The Yellow House, by Sarah M. Broom

9780802125088
Grove Press, 2019
376 pp

hardcover

"We are all born into histories, existing before us. The same is true of places. No place is without history."



Toward the end of this book, author Sarah Broom reveals that for the first time in five years, while visiting relatives, she had dreamed about  the Yellow House  before a trip to New Orleans.  On waking,  she wrote in a notebook the following question:

"How to resurrect a house with words?"

which is precisely what she does in this stunning, deeply personal, and unforgettable memoir.

She begins her story

"From high up, fifteen thousand feet above, where the aerial photographs are taken, 4121 Wilson Avenue, the address I know best, is a miniscule point, a scab of green. In satellite images shot from higher still, my former street dissolves into the toe of Louisiana's boot"

then moves closer to ground level to the neighborhood of New Orleans East.  The mention of this area where the author grew up is "rare and spare, afterthoughts" in the "twelve of thirteen history-telling books about New Orleans" she has stacked up; she also mentions an Avis Rent a Car map that cuts off New Orleans East, "a point beyond, a blank space on someone's mental map," although this area is "fifty times the size of the French Quarter, one-fourth of the city's developed surface."  It is also a part of New Orleans which doesn't find its way into the city's mythology; it's not that it  is "too young for history," but sadly, has been

"relegated to the sidelines, deemed not to matter as much, the place not having earned -- through demographics or economic success -- a spot on the cartographer's nearsighted map..."

It is also an area that reflects ongoing inequalities faced by African-Americans since before the author's childhood, but above all, it is someone's home. People lived and live there.

 Moving on, we are given a tour of the area as if the author is giving directions for driving there, a tour which hints at events involving her family at various locations along the way, slowly coming to Wilson Avenue until "finally arriving at what used to be our Yellow House," bought by the author's mother Ivory Mae in 1961 at the young age of nineteen and where thirteen children spent parts of their childhood.   It is there where the author's brother Carl often sits at a table at the spot where the living room of  4121 Wilson Avenue used to be, "where instead of floor there is green grass trying to grow."  This perfect beginning is beyond appropriate for many reasons which will become apparent while reading but more so because, as the author says in an interview on NPR,

"this is so important for me that I be able to act as a kind of cartographer and include my family on the map of a place that we love so much and also belong to" 

 an idea pointed to at the outset by her use of two different quotations, including part of Kei Miller's poem "The Cartographer Tries to Map a Way to Zion:"

"draw me a map of what you see

then I will draw a map of what you never see

and guess whose map will be bigger than whose?

Guess me whose map will tell the larger truth?"

It was in the Yellow House, which no longer exists,  "within its walls" that her mother "made her world."  And although it is no longer there, it has not been erased;  as the dustjacket blurb reveals, Sarah Broom demonstrates

"how the enduring drives of clan, pride, and familial love resist and defy erasure."

I find it appropriate that she unfolds these stories in "movements," since there is nothing at all static in the lives of these people (or for that matter, the street, the neighborhood or the city itself)  -- it is a story of people coming and going, absences, returns, displacements and dislocations, especially after 2005 and Hurricane Katrina.

The Yellow House is a beautiful, intricately-woven, often metaphorical book that allows the author to place her readers not  just inside  the house itself, but also moving outward,  inside the history of the family who lived there, the street, the neighborhood, and the city, about which the author has "braided, contradictory ideas."   It also moves inward, exploring her own connections to each, often from a distance.

Speaking of absences, and again quoting the author from the above-mentioned NPR interview, she says that

"it occurred to me that unless you knew a house had been there, you would never know. And I made this book in a way to stand in for that absence, to be a record, a history, so that some things might be saved.

While Carl keeps up the plot of land at 4121 Wilson Avenue to avoid it being taken away after the house had been demolished, "for any and for no reason, American History 101,"  he is also there  as "the keeper of the memory,"  knowing that he "could not put the house back together again," but still keeping watch, "letting the space transform and be the place it always was."

While I haven't even begun to scratch its surface here, I can't begin to say how much I loved this book; it is poignant, eye opening, and often funny, but above all,  so very down to earth and real, as it is told not only from the heart, but from the author's journalistic, investigative interviews with people within her own family.

 I have to say thank you to Sarah Broom for going against her "leanings" and bringing me to the Yellow House.  I have never read anything like this before, and I doubt I ever will again.  To say I loved it is an understatement.

**********

Since I'm just a reader, neither a critic nor reviewer, here are a few reviews from people who know what they're doing:

The New York Times - Angela Flournoy
NPR - Martha Anne Toll
The AV Club  - Joshunda Sanders

High on my favorites list for this year -- Josephine Tey: A Life, by Jennifer Morag Henderson

9781910124703

Sandstone Press, 2015

426 pp

hardcover

Sterling, superb, and all manner of superlatives -- this book is a must-read for anyone even remotely interested in Josephine Tey.  She is one of my all-time favorite mystery novelists, but her career and her life go well beyond just that of a few books.

As writer Val McDermid notes about Tey in her introduction to this book,

"Biographical information has always been scant, mostly because that's the way this most private of authors wanted it. The brief details on her book jackets reveal that Tey was born Elizabeth MacKintosh and that she also enjoyed success under another pseudonym -- Gordon Daviot, author of the West End hit Richard of Bordeaux, the springboard that launched John Gielgud to stardom.

Sometimes they mention that she was a native of Inverness who lived most of her life there. But until now, Josephine Tey was herself the greatest mystery at the heart of her fiction." (xviii)

Well, that's all changed now with the publication of Jennifer Morag Henderson's  Josephine Tey: A Life.  Henderson has done an invaluable service to Tey fans everywhere through her meticulous research:  as McDermid reveals, Henderson has been through Tey's family papers, as well as material that's never been published before to produce this simply amazing biography that

"gives us the chance to understand what shaped Beth MacKintosh into the writer she became." (xix)

 As the author explains, the book "aims to present the story of Beth's life -- of her many different lives.." and to set her "full body of work" in terms of Tey's life and within "the context of the literary canon."   It seems to me that Ms. Henderson has deftly and most thoroughly accomplished what she set out to do here. Tey was not just an amazing novelist (as most readers of her work like myself consider her), but a well-established, well-respected playwright whose performances featured such actors as John Gielgud, a screenwriter (which I did not know), a devoted daughter who helped take care of the family business and then her father and their home when he became very ill, and through it all, she continuously shunned the limelight, preferring her private life over her public one. The book is structured into three parts:

1. 1896-1923: Elizabeth MacKintosh
2. 1924-1945: Gordon Daviot
3. 1946-1952: Josephine Tey

although as you read it, you come to realize that these divisions are not so cut-and-dried or as rigid  as they look here.  In fact,  there's so much here about this woman's life that frankly, if you're a Tey reader, you will not want to miss a single word.

I'll leave the serious discussions about specific content, etc., to those far more wiser than myself who are skilled in analysis or to those who know much more about Tey than I ever will. Speaking from the vantage point of an avid Tey fan,  sometime after I'd read this book I reread her A Shilling For Candles, and I wrote the following about the experience on the crime page of this online reading journal:

"Having just recently finished Jennifer Morag Henderson's excellent biography of the author,  Josephine Tey: A Life ...  I find myself completely in agreement with her -- the more a Tey reader understands about her life, the easier it is to appreciate  and to understand her work.  I wish the biography had come out sooner; now I feel like I ought to go back and reread more of Tey's crime novels for better perspective."

I genuinely mean what I wrote there -- once I'd read this biography, it really opened my eyes as to just how much of MacKintosh, Daviot, and Tey went into her books.  Josephine Tey: A Life should be a must-read, cannot-miss part of any serious Tey reader's library; it's a book Tey fans will come back to over and over again.  It's a flat-out stunner of a biography, and Ms. Henderson deserves all of the praise that I'm sure will be coming her way because of it.

Thank you once again to Keara at Sandstone for the heads-up.  I absolutely loved this book, and very, very highly recommend it.

Street Poison: The Biography of Iceberg Slim, by Justin Gifford

9780385538343
Doubleday, 2015
265 pp

hardcover, sent to me by the publisher. Thank you!

I'm really liking my new idea of picking up a book about someone I know absolutely nothing about and letting it speak to me.  Two days ago I'd never even heard of Robert Beck/Iceberg Slim and now I'm beyond eager to read his work; two of his books should be arriving at my house this week.  Street Poison is in a word amazing.  

It took author Justin Gifford over ten years to research and put together this book, and right up front he says that at "first glance" writing about a guy who'd been a pimp for twenty-five years might seem to be "an appalling choice for a biography," since we're talking about someone who "abused hundreds of women throughout his lifetime;" he also describes him as "one of the most influential renegades" of the past century.  On the other hand, even though "he is practically unknown to the American mainstream," Beck went on to write a number of novels as well as his autobiography, Pimp: The Story of My Life.  Robin D.G. Kelley, an historian whose work I respect, also notes in the New Yorker that it's not just in the mainstream where Iceberg Slim's work remains relatively unknown -- he states that he's "amazed" that "well-read people" are unfamiliar with Beck's writing as well.

As Gifford notes, Beck is a "mess of contradictions," --

"student at Tuskegee Institute, Chicago pimp with connections to the black mafia, amateur scholar of psychoanalysis, pulp paperback writer, family man, Black Panther Party sympathizer, Hollywood darling of the blaxploitation era, and godfather of hip-hop...all these things and more..."

 and that this  book "attempts to make sense of these seemingly incongruent identities." I will say I think Gifford does a very good job at trying to make his readers understand what factors went into the making of Iceberg Slim in each of these roles, and he uses Beck's writing to get to the heart of why his life took the path it did.  Two important factors Beck cites in his becoming "street poisoned" and turning pimp are sexual abuse at a very early age and his relationship with his mother after she'd split up with Beck's stepfather, who was the closest thing to a real father  providing the only stable family life he'd had up to that time in his life.

Gifford moves chronologically through Beck's life, using Beck's writings as well as other primary sources to present his readers with a picture of this man,  at times testing what Beck writes about himself "against the historical record."  Readers also get a view of the huge number of  challenges faced by African-Americans  in America's cities from the time of the Great Migration up through  1992 and the Rodney King Riots; the author also takes his readers into the growth of African-American activism and politics in general, but more importantly, directly into how events shaped Beck's politics and his writing, which ultimately inspired and greatly influenced a number of rap/hip-hop artists, blaxploitation films in Hollywood, and most importantly, a huge number of readers of his work. 

Let me tell you here and now that if you want nice-nice and sugar-coated life story, you are NOT going to get it here. Nor is it exactly "true crime," as I see that some people are regarding it.  It is downright gritty, mean  and in a lot of places, just plain ugly -- not solely in terms of the abuse of women, but also in white America's racist policies and tactics that kept segregation and the realities of Jim Crow an ongoing reality.  I'm also walking away with a huge desire to read the work of Iceberg Slim, who as I noted earlier, I had no idea even existed before picking up this book. As soon as I got past the preface and into his childhood, I couldn't look away no matter what, and I did an all-day readathon until I'd finished.  Highly highly recommended; this is the sort of book I just love.

 Please do visit Kelley's  New Yorker article about "The Fires That Forged Iceberg Slim", which is just downright great, in my opinion, and gives Iceberg Slim and this book a much more thorough examination than I ever could. 

Irrepressible: The Jazz Age Life of Henrietta Bingham, by Emily Bingham

978809094656
FSG, 2015
369 pp

hardcover

 I rarely, and I do mean rarely, ever pick up a biography about someone I've never heard of before.  Normally I have at least some sort of fleeting knowledge of the subject, or  I choose books where I'm quite familiar with the person under study, but not in this case.  Had it not been for the little blurb about this book in The New Yorker,  I probably would never have even known this book had been published.  As things turned out, I was totally captivated by the story of this "wealthy, charismatic lesbian debutante from Kentucky."  On the other hand, sometimes I wasn't as enthralled by the writing (more later), but Bingham's story kept me up reading through the night and on into the entire next day.  I seriously couldn't put it down.

Just briefly, Irrepressible is written by Emily Bingham, a great-niece of Henrietta Bingham's, and she literally tries to "unpack" Henrietta's story as the book moves along. She'd always known about her great-aunt, the one the family called "an invert," but in an attic of the family home, Emily Bingham discovered quite a treasure trove of  Henrietta's belongings (including letters) that set her on the path to discovering for herself just who this woman actually was.

 Henrietta was born in 1901; her family at the time was quite socially prominent, the Bingham family achieved quite a raise in status and financial circumstance after father Robert's second marriage to Mary Lily Flagler, widow of Standard Oil co-founder Henry Flagler.  But I'm a bit ahead of the story here.  Henrietta's mother, Babes, was killed in a horrible car accident when Henrietta was only twelve; coming up on a railroad crossing, the driver of the car (Henrietta's uncle) took a moment to wipe the dust off of his glasses, and somehow failed to notice the oncoming train.  Henrietta was there when it happened; her father wasn't, but ever since that horrible and traumatic event,  her father (often referred to as "The Judge") came to depend on Henrietta for emotional support even after he married Mary Lily and then again when he married a third time, on which occasion, the author notes, Henrietta spent five hours vomiting in reaction to the news.   As the author notes, 

"Her mother's death before her eyes left an open wound -- an an opening for an unusually close partnership with her father that both empowered her and made her weak."

This strange sort of interdependence between father and daughter had a beyond-huge effect on Henrietta's life, a point that the author returns to time and again throughout the book.  As one reviewer puts it, she became "an emotional surrogate" for the Judge's "adored dead wife" even through his two marriages, right up to the time of his death.

Henrietta's story is compelling -- from her romantic affair with her English professor at Smith (Mina Kirstein) at the age of 21 until her death in 1968.  Emily Bingham has done an amazing amount of research about her great-aunt; sadly, information about her later life is rather lacking in terms of documentation.   She takes us slowly through Henrietta's life as she charmed and romanced members of the Bloomsbury set in 1920s London, started a long-term course of psychoanalysis with Ernest Jones, initially at Mina's behest (Kirstein hoping Jones could "cure" her of her own homosexual tendencies).  As it turned out, Jones became someone in whom she could confide about the "seductive ambivalence" toward the Judge, which ultimately would add to Henrietta's emotional and mental burden, even though the psychoanalysis "did not banish the anxiety and depression that stalked her."  We are privy to her various affairs with both men and women, her desire not to constantly be at her father's beck and call so that she could have some measure of freedom,  her unflagging support of her father when he became FDR's Ambassador to Britain just prior to the beginning of World War II (a position which was later taken over by Joseph Kennedy) and then her life, at least what's known about it  through the Judge's death and beyond.   One of the key ideas in this book is that while Henrietta had a large measure of freedom in terms of same-sex affairs as a young woman as long as she didn't flaunt things (her father even gave his tacit approval to her lesbian relationship with a tennis star with whom she lived while he served as ambassador), but as times changed, shifting morals,  homophobia, and Henrietta's status vis a vis her family's prominence in Kentucky  added to her already-overburdened mental state and ultimately contributed to her mental deterioration.

While I loved the subject and while I was cliche-ingly glued to this book, there were times when I kind of did the odd eyeroll or two over the author's writing -- very minor quibbles, to be sure, but still a bit annoying. Sometimes when she was describing people in the Bloomsbury group, there seemed to be much more about them personally than about Henrietta's relationship to them until she turns things around and gets back on track again, steering things back toward relevance to Henrietta.  She tends to do this quite a bit in other places as well with other people in Henrietta's orbit.  Two other stylistic examples stuck in my head. First, when discussing Henrietta's doctor in the mid-1940s starting her on prescription drugs, she writes

"That fall, Dr. Ackerly prescribed Henrietta the barbituate secobarbital (or Seconal) to assist with her withdrawal from alcohol, but probably also to ease her anxiety and depression."  

That certainly isn't problematic, but then she goes on to note that "These were the 'dolls' made famous in the 1966 novel Valley of the Dolls."  Necessary point? I don't think so. Later, again in a section about an overdose, she writes

"She found stimulants such as Dexedrine and Dexamyl, which Henrietta took to face life each morning and to control her appetite, along with sedatives -- Seconal, Dormitol, and Dormison -- which she needed to close the world down again,"

followed by this: "Pharmaceuticals have their own cold poetry".  Huh??

I will say however that the things that make this such an intense and compelling novel -- Henrietta herself, her family's history, her ongoing desire for the freedom to be who she wanted to be and the obstacles that so often got in the way, as well as her later tragedies -- far outweigh my niggles with the occasional writing issues, making for one hell of a good book.

Get a copy. It's amazing.

Under a Cruel Star: A Life in Prague 1941-1968, by Heda Margolius Kovály

9780841913776
Holmes & Meier, 1997
originally published 1973 as Na vlastní kůži
translated by Franci Epstein and Helen Epstein, "with the author"
192 pp

paperback

Finding this book was a stroke of luck, actually.  After having read Kovály's novel Innocence; or Murder on Steep Street (Soho, June 2015), I realized that the crime component of that book wasn't the entire story there.  The time, the place, and the people are what really stuck out for me, and it hit me that the story going on all around the mystery was much more important than the crime itself. I decided that I absolutely had to know more about this woman, and bought this book. What better place could there be to find out what motivated her than her own memoirs?  Under a Cruel Star is a short but very powerful book, one that you won't forget after you've finished it. It is a story of a woman who managed to survive during two extremely repressive regimes; it is also an examination of human nature and the moral choices people make under these circumstances.

Kovály's memoir covers a span of time from 1941 to 1968.  The author found herself part of the  "mass deportation" of the Jews from Prague that began in 1941, where, along with her family, she was sent to the Łódź ghetto.  They joined "close to one hundred thousand Polish Jews living in unimaginable conditions," but  Kovály found herself transported to Auschwitz before the end of the war and taken to do labor at another work camp.  As the Russian troops were advancing and were "so close to our camp that we could hear the rumbling of battle," the Nazis evacuated the camp, making the prisoners walk under heavy guard from Poland into Germany.  During this journey, the author and a small group of women decided to make a break for freedom and made it back to the Czech border.  Upon arriving in Prague, she discovered that trying to find food and shelter, even from friends, was not an easy task. Even her very best friend who had promised her family that he would do anything he could for them, reacts with horror when she knocks on his door.  After asking her what sense it would make "to risk one life for another," he admits that he's driven by fear -- after all, on the streets, columns were posted with lists of names who had been "executed for crimes against the Reich," which often meant entire families had been killed for trying to help, as she writes, "someone like me." Luckily, Kovály was taken in and helped by the Resistance up until the end of the war, when it was safe to return from hiding. During this time she married her husband Rudolf.

Yet, as she writes,  survivors were always not welcomed home with opened arms -- they'd often find themselves coming back to no home, or to trusted friends who'd kept their property and who now denied anything had been left with them.  Even worse, when they tried to get legal help, they were often scorned:

"It would also happen that a survivor might need a lawyer to retrieve lost documents and he would remember the name of one who had once represented large Jewish companies. He would go to see him and sit in an empire chair in the corner of an elegant waiting room, enjoying all that good taste and luxury, watching pretty secretaries rushing about. Until one of the pretty girls forgot to close a door behind her, and the lawyer's sonorous voice would boom through the crack, 'You would have thought we'd be rid of them finally, but no, they're impossible to kill off -- not even Hitler could manage it. Every day there're more of them crawling back, like rats..."

The survivors -- the Jews, partisans, returning political prisoners -- also had to contend with black marketeers and former collaborators who turned the Nazi defeat to their own advantage. Bureaucracies forced the returnees to jump through near-impossible hoops to get their lives going again.   Kovaly notes that she didn't find it surprising that people would turn to Communism, due to the "sheer despair over human nature which showed itself at its very worst after the war." Other factors (including the failure of prewar democratic ideals, the forsaking of the country by Western Allies, and the liberation of Prague by the USSR, plus blatant lies of citizens who'd lived in the Soviet Union) helped to set the stage for the rise of Communism in Czechoslovakia.  The author also states that "the most eagerly embraced belief of the time was that no national or racial oppression could exist under Communism."  While true that not everyone joined the Communist Party, Heda and her then husband Rudolf Margolius did, buying into the idea that building socialism would result in "peace, in an industrially-advanced country, with an intelligent, well-educated population."  But, as she goes on to explain, by the early 1950s these ideals had been largely forgotten and things had decidely turned for the worse, even though her husband had a high-level position in the new government. Arrests were being made under the "direct guidance of Soviet advisors whose task it was to purge the ranks;" ironically, as she says, those who had never joined the Party actually enjoyed a "temporary respite." Her husband, sadly, became a victim of the purges, despite his high Ministry position, he was arrested and eventually  executed as part of the Slanksy affair which resulted in other arrests, a series of show trials,  and state-ordered executions in 1952.

The bulk of this book is in how Heda survived after her husband's arrest, his official ouster from the Party, and his death. For her, it was a time in which she lost everything but her son.  Her name was enough to deny her even the most basic necessities -- for example,  once while at death's door she was turned out of a hospital when they discovered who she was. Her work was terminated and she was left wondering how to make ends meet. Only a few brave people would continue to even associate with her and even some of her son's friends were no longer allowed to play with him. She spares nothing in describing how all-encompassing life under the Communists could be -- the regime reached down into every aspect of life, controlling seemingly ordinary people through brutality and fear. Ironically, while the average citizen on the street finds his or her life sliding into chaos, the powers-that-be led altogether different lifestyles.  Her account ends with a brief Prague Spring under 1968 before the Soviets invaded Czechoslovakia; she herself left the country shortly afterwards.

There were times while I read this book that I was appalled, but quite frankly, there were times when I could seriously understand why some people made the choices that they did. While Under a Cruel Star is a very personal story, it can also be seen as an exploration of human nature under the most arduous and extreme conditions.   You can also read it as an understanding of how the best of idealistic intentions can often result in a nightmare.  It is also a study in the effects of totalitarianism on everyday, average people who, because of the need  to survive in an atmosphere of complete fear, often feel compelled to choose self-interest over the welfare of  fellow human beings,  keeping their heads down and getting on with their lives. Thankfully, there were others who chose not to go that route, or the author and countless others like her might never have survived.  I don't often read memoirs but as difficult as this one was to get through at times, I'm very happy I did. Highly recommended.

He Wanted the Moon: The Madness and Medical Genius of Dr. Perry Baird, and his Daughter's Quest to Know Him, by Mimi Baird

9780804137478
Crown, 2015
272 pp

arc -- my thanks to LibraryThing and to the publisher for my copy

Mimi Baird was just a little girl of six when her father, Dr. Perry Baird, a successful physician with a thriving practice,  was taken away by two state troopers while having lunch at a country club one day in 1944.  He wasn't under arrest, but rather the police were there to escort him to Westborough State Hospital in Westbourough Massachusetts.  Dr. Baird was no stranger to "mental institutions," having already "been held" at three others before Westborough, and he suffered what was then called "manic breaks," now recognized as serious bipolar disorder.  Using a combination of hospital/medical records, statements from Baird's friends, her own recollections and a treasure trove belonging to Dr. Baird, including his own manuscript that he wrote while hospitalized, Mimi Baird has put together a book about her father and his illness, relating how it affected her and her family especially since 1944 was the year he stopped coming home. Her father had always meant to publish someday, and now Ms. Baird has been able to fulfill his wishes some decades later. 

Since this book hasn't even been released yet, I won't be going into any great detail here about its contents, leaving that for interested readers to discover.  I will say that the very best parts of this book come from Dr. Baird's own writings while hospitalized at Westborough and later Baldpate, a private hospital in Georgetown, MA. In many ways, what he describes while in Westborough begs a comparison to the action in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (complete with his own Nurse Ratched) both in terms of "treatment" and in the idea that the most important priority of those in charge is to get the patients to conform. He writes about being bound in straitjackets (from which he constantly attempted to escape), wrapped in cold wet sheets, and other standard regimens for the mentally ill that were extant at the time.  Even more interesting though is how the reader can actually witness Dr. Baird's deterioration, not just in his worsening handwriting as described by his daughter, but in how his accounts of what's going on with him do not even come close to matching what his medical records say. As his conditioned worsens, he becomes delusional, and just how much so becomes quite clear while reading through his writings. But the book goes well beyond the medical aspects to reveal just how much stigma mental illness in the 1940s carried in normal society, and even in the personal sphere, where in this case, Dr. Baird's wife Gretta was told to "try to forget him", and in so doing, would never talk about her husband's condition, not even to her children. 

As much as I enjoyed reading Dr. Baird's personal account, considering that this book is in part a daughter's "quest to piece together the memoir and the man," her narration can sometimes come off as kind of cold and detached.  There's a particular line in here where Ms. Baird talks about her mother naming her "the ice queen," and sometimes that iciness comes through onto the page. While there are a few moments of pure admiration and love that come shining through, sometimes I think the tone is  much more matter-of-fact  than one would expect from the feelings of a daughter devoted to her recovering her father's life story. 

All in all, I enjoyed reading this book. I can't actually speak to being in Ms. Baird's shoes, but I appreciate the fact that it must have been extremely tough for her to have to relive what her father suffered. On the flip side, I'd say that having people who remembered him so positively and with such affection must have been a blessing to her.    I do have to comment about the fact that Ms. Baird is very open and honest about the editing of her father's work to make it more readable and concise. First of all, perhaps it might have been a more honest and gutwrenching account if even small portions could have been left unreadable, so that readers might have a better feel for Dr. Baird as his mental state eroded at times; second, I am always a little uncomfortable when I read that editors mess with primary documents like Dr. Baird's manuscript, since I'm of the opinion that these types of sources should  always stand on their own with no alteration whatsoever. 

Definitely recommended -- this book is already garnering some pretty high ratings and readers seem to be loving it. 

Childhood: The Biography of a Place, by Harry Crews

9780820317595
University of Georgia Press, 1995
182 pp
with drawings by Michael McCurdy

hardcover

"Nothing is allowed to die in a society of storytelling people."

In the opening pages, author Harry Crews  offers his readers one reason why he started writing this book -- it was because, as he says, "I have never been certain of who I am."  He goes on to say that he's "slipped into and out of identities as easily as other people slip into and out of their clothes;" that by the "third or fourth tape" of interviews he's done, he's  noticed that his voice would "become almost indistinguishable from the voice of the person" with whom he'd been speaking.  But he knows for an absolute certainty that whoever he is "has its source" in Bacon County, Georgia, and that

"... what has been most significant in my life had all taken place by the time I was six years old." 

He also notes that in organizing  a "search" for those six years, he needed to rely not only on his own memory, but that of others as well. What he's put together here, he says, is "the biography of a childhood which necessarily is the biography of a place, a way of life gone forever out of this world."  With an old shoebox full of photos by his side,  Crews goes on to tell of a hardscrabble first six years of life first on a farm in Bacon County, his "home place," then in a brief move to Florida, and finally back again to Georgia.

I haven't had the pleasure of reading any of Crews' novels yet -- I wanted to read this book before opening  the one book I bought to try him out (Feast of Snakes), but my guess would be that themes that will be found in any of his writing are probably found in here as well.  Here are a few I've discovered:  the power and art of storytelling,  poverty,  family, "courage born out of desperation and sustained by a lack of alternatives," fantasy/myth as an integral part of survival, alcoholism, women, and fathers.  And then, of course, looming over all of those likely candidates, there's the American South, which is why whether or not all of the events depicted here in Harry Crews' young life are true isn't really an issue here.  It is, after all, a "biography of a place," and somehow, he manages to pull it off without roaming into the usual poor-South stereotypes, and does it in such a way that humor manages to come through the worst of harsh and tragic. I come from Southern stock on one side -- and the people in this book are about as realistically described as anyone my grandparents ever told me about from their own lives, which also started out under some of the same conditions as the people in Bacon County experienced in this book.

The only thing left to say, since this is a book best experienced on one's own, is that the quality of the writing drew me in pretty much immediately. I know it's cliché and even trite to say this, but frankly, I was just spellbound all the way through it.   Reading this book was an experience on its own -- it was so very easy, even without the help of McCurdy's drawings, to imagine it all in my head, as if Crews was writing and illustrating all at the same time. It was also very easy, once I got the reading rhythm going, to see just how his small  world made sense to him.  As just one example, take this scene of young Harry looking through the Sears Catalog with his friend Willalee Bookatee:

"I first became fascinated with the Sears catalogue because all the people in its pages were perfect. Nearly everybody I knew had something missing, a finger cut off, a toe split, an ear half-chewed away, an eye clouded with blindness from a glancing fence staple. And if they didn't have something missing, they were carrying scars from barbed wire, or knives, or fishhooks. But the people in the catalogue had no such hurts. They were not only whole, had all their arms and legs and toes and eyes on their unscarred bodies, but they were also beautiful. Their legs were straight and their heads were never bald and on their faces were looks of happiness, even joy, looks that I never saw much of in the faces of the people around me.

Young as I was, though, I had known for a long time that it was all a lie. I knew that under those fancy clothes there had to be scars, there had to be swellings and boils of one kind or another because there was no other way to live in the world. And more than that, at some previous, unremembered moment, I had decided that all the people in the catalogue were related, not necessarily blood kin, but knew one another, and because they knew one another there had to be hard feelings, trouble between them off and on, violence, and hate between them as well as love."  (58)

 When I read this, something clicked inside of my own head about how well Harry understood his universe, even at such a young age. It's probably likely that at the time he wouldn't have used those words or even been able to describe his thoughts in those terms, but the feeling that he fully comprehended the unreality of the people in the catalog as juxtaposed against his experience comes through loud and extremely clear. The entire book is written like this, sucking you in to this childhood of his along with all of its scars, its violence, and the love of his family he could always count on no matter what.  Very highly recommended.

The Daphne Du Maurier Companion, ed. Helen Taylor

9781844082353
Virago, 2007
424 pp

paperback

In the introduction to this book, editor Helen Taylor notes that the goal of this volume is to

 "demonstrate the scope of her concerns and achievements -- hopefully to quell for ever the myth of a humourless, Cornish cliff-walking upper-middle-class recluse who wrote only one good book."

And while it is true that a very large section of this book consists of introductions to other works by du Maurier (all of the Virago editions),  it seems to me that the work most fully written about here continues to be her most famous book, Rebecca, sort of thwarting that goal. 

The Daphne du Maurier Companion is divided into five different sections. The first part, "Daphne du Maurier, by the People Who Knew Her," begins with an interview with her children, moving into a couple of pieces by an editor, Sheila Hodges, who worked with du Maurier for just under fifty years.  Part two is all about Rebecca's "lasting reputation and cultural legacy."  Part three (in part) takes on the other novels, but it only consists of introductions to Virago's editions of du Maurier's books. There is also a look at her short stories by collection (again, introductions to Virago editions)  but to be really honest, there are only a few out of her rather large selection of short stories that are discussed in any sort of  breadth. Part four, "Daphne Du Maurier in Adaptation" focuses on the movies made from her books -- again, with more written about Rebecca than any other novel or short story. Part five introduces a "rediscovered short story" entitled "And His Letters Grew Colder."

Considering that this book was published in the "centenary year of Daphne du Maurier's birth" (what would have been her 100th birthday), as a  "commemoration"  of her incredible output over the years, it's a pretty good general guide to her work, and there is much to glean from its contents.  It's a good book to have around while reading du Maurier as it does offer some insight into the woman herself, i.e. where she was coming from at different stages of her life as her writing career progressed.  I suppose you could argue that it does draw attention to her work outside of Rebecca, but because there is so much focus on that very well-read and well-loved book, my own opinion is that it actually does the opposite. My favorite part of the book was in part one,  where the interviews with her children and the articles by her editor made du Maurier more or less come to life as a real person rather than just an author.

I read one review that stated that it seems like The Companion is a sort of "make-book" for the occasion, and well, that's obviously true considering what I noted in the preceeding paragraph about the centenary. However, even though you're not going to get a lot of depth in this volume,  it's still a great place to start if you're considering reading any of du Maurier's work. I'd recommend it with the caveat that it's  more of an overview rather than a book that actually goes into great detail. But what is there is both interesting and insightful.

Dr. Mütter's Marvels: A True Tale of Intrigue and Innovation at the Dawn of Modern Medicine, by Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz

9781492408702
Gotham, 2014
384 pp

Kindle version, from the publisher via netgalley - thank you.

Some time back I was asked if I would like to review this book. As it happened, it was already on my ever-growing wishlist, so I agreed.  One - I'm actually quite fascinated with the history of medicine in this country -- far from being a dull topic, sometimes it gets pretty interesting. Two - The Mütter Museum has been on my list of places to see for a long time now, but somehow, whenever we're in Philly, we never have enough time to get there.  After having finished this book,  I'll definitely make time. Dr. Mutter's Marvels offers not only the personal life story of Thomas Dent Mutter (1811 - 1859)  which is interesting in and of itself, but it also examines the state of the medical profession both in America and abroad during the early 19th century.  Mutter remains largely unknown to this day, known mainly for the museum that bears his name, associated with medical oddities.  The author of this book wants to remedy that and bring her subject out of obscurity to reveal the contributions he made to the American medical profession.  It's a good and very readable book -- maybe running to the tangential here and there,  and lighter on source materials than I would have expected, but then again, to be fair to the author, Mutter himself proved to be quite an "elusive" subject.

Thomas Dent Mutter was sickly as a child, and the attempts at healing him were pretty primitive in today's standards. He remembers

"being bled by lancet or by leech, fed tinctures and bitter weeds, left to sweat it out alone in his bed or soaked in a special bath,"

and as he got older and started his studies, he became

"perhaps too familiar with other nonsurgical branches of medicine,  where recovery was often a guessing game." 

But in the long run, Mutter came to understand the importance of  surgery --  rather than being a "guessing game,"  he realized that it was really an "art," a way to provide relief to the suffering.  He also came to realize it as his life's calling. The author discusses how he was highly influenced by his time in Paris, where he was most fascinated with and inspired by those patients referred to as "monsters," those who "hid their faces when walking down the streets," or who

"took cover in back rooms, excused themselves when there were knocks at the door. They saw how children howled at the sight of them. They understood the half a life they were condemned to live and the envy they couldn't help but feel toward others..."

and who were willing to risk death during surgical procedures in hopes of living a better life.

Aside from Mutter the man, Dr. Mutter's Marvels also provides a look at the state of American medicine during this time period -- on the whole,  it wasn't a good time to be sick; god help you if you were.   When Mutter returned to America and started working in  Philadelphia, he started out teaching before joining the Jefferson Medical College as an instructor and a rather compassionate surgeon. He also developed several surgical techniques and instituted new standards such as doctor hygiene, post-op wards and using anesthetics during surgery -- the latter a definite improvement over having the patients down wine or other alcoholic beverages to help ease their pain.  The author also builds her story of Mutter and the medical profession as a whole by highlighting some of his contemporaries  in the medical profession who weren't so keen on Mutter's suggestions --  most notably, his rival Dr. Charles Meigs, who felt that allowing the use of anesthesia for patients was kin to anathema.

Ms. Aptowicz  writes in a way that is accessible to pretty much any reader without overloading her work with a lot of scientific jargon and explanations that could make her book a chore to read. There are a few interesting patient illustrations here and there throughout the book that added a nice touch to the text, and it's very obvious that she is quite enthusiastic about her subject. Most importantly, though, her focus is that Dr. Mutter should  be seen not just as the man who gave his name to a museum but also as a respected doctor and an innovator in the medical profession.  To be truthful, it's not as lively a narrative as, for example,  the work of  Eric Larson or Hampton Sides, but non-science readers such as myself who are  interested in the history of medicine and the history of science will find the book to be very user friendly and above all, very informative. Both reader and professional reviews of this book are already quite positive, and I think Ms. Aptowicz has done a good job here.

J.D. Salinger: The Escape Artist, by Thomas Beller

9780544261990
New Harvest, 2014
192 pp

hardcover

Writer Thomas Beller has put together this small volume which is not so much a biography but a book that reads like a series of meditations on JD Salinger. He has gathered a number anecdotes  by some of the people with whom Salinger lived and worked, combed through boxes of correspondence, visited places and people where Salinger spent time while growing up, and even used small bits of Ian Hamilton's court-blocked, unauthorized biography of the writer, which Beller had obtained on loan from a friend.  All of these parts are quite good, and while not as analytical as one might hope, they do offer a little more of a peek into the reclusive Salinger's earlier life.

As I got deeper into this book though, I discovered that it's also a blending of Beller's own story in terms of his love of Salinger (and the English teacher who turned him on to the author), and also in terms of how and where his own family's path crossed those of Salinger and his family in the past.   Some years back I read Mark Christensen's biography of Ken Kesey called  Acid Christ: Ken Kesey, LSD and the politics of ecstasy, where the author did pretty much did the same thing, and as with this book, I was not amused.  I also think that considering that Mr. Beller set up a model for understanding more about Salinger's writing  in a "tryptych" divided into three time periods, he moves around too freely through time and sort of throws that model out the window. For example, while speaking about events in the 1940s, the next chapter moves to Joyce Maynard who lived with Salinger for about nine months in the 1970s, then we're back to 1945.  Not only is it confusing, but it made me wonder why he would leave his own investigative framework to veer off this way.  The whole approach is also rather informal, not what you'd expect in an examination of such a famous person, and it has a sort of unfocused, kind of airy feel to it.

While the insights into Salinger via the letters, the interviews, the examination of his Jewish heritage and the tours around New York were interesting and kept me reading,  a) there wasn't a lot there and b) I was not at all impressed with the author's attempt at  "biography as a work of art" here. It comes across as a little more  artsy than informative, and it just wasn't something that left a huge impression or added more to the mystery life of this reclusive man.

High times: The Last Pirate: A Father, His Son and the Golden Age of Marijuana

9780385533461
Doubleday, 2014
249 pp

hardcover


“In many ways, the era of piracy and the era of pot are an uncanny match. Both the pirates and the marijuana smugglers cursed and cussed, sang bawdy songs, gambled, whored, profaned the holy days, gave in to lust, reveled in uncleanliness, and were greedy for life, liberty and merriment, which they gulped down to the last.”

The Last Pirate is a wonderful book, very entertaining but at the same time very serious. It charts both the rise and fall of a man whose career generated millions but whose addictions ultimately left him living under a bridge in Miami.  It also examines how the author's life was affected by The Old Man's highs and lows, leaving him without a dad throughout his childhood.


When the author, "Little Tony" Doukoupil  was six,  "The Old Man" walked out on his family.  In the author's first  six years, Big Tony may not have qualified as father of the year (leaving his kid alone in a Disney hotel, doing heroin while his son had a bout of serious croup), but all the same, Little Tony adored his dad. Before Big Tony left, the family lived off the proceeds of Big Tony's wide-ranging, and very profitable dope-smuggling enterprise, which lasted more or less over a 20-year span of time. His crew consisted of a very small group of trusted friends, but their cleverness & caution fed the big machine of sellers and users in the U.S. After Big Tony's departure, the money started to dwindle, and when needed most, Big Tony was in such a cocaine and heroin-addled state that he couldn't remember where he'd buried the coolers of cash he'd stashed from New England to New Mexico.  It was a big step down in the author's life -- going from one of the top private schools in Miami to becoming the poor kid was only part of how his father's absence affected his childhood.   The author grew up from age six on without his dad, who in his mind's eye would become an  outlaw and a pirate, engaging in the same sorts of renegade activities as pirates and smugglers of earlier times. Just recently, though,  Tony Dokoupil the younger became a dad, and haunted by his absent father,  set out to find out what he could about him. According to the author, it was his first Father's Day card that made him "terrified of the genes I carry and the man I may become." It also prompted him to discover his father's story so as to find some loophole in the account of his "father's rise and fall,"  something that would tell him that genetics aren't everything.

From various sources, the author has recreated as much of his father's history as possible, trying to form a better picture of who this man was and what he did.  All he knew about his dad before starting to research this book had come to him only in "scraps."  He goes into his father's  family and childhood, then looks at the early days of his dad's dope experiences and how from there he became the head of one of the biggest pot-smuggling operations in American history.  It's often funny, and at times eye opening, revealing for example,  just how close America came in 1970s to totally decriminalizing marijuana, or a drug-related scandal in DC starring Peter Bourne, Jimmy Carter's chief drug policy adviser, or  how DEA agents in South America would  turn a blind eye for their own cut of the business.  But on a more personal level, the story is much more on the troubling side, as Big Tony's family gets caught up in his decline primarily because of Big Tony's addictions, his "passion."  The book also reveals, among other things,  a brief history of  the early days of marijuana legislation, and how the golden years of pot smuggling started to decline later on due to a) Reagan's policies and the War on Drugs,  and b) the rise of less-risky homegrown, better-quality marijuana. 

There's so much more to this book, and I've only briefly touched on it here.   It's very honest, so much so that at times it's downright painful to read, but at the same time, some parts of this book are actually funny.  When it comes right down to it, he says, it's all about the choices people  make in life -- and he's absolutely correct.  What a good book! Definitely recommended.

Kansas City Lightning: The Rise and Times of Charlie Parker, by Stanley Crouch

9780062005595
Harper, 2013
365 pp

hardcover

"What he gave the horn, it gave back. What it gave him, he never forgot."

The ultimate reading day for me includes the following: rain (which we get a lot of down here in the south), a cup or two or three of strong black coffee (no pods -- I love freshly ground) and most important, the jazz music playing in the background.  One of my favorite musicians is Charlie Parker, about whom this book was written.  I have been wanting to read a biography about Parker for a long time; when Kansas City Lightning was published last year, I scooped it up.  But here's the thing:  this is less of a biography than I thought it would be.  At first I was disappointed, but I kept flipping back to the book cover with its subtitle "The Rise and Times of Charlie Parker," and came to terms with the fact that a standard biography was not the author's intention.  I say that up front so that if you start reading and Parker disappears for long periods of book space, don't despair and keep going. The end product as a whole is informative and frankly, quite a ride, one not solely for the jazz lover.  It also speaks to African-American culture of the time, and expands out into a look at  blues, swing and jazz in the context of a wider American culture.    

Starting out at New York's Savoy Ballroom, the "Madison Square Garden of the battles of the bands", the story takes you back in time to the Kansas City and the origins of Parker's eventual rise to fame.  It was a place where musicians held court at 18th Street and Vine, where the blues morphed into a new form of jazz.  The book is filled with the people, music, culture etc that influenced Parker, often related via interview by people who were there who had a connection with him. There are also times where the author goes off on serious but informative tangents and  not just in the world of music: he spends time talking about the Buffalo Soldiers, the impact of D.W.Griffith's "Birth of a Nation," which portrayed African American men as the white man's worst enemies vis-a-vis white women; there is a also a brief history of minstrelsy which eventually serious African-American musicians refused to be a part of; the rise and downfall of boxer Jack Johnson and his later betrayal of Joe Louis among many others.  But it's when he's into the music and the musicians that the writing shines;  the descriptions of after-hours jam sessions where musicians were free to be themselves are amazing.  Even though there are a number of gaps in Parker's personal life story here (as the author notes, it's largely because so much of his early years remain undocumented), the beauty of this book lies in the world surrounding Parker and how it influenced his near fanatic drive to create something new, something  already inside him needing to come out. 

While sometimes the writing meanders, when he's ready to bring Parker back into the scene, he's in tight control.  Some of these parts  are reimagined, while others are based on personal memories and research. At the same time, he lets the reader know when discrepancies arise -- for example, stories told by Parker's first wife Rebecca don't always mesh with the eyewitness accounts of her sister.  But while in places the writing might strike an off-key note (for me there were a few, especially when he equates "Charlie's curiosity about narcotics" to his affection for Sherlock Holmes mysteries) taken as a whole, the book has a cool flow to it, filled with vivid jargon in a style that is truly his own. 

Reader response has been generally favorable toward this book; after perusing several professional reviews, the same is true on that level as well.  I also discovered that Kansas City Lightning is just one of a two-volume set, so I'll sit tight and eagerly anticipate the next book.  In the meantime, I can very highly recommend this book, especially to fans of jazz and of Charlie Parker, but also to anyone who is into African-American history.  A definite no-miss.

Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the the Spending of a Great American Fortune, by Bill Dedman and Paul Clark Newell, Jr.

 9780345545565
Ballantine/Random House, 2013
456 pp


hardcover
 
 Empty Mansions is a book that proves the old axiom that sometimes truth really is stranger than fiction, and,  I would add, just as captivating.  The centerpiece of this book is Huguette Clark, a privileged, incredibly wealthy woman who chose to live her life happily by staying hidden. Huguette's story may seem to some to be the stuff of madness, but the the authors disagree, calling her  a "modern-day 'Boo' Radley," someone who shut herself away  in order to remain "safe from a world that can hurt."    Huguette died in 2011, at the age of 104, two weeks shy of 105, but her death isn't the end of this story.  As of yesterday, according to a report from one NPR station, jury selection began in the trial to decide who gets what from her estate.  Empty Mansions takes you from the wide Montana prairies to the smaller world of the privileged elite; from a beautiful mansion topped with a golden tower on Millionaire's Row in New York City  to a hospital room next to a janitor's closet in this strange but well-told and thoroughly-researched story.

The book takes the reader through the life of  W.A Clark,  former senator from Montana and self-made multimillionaire known as the "copper king," and his family -- his wife Anna La Chapelle, daughters Huguette and older sister Andrée.  Clark had other older children from a previous marriage, but lived with his second family on New York City's Millionaire's Row in a six-story mansion at Fifth Avenue and Seventy-seventh street.  The sisters grew up in opulence and lived privileged lives, all before tragedy struck with Andrée's death at the age of 16. After having lost her sister and best friend, Huguette was sent alone to a school for the "daughters of elite," where her dance teacher was Isadora Duncan.   In 1925 her father died, but due to the terms of his will, Anna and Huguette moved to an apartment at 907 Fifth Avenue. Huguette married in 1928, but it didn't last, and she was divorced by 1930.  As time went on, Huguette began to stop seeing visitors, becoming reclusive, and eventually stopped leaving her apartment.  Anna died in 1963, and Huguette "throws herself" into her art -- which consisted of painting and meticulously furnishing dollhouses, or more accurately, storyhouses where she could move her dolls (a massive collection) through the rooms, having them do different things, and studying cartoons frame by frame. She spent tons of money on these projects, and was also very generous with her money among friends and supporting worthy causes (along with paying for upkeep of the "empty mansions" she'd inherited) from her "fairy-tale checkbook,"  but above all valued her privacy, trusting in her attorney and her accountant to handle all business transactions.  But Huguette had also been getting treatment for skin cancer, and when her doctor died in 1990, she didn't look for another one, and all the while she was getting worse. A friend persuaded her to go the hospital for treatment, and she ended up at Doctors Hospital,  a "treatment center for the wealthy,"  in New York City.

The story of the Clarks, the author says, is also  "like a classic folk tale" in reverse, with

 "the bags full of gold arriving at the beginning, the handsome prince fleeing, and the king's daughter locking herself away in the tower."

Now, as if the dollhouses weren't weird enough, this is where the story starts getting just plain strange and even worse,  just plain sad.   At the age of 85, within two months of  Huguette's surgeries, she becomes an "indefinite patient," at Doctors Hospital,  choosing to remain there for the rest of her life, never telling family where she was, ordering everyone to respect her privacy at all costs.   According to the authors,  within a month, one of her doctors alerts the hospital's powers-that-be Huguette is the daughter of a multimillionaire, and that he'd be willing to help develop an "appropriate cultivation approach." Behind her back, they made fun of her, but the hospital officials hold meetings to figure out how to get her to give up some of her money.  The president of the hospital, again according to the authors, boldly says that

"Madame, as you know, is the biggest bucks contributing potential we have ever had."

The doctors go all out trying to get her to cough up in a number of measures that can only be described as coercive.

[As an aside, I'm a notetaker when I read, and going through them now, I see I had a "holy sh*t" moment that I noted in the margins when I came upon a scheme to get her to sign over her assets in a "charitable gift annuity"  scheme --

that carried much more risk than benefit for this 98 year-old woman.]  

It wasn't just the officials or her doctors who got part of her money, either, one of them outright blackmailing her into loaning him  an extra $500,000 on top of the million she'd already given him.  Her private nurse/companion is Hadassah Peri who also came to benefit from Huguette's generosity, as Huguette gave her and her family several "gifts" of cash and property, coming to over $30 million dollars.  Every now and then Peri would just happen to mention some monetary issue she was having, and Huguette would take care of it.  For example, Peri once told Huguette that her kids have asthma and there was a flood in the basement.  Huguette tells Peri she should really move, and hands her $450,000 for a new house. Christmas gifts came in the form of tens of thousands of dollars, she paid for Peri's children's schooling, their summer camps, back taxes the family owed to the IRS, a new house for Hadassah's brother and family to use when they were in town, and the list goes on and on and on.  She was being taken advantage of by pretty much everyone, including Citibank, who'd earlier lost millions in jewelry she'd had in safety deposit boxes, and only allowed her to settle for a maximum amount, playing on her need for absolute privacy and knowing she'd never take them to court.  By the time of her death, Huguette was cash poor, and had been selling off extremely valuable possessions  to pay for the little "gifts" she gave out as well as the taxes attached to the gifts. 

The empty mansions of the title refer to the places that had been acquired by the family over Huguette's lifetime, and then rarely, if ever used, and the chapter headings carry the names of the properties. Each one, including Woodlawn Cemetery, had been kept up by Huguette as places to preserve memories, and were left frozen in time with orders to the caretakers not to be disturbed in any way. 

This is truly an incredible story, and I've thrown it into the book group mix this year.  I will say that the first parts of the book that went back to the days when W.A. Clark was making his fortune and building up a tarnished reputation as a Montana senator were pretty dull, and that I almost put the book down.  Once the early history was finished, however, the story picked up with a vengeance.  There were parts that shocked, parts that made me downright angry, and parts where I couldn't tell whether Huguette was mentally disturbed, easily taken advantage of or coerced,  or whether she was just exercising her right to spend her money the way she chose to. I just wanted to know her story and how she got to the point where she chose to stay in a hospital for twenty years, but it turned into much more than that.  There are some really good points raised  in this book, but in the end, I discovered that it actually raises more questions than it answers.  That's not a bad thing, and there are probably things that will never be known, even when this upcoming trial gets underway.  

Definitely recommended, and while not all reviews have been positive, I don't really pay attention to them when I find something I've really liked reading.  If you are looking for something beyond the ordinary, you'll definitely find it here.

White Out: The Secret Life of Heroin, a memoir by Michael W. Clune

 (reposted from the main page of this online reading journal, 2013: The Year in Books )

1616492082
Hazelden, 2013
260 pp

my copy from the publisher -- thank you! 

At the time the author wrote this book, he'd been free from his heroin addiction for ten years. White Out is his story of his addiction and then how he came to kick it.    I won't got into great detail about what he wrote per se, because this is a book that actually has to be experienced --  it reads like he sat down at his computer and just let everything pour out of himself.

While a grad student at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore,  starting at age 21, Michael Clune lived the life of a heroin addict for years, until he got to a point where on a visit to his parents in Chicago he was picked up by the police, thrown in jail and then given a choice of prison or recovery.  In between those two times, his experiences and his feelings often flow here in stream-of-consciousness-like prose, where he also reflects on memory, addiction, and time.  The book gets into his introduction to heroin, his addiction (and the denial that he's an addict) and his ongoing relationships with his demons. In fact, other than the central metaphor of "white," one of the themes that runs consistently through this narrative,  he spends a lot of this book talking about "the first time."  As he tells his readers, the first time is "dope's magic secret."

"Then I see a white-topped vial. Wow. I stare at it. It's the first time I've ever seen it. I know I've seen it ten thousand times before. I know it only leads to bad things. I know I've had it and touched it and used it and shaken the last particles of white from the thin deep bottom one thousand times. But there it is. And it's the first time I've ever seen it."

and 

“It might seem like I’m kind of obsessed by the first time I did dope. No shit. If you’re writing a book about this, and you don’t use at least this much space writing about the first time, you’re not being honest.”

Well, honest is what you get in this narrative, written in a style that can often come across as repetitive, but one which tries to convey what it was like for the author during the addiction years. His writing style seems to mirror his inner unraveling, but it makes sense and coheres in a bizarre, offbeat sort of way.  Through it all he reminds his readers that the heroin  is still "right over there" which, if you think about it, is pretty frightening. 

I liked this book.  I'll probably never really gut-level understand what Mr. Clune went through, and for someone like myself who picks up a personal account like this, I don't think it's fair to say that his experience can be entirely comprehended within the scope of a couple of hundred pages.  That's not a negative -- this is his unique story, a way for him to try to relate his unique experience which was pretty frightening,  even considering the positive outcome.  But I think this book is probably best suited for readers who are close to someone who is an addict and who may want to try to glean some insight from Mr. Clune's experiences. It's definitely an account I'd turn to in that situation.

my thanks to TLC book tours

The Nazi Seance: The Strange Story of The Jewish Psychic in Hitler's Circle, by Arthur J. Magida

9780230342040
Palgrave Macmillan, 2013
269 pp

softcover

first: a thank you to both the LibraryThing early reviewers' program and to Palgrave Macmillan for my copy of this book.

To summarize the wildly out-there autobiography of Erik Jan Hanussen, born Hermann Steinschneider in 1889, his life was just one amazing feat after another.  It's pretty obvious that a reader shouldn't  depend on Hanussen's exaggerated account of his life, so in The Nazi Seance, Arthur J. Magida  has tried to discover the realities behind the man.  From humble beginnings as the son of poor Austrian Jewish parents, Hanussen not only remade himself into a wealthy mind reader, psychic and hypnotist under the not so modest title of "Europe's greatest oracle since Nostradamus," but also into Danish nobility.   Sadly, the psychic failed to predict his own death in 1933 at the hands of the Nazis.  The author of this book first heard of Hanussen while reading a book about the famous Indian rope trick; with his interest piqued, he started researching this colorful character, leading to the publication of Nazi Seance.  While Hanussen takes center stage in this book, around his story Magida also, albeit somewhat briefly, explores the cultural scene in Berlin, "primed for someone like Hanussen," as well as the economic and political climate which would allow for the rise to power of the Nazis.

Hanussen is certainly a strange subject, one who would make an interesting character in an historical novel.  Yet as Magida shows, he was all too real, going through his career with a number of critics who challenged his psychic credibility.  After a brief period away from Europe (leaving New York, for example, before he could be prosecuted)  he returned to Europe, where after being found not guilty in a fraud case in Czechoslovakia in 1930, he boarded a train for Berlin.  The Czech case had garnered Hanussen a lot of fame, and in Berlin, he found a ready-made audience for his  "telepathic acts." As the author notes, the modern age that brought forth "speedy trains, miracle medicines, inexpensive goods, mass production..." also produced people who were "anxious and adrift," who, having "lost their way," often turned to the spirit world for help.  Hanussen soon

"became a magnet -- for pretty women; for the lost and confused who paid large sums to know their future..."

taking advantage of their fears and becoming very rich in the process. He also started a newspaper, had plans to open a healing spa, and made a lot of enemies.  Soon he began cultivating the friendship of Count Wolf-Heinrich von Helldorf, who had turned to the Nazis after his economic problems led to a bankruptcy,  became the head of the Sturmabeteilung (SA -- Storm Troopers) in 1931, and  according to Magida, "had the confidence of the highest levels of the Nazi machine," by 1933.  Keeping the fact hidden from Helldorf that he was a Jew, Hanussen loaned him large sums of money in return for Helldorf's protection and clout.  He also began avidly promoting Hitler and the Nazis in his newspaper, and held on to several IOUs from Nazis who borrowed money from him -- which would, along with the events of a seance the night before the Reichstag fire, lead the psychic down a path that even the great Erik Jan Hanussen could not foresee.

In terms of historical value, the book is helpful for anyone who might want a barebones outline about the interwar years in Berlin, offering a very brief look at the cultural, economic and political circumstances in which the Nazis were able to assume power and later set aside any pretense of a democratic government. As a Jew cozying up to Nazi acquaintances during this time, Hanussen's story is intriguing and definitely worth examining, but it is difficult to feel much sympathy for this con man/huckster except where his daughter is concerned.  The author's presentation is also a bit waffly.  For example, it's difficult to decipher here whether or not Hanussen actually even met Hitler -- the author is less than clear on this issue. In examining different sources that put the two together or deny they ever met,  the author uses phrases like "It's improbable," or "slightly more probable," or "this version has the ring of truth;" after examining one account by a "left-wing German editor who had waged a campaign against Hanussen in 1932,"  stating that Hitler and Hanussen never even met, the author notes "That should settle the question..." then in the next sentence, "It doesn't," summing up this entire chapter by saying "If it was true that Hanussen and Hitler met..."   There is a lot of this type of meandering theorizing that goes on, even as far as whether or not Hanussen actually did or didn't have real psychic powers, and I must say it didn't inspire a lot of confidence on my end in this author.

Despite my misgivings, and in and around the waffling, there's a good story here that piqued my own curiosity enough to want to learn more.  If you want a straight point A to point B kind of biography, this book might be a little challenging but otherwise, the story of this "Jewish Psychic" is worth reading.

My Journey as a Combat Medic: From Desert Storm to Operation Enduring Freedom, by Patrick Thibeault

9781782000907

Osprey Publishing,  2012

176 pp

available format: PDF, Kindle

 

There are two items of business I have to conclude before I can move on with my discussion of this book.  First, I absolutely have to thank Osprey Publishing and Teddy Rose from Virtual Author Book Tours for my copy of this very insightful and personal account; second I must apologize to the same people along with the author, Patrick Thibeault, for being a week late with my post which was supposed to have been on February 1. Somehow in my muddled mind the 1st got transposed to the 11th on the calendar and well, to all concerned, mea culpa, and I sincerely apologize for the lateness. 

As Patrick Thibeault notes, "The combat medic is the warrior healer, someone who provides lifesaving medical care during operations in a combat zone. He or she is a warrior by trade and a healer by choice..., "  "... one of a few people who brings compassion and humanity to the field of battle." My Journey of a Combat Medic is, in part, the author's story of his role as a combat medic in Desert Storm and in Afghanistan during Operation Enduring Freedom. Much more than that, however,  it is a record of his personal journey from training to coming home, an eye-opening story of the arduous and demanding preparation not only to be a soldier but to become a full-fledged combat medic. It is an eyewitness account that details part of his time in the Middle East, a record of his homecoming and readjustment to regular life, including his ongoing struggle with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). There is also a section for would-be combat medics where he offers advice based on his own personal observations and experiences.

I think I misjudged this book at first, thinking that I was about to read about the author's experiences as a combat medic, expecting it to be  about trauma suffered on the battlefield and how the author as a combat medic dealt with what he came across in the field. As the author started getting into his Army training days, it slowly dawned on me that his account was not limited solely to what had happened with him in the combat zone: this is actually the story of how a man dedicated to "compassion and humanity" came to take the road leading him to places where those two qualities are as necessary as the bandages and syringes of morphine in his medical bag. While his training and his later experiences in the field (along with open discussions of personality clashes and other issues that give the book more personal depth) make for a fascinating read, even more compelling is his treatment of coming home, especially his struggles with PTSD.  Point by point he gives an honest assessment of the components of his own PTSD as well as triggers he's come to recognize that might set it off.  He also offers some very good advice here: 

"There is a million dollar question that Joe Public likes to ask a combat veteran: have you killed
anyone? Don’'t ask a veteran if they killed anyone; that is a can of worms that does not need to be opened." (136)

I've been appalled in reading several accounts of returning soldiers that this is one of the first questions people like to ask -- as if that's all they care about.

My real issue with this book is that I think the editing/proofreading could have been a bit tighter. Sometimes it's a bit distracting for a reader when you're really into what the author is saying and up pops a poorly-edited paragraph or a typo or 2 or 3. Aarrgh.  Otherwise, I'm always amazed at other people's lives -- why they chose to do what they've done in life, what they did, and how it affected them afterward, and I was definitely not disappointed here.  Do not let the simplistic style of the narrative fool you:  there is an important story here, one which should be a welcome addition to the growing number of personal accounts from those who've returned from  serving their country during  the conflicts in the Middle East.  Unlike many of these works,  there are no literary flourishes here, it is not a book designed to question the whys or rightness/wrongness of these operations, and it is not a story that highlights every tragedy the author may have witnessed during his various tours of duty.  Any personal story is a story worth telling, especially one that takes place in a situation that no one can really understand unless you've been there.  

My thanks to Teddy Rose, for the offer to join his book tour at Premier Virtual Author Book Tours.