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ters, many of which appear in this volume.
It was only in the mid-1970s that Bernstein finally left Fe-
licia to take up with Tom Cochran, who’d been his de facto
lover since 1971. But soon Felicia was stricken with cancer—
the suspicion has lingered that somehow it was a direct result of
her husband’s departure—so Bernstein moved back home and
saw her through until her death in 1978. He was devastated by
her demise and lamented that she never forgave him for having
left. However, her departure does seem to have freed something
in Bernstein, who now became, at the age of sixty, much more
open about his homosexuality. (By the way, Simeone does not
include any material related to Bernstein’s relationship with
Tom Cochran, which seems an odd omission.)
A general impression one gets from these letters is the sense
that Bernstein wanted to be loved by everyone, and that he
drove himself mercilessly to this goal, however unachievable.
A work titled “Bernstein Agonistes” would depict a man torn
by inner conflicts involving his need to be everything to every-
one. He always felt that he wasn’t doing enough. When com-
posing, he wondered if he should be conducting; when writing
musicals, he felt he should be working on an opera.
Added to the mix was Bernstein’s Jewish identity. He needed
to prove himself as a Jewish man in a world that was still quite
anti-Semitic. Excused from military service during World War II
due to health problems, he learned from afar about the destruc-
tion of European Jewry by the Nazis. When he conducted in Vi-
enna and in Bayreuth, Germany, Jews all over the world felt a
sense of pride in his triumph. In my own family, Bernstein was
worshiped as a “Jewish boy who made good.” His Young Peo-
ple’s Concerts and his Omnibus Series were must-hear events at
our house. My mother bought tickets to see
West Side Story
on
Broadway within the first month of its opening.
Behind the scenes, the letters about the making of
West Side
Story
will be of great interest to anyone who’s a fan of the bril-
liant musical. We learn about the difficulty that Bernstein had
collaborating with Jerome Robbins, who was notoriously diffi-
cult to work with, and that he almost quit the show because of
Robbins.
Now for a couple of complaints about this book, as well-
produced as it generally is. Simeone does not include many let-
ters from Bernstein’s later years. There are no letters about his
refusal to accept the National Medal of Arts from President
George H. W. Bush as a protest against the revocation of an
NEA grant for an AIDS exhibit when it was learned that the
show featured works by Robert Mapplethorpe and Andres Ser-
rano. A second quibble is that the footnotes are often unneces-
sarily long and compete for space with the letters themselves.
Those peccadilloes aside,
The Leonard Bernstein Letters
opens a window into the world of one of the most accomplished
and brilliant artists of the 20th century. His letters reveal his
search for meaning through his involvement, not with abstract
ideas for the most part, but with the flesh-and-blood world of
family, friends, lovers, and, of course, his music.
38
The Gay & Lesbian Review
/
WORLDWIDE
Provincetown 2013
Check out the beaches, chewed back
by last fall’s hurricanes. At Herring Cove
new showers, change rooms, snack shops
cluster in the reconfigured dunes,
wooden roofs angling clean
above the sands, a rustic version
of the Sydney Opera House. The sea
seduces with same old tides, the air
with its same salt tang. Seaweed clings
to swimmers’ flesh in dark designs,
Rorschach-like. Appetites grow
for clam and lobster rolls, fried cod,
cilantro mojitos, tea dance
and after, the glamour and the camp.
A full moon settles into pillows of cloud
while Cher slices on her skateboard
through gathering crowds, races the ebb
and flow along Commercial Street.
J
UDITH
S
AUNDERS