George V. Higgins The Life and Writings

George V. Higgins

George V. Higgins

The Life and Writings

ERWIN H. FORD II

FOREWORD BY PETER WOLFE

McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers

Jefferson, North Carolina

Frontispiece: George V. Higgins in 1986 at the University of Buffalo (photograph by the author).

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGUING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA Ford, Erwin H., 1950 author.

George V. Higgins : the life and writings / Erwin H. Ford II ; foreword by Peter Wolfe.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-7864-9475-0 (softcover : acid free paper)

ISBN 978-1-4766-1635-3 (ebook)

1. Higgins, George V., 19391999. 2. Novelists, American20th centuryBiography. I. Title.

PS3558.I356Z63 2014

813'.54dc23

[B]

2014020127

BRITISH LIBRARY CATALOGUING DATA ARE AVAILABLE

2014 Erwin H. Ford II. All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any formor by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopyingor recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,without permission in writing from the publisher.

On the cover: George H. Higgins 1996 (authors collection) Printed in the United States of America

McFarland & Company, Inc., PublishersBox 611, Jefferson, North Carolina 28640

www.mcfarlandpub.com

For my parents,

the Reverend Erwin Howard Ford, Sr.

Florence Ford Reynolds

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Contents

Acknowledgments

ix

Foreword by Peter Wolfe

Preface

1. Strange Faiths and Cruelties

2. Cutting Up Animals in the Basement

3. Nobody Gets Writers Block

4. Double Eagle

5. Let Us Go Forward Together

6. A Ruthless Fidelity

7. The Vox Americana

8. Maximum John

9. The Litry Life

10. Whack Him Another Fee

11. Hub Man

12. The Mothers

13. That Scurvy Mob

14. A Paucity of Decorum

15. My Lost Duchess

16. A Great Swaggering Bear

17. On the Other Side Is the Abyss

Afterword

Chapter Notes

Bibliography

Index

vii

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Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the following people for their many contributions to this work. My thanks to Loretta Higgins for various permissions. Martin F. Nolan, journalist par excellence, offered many important insights on George V. Higgins. Dr. Martin Kelly, Higginss classmate and longtime friend, provided personal knowledge unavailable elsewhere. To Professor Jay Goodman of Wheaton College, Higginss friend and a wonderfully kind man, a special thanks for his memories of George Higgins at Stanford University and after.

Several Massachusetts state policemen supplied invaluable information from Higginss years as a prosecutor. The late Detective Lieutenant John D.

Butler, a wonderful, wry raconteur and law enforcement officer, was gracious and generous with his memories, as was Sergeant Ernest Finan. A number of attorneys who worked with George Higgins have now gone on to higher positions: Dean Charles Rogovin of Temple University Law School, Levin Hicks Campbell and Walter Mayo. To them, I offer sincere thanks.

Michael Mone, attorney at law, deserves a special thank you for taking his valuable time to educate me on his friendship with George Higgins over the years. Mike is a wonderfully warm human being and a great plaintiff s attorney. And David Mills, Esq., brought me into the thick of the fray with his early reminiscences of Higgins at the bar. To the Honorable Joseph L.

Tauro, Federal Judge of the First District, my sincere thanks as well. Judge Tauro holds the rare position of being simultaneously a legendary jurist and a really down- to-earth fellow. Thanks, Your Honor.

Novelist Ward Just spent ample time discussing George Higgins the writer with me. Ward himself deserves a biography to note his long career and many books. G. Gordon Liddy took time from his radio work to recall the painful period following Watergate when Higgins represented him. Gerry ONeill of the Boston Globe Spotlight Team shared thoughts on his long friendship with Higgins. And the late Robert B. Parker, Higginss friend and protg, made me aware of the Bostonian Higgins during their parallel writing careers.

ix

x

Acknowledgments

Ashbel Green, Thomas Rosenthal of the United Kingdom, and Jack McRae, all of whom dealt with George Higgins and helped him publish his 29 works, were of great help in this project. Mary Zuber, Town Clerk of Hinesburg, Vermont, led me back into the nineteenth century by way of Hinesburg Town Records. Thanks, Mary. You went above and beyond for a young professor you didnt even know. A. Scott McKinley, principal of Rockland High School, filled in blanks from the forties and fifties, and brought the Higgins family in Rockland to life. And Father Francis Sweeney, S.J., supped with me at Boston College and told me of Higgins the student.

The following people have not lived to see this work come to fruition, which saddens me. Elliot Richardson, United States attorney general and ambassador to Great Britain, spent hours with me in his Washington, D.C., office. He deserves special thanks. The Honorable James Rentschler, ambassador to Morocco, passed on three years ago. He too supplied wonderful memories of George Higgins. Doris Higgins survived her son by several years, but did not live to see his biography completed. She was a fine lady, tough as nails.

And renowned critic and friend Leslie Fiedler got me started on this project and encouraged me along the way. Thanks, Leslie. You are sadly missed.

Professor Patrick Scott, formerly head of Special Collections at the Thomas Cooper Library, University of South Carolina, aided me in burrowing through Higginss papers. My son, Ian Ford, attorney at law, worked internet wonders researching legal matters. Dr. Charles Grey of the University of North Florida read the draft and found my many errors. And Professor Peter Wolfe, a curators professor of English emeritus at the University of MissouriSt.

Louis, has shared my interest in George Higgins for many years. If there is a true expert on Higgins it is Wolfe. Professor Jeff Zorn, Senior Lecturer at Santa Clara University, did great service as well in reading this book in raw form and recommending improvements. And to Roberta Ford, the nicest girl Ive ever met, thanks for sticking by me all these years through all these drafts.

Finally, to George V. Higgins, writer, teacher, friend, thanks for many gifts. Recall Hamlet: If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart/Absent thee from felicity a while/And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain/To tell my story.

Foreword

by Peter Wolfe

The insightful, remarkably thorough Erwin Ford could write anyones biography. This tireless investigators long friendship with George V. Higgins (19391999) makes him the ideal biographer of the author of The Friends ofEddie Coyle. Ford knows his turf. Besides tracing his mans Vermont lineage, he interviewed judges and lawyers, policemen and clerks, in towns associated with Higginss ancestors in both Vermont and New Hampshire. Nor does he miss a lick, sifting carefully his own decades- long correspondence with Higgins, querying Higginss ex- schoolmates, literary friends, and colleagues from both the legal and academic fronts. Hes particularly strong on the historical record of Boston because of its importance to Higgins. The shifting relationship between the Hubs Roman Catholic majority and the Beacon Hill- WASP