"Ronald Reagan, the Movie" and Other Episodes in Political Demonology

1987, undated later edition, from University of California Press
Michael Rogin
"Ronald Reagan, the Movie" and Other Episodes in Political Demonology
Original price unknown, purchase price $17.50
Good condition hardcover with worn dustjacket
C+

While the title essay and some of the other material is interesting and occasionally thought-provoking, the book is dull at times, especially in Chapter 4, "Partisanship and the Group Interest."  By "demonology" Rogin means the making of other groups into evil symbols, not just "The Evil Empire," but Indians, blacks, Jews, Catholics, women, etc.  He sees this as an important part of mainstream politics (not just of the Right).  He looks at movies of the Cold War (Reagan's and others), as well as in detail at The Birth of a Nation.  He also examines the U.S. government's treatment and language towards Native Americans ("great white father and red children").  And he discusses the king's (or president's) two bodies, the way that the ruler's health is symbolic of the nation's (and vice versa).  I wish the book was as good as its illustrations, including the haunting cover, of a giant Ronnie on a screen waving at worshipful Nancy at the '84 National Convention.

Hatchet

1987, 1996 Aladdin edition
Gary Paulsen
Hatchet
Bought new for $4.50
Slightly worn paperback
B

There's an odd very 1980s-backlash subtext to this book-- "Adulterous wives are getting divorces and leaving children to fend for themselves"-- but 13-year-old Brian's knowledge of "The Secret," after he witnesses his mother kissing a strange man and his dilemma of whether to tell his father are just the background to the story.  Narratively, his parents have to get divorced so that he can be traveling to visit his father in Canada and get in a plane crash and have to survive on his own in the woods, with nothing but the title object and his wits.  It's like the set-up for Island of the Blue Dolphins, although Brian doesn't bond with animals at all to the extent that Karana does.  (He's also stranded for weeks rather than years.)  With both books, the coping, the inventions, and the awe about nature are what matter.  When Brian is, towards the end, able to retrieve the survival pack, he feels like the sleeping bag, cooking pots, and so on are amazing luxuries.  He's been finding food, shelter, and fire on his own for so long.  He's rescued soon after, so we don't know how he'd deal with, for instance, his mixed feelings, about the gun he now has.

Well, I guess people who've read Brian's Winter (1996) know.  It's an alternate novel, showing what would've happened if Brian hadn't been found at that point.  I've never read it, or the three other Brian's Saga books.  The two or three times I've read this book, I've enjoyed it-- much more than I do most preteen boys' fiction-- but somehow it's not a book that stays with me.  That said, I've never read O'Dell's Zia (1976), about Karana's niece, either.

Man of the House

1987, 1988 St. Martin's Press edition
Tip O'Neill
Man of the House
Possibly bought newish, for $4.95
Very worn paperback
C+

I wanted to like this book more than I did, but it has some of the flaws of the Donaldson book, without many compensations.  Although O'Neill was 74 at the time this book came out (he died in 1994), he says very little about his first forty years, and almost half of the book is set during his decade as Speaker of the House.  Like Donaldson, he doesn't say very much about his family, which in his case may be partly due to his living away from them most of his time as a Representative.  I learned much more about his Washington roommate Rep. Boland than I did about wife Millie.

I also felt like too much of the book was spent on describing deal-making.  Granted, this is a big part of politics (especially Massachusetts politics), but it's only here and there that I got a sense of O'Neill having higher values than horse-trading.  Even his opposition to the Vietnam War was more pragmatic than idealistic.  I suppose that explains his success, but it doesn't make for inspiring reading. 

Yes, he offers some insights into the many presidents and other figures he knew, but I found his belief in JFK's liberalism laughable and surprisingly naive.  I don't believe that Kennedy was going to pull back from Vietnam, or that he was deeply concerned with civil rights.  On the other hand, I did like O'Neill standing up to Reagan, even when Tip started to receive insults and death threats as a result.

A marginal recommendation, if you're interested in politics and/or the 1970s and '80s, but even more than with the Donaldson autobiography, don't expect the whole man.

Archie & Edith, Mike & Gloria

1987, possibly first edition, from Workman Publishing
Donna McCrohan
Archie & Edith, Mike & Gloria: The Tumultuous History of All in the Family
Original price $7.95, purchase price $6.99
Worn paperback
B-

This is the first but far from the last of the books I own to take this particular approach to a television show: chapters on the making of and its cultural impact, miscellany, and then an episode guide towards the end.  All in the Family was one of those shows that I grew up with as a child of the 1970s, but already by '87 it was very dated.  (In fact, the 1977 episode "Mike and Gloria Meet" gets much of its humor by showing how different the early '70s looked.)  Norman Lear's magic touch had worn off-- Paul Rodriguez, star of A.K.A. Pablo jokes here, "I like to think of myself as the man who ruined Lear"-- and the nature of sitcoms had changed significantly.  Still, you could very well argue that AitF was the big game-changer, that if you had to pick one show (or at least comedy show) that there is a before and after of, it's the one.

Back when I had Netflix (a gift from a friend), I found their search engine woefully primitive, so I gave up on trying to get movies from them and instead got early seasons of M*A*S*H and AitF.  The former, with the exception of the classic "Captain Tuttle" episode, was not nearly as brilliant as I remembered.  But I found myself laughing at Archie, Edith, Mike, and Gloria.  Yes, the way they handled feminism in the early days was wincey, but the writing was overall good.  And thirty years on, I still loved Watergate humor.

McCrohan does a pretty good job of capturing what was special about the show.  There are times when her writing could be tighter (less redundant, sharper), but I liked her even-handedness.  There were disputes about the show not just among the public and the media, but by those who worked on it.  She presents the different sides, but doesn't take one herself.

When I watched the show as a kid, I thought of Archie as elderly.  It was a shock to find out as an adult that his character was born in 1924 (a year before my father, the same year as Jimmy Carter), so he was 46 when it started (a year older than I am now).  As a '70s kid, I thought all the bigots were old and would soon die off.  Carroll O'Connor (a liberal in real life) lived until 2001.  Jean Stapleton is still alive at age 90 although retired.  Rob Reiner and Sally Struthers quickly aged almost beyond recognition, and became at least equally well-known for respectively directing and "Do you want to make more money? Of course. We all do!"  And little Danielle "Stephanie" Brisebois?  She co-wrote the earwormy "Pocketful of Sunshine."

Anastasia's Chosen Career

1987, 1988 Yearling edition
Lois Lowry
Anastasia's Chosen Career
Original price $2.95, purchase price 99 cents
Very worn paperback
B-

I forgot that I own this, which is odd since I enjoyed it more than 1984's Anastasia, Ask Your Analyst.  It felt like there were fewer loose ends.  The main action takes place in one week-- I think it's Spring Break-- where Anastasia takes a modeling course and meets a bookstore owner.  She makes friends with the other students, particularly with Henry (short for Henrietta), a Sassy Black Girl®.  I found both girls' use of the insult "turkey" wincingly dated for the late '80s.  (Even in the late '70s, it was an overly ubiquitous term on kids' TV programs.)  Still, I liked their friendship, and the scenes with the bookstore and modeling school, as well as Anastasia's family, were nicely done.  This is Book #7 of the series (following 1985's Anastasia on her Own and 1986's Anastasia Has the Answers), and yes, she's still a 13-year-old 7th-grader.  Her parents watch Hill Street Blues, which would leave the air that Spring, but maybe it's not actually set in '87.  Cosby Show is another show that's mentioned, so it must be at least '84.  There's less "mature content" than in Analyst, although there is a boy who likes to talk about chest hair and other embarrassing matters.

As far as I know, I don't have any other Anastasia Krupnik books, but I obviously wouldn't swear to it.  I do know I've got Number the Stars coming up in 1989.  And with this entry, the 1980s have passed the 1970s to be the most prolific decade I've reread.

Reagan's Reign of Error: The Instant Nostalgia Edition

1987, expanded and updated version of 1983's There He Goes Again, from Pantheon Books
Mark Green and Gail MacColl
Reagan's Reign of Error: The Instant Nostalgia Edition
Original price $6.95, purchase price $3.95
Slightly worn paperback
B-

Unlike Ducovny's Nixon book, Green and MacColl (and their contributors) don't just show how Reagan contradicted himself.  They also provide the facts that contradict Reagan's-- I'll try to be polite-- imaginative statements.  And unlike Pat Brown's 1976 book on Reagan, this book didn't anger me.  Oddly enough, I found myself feeling sorry for Reagan.  At some points, I was convinced he was mentally ill or incredibly naive.  Yes, I think Nixon was a bit crazy, but he was also wily, which you can't say about poor old Ronnie.  Unless he really was an amazing actor!  That would anger me. 

I'm not sure what the "instant nostalgia" of the subtitle refers to, unless they mean nostalgic for the time before Reagan, or at least the time before Iran-Contra made more people see through him.  (Donaldson's book was the first of the books I've read to mention the scandal, although obviously that wasn't the main focus.)  Certainly, Reagan was nostalgic, while also plagued by a notoriously bad memory.  (They quote New York Magazine's classic question, "What did Reagan forget, and when did he forget it?")  Maybe he was nostalgic for the past he imagined.  This book got me thinking more about Reagan's viewpoint than anything else I've read so far, maybe because so much of it is quotations from him.  On the other hand, I don't think I could stomach a book written by him.

Her Mother's Daughter

1987, 1988 Ballantine edition
Marilyn French
Her Mother's Daughter
Original price $5.95, purchase price unknown
Very, very worn paperback
B+

This is a definite improvement over The Women's Room and The Bleeding Heart, although like them it tells many life stories.  Here though, the focus is on four generations of one family, not just the mothers and their firstborn daughters, but mostly.  The main perspective is that of Anastasia: daughter of Belle, granddaughter of immigrant Frances, mother of Arden (and Billy and Franny).  Anastasia struggles with how Frances's and Belle's unhappiness has impacted her life, among others.  Like Mira in French's first novel, Anastasia is unhappy as a 1950s housewife, but she finds adventure as a globe-trotting photographer.  Arden ironically lives a life not unlike Frances's and Belle's earlier in the twentieth century, when she lives on a hippie commune.  (She has to take care of three small children without modern appliances or hot water.)

I nearly loved this book when I was younger (which is true of a lot of the B+s), and it has extra meaning to me in middle age, even though my mother died when I was three, and I'll never have children.  It's a much "realer" book than so much of the fiction I've been reading lately.  Like Anastasia's photos, it's constantly zooming in and out, from groceries to war and back again.  I believed in these characters, ached for them, gloried for their occasional triumphs.  I also believe that it's the first time that French sees how men are victimized by society, perhaps less than women, but their pain is real, too. 

I don't agree with French (or is it Anastasia?) that women's problems are mostly due to men, because what about the problems that Belle creates?  Also, while I can relate a lot more to Anastasia's "screwing around years" than I could when I was younger (not that I was ever promiscuous to her extent, but certainly more than I was when I first read this book as a monogamous wife in my early 20s), I don't like how she cheats on Toni, who at that point is the first good man she's been involved with.  Yes, she's pressured into the marriage-- and into bearing Franny-- but it's not as if they've had an open marriage.  (It's sort of "don't ask, don't tell.")  The other issue I have with the book is that the character of Clara-- a lesbian friend who falls for Anastasia when they're both in their 40s-- although mentioned often in passing, isn't really developed.  (I thought until fairly late in the book that she was Anastasia's psychologist, and this is a reread!)

Still, it's a very rich, gripping novel, one of the few of its length (over 750 pages) that I didn't feel fidgety during.