The Freaks Came Out to Write: The Definitive History of the Village Voice, the Radical Paper That Changed American Culture

by Tricia Romano

A rollicking history of America's most iconic weekly newspaper told through the voices of its legendary writers, editors, and photographers. 

You either were there or you wanted to be. A defining New York City institution co-founded by Norman Mailer,  The   Village   Voice  was the first newspaper to cover hip-hop, the avant-garde art scene, and Off-Broadway with gravitas. It reported on the AIDS crisis with urgency and seriousness when other papers dismissed it as a gay disease. In 1979, the  Voice ’s Wayne Barrett uncovered Donald Trump as a corrupt con artist before anyone else was paying attention. It invented new forms of criticism and storytelling and revolutionized journalism, spawning hundreds of copycats. 
 
With more than 200 interviews, including two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, Colson Whitehead, cultural critic Greg Tate, gossip columnist Michael Musto, and feminist writers Vivian Gornick and Susan Brownmiller, former  Voice  writer Tricia Romano pays homage to the paper that saved NYC landmarks from destruction and exposed corrupt landlords and judges. With interviews featuring post-punk band, Blondie, sportscaster Bob Costas, and drummer Max Weinberg, of Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band, in this definitive oral history, Romano tells the story of journalism, New York City and American culture—and the most famous alt-weekly of all time.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Journalism, New York, American History, Biography, Audiobook

608 pages, Hardcover

Published February 27, 2024

Reviews

[Kurt Neumaier · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is truly nothing more fun to read in the entire world than a well written oral history. Just cool people telling stories.

"Then I asked him, 'Why do you think you've inspired so much love?' He wrote back, 'I'm not demanding,' which was perfect because it was true."

[Sally · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was looking for an apartment the first time I opened the Village Voice in 1979. I didn't find a place in their ads, but I did find treasure in their cultural and political reporting. Reading it every week was as close as I could come to feeling like a New Yorker because New York, especially downtown NY was their beat. The Freaks... reminded me not only of the singularity of that place in its time (especially the last decades of the 20th century), but also of the immeasurable value of oral history--that is, reporting from the horses' mouths. And what a mouthy bunch these horses were: passionate, contentious, self-congratulatory, and deeply devoted to what the Voice represented: journalism that never played it safe. Romano took on a monumental task, conducting more than 200 interviews and including vital ancillary information. The work is well organized and the quotes flow seamlessly one from the other, all to make for an invaluable history of a weekly that defined the term "alternative journalism."

[Rob Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Honestly just terrific.

I'm extremely biased; I don't think I've ever actually read an article from the Village Voice. By the time I was growing up and starting to read news and alternative press, the paper was well into its own decline thanks to the internet and a series of other forces and decisions in the 2000s.

I am, however, a writer by trade and journalist by profession, and a bit of a fucking weirdo by inclination — I originally got my start in the business by interning and working for alt publications in my state after college. By the time I arrived, local alt-press had also long been declining, as described in the later chapters of this book part by the internet driving classified ads out of business, but also by the larger culture subsuming much of what made alt-press alternative in the first place.

Despite starting my career far away from Manhattan and among Roman ruins of our own local papers, I still recognize a lot of the types, a lot of the work, a lot of the ethos that's present in this book. You meet oddballs, you cover cranks, you hang with hipsters and outcasts who wouldn't normally get into respectable publications like dailies or nonprofit newsroom affiliates via NPR or PBS. There's no money, but there's a lot of fun.

This book gives you a better feel for what it was, and maybe still is in some rare habitats, for working for alternative press, it's boom and busts. You don't get any respect, you rarely get enough money to get by, but you get to write whatever the hell you want and not take a lot of shit that you have to when you go on to work for reputable outlets.

This book also covers a lot of the uglier sides of these newsrooms and businesses, a lot of the old-time, boomer-era sexism, racism, homophobia that I've also seen during my time in alt-media from different levels. I have to give it a lot of credit, it's extremely ugly and would be disappointing if I wasn't already expecting it. It's lost, and there's some romance to it, but it certainly wasn't some kind of writerly nirvana unless you happened to be white and male.

Something else that stood out? The "free speech, first-amendment we'll print or advertise anything" is and was a giant pain in the ass. The book is pretty explicit that while it gave the Voice license to write about anything, it also gave cover to some pretty heinous behavior and attitudes towards minorities. It has always come off to be more as an abdication of responsibility than some kind of radical credo.

What I feel and what I get out of this book is entirely because I spent five years or so working and writing in alt-media. It's a real "Jesus either lives in your heart, or he doesn't" kind of book. I got a lot out of it, I read it over the course of a weekend and a half and had a blast doing so. Will someone not plugged into media or alt-media get the same? I don't really know, I think most people not on this wave-length will see it as boomer-nostalgia, and it is, in the best and worst ways.

Some other notes: couple of other written reviews on here have dinged it for being an oral history. Honestly the format works great, I think having all these different voices culled from already published statements and interviews and Romano's own interviews on its history are a fantastic way to tell the story. You don't usually get a set narrative of events, you get like the book describes the paper as, a bunch of drunks talking in a bar. It's a terrific effect.

Gotta ding the market though, they really bury that this is an oral history. I'm not sure I clocked that's what it was till I opened the book for the first time in the store. It's not described as such by the title, and only twice on the jacket's copy; once in a blurb on the back, and deep into the description on the front leaf. Still, for a paper called the Voice, it only seems right to include actual voices.

The chapters are also short. This helps when it's something you may not be too interested in, but also drags when they have something compelling and it just abruptly ends. It's a book that's less telling a coherent story, than again, having a bunch of veterans gab about the good ol' days. Some of it's also real inside-baseball stuff for Manhattan and NYC history and culture in general. The end result is less a narrative, than more of a vibe, a sense of time and place that turns into very real and long-gone historical conditions that allowed something the Voice to start and flourish in the first place.

My one last quibble: the book uses footnotes fairly inconsistently to explain who someone is, or what an organization is. In the opening chapters it seems their used to explain some really commonly known things that I don't think needed a footnote for, and they're used more liberally as the book goes on.

Overall, if you're into counterculture or media, this one's for you.

[Tosh · Rating 3 out of 5]

Excellent oral history of a long history publication. But lost interest in the later years due more to my interest and life. But still, an important book.

[bird · Rating 3 out of 5]

first off, i do love gossip. the first third of this flew by. then it really started to illuminate what was so spectacular about sarah schulman's work in let the record show, in that she provided quite subtly a lot of context and framing that allowed me as a newcomer to understand the content of the oral history-- that memories are cast against the backdrop of history. this really was not giving any zoomed-out perspective or consequence that could have underlined the critical beats of the oral histories, so it simply devolved into a bunch of people chatting about their old workplace, which does have an inevitable ceiling on the insight and pleasure it provides.

[John Schorg · Rating 5 out of 5]

A shining example of how to write an oral history, especially when you have a tale as rich as this one that is told by a truckload of articulate, passionate people. As a long-time subscriber of the Voice, I always found it willing to stretch the limits of what could be found in a newspaper. I didn't understand a lot of it, but it was always worth the effort to try. If there is a small caveat here, it's that some narrative context might have helped explain some of the subjects that were discussed. However, the people who lived through the history of the Voice are storytellers of the highest order, and they are worth a listen.

[Mike · Rating 5 out of 5]

My favorite book so far of the year. While it’s the oral history of the Village Voice, it’s also by default an oral history of New York City. The cast of characters in this book is amazing, from Norman Mailer to Debbie Harry to Andy Warhol to Roy Cohn to Donald Trump to Public Enemy to Colson Whitehead and everyone in between. Can’t recommend this book enough.

[Lynnie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an oral history of journalism in New York City for the iconic weekly newspaper, .

The book is not a narrative, but rather a series of interview statements. While these primary sources are important, I would have preferred a narrative with occasional interviews to understand the history and a more coherent read.

This book contains a lot of New York City history that newspaper covered from its inception. The interviews are interesting and the reader acquires biased information from these interviews. The cast of characters is a necessity and lists who is who with dates is helpful to keep everybody straight.The timeline of the The Village Voice is also a good visual for understanding the production of the newspaper.

If you enjoy reading interviews, this book may be a good fit and I would suggest purchasing the hardcover book over the digitized version.

The digitized book is awful for viewing. There are many errors in capitalization and spelling, alignment of the text, spacing of words, and it is hard to go back and find something. Make sure you highlight and note! I’m sure these formatting glitches will be rectified prior to publishing. However, this book is a piece of NYC writing history and worth having a hardcopy.

Thank you to NetGalley and Public Affairs for the e-Advanced Reader’s Copy of The Freaks Came Out to Write: The Definitive History of the Village Voice, the Radical Paper That Changed American Culture by Tricia Romano.

Available February 27, 2024
@PublicAffairs
@NetGalley

[Bert Hirsch · Rating 5 out of 5]

A unique oral history of the groundbreaking iconic local newspaper The Village Voice. Conceived in the late 1950s by a trio of friends: Norman Mailer, Dan Wolf and Ed Fancher.

Dan Wolf took on the major role handling the paper's direction and quickly established itself as the leading proponent of what some called "new journalism", whose major aspect was the introduction of the reporter's own reactions to what they covered, in contrast to what had simply been a reporting of the facts.

The paper focused on downtown news with a strong bent towards cultural events. It attracted a young stable of journalists and other less trained writers some of whom merely left pieces under Dan Wolf's doorstep. It's coverage of the music and arts proved avant-garde and served as a precursor to The Rolling Stone and other music publications.

The author Tricia Romano turned her own internship at the paper into a lifelong love affair and her format for the book proved brilliant in its scope and readability. Basically, she contacted all the leading lights as the paper progressed through different iterations first under the leadership of Wolf and then once sold to Rupert Murdoch by the adept leadership of David Schneiderman who came over from The NY Times and was able to maintain the cutting-edge reporting despite Murdoch's conservative bent.

Several events become highlighted that helped establish the paper's reputation: Jules Feifer cartoons, film critiques by Joans Mekas and Andrew Sarris, the downtown music scene of first Dylan and then CBGB, The Fillmore East and The Bottom Line directed by Robert Christgau and a stable of black journalist championing the hip-hop scene-Greg Tate, Nelson George and Carol Cooper, Stanley Crouch, the emergence of the Soho loft art scene of Warhol, Haring and Basquiat, NYC politics covered by Wayne Barrett, Sylvia Plachy's photography, the Obie Awards identifying Off Broadway as the petri dish for playwriting...

The list is endless. Romano interviewed and quoted all of the players and in doing so has created a unique detailed history of New York City spanning the 1950s to 2000s. There are numerous excerpts of reporting one I especially liked was Vivian Gornick's coverage of Jack Kerouac's funeral only one of dozens of examples. https://www.villagevoice.com/jack-ker...

This is a great easy and engrossing read.

[Michael Reilly · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a perfect subject for an oral history. For 63 years, from 1955 to 2018, The Village Voice was put out every week by a group of the smartest, most articulate and most cantankerous writers and editors in the country. Romano was smart enough to realize that the best way to tell the story, is to let them talk.

There are several constants through the whole story.

The Voice was always the first major publication to give serious consideration to the new thing in New York. They were the first to graffiti as art, to rap as music, and to off-off Broadway as theater.

The Voice spend the time and money to expose corruption as the lifeblood of New York. They didn't write theoretical articles. They wrote long detailed exposures of crooks and conmen. The first great reporting on Trump was in the Voice. Jack Newfield, the dean of their political reporters, published annual "New York's Ten Worst Landlords" and followed it up with an annual column on "New York's Ten Worst Judges", and named the names. (It is, of course, obvious that every city in this country would still benefit from a good reporter publishing those articles annually.)

The reporters always hated the new editor and preferred the old editor. Romano makes it clear that editing the paper was a nightmare job. The editor was managing a gang of massive insecure egos, who were also, mostly, brilliant writers. Each Department, news, movies, theater, books, dance, etc thought it should have more space and blamed the editor when they didn't get it.

Romano tells one great story after another with voices from the different perspectives.

There was a constant battle to get a more diverse staff. Initially there was a fight to get acceptance of gay writers, then woman fought to get hired and respected, then black writers fought for fair treatment and then, as the City changed, Latino writers became the battlefield.

The Voice offices were just down the street from the Stonewall Inn so they covered the riot from the first day and continued to cover gay issues. Like many liberal publications some of the Voice's writers struggled with the AIDS issue early on because of a concern that emphasizing it would unfairly stigmatize gays.

Nat Hentoff was an original writer for the Voice. He was a widely admired jazz writer. He expanded his writing to politics and protection of the First Amendment in particular. He was considered a hard core liberal, but he became convinced that abortion was a civil rights issue for the unborn and thus he opposed it. Almost all of the other Voice writers were outraged by his articles. They tried to stop his writing on that subject for the Voice, which Hentoff insisted was an outrageous violation of his First Amendment rights. It was a perfect tangled web of strong opinions and firmly held beliefs at cross purposes. Romano tells the story well, with voices form every side.

I enjoyed learning the random fact that Maz Weinberg, Bruce Springsteen's drummer, got his job with the E Street Band by answering an ad in the Voice for tryouts.

The book is filled with the voices of some of the great critics of the last sixty years. Robert Christgau was the first great rock and roll critic. Andrew Sarris brought the auteur director approach to American movies. Stanley Crouch was one of the best writers on jazz and then civil rights. (Although he had violence and temper issue that even the Voice eventually could not put up with.)

This is a great New York City Book.

[Erika Verhagen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent oral history, just banger chapter after banger chapter. Only half-heartedly refused my deep and enduring romanticism for the heyday of alt-weeklies. Furthered my disappointment with our current alternative media landscape being 10,000 bland and substance-devoid Substacks. Got some last minute licks in at the Craigslist guy (Craig), nice.

[Hallel · Rating 4 out of 5]

it took THREE libby checkouts but I DID IT!!!

[Dodi · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Freaks Came Out to Write is a long book, and at times I thought, too long. Tricia Romano reflects on the long history of the Village Voice and the impact it had on New York and national reporting. Organized chronologically by decades, Romano begins at the beginning with Norman Mailer being one of the founding writers. Looking back at New York City and hiring and office practices in the past reminded me of the gradual changes experienced since those earlier times. I would not have wanted to be a woman working in that toxic environment, but I'm so glad other women had the fortitude to blaze the trail.

I enjoyed the interview style used to tell this story. Romano brings writers, photographers, musicians, and others to the table to relate their encounters with the Voice. Reliving history through the eyes of all these different people is fascinating. From New York politics to the beginning of the AIDS epidemic to 9/11 to Trump--it's all there, and it's all opinionated like the Voice was.

[Stephan Benzkofer · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Freaks Came Out to Write is an oral history, with many voices telling their stories about the Village Voice and successfully making the claim for its importance in American culture. It doubles as a history of New York City through the turbulent closing half of the 20th century and as a shocking reminder of how quickly the internet gutted the newspaper industry.

As a former journalist, I was reminded of many of the characters and events I encountered in various newsrooms, but the shenanigans I saw paled in comparison to the Voice in its early years and all the way into the early 2000s.

I listened to the audiobook and worried at the beginning that the large cast of characters would be a problem, but I found it didn't hinder my enjoyment at all.

Many thanks to Mike and his exuberant review, which tipped me to this book.

[Jess Svajgert · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fantastic oral history about the Village Voice and New York City itself. Listened on audio and it was so fun to hear these stories told—a truly incredible (and vast) cast of characters grace these pages.

[Andy Cantrell · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating oral history of the rise and fall of the Village Voice, but more importantly, it is a rise and fall of liberalism and journalism in America. A story of how David became Goliath, only to be slain by a thousand Davids. Funny, poignant, and sad.

[Evie Waters · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kept renewing this from the library, kinda thought they were just gonna let me keep it
Really awesome and cool and interesting book, loved it lowkey but also, I’m gonna be done reading for a while (unrelated reasons!)

[Gracie Garris · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love an oral history and knew nothing about the village voice before this book. So passionate, entertaining, and educational about NY and American history. Very thorough and really inspiring and would definitely recommend!! Covered everything from local and international politics and investigative journalism to off-broadway, music, and art. Really grew to love a lot of the writers for the voice (and dislike some). Love🔥🔥

[Glenn · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Village Voice was my connection to music and films and art while i was living in Pittsburgh mid 70s to 1980 and in Massachusetts through ‘85. I even had a mail subscription! Some of my favorite writers contributed (Gary Giddens, Robert Christgau, Greg Tate). There were comics by Stamaty and Feiffer and Matt Groening’s Life in Hell.) I still miss it. When they decided to go free and limited it to NYC it was over for me.
This book is a finely edited oral history with contributions by everyone who was involved with the paper, living and not. Tricia Romano has done a wonderful job sequencing it all. This brought back SO many memories. I only wish there were more and longer article excerpts. Perhaps another book… Highly recommended.

[Leela Gebo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Electric…. Fave book of the year and I’m calling it in August

[Jacob Brown · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some sections were very entertaining others were incredibly boring and hard to get through.

[Siobhan Burns · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely amazing. A chronicle of the rise and fall of a great paper, and also an insightful look at some of New York City’s craziest decades.

[Jana Viktoria · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think it was Alice walker who said that she started writing the books she wished she would have read (or the ones she feels she wants to read)…

Now this is the book I wish I would have written.

I had to research a lot and still did not get all the cultural (and political) references right- let alone all the characters. But I enjoyed every page - and the joyride the book took me on (so much music, art, history, but also so much interpersonal stuff, anecdotes, atmosphere… and of course the writing)

Writing for the voice might have been my dream job…

[Irine Le · Rating 5 out of 5]

i wrote my senior thesis at the new school about historic local magazines/newspapers when i was 21 (only because it interested me) and by very random chance occurrences, ended up working in greenwich village historic preservation research when i was 22. "the freaks came out to write" is a brilliant oral history that reminded me the things that ignited your creativity and passion for the world when you were younger are simply not things of the past that are one and done, but instead are just the building blocks that will somehow find their way back to you. i'm now 24 and about to (unexpectedly) start my masters in historic preservation in 2 weeks and i've spent a lot of time these last few months mulling about how i got to this point, because i'd never even heard of historic preservation until 2 years ago.

i had so much fun reading through the wonderful stories of amazing people who contributed to the village voice and social/political progress in the village. one of the most important parts of preservation truly is listening to and learning from communities about the work they do. "the freaks came out to write" was an amazing look into people sharing how the village voice was important to them, and most of the time, they were just writing and sharing what made them passionate, but it all contributed to a greater good.

bring back print counterculture publications... that's all i'm saying.

[Dave Capers · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this on and off over the entire summer as the oral history format is conducive to that approach. Summer is ending so I finished the book tonight. Now what I need is for someone to write a brief, linear history of the paper because as great as this book is it would be an even better read with a companion history to refer to.
The Voice was an enormous part of my young adulthood, those late teen and early 20s college years that form much of the person you become. I wish it still existed in a more viable form today with a wider influence because the world needs a contrarian, muckraking hard news entity that is also a leading proponent of emerging artists in all fields.

[George · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this one. This book gave a deep look into the beginning of the progressive, modern journalism we know today. It was fascinating to learn how stories broke in the 60s and 70s, all the way through 9/11. The way our culture evolved pushed away platforms that the Village Voice helped create. The impact of the Voice is evident in our culture today. My only mark against the book is that at times it felt almost too “inside joke”/“inside story” related. It was hard to keep up with all the people/understand their relevance at all times. However, by and large an interesting read.

[Victoria Yarnish · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fantastic oral history of one of the country’s most beloved alternative weeklies. A deep dive into old school journalism, New York cultural history, art criticism, and the end of the print media as we knew it. Each chapter feels like sitting around a newsroom with some of New York’s best writers.

[Leah Weyandt · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Our philosophy was you do not hire an expert. You hire someone who is living through the phenomenon worth covering.”

#dreamjob

[Greg Talbot · Rating 5 out of 5]

New York history starts somewhere around 10,000 BC, , but you wouldn’t be wrong assuming New York only started looking in the mirror around 1955. Ed Fancer, Dan Wolf, Norman Mailer, created the Village Voice, with the intent to bring the artistic vanguard of the Greenwich Village to a larger New York audience. The Village voice essentially built the blueprint of new journalism style - subjectivity, literary techniques and long form-fiction. A style Ann Powers states (p,3) that is just the template for everyone else now.

Charting the course of the titanic alternative press, Tricia Romano , creates this beautiful quiltwork of writers, editors, the greater new york community to share their stories. Covering the lifespan of the paper across 88 chapters and some 200 interviews, we go deep into the history. Hopping from banal subjects of office politics and the entrenched battles with management, to playing witness to pivotal moments in women’s liberation, queer culture, new york politics, and general bohemian awareness, “The Freaks Came Out to Write” is delectable dessert on the subject of narrative and culture.

One quote that stands out for me, from Karen Durbin (p.119)

“It always made me think of a great bar in the village, a funky bar. And everyone’s sitting at the bar, and having whatever they’re having, and talking about everything under the sun. And sometimes an argument and sometimes a chorus. I thought the Voice was like that.” the writers looking inward, on their experiences of bringing progressive perspectives to a juggernaut city. Also, they look beyond themselves - exploring sexual performance art with yams, introducing hip-hop beyond the Bronx Neighborhood of its founding, commenting on independent cinema, and navigating the colossal protests of the Vietnam War.

One of the greatest achievements of the Village Voice was to normalize queer culture. Descriptions of the Stonewall Riots, the Act-Up Campaign for AIDS awareness, the Pultizer prize writing about “AIDS” , are given a lot of writing room in this book. And it makes complete sense, knowing that the Village Voice gave so much of its identity to queer art and queer culture. Hilarious story of thr outing of Harvey Milk too The progress for gay rights in this century is a testament to the pioneers who gave recognition to the culture.

Also, I absolutely loved the music sections. Greg Tate, Robert Christgau, and Lester Bangs . It’s like the Iggy, Bowie, and Reed of music writers. Also, just to show my hand here, as a millennial obsessed with the indie elevation by Pitchforkmedia.com, I have so much appreciation for these writers highlighting art rock, jazz and hip-hop before the internet and their communities existed. We can never forget the Pazz & Jop pollen.

The paradox of our time is that content is ample but curation is limited. Information is available, but guidance is missing. We are plugged in but distracted. Attentive but unfocused. I think it’s more than a nostalgia for holding folded paper, heterogeneous writer voices, and feeling like part of an active living culture. Sure there are pockets, and communities out there, and I try to harness myself to them (Slate Culture Gabfest, Political Gabfest), but our fragmentation politically has to be related to our decentralized new intake. The war on the press and the lack of financial incentives is one of the cruel effects of digital capture.

The concluding chapter are sad, but not without hope. A reminder that stories don’t generate themselves , or at least not yet, and that there is more than money that drives our desire. This is a wildly ambitious project and it succeeds phenomenally. There are deep insights about the power of the 4th estate, the power of bringing a story to an audience, and the audacity of sharing a story in the world’s most bustling city. The Village Voice was before my time, and maybe no longer in our time, but it leaves a legacy. It’s august window showed us we were more than ourselves, and line by line, and just who we could become.

[Ken Dowell · Rating 3 out of 5]

When I was a teenager in the 1960’s, and later in the 70’s and into the 80’s, if it was Wednesday, I was combing the newsstand (we had those then) for the new Village Voice. It was where I could read about the kind of music I liked to listen to, the kind of movies I wanted to see and the dissident politics I subscribed to. It was at Stonewall, at the epicenter of the feminist movement and the AIDS crisis. The Voice covered off-Broadway, independent film and the downtown club and music scene. Readers of the Times, the New Yorker and the tabloids would find nary a word of any of that. And there were the classifieds, the anything goes personal ads, and most importantly the job and apartment listings. If you were a Greenwich Villager, or wannabe Greenwich Villager, you might find yourself scheming to get an early copy of the Voice to get a first shot at an apartment. Thursday was too late. I once scored a job in the Voice, while on a brief hiatus from college, picking orders in the Grove Press book warehouse on Hudson Street. More notably, Max Weinberg tells of how he got his job with the E Street Band through the public notice music section of the Voice. At least for its first couple decades, the Village Voice was, above all else, a community newspaper for a distinctly unique community.

Tricia Romano was an intern at the Voice, and later a contributing writer. She has put together an oral history starting with its founding in 1955 and going through to the off-again, on-again recent history. We hear the voices of writers, founders, editors, owners and sometimes even subjects. It’s Mailer, Hentoff, Newfield, Christgau, Musto, et al. For some who have passed away she has used surrogates or archived interviews.

There were some surprises. Did you know the Voice was once owned by Rupert Murdoch? Or that Colin Whitehead was once a contributing writer? Here's one of my favorite stories.

Staff news writer Wayne Barrett offered this description of lunching with Trump crony Roy Cohn:

“I had lunch many times with Roy Cohn. Roy Cohn ate with his fingers. I kid you not. He brought a little glass inside of his coat pocket. He would pop little white pills when he thought you weren't looking. He was the most satanic figure I ever met in my life. He was almost reptilian”

I forgot that the Voice had a sports section. I loved it and read every word.

Allen St. John, a contributor, notes how it differed from other media’

“In the Wall Street Journal, you’re writing about the Yankees, the first reference would be ‘Derek Jeter.’ And the second reference would be the very stilted ‘Mr. Jeter.’ If you were writing about Derek Jeter in the Village Voice, it would be ‘Derek Jeter’ and then the second reference would be ‘Mariah Carey-banging motherfucker.’”

It was chaotic and there was no end of the intrastaff feuding. One notable example being the Marxist feminists vs. the old white guys.

This is not necessarily a smooth read. There are dozens and dozens of folks whose voices are included here. If you are the type that needs to know exactly who is talking in each passage, you’ll go nuts going back and forth from the list of participants at the front of the book. Also I found that it wasn’t always clear who the interviewees were talking about. I remember a chapter where everyone commented on “Jack.” I had no idea what “Jack” they were talking about. Lots of discussion about various editors at the Voice which made me think how a bit of a better editing job would have benefitted this book.

Having said that, I still found “Freaks” invaluable. It documents a very notable piece of the history of New York journalism and culture, as well as my own personal history. There is still a Village Voice online, though I don’t know of anyone who reads it. I checked it before writing this review and found hardly anything written since last month.

Romano closes with this obit-sounding bit from former senior editor Joe Levy:

“So, without the Voice, there is one less advocate for the rights of sex workers, or the rights of immigrants. One less outlet hearing those voices. One less place to be noticed as an aspiring playwright, musician, choreographer.”