I really believe a wide range of readers will connect with the overriding “human interest” aspects of this book, from the way Bernard fully embraced living a long life of exploration, creativity, and adventure, to his insatiable quest for human connection. 

Michael Schreiber – 31 October 2016

The Back Flap

Bernard Perlin (1918-2014) was an extraordinary figure in twentieth century American art and gay cultural history, an acclaimed artist and sexual renegade who reveled in pushing social, political, and artistic boundaries. His work regularly appeared in popular magazines of the 1940s, 50s, and 60s; was collected by Rockefellers, Whitneys, and Astors; and was acquired by major museums, including the Smithsonian, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Tate Modern.

As a government propaganda artist and war artist-correspondent, he produced many now-iconic images of World War II. His portrait clients included well-known figures in the arts and politics. Among his most intimate companions were Vincent Price, George Platt Lynes, Paul Cadmus, Glenway Wescott, Leonard Bernstein, and Truman Capote.

From the 1930s on, he also daringly committed to canvas and paper scenes of underground gay bars, nude studies of street hustlers, and other aspects of his open and active gay life.

In One-Man Show, Michael Schreiber chronicles the storied life, illustrious friends and lovers, and astounding escapades of Bernard Perlin through no holds barred interviews with the artist, candid excerpts from Perlin’s unpublished memoirs, never-before-seen photos, and an extensive selection of Bernard Perlin’s incredible public and private art.

About the book

What is the book about?

I had the tremendous good fortune to know the American painter Bernard Perlin (1918-2014) in the last years of his long life. Together, we recorded his extraordinary life story through a series of interviews that supplemented writings he was working on toward a potential memoir. We also spent many hours together reviewing his life’s work as an artist. Bernard Perlin is perhaps best known for his work as a World War II propaganda artist and war artist-correspondent, as well as his postwar work as a “magic realist” painter. He moved in extraordinary social circles in the arts, counting many luminaries amongst his most intimate friends. He was also a fearlessly openly gay man during a fearfully closed period in our recent history. One-Man Show chronicles Bernard Perlin’s incredibly storied life – a life spent in pursuit of his remarkable creativity and passion for human connection.

How long did it take you to write it?

The interviews with Bernard Perlin took place over the course of two and a half years, from April 2011 through October 2013. I didn’t begin seriously working on the book, though, until after my first meeting with my publisher in New York in March 2014. When the project was greenlighted by Bruno Gmünder a full year later, I began burning the proverbial midnight oil to get everything done before a deadline set for fall of 2015. I had almost 100 hours of audio to listen through and transcribe, as well as images to collect and edit, and an introduction to write – all while maintaining a full schedule at my “day job” as a special education teacher. I’ve got permanent bags under my eyes to show for it, but a big smile is holding them up now that the book is done and out!

Where did you get the idea from?

I first came to know Bernard Perlin not through one of his extraordinary paintings, but through an exquisite photographic portrait taken of him in 1940 by the legendary photographer George Platt Lynes. I was instantly intrigued by this mysterious figure, about whom very little information was then available online or in books, aside from some images of his own evocative artwork. Compounding the fascination for me was the fact that I had found the name of this mystery man, Bernard Perlin, threaded through all of the books I was then reading about the illustrious gay social and artistic circle of which George Platt Lynes had been a part from the 1930s through the 1950s. It seemed that Perlin had been intimately connected with this great New York gay “cabal,” whose members and visitors had included such artists as Paul Cadmus, Jared French, George Tooker, and Pavel Tchelitchew, the impresario Lincoln Kirstein, and such literary figures as Glenway Wescott, E. M. Forster, Somerset Maugham, Christopher Isherwood, and Truman Capote. Bernard Perlin was the last living member of this extraordinary company, and so I worked up my courage and sent him what was essentially a “fan letter.” He responded with a phone call that left me completely in his thrall. Bernard, I quickly realized, was a storyteller the likes of whom I had never before encountered. After a flurry of further friendly phone calls and letters, I was summoned out to his home in Connecticut for an in-person meeting.

When did you start writing the book?

Without realizing I was starting a book, One-Man Show truly began after my first weekend visit with Bernard Perlin in April 2011, when I transcribed my audio recordings of our first long conversations about his life and art. I sent these transcripts to Bernard, who enjoyed them so much that he encouraged me to keep recording our talks. I began thinking that perhaps this would lead to some sort of “oral history” project about Bernard’s life and artistic career that I would eventually give to the Archives of American Art at the Smithsonian. But then that summer he showed me several essays he had written toward a potential memoir. I in turn encouraged him to keep writing these, but he ultimately abandoned the endeavor as our “recording sessions” continued on in earnest. As wonderful and as authentic to his voice as his writings are, he decided that he preferred to let the rest of his story unfold in a raw, conversational way between us. He thought this approach was “less pretentious, more honest, more real.” And so, between his writings, our growing stack of transcribed conversations, and the images of his artwork that I had been acquiring, a book started to seem like an inevitability.

Were there any parts of the book where you struggled?

Bernard was a wonderful storyteller. However, his tales often meandered down rabbit holes that I rarely interrupted, as his side stories were usually just as captivating as the topic we’d started off discussing. He also told many of the same stories again and again, but often added new information or corrections in his retellings. So needless to say, this all made editing a gargantuan task.

What came easily?

Interviewing Bernard Perlin for the book was always an easy and very enjoyable task. Bernard was an extraordinarily enthralling storyteller. It also certainly helped that most of our long conversations were accompanied by many glasses of wine or scotch!

Are your characters entirely fictitious or have you borrowed from real world people you know?

As much of a “larger than life” figure as Bernard Perlin was, and as incredible as the stories of his life’s adventures may seem, One-Man Show is remarkably all true. Well, except for a few of Bernard’s “dirty” jokes!

We all know how important it is for writers to read. Are there any particular authors that have influenced how you write and, if so, how have they influenced you?

In hindsight, One-Man Show truly owes a debt of gratitude to a book my parents gave me from my Christmas wish list when I was just 15 (many eons ago!): Edie: An American Biography by Jean Stein, edited with George Plimpton. I remember being as enamored by Edie Sedgwick’s compelling life story as I was by the unique way in which the book told it: almost as though it was the transcript to a documentary film, reconstructing her story through the memories and observations of people who either knew her or could provide some context about the worlds through which she moved. More recently, the marvelous book that accompanied the film Salinger, by David Shields and Shane Salerno, approached its subject in this same documentary script style. I had the good fortune to be in direct communication with my subject for One-Man Show, but you might say that books like these indirectly influenced its interview format, and the decision to include quotes throughout the book from various other “voices” – art scholars and reviewers – about Bernard Perlin’s work.

In terms of my research for One-Man Show, I am also indebted to and was certainly influenced by the many extraordinary books I’ve devoured through the years about the great artistic and social circle of which Bernard Perlin was a part. I am still constantly poking around in these books. They include Jerry Rosco’s Glenway Wescott Personally and Wescott’s published journals (Continual Lessons and A Heaven of Words), Anatole Pohorilenko’s When We Were Three (with essays by Pohorilenko and James Crump), and David Leddick’s Intimate Companions: A Triography of George Platt Lynes, Paul Cadmus, Lincoln Kirstein, and Their Circle (for which Bernard Perlin wrote the most delicious foreword!). Lincoln Kirstein’s memoirs and Martin Duberman’s The Worlds of Lincoln Kirstein were essential reading, as was George Tooker by Robert Cozzolino, Marshall Price, and Melissa Wolfe. Cozzolino is tops when it comes to scholarship and great writing about Perlin’s artistic contemporaries. Other writers whose work on the subject of that intriguing circle I very much admire are Steven Haas, Allen Ellenzweig, and Philip Eliasoph. New favorites are Aaron Rosen, Samantha Baskind, and Erika Doss, who recently contributed incredibly insightful essays about Bernard’s most famous painting, Orthodox Boys, to the Tate’s “In Focus” project.

Do you have a target reader?

Not a specific reader particularly. In Bernard Perlin, I was blessed to have observed a fellow human being who had the ability and the courage to embrace and to dominate his life – a man who was fully occupied with living, loving, and leaving nothing unexplored that interested him. So I think his story and his art have wide appeal, in that both demonstrate that it’s not only OK but important to see and feel and live and love the way each of us uniquely does.

About Writing

Do you have a writing process? If so can you please describe it?

When I’m writing a magazine piece or a blog post, I typically start by sketching out a rough outline, although I rarely follow it from beginning to end while actually writing. That outline then becomes like the picture on a puzzle box, and my writing style the random picking up of pieces of that puzzle as I put together a fragment here, a whole sentence there, sometimes a small chunk of text until I finally have the whole picture/story filled in. In other words, I’m sort of all over the place. This is certainly how I approached writing the introduction to One-Man Show as well as the questions I prepared for my interviews with Bernard Perlin. The bulk of the work on that book, however, was in editing Bernard’s own telling of his life story through our interviews and his own writings.

Do you outline? If so, do you do so extensively or just chapter headings and a couple of sentences?

As One-Man Show is really a combined biography/memoir/art book, I had the advantage of having a built-in outline: the chronology of Bernard Perlin’s life. So I was able to differentiate out my chapters fairly easily according to general periods of his life: his early years, his time as an art student, his work as a war artist, etc. I did then outline pretty extensively under each of those headings, listing key events and people that I wanted to make sure were discussed. This was really helpful when cutting up and placing sections from my interviews with Bernard (his storytelling often went all over the place!). It also helped guide some of our later conversations, knowing there were some gaps in his life story that we needed to discuss and fill in. We got to many of these but unfortunately not all before his passing in January 2014.

Do you edit as you go or wait until you’ve finished?

I am constantly reviewing and editing as I go.

Do you listen to music while you write? If yes, what gets the fingers tapping?

I sometimes listen to classical music (anything with lyrics is too distracting!), but mostly like it “quiet” while writing or editing text.

About Publishing

Did you submit your work to Agents? N

o.

What made you decide to go Indie, whether self-publishing or with an indie publisher? Was it a particular event or a gradual process?

Initially, I sent out “pitch” emails to about a dozen major publishers and indies. Those that replied kindly said it was a worthwhile project, but not something they thought they could “sell” without there being a major multiple-city museum exhibition of Perlin’s work. In short, Bernard Perlin just wasn’t “famous” enough for an art book, and I wasn’t willing to try re-pitching only the manuscript for a potential text-only book. The book is as much about Bernard Perlin’s incredible art as it is about his extraordinary life story, and I just couldn’t fathom separating out the two. A few indies offered to publish the book if I would entirely “crowdfund” it. I thought in that case, why not just self-publish and maintain full artistic control? That was my plan when the Berlin-based publisher Bruno Gmünder came forward and expressed interest. However, it was a full year before they were able to greenlight the project, so in the meantime I forged on with getting the manuscript together. And happily, Gmünder allowed me a great deal of input (and veto power) regarding layout and the choice of images.

Did you get your book cover professionally done or did you do it yourself? I

sent my publisher a shortlist of potential images to use for the cover – examples of Perlin’s artwork and photos of Bernard. His extraordinary painting, The Bar, which is at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, was always my top choice for the cover. Happily, my publisher agreed, and took it from there.

Do you have a marketing plan for the book or are you just winging it?

It’s become a collaborative effort between my publisher Bruno Gmünder and myself. They’re an indie gay publisher, so are marketing to their core audience. I’m jumping in on some of that, but am also pitching to the art market and to general interest readers. Bernard Perlin’s art and life story truly transcend any one or two categories. As I said above, I really believe a wide range of readers will connect with the overriding “human interest” aspects of this book, from the way Bernard fully embraced living a long life of exploration, creativity, and adventure, to his insatiable quest for human connection. His own story is just as fascinating as are the titillating tales he tells about his many famous friends!

Any advice that you would like to give to other newbies considering becoming Indie authors?

Persistence and patience pay off!

About You

Where did you grow up?

In North Dakota.

Where do you live now?

I shuttle between homes in Chicago and northeastern Iowa.

What would you like readers to know about you?

As curator for the estate of Bernard Perlin, I’ve helped organize exhibitions of the artist’s work in New York, Missouri, and Virginia. My husband Jason and I are also the creators of the blog This American House, which chronicles our adventures restoring our Frank Lloyd Wright-designed home in rural Iowa.

What are you working on now?

I have been so intensively working on One-Man Show this past year and now on its promotion that I’ve only been irregularly contributing to This American House. So I have quite a long list of posts I’m wanting to write for the blog this fall. Also, One-Man Show is being adapted into a documentary film, so I’ll be starting work soon on the script (AND grant writing!). I’m very excited about exploring that new (to me) world of writing!

End of Interview:

To delve deeper into Bernard Perlin’s art and life, visit this website. If you’d like to read more about Michael and his husband’s home restoration, visit This American House.

Get your copy of One-Man Show from Amazon US or Amazon UK.