The Disunited States, by Vladimir Pozner

9781609805319
Seven Stories Press, 2014
(originally published as  “Les États-Désunis,” 1938)
302 pp

paperback

"Life is service. The One who progresses is the one who services his fellow human beings a little more, a little better, by working a little more, enslaving themselves a little better all the time." (26).

"Beginning and end, and beginning again." 

                                       (248)

I've tried to write about this book three times here and it just comes across very stupidly to my ears. So I'm just going to offer a few insights into this book without really "reviewing" it.  You'll find  my favorite review of this book here at Words Without Borders, written by Scott Borchert who provides great analysis.

French author Vladimir Pozner was touring America in 1936,  and as he went from coast to coast and back again, he got a firsthand look at what was actually happening in this country at the time.  In his Les États-Désunis, published in 1938, he chronicled the time spent here along with his observations. His book is now published by Seven Stories Press in a translation by Alison L. Strayer.  After I read it, my immediate reaction was to think that in spite of all of the "progress" this country has made since that time, some things have barely changed -- a very discouraging  thought  if one considers the implications for a large number of Americans as this nation moves into the future.

Since I'm not really writing what I'd consider a "review,"  I'd like to point out a few parallels between Pozner's observations in 1936 and our current society in 2014.

•  In 1936, the prevailing philosophy in America  ran somewhere along these lines, and should sound familiar to our modern ears:

"Every American, wretched though he may be, can become a billionaire or president, if he is frugal, industrious, pious, etc. If you are poor and old or young and unemployed, you have only yourself to blame."  

• As Pozner traveled coast to coast, he discovered a nation in crisis -- a nation of people caught up in social, economic and class turmoil, racial prejudice and disparity, and a great deal of social unrest.  Sound familiar?
• He  discovered  that the owners of  giant corporations had little to no disregard for the environment, worker health, worker safety, and the law. Case in point:  that of Union Carbide, which started work on a "thirty thousand-horsepower hydropower station at Hawk's Nest, West Virginia." The work would entail digging a tunnel (32 ft diameter) between Gauley Bridge, West Virginia and Hawk's Nest, with the added bonus of harvesting silica for other uses. After only a few months working underground, men who were happy to even have work started becoming ill, and when they went to the company doctors, they were told they had "tunnelitis," a non-existent disease, or "high blood pressure," even though the contractors knew the men were suffering from silicosis. Doctors were forbidden to use the word, and handed out pills that did no good. Workers began dying, new ones were brought in immediately to take their places.  When the company was finally sued by three hundred workers after an autopsy on a dead man revealed silicosis, the contractors in charge of the project lined up their own witnesses, gave jurors rides home each day, and ultimately settled after a hung jury.  White workers' families received more in redress than black workers' families, and of course, just like today, that was after the lawyers considered their own fees and handed out a sum of their own choosing.  To make matters worse, families who received settlement money (which was pretty much nothing) were threatened with being cut off from federal relief programs.   The company's political connections helped when its representatives were called upon to answer to Congress, and of course, they denied any knowledge of wrongdoing.  Its profits, by the way, skyrocketed. Sound familiar?
• Another "sound familiar" moment: the author discovered that "gangsters" have their own capitalistic empires that reach far and wide throughout the country -- that "gangsterism is the crime industry in the era of monopoly, and its largest branch, racketeering, is nothing but the continuation of capitalist competition by other means." Gangsters had police, judges and other state officials in their pockets. More importantly, he finds that gangsters come mainly from "poor big-city neighborhoods," have had "no professional training," and that

"unemployment and its consequences -- enforced idleness, giving up the pleasures and necessities of life -- can lead certain people to a life of crime."   

Pozner uses  a wide array of different media to examine this America in crisis:  interrogations and testimony, newspaper articles, speeches, letters, songs, interviews, chats etc all serve to  illustrate this point. It also made me think that the forces put into place to protect  free-market capitalism and the flow of corporate profits to help stimulate the economy were (and still are)  in some large measure responsible for some of the nation's woes. Here's one further example at work:  one of the most intriguing parts of this book came from an interview with an unemployed shoemaker relating how the Pinkerton Agency (unbeknownst to him)  hired him  to get into a particular company and spy on other workers, often having him speak up about union organization, strikes and Communism  to see how other his fellow employees reacted. Arrests were made and people lost their jobs in the process, and worse.

In Boston, Pozner speaks with William H.L. Dana, grandson of Longfellow, who takes him on a tour of  an "itinerary of events" from this country's Revolutionary War period, then on to Concord, to Cambridge, and finally back to Boston, where Pozner wants to discover 

"What has become of the descendants of the patriots, the Minutemen who inscribed in the US Constitution the inalienable right of all to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

Ironically, he finds that some of them have become members of the conservative establishment, now calling for area teachers to sign a loyalty oath or lose their jobs.  As he also learns, "From its glorious past, this crowd retains only the memory of witches burned near Boston two and a half centuries ago.”  But the good news, at least for Pozner, was that in "Real America," there were people who were trying in their own ways to actively protest against the system. 

I absolutely loved this book, and I will add that  Pozner's observations should not be disregarded simply because of the point of view from which he writes.  Highly, highly recommended. 

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.

Village of Secrets: Defying the Nazis in Vichy France, by Caroline Moorehead

9780062202475
Harper, 2014
384 pp

arc - from the publisher, thank you!

"Parallel to the map of Vichy is a map of decency." 

Now here's a book definitely worth every second of time I put into it. It's also one that stayed with me for some time after finishing it.

In the author's Foreword to this book, she notes that  in 1953 an article appeared in Peace News about a pacifist pastor named André Trocmé in the French parish of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon who "helped save some 5,000 hunted communists, Freemasons, resisters and Jews from deportation to the extermination camps of occupied Poland."  According to this piece, Trocmé had instilled his belief in non-violent, peaceful resistance among his parishioners, and it was in this spirit that they were led to take in, hide, and sometimes get people whose names "appeared on Nazi death lists" safely over the Swiss border.  Over two decades later, in  1988,  Le Chambon was designated by Yad Vashem as the only village in the world to be  "Righteous Among Nations," an appellation that  in combination with a number of articles, documentaries, and memoirs about this remote village in the Massif Central, perpetuated an ongoing  "myth" about Trocmé's role and that of Le Chambon as well.  But there's a problem here:  by focusing solely on this small, remote village and this peace-loving Protestant pastor, over the years that "myth" has ignored a lot of other people -- those from other places, of other beliefs, and even a number of  humanitarian authorities who literally risked everything to help save people designated for the camps.

In Village of Secrets, the author begins her study with the coming of the Nazis to France in 1940 and the establishment of the Vichy government under Pétain. At first, early measures of repression against certain targeted groups ("foreign" Jews, Freemasons and Communists) were accompanied by propaganda that targeted these groups as "dark forces of the 'anti-France." However, as time went on, it became clearer that the government was expected to play a role in helping the Nazis  implement their own policies against the Jews -- not just the foreign-born, naturalized citizens, but eventually the French-born Jews, who'd mistakenly believed that their status offered some modicum of safety. As the author points out, not everyone was willing to stand by and watch this happen -- a number of organizations and individuals stepped in to save as many people as possible, especially the children. Networks were created to put their plans into action, and the remote, inaccessible-in-winter Plateau Vivarais-Lignon was one location where these volunteers were willing to leave those they'd managed to save from the camps.  Pastor Trocmé had told his Le Chambon parishioners that it was their duty to ""resist whenever our adversaries demand of us obedience contrary to the order of the gospel" --  and the people took his message to heart, taking in new arrivals. Many of the people on the Plateau were members of various sects that practiced quietness, so there was little chance that they'd open up to strangers who might come looking for those in hiding.  But, as Ms. Moorehead states, it wasn't just the villagers in Le Chambon, nor was it just those of the Protestant faith who helped save lives on the Plateau Vivarais-Lignon. Members of the Catholic, Quaker, and Jewish faiths also contributed, as did agnostics & atheists. There were other villages where community co-operation helped save lives, and most surprisingly, she tells of some of  the local authorities and policemen who turned a blind eye to what was going on, often providing warnings of impending Gestapo visits. As time went on, members of the Resistance were taken in, as were young men who refused to report for the national Service de Travail Obligitaire -- a national conscription for forced labor in Germany. And it was in this mountain area that "more people, proportionately, were saved than anywhere else in France."

While the accounts she relates are intriguing, heroic and often heartbreaking, one very important issue this book touches on is history itself. Right after the war, as she notes, the French

"were encouraged, not only by DeGaulle but by all the political classes, to believe that Vichy had been the work of a small number of traitors, more misguided than evil, drawn into treachery by the Germans."

That view would change some years later in the 1970s, as authors such as Robert Paxton and Michael Marcs "meticulously pulled the myth apart," to show that the big players in Vichy actively sought collaboration with the Nazis, with the goal of "carving out a new role for France in Hitler's new Europe." Their work brought on debates that are still part of the French political scene, and they also brought out the long-neglected story of the Jews in France during the Holocaust.  But this period of history is still debated among people throughout  the Plateau Vivarais-Lignon, the result of a contentious trifecta:  1) the publication  of a book based on Trocme's autobiography by an American historian looking for "proof that pacifism could successsfully counter violence," 2) a documentary that used some of the material in that book, and 3) a lecture given by the book's author that came across to the people who had lived it as "a mutilation of historical truth by revisionists." 

Village of Secrets is a most excellent book that, as its bottom line, examines how ordinary people responded to very extraordinary circumstances during this terrible period.  It is also an examination of  the realities behind the myths and the changing discourses evolving from this historical period.  It is an incredibly well written and  meticulously-researched narrative that uses first-person accounts of people who lived to tell their tales due of the help they received from others, as well as accounts from some of those who helped them to survive.  What really struck me here were the stories of those who were brought into hiding and ultimately stayed safe through the war - these are interspersed throughout the narrative and for me were the most powerful parts of the entire book. For some of them, the aftermath of living in hiding wasn't all positive and led to issues they had to overcome later in life. Every time one of these stories came up, I put down my note-taking pen because I wanted to catch every single word. I can't even begin to imagine what they lived through.

I don't often find myself reading World War II European history, so a lot of things were totally new to me here, but I have to say that I was never once bored, nor did I ever feel like I was on information overload.  Reader reviews have been much more positive than negative,  and it seems to me that the naysayers have wanted everything given to them without wanting to take time to understand the overall history of this place in this time period. One reviewer referred to it as "a slog," which is absolutely not true.  If you're a lazy reader, that's your problem -- it's certainly not the problem of the author.   Village of Secrets is a much-appreciated addition to my history library, and I can't recommend this book highly enough.  

*********** 

My many thanks to TLC book tours who brought this book to my attention, and to the publishers for my copy of the book!

There are many more people reading Village of Secrets for TLC; if you want to follow other readers' opinions, you can find the schedule here. 

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.

a rollicking good yarn that happens to be true: In the Kingdom of Ice: The Grand and Terrible Polar Voyage of the USS Jeannette, by Hampton Sides

9780385535373
Doubleday, 2014
454 pp

hardcover

It wouldn't be a stretch at all to say that I devoured this book:  it was about 1 pm yesterday when the book arrived and I stopped what I was doing to open it;  it was 9:30 a.m. this morning that I finished it.  I actually read it throughout the night, and turned the last page during breakfast.  a) It's about polar exploration,  probably my favorite nonfiction reading topic in the universe,  b) it's by Hampton Sides, who has not let me down yet with any of his books, and c) it's just so engrossing that I couldn't stop reading it. I'm pretty tired and cranky right now, but what the hell -- it was so worth it.

Once again Hampton Sides has proven that he is not only a master of his topic but also a master of storytelling.   In the Kingdom of Ice recalls the story of an ill-fated expedition to the North Pole that began in 1879, commanded by George Washington DeLong and  backed by New York Herald  publisher James Gordon Bennett, who had some time earlier sent Stanley to find Livingstone in Africa as a major press stunt. Along with a number of scientists of the day, both Bennett and DeLong were proponents of a widely-circulated, widely-believed theory about the  "open polar sea," an idea postulating that a warm-water current flowed through the Arctic:

"The weather wasn't especially cold at the North Pole, at least not in summer. On the contrary, the dome of the world was covered in a shallow, warm, ice-free sea whose waters could be smoothly sailed, much as one might sail across the Caribbean or the Mediterranean. This tepid Arctic basin teemed with marine life -- and was, quite possibly, home to a lost civilization."

This open polar sea was "routinely depicted" on cartographer maps, and labeled as such across the top of the globe. Never mind that no one had actually seen it; as the author notes,

"Fixing it on maps had fixed it in people's minds. Like Atlantis or El Dorado, it was a beautiful vision based on legends, rumors, and tenuous scraps of information. Layer by layer, decade by decade, scientists and thinkers had contributed to the plausibility, the probability, and finally the certainty of this chimerical notion." 

While the open polar sea had its skeptics, De Long believed that if he could only find a "portal," a "gap in the ice" that ringed the "warm-water basin" right about the 80th parallel where other explorers had faltered, he would have no problems getting to the North Pole.  Bennett met with and received "a full set of charts and maps of the Arctic"  from Dr. August Petermann, a cartographer in Germany who had himself never been to the Arctic, but who believed that the "thermometric gateway" could be reached by approaching the Pole via the Bering Strait -- and that by doing it this way, the Pole could be reached in one summer.  Thus began the

from http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:USS_Jeannette_with_crew.jpg

voyage of the USS Jeanette, which left San Francisco in 1879 with the backing of the U.S. Navy and a crew of some thirty-plus people with  DeLong as the commander, and which within only a very short time got stuck in the polar ice off of Wrangel Island and forced by nature to drift  in the ice floes for nearly two years.  The book details the journey of the Jeanette, along with all that the crew had to endure not only as they sat stuck in the ice, but also afterwards when they were forced to abandon their ship -- which would make the two-year ice drift seem like good times in retrospect.  In and around that harrowing story, the author also provides a look at America approaching, at, and just after its 100-year mark as a country, the use of  journalistic sensationalism, the people left behind once the Jeanette left on its mission, and ultimately, the efforts to provide a rescue for the icebound crew.

I seriously can't do this book the justice it deserves, but In the Kingdom of Ice is an absolutely phenomenal story told by a master storyteller, and it deserves as wide of a reading audience as possible.  Even readers who might not  normally be excited about the history of polar exploration would love this book -- the story is harrowing enough, but Mr. Sides highlights the humanity and the sheer bravery of these heroic men facing the unendurable in one of the most unforgiving environments in the world.  The book literally reads like a novel, complete with cliffhangers, moments for rejoicing, and above all, page-turning scenes making it impossible to set the book down.  It's an ultimate true "rollicking adventure" story, one that should be on everyone's reading list.  To answer other reader criticism, yes, there's a lot of detail involved, but none of it is wasted space or used as padding as so often seems to be the case. I cannot recommend this book highly enough -- on the favorites list of 2014.

 someone should get in touch with Ken Burns -- this would make a fascinating PBS special.

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.