Miss MacIntosh, My Darling: Chapter 25, Leo Lerman

Tune in and listen to Chapter 25 of Marguerite Young’s epic novel Miss MacIntosh, My Darling. To start off, reader Leo Lerman talks about how he involuntarily served as a model for the character Mr. Spitzer. Listen to Lerman's eerie resemblance with the character and how he finds a voice that narrates his own fiction. We then begin to understand that “the only music worth hearing was the music he had never heard… and the only friend was the friend he had never met, and the only loves were the loves he had never loved.”

Leo Lerman (1914-1994) was an American writer and editor who worked for Condé Nast Publications for more than 50 years. Lerman also wrote for the New York Herald Tribune, Harper's Bazaar, Dance Magazine, and Playbill. Selections from his journals were published in 2007 as The Grand Surprise: The Journals of Leo Lerman, detailing his social and business interactions with a remarkable number of famous and important people who passed through the New York arts scene from the 1940s to the '90s.

In 1976-77, Charles Ruas produced a series of WBAI radio programs focused on literature and radio performance, called The Reading Experiment. As part of this series, Miss MacIntosh, My Darling was read over a year-long period by Marguerite Young’s contemporaries from the New York City literary, musical and theatrical communities. All readings are underscored with soundscapes and music by artist Rob Wynne.

This program has been restored by The Clocktower Radio; with the assistance of Charles Ruas; and by agreement with The Yale Beinecke Library, home to the Marguerite Young Papers. Special thanks to Dr. Contance Eichenlaub for her passion and generosity.

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