Book Review : Where Reality Outpaced Fiction: A Novel on the Steinberg Case

Waverly Place by Susan Brownmiller (Grove Press: $18.95, 304 pages)

First out of the gate in an inevitable commercial sweepstakes, Susan Brownmiller’s version of the Steinberg case is presented as fiction, though recapitulation might be a more precise description of her method. Beginning to write on the day the Steinberg child died from head injuries inflicted by the man who had so casually “adopted” her, Brownmiller says, “I wanted the freedom to invent dialogue, motivations, events and characters based on my own understanding of battery and abuse.”

Drawing heavily upon the lore collected for her impassioned study of rape, “Against Our Will,” Brownmiller struggles to make this case fit a precast mold too narrow for the appalling facts. Instead of expanding our perception of the tragedy, “Waverly Place” inadvertently shrinks it.

Even before the actual trial, the New York press coverage was exhaustive, providing Brownmiller with a daily supply of lurid revelations corroborating, rivaling and often exceeding anything she could imagine; turning the project into a contest in which fantasy is continually overmatched by reality. Finding setting, characters and plot on her doorstep, Brownmiller seems to have taken them in with only the most cursory effort to turn the raw elements into fiction. Her central characters remain pallid stand-ins for Joel Steinberg and Hedda Nussbaum, while the “invented” friends and relatives are hastily recruited from a pool of urban stereotypes. Since virtually every incident is preempted by the actual scenario, the ‘invention’ is limited to singularly flat dialogue and a disappointingly superficial exploration of motive.

On home ground when she’s describing the mental and physical degeneration of a vulnerable woman victimized by a vicious man, Brownmiller is less assured when she attempts to portray the complex pathology of extreme drug dependence. Ultimately, the sordid, numbed world in which Nussbaum and Steinberg lived eludes writer and reader. Moderately effective as an account of psychosexual dependence, “Waverly Place” falters when it ventures beyond the confines of the apartment into the obscure recesses of an addict’s mind.

Brownmiller’s version of Hedda is a pathetically ordinary young woman named Judith Winograd; a Brooklyn College graduate who dreams of becoming a novelist. In 1970, when she’s picked up at a Greenwich Village street fair by a smooth-talking hustler named Barry Kantor, she’s 28 years old, stuck in a poorly paid job, living alone in a gloomy studio; spending a June morning fingering the curios at a sidewalk stall and hoping her desperation doesn’t show. “Brooklyn gypsy with a ton of hair spray, perky. A type he liked.” By afternoon she’s in Barry’s apartment, blissfully stoned; thrilled at having been picked out of the crowd by this hip, swaggering lawyer who rolled a joint as if he’d just stepped off the set of “Easy Rider.”

Early Romance

At first, he takes her hiking at Bear Mountain and skiing in Vermont, introduces her to the Kama Sutra, and she thinks she’s the luckiest girl who ever crossed the Brooklyn Bridge to Manhattan. Within a few months, Judith is living in Barry’s brownstone apartment, blindly catering to his outrageous whims, alienated from family and friends; the world well lost for love.

Struggling to learn survival tactics, she tries to avoid doing anything that might send Barry into one of his frequent rages, blaming herself whenever she’s brutalized. Always a dissembler, she becomes an expert liar, explaining away the bruises and black eyes as accidents, keeping her distance from the busybodies at her office. Their halfhearted advances rebuffed, her colleagues leave her alone, telling themselves that her private life is none of their business as long as the work gets done.

Barry makes sure there’s always a supply of Valium, pot, cocaine and finally heroin to take the edge off the anguish. The drugs erode Judith’s fragile will and vestigial self-respect, effectively dulling the emotional and physical pain. Her captor couldn’t have found a more malleable subject.

The Baby Broker

By 1981, when they acquire the first of the two children, Judith is entirely his creature, a zombie programmed to follow his orders unquestioningly. Barry Kantor’s law practice has never been more than a matter of defending drug dealers and users, many of whom paid him with stock in trade. What cash there was came from a lucrative sideline as a baby broker. Driven by greed, he tries to extort more money from clients by actually auctioning a child to the highest bidder, and when both sets of prospective parents back off, he brings the baby home to Judith.

For a few years, the role of adoring father amuses him; then it abruptly palls. From this point on, Brownmiller seems content to record the nightmare essentially as documented by the media; reducing the convoluted social issues to an anomalous form that seems a novel in name only.