1974

A Personal History

De: Francine Prose

Narrado por: Francine Prose

1974 has descriptive copy which is not yet available from the Publisher.

Powerful personal history

I really enjoyed reading this “personal history” of what it was like to be a young woman in her twenties starting a writing career and finding her way through the world—at a particular moment in time, 1974, and through the lens of a brief relationship she had with Tony Russo, who had gained fame for his role in leaking the Pentagon Papers. This is not a straight-up national history book about 1974 and the Pentagon Papers. Yet it powerfully conveys what it was like for one young woman to be alive at that time, in the United States—the aspirations her immigrant parents had for her, her own curiosity, anxieties, and quest to build a life in the wake of the 1960s idealism when values and politics were shifting... and toward what? The book gives us a sense of how the present and the future seemed open-ended, almost in free fall, at least for the author at the time.

It’s a book about memory, about change and continuity in the self, so the narrative actually weaves in and out of 1974, to prior and later years. Stylistically, the frequent use of repetition to open a series of sentences effectively dramatizes the efforts of the author-narrator at piecing together a past self from the present perspective, and finding meaning in it. Whether framed as assertions, speculations, or reflections, these refrains are like a hypnotic drumbeat, or heartbeat, running through the book in a way that reminds me of Joe Brainard’s beautiful autobiography, “I Remember” — which is apt, considering that Brainard’s book came out in 1970-75, the very time period when this book is set. Listening to the voice of the author herself narrating this personal history powerfully amplifies that feeling. The effect is like a spirit medium conjuring up a past self—channeling that past self, relationships, experiences, sensations, and thoughts—through the perspective of the present, alternately tinged with regret, insight, curiosity, compassion. And indeed, at various points in the book, the author-narrator mentions the various mystical practices that she and others turned to at the time, like I-Ching divination and tarot cards. The book communicates this search for meaning and reassurance in a world where the ground seemed to be constantly shifting like sand.

PS One of my favorite parts of the book is how she recounts Tony’s description of his boss in Saigon, “Dr Strangelove”. (Chapter: “We got back in the car”)

A Lost Era with Lost People

Francine Prose traces her relationship as a young writer with Anthony Russo, co-conspirator with Daniel Ellsberg in the release of the Pentagon Papers that exposed government duplicity in regard to the Vietnam War. Prose captures the scattered and confused qualities of the mid-1970s, when the idealism of the 1960s has waned, but nothing has yet replaced it. Traditions of friendship, love, and loyalty had been overturned, and people were still making up what would replace those traditions as they went along. Falling in something like love with Russo, the young Prose found herself experiencing something like vertigo and she uses Alfred Hitchcock’s film throughout as a metaphor for what she experienced in this period. A fascinating story, often painful, and sometimes approaching navel-gazing in places. I don’t know that Prose was the best choice as a reader; her halting style was distracting in places, and I could not tell if there were chapter breaks anywhere.

Droning about unremarkable events

The performance was indeed, bad. But I would have rated the book more highly if it had a more interesting story to tell. The reviewer I read implied a more eventful tale, better told.

Kept waiting for it to improve

What a boring book about the author's short friendship with a semi famous person, who is not of interest to many people in our current time. If you are a person curious about the era of the Vietnam Nam war period you may find this of slight interest. There is nothing to give away as the book has no plot twist or other usual elements of memoir writing. The book is about the psychological decline Tony Russo post Pentagon Papers/Vietnam Nam war... the author was enraptured by is fame regarding his part in the Pentagon Papers.
I kept waiting for the book to improve or pick up. It never does. Further, the author reads it herself, she is very monotone. BORING!