Books on Ibiza
Bibliomaniacs' Corner by Martin Davies
Harold Liebow
"The
mind is like a city," wrote Sigmund Freud, but to which metropolis would
the good doctor have compared Harold Liebow, the latest recruit to Ibiza History Culture?
To the latter's native New York, that centre of excellence in so many areas of
human endeavour? Or to ancient Athens, acme of pocket-sized capitals, where mind
and body were so closely interwoven? Or maybe to an oriental city medieval Baghdad
or Cairo in whose myriad alleyways the everyday goes hand in hand with the search
for the divine? Or would Habsburg Vienna, cradle of western music, have been selected
by the great psychoanalyst? Whatever his choice, Harold Liebow would undoubtedly
have been completely at home in any one. Our subject was first
pointed out to me at a Christmas party as a formidable expert in hi-fi and broadcasting.
Looking across the room, I saw a tall, distinguished-looking man with a fine head
of grey hair whose features hinted (but only hinted) at sternness like a prophet
tired of telling the Chosen People to get their act together. Languid Brooklynese
drifted over, laced with an occasional piece of chutzpah. After that, I remember
glimpsing him at SYP with his charming, frail-looking (but only looking) Finnish
wife, Anja. The pair were putting a wayward and heavily-laden trolley through
a complicated manoeuvre. Only after did I discover that Liebow dinner-parties
were on no account to be missed. A year or so later I heard by chance that he
was an accomplished artistic photographer (the book he co-wrote and illustrated
about Ibiza is profiled in Ibiza History Culture Archive article (Weekly Edition
057 of Saturday 30th March 2002), and thought I had him pigeonholed until a friend
mentioned a musical evening devoted to Jewish music, during the course of which
Harold's learned commentary dovetailed with a selection of examples spanning continents
and centuries. It then transpired that he was an authority on tennis, as well
as a former businessman, and ex-educationalist; and finally that he had worked
at several stages as a journalist. I stopped being surprised whenever a new career
or area of specialization popped into the conversation. Harold was well, Harold. The
story all began, appropriately enough in Utopia', the summer camp for children
set up by his parents in the Pocono Mountains of western New York State. Three
thousand acres of virgin forest, rushing streams and wildlife, with a crystalline
lake like a gleaming diamond at the very centre. Twenty odd bungalows housed the
boys, all of them overlooking the lake and a similar number of girls, lived in
a parallel set of chalets on the far side of the shimmering water. Utopia was
more than just a recreational retreat: it was more of a Platonic republic with
its own secretariats of health, security, commissary and culture. The four hundred
youngsters spent two months learning about aspects of life which tended to get
swept under the carpet in the Big Apple. There was fishing, canoeing, teamwork
and semi-professional dramatics. The young Herbert Brodkin, first cousin to Harold
and later a leading TV producer, directed the cream of the current Broadway crop.
Hits like Waiting for Lefty and Bury the Dead! played to audiences
of as many as a thousand, made up of the children, their visiting parents, staff
and fascinated locals. Amateur drama left Harold with
two abiding loves. The first was the written word: he went on to read English
Lit. at NYU (whose English faculty was one of the finest in the country) and might
well have continued into the dense groves of academe had not other roads proved
more beguiling. This profound identification with literature was to surface later
though in contributions to prominent monthlies such as Off Duty (for ex-servicemen),
Lookout and D'Oro (an article on Pablo Casals), as well as specialist
journals like Hi-fi News and Record Review and Speakers. The
second passion was music, initially roused from deep slumber by a Utopian staging
of Odet's 1935 masterpiece, Awake and Sing! In this Harold played the part
of a young man for whom a Mozart piano duet brings back powerful memories. A novice
to the Viennese magic, Harold was so moved by the opening bars that he broke down
on the stage and wept. The audience, unaware they were witnessing real life, went
wild. The summer camp to which minesweeping Lieutenant
Liebow returned after the Pacific War were no longer the Ransomesque playgrounds
of the thirties: teenage girls now spent entire days in dorms primping themselves
for the night ahead while the boys no longer quite the same either. After two
years of increasing disillusionment, Harold decided to sell out and enter the
world of Manhattan business. Fast forward to 1960: Harold's
financial career takes a quantum leap when he starts a life insurance business
with a nest-egg, and starts burning the midnight oil by the barrel. So successful
is it that he works himself into a hospital ward and has a lawyer drawing up the
final will and testament. Time to exit the rat race, fast. Bought out by his partner
(it has since become the largest independent life insurance company in America)
he decides to look around for a different way of earning a living. Two
years down the road, the self-taught photographer was beginning to sell pictures
to mainstream journals when the really big break drifted along. He heard on the
grapevine that educational giants McGraw Hill were looking for a writer/photographer
team to do six photobooks about children across Europe. Harold and second wife
Gina were born for it. The editorial board loved Harold's children's portfolio
and they were engaged on the spot. (Readers can follow the story further in the
30th March issue as well as the Harold's piece in this one) After the Paris book
Harold arrived in Ibiza in late December 1964. The Ibiza book was finished six
months later. A final stint in Finland ended badly. The photography was completed,
but Gina didn't write the book. Instead, she went back to the States for good
and Harold returned to Ibiza, and has since remained. Both he and Anja, were in
the final stages of divorce when they met. There is much
more to the Liebow story: the house he reformed on the outskirts of Ibiza town,
the changes to the island which he has witnessed over the past four decades and
the cavortings of colourful local characters for which he has enjoyed a front-row
seat. For privileged Ibiza History Culture readers, the lights have dimmed and the curtain
is about to rise. Awake
and sing, ye that dwell in dust: for thy dew is as the dew of herbs, and the earth
shall cast out the dead.
Isaiah
26:19
|
Harold Liebow and al fresco lunch |
Pig-slaughter
feast, Can Rieró, Atzaró, 1965 | |
Pictures
Courtesy of Harold Liebow These pictures are also published in the photographic
anthology , Eivissa-Ibiza: A Hundred Years of Light and Shade |
Martin Davies martindavies@ibizahistoryculture.com
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