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Roger Bishop

Biography

Second-best bed, indeed

Review by Roger Bishop

Very little of what we know about Shakespeare's life can be documented; of his wife, Ann Hathaway, we know even less. Because of the little we do know about their relationship—primarily that Shakespeare left her his "second-best bed"—Shakespeare biographers have assumed Ann played virtually no important role in his life. Germaine Greer, a scholar best known for The Female Eunuch, would have us consider other possibilities. With a dazzling display of erudition and lively prose, her Shakespeare's Wife is a delight to read and a breath of fresh air for those interested in the Bard's life.

Greer differs from Stephen Greenblatt, whose Will in the World is the most acclaimed Shakespeare biography of recent times, on numerous points. While Greenblatt believes Shakespeare's marriage was a mismatch and that he "contrived" to get away from his family in search of a more satisfying life in London, Greer notes that in the 16th century it was a crime for a man to live away from his wife. Also, we have nothing to indicate that Ann asked for her husband to be charged with desertion. While Greenblatt says Shakespeare was "curiously restrained" in his depictions of normal married life, Greer argues that in literature, marriage may be the happy ending, but we don't stay around to see what happens next—unless the marriage is dysfunctional. She adds that though we don't have letters from Shakespeare to Ann, we don't have his letters to anyone else either. Greer uses specific examples from Shakespeare's plays and sonnets to illustrate how his work may have been influenced by life with Ann. The key word is "may"; she is careful to qualify every statement in this regard. Sonnet 110, for example, reads "like an apology to his oldest and truest love," she says, while the well-known Sonnet 29 is concerned with solitude, self-imposed distance and unrealized ambition. Many times in his work, Greer writes, Shakespeare "confronted the two-in-one paradox of marriage, knowing it to be a contradiction in terms while celebrating its grace and power."

Greer also has much to say about the lives of women in Shakespeare's time. She points out that all women of the era worked in some way and without evidence thatShakespeare supported his family in Stratford, Greer makes a strong case for Ann's running a successful brewing, winemaking and/or sericulture business to sustained them. Even those who disagree with Greer's interpretation should find Shakespeare's Wife stimulating. Her radical exploration of Ann Hathaway is a compelling triumph.

Very little of what we know about Shakespeare's life can be documented; of his wife, Ann Hathaway, we know even less. Because of the little we do know about their relationship—primarily that Shakespeare left her his "second-best bed"—Shakespeare biographers have assumed Ann played virtually no important role in his life. Germaine Greer, a scholar best […]
History

The virtues of Lincoln as president

Review by Roger Bishop

In the widely praised Lincoln's Virtues, historian William Lee Miller explored Abraham Lincoln's moral choices during his ascension to power. Miller's splendid new book, President Lincoln: The Duty of a Statesman, is about, as he says, "statesmanship and moral choice in the American presidency, through an examination of the most remarkable occupant of that office."

Miller notes that Lincoln received the nomination for president due solely to his "effective presentation of the moral-political argument for the Republican position." He brought two contrasting qualities to the presidency—"profound clarity and coercive action"—that Miller views as coming from the same root, "a moral indignation that saw the immense impact on human life of these decisions and events."

Among other attributes, Lincoln's life experience led him to develop "intellectual and moral self-confidence . . . and an unusual sympathy for those in distress." This meant using deft political and military strategy that, depending on the issue at hand, alienated, at least temporarily, his own supporters. It meant, for example, that he refused to accept the views or actions of such national heroes as Gen. Winfield Scott, who saw no alternative but to surrender at Fort Sumter, or Gen. John McClellan, who had repeatedly failed to act as directed. Gen. John C. Fremont's declaration of instant emancipation of slaves belonging to disloyal Missourians was problematic because Freemont failed to consider its effect on Kentucky's position on secession.

Miller strongly disagrees with those who see the issuing of the Emancipation Proclamation as the only morally significant aspect of the Civil War. Rather than a power-political struggle before that, he says, Lincoln saw "an undertaking with vast and universal moral significance—showing that free, popular, constitutional government could maintain itself, a project that, as Lincoln said, goes down about as deep as anything." This rich and rewarding book should be enjoyed by all those interested in Lincoln or the presidency in general.

In the widely praised Lincoln's Virtues, historian William Lee Miller explored Abraham Lincoln's moral choices during his ascension to power. Miller's splendid new book, President Lincoln: The Duty of a Statesman, is about, as he says, "statesmanship and moral choice in the American presidency, through an examination of the most remarkable occupant of that office." […]
NonfictionEssays

Myriad musings from John Updike, an American master

Review by Roger Bishop

John Updike is one of America's most renowned men of letters. Best known for his prize-winning novels and short stories, he is also an accomplished poet, an author of children's books, memoirs and a play, and one of our finest literary critics and essayists. In his new collection, Due Considerations, he shares work of the last eight years or so and dazzles us once again.

These essays are general considerations, with sections on American and English fiction, along with novels from other parts of the world; art (Updike once aspired to be a graphic artist); literary biography; appreciations and considerations of writers and others; and Updike's contribution to the NPR series This I Believe. The key part of the collection is Updike's literary criticism. He is perceptive and insightful, generous with praise, but very specific about reservations he may have. He is also keenly aware of his limitations. As he looked over the reviews included in the book, he says he wondered if their customary geniality, almost effusive in the presence of a foreign writer or a factual topic, didn't somewhat sour when faced with a novel by a fellow-countryman. But, he concludes, a book reviewer must write what is felt at the time, when impressions are still warm and malleable, and leave second thoughts to prefaces. Over the years Updike has been asked to comment on his childhood reading. He had forgotten an account he wrote for the New York Times in 1965 until it reappeared on the Times website in 1997. He included it here because, he says, it rings truer than any of the too-numerous later attempts of mine to describe my childhood reading. His earliest literary memory is of his fear of the spidery, shadowy, monstrous illustrations in a large deluxe edition of Alice in Wonderland in his family's collection.

He is a copious reader and careful researcher, exhibiting familiarity with other works by and about the author whose work he is discussing. He also spends a lot of time describing what happens in the book at hand. It would be fair to say of Updike what he writes of Frank Kermode, whom he considers the best of English book reviewers: decent devotion to literary merit and a humble and tenacious will to explicate the best examples of it. A longtime contributor to The New Yorker, Updike writes with authority about such literary legends as E.B. and Katharine White, William Shawn and William Maxwell. He does not hesitate to say that a biographer of John O'Hara does not, it seemed to me, get The New Yorker exactly right. He proceeds to set the record straight on facts and interpretation, including, for example, a previously unpublished tribute to Tina Brown, when she abruptly left as editor of The New Yorker in 1998. He notes that she made the magazine more woman-friendly and celebrity-friendly, that she brought fun into the production process, into the publicity process, and decreed a party atmosphere. He continues, Her party in these offices is over, but its brave vibrations linger into the new dawn. This cornucopia of writing by a master will delight many readers.

 

Roger Bishop is a retired Nashville bookseller and a frequent contributor to BookPage.

John Updike is one of America's most renowned men of letters. Best known for his prize-winning novels and short stories, he is also an accomplished poet, an author of children's books, memoirs and a play, and one of our finest literary critics and essayists. In his new collection, Due Considerations, he shares work of the […]
Biography

A Founding Father brought to light

Review by Roger Bishop

Noah Webster devoted his life to establishing a distinctly American culture. At the beginning of his literary career he noted the importance of America being, in his words, “as independent in literature as she is in politics—as famous for arts as for arms.” His best-known contribution toward this end was, of course, his American Dictionary of the English Language, published in 1828, but his legacy includes much more. His American Spelling Book sold an incredible 100 million copies. He drafted America’s first copyright laws and was the first editor of the first daily newspaper in New York City. He served as a state legislator in both Connecticut and Massachusetts, he was involved in the founding of Amherst College, and his habit of counting houses wherever he went inspired the first census. One scholar has called him a “multiple founding father,” but most people do not remember him that way.

In his enlightening and absorbing The Forgotten Founding Father, Joshua Kendall helps us understand both Webster’s achievements and the reasons why he is not recognized in the same company as his role model Benjamin Franklin. Kendall’s previous book, the widely praised The Man Who Made Lists, was a biography of Peter Mark Roget, of thesaurus fame, another word-obsessed man.

Although his contemporaries recognized Webster’s great abilities, they were also aware of his negative traits: He was arrogant and tactless, often argumentative, a perpetual self-promoter and wholly self-absorbed. Kendall has closely examined Webster’s diaries and letters, including some that the family has long suppressed, and believes that Webster could not help himself—that he suffered from what psychiatrists today would identify as obsessive-compulsive disorder. Kendall thinks that Webster’s 30-year struggle to finish his dictionary was a case in which his “pathology was instrumental to his success.” But it also may have been a factor in the many contradictory identities he displayed over the years, including patriot, political reactionary, peacemaker, ladies’ man and “prig.” Words seemed always to be his best friends, and defining them was an obsession that ruled him.

Kendall’s discussion of the content of Webster’s dictionary is eye-opening and fascinating. Although Webster borrowed generously from Samuel Johnson’s dictionary, he also expanded it to 70,000 words—12,000 more than the latest edition of Johnson’s. Webster celebrated America’s founders and offered countless references to American locales. He also used many references from his own life. The definitions were often didactic, in line with Webster’s devout Christian values, and his questionable etymological ideas appeared on occasion; he had “a penchant for making wild guesses about the roots of words.”

There is so much more in Kendall’s superbly written and carefully balanced narrative of an American original. One comes away convinced that this complex and often difficult man was a major force for creating a sense of American nationalism and unity among his fellow citizens.

Noah Webster devoted his life to establishing a distinctly American culture. At the beginning of his literary career he noted the importance of America being, in his words, “as independent in literature as she is in politics—as famous for arts as for arms.” His best-known contribution toward this end was, of course, his American Dictionary […]
LiteratureArts & Culture

The wit and wisdom of James Thurber

Review by Roger Bishop

James Thurber was one of the great American humorists of the 20th century. From his first appearance in the fledgling New Yorker in 1927 until his death in 1961, he was known for his unique reflections in prose and pictures on what he called "human confusion, American-style." These laugh-out-loud critiques of love, marriage, sex, literature and history made him a favorite with readers. As the largest single collection of his correspondence, The Thurber Letters: The Wit, Wisdom, and Surprising Life of James Thurber reveals that his life and his art were, for the most part, separate. Harrison Kinney, author of the definitive 1995 Thurber biography James Thurber: His Life and Times, edits the collection with Rosemary A. Thurber, Thurber's only child. As Kinney writes, "Very little of his personal life . . . can be surmised from what he wrote for publication. It is his letters . . . that comprise a reliable and fascinating portrait of Thurber, the man and artist, and offer a vivid understanding of what largely motivated his remarkable prose and art." This fascinating volume includes letters to his family in Ohio and to his wide circle of literary friends, including his New Yorker colleagues. Among the latter, the most memorable letters include his missives to Harold Ross, the legendary editor with whom Thurber had a decades-long ambivalent relationship. A wonderful example is an undated letter in which Thurber strongly objects to changes made in his copy. "Since I never write, for publication, a single word or phrase that I have not consciously examined, sometimes numerous times, I should like to have the queriers on my pieces realize that there is no possibility of catching me on an overlooked sloppiness." There are many letters to Thurber's good friends E.B. and Katharine White, and letters to Rosemary that reveal him to be a devoted parent. Some of the most entertaining items are Thurber's responses to students and other people he does not know who have written to him for advice.

The letters appear chronologically, so we can trace Thurber's development from a 23-year-old code clerk in Washington and Paris in 1918 through several years as a newspaper reporter and columnist and his eventual employment by Ross in 1927 as managing editor of The New Yorker. From his perspective, we learn of his sticky relationship with the magazine, primarily with regard to proper payment for his work and the rejection of numerous submissions he made to it. His adventures as an author of books and co-author of The Male Animal, a successful comedy on Broadway, are also included.

From the earliest letters to the last, Thurber impresses us with his gift for language and his sheer joy in writing. He can be chatty, as in letters to his family; focused on concerns at the magazine, as he was with Ross and many others; opinionated, as when writing to Malcolm Cowley in the 1930s about his dislike of "literary communists"; or witty, as in his response to an invitation to appear on the radio program "This I Believe" in 1953: "my belief changes from time to time and might even change during a brief broadcast." Whatever the occasion, Thurber never fails to write in such a way that readers are caught up in what he has to say.

Anyone interested in Thurber's life and work or who would like an insider's view on the workings of a great American magazine should enjoy this collection immensely. Roger Bishop is a Nashville bookseller and a regular contributor to BookPage.

 

James Thurber was one of the great American humorists of the 20th century. From his first appearance in the fledgling New Yorker in 1927 until his death in 1961, he was known for his unique reflections in prose and pictures on what he called "human confusion, American-style." These laugh-out-loud critiques of love, marriage, sex, literature […]
History

The life and times of Old Hickory

Review by Roger Bishop

Andrew Jackson, our seventh president, held ideas about the role of government that were shaped by his experience on the American frontier. In that environment, ambitious men vied for wealth, property and political power in the midst of hardship and violence. Unless we understand Jackson within the context of his pre-presidential years, according to historian Andrew Burstein, we cannot appreciate his actions as president or understand why he was both so loved and so hated.

Burstein explores the life and times of Old Hickory in his consistently illuminating new book, The Passions of Andrew Jackson.

Politics in Jackson's day was vicious and often violent, and he thrived in the atmosphere. Burstein notes that Jackson possessed two paradoxical personality traits: "imperiousness (unassailable opinions) and identification with the democratic (folk) temper." When viewed in the context of Jackson's political generation, the author says, Jackson "was not necessarily any more fierce, profane, or irrational than his competition." The author is keenly aware that many others have written about Jackson; two approaches distinguish his study. First, as he has done in his books about Thomas Jefferson and others, the author effectively dissects Jackson's correspondence, which shows him to be more than a man of action.

Second, Burstein emphasizes Jackson's friendships, showing the reader who Jackson identified with and why. Friendship was important to Jackson, but only on Jackson's terms. Some of his close friends became bitter enemies, though he regarded himself as one who "never abandoned a friend, without being forced to do so, from his own course toward me." Burstein skillfully reveals the complex central figure in his narrative while also conveying the upheaval taking place in the country during the era of western expansion. Despite Jackson's flaws, Burstein believes there is a strong case that he was the right leader to help fulfill the founders' vision of a "manifest continental destiny." This rewarding study convincingly explains how and why he filled that role.

 

Roger Bishop is a frequent contributor to BookPage.

Andrew Jackson, our seventh president, held ideas about the role of government that were shaped by his experience on the American frontier. In that environment, ambitious men vied for wealth, property and political power in the midst of hardship and violence. Unless we understand Jackson within the context of his pre-presidential years, according to historian […]
NonfictionPolitics

Clinton and Yeltsin’s diplomatic duet

Review by Roger Bishop

When Bill Clinton assumed the presidency in 1993, he hoped to focus on the U.S. economy. Instead, momentous events in Moscow almost immediately thrust him into an unexpected role. "By the spring of his first year in office," Strobe Talbott writes, "Clinton had become the U.S. government's principal Russian hand, and so he remained for the duration of his presidency." Until Boris Yeltsin resigned on January 1, 2000, the two men were the major figures on the world's political stage. They met 18 times, almost always to deal with extremely sensitive issues. As Russia sought to reinvent itself, significantly changing international politics in the process, the United States was required to "reinvent American foreign policy," Talbott says.

In The Russia Hand, a compelling account of this dramatic and crucial period in post-Cold War politics, Talbott shares his behind-the-scenes experiences as deputy secretary of state and chief architect of the administration's policy toward Russia.

A multitude of concerns regarding nuclear weapons, the war in Chechnya, political opposition in the Duma, the Russian parliament and virtually anything that might be considered reform made diplomacy sticky for the Clinton administration. Yeltsin added to the challenge by being somewhat unpredictable. He felt his country should never be perceived as being less than equal with the U.S. Clinton was empathetic with Yeltsin and felt the United States and other allies should help Russia. The two leaders, despite their differences, respected each other. "The thing about Yeltsin I really like," Clinton says at one point, "is that he's not a Russian bureaucrat. He's an Irish poet. He sees politics as a novel he's writing or a symphony he's composing." Talbott, whose background includes a 21-year career as reporter, Washington bureau chief and columnist for Time magazine, is a keen and insightful observer as well as a key player in the story. Anyone interested in U.S.-Russian relations will find his new book a source of riches.

 

Roger Bishop is a regular contributor to BookPage.

When Bill Clinton assumed the presidency in 1993, he hoped to focus on the U.S. economy. Instead, momentous events in Moscow almost immediately thrust him into an unexpected role. "By the spring of his first year in office," Strobe Talbott writes, "Clinton had become the U.S. government's principal Russian hand, and so he remained for […]
LiteratureArts & Culture

A personal quest to understand the poetry of war

Review by Roger Bishop

Daniel Swift’s paternal grandfather died during World War II, at the age of 30, while on a bombing mission for the Royal Air Force over Germany in 1943. In the course of research about his grandfather’s life and death as a bomber pilot, Swift, a literary critic and English professor, began to explore the relationship between the bombers and poetry. Discussion of the role of bombers is a sensitive subject for many because of the great devastation and the death of many civilians on the ground. As Swift notes in his illuminating personal and literary journey, Bomber County, “The poetry of air bombing requires a particular imaginative sympathy absent from other war poetry, and it must play between telling and deferring the tale: between the poet who survived and the others who died that night.”

Swift is concerned with bomber poetry written from several perspectives. He focuses on the work of noted bomber poets such as James Dickey and John Ciardi, but he also wants us to read poetry by those engaged in bombing runs who had not been poets but felt compelled to write poetry because of their experience, including Michael Scott and John Riley Byrne. He explores, too, the war poems of Randall Jarrell, who trained others to be pilots but did not see action himself. He considers in detail poetry by civilians moved by the terror of air raids. T.S. Eliot was an air raid warden in London, and “Little Gidding,” the last of his Four Quartets, is directly concerned with living in a bombed city. Dylan Thomas thought that he could write poetry only in peacetime. Although not a combatant, Thomas wrote hauntingly about the distinctive grief of aerial bombardment in “Ceremony After a Fire Raid” and “A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London,” as did Stephen Spender in “Responsibility: The Pilots Who Destroyed Germany, Spring 1945.”

As Swift continues to find out more about his grandfather’s life and death, he discusses the very different views of the bombing raids, ranging from “atrocities pure and simple” to “one of the decisive elements in Allied victory.” He does not shy away from discussing the morality and ethics of the bombers’ missions: “Bombing can be both bright purpose and dreadful duty; both horror and great joy; tourist and killer, proudness and fear.”

Bomber County is a stimulating and insightful investigation into the poetry of a particular time as well as a unique personal quest to understand a grandfather’s legacy.

Daniel Swift’s paternal grandfather died during World War II, at the age of 30, while on a bombing mission for the Royal Air Force over Germany in 1943. In the course of research about his grandfather’s life and death as a bomber pilot, Swift, a literary critic and English professor, began to explore the relationship […]
FictionHistorical Fiction

Alex Haley

Interview by Roger Bishop

Alex Haley is one of the best-known and most widely read authors in the world. His book Roots, published in 1976, and the television series based on the book, which aired in 1977, were not only critical and commercial successes, they were also unique cultural events. James Baldwin wrote about the book in The New York Times: "Roots is a study of continuities, of consequences, of how a people perpetuate themselves, how each generation helps to doom, or helps to liberate, the coming one—the action of love, or the effect of the avsence of love, in time. It suggests, with great power, how each of us, however unconsciously, can't but be the vehicle of the history which has produced us."

Among other honors, Mr. Haley was awarded a special Pulitzer Prize for Roots, a work he calls "faction," a combination of fact and fiction. Earlier Mr. Haley had won critical acclaim for his authorship of The Autobiography of Malcolm X.

And now Alex Haley has a new book A Different Kind of Christmas, that will appeal to readers of all ages. The novella follows a young Southerner who becomes an agent for the Underground Railroad and helps mastermind the escape of slaves from his father's plantation on Christmas Eve, 1855. Editor Roger Bishop recently interviewed Mr. Haley at the author's farm in Norris, Tennessee. The conversation centered on the new book with occasional discussion of other subjects. What follows are the excerpts from the interview:

RB: Mr. Haley, your new book, A Different Kind of Christmas, is a powerful story that should appeal to the widest possible audience. Without giving too much away, would you describe the story?

AH: Somebody wrote in USA Today that it is a story wherein a white college student had become self-influenced to join the Underground Railroad and organized an escape of slaves. That's in essence what happens.

In a broader sense, I have always been intrigued how we as a culture tend to have tunnel-vision images of things and don't include facets of it. For instance, slavery, which I researched a great deal in the course of Roots. I think most people when you say slavery tend to see a group of anonymous people pulling cotton sacks in great plantation fields, and that is largely true. But it’s always intrigued me that amidst the group called slaves there were individuals who were extremely able, who were extremely colorful, who were powerful personalities, who by no means fit the usual images of slaves. They were people who, through their personalities and abilities, were very respected in the community where they lived by both black and white. Such a person was Chicken George out of Roots. You couldn’t think of Chicken George as some anonymous cipher. He was Chicken George. And so with this in mind, in this book I have created the character Harpin’ John. Harpin’ is because he was a very expert harmonica player together with which he was a very expert barbecue man. Now in the South, today and then, anybody who is really a virtuoso on the harp and at the barbecue pit is somebody to reckon with. He was a major character in his slave community, and he was a slave—but he was also Harpin’ John. Another thing I enjoyed about his name is that it sounds like hoppin’ john, the food.

The principal character is a young, white college student, Fletcher Randall, at The College of New Jersey (what we now know as Princeton University). It’s set in 1855. His father is a senator from North Carolina and a large plantation owner. At that time many young, Southern men were sent to school up North because their parents thought they would get a better education in the Yankee country, although they despised the Yankees. And some of them, like this boy’s father, covered it by saying to know what the Yankees were up to they had to send their boys to Yankee schools. And it is there in college, that Fletcher, a Southerner by birth and trend, begins to question the mores of his heritage and culture.

RB: Although A Different Kind of Christmas is fiction, were there actual incidents that you were aware of when you wrote?

AH: Oh yes. Everything in it is to be found. White converts to the antislave belief made the Underground Railroad work. Only the whites had the power to subvert slavery. The Quakers, as a religious group, were one of the main forces. They forbade any member to own slaves, so many Quaker men who had owned slaves simply released them into freedom. Everything in the book has happened and has happened many times. Many slaves, like Harpin' John, were agents. The most famous being Harriet Tubman, who was called the general, because she went back so many times to get so many people out.

RB: You write of the strong bond between the black slaves in the United States in 1855 (the time of your story) and the American Indians. Would you please speak about that relationship?

AH: By that time the Indian Removal had occurred, and there were not many Indians left, but there were pockets here and there. It was a very close bond and not too much is written about it. Anyway, here you have two groups of people who were disenfranchised. They were both thrust outside of society—both rejected and wanted in that they were both used. The Indians had been used worse than the slaves in that their land —everything—had been taken. But they were still living around in enclaves hither and there. There was a great deal of inbreeding between the Indians and the slaves. Genetically speaking, black people are some part black, some part European, and most of us are some part Indian. In my own family, we are part Cherokee. There was a lot of marriage both directions, but mostly Indian men and slave women.

RB: You have said that you have never lost your love for the South despite the region’s history of slavery, segregation, and racial discrimination. Here is a direct quote from you: “There’s more substance here, so much more to write about. I don’t know anything I treasure more as a writer than being a Southerner. I love to write about the South and try to convey the experience of it, the history of it. It has been pointed at negatively in so many ways, and so few people for a long time appreciated the physical beauty of the South.” Perhaps that says it all.

AH: Well, I would only reiterate most of it to say the thing I find I love so much here is the culture which is comprised of people who tend to have been raised better than people in the North. We all grew up as children who learned how to say yes mam and no sir and mean it with respect for elders. And somehow, it seems to me that in the South, at least as I know it, you could go up in that yard and find you a grasshopper to follow, or you could go and get your grandmother’s spool she’d used all the thread off of, notch the edges, get a rubber band, and make you a little tractor. Everywhere you turn there is something that with a little thought, ingenuity and a whole lot of precedence you could do to entertain yourself. There are so many, many more things that are the South—the music. The South has more detail to write about. We have so much more grass for one thing, and all the things that happen in the grass are denied to those people who, for the most part, live in the Northern cities. Just the grass alone is an arena to deal with. I feel very close to the South. I am of the South. And the racial prejudice that which is so strongly associated with the South is not unique to the South. The North had racial riots—one after another—which were all deflected in the finger pointing at the South. What we are dealing with now is the new South which is a very different place.

RB: In your essay, which serves as the Preface to The Prevailing Past: Life and Politics in a Changing Culture, you write about the black Republicans in Henning, Tennessee, then you say: “It is poignant how little attention history has paid to the fact that from the early years of Reconstruction, in many Southern localities, the Republican Party’s principal custodians were these and similar groups of blacks who voted in each national election as an act of holy ritual, no matter what obstacles were thrust into their paths, including physical threats.” Would you speak about these Republicans?

AH: The fundamental reason for these Republicans was Abraham Lincoln, who was seen as the great emancipator, and because he was a Republican, the black people just flocked to that party and stayed with it very loyally right on up to FDR. He was the man who turned the tide for the Democrats. And the reason was obviously the Depression. People were down to their last whatever, and it wasn’t just the blacks but the whites as well. And when FDR came along with his alphabetical government and all the things it offered—the CCC, the NRA and various other programs—he was a revolutionary for a whole culture, it wasn’t just the blacks. But for black Republicans he was as dramatic as Lincoln had been earlier. Here was a world in which black women, at least in Henning, Tennessee, were all domestics. They found jobs more quickly than black men. Now when that was the way the world was then and along came FDR with these programs which, for the first time, allowed men to get jobs and be paid 7 or 8 dollars a day instead of 1 dollar (which was standard at that time), it just altogether changed their thinking. So, it was these influences, which were very practical influences, which caused the blacks to go Democrat.

RB: In A Different Kind of Christmas your main character has his Christian conscience challenged and comes to the aid of the slaves. Are there any generalizations that you can make about individuals such as Fletcher Randall?

AH: Fletcher manifests my feelings how as Christians we should behave. The only reason the Underground Railroad really existed was because there were a lot of Fletchers. Some who were innately against slavery, and some who, like Fletcher, gradually came to be and who, having come to be, took some activist role. Society ought to be led by its Christian leaders, not by political leaders, at least in the areas of morality. For instance, the drug thing we’ve got today, it’s not just an annoyance, it’s a dire thread to this nation. Years ago, had somebody been positively identified in the community as selling drugs to any of us as children, I think he would have probably been found one morning—well, you know. And I think more probably it would’ve been done by the deacons and the stewards of the churches. And the reason is that they simply would not have allowed that in their community. but now we simply allow it. You know it could be stopped, of course it could be stopped. We just simply permit it to go on. If the public said no, it would really be all over it. And maybe one day we will before it will have done us in.

RB: Before your international recognition with the publication of Roots you had achieved a distinguished career as a journalist and the author of The Autobiography of Malcolm X. You conducted the first interview with Miles Davis in the Playboy magazine interviews. You went on in that series of interviews to interview Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Malcolm X which subsequently led to your authorship of his autobiography. As one who interviewed both Dr. King and Malcolm X, and grew to know the latter so well, could you speak in a general way about those two men—how they were alike and how they were different in your experience with them?

AH: The thing that has always intrigued me about Dr. King and Malcolm was how easily either of them might have been the other. Now if you had taken Malcolm in the eighth grade, precocious youngster, living in Michigan at the time, an outstanding student in his class—sharp, articulate. If that Malcolm could have then gone to the top black high school where Dr. King went in Atlanta, and from high school to the Boston College School of Theology, think of what a minister and leader we would’ve had.

If Dr. King, age eighth grade, entering that high school and had instead been told, like Malcolm, it was ridiculous to think about being a lawyer, so why doesn’t he become a carpenter. He was so popular in school that proves that white people would hire him to do carpentry. That’s what Malcolm’s class advisor told him. Had Martin Luther King, age eighth grade, gone instead to his aunt’s home in Rockville, Massachusetts (suburban Boston) and learned to hustle—and was taught by a guy who called him homeboy because he was from the same area—was taught first how to hustle shinning shoes. (If you’re gonna shine shoes, let the rag hang limp so it would pop louder for a quarter extra tip). Then learned how to sell marijuana and to do the things that’s hustling. And when he had become a pretty able hustler, go for (what Malcolm called) his graduate studies and get on a train and make it to Harlem where he could get into crime and into this and that and the other. Dr. Kin would’ve made a tremendous hustler. And Malcolm would’ve made a tremendous theologian. Both of them were great powers in their own way. And so to me always the intrigue has been the two men are a case of “…but for the grace of God…” And as a matter of fact, not enough recognition is given to the fact that Malcolm was most helpful to Dr. King. The way I mean it is Malcolm scared people. And what it did was shake people enough so that when Dr. King came along, speaking of turning the other cheek and the Ghandi principles, he was a lot less threatening. So preceded by Malcolm, Dr. King went forward.

RB: Are you engaged in any other writing projects at the moment?

AH: My next book will be called Henning, Tennessee. It is a book about the people and events in the little town where I grew up 50 miles north of Memphis. with any kind of luck it will be out next September. And then will come a book about Madame C.J. Walker who was an absolutely fantastic personality.

 

Alex Haley is one of the best-known and most widely read authors in the world. His book Roots, published in 1976, and the television series based on the book, which aired in 1977, were not only critical and commercial successes, they were also unique cultural events. James Baldwin wrote about the book in The New […]
Memoir

William & Barbara Christopher

Interview by Roger Bishop

The overwhelming popular and critical reception for the film Rain Man, which received eight Academy Award nominations, has helped to focus national attention on autism. In psychiatry, autism is defined as a pervasive developmental neurological disorder, characterized by impaired communication, excessive rigidity and emotional detachment.

Although the character Raymond, portrayed by Dustin Hoffman, is autistic, he is also an idiot savant, which most autistic persons are not. But the film, however well done, is a work of fiction. There are many families that must cope with the realities of autism each day. Such is the family of William and Barbara Christopher and their sons John and Ned. Mr. Christopher is perhaps better known to the public as “Father Mulcahy” in the immensely successful television series “M*A*S*H.” In a new book, Mixed Blessings, due for May release, the Christophers have written about the extraordinary challenge of raising their autistic son, Ned. Alan Alda says that theirs is “A book that brings you right into the center of their hopes, confusion, love, exasperation and grit. This book is alive . . . Bill and Barbara’s strength is contagious . . . their humanity is healing.” Mike Farrell comments: “A faithful and heartfelt rendition of their experiences . . . People are in sore need today of (such) examples of the true meaning of parenthood.” And R. Wayne Gilpin, President of the Autism Society of America, writes that Mixed Blessings is “Rich in caring, concern, and grace.”

Editor Roger Bishop interviewed William and Barbara Christopher last December. The edited excerpts from a long conversation about their important new book appear below.

 

RB: For whatever else it may be Mixed Blessings I saw as a story of the parents’ love for their two sons and of the parents’ extraordinary patience, persistence and intelligence in dealing with the physical disability of one child. Are there other things that you would like to say describing this book?

BC: I think you have said it very well. We think of it as a family story too. Only one family member has autism, the rest of us fortunately do not, and the kinds of challenges that we faced as a family are certainly parallel to any challenge that you meet as a family. And almost every family has some challenge.

 

RB: Early in the book you say that Ned’s teachers say that he’s the smartest boy they have had in their class, but then you receive a note from the Christian Nursery School expressing some concern about his behavior. The note in part says, “We would like to have some professional advice so that we can help him . . . we’re worried about Ned and we know you are too.” I think there are other parents that might find themselves in a similar situation. Would you talk a bit about this first visit to the psychologist?

WC: When the Christian Nursery School expressed their concerns to us, we thought it was time maybe to ask some questions, and we felt very good about their raising him.

BC: One of the things that happens, I think, is that you have your doubts, and you’ve talked to the pediatrician and he is very reassuring, and that makes you feel very good and you think, “Well . . . I don’t know a lot about children, I guess he’s O.K. He’s not much like John, but trust the pediatrician, he’s fine.” And then the next thing happens that makes you feel uneasy. So when the teacher finally says, “We know you are worried about him too,” I think I felt very devastated. On the other hand, it was almost a relief.

WC: Yes, we were in a partnership with these people. Neither one of us has the answers quite, but their suggesting get a little help, and then we can proceed. That sounds smart—that sounds like the way to go. We never thought going to get that little help would open up something much bigger.

 

RB: Toward the end of the book, there is a quote from a leading biologist in the study of autism and she says, “Autism is no longer a diagnosis, it is a description.” Would you elaborate on what you learned about autism?

BC: Well it is a pervasive, life long neurological disorder which is incurable. It affects the person afflicted with varying degrees of problems of all kinds—language disability, communication, socialization, and sensory organization. And these basic neurological problems manifest themselves sin different ways in different autistic people—there’s the full range of intelligence, there are retarded autistic people, and there are genius autistic people. I think when Mary Coleman said that about autism no longer being a diagnosis what she meant was after you get this label of autism, there are many subgroups—there are many variations on the theme and there are many approaches. I know that Ned would be called autistic and some kid over here, who’s very different, would also be called autistic. It’s very hard to generalize.

Many autistic people don’t socialize at all. Ned has always had certain people in his life that he really had affection for and an interest in. Some autistic children I’ve met have a real stone wall. Others progress into what is very close to a normal life and normal ability to relate.

RB: It’s understandable certainly, from what you’ve said here and from reading the book, that the general public would be quite confused about what autism is.

WC: We hope we drew a clear picture of what Ned was like because we don’t think of ourselves really as being expert in autism, but we did feel we had an interesting story in Ned. It’s hard I think for us as parents now after having written the book to know whether the book is going to make people say, “Yeah, I know what that kid is like.” I hope people do know what he’s like from reading because I’ve read other books and I sometimes wanted to know clearly just what the boy being described was like.

RB: May I ask where the idea for the book originated?

BC: Abingdon Press came to us and asked if we would be interested. Bill had received an award from an organization called Religion in the Media, and Abingdon was also receiving an award at that same banquet. They heard Bill speak and he mentioned his interest in the handicapped. Shortly thereafter they contacted us to see if we would be interested in writing about our experiences raising an autistic child. Bill’s first reaction was, “No, let’s not. That sounds like a lot of work.”

WC: To write a few sharp anecdotes or to sketch out something—that wouldn’t be so hard, but to sit down and have a book that really we could say, “this is what it was like,” that seemed formidable. But we soon discovered these letters that Barbara had written. They allow things to be in the book that really couldn’t have been written into the book. The letters can say things that we couldn’t even begin to say—not just because of the fact that the letters brought back forgotten things, but they also say things that we might find very awkward to put down, even if we could remember them.

RB: From a reader’s standpoint, I felt that the letters added a lot because you get some sense of your family life—other things that are going on.

WC: That’s the kind of thing we never would’ve been able to write in. Also the interesting thing is that the letters express feelings that we were having at the time, which in retrospect we—it was sometimes hard to believe we had those feelings.

BC: One of those things that struck often when we started working on the book and going through all our diaries (they’re not real diaries, they’re calendars) and going through the letters was the fact that we were so busy. We were constantly doing things, and while Ned was a big focus in our life, he wasn’t the only thing.

 

RB: Although the book should be helpful to so many people—parents certainly—all kinds of parents, it would seem to me the writing of the book and the reliving of these experiences would have been somewhat difficult. Was that true or did you have another reaction to that experience?

BC: I think I was both things, but certainly there were moments when—especially when I would uncover a letter I had completely forgotten about. One that comes to mind is the letter I wrote to the institutes when we were writing to see whether Ned would be a candidate for their program, and I outlined all the things we’d been through, and I remember reading that letter and just falling apart and thinking “how awful.” But at the same timeI think there was a kind of interest in looking at our own life this closely quite apart from problems or dealing with autism or Bill’s career. Just taking your own life, looking at it hard over a 20 year period and trying to organize it to make it intelligible to someone else was a very interesting process. 

WC: There were a few things that we found in the book that were painful to relive. I was thinking of some of the negative experiences like when Ned first went away and he lived in a group home and the experience was not good. We kind of had to hold back—we didn’t want to make a tirade.

BC: We didn’t feel we were out to settle scores.

 

RB: Well, the book certainly reflects, what I think we could generally call—maybe you would choose another term—an emotional roller coaster as you try one approach, then you try another approach, and you talk with professionals in the field who are apparently giving you their very best judgement on these things and often they’re wrong. But it does seem to me that you’re very generous with the way that you do treat the different people regardless of how they work out.

 

BC: Well, you know people don’t go into this field unless they really want to help, and the professionals we encountered weren’t alone in not having the answers. 

WC: I think one thing that is true—some might be critical of professionals in that there is some attitude that they feel they ought to have answers, and if they don’t, sometimes they kind of invent or fake it a little bit to make the parents feel this professional does know what they’re talking about instead of coming out and saying, “I don’t think I know either.”

BC: Of course we didn’t want to hear that. The last thing we wanted to hear was, “Well, I don’t know anymore than you do.”

 

RB: One of the parts that I so much enjoyed was a happy family experience when you went to England and you visited the Jane Austen places. You quote from her: “It is well to have as many holds on happiness as possible.” I was contrasting that with the Washington trip that you described later on which didn’t work out nearly as well.

 BC: No. That really was a very low point. And of course the abuse of medication is a serious problem with children like Ned, and children with various skinds of mental handicaps, because it seems to be such an easy solution, and it’s almost always the double edge. 

WC: What you end up with these kids is the unpredictability. With kids like Ned or kids in special education, the professionals and the parents learn that they have to make allowances for these very big swings. Especially autistic people who have days or cycles almost of months where they operate very well, and then they will operate not nearly so well, and you can’t despair saying, “Oh, what’s happening? Is his brain deteriorating?” In autism you learn to begin to expect these swings and if you’re using medication, it’s just that much more complicated because you don’t know what you’re going to get.

 

RB: We don’t have time of course to go into all the different schools and approaches, but I was particularly fascinated by the Institutes for the Achievement of Human Potential in Philadelphia. This program demanded a lot of Ned, but also required an incredible amount of your time and effort. Would you talk just a little bit about that?

BC: It is hard to talk jut a little bit about the Institutes. It was a very all encompassing program which kept us busy from the early morning until late at night, and to many people it seems overwhelming, but the thing that is really hard to do with a child like that is nothing. Ned doesn’t do “nothing” very well. A normal child finds all kinds of things to get interested in and starts to develop friends an d alife of his own. In the years before we were doing the Institutes’ program, it was driving Ned to school and driving him from therapy to therapy. I was busy all the time and I didn’t have a sense of success. So when we began the Institutes’ program, we were so inspired by these wonderful people in Philadelphia and we saw immediate progress—so we were working terribly hard but it was terribly interesting. It was the most interesting time in my life, and Bill at the same time was working on “M*A*S*H” and coming home and helping with the program. It was very exciting. 

I don’t think we could have done it forever—it was too intense for that. They don’t have the answers necessarily for all the problems, but they have an approach that works for many children to help them—not cure them, but help them. We gained a lot of confidence in ourselves through working in such a direct partnership with professionals.

 

RB: For those who know you, Mr. Christopher, as Father Mulcahy from the “M*A*S*H” program, have enjoyed that through the years. In the book you get some sense of your work on that program, but was the experience with Ned such that it affected your portrayal of Father Mulcahy in the program or not? 

WC: I really felt totally free of anything like my home as I worked. One thing I think an actor does, I’m sure, is if you’re working and your life seems to be making sense around you, it may send you off to the studio in high spirits, and you may attack your work with  vigor and all. I always felt we had a pretty positive way of working with Ned. And if anything, I think the fact that Barbara and I were such a wonderful partnership all through our marriage has sort of reinforced my ability to give myself to my work. We developed a clear path—way of living with Ned and brining him along—if anything it made me clearer in my mind to devote myself to my work. I didn’t feel that I was at the studio sitting there wringing my hands about what was going on and unhappiness at home—that just wasn’t part of it. So I didn’t feel I had to write about that.

The overwhelming popular and critical reception for the film Rain Man, which received eight Academy Award nominations, has helped to focus national attention on autism. In psychiatry, autism is defined as a pervasive developmental neurological disorder, characterized by impaired communication, excessive rigidity and emotional detachment. Although the character Raymond, portrayed by Dustin Hoffman, is autistic, […]

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