When last we were here, in my collection of emails from Lee Israel, we learned that Lee was working on a memoir, and also that money was tight, so she was looking for copy-editing assignments. We pick things up on…
4/20/07
eager to read your piece. cannot open it. I’ll pursue later. Did you know that there are only 49 entrants in this year’s Miss America contest? Nobody wants to be Miss I Da Ho.
4/26/07
[Note: This refers to Lee’s old friend Elaine Stritch appearing on TV’s 30 Rock as Alec Baldwin’s mother.]
Thanks for the “heads-up.” (god I hate noncewords) I will watch it if I am sober.
I hope Stritch as his Mom is as nice to him as he was to his pig-kid.
6/19/07
Hello Funny Guy … Thank you for the recommendation. I will be doing the stint offered by Jackie H. You were right; I did work for Instructor [magazine] during my Scholastic tenure. I’ll be seeing you, but I’d like to avoid Rene. Last time I spoke to her I was drunk and I called her mean-spirited. Is there veritas in Johnny (sp) Walker? I have an agent, a coterie of impressive people who are calling my memoir hilarious, and who knows. Scott Fitzgerald said there were no second acts, but he was a drunken diabetic screwing Sheila Graham.
8/28/07
seventh inning stretch
what are you wearing?
10/14/07
Hello Jack … I saw a classified for senior copy editor at Scholastic on a website this morning. Is Renee leaving? Why?
New Yorker finally said no to my memoir despite one senior editor being over the top about it. Was a question of morality. You know of course about my life as a literary forger. I thought I’d be devastated, but never have I had such a response to anything I’ve written, even the books. so I’m not undone at all.
How are you? I heard about your promotion, which is probably old news by now. Russell Smith goggled you. Was it good for you? Lee
10/26/07
Rachel Maddow (sp?), a brilliant young Air America commentator (the commie lesbo), just mentioned how cute and imaginative it was to have Natalie Portman edit your magazine.
11/12/07, 5:33 pm
Jack just this morning received news that simon and
schuster has made an offer to my agent. They are
publishing my memoir, praise jesus Lee
7:11 pm
We didn’t take whatever they offered. My agent asked for thrice, and we got it.
Tell you something about not having an agent. This piece came to S&S through an editor at the New Yorker who was outvoted; he loved it and wanted to use it. He told his book editor at S&S about it. We had a deal in a week. I’d sent the same memoir to New Yorker before I had an agent. They refused it with one of those polite, formatted No-thank-you notes. I’ll see you one of these days soon. Please tell MapMan my good news. I love you both. Lee
12/3/07
Dinner with you and Mappy to help celebrate tremendous good fortune. Yours is on me. I owe you one. Can you just hear Bette Davis saying the last three lines? No? You must be straight. Lee
7/24/08, 1:09 pm
Jack I read and loved that review in VSL. My editor sent it to me. But you might have noticed that there is an enormous story about me in today’s New York times and a damning little piece in the Post. love ya lee
1:25 pm
[on being the “toast of the town”:]
It beats welfare.
7/25/08
[from the last page of Lee’s memoir: “Not too long after house arrest was done, and still in my probationary period, I found a staff position copyediting the venerable classroom magazines at Scholastic, the Spring Byington of the publishing world.”]
I love the Spring Byington line, but no one is gonna get it. . She was the mother in Little Women …always the sweet, smiling, darling,slightly dithered gray=hair lady. Just like Scholastic.
I did so many interviews and photo sessions today…and articles about me and the book will be in the London Telegraph and in France, and all over New York. So mostly the book is .. a good thing.let me hear about our dinner. I am really like a notorious writer globally. lee
7/26/08
Man came to interview me for what I suspect is going to be a big story in the London Telegraph. The English are all adither about the book because I successfully imitated their Lordship of the Smoking Jacket, Noel Coward. He went into Rizzoli’s (sp?) to buy the Coward letters in which my letterss were taken to be the real McCoy. And the saleswoman said to him “Did you read about that terrible woman!”
Speaking of terrible women, has Rene learned about the book. (Actually I am quite fond ot her.) lee
7/28/08
Jack But enough about me … The New York Times Sunday book review was just read to me by my agent (in tears). But they were happy tears. It’s a fucking rave. Everything is in it … more out of the closet than I wanted to be…even includes Scholastic and the Spring Byington line. People are going to go around those Soho offices saying (to be read as Don Rickles) “What?” lee
7/29/08
Some reviewer who didn’t like my book said I’d attacked Scholastic through the Spring Byington comparison. Hogwarts! Byington always played the sweetest ladies of middle years, a little fuddled by the advancing times, but a darling — except, of course, for her virulent Jew hatred.
12/18/08
Love it that you sent me that NPR stuff; sent something about it off to Liz (not Lipshitz, Smith) I couldn’t tell, except for Milk, which other movies you reviewed. I liked Milk very much, and I just rented the documentary. Going to watch tonite or tomorrow. I didn’t like Jennifer at the Wedding. Dysfunctional family movies are a bore, especially when they include sundry toastings. And I hate the name Jennifer; also weddings. Have you seen Doubt? It’s just a gigantic movie-hoot. Our Lady of the Accents has gone too far lately.
You know women have gone too far when gay men go gaga over them .
Hope you are well and, dare I say, happy. ….as ever lee
P.S. You said “iconic.! Stop it now,
12/19/08, 7:08 am
But I think there was a Jennifer At The Wedding. Mine was an act on comedic conflation. I wasn’t sure, but I thought it might be funny. The writer who’s adapting my book for the flickers has a treatment due any day now. And then we lunch. I think it is still the guy who wrote Avenue Q.
I wanted Elaine May, but people think she might be dead;or Carrie Fisher (sp); but she isn’t reliable on a start-to-finish basis, or so they say, but they also say that falling in love is wonderful … lee
11:21 am
Now I remember. It was Jennifer’s Big Fat Greek Wedding
1:16 pm
No. You’ve confabulated wrong. It was Four Big Fat Greek Weddings and a Bris.
1:23 pm
correction
er … I meant “conflated.” I need a good copy editor.
Jack Silbert, curator