Word: memoirs
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...Richard Goodwin, a former speechwriter and aide to L.B.J., has taken such recollections several steps further. In his memoir of the 1960s, Remembering America (Little, Brown; $19.95), Goodwin writes that Johnson was at times literally crazed and that his episodic madness helped propel the U.S. into "a needless tragedy of such immense consequences ((Viet Nam)) that, even now, the prospects for a restorative return remain in doubt." He brazenly diagnoses Johnson's large eccentricities as "incursions of paranoia," which led to leaps "into unreason" that "infected the entire presidential institution...
...Blanc's memoir makes clear, his heart and vocal cords belong to the real Toontown, Warner Bros., in the days when Yosemite Sam and Pepe Le Pew were as popular as Bogart and Boyer. For those who care, Blanc reveals the secrets of the stars: why Bugs Bunny speaks with a Brooklyn accent, why Porky stutters, and why Daffy Duck lisps. Those who do not care, as Blanc concludes, are desthpicable...
...shuttle from England to Saudi Arabia, carrying heavy machinery to and cheap petroleum fro. Several years ago, British Journalist Robert Hutchison enlisted in the small army of these diesel gypsies, sharing their home cooking and their raunchy exploits. Aside from engine trouble and the occasional stray bullet, his lively memoir records few acknowledgments of the 20th century. Ancient hostilities persist, and bribery remains endemic. Still, customs inspectors prefer modern baksheesh. At one checkpoint, the presentation of a girly magazine "got us all waved out of the compound without further hassle...
Holleran's collection of essays and Paul Monette's memoir of his dying lover, Borrowed Time (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich; 342 pages; $18.95), are reports from the combat zone. They are far more personalized than Randy Shilts' And the Band Played On (1987), a survey of the medical, political and social impact of AIDS. Holleran and Monette stand waist-deep in the wreckage of homosexual society, particularly that mayfly culture that soared during the '70s and plunged abruptly when the virus struck hard at the beginning...
Buried within the lengthy list of acknowledgments at the end of this life of John Cheever is a poignant sentence indeed: "The most important book dealing with Cheever's life is Susan Cheever's Home Before Dark, a sensitive memoir that provides fascinating quotations from his journals and letters." Scott Donaldson, a professor of English at the College of William and Mary, does not go on to explain why his book hardly quotes journals and letters at all, but the reason is obvious. Susan's book about her father was published in 1984, several years before an important glitch arose...