Wednesday, August 24, 2005
29 Lenny Bruce.
30 Andrew Young.
31 The one with the lobsters, Accelerondo.
32 The Deal.
33 Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves town.
Unnumbered: Orwell. England your England. Essay, not whole book.
34: A long way from home, Tom Brokaw.
35 Honey Fitz.
unnumbered: Possum Living.
Unnumbered, Notes from a Sea Diary: Hemingway all the Way, Nelson Algren
36 The Kennedy Imprisonment
37 Dear Jack
[38?] I have started Saul Bellow's Herzog but might end up not reading it, it hasn't grabbed me yet.
Dear Jack, by Gunilla Von Post. NTY Review. Slate article: they don't know Jack.
Today, Kennedy scholars and debunkers can share a collective smirk at Manchester's naiveté, confident that 35 years and 500 books (by the Kennedy Library's rough count) have taught us all a thing or two; that our understanding of JFK, like the Kennedy literature itself, is rich, complex, ever expanding....
In Love, Jack, Gunilla von Post's slight memoir of a brief affair during the 1950s, JFK again has a winning grin, both "incandescent" and "offhand." (It fades only when he thinks of Jackie.) But in Kennedy's soul, where Hersh sees darkness, von Post, a stunning Swedish aristocrat, perceives only light.
This book can fairly be considered part of the Camelot school - it worships Jack as a knight rescuing a damsel, not that she was in any particular distress. Gunilla was an Swedish aristocrat (not so much in the aristocrats sense)who attended house parties and then as a trophy wife threw them. It's the story of their affair. He was married to Jackie, told her it was a loveless marriage and he wanted out, but his father thought that would be bad for his plan to be president. Apparently for a swedish aristocrat adultery is no big deal. How Melbournian. I've read maybe 20 or 40 of the 500 Kennedy books, and she is isn't mentioned in any of them, because she's a very minor episode. He had hundreds of women, some in love with him and expecting him to leave his wife any day, others hookers brought in the mob, with threats if they ever told they would wind up in a mental hospital like... Juanita Broadrick. It was some light reading in the tub, well worth the three dollars or so I paid for it - I'm trying to get a diversity of views to build up the big picture. Slate again:
Individually,none of these books tells us much about John F. Kennedy that we didn't already know. None, not even Hersh's best seller, will greatly alter Kennedy's reputation. Considered together, though, they underscore a truth about JFK: that he can't be reduced to a type. Suave and sleazy, cool and reckless--these contradictions raise important and troubling questions about his presidency....Jeff Shesol is author of Mutual Contempt: Lyndon Johnson, Robert Kennedy, and the Feud That Defined a Decade and the creator of Thatch, a nationally syndicated political cartoon strip.
That sounds like one I should read. Here's an amazon list by a kennedy obsessionist.
http://www.sonsofcamelot.com/index.html
A book on the next generation, research I haven't done yet, but it looks like the pattern continue to play out - money, power, politics, journalism, sex, competition, fame, drugs, scandal, highs and lows. Takes the expression "crash and burn" literally at times.
Not sure what I'll be reading next. On target for 50 in 2005.
30 Andrew Young.
31 The one with the lobsters, Accelerondo.
32 The Deal.
33 Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves town.
Unnumbered: Orwell. England your England. Essay, not whole book.
34: A long way from home, Tom Brokaw.
35 Honey Fitz.
unnumbered: Possum Living.
Unnumbered, Notes from a Sea Diary: Hemingway all the Way, Nelson Algren
36 The Kennedy Imprisonment
37 Dear Jack
[38?] I have started Saul Bellow's Herzog but might end up not reading it, it hasn't grabbed me yet.
Dear Jack, by Gunilla Von Post. NTY Review. Slate article: they don't know Jack.
Today, Kennedy scholars and debunkers can share a collective smirk at Manchester's naiveté, confident that 35 years and 500 books (by the Kennedy Library's rough count) have taught us all a thing or two; that our understanding of JFK, like the Kennedy literature itself, is rich, complex, ever expanding....
In Love, Jack, Gunilla von Post's slight memoir of a brief affair during the 1950s, JFK again has a winning grin, both "incandescent" and "offhand." (It fades only when he thinks of Jackie.) But in Kennedy's soul, where Hersh sees darkness, von Post, a stunning Swedish aristocrat, perceives only light.
This book can fairly be considered part of the Camelot school - it worships Jack as a knight rescuing a damsel, not that she was in any particular distress. Gunilla was an Swedish aristocrat (not so much in the aristocrats sense)who attended house parties and then as a trophy wife threw them. It's the story of their affair. He was married to Jackie, told her it was a loveless marriage and he wanted out, but his father thought that would be bad for his plan to be president. Apparently for a swedish aristocrat adultery is no big deal. How Melbournian. I've read maybe 20 or 40 of the 500 Kennedy books, and she is isn't mentioned in any of them, because she's a very minor episode. He had hundreds of women, some in love with him and expecting him to leave his wife any day, others hookers brought in the mob, with threats if they ever told they would wind up in a mental hospital like... Juanita Broadrick. It was some light reading in the tub, well worth the three dollars or so I paid for it - I'm trying to get a diversity of views to build up the big picture. Slate again:
Individually,none of these books tells us much about John F. Kennedy that we didn't already know. None, not even Hersh's best seller, will greatly alter Kennedy's reputation. Considered together, though, they underscore a truth about JFK: that he can't be reduced to a type. Suave and sleazy, cool and reckless--these contradictions raise important and troubling questions about his presidency....Jeff Shesol is author of Mutual Contempt: Lyndon Johnson, Robert Kennedy, and the Feud That Defined a Decade and the creator of Thatch, a nationally syndicated political cartoon strip.
That sounds like one I should read. Here's an amazon list by a kennedy obsessionist.
http://www.sonsofcamelot.com/index.html
A book on the next generation, research I haven't done yet, but it looks like the pattern continue to play out - money, power, politics, journalism, sex, competition, fame, drugs, scandal, highs and lows. Takes the expression "crash and burn" literally at times.
Not sure what I'll be reading next. On target for 50 in 2005.
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