Omaha Blues A Memory Loop

by Lelyveld, Joseph

• ISBN13: 9780312425104
• ISBN10: 0312425104
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2006-03-21
• Publisher: Picador

Summary

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 Book A 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 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." "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 personal'”the secrets of his warring and troubled parents and his own injured youth. At the heart of the story is a misaligned Midwestern marriage'”a 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 contempl

Author Biography

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.

Table of Contents

"[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