However, there was a quality of mounting and cumulative revelation in the original interviews which I had decided was an integral part of the way Howard Hughes had told his life story, and to sacrifice that for the sake of chronology would have meant missing the point of the whole exercise. Hughes on several occasions told stories and later corrected them, or deliberately left a gap which he filled in when the mood suited him. In these instances the method again revealed the man, and I have not tampered with the way he worked his way round to nailing down the truth as he saw it. He says in his Preface, ‘I believe the reader will see I have tried very hard to tell the truth,’ and the revelatory and corrective passages in the text constitute a proof which I had no right to destroy.
When the cutting and pasting was done and the book had reached a near-final form, I found a number of anecdotes, conversations and lengthy statements of opinion that seemed to have no obvious historiographic slot in the narrative. They took place at various times and referred to different periods; some of them were in response to stories I had heard about Howard which I retold to him, so that they were more dialogue than narrative and would lose their meaning if the form were bastardized. Rather than omit these bits and pieces, I pulled them together into a section called INTERLUDE: CONVERSATIONS AND OPINIONS, which follows Part III of the book. The arrangement of the book into four parts, by the way, is my responsibility and does not necessarily conform to the three major interview sessions. The breaks in the text, however – the unnumbered chaptering and the spaces separated by three asterisks (***) – generally represent either a separate night-session of talk or a switching-off of the tape recorder.
As for other omissions from the orginal verbatim transcript, they have been made only for legal purposes – to avoid libel and unwarranted defamation of character – or because Hughes for some reason specifically requested it. But the latter instances are very few.
III
SOME FINAL APPRAISAL on my part may seem obligatory, but I am going to duck it. Howard Hughes can speak for himself, so for the moment I will leave the field to the critics and historians. One thing I know: the real Hughes will care very little what they say. I only hope that by telling as much as I have told I have not cheapened in any way the flesh, bones and heart of this book, which lie in Howard’s words and not in my own. He said toward the end, ‘This has been one of the most extraordinary events in my life. Talking with you has been an adventure. It’s cleared the air for me. I don’t regret it for a minute.’
I have related my part of the tale in the interests of clearing up the mystery of how the autobiography came to be and dispelling the inevitable gossip concerning authenticity. But when the book is read the importance of the mystery will vanish, as will the gossip. Howard Hughes may become a mythic figure in American history, but the myths surrounding him will be laid to rest.
Just as the dry business articles dealing with Hughes have undoubtedly prepared the reader poorly for the man who reveals himself in these pages, so my correspondence with him a year ago prepared me poorly for the human being I met. I expected a certain stiltedness, a stiffness of manner. Instead I found a warmth and dry humor, as well as an acuteness of insight into American manners and ethics, which brought me up short again and again. Several times, at the end of the talk session, I found myself musing about the America that Howard Hughes had revealed to me in the course of our conversatiion, an America I was only aware of second- or third-hand. I knew little of high finance or of the interplay between business and politics – things that were of everyday familiarity to Hughes. But he never condescended to me, and I think the reason was that he was too anxious to explain and reflect. No one, after meeting him or reading his autobiography, could call him innocent; and yet there was about him, in the interstices between his stubbornness, his pride, his selfishness and cynicism, his eccentricity, his arrogance and sadness, a quality of innocence that may be uniquely American. He was a Texas boy, the ‘Sonny’ of his childhood who had suddenly awakened from a dream to find himself with two billion dollars and the consequent paradox that he was both slave and free man. In some ways he was like the narrator of Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, looking in from the outside at a world of money and opulence, finding it unsatisfactory, and dreaming, in the end, of ‘that fresh green breast of the New World that flowered once for Dutch sailors’ eyes’ and was no more. Howard had his dreams too.
One afternoon in Florida toward the end of the many interview sessions that form the basis of his memoirs, he telephoned me. I was transcribing the tapes; I was tired and a little fed up. We had been wrangling for several days about something – the subject is unimportant – and there was no question but that our personal relationship had momentarily suffered. He was sniping at me and I was sniping back. After a 48-hour break he called and said, ‘What are you doing tonight?’ I told him I didn’t have any plans. ‘Well, I thought I’d come down and visit you,’ he said, ‘if you weren’t busy. Not to do any more interviewing. I just thought maybe we could sit around and talk… you know, about this and that. Like friends do. No discussions about my sex life and business deals. No arguments. We’ll just chat.’ He asked hesitantly, ‘Would that be okay?’
I replied that it would be a pleasure and he said he would be driven down by his driver between seven-thirty and eight. ‘By the way,’ he added, ‘is your television set working?’ I said it was, and he arrived a few minutes before eight o’clock. I had turned off the air-conditioner, which was required for Howard’s visits even though the temperature was in the 80s, and the fridge was stocked with beer for me and Poland Springs mineral water for him. I stubbed out my last cigarette when I heard his tap on the door, dumped the ashtray in the wastebasket and sprayed the room quickly with Lysol disinfectant to kill the odor.
Howard sat down in an easy chair and stretched out his long legs beside his briefcase. He always carried an oversized battered brown leather briefcase filled with various papers, graham crackers, packages of Kleenex, ballpoint pens, sanitary paper cups and paper toilet-seat covers. If he ever blew his nose he went immediately to the bathroom and flushed the Kleenex down the toilet. He wore the usual getup of sport shirt, cardigan, rumpled slacks and loafers. Without preamble, he said, ‘You like baseball, don’t you? Let’s turn on the TV. There’s a good ball game on. Giants against the Dodgers.’
I had been a Dodger fan in my youth, before they deserted Brooklyn for Los Angeles and before I deserted New York’s West End Avenue for Ibiza, so I said, ‘Sure.’ I switched on the TV and Willie Mays’ grave smile filled the screen in a pre-game interview. The Dodgers were challenging the Giants for the Western division pennant in the National League. Mays explained the situation and Howard listened intently, straining forward to hear although the volume was turned up high enough to back me into a corner on a couch on the far side of the room. Howard turned to me and said, ‘Let’s put a bet on the game. I always like to root for one team or the other, and a little bet makes it easier.’ I asked him which team he wanted. No, he explained, that was up to me.