This Time Together: Laughter and Reflection
Carol Burnett, 2010
Crown Publishing
267 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780307461186
Summary
This Time Together is 100 percent Carol Burnett—funny, irreverent, and irresistible.
Carol Burnett is one of the most beloved and revered actresses and performers in America. The Carol Burnett Show was seen each week by millions of adoring fans and won twenty-five Emmys in its remarkable eleven-year run. Now, in This Time Together, Carol really lets her hair down and tells one funny or touching or memorable story after another—reading it feels like sitting down with an old friend who has wonderful tales to tell.
In engaging anecdotes, Carol discusses her remarkable friendships with stars such at Jimmy Stewart, Lucille Ball, Cary Grant, and Julie Andrews; the background behind famous scenes, like the moment she swept down the stairs in her curtain-rod dress in the legendary “Went With the Wind” skit; and things that would happen only to Carol—the prank with Julie Andrews that went wrong in front of the First Lady; the famous Tarzan Yell that saved her during a mugging; and the time she faked a wooden leg to get served in a famous ice cream emporium. This poignant look back allows us to cry with the actress during her sorrows, rejoice in her successes, and finally, always, to laugh. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—April 26, 1933
• Where—San Antonio, Texas
• Education—University of California, Los Angeles
• Awards—Six-time Emmy Award winner
• Currently—lives in Los Angeles, California
Carol Creighton Burnett is an American actress, comedienne, singer, dancer and writer.
Burnett started her career in New York. After becoming a hit on Broadway, she debuted on television. After successful appearances on The Garry Moore Show, Carol moved to Los Angeles and began an eleven-year run on the The Carol Burnett Show which was aired on CBS television from 1967 to 1978.
With roots in vaudeville, The Carol Burnett Show was a variety show combining comedy sketches, song, and dance. The comedy sketches ranged from film parodies to character pieces which featured the many talents of Burnett herself who created and played several well-known and distinctive characters. (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
These short memories, of the people Burnett met and interviewed over the years, on- and off-camera, bring it back—the golden age of variety shows.... Burnett has a writer's eye for the moment, the detail, the slip that reveals character. She's never mean and always grateful.
Los Angeles Times
A disappointment.... Burnett, 76, is a consummate storyteller, and there are enough gems amid the dross in This Time Together to keep a tolerant reader interested.... Fans will probably love Burnett’s new book. But if you really want to know about her, read One More Time.
St. Petersburg Times
In short, there’s a lot of humor in this book, and many of the funny stories are told at the teller’s own expense. What you won’t find here is very much beneath the surface about the heartaches Burnett had to deal with in her life.... In the end, the memoir gives us what we want most of all: another chance to spend just a little time with a woman who still makes us laugh.
San Francisco Chronicle
Fans of both the show and the actress will enjoy this mostly lighthearted though sometimes poignant look back at Burnett’s career.
Booklist
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for This Time Together:
1. Has your opinion of Carol Burnett changed after reading This Time Together—or has it confirmed your prior opinion of Carol. What kind of person is she...how does she come across in this book? Is she someone you would like to have dinner with?
2. What was the overall tone of this book—humorous and lighthearted as you would expect in a Carol Burnett memoir? Or sadder, more poignant than expected? What do you make of the fact that Burnett rarely, if ever, takes aim at others, that she speaks well of almost everyone? (Okay, be honest — were you hoping for more Hollywood gossip?)
3. Burnett maintains a bewildered attitude toward her fame, going so far as to claim that her success is due, in large part, to luck. Would you say she's too modest, even hard on herself? Is her success due to talent, hard work, and perseverance? Or would you agree that her success is, in fact, a matter of luck?
4. Many of the stories related in the book are funny, some laugh-out-loud hilarious—especially the ones with Lucille Ball. What other anecdotes made you laugh? Do you have any favorites in the book?
5. This is Burnett's second memoir. If you've read her 1986 memoir One More Time—about her years growing up in Texas and her start in show biz—how the two compare? Is there enough new information to fill out a second memoir? If you haven't read her first one, does This Time Together inspire you to do so?
6. Are you surprised about the clashes offstage with Harvey Korman? Is there anything else in the book that surprises you?
7. You could describe Carol Burnett as earthy, loud, and rambunctious. Does her friendship with Julie Andrews, whose public personae might be called "prim"—surprise you? The two seem such opposites.
8. What does it reveal about Burnett that she was over-awed, even intimidated, upon meeting Cary Grant—even though, by then, she herself was a star? What accounts for her tendency to become awestruck?
9. How does Carol describe her marriage to Brian Miller? What makes her marriage work, especially with a husband 20 years her junior? (So, like, could that even happen outside Hollywood?)
10.One reviewer said This Time Together is "anything but a tell-all book. In fact, it's barely a 'tell-some' book." Do you agree? Are important stories skimmed over—especially, perhaps, the death of her daughter Carrie and how Carol marshaled the strength to cope with her grief? Why do you suppose readers learn of Carrie's death through a reprint of her New York Times obituary? What more would you have liked to have learned? Or is the book revealing enough as is?
11. In the era of off-color television sitcoms and YouTube videos, would The Carol Burnett Show be successful on prime time today? Or is it a cultural relic from one of TV's golden eras?
12. What were some of your favorite Carol Burnett shows? Which skits stick in your mind? (How about the one with Tim Conway as an incompetent dentist...and Harvey Korman as the patient. Catch it on YouTube—it's worth seeing...over and over...!)
(Questions issued by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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Nine Lives: Death and Life in New Orleans
Dan Baum, 2009
Spiegel & Gau
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780385523202
Summary
After Hurricane Katrina, Dan Baum moved to New Orleans to write about the city’s response to the disaster for The New Yorker. He quickly realized that Katrina was not the most interesting thing about New Orleans, not by a long shot. The most interesting question, which struck him as he watched residents struggling to return, was this: Why are New Orleanians—along with people from all over the world who continue to flock there—so devoted to a place that was, even before the storm, the most corrupt, impoverished, and violent corner of America?
Here’s the answer. Nine Lives is a multivoiced biography of this dazzling, surreal, and imperiled city through the lives of nine characters over forty years and bracketed by two epic storms: Hurricane Betsy, which transformed the city in the 1960’s, and Katrina, which nearly destroyed it. These nine lives are windows into every strata of one of the most complex and fascinating cities in the world. From outsider artists and Mardi Gras Kings to jazz-playing coroners and transsexual barkeeps, these lives are possible only in New Orleans, but the city that nurtures them is also, from the beginning, a city haunted by the possibility of disaster. All their stories converge in the storm, where some characters rise to acts of heroism and others sink to the bottom. But it is New Orleans herself—perpetually whistling past the grave yard—that is the story’s real heroine.
Nine Lives is narrated from the points of view of some of New Orleans’s most charismatic characters, but underpinning the voices of the city is an extraordinary feat of reporting that allows Baum to bring this kaleidoscopic portrait to life with brilliant color and crystalline detail. Readers will find themselves wrapped up in each of these individual dramas and delightfully immersed in the life of one of this country’s last unique places, even as its ultimate devastation looms ever closer. By resurrecting this beautiful and tragic place and portraying the extraordinary lives that could have taken root only there, Nine Lives shows us what was lost in the storm and what remains to be saved. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
Dan Baum has been a staff writer for The New Yorker, as well as a reporter for the Wall Street Journal, the Asian Wall Street Journal, and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
He is the author of Citizen Coors: An American Dynasty and Smoke and Mirrors: The War on Drugs and the Politics of Failure. He has written numerous articles for such national magazines as The New York Times Magazine, Playboy, Rolling Stone, and Wired. While living in New Orleans to research Nine Lives, Dan wrote a daily online column for The New Yorker. (From the author's website.)
Book Reviews
At about page 65, something very real clicks in Nine Lives. The small, stray, unobtrusive details that Mr. Baum has been planting along the way begin coming together and paying off, like a slot machine that's begun to glow and vibrate. By the final third of Nine Lives, as the water begins pouring into the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans, I was weeping like an idiot in the coffee shop where I was reading.... Nine Lives may be this young year's most artful and emotionally resonating nonfiction book so far, and for that, to Mr. Baum, a belated New Year's toast.
Dwight Garner - New York Times
Aware of journalism's failure to reimagine New Orleans as it had been before the hurricane, Baum has written a splendid book that is two-thirds prologue. The winds and waters of Katrina don't begin battering the nine lives he puts on display until the reader is past Page 200, by which time his characters and their city have been realized in all their generosity and folly.
Thomas Mallon - New York Times Book Review
A spiritual saga strikingly different from [Baum's] magazine reporting. He says little about the political dynamics of Katrina and submerges his own voice as he weaves the experiences of nine New Orleans residents into a sinuous narrative. His technique brings to mind Robert Altman's film "Nashville," cutting between short scenes and longer vignettes from the lives of people who rarely intersect.... I applaud Baum's shimmering portrait of the city. He adroitly moves his subjects through parades, prison, divorces, sex changes, fancy balls and gun brawls—yes, the stuff of life here—showing New Orleans as a magnetic, enduring force.
Jason Berry - Washington Post
Baum’s reporting, which focuses on nine longtime New Orleans residents, is superb. So is his writing.
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
What makes these people so compelling is not where they live, nor that you know what lies ahead for them. It's about skill and craft.
Dallas Morning News
Brilliantly reported.... Compassionate and clear-eyed, Nine Lives brings you into the heart of an American tragedy.
People Magazine
Reporter Baum (Citizen Coors) arrived in New Orleans two days after the levees broke after Hurricane Katrina. He admits his initial accounts of the disaster were flawed, but with this captivating collection of nine linked profiles, Baum has rectified what he claims was his narrow interpretation of events. "While covering Katrina and its aftermath for The New Yorker, I noticed that most of the coverage, my own included, was so focused on the disaster that it missed the essentially weird nature of the place where it happened." Baum begins the narrative with the 1965 battering of the Ninth Ward by Hurricane Betsy and concludes in 2007. He captures the essence of the city "through the lives of nine characters over 40 years, bracketed by two epic hurricanes," people such as Billy Grace, the king of Carnival and member of New Orleans' elite; Tim Bruneau, the city cop haunted by images of Katrina's destruction; and transsexual JoAnn Guidos, who finds a home and, following Katrina, a sense of purpose. Baum, an empathetic storyteller, has nearly perfectly distilled the events, providing readers with a sensuous portrait of a place that can be better understood as "the best organized city in the Caribbean rather than the "worst organized city in the United States." Baum's chronicle leaves readers with a bittersweet understanding of what Americans lost during Hurricane Katrina.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) What gives this collection of stories its added punch is the way Baum uses the fictional techniques of literary journalism.... The underpinning of solid reporting makes all this believable and powerful.
Booklist
One of those rare occasions when journalism crosses the threshold of art.
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for Nine Lives:
1. Which of Baum's nine characters do you most relate to...and least relate to? What does each character reveal about the city of New Orleans—in terms of its culture and socio-economics?
2. How would you describe New Orleans? What is the portrait of the city—before Katrina—that comes through in Baum's book? His coverage goes back to 1965: how did the city change over those 40 years (up to and before Katrina)? What part of New Orleans and its history do you find most appealing...fascinating...or disturbing?
3. If you've ever traveled to New Orleans...or lived there...or still live there, talk about your experiences—about the city you know and love...or know and hate!
4. Talk about the ways in which each of the nine characters experienced—and was changed by—Katrina. How did Katrina reveal the inner strengths and/or weaknesses of the nine lives?
5. Baum covered New Orleans as a journalist during and post Katrina. Why did he depart from his journalism and decide to write this book? What did he believe a book could reveal that his articles and essays could not?
6. What were your reactions reading this book? What most horrified you about Katrina? What surprised you? And what have you learned from Nine Lives?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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Laughing Without an Accent: Adventures of a Global Citizen
Firoozeh Dumas, 2008
Random House
256 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780345499578
Summary
Mining her rich Persian heritage with dry wit and a bold spirit, Firoozeh Dumas puts her own unique mark on the themes of family, community, and tradition.
Explaining crossover cultural food fare, Dumas says, “The weirdest American culinary marriage is yams with melted marshmallows. I don’t know who thought of this Thanksgiving tradition, but I’m guessing a hyperactive, toothless three-year-old.”
On Iranian wedding anniversaries: “It just initially seemed odd to celebrate the day that ‘our families decided we should marry even though I had never met you, and frankly, it’s not working out so well.’ ” Dumas also documents her first year as a new mother, the experience of taking fifty-one family members on a birthday cruise to Alaska, and a road trip to Iowa with an American once held hostage in Iran.
Droll, moving, and relevant, Laughing Without an Accent shows how our differences can unite us–and provides indelible proof that Firoozeh Dumas is a humorist of the highest order. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1965
• Where—Abadan, Iran
• Reared—in Tehran, Iran, and Whittier, California, USA
• Education—University of California, Berkeley
• Currently—lives in northern California
Firoozeh Dumas was born in Abadan, Iran. At the age of seven, Dumas and her family moved to Whittier, California. She later moved back to Iran and lived in Tehran and Ahvaz. However, she once again immigrated to the United States; first to Whittier, then to Newport Beach, California.
Kazem, her father, dominates many of her stories throughout her 2004 memoir Funny in Farsi: A Memoir of Growing Up Iranian in America. She takes pride in her Iranian heritage, but at the same time, mocks her dad's fascination with "freebies" at Costco and television shows like Bowling for Dollars.
Growing up, Dumas struggled to mix with her American classmates, who knew nothing about Iran. She also retells firsthand experiences of prejudice and racism from being Iranian in America during the Iranian Revolution. However, throughout hardships, she emphasizes the significance of family strength and love in her life.
Dumas is a wife and mother. She often visits schools and churches (as for example in November 2008 at the Forum at Grace Cathedral) to discuss her book and conduct book talks. As a result of Funny in Farsi's success, Firoozeh Dumas was nominated for the Thurber Prize for American Humor. Not only was she the first Iranian author to be nominated, she was also the first Asian author to hold such an honor.
Firoozeh became a hot topic when she challenged Ayaan Hirsi Ali to a debate on women in Islam.
Funny in Farsi was a finalist for both the PEN/USA Award in 2004 and the Thurber Prize for American Humor, and has been adopted in junior high, high school and college curricula throughout the nation. It has been selected for common reading programs at several universities including: California State Bakersfield, California State University at Sacramento, Fairmont State University in West Virginia, Gallaudet University, Salisbury University, University of Wisconsin–La Crosse and the University of Wisconsin–Madison
She is also the author of Laughing Without An Accent (2008), which is a memoir containing a few stories about her childhood, but mostly stories about her adventures as an adult. (Adapted from the publisher and Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
There’s such warmth to Dumas’ writing that it invites the reader to pull up a seat at her table and smile right along with her at the quirks of her family and Iranians and Americans in general. —Kristine Huntley
Booklist
Follow-up to Dumas's warm debut, Funny in Farsi: A Memoir of Growing Up Iranian in America (2006), expanding the timeline to span her life from childhood to motherhood, and everything in between. Many of the pieces are nothing more than five-page campfire stories, such as the tale of a monkey who showed up on the balcony of her family's apartment, or the article documenting the difficulty of tracking down somebody to translate her first book into Farsi. A few chapters, most notably the discussion of her uncanny memory for faces and dialogue, are less jokey and more observational. One highlight is a more-or-less direct transcription of a college speech; Dumas loves speaking at schools, "even though most of my invitations are prefaced with Khaled Hosseini was not available.' " The author's fleshed-out, Letterman-like top-ten list ("Write thank-you notes," "Don't get credit cards yet," "Watch less television") doesn't necessarily impart the most important life lessons the youth of America will ever receive, but Dumas isn't about teaching: She's about entertaining the masses. Her gentle, acute observations of human nature are similar at times to those of David Sedaris, albeit with a considerably lower snark factor. In content, her essays recall comedienne Margaret Cho's stand-up routines about her Korean family's attempts to assimilate into the United States without sacrificing their identity. Dumas focuses on the lighter side of fitting in, a tactic that has its merits—she's undeniably entertaining—but a few serious cultural insights a la Marjane Satrapi wouldn't have hurt. Offers a few laughs, but little else.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Firoozeh says that humor differs from one culture to the next, but it also varies from person to person. Is there something that you find hilarious that others don’t?
2. In Laughing Without an Accent, Firoozeh uses humor to tackle some very difficult topics–like the death of a loved one in “Seyyed Abdullah Jazayeri,” or Iranian censorship of her previous book in “Funny in Persian.” Do you believe humor is appropriate in all situations? Or are there times when it is not appropriate?
3. Cultural norms are very different from country to country, such as all middle-class families having servants in Iran, unlike in the United States. After reading Laughing Without an Accent, which stood out for you? Are there any from other cultures that you have encountered that surprised you?
4. In “Maid in Iran,” we learn that Firoozeh’s father changed the life of the maid’s son by making sure he had access to education. Do you believe that we each have the power to change the course of someone’s life? Why or why not? Who in this culture, besides Oprah, changes lives?
5. In “The Jester and I,” a slightly misused word causes a great mix-up. Discuss a time when language barriers or mishaps have caused confusion for you.
6. School is very different in Iran than it is in America. Many Americans believe that the educational system in the United States is failing many of its students. If you agree, what changes would you make? Why is it difficult to make changes? What are the obstacles?
7. In “My Achilles’ Meal,” we see that Firoozeh’s parents felt she was too young to deal with the death of her grandmother. Each culture, and each family, deals with death in a particular way. How does your family deal with death?
8. Firoozeh is guilty of being “the boy who cried wolf” in “Me and Mylanta.” Have you ever had a similar experience? Was it difficult to regain the trust of the person involved?
9. Everybody’s family embarrasses them. Discuss family quirks that cause you to cringe.
10. It may be true that both kids and adults rely too much on television to entertain them. Do you think not having a tele- vision would make someone more creative, or unlock some creativity that has been stifled by hours of TV?
11. “In the Closet” proves that Firoozeh’s mother definitely believes that one man’s trash is another’s treasure. Do you believe this is true?
12. Firoozeh writes about the challenges of finding appropriate clothing for her teenage daughter. How do you feel about the clothing choices available for tweens and teens, especially for girls? Do you think the type of clothing one wears affects one’s life?
13. Have you ever falsely accused someone of wrongdoing, as in “Doggie Don’t”? Did the accusation come back to bite you, as in Firoozeh’s case?
14. How would you feel if someone accused you of wrongdoing, or disliked you simply because of where you are from? How does the media’s portrayal of people from different countries shape how people feel about them?
15. Firoozeh describes some foods she finds disgusting, whether maggot cheese, bovine urine, or the unsettling andouillette described in “Last Mango in Paris.” Discuss a time when you were presented with food that you found difficult to eat. How did you react? Was your host offended? Some people travel so that they can try new foods; others do all they can to avoid trying new foods. Which could be said of you?
16. Selling a cross-shaped potato proved not to be the best get-rich-quick scheme for Firoozeh and her son. Have you ever tried a get-rich-quick scheme?
17. If you were to give a graduation speech, what bit of wisdom would you want to impart to the students?
18. Firoozeh made friends with an American once held hostage in Iran. What does this friendship say about the power of the ordinary person to act as a bridge builder? Do you think bridge building between nations is solely the job of politicians?
19. “Most immigrants agree that at some point, we become permanent foreigners, belonging neither here nor there.” If you are an immigrant yourself, or the child of an immigrant, do you agree with that statement? If you are not, what could you do to help the immigrants in your community feel at home?
20. What does the term “global citizen” mean to you? Do we have to lose something to become a global citizen, or do we simply gain? Firoozeh was born in Iran and raised in the United States, and is married to a Frenchman. She considers herself a global citizen. But how can others become global citizens? Does it involve living in another culture, or can we simply learn to think globally?
21. Firoozeh says that she thought guilt was a pillar in parenting. Do you know someone who uses guilt effectively? Have you ever used guilt? Did it work?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements
Eric Hoffer, 1951
HarperCollins
177 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780060505912
Summary
This best-selling analysis of fanaticism and mass movements is an important addition to the field of sociology.
A stevedore on the San Francisco docks in the 1940s, Eric Hoffer wrote philosophical treatises in his spare time while living in the railroad yards. The True Believer—the first and most famous of his books—was made into a bestseller when President Eisenhower cited it during one of the earliest television press conferences. Completely relevant and essential for understanding the world today, The True Believer is a visionary, highly provocative look into the mind of the fanatic and a penetrating study of how an individual becomes one. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—July 25, 1902
• Where—New York City, New York, USA
• Death—May 21, 1983
• Where—San Francisco, California
• Awards—Presidential Medal of Freedom—February, 1983
Eric Hoffer was an American social writer and philosopher. He produced ten books and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in February 1983 by President of the United States Ronald Reagan. His first book, The True Believer, published in 1951, was widely recognized as a classic, receiving critical acclaim from both scholars and laymen, although Hoffer believed that his book The Ordeal of Change was his finest work. In 2001, the Eric Hoffer Award was established in his honor with permission granted by the Eric Hoffer Estate in 2005.
Early life
Hoffer was born in the Bronx, New York City in 1902 (or possibly 1898), the son of Knut and Elsa Hoffer, immigrants from Alsace. By the age of five, he could read in both German and English. When he was age five, his mother fell down a flight of stairs with Eric in her arms. Hoffer went blind for unknown medical reasons two years later, but later in life he said he thought it might have been due to trauma. ("I lost my sight at the age of seven. Two years before, my mother and I fell down a flight of stairs. She did not recover and died in that second year after the fall. I lost my sight and for a time my memory"). After his mother's death he was raised by a live-in relative or servant, a German woman named Martha. His eyesight inexplicably returned when he was 15. Fearing he would again go blind, he seized upon the opportunity to read as much as he could for as long as he could. His eyesight remained, and Hoffer never abandoned his habit of voracious reading.
Hoffer was a young man when his father, a cabinetmaker, died. The cabinetmaker's union paid for the funeral and gave Hoffer a little over three hundred dollars. Sensing that warm Los Angeles was the best place for a poor man, Hoffer took a bus there in 1920. He spent the next 10 years on Los Angeles' skid row, reading, occasionally writing, and working odd jobs. On one such job, selling oranges door-to-door, he discovered he was a natural salesman and could easily make good money. Uncomfortable with this discovery, he quit after one day
In 1931, he attempted suicide by drinking a solution of oxalic acid, but the attempt failed as he could not bring himself to swallow the poison. The experience gave him a new determination to live adventurously. It was then he left skid row and became a migrant worker. Following the harvests along the length of California, he collected library cards for each town near the fields where he worked and, living by preference, "between the books and the brothels." A seminal event for Hoffer occurred in the mountains where he had gone in search of gold. Snowed in for the winter, he read The Essays by Michel de Montaigne. Montaigne's book impressed Hoffer deeply, and he often made reference to its importance for him. He also developed a great respect for America's underclass, which, he declared, was "lumpy with talent."
Hoffer was in San Francisco by 1941. He attempted to enlist in the Armed forces there in 1942 but was rejected because of a hernia. Wanting to contribute to the war effort, he found ample opportunity as a longshoreman on the docks of The Embarcadero. It was there he felt at home and finally settled down. He continued reading voraciously and soon began to write while earning a living loading and unloading ships. He continued this work until he retired at age 65.
Writings
Hoffer's first work was The True Believer, a landmark explanation of fanaticism and mass movements. The Ordeal of Change is also a literary favorite. In 1970 he endowed the Lili Fabilli and Eric Hoffer Laconic Essay Prize for students, faculty, and staff at the University of California, Berkeley.
Hoffer was a charismatic individual and persuasive public speaker. Despite authoring 10 books and a newspaper column, in retirement Hoffer continued his robust life of the mind, thinking and writing alone, in an apartment near San Francisco’s waterfront. A longtime smoker, Hoffer developed emphysema towards the end of his life.
Hoffer drew confidence and inspiration from his modest roots and working-class surroundings, seeing in it vast human potential. In a letter to Margaret Anderson in 1941, he wrote:
My writing is done in railroad yards while waiting for a freight, in the fields while waiting for a truck, and at noon after lunch. Towns are too distracting.
Hoffer also took solace in being an outcast, believing that the outcasts have always been the pioneers of society. He did not consider himself an "intellectual", and scorned the term as descriptive of the allegedly anti-American academics of the West. He believed academics craved power but were denied it in the democratic countries of the West (though not in totalitarian countries, which Hoffer understood to be an intellectual's dream). Instead, Hoffer believed academics chose to bite the hand that fed them in their quest for power and influence.
Although his writings were often likened to the centrist political philosophies of mid 20th century liberals such as Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., his structural approach to analyzing and understanding mass movements and their ideologies often led Hoffer to consistently non-ideological positions. He said, "my writing grows out of my life just as a branch from a tree." When called an intellectual, he insisted that he was a long-shoreman. Hoffer has been dubbed by some authors as "longshoreman philosopher."
Ideas
Hoffer was among the first to recognize the central importance of self-esteem to psychological well-being. Hoffer focused on the consequences of a lack of self-esteem. Concerned about the rise of totalitarian governments, especially those of Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin, he tried to find the roots of these "madhouses" in human psychology. He postulated that fanaticism and self-righteousness are rooted in self-hatred, self-doubt, and insecurity. As he describes in The True Believer, he believed a passionate obsession with the outside world or with the private lives of other people is merely a craven attempt to compensate for a lack of meaning in one's own life.
The mass movements discussed in The True Believer include religious mass movements as well as political, including extensive discussions of Islam and Christianity. They also include seemingly benign mass movements that are neither political nor religious. A core principle in the book is Hoffer's insight that mass movements are interchangeable; he notes fanatical Nazis later becoming fanatical Communists, fanatical Communists later becoming fanatical anti-Communists, and Saul, persecutor of Christians, becoming Paul, a fanatical Christian. For the true believer the substance of the mass movement isn't so important as that they are part of that movement. Hoffer furthermore suggests that it is possible to head off the rise of an undesirable mass movement by substituting a benign mass movement, which will give those prone to joining movements an outlet for their insecurities.
Hoffer's work was original, staking out new ground largely ignored by dominant academic trends of his time. In particular, Hoffer's work was completely non-Freudian, at a time when almost all American psychology was informed by the Freudian paradigm. Many argue[who?] Hoffer's lack of a formal college education contributed to his independent thought, with his book remaining an insightful classic today. Hoffer appeared on public television in 1964 and then in two one-hour conversations on CBS with Eric Sevareid in the late 1960s. Both times he drew wide response for his patiently considered but unorthodox views. (All biographical information from Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
Some of the world's most provocative, controversial and influential books have been written by shrewd and learned men...Machiavelli, Marx, Spengler, Ortega y Gasset, Sorokin, Toynbee.... A new candidate for inclusion in their company has volunteered this week...Eric Hoffer.
Orville Prescott - New York Times (1951)
It is in the cards, as surely as weeds outnumber nutritious plants, that many souls are doomed to suffer pangs of self-disgust engendered by frustration. This searching pain drives the victim to seek release in politico-religious identification.
E.B. Garside - New York Times (1951)
If you want concise insight into what drives the mind of the fanatic and the dynamics of a mass movement at their most primal level, may I suggest an evening with Eric Hoffer.... It’s an odd coincidence that the 50th anniversary of its publication should coincide so precisely with the renewed and remarkable relevance of its ideas.
New York Herald Tribune (now defunct)
Its theme is political fanaticism, with which it deals severely and brilliantly.... It owes its distinction to the fact that Hoffer is a born generalizer, with a mind that inclines to the wry epigram and icy aphorism as naturally as did that of the Duc de La Rochefoucauld.
John McDonough - Wall St. Journal
[Hoffer] is a student of extraordinary perception and insight. The range of his reading and research is vast, amazing. He has written one of the most provocative books of our immediate day.
Christian Science Monitor
Its theme is political fanaticism, with which it deals severely and brilliantly.... It owes its distinction to the fact that Hoffer is a born generalizer, with a mind that inclines to the wry epigram and icy aphorism as naturally as did that of the Duc de La Rochefoucauld.
The New Yorker
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for The True Believer:
1. What is Hoffer's central thesis regarding mass movements? To what does he attribute their formation? What are the specific ingredients necessary to create a movement?
2. How does he describe or define the True Believer? What is the appeal of a mass movement to its followers?
3. Overall, how would you say Hoffer views human nature? Do you agree with his view or not?
4. Hoffer sees similarities in all mass movements despite their ideological content. They are, he believes, interchangeable. Do you agree with his lumping together of, say, the nazi-fascist movement with the early Christian or Jewish religion?
5. Hoffer writes, "We are less ready to die for what we have or are than for what we wish to have and to be. It is a perplexing and unpleasant truth that when men already have 'something worth fighting for' they do not feel like fighting." Do you agree with this passage, or disagree? Or somewhere in between?
6. What roles (and why) do make-believe, play-acting, ceremonies and pageantry play in mass movements? Why are they important? What about fear-mongering and hatred of outsiders...or the world at large...? What role do they play?
7. Some readers have talked about the timelessness of Hoffer's book—that it is as relevant now as it was nearly 60 years ago when first issued. Do you agree or disagree...and for what reasons? What, if any, parallels do you see today?
8. Identify some mass movements that have developed after 1951, the year this book was published?
9. Do you agree, or not, with this statement by Hoffer: "Faith in a holy cause is to a considerable extent a substitute for the lost faith in ourselves."
10. In what ways does a mass movement, according to Hoffer, improve participants' self-esteem? What does he mean when he says, "the vanity of the selfless, even those who practice utmost humility, is boundless"? (A side question: Does that vanity also apply to individual acts of charity—do we feel proud of ourselves when we donate to a cause? Is that the reason we give, even when we're not part of a movement?)
11. Here is another comment by Hoffer: "Self-righteousness is a loud din raised to drown the voice of guilt within us." First of all, define self-righteousness. Then consider the meaning of Hoffer's passage...and whether or no you agree with him.
12. Is Hoffer's book a dispassionate (objective) work? Or is it a polemical statement that makes judgments on mass movements and their members?
13. Hoffer claims that the success of a movement doesn't depend on the truth of its claims but by how well its organization and management deliver fulfillment to their followers. Agree? Give examples? Disagree?
14. Does Hoffer believe that mass moments are bad? What do you think?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective
Kate Summerscale, 2008
Walker & Co.
384 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780802715357
Summary
The dramatic story of the real-life murder that inspired the birth of modern detective fiction. In June of 1860 three-year-old Saville Kent was found at the bottom of an outdoor privy with his throat slit. The crime horrified all England and led to a national obsession with detection, ironically destroying, in the process, the career of perhaps the greatest detective in the land. At the time, the detective was a relatively new invention; there were only eight detectives in all of England and rarely were they called out of London, but this crime was so shocking, as Kate Summerscale relates in her scintillating new book, that Scotland Yard sent its best man to investigate, Inspector Jonathan Whicher.
Whicher quickly believed the unbelievable—that someone within the family was responsible for the murder of young Saville Kent. Without sufficient evidence or a confession, though, his case was circumstantial and he returned to London a broken man. Though he would be vindicated five years later, the real legacy of Jonathan Whicher lives on in fiction: the tough, quirky, knowing, and all-seeing detective that we know and love today...from the cryptic Sgt. Cuff in Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone to Dashiell Hammett’s Sam Spade. The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher is a provocative work of nonfiction that reads like a Victorian thriller, and in it Kate Summerscale has fashioned a brilliant, multilayered narrative that is as cleverly constructed as it is beautifully written. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1965
• Raised—Japan, England, and Chile
• Education—B.A., Oxford University; M.A., Stanford University
• Awards—Samuel Johnson Prize for nonfiction; Somerset
Maugham Award
• Currently—lives in London, England, UK
Kate Summerscale is the former literary editor for the Daily Telegraph and author of The Queen of Whale Cay, which won the Somerset Maugham Award and was shortlisted for the Whitbread biography award. Summerscale lives in London (From the publisher.)
More
Kate Summerscale is an award-winning English writer and journalist. She is the author of The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher or The Murder at Road Hill House (about the Constance Kent case), which won the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-fiction 2008, and the bestselling The Queen of Whale Cay, about Joe Carstairs, 'fastest woman on water', which won a Somerset Maugham Award in 1998 and was shortlisted for the 1997 Whitbread Awards for biography.
She worked for The Independent and from 1995 to 1996 she wrote and edited obituaries for the Daily Telegraph. She is the former literary editor of the Daily Telegraph. Her articles have appeared in the Guardian, Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph. She has also judged various literary competitions, including the Booker Prize in 2001. (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
Summerscale has done excellent research in ferreting out the details of this curious case. [She] has come up with a new solution to the puzzle and in doing so has produced a book that deepens and expands the knowledge of what one would have thought was an already over-examined case: a remarkable achievement.
Sunday Times (London)
A fastidious reconstruction and expansive analysis of the Road Hill murder case.... Summerscale smartly uses an energetic narrative voice and a suspenseful pace, among other novelistic devices, to make her factual material read with the urgency of a work of fiction. What she has constructed, specifically, is a traditional country-house mystery, more brutal than cozy, but presenting the same kind of intellectual puzzle as her fictional models and adorned, as such books once were, with wonderfully old-fashioned maps, diagrams, engravings, courtroom sketches and other illustrations.... More important, Summerscale accomplishes what modern genre authors hardly bother to do anymore, which is to use a murder investigation as a portal to a wider world. When put in historical context, every aspect of this case tells us something about mid-Victorian society.... The author's startling final twist both vindicates her fallen hero and advances an ‘aggressive’ attack on moral hypocrisy in his day and ours.
Marilyn Stasio - New York Times Book Review
Kate Summerscale's The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher is not just a dark, vicious true-crime story; it is the story of the birth of forensic science, founded on the new and disturbing idea that innocent, insignificant domestic details can reveal unspeakable horrors to those who know how to read them.
Lev Grossman - Time
Kate Summerscale’s book is a tour de force. It sweeps us irresistibly into the investigation, turning us into armchair detectives.... Under the spell of [her] scrupulous intelligence and mesmerizing research, we are drawn into a detective story within a detective story that takes us halfway into the 20th century and across the sea to Tasmania before the clues finally add up to what surely must be the last word on the Road Hill Murder.
Daily Mail (UK)
(Starred review.) Summerscale delivers a mesmerizing portrait of one of England's first detectives and the gruesome murder investigation that nearly destroyed him. In 1860, three-year-old Saville Kent was found murdered in the outdoor privy of his family's country estate. Local police scrambled for clues, but to no avail. Scotland Yard Det. Insp. Jonathan Jack Whicher was called in and immediately suspected the unthinkable: someone in the Kent family killed Saville. Theories abounded as everyone from the nursemaid to Saville's father became a suspect. Whicher tirelessly pursued every lead and became convinced that Constance Kent, Saville's teenage half-sister, was the murderer, but with little evidence and no confession, the case went cold and Whicher returned to London, a broken man. Five years later, the killer came forward with a shocking account of the crime, leading to a sensational trial. Whicher is a fascinating hero, and readers will delight in following every lurid twist and turn in his investigation.
Publishers Weekly
An English country house, a ghastly child murder, family secrets, a brilliant detective—all the elements of a Victorian crime novel are here in this true account of a celebrated murder in 1860. On June 29, three-year-old Saville Kent was found with his throat slashed in the servant's privy at Road Hill House. An incompetent police investigation proved fruitless, so the magistrate called in London detective James Whicher. Detectives, who investigated crimes across different police districts, were viewed with both awe and suspicion; their investigations often threatened the sacred privacy of the home. Whicher was certain that a member of the family had murdered the child, but a flat denial and the outrage of the community sent him back to London in disgrace. Later developments proved him right, but Whicher's real claim to fame was as the template for fictional detectives, particularly Sgt. Cuff in Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone. Summerscale organizes the book like a period novel, with a denouement that suggests that full justice was never done. Erik Larson (The Devil in the White City) fans will be enthralled. For public and academic libraries. —Deirdre Bray Root, Middletown P.L.
Library Journal
Painstaking but never boring recreation of a sensational 1860 murder brings to shivering life the age of the Victorian detective. The Road Hill case served as fodder for the emerging detective genre taken up with relish by such authors as Dickens, Poe and Wilkie Collins. It perplexed detectives at the time and was resolved five years after the deed-and then only partially and unsatisfactorily, avers British journalist and biographer Summerscale (The Queen of Whale Cay: The Eccentric Story of ‘Joe' Carstairs, Fastest Woman on Water, 1997, etc.). She models this engaging true-crime tale on the traditional country-house murder mystery, packed with secretive family members moving about with hidden motives in a commodious old manor house. On June 30, 1860, in the Wiltshire village of Road, three-year-old Saville Kent was removed in the dead of night from his cot in the room he shared with his nursemaid, suffocated, stabbed and dumped in the privy outside the kitchen. In addition to his parents, Samuel and Mary Kent, the inhabitants of Road Hill House included numerous servants and Samuel's four children from his previous marriage, each harboring various grievances since their mother's untimely death. After the local constable made a mess of the investigation, authorities called in Scotland Yard's "prince of detectives," Jonathan Whicher, then at the height of his career at age 45. The author dispassionately presents highlights from the record of Whicher's interviews with servants and family members, allowing readers to fill in the blanks much as the detective had to do. On largely circumstantial evidence, he arrested Samuel's 16-year-old daughter Constance, but she was soon released, and the press ridiculed Whicher for accusing an innocent girl. In 1865, however, she confessed to the crime and after a sensational trial served a 20-year prison sentence. Summerscale pursues the story over decades, enriching the account with explanations of the then-new detective terminology and methods and suggesting a convincing motive for Constance's out-of-the-blue confession. A bang-up sleuthing adventure.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. This book is modelled on the country-house murder mystery, the form that the Road Hill case inspired, and uses some of the devices of detective fiction,” Summerscale writes in her introduction (xiii). How does the form of The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher complement its subject? What are some of the “devices” that Summerscale borrows from fiction?
2. Summerscale delves into the vocabulary of detection, from “coppers” (46) to “clue” (68) to “detect” (157). Which word origins were the most surprising and interesting, and why?
3. What role did privacy play in the Road Hill case? How did notions of privacy impede or advance the case? How do Victorian ideas of privacy and domesticity compare to today’s concept of the home?
4. Summerscale lists some of “Whicher’s detective qualities: an excellent memory, an eye for the incongruous, psychological acuity, and confidence” (50). Which of these qualities were apparent in Whicher’s investigation of the Road Hill murder? Which qualities seemed to fail him as the case unraveled?
5. Discuss the importance of class relations to the Road Hill case. What was the relationship between the Kent family and the villagers of Road? What were the sources of class tension between Whicher and the local police?
6. How was the Road Hill murder case a product of its time? What features of the Victorian era were especially prominent in the case? What was the influence of Charles Darwin’s emerging theories?
7. Summerscale observes an aspect that Whicher and Samuel Kent have in common: “Factory inspectors, like police inspectors, were agents of surveillance” (61). What is the significance of this similarity? Did Whicher and Kent seem aware of what their occupations have in common? Might Whicher have had a bias toward Kent? Why or why not?
8. What role did gender play in the case? How were the female suspects, Elizabeth Gough and Constance Kent, treated by the police, the press, and the public? How might the case have proceeded differently with a male primary suspect, such as Samuel Kent, William Kent, or a male servant?
9. “Whicher’s job was not just to find things out, but to put them in order. The real business of detection was the invention of a plot” (94). How does the chronology of The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher parallel the order of detection? When does Summerscale deviate from chronological order, and why?
10. “The Road Hill case was dense with fabric” (70). How did the material evidence shape or unravel the case? How would a murder investigation today handle these bits of fabric?
11. Summerscale recounts, “In the early 1860s the emotions aroused by the Road Hill murder went underground, leaving the pages of the press to reappear, disguised and intensified, in the pages of fiction” (217). What was the relationship between fiction and nonfiction in the Road Hill case? Which genre came closer to the truth of the murder and its motives?
12. To the public, Constance’s confession was a sign that “God had triumphed where man—and science, and detection—had failed” (236). What role did religion play in the unraveling of the Road Hill murder case? Why might the public have credited religion over detection in the resolution of the case?
13. Summerscale points out Constance Kent’s own “impulse to detect,” dating from her childhood (296). What did Constance and Whicher have in common? Where did their “detection” methods differ? In the end, how was Constance an “imperfect detective” (299)? Could the same label also be applied to Whicher? Why or why not?
14. Summerscale identifies a pitfall of investigation: “The danger, in a real murder case, was that the detective might fail to solve the crime he had been sent to investigate. He might instead get lost in the tangle of the past, mired in the mess he had dug up” (75). In the end, which secrets of the Kent family seem irrelevant to the murder?
15. William Kent is a shadowy figure for much of the book, emerging as a distinct personality mostly in Part Three. Why is so little recounted of William in the beginning? What aspects of his personality emerge as most interesting—and most suspicious—in the final pages of the book? Is Whicher’s accomplice theory the most plausible? Why or why not?
16. Summerscale writes of Saville Kent in her afterword, “In unravelling the story of his murder, I had forgotten him” (303). Is this forgetting apparent in the book? Is this work of nonfiction “a tragedy with a happy ending,” as Raymond Chandler deemed the detective story (304)? Why or why not?
17. Which recent murder cases have caused as great a sensation as the murder at Road Hill of 1860? Why might murder prove so riveting in the press and in fiction, both in the Victorian era and today?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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