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Vachss is haunted by society’s dirty little secret — sexual abuse of children.
His books are strewn with the psychological casualties and human remains that
lie in its wake. Under the guise of hard-boiled crime fiction and well beyond
the almost obligatory hardened cynicism of his anti-hero lies a seething
outrage that is downright palpable. It is this outrage — not only toward the
human predators that inextricably damage their innocent victims but also the
antiquated laws and jaded legal system that all too often protect them — that
fuels Burke’s forays from the glass high-rises, tony townhouses, and patrician
brownstones of respectability to the darkest, nastiest crevices of Gotham’s
fetid netherworld.
Those who work professionally in this field know that perhaps the major issue
of the decade has been the controversy over repressed/recovered memory and its
inevitable backlash movement whose cries of “witch hunts” and “false
allegations” have drawn headlines nationwide. In his new book, aptly titled
False Allegations (Knopf, $23 hard), Vachss tackles the issue head-on
and in Burke’s search for “the truth” the reader is given an all-too-real
education about the harrowing world of child abuse in its many forms —
physical and emotional. It’s certainly interesting to see how Vachss covers the
bases as his plot methodically unfolds.
Burke is hired by a mysterious lawyer to investigate whether a woman’s
allegations of childhood abuse are, in fact, truthful. The action may
slow for some readers when the trail leads Burke to a cutting edge research
institute in Texas which is based on the Civitas Child Trauma programs run by
the real-life Dr. Bruce Perry at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. Others
will no doubt find the neurophysiological information imparted there to be
utterly fascinating. More importantly, it provides a crux of the author’s
crusade in educating the public while helping to more thoroughly validate the
pretext of his own writing.
 Andrew Vachss |
populated by a sordid collection of deliciously twisted characters. His
depiction of women, however, as all-too-vulnerable survivors has become, I
feel, a tad predictable. The exception being, thus far, the intense former
DA-turned renegade, Wolfe, herself a survivor of a very different sort of abuse
at the hands of entrenched bureaucrats and unresponsive institutions. I would
love to see her character developed more fully in future episodes.
Andrew Vachss has carved out a distinct niche for himself within the crowded
world of crime fiction with a terse, page-turning style and by directly
addressing an issue only hinted at by others, an issue that plumbs the depths
of the human psyche. From his unique vantage point of having worked extensively
with children and youth, the implied allegations in his fictional creations are
anything but false.
— Jay Trachtenberg
It comes as no surprise that when Toni Morrison, acclaimed author of Tar Baby and
Beloved, accepted the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished
Contribution to American Letters this past November, she gave a speech. The
Dancing Mind (Knopf, $12 hard) is the text of that speech in book form. In
this most anorexic of “slim volumes” Morrison affirms the unfettered exchange
of ideas in a free society as the highest good. In such a society both writing
and reading may be enjoyed for their own sake.
The exchange of ideas between two open minds, without fear of censorship or
censure, is the metaphorical dance of the title. A society which is not
threatened by this exchange becomes the venue in which the dance takes place.
Such a forum exists in this country most accessibly for Morrison in the form of
printed media and she charges those of us who write and read with the
responsibility of maintaining it.
Reading, at leisure and in depth (spending quality time with a book, if you
will) is the first and most difficult step in Morrison’s dance of minds. The
day-to-day recedes as the reader’s mind creates an alternative reality
mirroring the images and ideas produced by the writer’s mind. Time passes
differently. The experience is primarily its own reward, but there can be other
benefits — information and emotional support, for example. Nevertheless, it is
the experience of reading, the process itself, which becomes the goal. Morrison
brilliantly illustrates this point with the first of two anecdotes. A Ph.D.
candidate struggles to teach himself this skill which many of us take for
granted. As a young man born to affluence and privilege, his well-meaning (if
somewhat misguided) parents held him to an itinerary of “carefully selected
activities,” from which he was to tick off a mental checklist of facts and
emotional soundbites. There was no time to process or think about what had been
experienced: Completing the checklist in the allotted time was the goal. He had
never allowed himself to read an enjoyable book from cover to cover for its own
sake. Like an English composition student with an overdue paper, he was too
involved in a scavenger hunt for facts, setting, plot, style, etc.
Many of us experienced the dance of minds as children. Since our parents
provided our basic needs, we were free to read as the mood struck us and did so
with gusto, often aloud with shameless enthusiasm. As adults, the struggle for
fiscal survival prevents many of us from reading as we once did. Instead, we
read to advance our careers, to invest wisely in our 401Ks or to discover if
the weather will allow us to drive to work or school in the morning. We read
much as the graduate student did, to pass a test or complete a program.
The expression of what is meaningful, in writing or in some other form, is the
second step in Morrison’s dance. She met the subject of her second anecdote
while in Strasbourg at a meeting of the Parliament of Writers, an organization
committed to rescuing persecuted writers. A “splendidly educated” woman writer
lives under an oppressive regime where her outspoken views have often placed
her life in danger. In a moment of extreme emotion, she entreats Morrison to
help her and other similarly persecuted writers: “You have to help us. They are
shooting us down in the street.'”
As Americans, we cite the First Amendment in response to such atrocities and
assert that it couldn’t happen here. Nevertheless, The Austin Chronicle was temporarily “banned” from a local supermarket chain a few years ago;
anti-abortion activists proudly claim responsibility for the deaths of family
planning physicians and employees; the Communications Decency Act threatens to
transform the Internet into a virtual Disneyland; and Larry Flynt (unpopular as
he might be in some circles) was shot and paralyzed from the waist down by a
white supremacist sniper who objected to his magazine. If the Jesse Helmses and
“Community Standards” advocates of our society are given free reign, would the
“official vigilantism” and even “murder” that Morrison speaks of be that far
behind?
The fact that the publishing “industry” engages in its own form of censorship
is not lost on Morrison. Books, magazine articles, films, and other media are
often “marketed” based on their ability to “sell” to a particular audience. It
is unfortunate that salability can have an adverse effect on the availability
of alternative viewpoints. Well, there is no accounting for the public
taste.
In The Dancing Mind, Toni Morrison affirms the exchange of ideas,
through reading and writing, as the highest form of communication. She charges
those of us who read and write with the responsibility of ensuring that there
is always a safe space in which to do either. I enjoyed reading it and
recommend it to anyone with a passionate interest in reading or writing.
However, poor as I am, at $12 (71cents a page), I would wait for the paperback
or for its inclusion in something else.
— Don Palmer
What is “The American
Dream?” Most of us would define it as, “If you work hard, and your company
prospers, you too shall prosper.” Filmmaker and humorist Michael Moore believes
the real answer is, “You work hard, the company prospers — and you lose your
job.”
In 1989 Moore directed Roger and Me, an inspired chronicle of his quest
to contact General Motors chairman Roger Smith about the economic ruin that
befell more than 40,000 laid off Flint, Michigan workers. Dark and dripping
with irony, Roger and Me was the highest-grossing documentary film ever.
Moore’s next success was an Emmy-award winning run of two seasons with TV
Nation, a sort of home video version of 60 Minutes.
Now Moore has published a bestseller, Downsize This: Random Threats from an
Unarmed American (Crown, $21 hard). The book’s 35 essays, scrutinizing
politicos (“Would Pat Buchanan Cash a Check From Satan?”), government (“Don’t
Vote — It Only Encourages Them”), and even O.J. (“O.J. Is Innocent”) amount to
a Poke in the Eye of The Man with a sharp stick.
Perhaps the keenest observer of America in the 1990s, Moore is Mark Twain with
a word processor. “Show Trials I’d Like To See” relates how he’d enjoy packing
80,000 rabid citizens into Giants Stadium to demand justice against some of our
times’ main offenders, who’d be paraded to the 50-yard line by a tribunal
comprised of Ed Asner, JFK, Jr., and Daisy Fuentes (“Don’t ask”). Moore
fantasizes about “The People versus the NRA,” and “The People versus the Guy
Responsible for the Little Silver Tape You Can’t Get Off the CD Box.”
One of the book’s highlights, “A Sperm’s Right to Life,” puts forth that life
begins with the sperm and that too many men are out there “recklessly aborting
their sperm.” Perhaps the most difficult of Moore’s offerings is his defense of
O.J. on the basis of police corruption and circumstantial evidence (sound
familiar?), but his point of view is what makes the essay compelling. He closes
it by addressing The Juice directly: “You tried harder than any black man to be
`one of us’ and a lot of good that did you.”
In strange times, the only certainty is strangeness. A McDonald’s restaurant
in South Dakota is offering $25 to potential employees just to fill out an
application, yet nearly 20 million Americans are either unemployed or are
earning wages below the poverty line. However, before we all move to Sioux
Falls, consider that our top CEOs are paid more than 200 times what their
average workers earn, yet they continue to cut jobs in fearsome quantity to
improve profits.
What can we do about all of this? According to Moore, we can join “Mike’s
Militia.” The purpose of Mike’s Militia includes selling raffle tickets, the
proceeds for which will be used for militia members to go on field trips to
places like the Nixon Library, John DuPont’s World of Wrestling, or a sleepover
in the Unabomber’s shack. Strange times indeed. — Stuart Wade
This article appears in February 7 • 1997 and February 7 • 1997 (Cover).