Review: 'Becoming Duchess Goldblatt'

Becoming Duchess Goldblatt

By Anonymous

Memoir

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

As the cruel people who hate for its own sake take up so much attention, it is a balm to see evidence that not everyone is like that, and that kind-hearted people are still here.

The woman behind the online persona of Duchess Goldblatt is such a kind-hearted person. In her new memoir, Becoming Duchess Goldblatt, the anonymous author recounts when her marriage fell apart, her world did as well. Although it was hard for her to not give up, she looked outward instead of inward, adopted a friend's drag queen name came up while talking with another friend about the possibility of lurking on social media, and ended up creating something of value to many people.

That she didn't do it on purpose makes the evolution of what has happened all the better.

Duchess Goldblatt is a famous and esteemed writer in her early 80s. Born in Texas, she now lives in Crooked Path, which is somewhere in New York state. Her portrait so closely resembles that of a painting from 1633, Portrait of an Elderly Lady by Frans Hals, that they might as well be the same. Her renowned work includes An Axe to Grind, Feasting on the Carcasses of My Enemies: A Love Story and Not If I Kill You First, showing there is spice as well as sugar in the persona.

That Duchess is a persona and not the author is a point that Anonymous makes explicit throughout the memoir, albeit an epiphany in the narrative. The fiction of the life of Duchess, her holidays, the ups and down of Crooked Path, the occasional visits to her daughter, Hacienda, who is in a comfortable Mexican prison for life for reasons not fully spelled out -- it could all be extracted from the Duchess Goldblatt Twitter feed and turned into a fictional narrative. Indeed, it could be quite the epic saga.

But that's not the complete Duchess Goldblatt story. The tweets are part whimsy, part surreal, part wisdom, and the ones quoted in the book fit well with what is happening in the author's ongoing journey. And then there are the admissions, to wit:

People often ask me how a fictional being made of spun sugar and justice can overcome life-threatening paper cuts. Simple: It's magic.

It's the wit and the kindness that have drawn people to the Duchess, as when she tells someone:

The world is broken, but you are not broken. Things may not be okay, but you're okay, and you will be. I promise.

As people began to follow the Twitter feed, they began chatting with each other as well, forming a community. They have sent things to the person behind Duchess as well as to Duchess herself, calling her Your Grace even though she is not a member of typical nobility. Some of her admirers send gifts; the author asks real-life friends to receive the goodies for a few months at a time. Best of all, the community shows the best in others. Like some of her famous friends, especially Lyle Lovett, Benjamin Dreyer and Celeste Ng. 

The memoir ends with the author in a much better place than when she created Duchess, ready and willing to go on in the real world and the virtual one. It's a tale well told.

©2020 Lynne Perednia

Review: 'The Watergate Girl'

The Watergate Girl: My Fight for Truth and Justice Against a Criminal President
By Jill Wine-Banks
Memoir
February 2020
Henry Holt and Co.
ISBN: 978-1250244321

A young prosecutor in 1973 prepares for the most important questions she has ever presented in court. The witness is angry at being forced to testify. But her information is essential to the case, to try to make sense of what happened.

It's Rose Mary Woods, Richard Nixon's secretary, on the stand to testify about the infamous 18 1/2-minute gap in a crucial tape recorded by Nixon. Getting ready to question her is Jill Wine-Banks. Woods is even more unhappy when she is caught lying as she demonstrates what supposedly happened to create the gap in the tape.

As Wine-Banks recounts in her memoir, The Watergate Girl, the crowd in the courtroom was stunned. Even more stunning to her, when she proposed that Woods demonstrate how she said the gap was created in her office, because what she said did not happen in the courtroom demonstration, attorneys for Woods and Nixon did not object.

Wine-Banks was one of three trial lawyers, and the only woman, on the Watergate special prosecutor task force for obstruction of justice and cover-ups.

As she recounts how she got to this moment, and how complex her feelings were about dealing with Woods, Wine-Banks also describes what life was like for a professional woman in the early 1970s. She shows how being hard-working and smart could pay off, but also the drawbacks to outshining any man who couldn't handle it. Unfortunately, one of those men was her first husband.

Whether it's personal or professional, Wine-Banks demonstrates that her first love was writing. She went to law school to gain gravitas in what she would be considered as eligible in covering in journalism. When she stayed with the law, journalism lost a powerful voice. But her background does show that she is a natural for what she is doing now as a television commentator.

Although her memoir does touch on these other things, and she gives a quick rundown of what she has been doing in the corporate world since the Watergate era, it is that period that is the focus of this book. The larger-than-life characters in the prosecutor's office and the political world, the suspense in not knowing what was going to happen next -- especially after the Saturday Night Massacre -- the relentless work schedule and the pressure to make sure all i's were dotted and t's crossed are all recounted vividly.

Wine-Banks has written a timely memoir that brings back the Watergate days for those who lived through that time, and provides an elegant primer to those who don't know what all the fuss was about.

©2019 All Rights Reserved TheLitForum.com Reviews and reprinted with permission

Review: 'The Man Who Sold America'

©2019 All Rights Reserved TheLitForum.com Reviews

The Man Who Sold America
By Joy-Ann Reid
Current Affairs
June 2019
William Morrow
ISBN: 978-0062880109

From the introduction, "Welcome to Gotham" with on-point comparison of today's occupant of the White House to a Jack Nicholson signature performance, to the epilogue about who we really are, Joy-Ann Reid tells us about ourselves in the age of Trump, how we got here and what we must do next before a new chapter can be written in her new book, The Man Who Sold America: Trump and the Unraveling of the American Story.

In concisely researched sections, Reid, host of MSNBC's AM Joy, shows the origins of Trump, the current state of his party, the media and government. It's a perfect storm of resentment, yearning and complacency. She begins with the 2016 election, laying out not only the vote counts but also the underlying studies that show why anyone would vote for someone who had no political experience but plenty of bluster. That the narrative is calm and fact-based sets the tone for the book. This is not a political rant. This is a reflection on the current point in the American story.

Information from a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science in April 2018 displays what "economic anxiety" really means for white Americans who voted for Trump. Regardless of their actual economic status, it was their perception that mattered. That perception, as seen in media feature stories still being published on a regular basis, is the fear that white Americans are being crowded out by people of other races, ethnicities and religions, regardless of their immigration or citizenship status. Diana C. Mutz of the University of Pennsylvania political science department noted in the study that candidate preference was connected to a political party's position on American global dominance and an American population that is becoming majority-minority. In other words, if white Americans feared no longer being part of the dominant group, they voted for Trump.

At the same time, American culture is becoming more divided, with groups staying together based on how they view the world and less genuine communication among different groups. Reid notes the work of Robert P. Jones in a Public Religion Research Institute study done with The Atlantic in 2017 to show the fear among those who do not like the increasing diversity of America. In a chapter on the media, Reid adds how what we believe determines where we get our news. Facts themselves have become a malleable commodity.

In addition to quoting other studies, Reid also goes into the cultural aspect of how Trump's base was built and why it remains true to him. Britain is dealing with the same resentments that led to Brexit, so it's not just an American phenomenon.

One of the strongest chapters in the book compares and contrasts the journey of South Africa following apartheid to the United States since the Civil War and Jim Crow eras. Reid reports how white people in both nations have feared change and losing power, and how they are responding. The countries are different, and Reid is clear to note that. But seeing the paths the two countries have taken and the origins of conspiracy theories in South Africa that have made their way to the United States is illuminating. What unites us is stronger than what divides us, but what is it that unites us? And divides us?

Reid tell us how we got here and how we see ourselves. One of the great take-aways from reading The Man Who Sold America is that until and unless Americans face up to who we are, things are not going to improve for anyone who isn't already one of the .01 percenters. Superhero mythology is a motif in the book. But Reid makes it clear we should not be holding out for a Superman or Captain America or Wonder Woman. As Joan Didion said, "We tell ourselves stories in order to live." What is the new chapter in the story we tell about ourselves? It is up to us to write it.

©2019 All Rights Reserved TheLitForum.com Reviews and reprinted by permission

Review: 'Men Who Would Be King'

THE MEN WHO WOULD BE KING
By Nicole LaPorte
Nonfiction
May 2010
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 978-0-547-13470-3

Once upon a time, three boy-men thought they were pretty good at what they did and pretty important. So did the rest of the world. Then they joined forces, formed DreamWorks SKG and it all fell apart.

Putting the story of Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen together in an easily understood format, despite a huge cast, special effects and multiple storylines, is former Variety reporter Nicole LaPorte. Her book is as detailed as the great entertainment biz reporting of the 80's and 90's by Connie Bruck, Bryan Burrough and Ken Auletta in Vanity Fair and The New Yorker.

All the background noise fades, though, in making clear that the broken promise of this would-be indepedent Hollywood live film, animation, TV, music and game behemoth came down to the personal stories of its founders.