Word: memoir
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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This "irreverent memoir" of Arthur Fiedler and the Pops, written by his assistant conductor for 40 years, is frustrating to read because Dickson simply cannot write well enough to bring Fiedler's evidently singular personality and career to life. Music buffs, if they concentrate hard, can probably glean from Dickson's anecdotes some sense of the excitement it must have been to work closely with Fiedler over the years, and feel the star-watcher's thrill at the Pops parade of brilliant guest performers; those who suffered through piano lessons and drillwork can catch the allusion and laugh at jazz...
Thus the "irreverent memoir" winds up telling little about Fiedler. It reveals more about Dickson, as an assistant's grateful tribute to the experience of working with his maestro. Dickson's compendium of reminiscences and moments, a handful of which do seem interesting enough to be memorable, can, given sufficient effort and imagination from the reader, furnish the tools to create the picture of what it was like to know Fiedler and the Pops--but the image remains blurred and ineffective for those without the urge to do-it-yourself...
...from society's foibles, lit out for the "territory ahead of the others" to avoid being "sivilized," he formalized an American tradition of adolescent rebellion. Now Joel Agee, son of Writer James Agee (A Death in the Family), steps in those boyish footprints in this finely written, moving memoir. From age eight to 20, Agee's life in East Germany reveals a young swashbuckler at odds with collectivism and Teutonic culture, and with his own aspirations. By turns poetic and picturesque, Agee energetically catalogues his expatriate passage to manhood with a pinpoint eye and a healthy American distaste...
...noisily resigned last May in a dispute over defense spending and the future of the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. Last week Israeli readers pored over selected controversial passages from Weizman's soon-to-be-published book, The Battle for Peace, a salty, 395-page memoir of the period straddling the 1978 Camp David accords. Excerpts...
...even as the statistics and footage of war receded in a blur of swoosh stripes, words began to sprout. A poem, a play, a novel, a memoir might recall what most citizens wished to forget. Some could not. Viet Nam veterans grew older, had children and, as if by some compulsion to pass on their stories, began to talk. In the spring of 1981 the "livingroom war" shows signs of becoming the tape-recorder...