In Review: July 7, 1999
A critical year in American history
Joseph Stevens '79 takes his readers to 1863
1863: The Rebirth of a Nation
Joseph E. Stevens '79
Bantam, $26.95
The year 1863 opened in the dis-United States with crucial events occurring
over a front of a thousand miles, from Washington to Vicksburg. In the capital,
a weary Abraham Lincoln, his arm quivering from the strain of hours of handshaking
during a New Year's Day reception at the White House, firmly signed an Emancipation
Proclamation declaring three million slaves in Confederate states to be
"thenceforward, and forever free." But that freedom would depend
on Northern victory in the Civil War, and such a victory appeared more elusive
than ever. At Chickasaw Bluffs, just north of the Confederate stronghold
at Vicksburg, Union troops commanded by William T. Sherman had suffered
a bloody repulse three days earlier. Northern military prospects in other
theaters seemed little better. From the President down to the lowliest private
in the ranks, discouragement prevailed. "If there is a worse place
than Hell," said Lincoln after Union disaster at the battle of Fredericksburg,
"I am in it....We are now on the brink of destruction. It appears to
me the Almighty is against us, and I can hardly see a ray of hope."
A soldier in the Army of the Potomac wrote home after Fredericksburg that
"my loyalty is growing weak....Why not confess we are worsted, and
come to an agreement" to end the war.
By the end of the year, the compass of war had swung 180 degrees. In
his State of the Union address on December 8, Lincoln noted that the year
had begun with "dark and doubtful days," but now "the crisis
which threatened to divide the friends of the Union is past." In Richmond,
by contrast, Confederate leaders lamented the "calamity...defeat...utter
ruin" they faced. "I have never actually despaired of the cause,"
wrote a Confederate War Department official, but "steadfastness is
yielding to a sense of hopelessness."
What had happened? The answer was written in blood at some of the most
hallowed ground in American history: Vicksburg, Chickamauga, Missionary
Ridge and Lookout Mountain at Chattanooga, and above all at Gettysburg,
where thousands of Union soldiers "gave the last full measure of devotion"
that "this nation, under God...shall not perish from the earth"
but instead "shall have a new birth of freedom."
Lincoln's words at Gettysburg evoked the events of 1863 that made this
year a turning point of the Civil War. And the words of Joseph E. Stevens
'79 in this stirring narrative of those events bring to life the personalities,
courage, blunders, devotion, selfishness, selflessness, tragedies, and triumphs
of its protagonists. Stevens writes with a vivid clarity that carries the
reader through breathless moments of battle and transformative experiences
on the home front that reshaped a nation. One of this book's many virtues
is Stevens's ability to recapture the mood, the atmosphere of the times
whether the scene is a muddy bayou near Vicksburg, the redlight district
in Washington, the stench of a field hospital at Gettysburg, the tension
in Confederate headquarters near Chattanooga, the ugly violence of draft
riots in New York, or the joy of former slaves celebrating their first New
Year's Day as free people.
This is a book not only about the Civil War, but also about a year in
the life of the American people -- men and women, soldiers and civilians,
black and white, Northern and Southern -- arguably the most important year
in our history. Hard fighting and many struggles lay ahead, but Joseph Stevens
has brilliantly described how and why 1863 was the hinge of fate for the
destiny of America.
-- James M. McPherson
James McPherson is the George Henry Davis '86 Professor of American
History.
Staying alive
A first novel that examines how far humans will go to keep on living
Kill Me First
Kate Morgenroth '94
HarperCollins $24
A killer named Merec enters a Maryland rest home and plays a diabolical
game: he pairs off the residents and forces one of each couple to pick which
of the two will be killed. Not surprisingly, after hemming and hawing, everyone
picks the other guy, except for Sarah Shepherd. Guilt-stricken for having
caused and survived the car wreck that killed her husband, Shepherd imagines
she has nothing left to lose. "Kill me," she says. Instead, Merec
takes her with him.
It's an electric beginning for Kate Morgenroth's first novel, which takes
its title from a quote by Patty Hearst about the lengths to which human
beings, when faced with stress, are willing to go just to stay alive. Merec,
a seemingly heartless professional assassin, enjoys destroying his victims'
moral boundaries before he kills them, but Sarah doesn't rise to his bait.
After he releases a videotape of the rest-home murders to the media, she
refuses to tape a follow-up video and ask for ransom. Instead, Merec makes
his minions abuse and torture her; when tapes of that abuse are broadcast,
Sarah becomes an unwilling (and unwitting, since Merec doesn't let her watch
television) national media obsession.
As Merec builds a plan to bring the Sarah Shepherd phenomenon to a spectacular
(and bloody) end, an FBI agent named Tresler joins the hunt for the pair.
But his quest is made more difficult by the fact that Sarah is increasingly
complicit in her own abduction. Merec is the essence of evil, and Tresler
is a coolly efficient, intellectually worthy foil, but with this twist Sarah
becomes the psychological center of Morgenroth's tale. Sarah's motivations
aren't always clear, however. When asked by a suspicious Merec how she can
explain her affinity for her new life on the lam, she simply answers, "I
can't." He says that response is hardly convincing. "The truth
often isn't," replies Sarah. But it's hard to believe that a bereft
Sarah is so starved for purpose in her life that she's willing to follow
around a chilly-blooded killer, particularly when we've seen the domestic
idyll of her former life with her husband.
Morgenroth's work is a genuine page-turner, its brief chapters coming
like gunfire, but it also delves more deeply into the minds of its characters,
attempting to unravel the knot of what, if anything, distinguishes killers
from victims. The reader comes away from Kill Me First entertained,
provoked, but still, like Merec and Tresler alike, wanting to more fully
understand the enigmatic Sarah Shepherd.
-- Katherine Hobson '94
Short takes
The Short Life of the ASTP, by Francis N. Iglehart '47 (American
Literary Press, $10.50) -- This memoir of World War II tells
one front-line infantryman's story of the Battle of the Bulge and the push
into Germany. Inglehart, at the time a 20-year-old PFC, gives a grunt's-eye
view of the fighting -- he was wounded during a night attack in which 10
of the 12 members of his squad were killed -- and the misery of surviving
in foxholes for weeks at a time during the worst European winter in 50 years.
-- J.I. Merritt '66
Yours D3, by Richard Davis '47 (Alliance House, $24.95)
-- Richard Davis's first novel follows the handsome and upright Alex Dunham
from prep school to Princeton to the killing fields of World War II. As
he comes into his own, Dunham must struggle against a cold and overbearing
father, but he finds strength in unwavering love for his childhood sweetheart.
The first half of the book -- muddy prep-school football games, first kisses,
Princeton rowing races, and good-natured collegiate high-jinks -- is a schoolboy
coming-of-age tale. Alex Dunham doesn't have many faults to overcome, though.
He's just about perfect from beginning to end: brave, idealistic, loyal,
and hard-working. The book comes alive in the war scenes. Davis recreates
battles in painstaking detail, including descriptions of the huge German
Panzerfaust tanks that crush everything as they move down Sicilian dirt
paths, the Allied machine guns that Dunham's battalion uses in a bridge
attack on the river Draas in Holland, and death scenes (a particularly gruesome
one describes the spatter of blood and bone of a young army lieutenant whose
head is shot off). The book has the golden glow of a time lost to us when
wars seemed unambiguous, people uncomplicated, and "in the nation's
service" was more than just a reassuring college slogan.
-- Field Maloney '97
Myths, Legends, and Folktales of America, by David Leeming
'58 and Jake Page (Oxford University Press, $25) -- As
the authors make clear in the first line of the introduction, "this
is a book of peculiarly American stories." The collection includes
creation stories and myths from Native Americans, tales of heroes from the
Wild West, and references to other figures in American history. Though dedicated
to the authors' grandchildren, this is not a storybook to be read to young
children, but rather a resource for interested people to see America through
the creative eyes and minds of the various people who shaped the nation's
consciousness.
Where Is God Not?: An American Surgeon in India, by Forrest
C. Eggleston '42 (Providence House, $18.95) -- In this affecting
memoir, Eggleston, a former missionary doctor in India, recalls his 33 years
there, beginning in 1953, when he and his wife and two young children moved
to remote Ludhiana, in the province of Punjab, to take charge of a tuberculosis
clinic. Through often-poignant anecdotes, Eggleston recounts the hardships
he and his colleagues endured and the astonishing improvements he and his
staff made. Though not a professional writer, Eggleston has produced a book
that captures a sense of time and place, introduces memorable characters,
and gives insight into the human condition and spirit.
-- Lolly O'Brien
Road movie, mystery, love story
One Take
Dan Wachspress '80
Let's Get Reel
You're too goal-oriented," Jessie admonishes her boyfriend, Kevin,
after he has coaxed her, despite her complaints of stomach pain, to climb
to the top of a mountain. Kevin wants to take photos from the summit. One
of those photos literally comes back to haunt him, in Dan Wachspress's awardwinning
independent feature film One Take.
Wachspress premiered his film, which he also wrote and edited, in April
in the university's James M. Stewart Theater to a capacity crowd. When the
lights went up and the vigorous applause quieted, Wachspress took questions
for over an hour from the audience.
The discussion, which ranged from specifics about scenes, characters,
and intentions to the making and marketing of independent films, underscored
one inescapable truth: the director of a low (or no) budget film has to
be as goaloriented as One Take's main character, Kevin.
Wachspress detailed the exertions involved in making an independent film
-- asking endless favors; employing family and friends in ingenious ways;
withstanding nature, lowflying aircraft, and other unexpected intrusions;
and trying to shoot each scene in as few takes as possible.
Despite these difficulties, One Take appears seamless. Part road
movie, mystery, and love story, the script was inspired by the premature
death of Jon Bernstein '81, a friend of Wachspress's at Princeton. In the
film, one month after Kevin (Jamison Selby) learns that his exgirlfriend,
Jessie (Jessica Queller), has died of a bizarre illness, he receives in
the mail a snapshot of the two of them; on the back is written, "I
love you, Kevin," in Jessie's handwriting.
With the same singlemindedness that impelled him to push to the top of
the mountain, Kevin sets out to discover who sent the photo and why. In
the course of his trip back to Jessie's hometown in upstate New York, Kevin
picks up several old acquaintances, including Jessie's younger brother,
Jerry (Karl Giant, in a restrained and riveting performance), and John (Kevin
Orton), a benign fanatic. Every person Kevin encounters increases his suspicion
that Jessie may still be alive.
Instrumental elements
One point Wachspress stressed in the public discussion is that nothing
in a film -- not one camera angle, not one sound effect, not one exchange
between characters -- occurs without purpose. Every element is instrumental
in conveying the filmmaker's vision. Thus, Wachspress sees to it that each
offbeat or tormented individual Kevin meets in his physical and emotional
journey home offers a quintessential insight that not only helps Kevin solve
the mystery but also propels him toward the final scene -- a poignant gathering
of these same friends, who in turn find hope in Kevin's sudden grasp of
the preciousness of life.
Graced with sparkling cinematography and a buoyant score by Oscarwinning
composer Joe Penzetti, One Take is weighed down only by the steady
flow of homilies and words of wisdom uttered by the film's characters. But
just as Kevin realizes that "one take is all we get," Wachspress
may have deliberately included as many of his observations about life as
he could, believing that this might be his one take in feature films. Perhaps
he worried needlessly. Last month, his film was awarded Best Narrative Independent
Film at the New Jersey Film Festival.
-- Janet Stern
Yuval Taylor '85 launches a Library
of Black America series
Slave narratives, dramatic and powerful stories of heroism, are the
first in the series
I Was Born a Slave:An Anthology of Classic Slave Narratives
edited by Yuval Taylor '85
Lawrence Hill Books, $21
Slave narratives were the 18th- and 19th-century equivalents of best
sellers. They celebrated survival and heroism within the harshest of circumstances,
they offered yarns that alternately gripped and horrified readers, and they
whipped many Americans into an abolitionist frenzy. During much of the 20th
century, however, slavery slipped further and further into the past -- and
so, too, did the notion that slave narratives held either literary or historical
merit. During the 1990s, this view began to change, thanks to growing interest
in African-American history. But while that interest has brought attention
to some of the better-known slaves-turned-authors, such as the famed orator
and activist Frederick Douglass, the publication of lesser-known writings
by ex-slaves had to wait until Yuval Taylor '85 got involved.
I Was Born a Slave: An Anthology of Classic Slave Narratives --
just released by Lawrence Hill Books of Chicago -- was put together almost
singlehandedly by Taylor. After locating and reading roughly 60 of the 150
known slave narratives, Taylor chose 20 that were published between 1772
and 1866. He later added annotations that explained unfamiliar language
and wrote introductions for each author and for the collection as a whole.
The two-volume set, which took Taylor about a year to complete, weighs in
at a whopping 1,560 pages. Because Taylor had to pay no royalties to the
long-deceased authors, each volume retails for a modest $21.
In I Was Born a Slave, readers meet such diverse characters as
William Wells Brown, who traveled up and down the Mississippi River as a
servant to a slave trader; Harriet James, who used her sexuality as a weapon
rather than becoming a victim; William Grimes, who was owned by 10 different
slaveholders, haunted by ghosts, and prone to such self-destructive acts
as an attempt to break his own leg; and Moses Roper, whose master, Mr. Gooch,
tortured him so horribly that Gooch's name became widely synonymous at the
time with the evils of slaveholding.
To the extent that slave narratives have been studied in academia, Taylor
says, they have mostly been viewed as a source of historical detail about
the daily lives of American slaves. By contrast, he contends, the narratives'
literary merit has been largely overlooked. "I think it may be because
many of them are crude," Taylor says. "There are lots of misspellings
and typos. These people overcame tremendous obstacles to get their words
into print, and they were not well educated, by any means."
Even slave narratives that are chronologically disparate open formulaically;
in fact, most begin with the very words, "I was born...," which
Taylor purposely echoed in the collection's title. At some point, Taylor
says, "almost all the narratives have an emotional scene where the
slave is separated from his or her parents. Almost all have a thrilling
escape. Almost all have a scene were a strong black man stands up to a powerful
white man and gets killed."
By the narratives' second half, however, most authors manage to present
a voice that's uniquely his or her own -- no easy feat for survivors of
a social system designed to break down one's identity. "One thing that
surprised me is the creativity of the narrators," Taylor says. "When
writing autobiography, there are limits to what you can do within the genre.
Yet these authors were often incredibly creative."
Although Taylor analyzes the narratives authoritatively in his introduction,
he actually possesses no academic credentials in African-American studies.
Taylor, 36, grew up in Bloomington, Indiana, and majored in politics at
Princeton. After graduation he spent time volunteering in Israel, earned
a master's degree in American Studies at the University of Iowa, and eventually
joined Da Capo Press, a New York publisher that specializes in books on
jazz, popular music, the Civil War, and African-American history. After
eight years at Da Capo, Taylor moved to Chicago and took the reins of Lawrence
Hill Books, a near-dormant imprint that had specialized in books by left-wing
and radical authors.
Taylor, Lawrence Hill's only editorial employee, refocused the press's
speciality toward mainstream African-American history. His major innovation
has been to launch a Library of Black America series, which the two volumes
of I Was Born a Slave inaugurate. Upcoming books in the series include
selected speeches and writings by Frederick Douglass, fiction by Amiri Baraka
(formerly known as Leroi Jones), and an anthology of African-American humor.
Taylor also hopes eventually to produce volumes on African-American sermons,
black writing about the Civil War, and the writings and legal opinions of
the late Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. "I'm not using a
lot of jargon, and I don't want to sound too academic," Taylor says.
-- Louis Jacobson '92
Louis Jacobson earned a certificate in Afro-American Studies at Princeton.
He is now a staff correspondent at National Journal.
Justice in the media
Rob Waring '75, who teaches legal writing at the John F. Kennedy School
of Law in California, along with John Denvir and Paul Joseph, both law professors,
have assembled a Website called Picturing Justice, sponsored by the University
of San Francisco Law School. The Website, an "online journal of law
and popular culture," posts articles about the legal world and how
it is depicted in movies, TV shows, and computer programs. It's the kind
of site the Web seems made for: appealing to a wide audience, trendy, and
offering a forum for people to discuss the subject at hand.
The site is divided into media sections: Silver Screen, Small Screen
(TV), News & Views, and Archive. Individual articles are accompanied
by lists of related sites and opportunities for readers to submit their
own reactions. Both articles and comments come from all over the world and
from every segment of the legal world, including law students. Also posted
are photos and bios of the "webitors" (Waring, Denvir, and Joseph),
submission guidelines, subscription signup, and links to other Websites.
Picturing Justice, which won an award from Yahoo Internet Life Magazine,
bridges law and popular media, and judging by comments it obviously hits
a strong chord with readers. The graphics are clean, simple, and easy to
navigate, a model for other Websites.
The articles are, of course, the "meat." Recent articles examined
movies Pleasantville and A Civil Action (Waring: "In
spite of the plaintiff's attorney's greed and horrific tactical miscalculations,
I suspect the film will improve the public image of the plaintiff's bar."),
and TV shows The Practice and Maximum Bob, and expounded on
the "trickster" image of lawyers today. An eyeopening story on
the computer game "Ultima Online" speculated about concepts of
justice in an increasingly realistic online world.
-- Tony Carroll '66
Books Received
Writing Your First Play, by Roger A. Hall '68 (Focal
Press, $24.95) -- In this second edition, Hall has included more
writing exercises and updated his references. He is a professor of theater
at James Madison University.
The Bible According to Einstein: A Scientific Complement to the Holy
Bible for the Third Millennium, edited by Stuart Samuel '75 et al.
(Jupiter Scientific, $34.95) -- Provides the laws of nature and
narrates a history of the universe, earth, and life in biblical format.
Samuel is a professor of physics at City College of New York.
Inventing Paradise: The Greek Journey, 1937-1947, by Edmund
Keeley '48 (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $24) -- Explores the encounters
between Greek poets and their visitors Henry Miller and Lawrence Durrell.
Keeley is a professor of English, emeritus.
Christa Wolf, by Gail Finney '73 (Twayne, $32) --
A critical introduction to the German author's life and work. Finney is
a professor of German and comparative literature at the University of California,
Davis.
States of Desire: Wilde, Yeats, Joyce, and the Irish Experiment,
by Vicki Mahaffey *80 (Oxford, $45) -- The author assigns a political
motive to the art of modernist wordplay and offers a socially driven version
of Irish literary history. Mahaffey is a professor of English at the University
of Pennsylvania.
Making Christians: Clement of Alexandria and the Rhetoric of Legitimacy,
by Denise Kimber Buell '87 (Princeton, $39.95) -- The author
argues that many early Christians used metaphors of procreation and kinship
to legitimate their positions. Buell is an assistant professor of religion
at Williams.
Virtues of Authenticity: Essays on Plato and Socrates, by Alexander
Nehamas *71 (Princeton, $21.95) -- A collection of the author's
essays unified by the theme that Plato's central philosophical concern was
to distinguish the authentic from the fake, the original from its imitations.
Nehamas is Edmund N. Carpenter II Class of 1943 Professor in the Humanities.
Political Dissent in Democratic Athens: Intellectual Critics of Popular
Rule, by Josiah Ober (Princeton, $35) -- Argues that the
Western tradition of political theorizing arose when critics of Athenian
democracy sought new arguments to explain the relationship among politics,
ethics, and morality. Ober is David Magie '97 Class of 1897 Professor of
Classics.
The Great Persuader: The Biography of Collis P. Huntington, by
David Lavender '31 (University Press of Colorado, $24.95) --
A biography of the railroad mogul, who operated outside the law but inside
the prevailing morality of his time. Lavender lives in Ojai, California.
Understanding Truth, by Scott Soames (Oxford, $19.95)
-- Written for a general audience in philosophy, this book's goal is
to integrate and extend the most important insights on truth from a variety
of sources. Soames is a professor of philosophy.
Shaping and Signaling Presidential Policy: The National Security Decisionmaking
of Eisenhower and Kennedy, by Meena Bose *96 (Texas A&M,
$29.95) -- Analyzes and compares Eisenhower's formal approach to policy
making with Kennedy's more informal activities, stressing policy communication.
Bose teaches at Hofstra.
The Allure of Empire: Art in the Service of French Imperialism, 1798-1836,
by Todd Porterfield (Princeton, $39.50) -- Argues that the forces
of art and politics interacted to provide a rationale for France's military
conquest of the Near East. Porterfield is an assistant professor of art
and archaeology.
The Liberal Civil War: Fraternity and Fratricide on the Left,
by Jim Tuck '51(University Press of America, $39.50) -- Explores
the liberal community during the early years of the Cold War. The author
is a columnist and historian living in Guadalajara, Mexico.
Proto-Religions in Central Asia. The Asian Origins of Amerindian
Religions. Old Eurasian and Amerindian Onomastics. By Charles
Graves '53 (Brockmeyer, Universitätsstr. 140, 44799 Bochum, Germany)
-- Three volumes devoted to evolutionary cultural semiotics. Graves is secretary-general
of Interfaith International.
Countries of the Mind: The Poetry of William Carlos Williams,
by G. Stanley Koehler '36 *42 (Bucknell, $36) -- Williams's
poetry is considered in light of his poem "The Descent" and within
the context of memory and the unconscious. Koehler is a professor of English,
emeritus, at the University of Massachusetts.
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