The Illuminated Donkey

You New Yorkers out there will appreciate this great piece by Arthur Miller reminiscing about his early-1960's residence at the Hotel Chelsea.

The Chelsea in the Sixties seemed to combine two atmospheres: a scary and optimistic chaos which predicted the hip future, and at the same time the feel of a massive, old-fashioned, sheltering family. That at least was the myth one nursed in one's mind, but like all myths it did not altogether stand inspection. The idea of family had limits. Unless one was drugged out, or spending one's days putting paint on canvas, words on paper, chisels on stone, or singing operatic arias at the piano, one found it difficult to hold [hotel owner] Stanley [Bard]'s attention. In fact, I cannot recall a single real businessman-guest, although some of that type may have frequented the regular all-night card games, like the one which caused a bit of a rumble when two hold-up men stationed themselves outside the room and robbed the happy winners as they emerged into the hallway.

But such mishaps were rare and would be denied by the management even though it gave the place a certain panache, or relief from real life's ordinary constraints. It was not, one thought, that Stanley cultivated weird people, potheaded layabouts and some extraordinary as well as morbidly futile artistic types, but simply that he seemed to think these dreamers were normal; it was the regular people who made him uneasy.

The Chelsea of Miller's time was home to such figures as Dylan Thomas, Brendan Behan, Arthur C. Clarke, and later became newly infamous when Sid Vicious stabbed Nancy Spungen to death in Room 100. It was not, however, where Valerie Solanas shot Andy Warhol despite Miller's odd, uncorrected memories of the event.