*Re-posted here on this date from an earlier, personal writing.
November 12, 2015. There's too much stuff here. I need to sit back and breathe, to get my head out from underneath the cascading piles that Harvey Matusow left in his wake. George Royle (who has joined the project to help with research and management) and I are in Brighton, England, where the Harvey Matusow collection is now housed at an impressive archive known as The Keep. Surrounding us are bundles of letters tied with ribbon, which unfurl under delicate and deliberate touch. And when they do, out spill photographs, keepsakes, and the inner secrets of Harvey's life.
Immediately, a number of things become clear. 1 - The account of Harvey's voluminous files in Albert's Matusow Affiar: Memoir of a National Scandal was far from an exaggeration. 2 - This guy was prolific as much as he was eccentric. 3 - Big ego? Uh, yeah. 4 - This thing is a mountain. You need a well-planned route before you climb (thankfully, we made one). 5 - We'll definitely need to come back.
Incrementally, something else begins to take shape: the picture of Harvey as a young man. Yes, he was relatively young during his ascent to power and national notoriety (all of 27 years old), but the key to his behavior seems to lie in the formative years of his early youth. Without giving away too much, Harvey's letters home from his days in Army (sometimes two a day) portray a man who never really stopped being a child. Future letters, musings, poetry, unfinished memoirs and a host of actions all tend to point to the same thing.
There can be beauty in this: preservation of wonder at the world, boundless humor and unbridled optimism. Those are, of course, the admirable traits of children. Less admirable are those of impetuousness, vindictive tantrums, shallow desires, and a lack of understanding of consequences. Put those traits in an adult who is commanding great power, and a comical man-child is suddenly a very dangerous person.
Though Harvey may have been loathe to ever admit it, he hurt a good number of people in pursuit of his own righteousness. It's up to us to parse whether or not he was oblivious, in denial, or simply didn't care about the damage he left in his wake. Naturally, our own opinions are taking form as we trek deeper into the mind of this paradoxical figure and we look forward to sharing them with everyone someday soon.
- Ben Kahn, Executive Producer