For reasons unknown to me, I have been a voracious reader from the time Miss Brantley rescued me from the girls’ room. I have told the story before but perhaps it bears repeating. On my first day in school in the Forsythe School in Clayton, Missouri, I felt the need to relieve myself and walked into an open space which turned out to be the girls’ room. In a flash, Miss Brantley, the first grade teacher saw me and led me to the boys’ room. She told me that she understood my situation and that within a few weeks I would learn how to read. Thus that mistake would never be repeated again. And so I conclude that my voracious reading habits are attributable to Miss Brantley, a lovely white-haired woman.
There is one more story having to do with my reading habits. When I was a prisoner of the German Army near Rimini, Italy in World War II, I found a German language paper on the floor and started to read it. When I ran across a phrase, early in my reading, I asked a guard to explain it to me. In effect, he told me that he was lost in the German language because he was a Rumanian, Rumaniabeing allied with Germany. So you see, my attempt to explain my reading habits goes far back.
In 2005, I entered the Wills Eye Hospital in Philadelphia for a trabeculectomy on my one remaining eye. As it turned out, there was a hemorrhage and in spite of all of the efforts of the Wills people, starting with my surgeon, L. Jay Katz, M.D., there was nothing that could be done over the next few months to restore any sight to my eye. Soon I will celebrate the anniversary of the sightlessness that glaucoma has brought to me for the past five years.
Glaucoma stopped my father from reading his Bible every evening because at that time, in the 1940s, there were no books that could be turned into audible speech. But these days there are a good many books that are provided for those who are sightless, with an announcer reading the book to me. My daughter and her husband, Maureen and Walter Nollmann have even recently bought me a Kindle which does all sorts of tricks. So in effect I am not left with nothing to read. Far from it. As a matter of fact, it is at this point that I wish to give you a book report of my recent reading that may interest you.
In the past year and a half, there was a presidential election in this country which had hotly contested primary and general elections. The fact that we had such a situation has much to do with my book report. My report involves the following books.
The first book is by Richard Wolffe, who is an NBC commentator. Wolffe was born in Birmingham, England and is a very literate fellow. His book is called “Renegade” and it is about the Barack Obama campaign for the presidency.
The second one is “Battle for America.” The authors are Dan Balz and Haynes Johnson, veteran Washington reporters. It has much to do with the campaign for the presidency of the US last year.
The third book is “The Audacity to Win.” The author is David Plouffe, who was the campaign manager for Barack Obama. It involves the primary battle between Obama and Mrs. Clinton. I found Plouffe’s book very interesting reading.
The fourth book is “Too Big to Fail.” The author is Andrew Ross Sorkin. It is about the banks and Wall Street, and I will tell you in advance that I found it so unbelievable that I almost quit reading it. Sorkin writes for The New York Times. This book is about Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, and other organizations on Wall Street.
The fifth book is a political book by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin. They are also veteran Washington reporters. The title is “Game Change.” “Game Change” is about Barack Obama as well as Hillary Clinton and in addition there is great coverage of John Edwards.
The last book is “The Madoff Chronicles” by Brian Ross, a reporter for ABC News. It is about Madoff and his Ponzi scheme.
Of these six books, three of them come under a question of believability of the authors. I find it basically impossible to believe that the authors had access to the principles as they repeatedly voiced their innermost thoughts.
The first of these is “Battle for America.” That is the book by Dan Balz and Haynes Johnson. The next one is “Too Big to Fail” by Andrew Ross Sorkin. I have told you in the preceding paragraph that Sorkin claims to have heard infinite details that boggle my mind. That book was about Wall Street and the financial crisis and I find it almost impossible to believe that Sorkin was so intimate with the principles that he heard all of the stuff that he recorded in his book. The third book on my scorn list is “Game Change” which is a new book by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin.
The three books cited which are in doubt in my mind have verbatim quotes which could not have been recorded unless the speaker was talking into a recording device. That is impossible. It strikes me that in reporting on the campaign for the presidency last year, each author had set out to outdo the previous author in defense of his “insiderness.” In this case, I find that Richard Wolffe is refreshing because he reports the facts and it is up to the reader to decide to believe them or not. The worst case was Andrew Ross Sorkin, which caused me to question whether he ought to be on the financial beat for The New York Times. I simply do not believe that Sorkin had all of the intimacy that he claims with respect to the financial meltdown.
So there you have my little book report which tells you that sensationalism ain’t dead yet. It also tells you that some books are capable of being believed and others are not.
Of all of the forgoing books, I found Brian Ross’s story about Bernie Madoff the most informative. If the political writers had used Brian Ross’s respect for the news, then their books would have been better received by readers such as myself.
Now we move on to another observation about the recent books that I have heard. In a number of the books reported on a little earlier in this report, I am struck by the use of the “f” word. I was not raised in a convent and I spent the appropriate amount of time in the United States Army. When it comes to vulgarities, our English cousins are among the best. But clearly the best soldiers in terms of vulgarities were the Australians. The people who appear in this book report don’t even come close to using vulgarities appropriately. Clearly they are in love with the “f” word. When they run out of something to say, they often employ the “f” word for no apparent reason.
I questioned my daughters and one of their husbands in an effort to determine whether this was common usage in the American speech patterns among younger people. The two daughters and one husband all assured me that the “f” word is in common usage every day in every way. Over the years I have found that men who used vulgarities often were colorful folk. William Cowper Brann, who published newspapers in Texas about a hundred years ago, was a colorful user of vulgarities. The people quoted by the six authors that I have read recently don’t hold a candle to William Cowper Brann. So I guess I would say that if you are going to use vulgarities, don’t go out of your way to work them into your speech patterns.
One of the lessons from this essay should be that vulgarities are alive and well and you should be grateful to me for keeping you from reading books that are inauthentic. It took 82 years for all of this to happen but my belief is that Miss Brantley would be edified by what her erstwhile pupil, who wandered into the girls’ room, has now accomplished.
E. E. CARR
March 1, 2010
Essay 440
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Kevin’s commentary:
We are dipping into 2010. Not because we’re completely done with 2011 and 2012, but because I want to publish a whole mess of essays in the next few days and it’s easiest to do that by starting fresh with a new year.
I really enjoyed the fact that this essay came with a reading list and I wonder if I dig deeper into the archives of Ezra’s Essays that I will find more of them. I know that Pop reads almost constantly and I would very much enjoy more regular updates on what is striking his fancy. Particularly I want to keep an eye on his reading list to see if any fiction sneaks its way into there, so I can say “I told you so” when he enjoys it.
More on Australians, cursing, and the military here and here.
Also, Connor Shepherd speaks very highly of “Game Change.” I’ll need to investigate further.