Word: harrisons
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...hard to see how McCain's multiple mansions or $500 shoes detract from his economic plans, and just about impossible to see how Obama's decision to vacation near his grandmother in Hawaii undercuts his claim to economic leadership. But ever since the wealthy Whig William Henry Harrison's brilliant "log cabin and hard cider" campaign, candidates have tried to strike an Everyman pose, and missteps that have made them look "out of touch" - like George H.W. Bush checking his watch during an economic debate, or John Kerry windsurfing off Nantucket, or even Bill Clinton of Hope, Ark., getting...
...couple of decades now, the stars of big movies have been trending younger, until it seemed that the next generation of the Hollywood élite would emerge not from high schools but from the womb. This summer, though, has brought good news for geriatric actors--those over 30. Harrison Ford, who at 66 is, in movie years, practically a sequoia, looked at least as vigorous as the Indiana Jones film he headlined. Comic-book epics also have middle-aged men in lead roles: Robert Downey Jr., 43, in Iron Man and 58-year-old Ron Perlman in Hellboy...
...contrast, it took only a few hours to catch the killer in Kathryn Harrison's While They Slept (Random House; 290 pages). Early on the morning of April 27, 1984, Billy Frank Gilley Jr., then 18, beat his parents and his sister Becky to death with a baseball bat in their home in Oregon. He said afterward that he did it to save himself and his other sister Jody from an abusive domestic situation. He imagined that they would run away together. Jody called...
This story fascinated Harrison for years before she tracked down Billy (still in prison) and Jody (now a successful businesswoman) and interviewed them. Billy's quasi-incestuous interest in his sister echoes an episode of incest in Harrison's life. "I find [their story] has a forbidden, sexual charge," she writes. "Because love, murder and running away together do imply sex. They do suggest an illicit erotic fixation." There's something very creepy about her interest in the Gilley murders that is difficult for the reader to make peace with--she is not just a clarifying, interpreting narrator; she also...
...Harrison rummages heroically through the detritus of Gilley family life, which is certainly authentically depressing: poverty, alcoholism, physical and emotional abuse. But the deep, human reality of Billy's act eludes her--he is a dull, nasty subject, with none of the thwarted, Romantic brilliance with which Capote endows his subjects. Or maybe the problem is that she grasps Billy's truth too well, and that While They Slept suffers from an excess of honesty. That's something Capote certainly avoided in In Cold Blood. When it comes to true crime, too much truth can be fatal...