Literature is not what we tend to think of when considering “reality.” Nonfiction has the facts, right? Good literature, though, can convey much more than a story, an article, or a work of history. It carries with it a truth that helps the reader understand more.
History – and understanding – are powerful themes in Pat Barker’s 1986 novel, The Century’s Daughter. It’s the third novel Barker published and it builds off the close study of working class women in northern England from her two previous works, Union Street and Blow Your House Down. The key characters here are Liza Jarrett Wright, who was born at the start of the century, and Stephen, a young social worker. The novel’s protagonist is the power of poverty, war and hardship – along with violence and the lack of love – and its impact on human lives. Women’s lives take center stage. This is a novel of blood, phlegm, constraints and tears.
Liza’s lot in life was hard, but not without impact or meaning. Her parents never loved her and she married poorly because of an unplanned pregnancy. The world wars killed many of those important to her, altering lives and living circumstances. She struggled for self and family, and through it all maintained hope and dignity. Barker never sentimentalizes. Even with some tenderness and empathy, there is little soft in Liza’s story.
Stephen, who is charged with moving Liza from her soon to be demolished home, faces a different set of challenges. He’s estranged from his family. He is gay, uncomfortable with himself and his choices. Stephen’s father dies of cancer, and it is in his death that Stephen gains a greater sense of humanity and need. Stephen and Liza become friends and through their interactions, thoughts and lives, we gain a broader sense of themselves, their histories, and their communities. Stephen at times, though, seems more of a lens than a fully realized person.
It’s neither easy nor pretty. Barker makes it all compelling, though. Her prose is unfailingly sharp and clear. Her insights are deftly delivered. It is compassionate and hard. Century’s Daughter is a haunting novel.
Few Americans are as famous – and perhaps less well-known – than the Wright brothers. Wilbur and Orville’s discovery of controlled flight is an extraordinarily inspirational tale, told in schools and popular history. We all know that the brothers were close, that they had a bicycle shop, were engineers and tinkerers, and that their first controlled flight was in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. It’s so ingrained in our culture that it is on North Carolina’s license plate. The Wright brothers achieved something that has truly transformed the world.
But what do we know about them as people? And just how, exactly, did these two self-taught inventors from Dayton, Ohio, pull it off?
David McCullough, perhaps the nation’s most widely-read non-fiction writer of history, tackles the question in The Wright Brothers. McCullough is an extremely skilled writer who has been authoring best-selling prize-winning books for decades. His prose flows beautifully and he has an innate sense of when to move things along and when to linger. His work is accessible and grounded in meticulous research.
In The Wright Brothers, McCullough humanizes the brothers, along with their father and sister Katherine. They were driven, intense, and private – and quite unusual people. Wilbur was the more cerebral and controlling. Orville was more entrepreneurial. Brilliant, smart and obsessed, they lived their lives with a discipline and work ethic that was off the charts. McCullough cannot explain why, but he can show us how. He also highlights circumstances that directed the brothers’ path.
Wilbur was an outstanding student in high school with plans to attend Yale. That all changed when he was hit with a hockey stick and badly disfigured. The culprit was a fellow student who later murdered his family and was executed by the state of Ohio. The event altered Wilbur’s life, who remained at home for three years after the incident, reading and studying – all on his own.
Orville’s direction was also changed by a life-threatening illness. In his mid-twenties, as the brothers were building their bicycle business, Orville fell ill with typhoid. He nearly died. As he recovered, Wilbur read to him – and they spent a great deal of time discussing the works of Otto Lilienthal, a German aerialist. The experience bonded the brothers in conquering the challenge of controlled flight.
McCullough does outstanding work clarifying the methodical manner in which the brothers pursued their passion. He explains how they experimented, their research, their teamwork, and sheer persistence. The setbacks were many and the brothers did not seek, nor receive, much external support. Their success was a triumph of brains, dedication, and deliberation. The Wright brothers were quintessential engineers.
The Wright Brothers is a very good book. It is pleasure to read and I gained a new appreciation of the Wright brothers. The leadership of the City of Chicago made a very good call in 1934 naming a new community college after Wilbur Wright. He and Orville are well-deserving of many honors and our continued attention.
Miles Wortman, an economist, Latin American historian, and expert in international development, recently published a fascinating memoir, roman a clef, and field guide to the tangled world of international development and aid. Leaves: Tales of Development is a mixture of optimism and nostalgia, fact and fiction, and both a reflective summing up and elegiac, cautionary tale for those interested in international development. Wortman spent decades around the globe, in Latin America, Asia and Africa, working for the Peace Corps, the World Ban, the UN, USAID, and corporations.
Do not expect a straightforward memoir. Instead, Wortman jumps from field posting to field posting, adventure to adventure. He paints pictures of local communities and the disconnects (and connections) between those on the ground and those from afar. Translation of language, culture and purposes is a common theme across countries and years. And like most translation, you make think that you “have it” only to find out that something is missing.
Leaves is particularly strong on teasing out the multiple levels of ethical challenges that accompanies the work of international development. Degrees of agency are always constrained. Who is, or can even be, a true “friend.” Overlaying lines of authority and influence complicate even the most simple of exchanges. Added to this are stories of relationships, almost all of which are tangled and destined for failure. It’s difficult to maintain an optimistic romantic outlook – and at heart, Wortman is a romantic – in such environs.
Wortman also points out ways that aid has helped, has made lives better, and has created opportunity.
All in all, a very interesting take on an extraordinarily interesting life.
David Potash
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Questlove is a genius. I’ve been a fan for decades – and reading his latest book, Creative Quest, has made me even more enthusiastic. He is an amazing artist.
Probably best known as the drummer and leader of the Roots, the band on the NBC’s Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, Questlove is a musician, arranger, DJ, composer, author, producer (music, theater and more), writer, critic, foodie, teacher and all-round creative force. I first heard him DJ in the early 2000s in clubs and was hooked – and I’ve been regularly looking for events where he performs ever since. The breadth of music that he pulled together in his shows was always impressive and exciting. Creative Quest explains how and why – and quite a bit about his thinking, work habits, and creative processes.
Written as much as a discussion as a traditional book (and I imagine that it would be a great on audio), Creative Quest is driven by Questlove’s interest in creativity. He wonders if he is truly creative – and the narrative explores different kinds of creative processes. It’s a lesson book and an autobiography, as Questlove explains how he and other artists wrestle with questions of borrowing, originality, dry spells, failure and partnership. He makes suggestions and also assigns tasks. For example:
Begin each day by believing the opposite of everything you believe.
Think of two artists you know, who you consider to be very different, and imagine what project they would make if they collaborated.
When you’re having trouble thinking of new ideas, go to one your old ideas and rework it.
Imagine creating an exhibition of all the things that inspire you, and imagine how you would arrange the works in the show.
Giving the book a unique flavor is the breadth of Questlove’s experiences and wisdom. Influences range from J. Dilla to Joseph Brodsky, from Bjork to young chefs looking to make a mark, and many, many others. He has an ability to pull creative people into his orbit and that makes this a very interesting book.
I don’t know if this will make readers more creative, but it will make you think. And I don’t know – it just might help with your creative processes, too.
If you think about Cabrini-Green without any knowledge of Chicago or the history of public housing, the associations that probably come to mind are extremely negative: rampant violence and poverty, created by the government. Cabrini-Green, a former public housing complex in the near North Side of Chicago, achieved a kind of amazing notoriety. But was it always a failure? And why and how did it turn out so badly? These are important questions that Chicago resident and writer Ben Austen tackles in High-Risers: Cabrini-Green and the Fate of American Public Housing. It’s an important corrective to a complicated history.
Austen takes a chronological approach to the creation of Cabrini-Green: its conception, development, challenges and demise. He focuses on the voices and stories of the people who lived there – and his attention to their narratives is most welcome. If we really consider housing and homes, we know that they are not just bricks and layouts, or architects and developers and politicians. Housing has to be about the people who lived in the homes. Reading High-Risers gives a thoughtful account of the residents of Cabrini-Green and a history of the project, which was also a neighborhood and community.
Austen’s narrative makes clear that the fate of Cabrini-Green was not predetermined – any more than other large block public housing efforts were destined for failure. The book is good on the local political and economic factors that made Cabrini-Green so problematic. Austen explains the neighborhoods, the power structures, and above all, the pervasive racism and segregation. He explains the ways that violence, especially gang violence, tore the families and communities within Cabrini-Green
What High-Risers does not address is the larger shifts in American public policy that stacked the deck against public housing. What happened in Chicago was not unique. Changing funding streams, different expectations at the city level, and a host of other factors have made successful public housing extremely challenging. We’re living with the consequences of those decisions today.
High-Risers explains Cabrini-Green and quite a bit about Chicago. Austen’s contribution is most welcome to understanding this fascinating city.
New York City, Gotham, a space of opportunity or threat? Or perhaps both?
Brian Tochterman is an associate professor of sustainable community development at Northland College and the author of The Dying City: Postwar New York and the Ideology of Fear. The book is a reworking of his University of Minnesota history dissertation, but it’s not traditional history. This is cultural and intellectual history, with little economics, demographics, political studies – and few “great men.” Tochterman, who is from the midwest, has a provocative perspective on New York City in the latter part of the twentieth century.
The Dying City spans from the end of World War II until the early 1980s. Tochterman posits two discourses about the city: cosmopolis, as exemplified by the optimism of a young E.B. White, and necropolis, as defined by Mickey Spillane. These visions and narratives competed as ways to best understand and define a rapidly changing New York City. White presented the city as open, young, growing and inclusive; Spillane represented the city as dangerous, a frontier with little order calling out for violence and strong men. From these two constructs, Tochterman spins a web of voices, actions, debates and decisions to explain the Big Apple.
The book draws from literature, film, popular culture, criticism, music and media. It’s not comprehensive. Instead, Tochterman’s methodology is more opportunitistic and impressionistic. He crafts arguments of contrast: White and Spillane, Robert Moses and Jane Jacobs, growth versus destruction. Running throughout the narrative is a heightened appreciation of how narratives of fear framed debates, decisions and cultural production. The books makes one appreciate just how pervasive fear is as a justification, a motivator, and as a means of control.
One of the challenges of cultural history is inclusivity. Most people do not get published, do not produce “culture” and their voices and influence may not be recognized. I think that the issue especially difficult in framing what happens in the city, where interactions between people and groups of people spark all manner of creativity. New York City has been a tremendous engine for cultural production. Tochterman’s construct tends to focus on the work made by white and educated professionals. There’s nothing wrong with that focus, but is it the most representative? He could have done something similar but given priority to the origin and growth of hip hop and rap, for example. Who matters more: E. B. White or Grandmaster Flash? There are no easy answers – just different framings.
One could claim, using a more traditional history lens, that there are more “accurate” ways of understanding the sweeping changes New York City faced after World War II. One could pay close attention to demographics, to changes in the economy, to broad political trends, and the general shift of influence to the west and the south. However, that is a different kind of book. Tochterman has crafted something thoughtful in The Dying City. It’s creative and well done. And while it may be a bit too dissertation-like for some, I found it very interesting.
Why does America imprison so many people? And why are those who lives are all tangled up in our criminal justice system so often people of color? It is a question that drove James Forman, Jr., to write an extraordinarily powerful and important book, Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America. The book has received a great deal of well-deserved attention. Forman, a professor of law at Yale, makes it clear that this issue is central to understanding crime and justice in the US.
Forman, a former public defender, opens the narrative recounting the sentencing of a young black man in a Washington, D.C., all-black courtroom. He is angered, frustrated, upset, and wonders: “How did a majority-black jurisdiction end up incarcerating so many of its own?” The book is a well-researched attempt to answer that question, looking at politics, economics, and social history. Forman readily acknowledges the role of whites to promote mass incarceration, but his focus here is on black leadership and black communities. Doing so, he highlights extremely important issues of class. In 2000, “the lifetime risk of incarceration for black high school dropouts was ten times higher than it was for African Americans who attended college.”
The book is organized into two parts: origins and consequences. Forman’s personal experience as an attorney, a public defender, and community member buttresses his research throughout. He starts with the 1970s and the debate over marijuana laws and their enforcement. Within the Washington, DC community, David Clark, an African-American lawyer, successfully ran for city council with an aim to end prison as a potential penalty for marijuana possession. Then, as now, a drug possession conviction could have negative consequences for someone’s entire life.
Moderate as Clarke’s proposal was, it struggled to gain acceptance. Many political leaders in the black community worried about heroin and believed that any weakening of anti-drug laws would cause further problems. The bill died, foundering on the shores of moral hazard.
At the same time, a growing crime epidemic in DC within the black community outraged law-abiding citizens. With increasing calls for “getting tough on crime,” gun control legislation passed in the District. Dissenters unsuccessfully argued that it would weaken the right to defend one’s self. The result were stiffer penalties for gun possession without systemic efforts to address the causes of crime.
Forman’s chapter on the integration of color into the police is worthy of lengthy analysis on its own. He notes that “the case for black police has always been premised on the unquestioned assumption of racial solidarity between black citizens and black officers.” As it turns out, that assumption was and remains incorrect.
Consequences picks up with changes in sentencing in the 1980s. Forman explains how many in the black community in DC were let down by police and the courts – and how that frustration led to calls for longer and harsher sentences. Drug dealers were excoriated by black leaders. Mandatory sentencing was championed by many who distrusted the system. In 1982, Initiative 9 was overwhelming passed in an District-wide election. It called for a minimum mandatory sentence of five years for committing a violent felony with a gun for the first offense and ten years for all further offenses. Selling heroin netted a four-year minimum sentence, with two years for cocaine and one year for large amounts of marijuana. And again, not much was done to address underlying causes or treatment.
A serious problem that became a media frenzy, the epidemic of crack cocaine in the late 1980s and early 1990s led to greater gang violence and even more dramatic responses. Political leaders – often African American – hyped anti-crime measures and and increased policing presence. Forman rightly calls this the rise of “warrior policing.” In addition to more police sweeps, more violence, assets were seized. The toll on the black community was devastating, both from crack and the response to it.
The book concludes with implementation of “stop and frisk” and an epilogue that summarizes how we got to mass incarceration: “the result of a series of small decisions, made over time, by a disparate group of actors.” It is rare to see so many efforts over so long to address problems with policy choices that have not done what many have hoped. Forman argues that if we are to do something about these issues and the resulting institutional race and class problems, we will have to recognize the failures and start with small steps. In other words, we have take it apart the same way it was built, with securing local political support and greater awareness. While this may not be optimistic conclusion, it is practical – and it makes sense.
Michael Ruhlman is a prolific author, writing mostly about food. He does cookbooks, recipes, reviews, books, blogs, articles and more. He is always publishing, always getting prose out, and there is a good chance that you may have come across his work in a newspaper or magazine. It’s easy to understand why. Ruhlman writes as a friend, an informed colleague, and as the man next door (who loves to eat well).
Ruhlman’s recently published book, Grocery: The Buying and Selling of American Food, is a non-fiction account of the supermarket, written with a focus on a small family run chain, Heinen’s, in Cleveland. It is not a comprehensive account of the supermarket industry. Nor is it a business history, or what is all to common in the books about food, a polemic on what we should or should not be eating. Instead, Ruhlman is after information – about the store, they buying and selling of food, about his father, and about himself. To the extent that one can write a personal book about a grocery store, Ruhlman has done it. The book features some very interesting genre-crossing observations.
Ruhlman’s late father figures prominently. He loved to shop, to cook, and to feed people. Prominently among Ruhlman’s childhood memories are shopping with his father at Heinen’s, buying food for a week’s worth of meals, and large get togethers with family, friends and neighbors. The shopping trip represented family, prosperity, choice and optimism. Ruhlman senior was not alone in his love of the supermarket. We learn that for many, particularly of a certain generation, the boomers, fondness for grocery store trips and opulence is all too common.
Over the years, Ruhlman’s parents divorced, ending the shopping trips and the large meals. Ruhlman, too, is writing while experiencing a divorce and traumatic change. He grew up in Cleveland, but the book jacket notes that he now divides his time between New York City and Providence, Rhode Island. One does not have to be much of a detective to appreciate that this is a tangled book. Ruhlman’s interest in Heinen’s grocery is deeply tied to a host of memories, values and meaning. The knot of issues enhance, constrain and complicate the book.
The book is wide-ranging, moving from popular culture to what grocery store owners think and do, then back again. Ruhlman walks us around the supermarket, examining the differences in produce, dairy, delis and processed foods. There is a reason that milk is usually located at the back of a supermarket – and it’s more to do with a place for coolers than a marketing trick. The changes in how groceries operate and what they sell has been tremendous. More changes are anticipated, too. It’s a very complicated business with many moving parts and small profit margins.
The book concludes with the location of a Heinen’s in a restored downtown Cleveland building. It’s an expensive project. It also represents a new direction for the city and people’s expectation for shopping and food. Ruhlman is both elated by the new space and also saddened by loss.
Remember The Clash’s Lost in the Supermarket? Great track on one of the best albums of all time, London Calling, written all the way back in 1979. The song ran repeatedly through my head when reading Michael Ruhlman’s Grocery. Sometimes shopping is not really about shopping.
I’m all lost in the supermarket I can never shop happily I came in here for that special offer A guaranteed personality
On the recommendation of a bookstore staffer, I picked up Joshua Freeman’s Behemoth: A History of the Factory and the Making of the Modern World. I know – a book about factories? I was skeptical but she was persuasive. Turns out that she was right. It’s a surprisingly good read, presenting a host of historical changes in new light. Behemoth is well-written, accessible, and not dumb.
Freeman is a distinguished professor of history at Queens College, CUNY. He has serious history chops. His aim here, though, is not to overwhelm the reader with footnotes and in-the-weeds references and sourcing. The pace is swift, the prose is clear, and driving the book is a clear narrative tone that calls attention to something that many of us have missed: the importance of the big factory in the development of modern life. Freeman pulls from economics, anthropology, politics and history to explain the growth and key role the super-large factories have played.
Freeman begins with New England and the textile mills in the early 1800s, then moves to the large steel mills of the latter 1800s. Ford and the creation of the big automobile manufacturing facilities is next, and Freeman ties them elegantly to the mega-factories of the Soviet Union. He explores mass production and mass consumption, closing with a look at the massive factories in China and Vietnam. Foxconn City is an appropriate focus of attention and a good way to end the study.
Perhaps one of the most important takeaways from the book is a heightened appreciation of economic and technical change – particularly when it comes to making stuff. Material goods are central to the way that we live. How they come into being is fascinating on so many levels. Freeman does a fine job teasing out that question, providing historical answers across decades and borders.
Behemoth would be a fun book to teach, especially in an interdisciplinary course.
Working one’s way through Pat Barker’s novels is not work at all. But it also is neither easy nor comforting. Barker is an extraordinarily perceptive writer and the precision of her prose compels attention. She is beyond thoughtful; her attention is acute. I have come to realize that there is a clinical quality to her writing that is captivating – has me reading more and more – and also just a little bit scary. It is imposing.
Barker’s first big breakout novel was Union Street, a book that I had heard referenced years ago in discussions about “women’s literature.” While it features women, the categorization is inelegant at best. Union Street is much more, even with a relatively simple structure: seven interrelated chapters, each focusing on a different female character, all of whom live on the same street in a northern English city in the 1970s. The women are working class, poor, and range in age from early adolescence to aged and dying. The immediacy of their lives, struggles and circumstances impels the narrative, with the impositions on their lives dominating thoughts and actions. The plot does not move from conflict to resolution; the characters’ lives do not move from conflict to resolution. That’s also how people lead their lives, especially those of limited means. Life is often ongoing struggle.
Throughout, Barker gives the characters voice and agency, even if their language is rough and their agency severely constrained. It is powerful prose, carrying the reader into a world far removed from romance. It is also neither didactic or judgmental It is easy to see why the book, which came out in the early 1980s, generated so much attention. It remains relevant, an eye-opening read.
Published decades later, Barker’s Border Crossing is a frightening novel about the evil that children can do. Is it possible to become “good”? Does time served make a difference? And what might our responsibilities be to those who did something awful as a child? It is high gothic literature.
Set against the backdrop of a dissolving marriage, Tom and Lauren live in north of England. Trying for a child, they’ve grown farther apart or, perhaps, realized that they were never all that close. While on a walk, Tom rescues a young man who attempts suicide. The young man turns out to be a figure in Tom’s past. He is Danny, recently released from prison, who murdered an old woman as a child a decade earlier. Tom is a counselor and had testified about Danny. Tom and Danny start sessions, probing into issues of family, guilt, crime and identity.
Barker’s exploration of the characters is clinical. The dialogue is masterfully presented. In elegant prose, she lays bare the characters innermost feelings without reduction. Nor is the reader enlightened through gimmicks or third-person narration. Instead, the characters come across as complicated, high-functioning, and damaged people. Reading tells us much about them and about Barker, who is unremitting in her push for deeper understanding and truth. It’s high literature and a bit of a thriller, with uncomfortable tension throughout. Border Crossing isn’t diverting – it’s engrossing.
