Making Sense of the Universe: the Writer-Reader contract

The relationship between writers and readers is an odd one. The writer sits in a garret (or on the top of Mount Parnassus, depending on your point of view) and labors to create a work of lasting value.  If it's good enough and all the stars align, the readers let the work of an author's imagination into their own and reward the author with praise, treasure and enough allegiance to read writer's next story, as long as the author keeps the the writer-reader contract.

What, you thought what I just described was the writer-reader contract?  Au contrair, mes amis! That is merely the description.  The writer-reader contract is an old and long one that is modified only as literature evolves.  One of the basic tenets of this implied agreement is that, however complex the plot or intricate the fictional universe in the story is, the author knows everything that is going on in the story and can explain how this imaginary world makes sense.  For example:

Like most of the reading planet, I adored J. K. Rowling's fantastic Harry Potter series.  It's a mammoth accomplishment and a brilliantly planned series. Elements of the entire saga start appearing immediately although their importance is played down. (Spoilers abound here so if you spent the last quarter century living under a rock to avoiding the Potter phenomenon, read a different one of my posts). In the first chapter, we get the primary premise that magic-is-real set out and we learn a baby Harry somehow defeated an evil, magically powerful being named Voldemort. The soul souvenir of Voldemort's attack, a scar on Harry's forehead, is mentioned in passing on the first chapter but Potter fans don't learn the full significance of scar until the end of the series, seven years and a million words later. Still, virtually every bit of information JKR drops in the early part of the series forms part of the bigger picture later on, from Hagrid's motorbike to Dumbledore's evasive answers to personal questions. ("What do you see in the mirror, Professor?")  JKR doesn't tell the audience everything immediately, she can't, but she tells us what we need to know when we need to know it.  She honors the contract.

Another splendid example of an author knowing everything is Louis Sachar's Holes.  This is a case of non-linear storytelling at its best since most of the narrative is about perpetually unlucky Stanley Yelnats IV, a good kid in a bad situation.  Stanley can't know that his fate was tied to Camp Green Lake and a kid named Hector Zeroni generations before he was born but that's because there are "holes" in his family history.  The reader's fun comes from finding the information filling those holes at different parts of the story.  It's a masterful fulfillment of the Writer-Reader Contract.

Now compare these to Lemony Snicket's books, A Series of Unfortunate Events.  As usual we have an unfortunate child (well, 3 of them: Violet, Klaus and Sunny); a wicked, overarching villain who pursues them through the series (Count Olaf) and a bunch of mysterious clues and circumstances the kids encounter along the way. But, contrary to the implied contract, many of the mysteries in the story are never solved!  Readers never find out what was in that blasted sugar bowl or details about the schism that split the V. F. D. into fire-starters and fire-fighters! (Speaking of which, there are so many entities in the series with the initials V. F. D. it's hard to keep them straight.) Instead of resolving key mysteries that have been building through the series, the author states in the last book that not every question can or will be answered.  That is true of real life, but it's a weak excuse to readers who waded through 170 chapters of alliterative names and silly puns to find out what really happened to all of the Baudelaire family. It is a break in the writer-reader contract.

So, if you know someone struggling to write a novel this month, be kind to them.  Bring them encouragement and hot drinks as needed and assure them that they can always get through one more revision.  But remind them of the writer-reader contract and how they need to know everything in their fictional universe.  It's a part of the contract.

The Executioner's Daughter

There's a moment in Alan Bennett's play, The History Boys when an exasperated (female) teacher declares:

"History is a commentary on the various and continuing incapabilities of men.  What is history?  History is women following behind...with a bucket."

The Cover 

I can't help but wonder if Jane Hardstaff had this quote in mind when she wrote her excellent children's novel, The Executioner's Daughter. It may be fiction, but our heroine is forced to trudge through the disasters of history and scoop up the mess left behind with her basket.

Meet Moss, an eleven-year-old girl and permanent resident of The Tower of London. On good days, her father is the blacksmith in the tower, creating and repairing any piece of metal needed for Henry VIII's court and government and Moss stays in the forge.  On bad days, execution days, her father wields the ax.  If judicial murder and the blood lust of the crowd aren't bad enough, Moss has be present at each death.  Her job is to stand below the executioner's block and catch the prisoner's head in her basket once her father cuts it off. One execution would be enough to traumatize a child but because of the King's battle with the Catholic Church (aka The English Reformation) Moss has to witness this horror again and again  and each execution makes her want to rebel.

The Author

The Executioner's Daughter works on many levels, not the least of which is how it points out that the Tower of London functioned a separate, often self-sufficient, entity.  Yes, the castle was a prison but it was also a strong-hold, a Royal Residence and the large, full-time staff that maintained it also lived within those walls.  The Tower had few exits and Moss's father limits her freedom to its outer walls, making his daughter, in effect, another prisoner.  Preteen readers can identify with Moss's feelings of resentment and her need to expand her horizons beyond her father's world.  Parents will appreciate her loving father, a man forced to make terrible choices in order to keep his daughter safe. And everyone will like Salter, the Artful Dodger like trickster that shows Moss there are harder destinies than being the executioner's daughter and how to outwit fate.

Fascinating, adventurous and full of historical insight, The Executioner's Daughter is a delight for junior-high readers and up and it can make someone glad they're just a cleaning-woman in the annals of history.

The Politicization of Leslie

We're coming to the end of another election season and, like almost everyone on the planet, I'm glad this miserable contest is almost over.  The mud-slinging, innuendo, and overall nastiness of political rhetoric have made this a loathsome campaign year and the parade of contradictory polls is exhausting me.  But I will vote on Tuesday, as I have in every election.  I can't help it.  I was politicized long before I could read and my parents deserve the credit/blame.  That's what happens when you're kissed at a young age by presidents.

My mom had a button like this in her
jewelry box for decades

See, my mom was a big fan of John F. Kennedy in 1960.  YUGE fan, another candidate might say.  Well, what wasn't there to like?  He was young, attractive, and charismatic, enough to charm any woman in her early twenties.  And my mother was never tepid about politics.  She paid fierce attention to the news and loved or hated most people in public service.  So when she heard JFK and his running mate were arriving at the Wichita Falls, Texas airport, she had to be there to greet him, along with me and Dad.

Now my Dad was always interested in current events, although he never got drawn into fandom, like my mom.  I think he would have preferred to stay away from candidates and the crowds that followed them.  But Mom insisted, saying it would be a memorable experience for all three of us.   

That's me, a Presidential Pin-Up Girl!

Sorry to say, it wasn't memorable to me; I was less than 18 months old at the time and nothing of that day hangs in my recollection.  But Dad said he held me on his shoulders at that windy airport and Mom said that no one could tell from Mr. Kennedy's speech that he and Lyndon were ever political rivals.  After the speech, the candidates worked their way through the crowd and Mom said both JKF and LBJ kissed my cheek, the way they probably kissed a million kids along the campaign trail. Knowing how she felt about JFK, I'm surprised she washed my face afterward.

After that, national politics was always personal in my family. Mom wept uncontrollably when President Kennedy was assassinated but I went on to Kindergarten, secure in the belief that Lyndon's tenure in the White House meant the eyes of Texas really were upon me. (Hey, what does a 5-year-old know!) Mom preached civil rights from her kitchen and, during Watergate, called President Nixon and his staff everything but a Child of God for their actions. Dad didn't say as much but always knew the background on every issue and was willing to discuss them rationally.  Rational political discussions, there's something I miss almost as much as I miss my parents.

So I will go to the polls on Tuesday, same as I have for every election for more than 30 years. It's part of my role as a citizen, like my jury and military service were.  Even if I don't like who is running, I can't help participating in the process.  Like Girl Scouts and Sand Hill Plum Jelly, democracy is in my DNA.

To Believe in Yourself

Self-esteem is a tough nut to crack for most people. Very few people think they are perfect and those that do can't see what the rest of us know.  So we all have weak spots in our self-confidence.  But, if you are overweight, as about two-thirds of American are, or even obese (which is a third of the American population right now), being self-confident borders on the impossible.  Despite these numbers, anyone carrying extra pounds is continually subjected to the suggestion that skinny people are the only ones who really count.  Size is always a factor in the entertainment industry; marketing and fashion campaigns use skinny models and the rest of us chase endless ideas on how to modify the bodies we have right now.  With all of this subliminal propaganda, do you wonder why folks get depressed?

Enter Jennifer Dome King, the blogger behind Stellar Fashion and Fitness and the author of Fat Girl Power: How I Built Confidence through Body Positivity, Fashion and Fitness.  After chasing the Holy Grail of everyone else's approval, Jennifer went after a more difficult but rewarding goal.  She learned to love and believe in herself, just as she is, and debunk society's myths about weight-limitations.  You've got to admit, that takes guts.

Let's look at one of the myths Jennifer battles: that overweight people must be inactive. Yes, carrying extra pounds can sap a person's natural energy but, in Jennifer's view, that  only increases the importance of regular exercise.  Physical activity helps keep people healthy and happy, no matter what size they wear. And she doesn't just talk the talk.  Last year Jennifer created, "The Makeshift 5K" for everyone who wants to take a step toward health for themselves.  There are no stopwatches, no ribbons and no criteria for entering.  Just participating is enough to get you accepted.

Acceptance, particularly self-acceptance is a big part of body-positivity because it is a problem that people of all body types have.   After spending more than fifty-seven years on this earth, I've met people with different sizes, shapes and skin tones, but I've rarely met one who accepted his or her body, just as it existed. Instead, I've seen people starve, neglect, overwhelm and torture themselves to meet some arbitrary, impossible standard. Body-positivity doesn't mean that we shouldn't take care of the blood/bones/skin and tissue packages we spend our lives encased in.  Rather, it means we recognize the strong relationship between our physical and emotional selves and quit using one to beat up the other.

Jennifer says that the philosophy of Body Positivity can be reduced to the phrase "Love Yourself". Yes, and her essays remind me of another loving teacher: Charlie Smalls, lyricist of The Wiz.

Believe in yourself, right from the start

You'll have brains, You'll have a heart

You'll have Courage, to last your whole life through.

If you believe in yourself

as I believe in You.

Jennifer believes in the entire world. I hope the world returns the compliment.

The Old, Family Porch Rocking Chair

Great Uncles and Nephews
(The only record of my family on the porch)
The bare edge of the rocker is at the left

My dad's family lived in a house with a front porch they never used. I mean they never used it during my lifetime.  When we visited, we always parked in the side yard and used the kitchen door for our exits and entrances. (Some farm families do that; the kitchen is the heart of the house and everyone's go-to spot before and after the fields.)  All the indoor rooms were lived in but the front porch, with its wrought iron supports and cement floor was just not a comfortable place. The only decorations I remember seeing on the porch were some Elephant Ears growing out of coffee cans and the only seats were some wooden rocking chairs that could put splinters in your thighs if you sat in them. These chairs were hard and unfinished and the antithesis of comfort. Alone, they were enough to turn me into someone who hated porches.

Luckily that didn't work because my adult home came equipped with a porch that I wouldn't change for the world.  Running the length of the house it feels like acres of space and from the first, I wanted to equip it with rockers; big, beautiful, polished, wide rockers like they sell in Cracker Barrel stores.  Of course when we moved in, we couldn't afford Cracker Barrel's furniture but I was willing to wait.  Someday those generous machines for sitting would surely grace my porch.

The porch rocker in its natural state:
distressed but not depressed.

In June my husband claimed he had found me the perfect birthday present.  No, it wasn't what I asked for (he said) but it was exactly what I wanted.  He was sure of it.  Then, he presented it with all of the pride of a little boy showing something he'd made in Scouts.  It was a wooden rocking chair,  narrow, unpainted and splintery, just like the ones on the old front porch.

So how do you tell a husband you hate his present?  How do you point out the differences between your dream chair and what he found for you?  I've got to tell you, I couldn't.  Instead, I coated it with spray paint, stuck it on the front porch and mentally declared I'd never sit in it.

Then Hurricane Ivan hit.  

You may not believe it, but when a Grade 3 storm hits the coast, we feel it 280 miles north.  The wind and rain took out the power and the only place to wait out the storm with enough light was on the porch.  I sank my rear end into the depths of an Adirondack chair and stared at the world now over my knees. Hubby sat down in the chair he gave me and began to rock. For hours I tried to converse with a spouse whose head was three feet above mine. I was miserable but he was obviously comfortable. And, because he was wearing blue jeans, he seemed immune to splinters.  Was I wrong about the old porch rocker?

Ready for another 10 years of weather

Of course I was, on so many levels.  Not only was I ungrateful brat when my husband was trying to please me, I was ignoring the heritage on both sides of our marriage.  Both of our families grubbed a life from the land, his in Alabama and mine in Oklahoma and neither one had money for polished, front-porch rockers. When the long days were finished and they needed a breeze, our grandparents rested in rough wooden porch rockers like this, at least until they got air-conditioning. They hoped we'd find an easier life and we have, but at base, we are still country people and my husband's chair was the perfect choice for the porch. It's a part of our lives.

My birthday rocker still graces the front porch and today he got a fresh coat of paint. Nothing too fancy because he is what he is, a chair designed to withstand rough weather.  He's actually quite comfortable and sturdier than he looks.  And now that I've lost some weight, it turns out he's not  narrow at all.  In the decades he's spent with us he's held cats, friends, guests, tools and groceries and I expect he'll hold us for the rest of our days.  It turns out, I didn't need to get the porch rocker I valued.  I just needed to grow up enough to value the porch rocker I have.

A Thoroughly, Old-Fashioned, Kid's Book

Now that Halloween and it's cornucopia of scary stories is past, it's time to look at the final part of the year, when the shadows lengthen early and the evenings run cold.  These are the evenings when it's good to snuggle up with a few, warm comforts as we step into the long nights of the year.  So, pick up a warm drink, a good companion and a nice, old-fashioned kid's book, like The Railway Children.

It makes sense that the Industrial Age created "the Cult of the Child" and Children's Literature. Before then time, working and middle-class kids went with their parents to the fields and shops and started helping as soon as they could stand.  Children weren't read aloud to at night because many of their Georgian-era parents lacked the energy, or ability to read at the end of the day and they had no money for books.  Then came the era of machines and their descendants started working indoors. The money was better but these Victorian parents were often absent from their children's lives and they missed the little ones they labored for.  It's no surprise Victorian children were read aloud to in the evenings and that their stories often dealt with children learning to function without their parents.  Enter Peter, Roberta (Bobbie) and Phyllis: the Railway Children.

As the famous first line says, they weren't railway children to begin with.  At first they were just a brother and two sisters, tolerably decent as children but not the examples of perfection the Victorian age wanted.  They squabbled at times, their morals weren't perfect and they were used to a standard of comfort.  Then, their father is taken away and everything changes.  The servants are dismissed, the house and fine furniture are sold and Mama says they have to "play at being poor" in the country.  Mama changes from their supervisor and playmate to a woman who stays shut up for hours, writing stories to keep up with the bills.  And the children, left to themselves, become fascinated by the trains that run through the valley below their ramshackle house in the country.  The adventures trainwatching leads them to paved the way for Jane and Michael Banks, the Pevensie children and other heroes of British kid-lit.

The story must have had a ring of familiarity to it for its author, Edith Nesbit. As a child, she lost her father as a child and endured several family moves.  Later, she became one of the era's few working moms, writing fiction to support her own brood of children and her unsuccessful, philandering husband.  Chained to her desk by necessity, it would have been easy to Edith to remember the free if lonely days of her own childhood or imagine what her own unsupervised kids were getting into.

It's what my grandmother would have called, "a thoroughly English book" and I suspect The Railway Children was one of the stories she grew up with.  There's an editorializing narration, plenty of strange and wonderful coincidences and (I'm sorry to say) characters painfully distrustful of anyone not English.  Still, Peter, Bobbie and Phyllis carry the philosophy that everyone deserves kindness (at least until proven otherwise) and, as the heroes, their beliefs carry the day.  It's a lovely belief to hold onto at night or share with children, even if it is thoroughly old-fashioned.

When writing is the family business

A lot of great writers seem like they were better with ink and paper than people. Pick up biographies of some literary geniuses and you'll find many worked hard at their crafts and often endured terrible setbacks but were also self-centered loners who focused on their own problems to the detriment of their loved ones. A few of the "greats" were self-destructive abusers. Others unearthed family traumas or secrets and then publicized these for money. You wonder how their relations ever stood them.

On the other hand, there are a few authors who were so devoted to their families that their talent seemed to echo through their DNA.  Take a look at these clans of chroniclers and prepare to be amazed.

The Bronte Girls

The Bronte Sisters - Emily, Anne, and Charlotte, the literary doyennes of Yorkshire.  They grew when opportunity ran thin on the ground, especially for girls. These three (and their brother, Branwell) developed a rich communal imaginary life that carried them through some miserable childhood experiences.  All three of the Bronte girls tried to become teachers at some point (the only respectable profession open to women then)  but frail health and romantic disappointment eventually brought them back home.  As the daughters of minister they were, of course, poor as church mice and  they decided to try and make money by jointly writing a book of poetry.  Since their culture still didn't accept the idea of women as professional writers, the published book was credited to Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell; male pseudonyms with the same initials as the poetesses.  The Bronte sisters changed from poetry to prose and two years later England was hit with those twin monoliths of Victorian novels, Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights as well as Anne's story, Agnes Grey. Two years later came Anne's Tenant of Wildfell Hall and the Brontes were out of poverty and ruling the best-seller list, though not for long.  Consumption took Anne and Emily before 1850.  Charlotte lived long enough to marry and enjoy some degree of her literary success but it was difficult for her to continue without her sibling support system. The only novel she wrote after Anne and Emily's death was a retelling of her first effort. 

Mary Bard Jensen and Betty MacDonald

The Bard family clan: The Bard family's motto was "Don't be a Saddo" although some would say the clan had a right to be miserable.  The patriarch, Darsie Bard, died in 1920 leaving his wife with five young children, his aged mother, a heavily mortgaged house and very little money.  Nevertheless, his widow, Sydney to everyone that knew her, believed in making do and moving on without complaints. This "Never Give Up, Keep on Grinning" attitude kept the family together and doing anything (including writing) that might pay the family bills.  Sydney wrote, but her second daughter, Anne Elizableth, was the one to hit gold as Betty MacDonald, the author of The Egg and I and her children's series, The Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle Books.  Sydney's eldest daughter, Mary Bard Jensen also did well in the domestic humor market with her books about being a doctor's wife and one of Betty's friends Monica Sone published Nisei Daughter.  Almost every book contains the theme of facing adversity with optimism and humor. There are worse beliefs in this world.

Lawrence and Gerald Durrell

And then, there are the Durrells.  Masterpiece tipped me off to The Corfu Trilogy the saga of (another!) widow and her eccentric family trying to survive on no money and a good attitude, this time in a foreign land. The stories were obviously penned by the youngest child, Gerald, but it is his eldest brother, Larry, who insists he is going to be a writer.  After two good episodes about this fascinating family, I started reading Gerald's first book, My Family and Other Animals, and decided to do a bit of research on the family.  Are they known? Holy Smoke, are they ever!  The sardonic but kind Larry turned out to be Lawrence Durrell, one of the "Great" modern novelists my college  English instructors raved about in the 1970's. (Chants of "Miller, and Durrell and Greene, Oh MY! would spill angry English grad students into the halls of my first university.) Lawrence Durrell's work is visionary, sexy, brilliant, bitter, and good enough to be considered for a Nobel prize at one point but Gerald's stories of their family are what gained popularity.  (A good thing, since Gerald's vocation as a naturalist paid little or nothing!) The Corfu trilogy brought in cash and unexpected dimensions to any would be biographer of the "more literary" Durrell. The writing bug even spread to their sister, Margaret who penned "Whatever Happened to Margo?"; her account of how the family coped once they were relocated to England.

So there you have it.  A novelist doesn't need to cut off his/her family in order to work (although writing requires quiet every once in a while).  Family can actually be a scribbler's greatest ally, if his/her siblings get into the act.  As long as everyone agrees to help and refrain from being "a Saddo."

An Early Halloween Story

Let me state from the first, the events of yesterday were unforeseeable and unavoidable. None of the actions taken by all parties were neither premeditated or predictable.  However, in case a group of panicked Puritans is already headed to my house, armed with ropes and lit torches, I wish to make the following declaration:

• I am not now, nor have I ever been, a witch.
• Due to a past Halloween party, I own a hooded, black cape.
• This garment is a mass-marketed item, as the manufacturer's label attests.
• To my knowledge, said cape has no supernatural powers but it is a surprisingly warm, yet light-weight garment.

• Yesterday, I donned the cape in question prior to walking down my private drive at sunset. 

• The cape's hood was in an upright position to keep my ears warm. 
• Said cape is voluminous and anyone seeing me from a distance would not have been able to make out my "regular" clothing beneath its folds.

• When I started my walk, I had no idea the neighbors were entertaining young children on their front lawn. Consequently, I was as surprised as the children when they saw me coming over the hill.        
  
  

  
  
  
  
• Children can move very quickly when frightened and at the time I believed pursuing them to explain I meant them no harm would only make a bad situation worse. So I flew back, er... returned to my home.
  
  

  
  
• I heartily apologize for any nightmares I may have inadvertently caused. However any kid who panics at the sight of a middle-aged woman wearing a black-cape, sneakers, and horn-rimmed glasses is a kid with too much Halloween on the brain.

(Maybe next time, I should carry my wand....)

October in Alabama: A Love Story

As a teen, I never cared for love stories.  While other girls were sighing and crying over the latest sugary "boy-meets-girl", I jumped into the classics, swearing romance book writers conspired to create Cinderella pap to weaken women's minds.  (Mom said I was foolish but she kept a soft spot for Barbara Cartland.) Not that I didn't believe in love!  I was just felt very awkward and self-conscious reading about it.  I knew that if/when I fell in love, I'd never write tell the world about it.

Then I saw the South in October.

Yes, I know people aren't supposed to fall in love with places.  And if any part of the states is known for autumn scenes, it's New England, not Alabama.  But I did and the beauty of Autumn in Dixie was then a fairly well kept secret. So I had no idea, when I crossed the Mississippi River, that I was stepping into a place of transcendent beauty.  I spent that first visit walking with my mouth half-open, about the Technicolor foliage that appeared around every bend. I found the South and Southerners fascinating and loved their complex, stubborn relationship with this place but more than anything, I fell for the faraway hills covered in crazy quilts of color underneath sapphire skies. 

What can I say?  I began to fall in love.

I began to discover why an essential element of Southern literature is its exquisite sense of place, as if the things that happen here, couldn't occur that way anywhere else. I'm not sure, but is there anyplace else where natural beauty is spilled out so generously, where "trash trees" transform themselves into moving sculptures of butterscotch, crimson and yellow every Autumn?   On the branches, the leaves are breathtaking. When they fall, they become an impressionist's fantasy. Stand outside when the leaves are coming down and it's as if fat flakes of cadmium yellow sailed off some artist's palate and start floating down to the earth,  It's a treat for the senses but that's getting ahead of my story.

Fall is a festive season here, maybe because of the return of football games and maybe to mark our turn toward the holidays of December but I think it's due to the changing weather. The blue of the sky begins to deepen or it just shows more of a contrast against the variegated trees. Then, the massive heat waves finally break and it's fun to go back outdoors. People turn out for fairs, tailgating, fun runs and visits to the pumpkin patch. Music starts playing, scents of food fill the air and everyone seems happy to be part of the world. This is a great time for festivals but my favorite trip takes us up a secret bluff.

Can you believe this is where my husband and his friends hid out when they played hooky in high school?  It's a beautiful, hidden place, about a mile's hike off the public road and the view from the top goes on for miles. In spring, wild magnolia trees on the forest floor bloom and, if you stand on the edge of the bluff, you can touch the flowers at the tips of their branches. It's even better in fall when a hike through the leaves gives you an appetite for harvest soups and barbecue.  That level of beauty is everywhere and it only heightens as the season wears on.  By the time we return to the bluff, I am besotted with the joy of life and this wonderful world full of color.

Sometime between Halloween and Veterans Day, the deciduous trees hit their zenith of color and for a few days the sun rises on hills that already seem like they're aflame.  This is the grand finale of autumn and, regrettably, it doesn't last long.  The winds decide to change or a front comes through and the trees that were covered in vermilion and bronze before, now stretch nude limbs to the sky.  The beautiful leaves, now sodden, cover the ground at least until the the leaf-blowers get going and my infatuation with autumn will be finished again for a year.

So, yes, I've become a romantic fool, a fool for the South every October.  If our romance is short-lived, at least it's beautiful while it lasts and I always have next fall to anticipate.  And I am willing to wait. So maybe this is more than an autumn romance.  Maybe this is true love.

From Myth to Man: Hamilton

It was hard telling the Founding Fathers apart when I was in Elementary School.  Every fall another teacher would try to impress the achievements of the frock-coated/ American Revolutionaries into our malleable brains with similar results.  In a group portrait of patriots, we could all pick out Franklin (rotund, bald and smiling) and probably Washington by his unsmiling mouth clamped around a set of dentures but the rest were identifiable only to those who had studied.  To the rest of us, they were a group of middle-aged, white males with funny clothes and powdered hair.   If you had asked me then who Alexander Hamilton, Aaron Burr, and Benedict Arnold were, I'd probably have said: "One was a traitor, another was shot and the third one fired the pistol."  I doubt if I could have said more.

And that's why we need writer-historians like Ron Chernow.  His lauded volume Alexander Hamilton not only rescued the memory of a brilliant man from obscurity and (with the genius of Lin-Manuel Miranda) brought new respect to this patriot's memory; it illuminates the character of Hamilton so well that the man and his peers become people we can recognize and relate to.

Almost everyone went to school with someone like Hamilton; I know I did.  Look back in your memory to the bunch of outsiders in your class whose clothes don't match the current fashion and whose family weren't considered pillars of the community. Despite knowing they aren't part of the "in-crowd" most of them have some friendships and function as regular students not this kid. Outsider he may be, but that doesn't seem to register with him. Instead he wears his intelligence and self-confidence like armor and attacks each subject like it's a competition to be won.  This is the classmate whose hand is always up, who argues with the teachers like he is their peer and who has scholarships, a major and 10-year plan lined up while the rest of us are still looking at colleges. The kid's self-confidence often comes across as arrogance which means he/she isn't well liked but everyone recognizes the student's intellect and drive. Actually, "drive" doesn't begin to describe this kid's laser-like focus. This is an adolescent with the will, and brain of an adult.  But what is making this Sammy run?

Chernow believes Hamilton's insecurities as a child formed the needs that drove him as an adult. Abandoned by his father and functionally orphaned at 13, the illegitimate Alexander wanted the social and financial security he saw in other lives and missed in his own. Using his thirst for knowledge and a gift for writing, Alexander maximized ever chance fortune threw his way, first in the Carribean and then in the American Colonies where marriage and revolution gave him the opportunity to rise in a fledgling meritocracy. Unfortunately, his talents and aspirations also carried the seeds of his undoing.

Like many geniuses, Hamilton worked well on his own but lacked the insight and diplomatic give-and-take necessary to function well in a government of other accomplished, ambitious officials, all with their own agendas. (Among other things, Chernow's Hamilton traces the beginnings of America's two-party system and verifies that politics has long been a blood sport in this country.)  A compulsive and prolific political writer, Alexander was so used to gaining support through published essays that he expected public\exoneration after writing of his involvement in a sex scandal.  That action ruined his political future and his belief in the code duello as the way upper-class gentlemen settled disputes led to the deaths of himself and his first-born son.  Hamilton's tragedy is not a life of unrealized promise (much of his initial work is still apparent in this country's financial structure) but that his underlying insecurities kept him from seeing his life's work come to fruition.

By all means, catch a performance of the musical Hamilton if you are lucky enough to get tickets.  By all accounts, it's an amazing show.  But while you are learning the lyrics and melodies of this revolutionary musical, read the biography they sprang from.  As rich as the theatrical production is, this book is the mother-lode.