Skip to main content

A Writer in Waiting

By


I've long been interested in George Packer, not exactly in a positive way, but not negative either.  That was the way I felt about his first book The Village in Waiting, which my sister sent me to try to spur me to write about my own experiences in Lesotho.  His were about another small African country, Togo, at the opposite end of the continent.

He seemed to feel disillusioned after his Peace Corps experience, and it seems that feeling has carried with him in his writing.  For him America appears in decay, like the international programs it continues to sponsor.  Of course, I could have written about all those rusting hulks of farm machinery USAID had supplied to Lesotho, that didn't work in the mountainous terrain, where terrace farming was practiced.  Many of these old tractors had been stripped down and parts used for other machinery.  But, I wasn't able to find the words at the time and still struggle to find the right words.

Apparently, not George Packer, who has written what this NY Times critics is hailing as "something close to a masterpiece."  Mr. Packer has written about The Unwinding of America, a country literally coming apart like one of those jalopies from a Laurel and Hardy sketch.   The only problem, it seems, is that he finds no humor in it, which is what I found odd about his book on Togo as well.  Surely, we can have a little fun with this theme, not take it so darkly serious.  After all, he was writing about a leader, not much unlike Reagan, who seemed to be impervious to harm.  Literally, in the case of strongman Eyadema, who as Packer described, even survived a helicopter crash.

Packer also seems to have a thing for machinery.  I suppose it is a useful metaphor given the industrial giant we once were and still are in terms of military.  But, we no longer seem quite like the Titan we were back in the 50s.  The author takes 1960 (the year he was born) as the turning point. For those who have grown up after 1960 our image of America is largely one of decay, from collapsed barns to rusting metal truss bridges to pockmarked roads to auto graveyards spread throughout the country.  I guess being a Generation X'er means being born with a sense of disillusionment, especially after that fatal shot in Dallas 50 years ago.

It should make for an interesting book.  I'm game.  Packer not only looks to the past but at the current situation and the disillusionment he feels with Obama and his limp handshake.  He seems to hold out some hope in Congressional leaders like Elizabeth Warren, but his view appears to be mostly a dispirited one.  We failed to have our "Black Kennedy."

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

By
  Welcome to this month's reading group selection.  David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908.  At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades.  Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society.  I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran.  Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, noting the gro
228 comments
Read more

Dylan in America

By
Whoever it was in 1969 who named the very first Bob Dylan bootleg album “Great White Wonder” may have had a mischievous streak. There are any number of ways you can interpret the title — most boringly, the cover was blank, like the Beatles’ “White Album” — but I like to see a sly allusion to “Moby-Dick.” In the seven years since the release of his first commercial record, Dylan had become the white whale of 20th-century popular song, a wild, unconquerable and often baffling force of musical nature who drove fans and critics Ahab-mad in their efforts to spear him, lash him to the hull and render him merely comprehensible. --- Bruce Handy, NYTimes ____________________________________________ I figured we can start fresh with Bob Dylan.  Couldn't resist this photo of him striking a Woody Guthrie pose.  Looks like only yesterday.  Here is a link to the comments building up to this reading group.
182 comments
Read more

Team of Rivals Reading Group

By
''Team of Rivals" is also an America ''coming-of-age" saga. Lincoln, Seward, Chase et al. are sketched as being part of a ''restless generation," born when Founding Fathers occupied the White House and the Louisiana Purchase netted nearly 530 million new acres to be explored. The Western Expansion motto of this burgeoning generation, in fact, was cleverly captured in two lines of Stephen Vincent Benet's verse: ''The stream uncrossed, the promise still untried / The metal sleeping in the mountainside." None of the protagonists in ''Team of Rivals" hailed from the Deep South or Great Plains. _______________________________ From a review by Douglas Brinkley, 2005
293 comments
Read more