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Bob Greene II

Greene still writes books, and he does so successfully, post-scandal.


He wrote of the illness and death of a friend of his in And You Know You Should be Glad (2006).

Publishers Weekly called this book a "dusty attic of lost Americana," because Greene uses it to re-visit the small town midWest USA milieu where he and Jack -- the fellow who is dying -- had first met (and they did so on their first day in kindergarten!) and become friends.

Amazon.com's customer reviews are enthusiastic. A fellow named Peter Frost gives it five stars, saying "Yes, this book is sad in places, but it leaves you with a profound feeling of ... how important it is to have friends, and what they mean to us."

It is easy to make fun of the sort of schmaltz that gets that sort of review, but pulling it off, at book length, an act that requires some variety and dramatic heft, is trickier than sophisticates imagine. Greene does have a gift.

Here he is in the book's opening passage, remembering the early 1950s, his father, and of course his boyhood friends' fathers. "Those men home from their war -- what must they have thought?  It hadn't even been ten years for them, back then -- ten years earlier they had been fighting in Europe, fighting on the islands of the Pacific, and then they were here, leaning against their Fords and Buicks, waiting while their sons finished playing soldier in the dying sun."

The "dying sun" reference arises because his friend had just said, "Your dad used to watch us some times," referring to times when Greene Sr. would pick up Bob in a certain neighborhood and bring him home to dinner. But to end that particular sentence with "in the dying sun" took a certain heart-string-tugging skill.

My point?  Do I need one? -- it's my bloody blog! 

My point is that there was a time when I would have made fun of Greene. But now I have to say I admire his skill, even though it appeals to a niche to which I don't belong (I haven't read the book, and I just used the search-inside feature of amazon to find that quote). And to which I quite happily don't belong.

Bestr of luck in your future endeavors, Bob.
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  1. RDAugust 19, 2012 at 4:05 PM

    Contrast Greene on "Jack" with Joseph Epstein on his dying friend Edward Shils:

    http://cdclv.unlv.edu/archives/interactionism/biographies/shils_epstein.pdf

    Epstein is, BTW, the greatest American essayist of our time. As authentic of a Chicago Jewish intellectual as Saul Bellow.

    ReplyDelete

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