Bet-A-Million Gates

By William Bryk, on January 29, 2009

Who’s Who in the United States often rewards the casual reader because it reveals how its subjects view themselves. In the 1905 edition, the great J. Pierpoint Morgan modestly calls himself a banker and William Randolph Hearst a publisher. John W. Gates bluntly calls himself a capitalist. He lists no honorary doctorates, philanthropies, or hobbies. A reckless bravo who won and lost fortunes on the toss of a coin or the turn of a card, he had entered American folklore as “Bet-a-Million” Gates, who flinched at no stakes and feared no odds.

January 29th, 2009 | Category: Frenzied Financiers, Scoundrels | Leave a comment

No Substitute for Experience

By William Bryk, on March 5, 2002

In Roscoe, William Kennedy continues working the vein prospected by two minor classics, William Riordan’s Plunkett of Tammany Hall and Edwin O’Brien’s The Last Hurrah. The seventh Kennedy novel set in the author’s hometown of Albany, New York, is elegantly crafted, often uproariously funny, and betrays both a profound understanding of human frailty born of original sin and the sure knowledge that man born of woman is doomed to sorrow.

His characters, of course, enjoy themselves as best they can, usually at each other’s expense. Thus, one of Roscoe’s numerous memorable minor characters, Mac, one of the cops who assassinated Legs Diamond

March 5th, 2002 | Category: Books, Scoundrels, Statesmen | Comments are closed

The Persistence of Memory

By William Bryk, on March 21, 1999

Salvador Dalí came to New York for the first time in 1934. In a symptom of the Civil War to come, the provincial government of Catalonia had unilaterally declared independence from Spain. The subsequent street fighting terrified him and he would not return to Spain for many years.

He was Catalonian

March 21st, 1999 | Tags: | Category: Art & Music, Scoundrels | Comments are closed