#669 Musings Beyond the Bunker (Thursday May 25)
Good morning,
LEARNING ABOUT GREAT MEN
Revisiting the presidency of Lyndon Johnson a few weeks ago reminded me of how much we can learn from great men (and women) who preceded us. Reading the biographies of these great leaders educate us on their times, their challenges, how they approached leadership, their successes and their failures. Here are a few of the best:
Frederick Douglass, Prophet of Freedom, by David W. Blight. One would think there isn’t much new to say about Douglass, who wrote three autobiographies. But there is no end to understanding the story of Douglass. A former slave, he catapulted to the forefront of the abolitionist movement, helped move Lincoln toward emancipation, and was a public figure and orator of the first order. At the time of his death, it was reported that, together with Mark Twain, he was the orator witnessed by the greatest number of Americans.
Master of the Senate, by Joseph Caro. While one could argue all the Lyndon Johnson biographies are part of a monumental work (and they are), this volume tops them all. These are the years when LBJ expanded the role of Majority Leader and took control of the Senate. He is simultaneously brilliant, ruthless, vulgar, strategic, manipulative, and driven. The book has the added benefit of telling the story of the Senate and its traditions with a clarity and style I haven’t seen in a political book before.
Truman and Adams, by David McCullough. There arguably is no historian who has done more to resurrect the reputations of these two extraordinary, yet underappreciated presidents. Each was president during tumultuous times; each was preceded in office by an iconic leader (Washington and FDR, respectively). As a result of these two Pulitzer Prize winning biographies, each has had his stature catapult, both in academia and public opinion. To read these biographies is to understand not only these unique individuals, but their style of leadership, their personal character, and the times in which they lived. The Adams biography was adapted as a mini-series starring Paul Giamatti as the great man.
GREETINGS FROM DYSTOPIA
I recently completed visits to a bleak world of post-apocalyptic catastrophe—one a book and the other a mini-series adapted from a video game (with a second season to come). Their plot lines are similar. The book is The Road, by Cormac McCarthy. The video game / TV show is The Last of Us.
The themes of these two stories are similar. In The Road, the Earth has been rendered nearly-lifeless from environmental abuse by man. In The Last of Us, there was a pandemic caused by a fungus. In each, a man who has experienced loss is traveling west across the country in search of others, with a child in tow. In some ways, The Last of Us resonates with True Grit and other tales of grumpy adult and wide-eyed child struggling through hostile land. In another, however, it is the story of truly damaged people with little hope for the future fighting their way through a world of violence and immorality.
The Last of Us doesn’t have a good guy. Pedro Pascal does an excellent job of portraying a man without principles other than his mission. Killing is second-nature. He is reflective of the world in which he finds himself. The story feels a bit formulaic. Unlike Station Eleven or other post-apocalyptic stories, there is no comfort in the company of others. What brief humanity at all is shown by a side-tracked beautiful episode of two gay men finding each other and living as a lonely bastion of civility and kindness. Otherwise, it’s bleak and dark, interspersed with episodes that are bleak and dark.
The Road, by the author of No Country for Old Men and All the Pretty Horses, is no stranger to violence and despair in his story telling. That said, the key difference is the literary style and sense of place and purpose, coupled with real pathos. The hero (whose name I do not believe was ever revealed) witnesses violence and cruelty, yet doesn’t indulge in it in the ways that The Last of Us almost celebrates. It is the story of a man and his son, and the struggles of protecting that child from, yet preparing that child for, the harshness of life. The sentences are sparse, there are few apostrophes in contractions, and adjectives are in short supply. The people in the book that the couple meet along the way are almost uniformly without hope or purpose, often engaging in the cruelest of behaviors. It is a reminder that in times of stress, people will do almost anything. Yet, this protagonist steers away from the harshest behaviors, often because of his son’s intercession and sometimes because of what he wants to look like in his son’s eyes. I couldn’t put it down.
AND MORE…
Speaking of great dystopian novels, Josh Feffer suggests Children of Men. Jake suggests a few other stories: California, Severance, and The Book of Strange New Things.
Happy day,
Glenn
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