“Idols are best when they’re made of stone,” Joan Baez wrote in a song about Bob Dylan, the songwriting voice of a generation. It could also apply to a man many viewed as being the literary hero of the counterculture. As Charles J. Shields shows in his outstanding biography of the author, Vonnegut was far […]
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It sounds a bit like a script for a television show or film under the Disney umbrella. A small high school in a town of 250 people decides to start a football team. The goalpost crossbars are built out of two by fours. The players don’t wear jerseys. They wear sweatshirts with the numbers painted […] It sticks out on almost any bookshelf. Like the cover, a white circle appears in the center of the jacket spine, the antithesis of the black that otherwise fills the space. In the midst of the circle is black again, but in the shape of the Nazi swastika. The title, The Rise and Fall of […] Statues and busts have advantages over the heroes and icons they depict. Any imperfections are superficial, unlike human flaws. Their character is fixed, not subject to further research and analysis. But anyone who insists folk heroes must be paragons of virtue ignores the reality of human nature. Even — and perhaps especially — those with […] |
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