“I was invited to a dinner at the apartment of Ted Morgan on the East Side. Later, in 1982, I would write a positive review of his biography of Somerset Maugham, in which he gave a horrifying portrait of the aging writer as having lost his mind to Alzheimer’s though he was pumped full of youth-enhancing monkey glands. Virile and hyperactive but incapable of thinking, the once witty and ironic author would greet guests at the gates of his Riviera compound by present them with a welcoming handful of his own shit.”
— excerpted from CITY BOY: My Life in New York During the 1960s and ’70s
That sounds about right for the year just ending. Good riddance.
