Before and After. Wartime Chongqing as Captured by Melville Jacoby's Lens.
After spending four years with the research, writing and re-writing that shaped Eve of a Hundred Midnights, I feel sometimes as if I've lived in Melville Jacoby's shoes. At least, I feel as if I've seen the world through his eyes. As you can see in the following photos, Chongqing was a place of extensive striving and, after years and years of bombing — during his stints there in 1940 and 1941 Mel experienced 168 air raids — deeply scarred yet incredibly resilient.
Exploding Whales (Also, I Wrote a Book)
My head hurts. My carpal tunnels hurt. My blood is mostly coffee sludge. I've become a master of doctoring up Top Ramen. I know the shame that is ordering pizza from a place three blocks away because I can't be bothered to stand up because this sentence is connecting with that one and this with this one and oh my god I'm actually writing, there are words coming out and they make sense and I actually think I have something here and wow I'm going to win the pulitzer and.
More Artifacts From a Journalist's Life: Correspondence
Though Mel spent years away from his home and family in Los Angeles, California, he was a dedicated correspondent. He wrote to his mother, Elza, and stepfather, Manfred, regularly, and also to other relatives, friends, and coworkers. Mel's letters were reflective, touchingly honest, incredibly detailed, and often quite humorous. Later, in my book about Mel's life, as well as in future blog posts, I'll quote extensively from these letters to give you more of a direct sense of what Mel wrote and how he thought. For now, I thought I'd offer a glimpse of how these letters, their envelopes, even something as simple as their return addresses invokes nostalgia for an earlier era.
One Last Assignment One More Time
After much anticipation, last week I released a new video describing Melville Jacoby's fantastic life. It also reintroduces the work I'm doing to tell his story. Click the photo in this post or the link below to view it. I'm really proud of this video. I'd love to hear your opinion and for you to share it with anyone interested in wartime journalism, storytelling, or 1930s and 40s nostalgia. Meanwhile, I'm preparing for a trip to Southern California to meet one of Mel's friends from his time as an exchange student in China. I'm so fortunate he's still around, and willing to speak with me. I'll also be visiting my grandmother to properly review and inventory her collection of materials from and related to Mel's life. Keep reading to learn what I'm up to.
Discovering One More Friend of Melville Jacoby's
By now, anyone closely following Melville Jacoby's story knows a little bit about Chan Ka Yik. Last week, a few members of my family and I met Chan's daughters for something of a reunion between our two families. As I've already described, that was itself was a lovely experience. But Chan was not Mel's only friend in China, nor was he the only Chinese man Mel met who later moved to the United States. My visit to Palo Alto also stirred up a fantastic coincidence. This is the sort of thing that can provide a completely different glimpse three quarters of a century in the past. Click the link to read about that coincidence, and to hear the fantastic discovery I made as a result of that visit.
Won't You Be My Mrs. Luce?
"He was you at that stage of the game," my grandmother said. "It was a different way, but that's a story too. How does a young reporter like Bill Lascher get started?"
This is how. By not letting go. Two weeks ago I completed a quarter teaching a community college class on multimedia journalism and turned in the last of two small freelance assignments on my plate. All that's left for me is what I'm doing now: throwing all that I have on the table in pursuit of this one last assignment. Everything I have, everything I can be is now focused on this account of the first Time Magazine reporter killed in the line of duty, this tale of Melville Jacoby, this story of my family's beloved cousin and this man who lived so fantastically before he died so tragically.
"He had the good luck to be on an airplane with Mrs.[Clare Booth] Luce [the wife of Time Magazine founder Henry Luce, who was also on that plane], who was impressed with him." my grandmother said. "You have to be on an airplane with someone who will be impressed with you."
Studying Melville Jacoby in Eugene
Many of you have heard about Melville Jacoby by now. Those who haven't can read more about him there, and elsewhere on my blog. Now that the seventieth anniversary of his death is upon us, I'm renewing my work writing the book Mel never got to write.
Later today I'm headed down to Eugene, OR, to visit the special collections at the University of Oregon library. There, I'll peruse the manuscripts of the Charles E. Stuart Collection. Stuart, you'll recall, was the dentist and amateur radio enthusiast in Ventura, Calif. who received radio broadcasts Mel set up from XGOY, the official Republic of China radio station in wartime Chungking, China (now known as Chongqing).
A Letter From Melville Jacoby's Best Friend
I was digging through the collection of materials I have at my place related to Melville Jacoby and found a photocopy of a lovely letter written to Mel 74 years ago today. The note was sent by Chan Ka Yik, one of Mel's best friends. The two were roommates at Lingnan University in Canton (now Guangzhou) while Mel was an exchange student there. The letter responds to an earlier mailing Mel had sent. It describes Chan's fondness for his roommate, and, in many ways, is the sort of letter anyone might send to catch up with an old friend. But these greetings are described against a backdrop of war. Though calm seemed to have returned when Chan wrote the letter, it was clearly still a presence.
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