Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954-1963

Reading this book affected my view of the civil rights struggle profoundly. First, it introduced me to the spirit of the non-violent movement, which was not orderly at all but somewhat chaotic and full of internal debates and rivalries. Then, it shocked me with the level of violence perpetrated against those who were demonstrating for rights I had taken for granted. The description of segregationist mobs who attacked the Freedom Riders, in particular, and out-and-out violence and intimidation against civil rights protesters in general made me think twice about my perception of an empathetic response to the civil rights movement. Many white Southerners were blinded by hatred and bigotry to the extent that they would justify atrocities to defend segregation; there was precious little empathy in the response to the protests. Finally, the book opened up the federal government's response, including anti-Communist paranoia at the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover and quite a bit of foot-dragging on the part of the Kennedys in responding to the civil rights movement's activities. The march on Washington, which established Martin Luther King as a national leader capable of swaying the nation, also resulted in very little specific progress on the civil rights bill, in part due to the Kennedys' dependence on Southern Democrats who were also segregationists. The chapter after the march on Washington is entitled "Dreams and Nightmares" and puts the "I Have a Dream" speech in context with the Birmingham church bombing that followed close on its heels. The story as a whole is gripping and intense, and despite the huge cast of characters (history isn't as simple as a novel), it provides a powerful insight into how this change in American life came to be.

Three Books I Haven't Quite Finished

I started two books this summer and attempted to get through more of a third:

Personal History, by Katherine Graham, publisher of the Washington Post during the Watergate years and wife to a manic-depressive husband. As soon as I learned her husband was manic-depressive, I stopped reading the book. I guess I didn't want to know more about her husband's suicide and her "failures" to get to the bottom of his issues. The book was interesting enough, but it has a real sense of entitlement throughout. Ms. Graham really does believe the Post is the best newspaper in the world and that she was instrumental to that development, apparently. I didn't finish the book, but she was enormously proud of a business deal early on that I felt was more important to her than to the quality of the paper -- a merger, of all things, between two different Washington papers that gave the Post a dominant position in the "morning" slot. That may have been key to the Post's success, but it seems so prosaic compared to the romantic view I have of newspapers as guardians of the public trust, not as businesses. So this book opened my eyes to the business side of things, but it's not something I really wanted to have happen.

Next up was Ulysses, which I continued reading for a little bit before putting down again. I read up through a lengthy discussion of Shakespeare and some avant-garde interpretations that are more or less accepted as fact by the general public nowadays -- that Shakespeare was gay, that he was a Catholic, that he was a woman-hater. I do think Shakespeare was Catholic, but the "gay" concept is ahistorical, and the woman-hater charge is pure bollocks. Anyway, the lengthy discussion kind of wore me out as a reader, but I may try to get back into the swing of this novel again later.

Finally, there is Parting the Waters, a brick-sized volume on "America in the King Years" that is riveting in parts and mind-numbingly complex in others. The factual description of the violence perpetrated against the early Freedom Riders in particular is stunning. The book describes the chaos and confusion of the early King years, and I'm looking forward to the triumphant March on Washington. The complexity of the story, though, is threatening to overwhelm me as a reader. Maybe I'll take a page from Monty Python and "skip a bit."

Wicked by Gregory Maguire

This book got really long about half way through. It didn't make a lot of sense to me until the end, when it all starts to come together. It's a reimagining of the Wizard of Oz, telling the life story of the wicked witch. The plot really drags in the fourth part, when the witch holes herself up in response to a devastating blow. This is definitely an adult-oriented story, with a few sex scenes, starting from the beginning. The very beginning is pretty catchy, and the scenes of the education Elphaba (the witch) receives at the school in Shiz are an enjoyable, much more sinister take on Harry Potter. This book gets a little lost in its own mythology, though, and the "serious" discussion of evil conducted in dialogue toward the end of the book seems a little laughable. If the book is concerned with the nature of evil, it ought to be expressed more in the plot of the story than in this one piece of dialogue. Throughout, the book is more political about evil than it is moral or philosophical. That can be a good thing, but in this case it is kind of a drag. The witch is sympathetic, but she doesn't really rise to the level of tragic hero or even anti-hero. The mistakes she makes at the end are tragicomic, though, I guess. The end almost makes up for the fourth part of the book, but I wish the author could have made more of Dorothy.