The Freaks Came Out to Write

Starred review from November 27, 2023
Former Village Voice nightlife columnist Romano debuts with a phenomenal oral history of the alternative weekly from its founding in 1955 through the 2018 shutdown of editorial operations. Drawing on more than 200 interviews with Voice personnel, Romano explores the many vibrant personalities, colorful stories, and heated disputes that defined the publication. Founding editor-in-chief Dan Wolf is remembered for championing young writers who “were actually living what byline was about,” and cultural critic Greg Tate comes across as an erudite polymath whom features editor Lisa Kennedy credits for opening up “an incredible space for people to imagine writing whatever the fuck they wanted.” There’s no shortage of drama, such as when short-tempered jazz critic Stanley Crouch punched music writer Harry Allen over Allen’s defense of hip-hop (“In the interest of talking against the promotion of thuggish behavior, I smacked him,” Crouch says). Romano is unafraid to cast a critical eye, devoting a devastating chapter to the Voice’s scant early coverage of the AIDS epidemic; editor Richard Goldstein recalls that “there was a reluctance on the part of people to do something that was so negative about sex.” Brimming with riveting anecdotes and capturing its subject’s rollicking spirit, this is a remarkable portrait of the “nation’s first alternative newspaper.” Photos. Agent: Betsy Lerner, Dunow, Carlson & Lerner.

December 1, 2023
A chronicle of a famed publication. Journalist Romano makes a zesty book debut with a polyphonic oral history of the iconic Village Voice. Drawing from more than 200 interviews with writers, editors, photographers, proofreaders, interns, critics, artists, and activists, the author tells the story of the feisty newspaper, founded in 1955 by journalist Dan Wolf, psychologist Ed Fancher, and novelist Norman Mailer, to offer a forum for independent reporting. "Our philosophy," said Richard Goldstein, who served as editor, "was you do not hire an expert; you hire someone who is living through the phenomenon worth covering." Poets were hired as poetry critics, dancers as dance critics; Jules Feiffer became the resident cartoonist. From the outset, the Voice celebrated and encouraged personal journalism on issues that mattered to Greenwich Village and beyond, including civil rights, off-Broadway theater, jazz clubs, hip-hop, AIDS, gay activism, the women's movement, and independent films. Former editor Joe Levy notes that it "that took things seriously--small things, developing things, emerging things--that other places didn't." As Yippies co-founder Jim Fouratt comments, "At its very peak--the '60s, '70s, '80s--the Village Voice was the go-to place to find out what was happening in music, film, local politics, national politics, books, what was happening in the art world. The Voice had the cultural elite." Romano's interviewees reveal internal squabbles and rivalries, as well as changes resulting from a succession of owners: wealthy man-about-town Carter Burden, New York magazine founder Clay Felker, irascible mogul Rupert Murdoch, New Times Media, and billionaire Peter Barbey. "The Village Voice is an apocalyptic publication," one writer opined; "every four or five years they have another apocalypse." Now only an online publication, the Voice, Romano asserts, is evidence of a void in journalism created by "greedy, imperious, and/or incompetent and negligent management." Eyewitness testimony makes for a vibrant media history.

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January 1, 2024

When readers see the name of the NYC newspaper the Village Voice, they may instantly recall its radical and important journalistic coverage of some of the most important issues of the day, such as the Vietnam War, civil rights, the AIDS crisis, and 9/11. Romano interned and worked at the Voice for eight years. Her book is an absorbing firsthand history of the publication, recounting its history and cast of characters (from Mailer to Musto to Dash), either through their writings or the more than 200 interviews Romano conducted. Chapters about each era of the Voice are short, and there is little analysis. Instead, readers are left to interpret the vibe and meaning of those periods of Voice history. VERDICT An exceptional resource in which readers get a real flavor of the exciting and troubling times throughout the Village Voice's run and the opportunity to draw their own conclusions about its rise (and fall in 2017). Recommended for academic libraries and comprehensive journalism collections.--Maria Ashton-Stebbings

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