Justin danced with Marilyn Monroe, “gently kneading the little tire of baby fat around her waist.”

Anne hosted William Faulkner, in prospect “as daunting as if I were the village priest informed the pope was about to show up for dinner and all I had in the house was cabbage stew and black bread.”

These are two of the many memories recalled by Justin Kaplan and Anne Bernays in their newest book, Back Then: Two Lives in 1950s New York. This husband and wife team of versatile writers and influential literary figures were both natives of Manhattan who came of age there when the scene differed radically from the present one.

“Our habits, manners, language, attitudes in the 1950s were so different from what they are now that in some respects we could almost as well be writing about the era of Theodore Roosevelt and the Gibson Girl.” So the couple writes in the introduction.

Throughout the book, Bernays and Kaplan regale readers with their adventures, separate and shared. I found their stories consistently compelling and often hilarious.

They let a lot hang out, each detailing, for instance, romances with previous boy and girl friends, along with sessions in the offices of their shrinks. Explaining this frankness, Kaplan told me, “I owed it to the reader  –  –   to gloss over that would not be really truthful.”

After they met and determined to marry, the couple learned how to deal with Anne’s parents. Her father, Edward Bernays (who enjoyed one affluent reputation as “father of public relations” and another as a double nephew of Sigmund Freud) and her mother Doris Fleischman, at first disapproved of the match. Their daughter’s intended came from a Jewish family with roots in Russia, not in Germany, the only kind of Jewish origins the parents welcomed.

The wedding itself, an event micromanaged by Edward and Doris, took place in the Bernays home, and featured as officiant a judge unknown to the bridal couple. The photo of the affair suggests some of the discomfort of the bridegroom, wedged into a formal suit and sweating profusely. “Rivers of perspiration, inspired by heat and terror, coursed down his face and soaked the rented suit,” writes Anne of that event in July of 1954.

Whatever the apprehension connected with that day, the match has turned out to be beautifully successful. Though of markedly different temperaments, he reserved and slow to speak, she more spontaneous, they made a marriage proof against the blows that have claimed so many other couples.

The marriage flourished despite, at its beginning, Anne’s almost complete lack of household skills. She was unfamiliar with food shops and supermarkets, and did not know how to cook anything. In time, she had to learn how to cope with know-it-all obstetricians.  

Part of the couple’s success, it seems, stems from a wise decision they made in 1959 to leave their native city and move to Cambridge. By that time they had two young daughters and needed an atmosphere less fevered. As Anne describes the move, “Having lived for almost thirty years in a city with the world’s fastest pulse, I was ready for a change, for a place whose dazzle resided in its slow heart rate.”

The Cambridge of 2002 has, of course, rendered that description quaint.

Anne’s parents, incidentally, also eventually moved to Cambridge. Edward Bernays, as he neared and then surpassed age 100, became well known as an advocate for elder citizens in Massachusetts. The state Office of Elder Affairs used to consult him often and he seemed to take on a late life career as a model centenarian. A local writer of distinction, Larry Tye, has chronicled Bernays’ life in the 1998 book, “The Father of Spin.”

As almost always in a memoir, the photos stir fascination. I found myself scrutinizing them, seeking to find continuities and to trace changes in my friends Justin and Anne over the decades. These pictures alone, scattered throughout the book, provoke reflection about the impact of time on human life.

Without shame, the authors namedrop throughout the memoir, much to the delight of this reader, at least. Hardly a figure famous in the literary world escapes mention, it seems. Norman Mailer became a familiar party companion; they ran into the famous humorist James Thurber, tipsy and boring, at another affair. Justin’s account of Max Schuster, the publisher for whom he worked for a few years, is often richly comic.

Parties were a way of life in Manhattan, providing opportunities for contacts in the literary business and the more personal rewards of friendship. Opting later for a less frenzied, more recollected life allowed Justin and Anne both to raise their three children in relative peace and quiet and to become remarkably productive.

The book will be in the stores by the end of this month; I recommend it to readers at large, but especially to those who feel about New York the way Dr. Johnson felt about his capital city: “When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life.”

Richard Griffin