Omaha Blues
A Memory Loop
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3.0 • 1 Rating
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
The profoundly moving family history of one of America's greatest newspapermen.
As his father lies dying, Joseph Lelyveld finds himself in the basement of the Cleveland synagogue where Arthur Lelyveld was the celebrated rabbi. Nicknamed "the memory boy" by his parents, the fifty-nine-year-old son begins to revisit the portion of his father's life recorded in letters, newspaper clippings, and mementos stored in a dusty camp trunk. In an excursion into an unsettled and shakily recalled period of his boyhood, Lelyveld uses these artifacts, and the journalistic reporting techniques of his career as an author and editor, to investigate memories that have haunted him in adult life..
With equal measures of candor and tenderness, Lelyveld unravels the tangled story of his father and his mother, a Shakespeare scholar whose passion for independence led her to recoil from her roles as a clergyman's wife and, for a time, as a mother. This reacquired history of his sometimes troubled family becomes the framework for the author's story; in particular, his discovery in early adolescence of the way personal emotions cue political choices, when he is forced to choose sides between his father and his own closest adult friend, a colleague of his father's who is suddenly dismissed for concealing Communist ties.
Lelyveld's effort to recapture his family history takes him on an unforeseen journey past disparate landmarks of the last century, including the Scottsboro trials, the Zionist movement, the Hollywood blacklist, McCarthyism, and Mississippi's "freedom summer" of 1964. His excursion becomes both a meditation on the selectivity and unreliability of memory and a testimony to the possibilities, even late in life, for understanding and healing. In Omaha Blues, as Lelyveld seeks out the truth of his life story, he evokes a remarkable moment in our national story with unforgettable poignancy.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Although his parents nicknamed him "the memory boy," former New York Times executive editor Lelyveld can't remember how he earned such a moniker. In this memoir, the author reflects on this detail as well as other familial eccentricities as he sorts through his dying father's belongings. He recalls not just his own past, but that of his rabbi father and Shakespearean scholar mother, as well as political events of their time, like the Scottsboro trials and the Zionist movement. With a reporter's skepticism, Lelyveld investigates his personal history and ponders the nature of memory even as he relates the events of his own life. Although the book's title implies a sweep back into his past and then forward again, Lelyveld actually supplies more fragments than a single, continuous loop. He tends to double back, change subjects, introduce characters that aren't seen again and flip between present and past tense even when dwelling primarily on childhood events. The effect is usually charming, producing a jazzy, stream-of-consciousness atmosphere. But occasionally such time travel provokes a kind of literary motion sickness, as Lelyveld veers from adult feelings to childhood events, and ruminations on whether memory is even trustworthy. On the whole, though, readers will appreciate and connect with the way he tries to unravel his past and examine its details almost as they present themselves as one would for the paper of record. Photos.
