The Protest Singer
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To Pete Seeger, on his 90th birthday
REVIEW BY EDWARD MORRIS As Alec Wilkinson demonstrates in this profile of America's most durable folksinger, a person would have to be terrified of the First Amendment to regard Pete Seeger as a menace to the nation's health. His songs—whether aimed at children, civil rights marchers or war protesters—plead only for fairness. That makes him about as subversive as the Golden Rule. Indeed, his most radical element is that he's never ceased singing for his causes. Wilkinson, a New Yorker writer, says the self-effacing Seeger agreed to cooperate for this book only after declaring, "Too much has been written about me, and at too great length. What's needed is a book that can be read in one sitting." Thus, The Protest Singer: An Intimate Portrait of Pete Seeger, published to coincide with Seeger's 90th birthday, is a fine balance between the author's personal glimpses of Seeger as he labors and relaxes on his homestead in Beacon, New York, and the more mundane facts taken from other chroniclers. Sweetening the narrative are 30 photos, as well as a transcript of Seeger's 1955 testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee. That encounter, in which he refused to answer questions the way his interrogators demanded, earned him a one-year jail sentence for contempt of Congress. The verdict was eventually overturned. Wilkinson takes Seeger through his return to network television via the Smothers Brothers, his crusade for cleaning up his beloved Hudson River, his Kennedy Center Honor and his exaltation by Bruce Springsteen in The Seeger Sessions album. But real Seeger fans will want to know more. How did his children respond to his notoriety and absences? How did he fend off fear, anger and cynicism? Did his songwriting royalties make him wealthy, and, if so, how did he use that wealth? Ninety remarkable years just can't be conveyed in one thin book—or properly appreciated in one sitting.
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