give me any details. Oh no. Not Barbara. Barbara was a lady.
Sylvie Baekeland Skira
I can believe that she would do anything —including that. I can’t believe that he would, that’s all. There might be something in a woman where she wants to save her child to a point that is beyond credibility, but then the child remains a homosexual boy, and I can’t imagine that he would have found this in any way physically possible.
Alan Harrington
I was quoted in Newsweek magazine about something, I can’t remember what, therapeutic techniques, I think, and Barbara called me up and said she wanted desperately to talk to me, and she told me that she had slept with Tony. I said to her I didn’t think it was such a bad thing—I was trying to remove guilt—but now that I think of it, there wasn’t any expressed.
Barbara Hale
Sons and lovers—nobody knows the difference anymore.
Irving Sabo
Barbara Baekeland was in a writing class I took at the New School in New York in the early seventies with Anatole Broyard. Well, I can only say, she was a presence. She only came a few times when I was there, and I went to dinner with her a couple of times after class. The first time, we went to Bradley’s, on University Place—there were about ten of us—and she just thought it was all so marvelous. We all went Dutch on those occasions, and she just thought this was great. And a week or two later, she read some of her writing in class, her ongoing novel, which dealt with a mother-son incest, as I recall. Well, it was vivid. She was, I think, a good writer. And after that class, some of us were going uptown on the East Side and she invited four or five of us who were in my car to stop up for a drink.
That was a memorable occasion. She had a collection of antiques the likes of which you don’t get from any ordinary dealer. She had a lacquered Japanese highboy which was an extraordinary piece—it’s very vivid to me because I’ve designed furniture in my time. It was top museum quality. And everything in the apartment was on that scale, it just reeked of great wealth. She offered some bourbon and I like good bourbon, and I asked for some ice and she said, “Oh, you won’t need ice for this. This was made for me, it’s a private batch.” Well, there are distilleries that make special blends for special customers. It’s like having a private railroad car these days. Anyway, it was extraordinary bourbon, real sipping stuff. No ice needed.
The living room was full of photographs of a very beautiful young man, I would say in his early twenties. She had taken, I believe, a lot of the photographs. What struck me was the way the camera just dwelled on the beauty of this young man. Now this may be hindsight, but they were not the sort of pictures a mother would normally take of a son. After I saw those photographs, I felt that her novel was autobiographical.
Ethel Woodward de Croisset
I thought the story of sleeping with Tony was perfectly touching, because I think that was a dream of hers, you know—that somebody could make him whole. I think subconsciously she thought that the reason she had lost Brooks was because her son was a homosexual, you see.
Brooks Baekeland
The incest thing. I don’t know. If they had not been taking drugs, I would say, unhesitatingly, no. I would say it was a boutade —a caprice—that came out of Barbara’s taste for the outrageous. Pour épater les bourgeois —you know? But I know nothing about the drugged state. So who knows? I know he loved his mother.
He loved his mother more than he loved me, but he loved me, too. And he respected me. I was, in a way, his alter ego. He held to me as an exhausted man does to a rock—barnacled and harsh though I was. But I really did love his mother, you see, and I could never forgive him for killing her.
From a Psychiatric Report on Antony Baekeland ordered by the British Courts, January 5, 1973
His great improvement in prison may be due to relief from the
Sylvie Baekeland Skira
I can believe that she would do anything —including that. I can’t believe that he would, that’s all. There might be something in a woman where she wants to save her child to a point that is beyond credibility, but then the child remains a homosexual boy, and I can’t imagine that he would have found this in any way physically possible.
Alan Harrington
I was quoted in Newsweek magazine about something, I can’t remember what, therapeutic techniques, I think, and Barbara called me up and said she wanted desperately to talk to me, and she told me that she had slept with Tony. I said to her I didn’t think it was such a bad thing—I was trying to remove guilt—but now that I think of it, there wasn’t any expressed.
Barbara Hale
Sons and lovers—nobody knows the difference anymore.
Irving Sabo
Barbara Baekeland was in a writing class I took at the New School in New York in the early seventies with Anatole Broyard. Well, I can only say, she was a presence. She only came a few times when I was there, and I went to dinner with her a couple of times after class. The first time, we went to Bradley’s, on University Place—there were about ten of us—and she just thought it was all so marvelous. We all went Dutch on those occasions, and she just thought this was great. And a week or two later, she read some of her writing in class, her ongoing novel, which dealt with a mother-son incest, as I recall. Well, it was vivid. She was, I think, a good writer. And after that class, some of us were going uptown on the East Side and she invited four or five of us who were in my car to stop up for a drink.
That was a memorable occasion. She had a collection of antiques the likes of which you don’t get from any ordinary dealer. She had a lacquered Japanese highboy which was an extraordinary piece—it’s very vivid to me because I’ve designed furniture in my time. It was top museum quality. And everything in the apartment was on that scale, it just reeked of great wealth. She offered some bourbon and I like good bourbon, and I asked for some ice and she said, “Oh, you won’t need ice for this. This was made for me, it’s a private batch.” Well, there are distilleries that make special blends for special customers. It’s like having a private railroad car these days. Anyway, it was extraordinary bourbon, real sipping stuff. No ice needed.
The living room was full of photographs of a very beautiful young man, I would say in his early twenties. She had taken, I believe, a lot of the photographs. What struck me was the way the camera just dwelled on the beauty of this young man. Now this may be hindsight, but they were not the sort of pictures a mother would normally take of a son. After I saw those photographs, I felt that her novel was autobiographical.
Ethel Woodward de Croisset
I thought the story of sleeping with Tony was perfectly touching, because I think that was a dream of hers, you know—that somebody could make him whole. I think subconsciously she thought that the reason she had lost Brooks was because her son was a homosexual, you see.
Brooks Baekeland
The incest thing. I don’t know. If they had not been taking drugs, I would say, unhesitatingly, no. I would say it was a boutade —a caprice—that came out of Barbara’s taste for the outrageous. Pour épater les bourgeois —you know? But I know nothing about the drugged state. So who knows? I know he loved his mother.
He loved his mother more than he loved me, but he loved me, too. And he respected me. I was, in a way, his alter ego. He held to me as an exhausted man does to a rock—barnacled and harsh though I was. But I really did love his mother, you see, and I could never forgive him for killing her.
From a Psychiatric Report on Antony Baekeland ordered by the British Courts, January 5, 1973
His great improvement in prison may be due to relief from the
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