A New York Moment: Harry Bliss On His Close Encounters With Sy Hersh

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I first met Seymour Hersh astatine nan offices of The New Yorker erstwhile nan mag moved from West Forty-Third Street to 4 Times Square. We met connected nan elevator.

Seymour asked maine what I did for nan magazine, and I told him I was a cartoonist and screen artist. He introduced himself arsenic Sy, extending his hand. We chatted briefly, and I told him I was heading backmost location to Nyack. He asked maine really I was capable to travel up pinch screen ideas if I didn’t unrecorded successful nan city.

People are often funny really I’m capable to seizure nan city, having ne'er really lived successful Manhattan (my 12 years successful Philadelphia doesn’t count). I explained to Sy that I soak up nan metropolis connected nan days I visit. I locomotion everywhere, return photographs, and make sketches successful my journal.

Sy was genuinely willing successful this. He said his thought of a terrific New Yorker screen was for illustration a “mindfuck.” This made maine laugh. Sy told maine astir a clip successful nan eighties erstwhile he was surviving successful nan East Village pinch his family. One peculiar Sunday, Sy had to return his young boy to an early tennis instruction and it happened to beryllium nan greeting aft nan Village Halloween Parade. As Sy and his boy exited their building, they discovered 1 leftover drunk parade subordinate stumbling and singing successful nan mediate of nan thoroughfare dressed successful afloat Nazi regalia, wearing assless leather chaps.

“That,” Sy said to me, “was a mindfuck—a New York City mindfuck.”

We some laughed retired loud. The elevator reached nan lobby; we shook hands and parted ways. I’m still successful touch pinch Sy. Every now and again erstwhile I person 1 of his emails, I’m ever amazed astatine really superb and hilarious he is.