Synopses & Reviews
In the basement of the Cleveland synagogue where his father, Arthur, was a celebrated rabbi, Joseph Lelyveld finds a musty trunk of souvenirs. Applying his award-winning investigative skills, as both a newspaperman and author, Lelyveld uses his father's letters and mementos to rediscover his shakily remembered childhood, and his parent's unhappy marriage. Lelyveld's journey through personal history unexpectedly touches landmarks of the past century--the Scottsboro trials, the Zionist movement, the Hollywood blacklist, and Mississippi's "freedom summer" of 1964--and, in the words of Joan Didion, "this astonishing journal of personal discovery" combines "both a powerfully affecting family history and a political history of the most complex kind."
Joseph Lelyveld's career at
The New York Times spanned nearly four decades and included stints as a correspondent in London, New Delhi, Hong Kong, and Johannesburg. He also served as the paper's foreign editor, managing editor, and, from 1994 to 2001, executive editor. He is the author of
Move Your Shadow:
South Africa, Black and White, which won the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction in 1986. He lives in New York.
A New York Times Notable BookA Chicago Tribune Best Book of the Year
In the basement of the Cleveland synagogue where his father, Arthur, was a celebrated rabbi, Joseph Lelyveld finds a musty trunk of souvenirs. Applying his award-winning investigative skills as both a newspaper-man and author, Lelyveld uses his father's letters and mementos to rediscover his shakily remembered childhood and his parents' unhappy marriage. Lelyveld's journey through personal history unexpectedly touches landmarks of the past centurythe Scottsboro trials, the Zionist movement, the Hollywood blacklist, and Mississippi's Freedom Summer of 1964and, in the words of Joan Didion, "this astonishing journal of personal discovery" combines "both a powerfully affecting family history and a political history of the most complex kind." "Captivating and affecting . . . His account is clear-eyed, curious, scrupulous."André Aciman, The New York Times
"It is not the habit of newspapermen, even those as accomplished as Lelyveld, a former executive editor of the Times, to write memoirs of the heart. The usual mode is wry, crackling nostalgia (Mencken and Dreiser) or institutional accounting (Arthur Gelb, Max Frankel). At the Times, Lelyveld was known as a brilliant yet shy master of the newsroom, but here he is after something nakedly personalthe secrets of his warring and troubled parents and his own injured youth. At the heart of the story is a misaligned Midwestern marriagea literary mother and a political father, who was one of the most prominent Reform rabbis in the country. Lelyveld goes about his project of retrieval bravely, with the industry, the scrupulousness, and the ruthlessness of a lifetime's reportorial discipline. The result is a book that does not care to charm, and does not; rather, it arrives at redemption and forgiveness through the meticulous act of finding out, and recording, the truth."The New Yorker "Reminiscent of Proust's account of his forgotten childhood world suddenly reappearing . . . his book is more like life than memoir . . . Remarkable."Russell Baker, The New York Review of Books "Lelyveld has blessed us with a careful, sensitive, and moving book . . . A triumph of storytelling."Philip Connors, Newsday "Omaha Blues is an intensely personal book. What saves it from navel-gazing is Lelyveld's painfully beautiful writing and his distanced, almost analytical, portrayal of his parents' flaws and his own unhappiness. His father, while loving, was mostly absent from Joseph's life, jaunting around the country for his causes. His mother, plagued by mental illness and suicide attempts, was clearly disenchanted with motherhood. During the summer of his sixth year, Joseph was left with a family of strangers in rural Nebraska, where he contemplated his abandonment. Critics called the book moving and unforgettable for its personal elements and cited its glimpses into the civil rights and Zionist movements, in which the elder Lelyveld was deeply involved."Donna Marchetti, The Plain Dealer “Although his parents nicknamed him "the memory boy," former New York Times executive editor Lelyveld can't remember how he earned such a moniker. In this memoir, the author reflects on this detail as well as other familial eccentricities as he sorts through his dying father's belongings. He recalls not just his own past, but that of his rabbi father and Shakespearean scholar mother, as well as political events of their time, like the Scottsboro trials and the Zionist movement . . . Readers will appreciate and connect with the way he tries to unravel his past and examine its details almost as they present themselvesas one would for the paper of record.”Publishers Weekly "Generous, evenhanded . . . Eccentric . . . [Told] in mellifluous prose."Kirkus Reviews
Review
"[
Omaha Blues] arrives at redemption and forgiveness through the meticulous act of finding out, and recording, the truth."--
The New Yorker"Reminiscent of Proust's account of his forgotten childhood world suddenly reappearing. . . . His book is more like life than memoir. . . . Remarkable."--Russell Baker, The New York Review of Books
"Lelyveld has blessed us with a careful, sensitive and moving book . . . a triumph of storytelling."--Philip Connors, Newsday
Synopsis
The profoundly moving family history of one of America's greatest newspapermen.
As his father lies dying, Joseph Lelyveld finds himself in the basement of the Cleveland synagogue where Arthur Lelyveld was the celebrated rabbi. Nicknamed the memory boy by his parents, the fifty-nine-year-old son begins to revisit the portion of his father's life recorded in letters, newspaper clippings, and mementos stored in a dusty camp trunk. In an excursion into an unsettled and shakily recalled period of his boyhood, Lelyveld uses these artifacts, and the journalistic reporting techniques of his career as an author and editor, to investigate memories that have haunted him in adult life..
With equal measures of candor and tenderness, Lelyveld unravels the tangled story of his father and his mother, a Shakespeare scholar whose passion for independence led her to recoil from her roles as a clergyman's wife and, for a time, as a mother. This reacquired history of his sometimes troubled family becomes the framework for the author's story; in particular, his discovery in early adolescence of the way personal emotions cue political choices, when he is forced to choose sides between his father and his own closest adult friend, a colleague of his father's who is suddenly dismissed for concealing Communist ties.
Lelyveld's offort to recapture his family history takes him on an unforeseen journey past disparate landmarks of the last century, including the Scottsboro trials, the Zionist movement, the Hollywood blacklist, McCarthyism, and Mississippi's freedom summer of 1964. His excursion becomes both a meditation on the selectivity and unreliability of memory and a testimony to thepossibilities, even late in life, for understanding and healing. As Lelyveld seeks out the truth of his life story, he evokes a remarkable moment in our national story with unforgettable poignancy.
Synopsis
In the basement of the Cleveland synagogue where his father, Arthur, was a celebrated rabbi, Joseph Lelyveld finds a musty trunk of souvenirs. Applying his award-winning investigative skills, as both a newspaperman and author, Lelyveld uses his father's letters and mementos to rediscover his shakily remembered childhood, and his parent's unhappy marriage. Lelyveld's journey through personal history unexpectedly touches landmarks of the past century--the Scottsboro trials, the Zionist movement, the Hollywood blacklist, and Mississippi's "freedom summer" of 1964--and, in the words of Joan Didion, "this astonishing journal of personal discovery" combines "both a powerfully affecting family history and a political history of the most complex kind."
Synopsis
In the basement of the Cleveland synagogue where his father, Arthur, was a celebrated rabbi, Joseph Lelyveld finds a musty trunk of souvenirs. Applying his award-winning investigative skills, as both a newspaperman and author, Lelyveld uses his father's letters and mementos to rediscover his shakily remembered childhood, and his parent's unhappy marriage. Lelyveld's journey through personal history unexpectedly touches landmarks of the past century--the Scottsboro trials, the Zionist movement, the Hollywood blacklist, and Mississippi's "freedom summer" of 1964--and, in the words of Joan Didion, "this astonishing journal of personal discovery" combines "both a powerfully affecting family history and a political history of the most complex kind."
About the Author
Joseph Lelyveld's career at
The New York Times spanned nearly four decades. He served as the paper's foreign editor, managing editor, and executive editor. He is the author of
Move Your Shadow: South Africa, Black and White, which won a Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction in 1986. He lives in New York.