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On the Cutting Edge of the Weird
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11598 |
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BOOK WORLD
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9 / 1986 |
3,638 Words |
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James J. Thompson, Jr.
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THE SOUL OF AMERICA
Esquire
New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1986.
Hardbound. 298 pages. $16.95
That Esquire should undertake to fathom the "Soul of America" indicates the gravity of our travail in these late days of the twentieth century. How did Esquire latch on to such a high-toned topic? One imagines the following sequence of events. Rummaging around for something meaty to sandwich between sumptuous advertisements that peddle (with exquisite taste and insouciant savoir faire) pricey apparel, musk-mist after shave, mauve bikini briefs, and sundry costly ephemera, the editors snatched up the idea of probing the nation's soul. They rounded up the most journalists’ money could buy, cozened them with munificent expense accounts, and unleashed them upon the hinterlands. The editors back in New York nervously awaited the dispatches from out there, the wilderness beyond the Hudson River. The reports began to trickle in; hosannas rang from the editorial cubicles: "We've found it! The elusive soul of America has been run to ground scrutinized, measured, and categorized." However this project occurred, Esquire shared its findings with the public in the June 1985 issue of the magazine; the tidings have now been enshrined between hard covers to ensure their preservation for generations yet unborn.
The two dozen writers are not to be faulted for participating in this dotty venture; it provided a chance to have fun on someone else's money, to get away from that damnably oppressive typewriter, to flee the mortgage installment, dentist's bill, and Master Charge statement screaming to be paid, to travel a bit, meet colorful characters, and savor a slice of Americana. Most of them returned handsome dividends on the money invested. A sharp eye for small but revealing details and an ear attuned to the nuances of social discourse inform the best of these pieces: David Halberstam's descent into the nutty realm of Indiana high school basketball; C.D.B. Bryan's adventures among the vulgarly rich in Houston; Charlie Haas excursion into Westwood, California, "the Silicon Valley of Silly Delight"; and Peter Davis dissection of the "154 white males" aboard Eastern Airlines' Washington-New York shuttle.
Such pieces caution one against disparaging the journalistic trade. At their most observant and percipient, its practitioners boast an enviable record of illuminating the shards of experience that form the entity known as "America." Jacob Riis’ prowlings in the tenements and alleys of New York City in the 1880s eventuated in the searing indictment of How the Other Half Lives. Lincoln Steffens' nose for a good story engendered the cogent expose of urban malfeasance in The Shame of the Cities. In 1941 James Agee transformed reporting into poetry in Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. In our own day, Tom Wolfe and Hunter Thompson have melded the talents of novelist, reporter, sociologist, anthropologist, and comic pathologist to disclose the poignancy, piquancy, idiocy, and grotesquerie of everything from Redondo Beach muscle-boys to the doyens of artistic flim-flammery from motorcycle goons to drug-warped lunatics.
The danger is that the journalist will take himself too seriously - will seize the prophet's mantle and stumble from the desert shouting divine imprecations, or will turn pontificator and issue august reproaches to correct the errant ways of benighted public. Such preachiness
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