By Banzay on 20:57
Filed Under: Kati, Marton
It could be Quincy Jones. It could be Brian Stokes Mitchell. It could be Glenn Close. And, of course, it could be Hillary and Bill Clinton. I am talking about the people you could meet at Richard Holbrooke's place. He was a diplomat and a journalist and an editor and a writer and an amateur historian, the husband of Kati Marton, an author herself, and he was, in essence, a one-man salon. He had a thousand friends, and he deserved every one of them.I was one of those friends -- not all that close, but close enough. We had met, as best as I can recall, in a typical Holbrooke fashion, at the screening of a movie. It was George Stevens Jr's film about his father, the Hollywood director George Stevens, and Holbrooke and I had been asked by Stevens to see an early print of the movie. I remember the movie -- it is a fine work of art -- but what stays with me from that day is Holbrooke's voluminous knowledge of film. He seemed to have seen every film ever made and learned something from each one.I had heard of Holbrooke, of course. By his late 20s, he was already a mythical figure. He had been in Vietnam. He has been the Peace Corps chief in Morocco. He has been on the White House staff and had edited Foreign Policy magazine. Holbrooke was not a mere man. He was some sort of human key: if you knew him, he could unlock much of the world for you."Have you read Rebecca West's "Black Lamb and Grey Falcon??" Holbrooke once asked me. I was writing about the war in the former Yugoslavia, and the Balkans was the subject of the West book. I went out and got the thing. In paperback it is 1181 pages long -- to this day not a single one of then read by me. I am sure Holbrooke read them all. What's more, if I asked him, I'm sure he could quote a passage or two. He was brilliant. In fact, he was that brilliant.Holbrooke was omnivorous in his associations, his reading and his appreciation of life. His friends all had "Holbrooke stories" about his excesses, his vanities, his jealousies and his enormous capacity to keep their friendship and, just as important, his own sense of humor. Whatever else he was -- and he was a writer, diplomat, editor, banker, publisher and impresario of numerous organizations -- he was a deeply serious man engaged always in the serious business of saving lives -- in Vietnam, in Afghanistan, in Bosnia. He had a monumental intellect that matched his capacity for work. Once he and I flew to Munich with a congressional delegation, and after a long flight, he hit the ground, got an hour or two of sleep, and delivered a flawless, spectacular briefing to the assembled Americans -- the political situation in Germany, the state of German-American relations, etc. He was riveting, the result you might think of spending hours on the flight preparing. Not so. The two of us used the time to catch up on gossip. He was brilliant at that, too.From time to time, we talked a bit about Afghanistan and Pakistan. I could see the situation drained him. America was supposed to win, but what did that mean? The corruption was epic -- Vietnam all over again and maybe the same outcome. The flights back and forth were long and wearying. In the summer, he came over to my place at the beach. My wife had been diagnosed with cancer -- yet again. We talked about life, about mortality. He was 69 -- not old, but not young, either. I told him what I believed. He mattered. He had saved lives in Bosnia and elsewhere. He had founded the American Academy in Berlin so that American values would always have a presence in Germany. Last week, we talked briefly at an event in New York. I thought he looked tired. "What city do you think you're in?" I asked him. He smiled. He had a lovely smile. "Kabul, Islamabad, Washington, New York," he said. Two days later, his aorta shredded and within days he was dead. Others will tell you that he was a great diplomat. No doubt. I will simply say he was an extraordinary man.
Subscribe RSS via Feed
Subscribe RSS via Email
0 comm. for this post