5 comments about . . . and His Lovely Wife: A Memoir from the Woman Beside the Man.

1. I took an interest in Sherrod Brown's campaign early on. I am a progressive and he was featured in one of my magazines before the primary that never was with Hackett. I heard Connie Schultz interviewed on Fresh Air with Terry Gross and I became intrigued by the subject matter.
   
   That said, I found the book enjoyable and entertaining. Connie is a funny, independent woman as is evidenced by her writing. It is a political memoir, make no mistake, but it does give readers insight into how their relatively short marriage lasted (and even thrived) in a political campaign. I also enjoyed info. about the Hackett factor. Connie's insight about going from being a columnist to giving only her husband's opinions was food for thought. The only criticism that I have is that you really don't get a good sense of who her husband is. You know his political battles/views and some quirky things about him but it still feels like an outline of the man. Maybe some of this is deliberate in the face of leading very public lives. Needless to say, I would recommend this book. I read it in a day and very much enjoyed myself.



2. Connie Schultz, ...And His Lovely Wife: A Memoir from the Woman Beside the Man (Random House, 2007)
   
   I told myself when I started reading ...And His Lovely Wife that I would try to keep my feelings for Sherrod Brown's politics out of this review, but the farther I got into this book, the more impossible that seemed. Connie Schultz is, if anything, more of an idealist hardliner than her now-Senatorial spouse, so it would be an Herculean task to separate the politics from the writing. The policies that terrified me during the thankfully short time I lived in Brown's Congressional district are not only applauded by Schultz, but held up by her as the reasons Brown got himself elected Senator (and more so as the very reasons he should have gotten elected). Sometimes I fear for the collective sanity of our nation. Any time I buried my nose in the pages of this book (and I mean that quite literally; I'm one of those odd folks who loves that particular odor of paper, ink, and glue that comprises "new-book smell"), "sometimes" came a-runnin'. But still, I shall do my best to focus on Connie Schultz' writing rather than her (and her husband's) politics.
   
   The campaign trail is considered an unavoidable fact of political life these days. There are a lot of books out there written by or about politicians, but very few of them focus on the campaign trail, and none of those (that I am aware of) focus on the impact the campaign trail has on family life. Enter Connie Schultz, wife of Ohio Senatorial candidate Sherrod Brown, to fill the gap. And fill it she does, rather creidbly. I will warn you, as I intimated above, that if your political viewpoint is antithetical to Brown's, there are large parts of this book that will rankle, but the end result is the same: Schultz' focus is on the human interactions of the campaign trail far more than the political. That said, it's worth noting that Schultz doesn't seem to think her family's experience was typical, a sentiment that was noted by a number of other candidates' and elected officials' wives.
   
   If you've read Schultz' columns (and with the recent release of her collected-columns book, more of those outside the Cleveland area have probably done so), you've got a good idea of what to expect from the writing here-- acerbic, witty, observant. The downside is the same as it usually is when a columnist writes a book: this reads like a two-hundred-eighty-page newspaper column. What is good in small doses can get stale over the course of one hundred thousand or so words. Best to approach this with the intention of reading small bites at a time; I found, once I got into the rhythm, that a chapter a day seemed to do the trick.
   
   Could have been better, but not bad. ***



3. Enjoyed the radio interviews with the author, but I found the book too self-serving, too political.



4. I was on a commercial flight from Cleveland to Washington last Spring. It was a particularly windy day and landing at DCA seemed problematic. On approach, one wing would dip and then the other. There was no applause on landing, but a collective exhale. Ohio's junior Senator, Sherrod Brown, was on that flight.
   
   Connie Schultz is Sherrod's wife, a Pulitzer prize winning columnist for the Cleveland Plain Dealer. ...and His Lovely Wife is her account of discovering the vicissitudes of Ohio politics through the eyes of a campaign wife during her husband's 2006 run for the Senate. The title comes from her irritation at the awkward manner in which she was frequently introduced by those not yet comfortable with married couples with different last names.
   
   The book is a fascinating study of politics and romance, written with great humor and frequently great insight. It is especially readable because of the inclusion of details like Connie's insistance that her husband pledge not to fly in small airplanes during the campaign - too much of a temptation to fly when you shouldn't - too many dead candidates from choosing wrong:something I found ironic after that Spring landing in Washington.
   
   O.K., I'm from Ohio. O.K., I'm sort of a political junkie. O.K. I'm a longtime Sherrod Brown fan. This book just sucked me through. After the few days it took be to go through it, my only disappointment was that there was not more.



5. Smart, funny, and honest, ...and His Lovely Wife shows how crushingly difficult it is to run for public office. It also demostrates that there are still some honorable politicians who care deeply about average people. And there are dishonorable politicians willing to lie and slander in order to hang on to their power. (The incumbent Sherrod Brown defeated accused John Glenn--John Glenn--f being unpatriotic and soft on communism. The mind boggles.)
   
   
   The book is also a lot of fun. Not surprisingly, Connie Schultz writes very well (Pulitzers are not given out as Cracker Jack prizes), and she can be very funny about the lunacy of campaigning. I'm glad Ms. Shultz has been able to go back to her life as a journalist, and I hope this book is read by everyone who cares about American politics and government.

5 comments about Sixpence House.

1. Sixpence house is a autobiographical story of Paul Collins', and I wish I lived his life. I know the whole part of the grass being greener, but I sure would like to try it for awhile. I also understand that it takes talent (which Mr. Collins has in spades) an understanding and like-minded spouse and an innate ability to share with the world your passions. Paul Collin`s passion comes out in every page. The passion for his family, his work and for books. Bibliophiles everywhere will relate to his desire to live in the bookselling capital of the world Hay-on-Wye. In Sixpence House he gives us a glimpse at a world where, A: a foreign county within a foreign country (this will make sense when you read this book). B: The eccentrics that populate a place where booksellers outnumber any other retailer almost 40:1. C: Real-estate selling/buying is at best a trip through an insane asylum. He shows all of this to us with good writing and a sense of humor.
   
   I also believe that Diana Collins is on the fast track for saint hood.
   
   As a side note Paul Collins is also associated with Dave Eggers and McSweeny's.



2. Paul Collins chronicles his life, in wry prose, creating a narrative fully worthy of any erstwhilely, earthbound Arthur Dent.



3. I began with "The Trouble with Tom" and then had to get everything that Paul Collins has written.
   
   Follow this writer; he has wonderful things coming; I am certain of it. "Sixpence House" is charming, honest, intelligent writing; it's on my re-read-often list.



4. 
   This is an autobiographical account of an extended visit to a town with lots of bookstores in Wales. The mountains of books and the abundant book trivia make this book interesting. And it is enlightening to see an American's view of the town. However, I felt that I was taking up too much space in the Collins' home and I was embarrassed to be eavesdropping on their everyday activities.



5. To me, none of these "stranger-in-a-strange-land" books ever comes close to Peter Maybe but I love them all to a degree and never tire of them. This book tended to be a bit disjointed and rambling but I forgave it because it was, literally, laugh-out-loud funny. It's like a friend who starts out to tell you a certain story, gets distracted at many points, but everything is he says is either so witty or original you don't care. One of the very best parts, for instance, was how Collins breaks down exactly how you CAN tell a modern book by its cover. He's be a great columnist in the vein of "The Polysyllabic Spree" by Nick Hornby.

5 comments about Tell Them I Didn't Cry: A Young Journalist's Story of Joy, Loss, and Survival in Iraq.

1. Jackie Spinner's absorbing account of her Iraq wartime coverage is a courageous story, not just in the obvious sense of exposing herself to danger, but in exposing the vulnerabilities of herself, her family, and friends. The Iraqi staff and Washington Post colleagues became her family, drawing her closer than even her twin sister back in the states. This refreshing honesty is rare in a journalistic account of a war. She avoids the temptation to give canned histories of the region and plunges into the daily grind of finding news on the streets and homes of an ancient country torn apart.



2. This one is a good read. It was hard to put it down. Spinner does a good job in talking about the people of Iraq, those whom she worked closely with in the Post bureau. It was interesting to see how she grew a relationship, sometimes obviously close.



3. This is a great read. This gives you the personal view of an American journalist in Iraq - you see the pathos, the terrible results of war, the friendships, the fear, the drive and risks of journalists, the love. And you may lose sleep over this book, since it is very hard to put down - until you have devoured every page!



4. "Tell Them I Didn't Cry" is a great book, and well worth the read. Although Jennifer Spinner gets a co-author credit, the vast majority of the book is her twin sister Jackie's story of her 10 months as a foreign correspondent in Iraq.
   
   This is not an in-depth analysis of the Iraq war. Rather, it is a deeply personal account of Jackie's growth from junior reporter for the Washington Post to acting bureau chief in Iraq, while dodging bombs, mortars and kidnappers. Jackie tells an unbiased story, pointing out the good and bad of Iraq, "calling them as she sees them." The book is full of interesting stories, including a poignant account of her Christmas in Baghdad, part of which was spent looking for a church safe enough to attend for mass.
   
   Although I am slightly biased (like Jackie, I am an alumnus of Southern Illinois University) I think this is a great read.



5. When I married my husband, a reporter, I told him I'd follow him anywhere his career took him, as long as he promised never to be the kind of reporter who went into war zones to cover battles. He agreed, and we got married, and thankfully, he's never gone back on that promise. So, it was with some trepidation that I picked up Spinner's book, which had been recommended to me by a friend of mine -- do I really want to read about a reporter doing exactly what I've always worried my husband might want to do someday? But boy, am I glad I did. This is a wonderfully written and extremely personable book, detailing Spinner's ten month experience as a reporter covering the Iraq war for the Washington Post. And I don't know if it's the woman's eye, or what, but more than anything else I've read about Iraq, this is the book that really gave the whole thing some life for me, turning numbers into people, and bringing home some of the enormous problems people on all sides are facing right now in that messed up country.
   
   Highly recommended to anybody who is interested in A) journalism, B) current events, or C) understanding what the hell is going on in Iraq. And then after that, highly recommended to the rest of you. Read this book!

3 comments about Sky Time in Gray's River: Living for Keeps in a Forgotten Place.

1. I first heard RMP read at an outdoor conference in the late 1990s. Late that evening some of us shared single malt with him around a small table in a little trailer. I was hooked.
   
   First I read his Sasquatch book, which is not about sasquatch, except for a little bit. Then there is his beautiful western butterfly book, a book to be studied and treasured. It opened my eyes to much I had never seen in my many years of wandering the hills.
   
   Enough; this volume is near poetry.
   
   But in it, you will find RMP a bit whimsically professorial. For instance when RMP walks through thistles in his shorts, he remarks on itchy scratches.
   
   Incidently, Gray's River is in SW Washington across the Columbia River northeast of Astoria, Oregon.



2. Of all Mr. Pyle's books this one is the most lyrical and delicious. Just read a page before you go to sleep and you will dream of lush forest and lovely creatures on land and in the sky. Every sentence is filled with wonderful images of nature. It would make a nature lover out of any reader.



3. An imapssioned life, observing and enjoying all around him. A great read for those interested in people and nature, the interconnected web of a rural world. We can all learn something from this book. Thanks Bob!

3 comments about From China With Love: A Long Road to Motherhood.

1. This is a great book to be an autobiography but there is little information about anything other than her travels. She uses words that most common people would never use. It is almost like she tried to use every word she is has ever heard before.



2. I loved this book. It was a great look into the adoption system and the process of adoption. It also showed the challenges facing adoptive parents of children of a different race. Great story, very touching!



3. it was a good look at an insider's perspective on adoption. captures a new mother's heart as well as someone interested in world travel and politics.

5 comments about Seducing the Demon: Writing for My Life.

1. Purchase this book if you think you are buying a book of writerly advice (note the book's subtitle). Buy it if you love anything written by Jong and you won't be disappointed. STD is more memoir than didacticism; in the book's intro, Jong admits that she began the book as a tome of advice for the fledgling writer as a way to avoid writing her next novel. The 2 book jacket photos tell the story of the two EJ's: 1)the EJ that wrote THAT celebratory book in 1972 and 2) the older, wiser EJ. She's back to her old tricks at times, using the 4-letter "c words" for male/female anatomy. Among other things she is guilty of romanticizing the Sylvia Plath debacle and spends a fair amount of time describing her own flirtation with Ted Hughes. Especially pathos-oozing is her non-romantic reunion with Dart, a character from a previous novel. Jong describes his aging male type to a tee. She also writes a good deal about the not-so-mystical connections between the muse and booze (apparently she had an alcohol problem at one time and writes as if she may still be in recovery).
   Writing advice is inadvertently woven throughout her text, perhaps unconsciously so: "Nothing freezes the imagination like family loyalty or political correctness." Did you know that most days she feels like an abject failure as a writer?
   Jong unfortunately digresses into her affair with Martha Stewart's husband. No love lost between these two women, to be sure. She also professes her lust for Bill Clinton whom she feels "likes flashy broads. His own mother was a flashy broad and men never get over their mothers."
   A vintage Jongism can be spotted on page 154: "I used to get excited about boys in black leather jackets on Harleys. I would never have married Mr. Motorcycle, but I sure liked to f*** him." She writes a bit on her second marriage to Allan Jong, her 3rd to Jonathan Fast and of her present, fulfilling union with Ken.
   Despite a lot of literary flashbacks to the heady days of Fear of Flying fame, the book is up-to-date. She's also right-on with her bon mots on writing: "The itching of a scar. What a perfect description of the urge to write." And like any good Jong memoir, STD functions as a kind of tell-all in her stream-of-consciousness writing. She tells the reader about literary numeraries such as Arthur Miller, Julia Phillips, Henry Miller...she confesses that she thinks of FOF as more of a 'rant' than a novel.
   Politics rear their ugly head all through the book. Jong crucifies George W. Bush every chance she gets. And for the life of me, I cannot deduce how Jong can be such a fan of Nabokov's Lolita--which is nothing more than disguised pedophilia.
   And like a mother will do, Jong boasts of daughter Molly throughout the pages. Shameless, perhaps, but what's a mother to do? No doubt, though, that even Erica Jong would present a feminist argument on this very sentiment.



2. Writing is like "ITCHING THE SCAR" --Colette--
   
   "The notion of God brings us to the muse--the male writer's form of the demon. The muse also embodies creativity. She's fickle. She appears and disappears at will. We can't control her. And because we can't control her, we hate her as much as we love her.
   We try to summon her with sex, with falling in love, with mind-altering drugs. But the fact is, she won't be summoned. She alights when she damn well pleases her. She falls in love with one artist, and then deserts him for another. She's a real bitch" -Erica Jong.
   
   Just let me say right off, I looove Erica Jong! I've read several books about writing, but Jong's memoir rates among the highest. It is deliciously unique, sassy, insightful, and, oh my, so severely direct. The rawness and presence of her writing is invigorating. The humor, sexuality, and honesty, are precisely what the reader {me} is intrigued by, interested in, and want to devour.
   
   "Seducing the Demon" gives the reader a peek into Jong's past and present world, and what a world it was. I mean, this woman partied with super-stars like Ted Hughes, (Plath's ex) and Henry Miller, (Nin's ex). One of the greatest, controversial poets of all time, Anne Sexton, was her mentor. Can you imagine hanging out with Sexton-- Talking about metaphor, men, and menstruation? Anne was a feminist before feminism even existed.
   
   One could say Jong had the untamed life of a writer, or at least, what we assume a writer's life would be. Writing all day. Partying all night. Then writing again about her experience. Sounds like Hemmingway!
   
   I want the writer's life.
   
   Jong understood what rehab was before it was chic and cool, and she knew about sex, how to use it, how to get it, and then, fortunately, how to write about it. She talks about Colette, Plath, and Sexton; the vivacious feminist poets, who came before us, who dangerously and marvelously changed literature forever. Halleluiah.
   
   Jong is bookish, buoyant, and beautiful. She is fearless. She inserts a quote from Colette, which reads, "Writing is like itching a scar." And that, my dears, may be the truest statement of all. Because when one is born with the fever of writing, they must write, they must create; they must reinvent, they must relive, they must itch the scar any way they possibley can. They must do this to live.



3. There's a good memoir buried somewhere in the heap of re-edited commencement speeches and magazine think pieces that make up SEDUCING THE DEMON, Erica Jong's how-to book for would-be writers. The book jumps into overdrive when Jong recalls an early trip to California where, flush with the success of her novel FEAR OF FLYING, she sold the movie rights to Julia Phillips, a successful producer who was on the verge of a massive cocaine fueled breakdown. Jong's wild Hollywood nights contrasted sharply with her daytime visits to the Big Sur seaside home of aging lion Henry Miller, who exhibits an unexpected sweetness here in his extreme old age.
   
   Later, under the disastrous tutelage of Noel Marshall and his wife, actress Tippi Hedren, Jong decides to sue Phillips and Columbia for reneging on their agreement to film FEAR OF FLYING. What a mistake! The suit plunges Jong into financial disaster and forces her into writing all sorts of hackwork just to keep afloat. Her literary reputation, never high to begin with, plunges ziplessly downwards.
   
   SEDUCING THE DEMON seems a little desperate as Jong flings herself in all directions, rummaging through that ragbag of memory she calls her life. She rehearses the horrid love affair she had that already inspired a whole roman a clef ANY WOMAN'S LIFE, describing her hero memorably as the man whose erection wavered noticeably to the left, "in direct opposition to the tendency of his parents' politics." It's sentences like that that make you remember that Erica Jong was a poet first before becoming a pop novelist. She tells the story of how her daughter confessed to her that she was afraid of becoming a joke in Manhattan due to her cocaine addiction, then says, but this is my daughter's story to tell, not mine. I don't suppose anyone will finish this book, not even Jong's accountants, but it has its moments and oh, don't you wish she had obeyed her feminine instincts and actually taken Ted Hughes up on his offer of sexual favors? We would have had at least another few Jong novels out of it.



4. I remember reading once that someone said author Erica Jong looked like Miss Piggy. Her upturned nose probably inspired that comparison, but I've always found Jong, the author of the infamously erotic "Fear of Flying," very attractive and sexy. The photograph of Jong, obviously snapped when she was in her 20s or 30s, adorning the front jacket of "Seducing the Demon: Writing For My Life," is striking. Now in her '60s, she remains a dish, but this book (the first of hers I've read) shows she's got a full plate, and is more than a babe.
   
   Jong's book was "started as a book of advice for fledgling writers." My ego, my age, and my status as a professional writer (struggling, though I may be) may exempt me from the "fledgling" label, but writing is important to me, and I'm always interested in reading books by writers for whom writing is also important - a way of life rather than a way to earn fame or money.
   
   In the final chapter, titled "Does Writing Trump Family," she says, "If you want to be a nice person, don't write."
   
   "There's no way to (write) without grinding up your loved ones and making them into raw hamburger," she writes. Jong states elsewhere that all fiction is autobiography and all autobiography is fiction. As for genres - fiction, non-fiction, memoir - they don't exist. "I've always thought that the idea of genre was a blot on the soul of literature," she says. "Categories like novel, memoir, biography have no value when you're writing - however much value they may have to librarians or bookstores. A book is a book is a book."
   
   When I started reading Jong's book, I had no idea her words would speak to me so clearly. I often read in search of confirmation that others think what I think, have suffered as I have, and are oppressed by the same fears, the same guilts, the same demons. A good writer must be honest as much as he/she possesses a skill with words. When this honesty is present, the writer and reader communicate with each other in an almost spiritual way, soul-to-soul, heart-to-heart.
   
   When reading Jong's description of her father's last days, I'm reminded of my mother and her defiance, her refusal to eat or get involved in activities at the nursing home, as well as her 1999 hospitalization during which she was uncooperative, ripping the respirator from her throat, a move that actually kick-started her recovery. Jong describes her father in a similar way. He was a "fighter" who "tried to escape from the emergency room, from the ICU and from the hospital" and was proven right when "the pneumonia he caught in the hospital that would finally do him in at ninety-two and not any of the three types of cancer her got and conquered...He pulled out breathing tubes, peeing tubes, IVs. He did not go quietly."
   
   James Baldwin said that art is the order that comes out of the disorder of life. Jong says "I think writing elevates my mood because it's a way of imposing order on chaos."
   
   Reading Jong's fine book elevated my mood, as well as provided insight into her talent. And that cover photo? Damn, she's hot!
   
   Brian W. Fairbanks



5. Seducing the Demon. Unlike the dreams deferred of Langston Hughes, demons rarely dry up or wither away in the sun. The writing life may not be all things imagined, yet thousands of aspiring writers dream of one day getting that call. Ms. Jong's Seducing the Demon lets us in on her bitter but sweet journey. She inspires us to step onward with an understanding that the jog up these pathways are often paved with something other than gold. Yet still she writes.

5 comments about Best Damn Garage in Town: The World According to Smokey.

1. Goddamn! One of the best books I have ever read!
   
   Get it!



2. Simply put this is one of the best books about racing I have ever read. Smokey's stories are entertaining, hilarious, and insightful. His kind will not be by this way again! If you like racing of any kind, this book is a must read. It is well worth both the time and the money.



3. Extremely fortunate to have worked with Smokey during our years at Circle Track Magazine and all his years at PRI (Performance Racing Industry).
   THIS IS INDEED THE BEST DAMN BOOK IN TOWN. You'll love it.



4. Excellent reading. Very informative and it kept me interested the entire time. I would recommend for anyone!



5. Smokey tells it just like he sees it. No political correctness here. If he thinks something stinks, he says so. He has no love lost for Bill France and company, but respects many others.

   His writing style is straight to the point, amusing and raw. But it's the way he sees things...and he repeats that point...that it's just his opinion and urges the reader to make up their own mind.

   I highly recommend this set. And I salute you, Smokey.

No comments about Means of Transit: A Slightly Embellished Memoir.

5 comments about The Dog Diet, A Memoir: What My Dog Taught Me About Shedding Pounds, Licking Stress and Getting a New Leash on Life.

1. Patti Lawson examines her own life with honesty and gives the readers an insightful view of her metamorphosis from stress and unhappiness to the joy of living through the loving and caring for her beloved dog, Sadie. In so many ways I identified with the emptiness an accomplished life cannot fill and the error in thinking that food can. Patti found the answers to regaining her health and inner peace and shares with us a sustainable path to a healthier life, physically and emotionally. She gives us a positive uncomplicated approach to caring for ourselves in good times and bad, simple, tasteful and healthy options to our toxic eating patterns and a warm and humerous story of how a small dog caused so much disorder she adapted to survive and found herself thriving. Any dog lover will appreciate her story and commitment but the life lessons and suggestions are for us all and I highly reccommend it. This is also a book I'm giving as gifts to those "hard to buy for" and no one has been disappointed.



2. This a very cute book regarding a professional woman who after two bad relationships decides to get a dog. She adopts a dog from a shelter and it really changes her life for the better. The author tells how the dog helped her lose weight, by changing her eating habits and making her exercise more. The dog not only helps her lose weight, but also lose weight in a fun manner. The author has a very humorous style of writing. I found this book very enjoyable to read and I highly recommend it. Besides for a humorous read, this book also has some good diet and exercise tips.



3. I loved this book! I really enjoyed reading it and I got some great dieting ideas (and life perspectives). For example, I am now implementing her idea of having a salad box. Actually, I have two of them that are about the size of shoeboxes that I bought for $1 each at the 99cent store.
   
   Now, as soon as I buy my salad veggies, I clean them, chop or remove whatever leaves I need to, and put them in the salad boxes with a paper towel on top...and turn the box upside down (to let the extra moisture go into the paper towel).
   
   Since I eat salads (with sprouts) every day, this has really helped me save time. Also, I find that I am throwing out less wilted lettuce and spinach or other salad veggies. So I am not wasting food and I am saving money.
   
   This sweet book also shows how important animals can be in our lives...and that instead of complaining about having to clean up after them or take care of them...to realize...amoung other things...that you are burning more calories taking care of your pets...ha!
   
   Thanks Patti for your inspiring book.



4. This is one of the best books I've read recently. It has you rolling in the floor laughing and might even bring a tear as you connect with the writer and Sadie. I challenge any dog lover or someone who has tried to lose weight not to love this book. It is wonderful!



5. If you liked John Grogan's "Marley and Me" about a man, his family and their 'bad' but lovable dog, there's a good chance you'll enjoy this book. However, like Grogan's chronicle, this is NOT about how to raise a dog. For that sort of book, you'd do much better to check out something along the line of Cesar Milan's book, and/or watch him as "The Dog Whisperer" on the National Geographic channel. (This is especially true if you are looking at rescue dogs or at acquiring a male dog from a dominant breed--Rottweiler, Doberman, German Shepherd, etc.)
   
   That said, Patti Lawson makes some excellent points about dogs, how they view life and what they can teach us. She catalogs her own story of how her relationship with a pup took her on a journey from self-involvement to being present in the world, with a new appreciation for everything from smells to simply being in the present moment. Her description of standing at a buffet of Indian food and smelling it appreciatively is one that I will remember for a long time.
   
   I enjoyed her story and the summary boxes within it about the lessons she learned.

5 comments about Remembering Denny.

1. Calvin Trillin starts out writing that anyone who speaks at a funeral wants to speak about himself as much as the deceased. He then goes on to talk about himself and his deceased college friend Denny. Anyone who understands that you never really know anyone entirely and that we all have secrets, great and small, will not learn anything from this book.



2. Calvin Trillin's great work 'Remembering Denny' was re-released in 2005. I read the original back in 1993. It has stuck with me ever since then. I found it to be a brilliant look at unfulfilled promise, as embodied by his Yale classmate, Denny Hansen. Trillin also expertly weaves in two other larger themes. First, as he comes to know of Hansen's homosexuality, Trillin discusses the homophobia of the era (they attended Yale in the mid-Fifties) and the ramifications of that on Hansen's path in life post-graduation. The second theme is the changing of America in the 60s and how that sea-change wrong-footed some 'All-American' boys like Hansen, who were unable to adjust accordingly.
   
   I love the brilliant cover of the re-release, depicting a color photo of Hansen and his dazzling smile. It perfectly captures Hansen's then-promising future and why so many were smitten by him.



3. This book has haunted me for 10 years now. For Roger Dennis Hansen, there was the terrible pain of being in the closet for as long as he recognized he did not have feelings for girls that the other boys did, and that society said he should. And remember, in those days, you were some kind of monster for having same sex yearnings - take a look at the statistics.
   
   And then there was the most basic indicator of failure, a deeply dysfunctional family life - no support, no love. One tries and tries to carry oneself with those external trophies, with the support of friends, employers and mentors, and that sometimes works for a while. But the basic perception of oneself is cast, and if there is no beaming, loving face in the mirror, no one is there really giving a damn about your welfare, you go as far as you can - sometimes you make it to the end of the road, but sometimes you crash before then. It is hard.
   
   There is a little bit of Denny in a lot of us - I see him in me. I did not have the scholastic glory that this man had, which some of you think should have carried him through to ripe old age, but the similarities remain. This is not a book for ghouls, as Mr. "Jim Burns" opines, nor a treatise on how great Mr. Trillin is, as Mr. "A Reader" states. If anything, Mr. Trillin minces no words in how he failed Denny - I dare any of you to be that truthful about your own failings in your dealings with the humanity around you. A great book that transcends class and race lines, humor and ground floor truth an intoxicating mixture for me.



4. I am of mixed feelings about this book. Part of me feels sympathetic towards the subject, Roger (Denny) Hansen. It is quite sad to read of his downward spiral which led to his suicide. Hansen seemed like a nice fellow.

   But part of me wonders what all the fuss is all about. Hansen had a lot going for him and he was unable to find happiness despite all that. Many people feel that people are as happy as they want to be and Mr. Hansen simply chose to be in misery.

   Admittedly, some of his problems were external. He had severe back problems much of his life. He also may have been a homosexual, at a pre-Stonewall time.

   Still, other people with the same problems and fewer privileges make a good life for themselves. We all have hardships and Denny let his overcome him.

   Trillin fights with the elitist ideas of an Ivy Leaguer in the 50s. He is one of the few, one of those guaranteed a lofty place in America. Yet I get the feeling that he is somewhat ashamed of it underneath.

   And part of me feels no sympathy for the trials and tribulations of the snots who feel superior to anyone outside their circle. That snobbishness is evident throughout.

   I also wonder why the book was written at all. This is obviously a guilt trip on the part of Trilling who probably (understandably) wonders if there was something he could have done to prevent this suicide. It is certainly no tribute to the man, Trilling confesses at the end of the book that he probably had no idea of what made his friend tick.

   It also makes me wonder why Trillin wrote this book for public consumption. I can understand the voyage Trillin took to learn about his friend. But why release it to the public and why profit from the miseries of his friend. If Trillin gave his royalties from his efforts to some charity, perhaps. But some moral force within Trillin should have seen how crass this book is. Indeed, as I thought of this point, I decided to change my rating of this book from 2 stars to 1 star.




5. The book is a whatdunit: what caused an Ivy League golden boy with a million dollar smile to commit suicide at age 55.

   The boy was Denny Hansen. His family was lower middle class and lived in the San Francisco Bay area. At a public high school, he became all-everything. He attended Yale from 1953-57 where he became good friends with the author, Bud Trillin. There, he was a fifties hero: scholar-athlete, a student leader. and all-around good guy. He was a member of swim team, Deke fraternity and the Elizabethan Society. During his senior year, he was tapped by Scroll and Key. He graduated magna cum laude and was admitted to Phi Betta Kappa. Life Magazine published a photo essay about his graduation. He was selected as a Rhodes Scholar and studied two years at Magdalen College at Oxford. He received a master¹s degree from the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton, Not bad for a young man with his background.

   Denny Hansen became Roger D. Hansen. On the career level, he worked briefly in broadcasting, the State Department and at the National Security Council in the Carter administration. He wrote several books on foreign policy that were widely praised. But the Foreign Service rejected his application. Eventually, he was appointed to a chair at the Johns-Hopkins¹ School for Advanced International Studies in Washington. He was a member of the Cosmos Club and the Council on Foreign Relations. On a personal level, Roger never married. He became estranged from his family, his relationships with a few women soured, he gradually alienated his friends from Yale. He became a chronic complainer. He became very depressed. But he always defended right conduct. Near the end of his life, he lived a clandestine gay lifestyle. He bequeathed his pension to his former girl friend, and the remainder of his "huge" estate to Yale.

   What caused Roger to commit suicide in 1991?. His friends and colleagues offer various explanations. During conversations after Roger¹s death, his Yale friends discovered that they did not know Roger and may have never really known Denny. Trillin¹s explanation is that because of ³poisonous template of the fifties², Roger could not accept his sexual orientation. A reader can interpret his explanation as an attack on values of the Fifties. To me, the most persuasive explanation is an application of the backpack analogy. When a boy is born, he is wearing a backpack. Other people put their heroic expectations for him in the backpack. The more the boy succeeds, the more expectations are put in the backpack and the heavier it gets. Eventually, the loan becomes unbearable and the boy reaches a crisis. In Roger¹s case, instead of emptying the backpack, he chose to kill himself. He had a house, but not a home. Remember, the line from a Robert Frost poem, "Death of the Hired Man"., ³Home is the place where, when you have to go there,/ They have to take you in.² Neither Denny nor Roger had a place where they had to take him in.

   The details of the book are fascinating. Trillin describes college life at Yale during the 1950s and the careers of many of Denny¹s classmates and friends.. Of course, Trillin¹s writing is excellent: clear, powerful and sometimes humorous. In a way, the book is a mid-20th Century sequel to Owen Johnson¹s Stover at Yale.

   Trillin suggests that the ³poisonous template of the fifties² was the major cause of Roger¹s death in 1991. But change is not equivalent to progress. Sex does not explain everything. Each reader must decide for himself whether, based on the circumstantial evidence, the template of the Fifties enabled Roger to carry his backpack of expectations for more than 30 years, or whether it was the templates of later decades that poisoned the golden boy from California with the million dollar smile.