In 1976, James Baldwin showed up in Berkeley to visit me and we hung out and had a great time. Although he never mentioned Truman Capote, I am willing to bet that if I had asked him he would have said, “Yeah, I stopped off to see if you were here to see him on my way out of New York.” The fictional truth is a greater truth than any that we have in real life.
Why are any of us drawn to twisted or ironic amusements? And if my answer is dark, why would I want to document it? Still, now that I am looking at my predilection straight on, it unsettles me.
Both Taraborrelli and Anthony reach for an authentic Jackie beneath the layers of scrupulously constructed self-representation populating the archives and historical record. In his preface, Taraborrelli laments that generations of fans, reporters, and the general public have long been “guilty of trying to make her something she was not and never wanted to be–not a mere mortal but, rather, some sort of mythological figure.”
Patty Hearst was a rich man’s lost daughter, a damsel tied to the railroad tracks. Two months later, she was Helen of Troy. For young people, she became a transgressive idol, a young woman with the courage to break away from privilege and propriety. For nervous parents, she was a warning siren. For the FBI, she was a likely traitor and a pain in the ass. This was the nation’s first political kidnapping, and the simultaneous celebrity and nonentity, radical symbolism and girlish innocence, fascinated people.
We tend to think of the armed services for their main mission: ‘warfighting’ (and preparing for it). On the face of it, remembering seems to come more slowly. The Naval History and Heritage Command (NHHC) serves as the Navy’s institutional memory by preserving, acquiring, producing, and disseminating history and heritage products. Its vast warehouses testify to just how rich the history of the US Navy is.
Everybody wanted a piece of Sister Wilhelmina. Not a relic; those days are over. But they wanted to touch her, know her, maybe leave with a CD of the sisters’ music or a copy of the biography that was hastily whipped up. Even people who held religion at arm’s length read the national news stories, hungry for awe. And who does not need a miracle?
Macoupin County, Illinois, which holds Virden and Mt. Olive, has other important labor sites. But Mother Jones’s grave and two-story granite monument on the outskirts of Mt. Olive might be seen to mark a split in the soul of working-class America that is still evident in our nation’s division.
It has been surreal to witness more of our departures from here than our arrivals. Having been among those who left, I returned searching for clarity on the future of St. Louis and still believe in its imminent reinvention.
Greenwood Cemetery welcomes historians just as it welcomes first-grade classes learning about significant people in history. It welcomed Shelley and Raphael Morris in 1999, now leaders of the cemetery, and it welcomed me in the summer of 2023 as I sought to learn more about this burgeoning Saint Louis stronghold.
He had flawless musical timing, comic timing, cultural timing. When he fell out of time, we sped away from him. We still say Satchmo’s name, Ella’s, Sinatra’s, Elvis’s, with reverence. But only a smattering of fans and jazz musicians invoke “Bing Crosby” with similar awe.
