IN SOVIET, HEROISM AND CANDOR ARE HAILED, BUT QUESTIONS LINGER
Date: 26 April 1987
By BILL KELLER, Special to the New York Times
Bill KELLER
Full Article
FADED GLORY, VANISHED HOPES By John Logue. 230 pp. Boston: Little, Brown & Company. $16.95. DREAMS of bygone glory dominate the lives of a diverse group of Alabamians in John Logue's intriguing novel, set in the capital city of Montgomery in 1967. The populist Governor, Jesse Stuart, recalls his youthful hopes that his gifts as a baseball hero would lift his family from rural poverty. A cynical newsman, Jack Harris, yearns for the passion and commitment that had distinguished his coverage of the famous bus boycott. A black clergyman, James Boone Jr., guiltily regrets his loss of faith; his parishioner, Arabella Jackson, whose son has died in Vietnam, wants to bury him on a beloved hillside, now annexed to the city's whites-only cemetery. In covering this dramatic story, Jack Harris runs into an even more explosive one: the Governor is secretly selling criminal pardons to secure his family's fortune before news of his mortal illness becomes public. There is material here for several novels. Mr. Logue, who is the creative director of Southern Living magazine, nicely catches the inky ambiance of the newsroom before the computer terminal took over, and he has created a persuasive narrative voice for Jack Harris, the editor-narrator. Yet the author allows Harris to tell only portions of the story, disconcertingly shifting in and out of third-person narration in ways that sever the dramatic links his complicated tale requires. Moreover, perhaps his experience as the author of three mystery novels has led Mr. Logue to take technical shortcuts in which violent action substitutes for acuity in characterization. The story is set precisely in January 1967, yet the mood of the novel seems distinctly late 1970's. Harris walks in front of Martin Luther King Jr.'s church on Dexter Avenue, musing about ''a movement now as forgotten as the river,'' without mentioning the great Selma march past that very spot not two years before. Boone complains that the burial of a black soldier shouldn't cause an uproar because ''nobody here wants to think about this war anymore,'' a sentiment that seems totally wrong for Alabama in 1967. Similarly, the police are stern with the surprisingly small number of redneck opponents of the soldier's burial and astonishingly courteous to the black mourners. As the soldier's family watches his internment, an angry white family scrambles in the clay to remove a coffin from the adjacent plot. Having failed to rouse a violent protest, they have obtained a court order allowing them to open the grave rather than allow their mother to be buried near a Negro. Despite the historical discontinuities of the mood, Mr. Logue has written a powerful epitaph for the social conflict that still gripped Alabama in 1967.
Date: 26 April 1987
By HENRY MAYER; Henry Mayer is the author of ''A Son of Thunder,'' a political biography of Patrick Henry
Henry MAYER
Full Article
IN SOVIET, HEROISM AND CANDOR ARE HAILED, BUT QUESTIONS LINGER
Date: 26 April 1987
By BILL KELLER, Special to the New York Times
Bill KELLER
Full Article
FADED GLORY, VANISHED HOPES By John Logue. 230 pp. Boston: Little, Brown & Company. $16.95. DREAMS of bygone glory dominate the lives of a diverse group of Alabamians in John Logue's intriguing novel, set in the capital city of Montgomery in 1967. The populist Governor, Jesse Stuart, recalls his youthful hopes that his gifts as a baseball hero would lift his family from rural poverty. A cynical newsman, Jack Harris, yearns for the passion and commitment that had distinguished his coverage of the famous bus boycott. A black clergyman, James Boone Jr., guiltily regrets his loss of faith; his parishioner, Arabella Jackson, whose son has died in Vietnam, wants to bury him on a beloved hillside, now annexed to the city's whites-only cemetery. In covering this dramatic story, Jack Harris runs into an even more explosive one: the Governor is secretly selling criminal pardons to secure his family's fortune before news of his mortal illness becomes public. There is material here for several novels. Mr. Logue, who is the creative director of Southern Living magazine, nicely catches the inky ambiance of the newsroom before the computer terminal took over, and he has created a persuasive narrative voice for Jack Harris, the editor-narrator. Yet the author allows Harris to tell only portions of the story, disconcertingly shifting in and out of third-person narration in ways that sever the dramatic links his complicated tale requires. Moreover, perhaps his experience as the author of three mystery novels has led Mr. Logue to take technical shortcuts in which violent action substitutes for acuity in characterization. The story is set precisely in January 1967, yet the mood of the novel seems distinctly late 1970's. Harris walks in front of Martin Luther King Jr.'s church on Dexter Avenue, musing about ''a movement now as forgotten as the river,'' without mentioning the great Selma march past that very spot not two years before. Boone complains that the burial of a black soldier shouldn't cause an uproar because ''nobody here wants to think about this war anymore,'' a sentiment that seems totally wrong for Alabama in 1967. Similarly, the police are stern with the surprisingly small number of redneck opponents of the soldier's burial and astonishingly courteous to the black mourners. As the soldier's family watches his internment, an angry white family scrambles in the clay to remove a coffin from the adjacent plot. Having failed to rouse a violent protest, they have obtained a court order allowing them to open the grave rather than allow their mother to be buried near a Negro. Despite the historical discontinuities of the mood, Mr. Logue has written a powerful epitaph for the social conflict that still gripped Alabama in 1967.
Date: 26 April 1987
By HENRY MAYER; Henry Mayer is the author of ''A Son of Thunder,'' a political biography of Patrick Henry
Henry MAYER
Full Article
IN SOVIET, HEROISM AND CANDOR ARE HAILED, BUT QUESTIONS LINGER
Date: 26 April 1987
By BILL KELLER, Special to the New York Times
Bill KELLER
Full Article
FADED GLORY, VANISHED HOPES By John Logue. 230 pp. Boston: Little, Brown & Company. $16.95. DREAMS of bygone glory dominate the lives of a diverse group of Alabamians in John Logue's intriguing novel, set in the capital city of Montgomery in 1967. The populist Governor, Jesse Stuart, recalls his youthful hopes that his gifts as a baseball hero would lift his family from rural poverty. A cynical newsman, Jack Harris, yearns for the passion and commitment that had distinguished his coverage of the famous bus boycott. A black clergyman, James Boone Jr., guiltily regrets his loss of faith; his parishioner, Arabella Jackson, whose son has died in Vietnam, wants to bury him on a beloved hillside, now annexed to the city's whites-only cemetery. In covering this dramatic story, Jack Harris runs into an even more explosive one: the Governor is secretly selling criminal pardons to secure his family's fortune before news of his mortal illness becomes public. There is material here for several novels. Mr. Logue, who is the creative director of Southern Living magazine, nicely catches the inky ambiance of the newsroom before the computer terminal took over, and he has created a persuasive narrative voice for Jack Harris, the editor-narrator. Yet the author allows Harris to tell only portions of the story, disconcertingly shifting in and out of third-person narration in ways that sever the dramatic links his complicated tale requires. Moreover, perhaps his experience as the author of three mystery novels has led Mr. Logue to take technical shortcuts in which violent action substitutes for acuity in characterization. The story is set precisely in January 1967, yet the mood of the novel seems distinctly late 1970's. Harris walks in front of Martin Luther King Jr.'s church on Dexter Avenue, musing about ''a movement now as forgotten as the river,'' without mentioning the great Selma march past that very spot not two years before. Boone complains that the burial of a black soldier shouldn't cause an uproar because ''nobody here wants to think about this war anymore,'' a sentiment that seems totally wrong for Alabama in 1967. Similarly, the police are stern with the surprisingly small number of redneck opponents of the soldier's burial and astonishingly courteous to the black mourners. As the soldier's family watches his internment, an angry white family scrambles in the clay to remove a coffin from the adjacent plot. Having failed to rouse a violent protest, they have obtained a court order allowing them to open the grave rather than allow their mother to be buried near a Negro. Despite the historical discontinuities of the mood, Mr. Logue has written a powerful epitaph for the social conflict that still gripped Alabama in 1967.
Date: 26 April 1987
By HENRY MAYER; Henry Mayer is the author of ''A Son of Thunder,'' a political biography of Patrick Henry
Henry MAYER
Full Article
IN SOVIET, HEROISM AND CANDOR ARE HAILED, BUT QUESTIONS LINGER
Date: 26 April 1987
By BILL KELLER, Special to the New York Times
Bill KELLER
Full Article
FADED GLORY, VANISHED HOPES By John Logue. 230 pp. Boston: Little, Brown & Company. $16.95. DREAMS of bygone glory dominate the lives of a diverse group of Alabamians in John Logue's intriguing novel, set in the capital city of Montgomery in 1967. The populist Governor, Jesse Stuart, recalls his youthful hopes that his gifts as a baseball hero would lift his family from rural poverty. A cynical newsman, Jack Harris, yearns for the passion and commitment that had distinguished his coverage of the famous bus boycott. A black clergyman, James Boone Jr., guiltily regrets his loss of faith; his parishioner, Arabella Jackson, whose son has died in Vietnam, wants to bury him on a beloved hillside, now annexed to the city's whites-only cemetery. In covering this dramatic story, Jack Harris runs into an even more explosive one: the Governor is secretly selling criminal pardons to secure his family's fortune before news of his mortal illness becomes public. There is material here for several novels. Mr. Logue, who is the creative director of Southern Living magazine, nicely catches the inky ambiance of the newsroom before the computer terminal took over, and he has created a persuasive narrative voice for Jack Harris, the editor-narrator. Yet the author allows Harris to tell only portions of the story, disconcertingly shifting in and out of third-person narration in ways that sever the dramatic links his complicated tale requires. Moreover, perhaps his experience as the author of three mystery novels has led Mr. Logue to take technical shortcuts in which violent action substitutes for acuity in characterization. The story is set precisely in January 1967, yet the mood of the novel seems distinctly late 1970's. Harris walks in front of Martin Luther King Jr.'s church on Dexter Avenue, musing about ''a movement now as forgotten as the river,'' without mentioning the great Selma march past that very spot not two years before. Boone complains that the burial of a black soldier shouldn't cause an uproar because ''nobody here wants to think about this war anymore,'' a sentiment that seems totally wrong for Alabama in 1967. Similarly, the police are stern with the surprisingly small number of redneck opponents of the soldier's burial and astonishingly courteous to the black mourners. As the soldier's family watches his internment, an angry white family scrambles in the clay to remove a coffin from the adjacent plot. Having failed to rouse a violent protest, they have obtained a court order allowing them to open the grave rather than allow their mother to be buried near a Negro. Despite the historical discontinuities of the mood, Mr. Logue has written a powerful epitaph for the social conflict that still gripped Alabama in 1967.
Date: 26 April 1987
By HENRY MAYER; Henry Mayer is the author of ''A Son of Thunder,'' a political biography of Patrick Henry
Henry MAYER
Full Article
IN SOVIET, HEROISM AND CANDOR ARE HAILED, BUT QUESTIONS LINGER
Date: 26 April 1987
By BILL KELLER, Special to the New York Times
Bill KELLER
Full Article
FADED GLORY, VANISHED HOPES By John Logue. 230 pp. Boston: Little, Brown & Company. $16.95. DREAMS of bygone glory dominate the lives of a diverse group of Alabamians in John Logue's intriguing novel, set in the capital city of Montgomery in 1967. The populist Governor, Jesse Stuart, recalls his youthful hopes that his gifts as a baseball hero would lift his family from rural poverty. A cynical newsman, Jack Harris, yearns for the passion and commitment that had distinguished his coverage of the famous bus boycott. A black clergyman, James Boone Jr., guiltily regrets his loss of faith; his parishioner, Arabella Jackson, whose son has died in Vietnam, wants to bury him on a beloved hillside, now annexed to the city's whites-only cemetery. In covering this dramatic story, Jack Harris runs into an even more explosive one: the Governor is secretly selling criminal pardons to secure his family's fortune before news of his mortal illness becomes public. There is material here for several novels. Mr. Logue, who is the creative director of Southern Living magazine, nicely catches the inky ambiance of the newsroom before the computer terminal took over, and he has created a persuasive narrative voice for Jack Harris, the editor-narrator. Yet the author allows Harris to tell only portions of the story, disconcertingly shifting in and out of third-person narration in ways that sever the dramatic links his complicated tale requires. Moreover, perhaps his experience as the author of three mystery novels has led Mr. Logue to take technical shortcuts in which violent action substitutes for acuity in characterization. The story is set precisely in January 1967, yet the mood of the novel seems distinctly late 1970's. Harris walks in front of Martin Luther King Jr.'s church on Dexter Avenue, musing about ''a movement now as forgotten as the river,'' without mentioning the great Selma march past that very spot not two years before. Boone complains that the burial of a black soldier shouldn't cause an uproar because ''nobody here wants to think about this war anymore,'' a sentiment that seems totally wrong for Alabama in 1967. Similarly, the police are stern with the surprisingly small number of redneck opponents of the soldier's burial and astonishingly courteous to the black mourners. As the soldier's family watches his internment, an angry white family scrambles in the clay to remove a coffin from the adjacent plot. Having failed to rouse a violent protest, they have obtained a court order allowing them to open the grave rather than allow their mother to be buried near a Negro. Despite the historical discontinuities of the mood, Mr. Logue has written a powerful epitaph for the social conflict that still gripped Alabama in 1967.
Date: 26 April 1987
By HENRY MAYER; Henry Mayer is the author of ''A Son of Thunder,'' a political biography of Patrick Henry
Henry MAYER
Full Article