Spare yourself the agony of reading this alleged analysis of 1959 as a year of monumental change. If it was a boring as Fred Caplan makes it seem, then all of us would be brain-dead. Kaplan, who is really an arts and leisure writer, is hopefully adrift as any kind of historian, cultural or otherwise.
His artistic prejudice is evident from the time he spends on literature, art and music. He is preoccupied with the beat generation literature, jazz and Motown, the latter of which was really a 60's phenom.
Sports? No mention of any of that. Wasn't arguably the greatest NFL game ever played in 1959 in Baltimore?
We think of 1959 as the apex of Rock and Roll? Kaplan gives rock only two one line mentions. One of those is a passing reference to Buddy Holly, who was killed in 1959 and whose death was a watershed event that Kaplan treats with all the interest of a passing landscape.
Kaplan betrays his politics with a fawning, two paragraph tribute to our current leader - though, of course, Obama was not born until 1961. What the hell he's got to do with 1959 is anyone's guess. He managed to wait until page 5 of the book for this piece of indulgence.
But, in the final analysis, the book is a lazy attempt whose only spark is its title. And then, Kaplan struggles to keep that thread connected with an undiscilplined journey through the subjects that only interest him.
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1 comment:
Rex, I can't agree more. There was a reason that it took me more than two months to scan this book, and I still didn't enjoy reading it.
Your comments about the music are particularly interesting to me. I thought they were misguided and over-blown too.
Harriet
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