Al Bendich Defender Of Howl Summary

THE DEAD LAWYER

Margalit Fox’s “Al Bendich, Defender of ‘Howl’ and Lenny Bruce’s comedy, Is Dead at 85” is an article that appeared on the New York Times Magazine in January 15, 2015. It is practically an obituary of this successful lawyer, who helped with two major cases around 1960 on free speech and won. Even though the chances of winning were slim. It is about how big of a fight this man fought and used his keen intelligence, spirit and his belief of free speech to win the cases.

Margalit Fox aims this article to young readers of this generation. Those of just maturing age to make sure they are aware of the importance of free speech so that these young ones can change the future and

raise a type of awareness on how free speech was fought for before and should still be fought for today as strong and as valiantly as it was before, using Al Bendich as an example. Fox uses forms of ethos, tone, and giving concrete examples to show the importance of free speech.
Fox herself, builds ethos because she seems to be an expert on this dead man. Doing her research carefully to avoid sloppiness and to give the reader a better understanding of this lawyer, providing useful information so the readers can understand the lawyer which helps especially when the audience aimed for is one without the general knowledge of free speech. With this information we do not only praise this lawyer and his work, but also the beauty and importance of what he fought for.
Fox begins her essay stating facts about Bendich using a very formal tone, for example, “He was the sole defense in the first of Bruce’s obscenity trials, in San Francisco in 1962”.

Another example is when Fox mentions, “More striking still is the fact that when Mr. Bendich wrote the brief in the “Howl” case. This formal type tone seems to increase the loss of interest of the audience and not creating the “hook” needed to pull in the reader’s attention into the article. Her writing style continues like this throughout the article, making it hard for readers to relate. But yet this formal tone helps show the importance of this article. For instance, “He wore cufflinks that at the time cost $25,000 – more than $200,000 today”. This line in the article really seemed to show the importance of the judge who was judging the

trial.
Within her article Fox very highly praises Bendich for his work, quoting what others have said, such as, “But then he needed the law to support it, and that’s where Bendich comes in. To use a basketball analogy, they did the setup; he did the dunk.” – Ronald K.L. Collins. This quote shows the importance of Bendich’s job in this case.
The Arrangement of the article seems to be mixed up like it was thrown into a blender. It is all over the place. For example, Fox starts with mentioning Al Bendich and then suddenly moves straight to the victims of the cases. She also states certain facts and quotes out of nowhere, for instance, “Jack Ehrlich spent most of our time reading from books like ‘Moll Flanders’. This causes readers to easily get confused on what their reading. Some of these facts do go to use as supporting evidence though, such as when she wrote, “Judge Horn is a man of the lord” This helps the reader understand how the judge will come to his final verdict.
Fox does show the significant of what Bendich did by giving concrete examples, by giving facts and asking the readers the right type of questions. Questions the audience could relate with. Such as, “Could you imagine a world where it would be a crime to say words you can hear every night on cable TV?” – Micheal E. Tigar. This really helps the reader to wonder and actually imagine themselves in such a situation. The emotional connection helps persuade the reader into taking their perspective.
In this article Fox talks about Bendich’s cases.

She announces that with Bendich’s help the cases were won. But the article seemed to be missing one of the most important things: How Bendich won his cases. The cases themselves are talked through very briefly and did not provide enough information. If these cases were talked through and provided the information on how Bendich won his cases, stating the concrete facts he used to win his battle would have increased the level of how well the audience understood free speech. But all Fox does is say that the case has been won.

Also her choice of words were ones of high vocabulary, such as, “sartorially and ribald.” The entire article is filled with hard to understand words making it much harder to understand certain sentences, for example, “It said that this subcategory of sexually oriented is completely beyond the First Amendment pale”. Thus making it harder to understand the article

itself.
Fox uses forms of ethos, tone, and giving concrete examples to show the importance of free speech persuading the audience to believe and understand it to its full extent to make sure we take action for it and fight for it. I feel the article failed to do so. Fox’s tone was too formal making it hard for the readers to relate. The arrangement of the article was messy and she stated certain facts randomly. Which would cause readers to easily get confused. The vocabulary level was very high which would limit the readers. And the article was at all not interesting. I believe if she expressed the cases in depth and showed how Bendich won his cases, would have given the article the extra spice it would need to keep the readers interested. I do however respect how well she expressed Bendich and how big his role was. Her independent research on him was particularly appropriate for her (the author) time period and audience. I now see him in a new respect because of what he fought for, and in an odd way this helped show how important free speech is, which goes to show that Fox did achieve her goal to a certain extent.