The Gossip Columnist’s Daughter

Peter Orner’s latest novel–The Gossip Columnist’s Daughter–is so damn good, I wish I hadn’t read it. So I could enjoy the first-time experience of reading it all over again. 

I realize I have an advantage over other readers who might pick up this book. I’m familiar with the people he covers–prominent Chicago Jews in the last half of the previous century. Maybe obsessively so.

Among others there's the legal fixer Sidney Korshak--the mob's man in Hollywood—and as bunch of corrupt judges.  They're orbiting around a political universe controlled by Mayor Richard J. Daley, a human deity who was most definitely NOT Jewish. Though that didn’t keep them from worshiping him. That’s for sure.

The brightest star in this universe is Irving Kupcinet, better known as Kup, who wrote a gossip column for the Sun-Times and hosted a weekly TV talk show, which apparently a very young Orner routinely watched. As I did.

These days people tend to make fun of Kup--if they remember him at all. But, really, I don't think he gets the credit he deserves for being ahead of his times, especially on racial issues. In his autobiography, Malcolm X gave Kup a shoutout--he had to be doing something right.

Orner’s plot focuses on the very real death of Cookie, Kup’s a daughter, a Hollywood starlet, who either committed suicide or was murdered in 1963, a few days after JFK’s assassination.

Can’t be sure how Cookie died as the truth's probably concealed by powerful operatives protecting the interests of other powerful operatives. It’s sorta like a smaller version of the Kennedy assassination, which, of course, has its own connection to that constellation of 20th century Jewish Chicagoans–Jack Ruby.

In the world Orner depicts, everyone's corrupt, everything's rigged and nothing's what it seems. Dumbasses think the system's legit cause they swallow the bullshit that the newspapers fed them. And, really, what's changed in the last 60 or so years?

The writing is delightfully elliptical. Orner’s not making anything easy for you. Sometimes he uses quotation marks, sometimes he doesn’t. He moves back and forth through time and perspective, often from one sentence to the next. But if you keep up, man, what a ride. Give you one example…

Kup and his best friend, Lou, are in the locker room at the Standard Club, a private club for upscale Jews, and that moment triggers Lou's memory of a road trip they took 30 years before…

Irv points toward a swamp to the west of the road.

Out there, he says. See it? They call it Wolf Lake.

What about it?

It’s where they dumped Bobby Franks in a culvert.

Oh, Lou says and feels it in his chest. Good god, I remember.

Little Bobby Franks in his little gray suit.

To be a Jew in Chicago at that time. It was as if every Jew in the city took turns clubbing Bobby Franks on the head with a chisel.

Wasn’t the kid Leopold’s cousin?

Let's go for a walk, Irv says. Cain said to Abel.

You said it.

Did you know they stopped for sandwiches? While the kid was dead in the car. They stopped for sandwiches.

Sandwiches?

They didn't say anything after that. That way Irv and Lou used to have of talking without talking.

The Nash hurtles forward, wives in the back seat, giggling. A weekend at the beach without the children.

And then–boom–they’re back at the Standard Club 30 years later.

Lou sits on his damp towel.

Men dressing, men undressing.

Irv’s voice. Honorable Judge Holzer? How’s business, Reggie?

Splendid, Kup! Yourself?

So much said without saying it. (And if you don’t know about Leopold and Loeb or Judge Holzer--look `em up.)

The whole book’s like that—a seamless trip back and forth in time.

Great job, Peter. Really happy I signed up for your ride.