Compulsion

The author of my life…

One of the truly great things about the Internet is that you can find people with whom you have lost contact over the years.

Recently, I caught up with Mikael Levin, a friend from Williams College. I had not seen him for more than 30 years.

Mikael is today a very successful photographer. His work hangs in places like the Museum of Modern Art, The Whitney, The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Victoria and Albert, among others. He has done well!

But I was more interested in his father.

In October 1973, Mikael and I were both starting our sophomore year at Williams. The Yom Kippur War in Israel interrupted his studies. He was an Israeli citizen and returned to Israel to join his army unit.  He asked if I would return his car to his parents, who lived in NY. It was an old Simca.

I drove the car down to Manhattan and delivered it to their address on the upper west side.

I had grown up in a small suburban home on Long Island. My mother taught 3rd grade in the local school. My father sold insurance.  Walking into Meyer Levin’s apartment was walking into a world I had never experienced.

He was already a very well known author and journalist. In 1956 he had written Compulsion, a novel based on the Leopold and Loeb murders. It was the model for Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, a novel based on fact.  Among his long list of successes was the screen play for The Diary of Anne Frank.  He filmed and photographed all over the world.  His French wife was also a journalist and writer. Their home was filled with books, art, music….

I was mesmerized.

Meyer, thankful for the delivery of the car, invited me into his study. It was a book lined room with a desk at the center, covered in manuscripts, photographs and an old Olivetti typewriter. He spent an hour or two with me, telling me the story of his life, all his adventures, the places he had been, the work he did.

Then we went into the kitchen where I met his wife and we had a cup of tea and talked more.

I was there for perhaps a total of 2 hours, maybe 2 and a half. Yet they were two hours that changed my life completely.

Before I met him, I had absolutely no idea of what I was going to do with my life. No vision. No path to follow.

My father wanted me to go to law school, and I assumed that was where I would go.  Two hours later, I knew what I wanted to do.

When I got back to Williams, I got myself a camera and an Olivetti.  I started photographing and writing… compulsively.

I left school for a semester and went to work in coal mines in Kentucky, writing and photographing.

When I graduated, I took off for Iran, Afghanistan, India, Algeria, Zaire – three years of traveling the world, writing and photographing.  I went to live in Paris, moved in with Brigitte, built a book lined office with a desk at the center piled high with photos and manuscripts.

I never saw Meyer Levin again after those two or three hours.

I did not see his son, Mikael until a few months ago.

But that one afternoon in 1973 changed my life forever.

And I am deeply indebted.  Even for something seemingly so insignificant as a few hours of small talk on an October afternoon.