Falling far from the tree

R.W. Apple, the legendary New York Times political reporter, died October 4th at the age of 71. Although I knew he's lionized as the best print political reporter of his generation, I remember him mainly for his wonderful food articles the last few years, filed from all over the world and always including a mention of "my wife Betsey."

Todd Purdum's aptly-headlined Times obituary, R. W. Apple Jr., Globe-Trotter for The Times and a Journalist in Full, Dies at 71, opens with:

With his Dickensian byline, Churchillian brio and Falstaffian appetites, Mr. Apple, who was known as Johnny, was a singular presence at The Times almost from the moment he joined the metropolitan staff in 1963. He remained a colorful figure as new generations of journalists around him grew more pallid, and his encyclopedic knowledge, grace of expression — and above all his expense account — were the envy of his competitors, imitators and peers.

Apple, with his searching intelligence, limitless ego, tireless work ethic, and at-times bullying personality, seems to me the epitome of a famed journalist. He never won the Pulitzer, although as Purdum notes:

Mr. Apple enjoyed a career like no other in the modern era of The Times. He was the paper’s bureau chief in Albany, Lagos, Nairobi, Saigon, Moscow, London and Washington. He covered 10 presidential elections and more than 20 national nominating conventions. He led The Times’s coverage of the Vietnam War for two and a half years in the 1960’s and of the Persian Gulf war a generation later, chronicling the Iranian revolution in between. ...

In later years, he turned the same searching, childlike curiosity to writing about food, architecture and travel from around the globe.

The Times obit led me to a long but worthwhile Calvin Trillin profile of Apple that appeared in the New Yorker a few years back. There's Trillin's usual mix of sly observation and telling anecdote; you understand Apple's burning ambition, his desire to make something of himself in the world and then to get all that he was entitled to once he did. Including this doozy:

I once suggested to Apple that he bequeath his expense accounts to the Smithsonian Institution. “But the Times has them,” he said. “I turned them in.” He sounded a bit regretful, it seemed to me, that he was not in a position to give posterity an opportunity to inspect some of his more stunning creations. At the Times, the various departments have what is called a cost center—what amounts to a budget line. The foreign desk has a cost center. The editorial board has a cost center. R. W. Apple, Jr., has a cost center. “It’s been my fate and privilege over the years to sit next to various people who were approving Apple’s expense accounts,” Al Siegal says. “There were hoots, and once in a while you’d look up and the person—these were various assistant managing editors—was shaking his head and reading off ‘Wine from my cellars . . .’ ” Siegal, who is a great admirer of R. W. Apple, Jr., thinks that, all in all, the Times has received good value.

Asked about having his own cost center, Apple is suddenly overcome with modesty. “It’s because I write for all these different parts of the paper,” he told me.

Too many of today's journalists, I think, hunger for Apple's expense account without possessing anywhere near what it takes to deserve it.

The last article of his I read before his death, Singapore: A Repressed City-State? Not in Its Kitchens, seemed to me a great example of travel and food writing as journalism. The last article that he wrote, originally slated to be published later this fall, was The Global Gourmet.

It centers around "10 restaurants abroad that would be worth boarding a plane to visit, even in these fraught days," and since he knew he was near death contains the line, "What will you order for your last meal on earth?” The places listed are nearly all in the West; but unlike many of his fellow reporters, Apple consciuosly acknowledges his tastes and recognizes them as limiting even if authentic.

Apple's words always prompted hunger in me, and I usually felt he knew what he was talking about even as I marveled at the vast scope of his canvas. The Times has put online an archive of Apple's articles. There are 1,753 of them.

Of course, this being the modern Times, the web version of Apple's obit ends with this appended.

Correction: An obituary yesterday about R.W. Apple Jr., a correspondent and editor at The New York Times, omitted the city of residence of one survivor and omitted the surname of another. Mr. Apple’s stepson, John Brown, lives in Alexandria, Va., and Mr. Apple’s sister is Barbara Pittman.

Photo of Apple dining at Galatoire's Restaurant in New Orleans in April 2006 by Ozier Muhammad.