With baseball season underway, it seems like a good time to return to the collected e-mails of Lee Israel, as this batch heavily features her interest in our national pastime. Lee routinely watched Yankees games on TV even if, as you’ll see, she wasn’t particularly root-root-rooting for the home team.
The previous year, with the publication of her memoir and subsequent articles, reviews, and interviews, Lee had been living the high life. By 2009, though, things had calmed down somewhat. As for a movie version of the book, we didn’t really begin discussing that possibility in earnest until 2010. (Stay tuned.) Last week, I was extremely excited to see news that not only is the movie happening, with Enough Said’s Nicole Holofcener tapped to direct, but that Julianne Moore (!) will be playing Lee. Not exactly a dead ringer, but hey, that’s Hollywood. Lee would be so incredibly pleased and amused by all this, and I’m so sad that she isn’t around to experience it.
But now let’s return to April of 2009, as the Yankees were playing an exhibition game against the Chicago Cubs, the very first game to be played in the new Yankee Stadium. Lee Israel was not impressed….
4/3/09
Yankee Go Homo!
Hello Jack with the scant attention I am planning to spend on the new baseball season, I intend to root fervidly against the Yankees, because they are greedy oligarchs, playing in a stadium built with taxpayers’ money, designed for capitalist pigs, to which fathers can bring their sons only if the father happens to be a corporate giant….
How are you otherwise? Are you still wasting your talents at Scholastic? I am writing a humor piece for The New Yorker.
Obama brought a collection of songs from Broadway musicals to Elizabeth, who used to be taller. . I think he has his queens confused.
Jap Matsui just hit a home run. Shit!
lee
4/4/09
Happy birthday. Don’t you love it when schmucks say, Age is just a number … My new response is,, Yes, and death is just a word.
I am working on a humor piece because an editor there … the same guy who wanted to publish my book as a magazine piece .. I am working on a piece because he asked me to. It ain’t done yet. Neither is it accepted.yet.
Selling my forgeries on EBay, as forgeries, but I have only sold two so far. I accompany the items with a Certificate of Inauthenticity.
Actually, the New Yorker humor pieces are very good as a rule.
as ever lee
6/10/09
[On June 1, Lee’s old friend/foe/neighbor/boss Renee Glaser passed away; my then-employer—Lee’s former employer—scheduled a memorial. Lee hadn’t left the company on the best of terms.]
Hello Jack I plan to be at the memorial service tomorrow — 4 o’clock in the Greenhouse. I expect security will ask me for a name and I will offer yours. I’ll see you then best lee
8/6/09
[in response to a New York Times article I’d sent Lee, in which a handwriting expert determined that a signature by socialite Brooke Astor was a forgery (no, not one of Lee’s):]
Hi Jack This signature so-called science ..(“chirography”, something like that )– is such utter bullshit. I know my signature changes all the time, primarily dependent on my comfort and what I’m leaning on. (And whether I am Noel, Dorothy, Edna, or Louise) I signed a coupla books of mine leaving out a letter …drunk and in a hurry. The experts all make me laugh…. Hope you’re well. Always great o hear from you. lee-
P.S. The factoid I love most about the nonsense that was going on during Mrs. Astor’s last years .. they were getting her customary flowers from the neighborhhod bodegas, and I suppose she didn’t know the difference.-… I hope the Yankees lose !!!!!
8/15/09, 4:33 pm
Hi Jack I just read the Mamet trifle. Very funny. I would put a question mark after the last line, if I were doing it. I like your personal essays and I will read your new one on the morrow. OK?
About the Yankees. Yes, I ,know mine wasn’t exactly a kibosh. . You know I am not the baseball fan I was at idiotic eleven, and crazy for the Dodgers in Brooklyn, to which we moved from Jew-hating Woodside. I don’t root for the Yankees because of their greed .. especially in turning the new stadium into millionaires row. But they are an extraordinary team, and I enjoy watching them play.And I adore Mariano, the legend.
I’m a little down today, so I Googled “Lee Israel” “hilarious,” and now am feeling much better.
I just finished a piece about earworm for The New Yorker. I love it. I hope they do, too.
Goddammit it. You can never find a fly swatter when you need one
Les Paul will have to learn yet another way to play the guitar.
[The guitar legend had died three days earlier.]
Do you miss Renee? I would were I still there.
As ever, Lee.
4:36 pm
P.S.
And it’s always great to hear from you.
8/19/09
Hi Jack You do look like that guy [Patton Oswalt]. But he’s younger and much fatter.
I finally read your piece. Liked it. Reminds me of the stuff written by a famous New Yorker writer — first name Joe. there’s a movie about him — he chronicled the lives of New York characters. I learned about him the hard way, when one reviewer said I was like one of those New York characters. He’s played by the guy who portrays Julia’s husband in Julie and Julia, which I did not like. I hate Nora Ephron. She tried to have me arrested.
Because you said so, I am going to try to watch Find Me Guilty. You doubtless know that Reflux offers hundreds of movies free, to be played on one’s computer or TV. It’s the best.
Always enjoy hearing from you. as ever, lee
P.S. I let spell-check’s revision stand: changing “Netflix” to “Reflux,” which I like better.
10/18/09
[after the Yankees beat the Angels, 4–3 in 13 innings, in game 2 of the 2009 American League Championship Series:]
Damn Yankees
NUTS!
10/22/09
[after the Yankees scored 6 runs in the 7th inning of ALCS game 5 to take the lead:]
DAMN THEIR EYES
THOSE FUCKING YANKEES!
10/28/09
[Lee’s World Series prediction:]
the week ahead
Philadelphia in 4. After which Jeeter gets picked up for child molestation.
11/4/09
[just before World Series game 6; much was made of the fact that the Yankees’ Andy Pettitte was pitching on only three days’ rest, instead of the customary four:]
wow!
I went shopping this morning. And I did it on just three days’ rest.
• Volume 1: 2005–6
• Volume 2: 2007–8
Lee is/was sharp and hilarious. I’m sure you were lucky to have known her, and vice versa.
Don’t you sometimes wish the Yankees were broke and in last place so it would be more fun to root for them?
“younger and much fatter.” That’s sort of half a compliment there…maybe.
Endlessly entertaining! I can’t get enough. She wrote you these for a reason , Jack. I’m so glad she did. ” Age is just a number……yes, and death is just a word.” Did she forge that? I don’t care! what a character.
Totally enjoyed myself.