Harvey Keitel. Marshall Fine

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      ‘There,’ Keitel said, ‘is the whole foundation of self-analysis.’

4

      Keitel was more excited and curious than scared when America decided to intervene in Lebanon in 1957, to provide a peacekeeping presence while American and Soviet diplomats conferred and tried to resolve the dispute between Lebanon and the Soviet-backed forces in the region. ‘Jews weren’t normally allowed to be sent to the Middle East then,’ he said, ‘but it was an emergency situation – the threat that some Arab states were going to invade Lebanon – so they didn’t separate me from my unit.’

      Once they got to Lebanon, they carried rifles in the name of their country when they were on duty and, when off duty, explored Beirut, where they were stationed, as much as the politics of the moment would allow. Keitel was fascinated by Beirut’s blend of the modern and the biblical, but appalled by the poverty that he saw. American Marines always drew a crowd of children; Keitel found himself moved by the squalid conditions in which they existed. Though it was against regulations, he and his friends began filching rations in order to give them to the children they encountered.

      As he patrolled Beirut, Keitel – who only a couple of years earlier was spitting on the mezuzah at every opportunity – began wearing a Star of David on a chain around his neck, in plain view, as a note of defiance aimed at the people he was there to protect, people he knew would wipe out him and all the Jews in Israel, given the opportunity.

      Inevitably, it led one day to an encounter with a Lebanese civilian, who dropped a remark in passing – along the lines of ‘Jewish dog’ – that Keitel wouldn’t let pass. Springing suddenly into action, the nineteen-year-old Marine, eager for combat, grabbed the transgressor by the throat and applied a choke-hold long enough to make it clear that he disapproved of the remark. Keitel walked away, satisfied that the young man would keep future opinions about Jewish jewelry to himself.

      It wasn’t Keitel’s first run-in with anti-Semitism in the Marines. Still, the prejudice he’d found in the Marine Corps had a somewhat less emotionally charged context: ‘I was called a kike once by a sergeant when we were alone. I called him a guinea. He said, “Don’t call me that.” I said, “Don’t call me a kike.” He never said it again and we were OK.’

      His three years in the Marines remain a touchstone of his life, from his lifelong devotion to working out to the sense of self-esteem it instilled:

      That was the first time I had a real sense of pride about myself, a sense of belonging to a group that’s special. To this day, I’m proud of being a Marine.

      There was a spirit. We were on a journey, albeit the creativity was directed to a place none of us wanted to go to – war. But you understand, if you are in the middle of that, why the group is unstoppable. There is a spirit at work there, a support system, where you know you will never get left behind. I’m talking about being there for someone. Semper fidelis. That says it all. Always faithful. It means you’ll never let the other guy down. It means if he needs you, you will be there. Every experience I have affects my choices in life and the Marines was one of those experiences. Certainly the elevation of spirit that I encountered in the Marine Corps influenced me.

      Yet what he came away with – that pride in being a Marine – was hardly what he had gone looking for:

      I volunteered because I was looking for a war. And in retrospect, I see that it was all because of my inability to suffer, to be sad, to be lonely. I ended up being a Marine for three years and I know now that it’s easier to go to war than it is to face your own inner violence.

      I think I was probably looking to be tough, to be part of something where I could say, ‘I’m not afraid of anything.’ To hide the fear. But now I know where that’s at. The only way to protect yourself is to know fear and to accept it.

      It was on the return boat from Beirut to the United States that Keitel had the second revelation that changed his life forever.

      Bored and restless, having exhausted the ship’s supply of magazines and other forms of recreation, Keitel turned as a means of last resort to something he had studiously avoided for much of his life:

      He picked up a book and started to read.

      ‘I read a book for the first time. I wasn’t exposed to literature as a young boy. I’m not well-educated. I left school when I was seventeen. I went into the Marine Corps and I hadn’t read a book in my life. I was slow to come to it. It took me many years before I became something of a reader.’

      It is fitting that the book Keitel wound up with in his hand was about mythology, in which the stories provide moral lessons about the most basic sins: hubris, greed, jealousy, treachery, betrayal. Keitel seems to have built his entire career around telling stories – creating modern myths – dealing in the same issues that have attracted story-tellers from the most primal mythology to the most sophisticated: man’s quest to discern right from wrong, to resist evil even when doing good involves deep sacrifice, to learn the penalty – both internal and external – of embracing the dark path.

      I was aboard ship and somehow I picked up a book of Greek mythology and began reading. I had a desire to understand this chaos that I was experiencing in my body. And books were a guide. I don’t find that my reading has given me something I didn’t know so much as it’s made me more aware of what I do know but hadn’t permitted to enter my consciousness. Sometimes reading makes something clear to me. I’m reading Dostoyevsky, say, and I read a thought, and I say, ‘I know that thought; that thought is already in me and he just uncovered it.’

      I can think of no more important endeavor than reading. To be a little dramatic, it’s saved my life in many ways.

5

      Keitel returned to Brooklyn from the Marines in 1959, facing an uncertain future. He had no discernible job skills but now was equipped with a high-school equivalency diploma and an honorable discharge.

      For a while, he tried living at home. Pressured by his parents, he began working for them at an Atlantic Beach concession stand they now ran. But, after the relative freedom of the Marines, after being on his own for three years, the confines of the old apartment and the close quarters of working at the concession stand quickly began to chafe.

      He hooked up with an old friend from the neighborhood, Mark Reiner, and the two of them found an apartment in Brooklyn. After a brief employment search, Keitel took a job on 34th Street in Manhattan, selling shoes. But he didn’t like the work; given his shyness, he found it excruciating to put on the phony salesman’s smile and try to sell people shoes. The monotony and mundanity rapidly drove him wild. ‘I thought I did not want to be what I was,’ he recalled.

      Yet what else was there for him to do? He had no training in anything other than carrying a rifle and, now, measuring and trying shoes on people.

      Then someone from the neighborhood suggested court reporting. It was well-paid, steady work that offered variety on a daily basis, but without the need to interact with anyone. All you had to do was listen and transcribe to the stenotype machine. Keitel saved money from being a shoe dog and enrolled on a course to learn to be a court stenographer. ‘To learn it is easy,’ he said. ‘To get your speed up is difficult. I was good.’

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