Word: omaha
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...strengthened as I approached a town and fuzzed away as I entered the countryside. The airwaves were jumpy, uncertain and alive, a patchwork of distinctive accents and peculiar regional interests. I knew I was getting close to Texas from the twang of steel guitars. I realized I might reach Omaha by suppertime when I started hearing crop reports. Often, when I was traveling through North Dakota, the only voices I could hear spoke in Native American languages, whose singsong tones, though I found them unintelligible, eased the loneliness of the long, straight highways...
...problem, however, is that “Omaha Blues” is not really his story...
...issue is not one of invention or hyperbole, of motive or execution, but rather one of focus. The country of memory Lelyveld establishes in “Omaha Blues” feels like a homestead awarded him by chance, a claim better left unworked in favor of more fruitful ventures. His experience reporting overseas would seem to be rich territory upon which to build a memoir, but those are not the years and the events he chooses to survey in this text...
...latter part of “Omaha Blues” functions as a tribunal intent on uncovering the vagaries of a misremembered, distorted, and often undocumented past outside of Lelyveld’s own experience, a Rashomon-like court set with the tasks of weighing evidence, collecting testimony, piecing together a mystery...
...result, however, is a work that itself reads as mysteriously pieced together. Lelyveld’s goals work at cross-purposes, leaving the reader confused and disappointed. “Omaha Blues” shows how difficult it is to both conjure a ghost and purge restless memories within a single text. The endeavor is a valiant one, but it would have been better served by reserving its disparate aims for independent ventures...