When he was 8 years old, John Berendt so desperately wanted a watch that he wrote a miniature biography: \u201cRight handed. One sister, Mother, Father. 3rd grade, Sumner School \u2026. Gold ring on left hand. No watch.\u201d<\/p>\n
While Berendt\u2019s bibliography officially begins in 1994 with \u201cMidnight in the Garden of Good and Evil,\u201d his best-selling, nonfiction classic about a murder committed by a wealthy Southern antiques dealer, this little biography is the writer\u2019s first published piece. It appeared in the 1951 novel \u201cSmall World,\u201d by his mother, Carol Deschere.<\/p>\n
Berendt, 86, revisits his childhood obsession in \u201cWristwatch,\u201d a new essay that appears in \u201cClass Act: A Gentleman\u2019s Guide to Dressing Well<\/a>,\u201d a collection from Vintage Books out this week that comprises 50 installments \u2014 some updated \u2014 of his Esquire column, \u201cClassics.\u201d From 1982 to 1994, \u201cClassics\u201d offered Berendt a space to analyze men\u2019s wear and manners.<\/p>\n Plucked from The Harvard Lampoon right out of college by the Esquire editor Harold Hayes, the writer began his career at the men\u2019s magazine when he was 21. Berendt admitted he initially felt his heart sink when Hayes bequeathed him with a fashion column. \u201cThat column was a chore,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n And yet Berendt found a tantalizing story in every subject. The columns in \u201cClassics\u201d reveal gruesome and useful facts \u2014 for example, the skin of wild animals is better for gloves, because it\u2019s more supple. He included debonair, noble characters like Benjamin Guggenheim, who sacrificed his spot on a lifeboat on the Titanic and then put on his white tie and tails to die \u201clike a gentleman.\u201d And he debunked myths, such as one about Bermuda shorts, which are not from Bermuda; another about the argyle pattern, which is not connected to the Argyle family (and they don\u2019t like it when you ask).<\/p>\n \u201cI hit on the light touch, the sardonic touch, to keep me going writing the column,\u201d Berendt said. In doing so, he found the voice for \u201cMidnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.\u201d \u201cI felt I knew how to get into any story now,\u201d he explained. \u201cTo this day, I look for the entry point.\u201d<\/p>\n The Entry Point<\/p>\n The \u201cClassics\u201d columns, where Berendt developed his style, reveal a deceptive talent for balancing the immediacy and verve of literary vamping with stealthy, authoritative analysis and gossipy history. Jennifer Barth, senior vice-president and editorial director at Vintage Books and executive editor at Alfred A. Knopf, who published \u201cClass Act,\u201d likens the entries to \u201cpiano-fingering exercises.\u201d \u201cHe\u2019s just got this wonderful, slightly old-school delivery and presence,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n The entry point for Berendt is often the clothes. In fact, he was still writing his column when he first visited Savannah, Ga., in 1982 and moved there, three years later, to research the murder of a young man named Danny Hansford by the antiques dealer Jim Williams in 1981 and the four trials that ensued.<\/p>\n In the opening pages of \u201cMidnight in the Garden of Good and Evil,\u201d Berendt turned his eye to out-of-place outfits, like Williams\u2019s drab garb in his gorgeous house and Hansford\u2019s T-shirt, which had the phrase \u201cF\u2014 YOU,\u201d emblazoned and uncensored. These details quickly conveyed to the reader that Williams was hard at work to maintain appearances and that Hansford was a threatening sexual provocateur.<\/p>\n