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Friday, June 28, 2013
Another enjoyable read from author Walls
Patterson tells stories behind people who shot to fame for 15 minutes THE CANADIAN PRESS TORONTO — American pop artist Andy Warhol’s iconic quote “In the future everybody will be world famous for 15 minutes” has inspired a Canadian author to look at the stories of those who briefly entered the spotlight only to fall back into obscurity. “The stories behind the stories are of interest to me,” said Dale Patterson, whose new book “Fifteen Minutes of Fame: History’s One Hit Wonders” is just out from Red Deer Press. Remember Max Yasgur? He’s the New York farmer who rented out his field for a small musical gathering and ended up hosting Woodstock in 1969. He died of a heart condition four years later at age 53. “Rolling Stone gave him an obituary, which is very rare for a non-music person. He was beloved by the Woodstock generation because he gave them a break,” Patterson, 60, said in a recent interview. There are more than 200 entries in the book, and at the end of each, Patterson supplies an additional nugget of information. “If you’re into trivia, this is the book for you,” he said. “And I’ve really dug deep to find the trivia.” In the case of the “Rock ’n’ Roll Farmer,” for instance, Patterson includes the musicians who passed on Woodstock, including Led Zeppelin, the Byrds, the Moody Blues, Jethro Tull, the Doors and Procol Harum. “I’ve always been interested in history and the people in history, the actual people and the stories behind the people. ... My favourite thing is what happened after the fame,” said Patterson, who hails from Ajax, Ont. Remember Robert Opel? The photographer and art gallery owner streaked the 1974 Oscars while British actor David Niven was introducing film diva Elizabeth Taylor, who was to hand out the award for best picture. “During my research I want to find out not just about that but what happened afterwards,” said Patterson. “He was murdered five years later in his art gallery in San Francisco. It was a robbery. It was just wrong place, wrong time.” Patterson’s previous book was “What Time Of Day Was That?: History by the Minute” (2001), which organizes history according to the time of day it happened. The idea for “Fifteen Minutes” was already percolating after he
wrote an entry about Abraham Zapruder, an American manufacturer of women’s clothing who became famous for his film using a homemovie camera of the assassination of U.S. president John F. Kennedy in Texas on Nov. 22, 1963. “That was to me a natural because he was famous accidentally. Because the idea of 15 minutes of fame is to be famous accidentally without anyone trying to be famous,” said Patterson, who worked for The Canadian Press news service for 35 years as a reporter-editor. After his retirement in 2010, Patterson spent about three years doing intense research and writing “Fifteen Minutes.” “Writing to me is like a hobby. It’s not work for me. I love writing so much. And I would do it in my spare time. Same way like an artist would be working on a painting, I like writing,” said Patterson, who has spent 17 years updating the website Rock Radio Scrapbook, an aircheck archive of Canada’s radio history. “Fifteen Minutes” is the type of book you can have fun dipping into here and there, reading snippets. You’ll learn about Tank Man, the unknown protester who, in 1989, stared down a column of tanks in Tianan-
men Square; Dolly, the first cloned sheep; and Denise Ann Darvall, whose heart was used in the first human-tohuman transplant performed by South African cardiac surgeon Christiaan Barnard after she was badly injured in a car accident. Then there’s the story of Rosie Ruiz, who basked in the winner’s spotlight for her 15 minutes at the 1980 Boston Marathon. But it turned out she took the subway en route. When her cheating was revealed, Quebecborn Jacqueline Gareau was recognized as the winner in a special ceremony, “but her win was overshadowed by this woman who cheated. Ruiz wasn’t even sweating at the end,” Patterson noted. “If you write history properly it can come alive and be interesting. I’m passionate about history and making it interesting.”
In addition, the girls must attend a school newly integrated. Because the “white” school is newer, the State of Virginia decrees the blacks must do the moving. Liz and Bean have lived all over California and add some civility to the proceedings. The girls decide they need to find jobs, although there are few to be had. Since they don’t know the history of the town, they are happy to be hired by nasty Mr. Maddox. You just know this is going to turn our badly, but when Maddox does his worst, Bean bravely fights back. Mother arrives, but it takes special circumstances and wit to stop Maddox. Jeannette Walls knows how to put a story together, she knows young girls and how they react and she knows about parents with dreams. I would be lying if I said there were no similarities between this story and The Glass Castle, but I enjoyed this book very much. Peggy Freeman is a local freelance books reviewer.
True tale of reporters’ capture and escape shows U.S. Civil War through new lens by THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Junius and Albert’s Adventures in the Confederacy: A Civil War Odyssey by Peter Carlson Among the tens of thousands of books written about the American Civil War, there are dense histories of campaigns, profiles of leaders, compilations of battlefield photos or soldiers’ letters home. Then, once in a while, you run across just a really good yarn. That’s what Peter Carlson has written in his nonfiction account of two New York Tribune reporters’ unique experience of the war. They witnessed fighting or its aftermath at Shiloh, Antietam and other slaughters. They met Abraham Lincoln more than once. But mostly this is a story about their capture and 19-month imprisonment by Confederates, how they survived and, amazingly, how they plugged into a complex network that risked all to help prisoners escape to seemingly unreachable Union lines. At the heart of this buddy story are two distinctive characters, close friends who sometimes infuriate and often help each other — even nursing each other through life-threatening illness — while seeking out news by very different methods and writing it in sharply contrasting styles. Carlson’s story portrays their relationship and the wild ride of their wartime experience with emotional depth and often with humour.
Describing the “self-conscious romantic” Junius Browne’s fateful decision to change careers from banking, Carlson writes that he chose “a trade that has traditionally served as a refuge for the skeptical, the curious, the opinionated, the semi-adventurous, the quasi-literary and the vaguely talented — journalism.” Browne comes off as a bit of a dilettante, classically educated and always ready with a bon mot but not necessarily ready to meet deadlines. Although he produces some dispatches that rightly make his reputation in New York, we also see him missing one major battle altogether and concocting a detailed but largely fictional account. As a journalist, Albert Richardson is Browne’s opposite: tireless in his reporting, gifted and comfortable as an interviewer, and elegantly spare in his writing. In the end, each produces a bestselling book about their shared ordeal, and Carlson mines these rich veins and many others (his source notes run a dozen pages, though this is not an academic history) to chronicle the two men’s lives and the trials they get through. Carlson’s story drags in a few places where the day-to-day recitation of the heroes’ progress should have been pruned a bit by an editor. The author, a former Washington Post reporter and columnist, has produced a work that entertains as well as educates and lets readers see the endlessly chronicled Civil War through a truly fresh lens.
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If you liked The Glass Castle and Half Broke Horses, then you will be happy to know about this new book by Jeannette Walls. This time, there are two young sisters, Liz, 15 and “Bean” (Jean), who is 12-years-old. They are living in southern California in various locales, with their mom, Charlotte, an aspiring singer and actor. Charlotte hates to be called “aspiring” but at age 36, it’s possible her ship has sailed. As to parenting, Charlotte does leave the girls alone quite often, but it’s plain they are loving with each other and resourceful in many situations, so someone taught them something. Jean, known as “Bean,” tells this story and she is immediately likeable. The year is 1970. Mother is in Los Angeles working on her career, the girls are home attending school and eating chicken pies, which they love and eat at every meal.
The girls know social workers must be avoided at all costs, so when a wellmeaning adult starts snooping, they take their meager resources and catch the Greyhound for the long ride to Byler, Via. That’s their mom’s old home town and Uncle Tinsley and Aunt Martha Halladay live there. Now the story turns into a Western. The town of Byler used to be a busy milling town and Halladays owned it all. Times have changed and the girls arrive in a dusty, used-up town where the mill is run by a bully named Maddox and although Uncle Tinsley makes them welcome, he’s as broke as everyone else. The two girls have different strengths. Liz is a planner and a good student but in over her head emotionally. She’s on to her mother’s unreliability. Bean cheerfully embraces the relatives, believes Mom will be back, goes to school and makes sure she fits in. There are many people in Byler who are very good to these two kids, and there are a couple of emus named Eugene and Eunice that help out.
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The Silver Star By Jeannette Walls $29.99 Scribner Publishing