capitol in order to be with his children following the tragic deaths on December 18, 1972 of his wife Neilia and their one-year-old daughter Naomi in a car crash.
“I love my bed. It is larger than a desk and better designed to hold books and papers. It is softer than a desk and better designed for naps. It is the center of good things. And, day or night, everyone knows where to find me.”
Philip and his wife Franny lived in Washington Square Village where their bed was an extension of his desk.
After his friend William Stafford’s death in 1993, the poet honored him by writing a poem every morning. “I write in bed,” said Bly, “and don’t get up until the poem is done.”
I had been on a Mediterranean cruise with Kurt and our daughter Lily when our ship docked for a day at the Moroccan port. Having written in advance to Mr. Bowles, we were greeted by his emissary bearing a tray of mint tea and then whisked off to Rue Kostalyani.
The multi-faceted novelist poet and composer was still holding court for his admirers (which had recently included Allen Ginsberg) enjoying hashish, composing on his keyboard, taking a daily walk, and writing in bed.
“Like any Romantic I had always been vaguely certain that sometime during my life I should come into a magic place which, in disclosing its secrets, would give me wisdom and ecstasy — perhaps even death.”
Colson recently won his second Pulitzer for The Nickel Boys while David’s 2000 play Proof won the 2001 Tony Award for Best Play and Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
