Behind the Moss Curtain: And Other Great Savannah Stories [Hardcover]

Murray Silver (Author), Cristina Piva (Editor)

Editorial Reviews

Review

Congratulations on Behind the Moss Curtain. I don't think I've yet found a writer, or any other media personality, for that matter, that really captures the multi-dimensional Savannah the way you do. Everything else seems like a façade, what people want Savannah to be, as opposed to what it is. --Orlando Montoya, Georgia Public Radio

Product Details

• Hardcover: 285 pages
• Publisher: Bonaventture Books; 5th edition (December 3, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0972422404
• ISBN-13: 978-0972422406
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.8 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #381,206 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Murray Silver is a 5th generation Savannahian. He worked in the late 60's as a promoter for rock bands like Fleetwood Mac, Grateful Dead, the Allman Brothers, and others. While going to law school he transitioned from promoter to journalist in the 70's and 80's touring with acts such as Pink Floyd, Paul McCartney, Bob Dylan, Elton John, and Peter Gabriel.

In 1982, Silver published his first book, "Great Balls of Fire: The Uncensored Story of Jerry Lee Lewis," which was adapted to the big screen by Orion in 1989. In doing so, Silver became the first Savannah writer in history whose first book was an international best seller and subject of a major motion picture.

In 1988, Silver was introduced to His Holiness the XIVth Dalai Lama by mutual friend Richard Gere. At His Holiness' request, Silver set aside the business of his life, both personal and professional, to write articles about China's oppression of Tibet, and to sponsor tours of Tibetan Buddhist monks who performed their sacred chants and dances at colleges and museums throughout the United States. Silver was tour manager for SacredMusic, Sacred Dance, and personally responsible for packing and transporting "The Mystical Arts of Tibet Exhibit," which featured personal sacred objects of the Dalai Lama.

Returning to Savannah in 1998, Silver authored "Behind the Moss Curtain and Other Great Savannah Stories," presently in its sixth edition, intending to turn them into Savannah movies. He has recently released his memoirs: "When Elvis Meets the Dalai Lama." Murray has most recently been seen on The Travel Channel's "Ghost Adventures" with Zac Bagans, and is host and associate-producer of the popular PBS series "Haunted South" and "Phantoms of History."

Murray appears regularly on Public Broadcasting Stations across the country, and is a member of MENSA. Murray Silver tours the United States delivering the latest thinking on matters of Spirit, including annual performances as keynote speaker at MENSA's national gathering. He balances his position as America's most sought after commentator on Spirit with his writing including an upcoming title set to launch next year through Continental Shelf Publishing.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Info on several topics from Suspence to Sports, April 25, 2006

By 

Go dawgs "Mad about Georgia Tony" (Georgia. USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Behind the Moss Curtain: And Other Great Savannah Stories (Hardcover)

I met Murray in Savannah at a book signing a couple of years ago.
I really enjoyed the section in the book concerning, Shoeless Joe. There is a lot more to Ole' Joe than bare feet and a magic cornfield! I was so impressed with his writing that I can't wait
for his next book.

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Powerful, poignant, non-fiction!, December 26, 2007

By 

Meyer Pinzer (Hilton Head Island, S. C.) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Behind the Moss Curtain: And Other Great Savannah Stories (Hardcover)

"Always tell the truth, then you do not have to remember what you said!" Silver does this very well. I laughed out loud at "Buster White's Big Fight Night," and cried reading "The Saga of Silent Stafford." I purchased this from the author, who is a unique, passionate, intelligent person. I read the book from cover to cover in 3 days...and have read various chapters more than once. An absolutely splendid addition to any library about Savannah, Ga. Non-fiction at its finest!

19 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Don't Waste Your Money, May 27, 2005

By 

Steven Hobbs (Millsboro, DE) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Behind the Moss Curtain: And Other Great Savannah Stories (Hardcover)

I purchased Behind the Moss Curtain and other great Savannah Stories in a gift shop on cobblestone-paved River Street in Savannah, Georgia. The author, Mr. Murray Silver, was present in the store for a scheduled book-signing event. Upon request, he signed my copy of his tome and cordially welcomed me to Savannah, the quintessential Southern gentleman.

Mr. Silver's work was probably penned with intent to appeal to tourists and Savannahians with an interest in local history, as most of the stories are based on accounts and personalities from the period of the early- to mid-Twentieth century. The city of Savannah is today a booming tourist attraction, primarily because of its historical significance in the state of Georgia, but also because of the attention (and possible notoriety) it gained as a result of John Berendt's wildly popular and wonderfully written novel Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, the dramatized true story of a fatal shooting which occurred in the mansion of a prominent member of the Savannah elite. The book spent four years on The New York Times bestseller list, and subsequently became a major Hollywood production starring Kevin Spacey, John Cusack, Jude Law, and Savannah's own Lady Chablis.

Mr. Silver (and his editor, Cristina Piva) passionately dispute the validity of Berendt's book and motivations, almost from the outset. Ms. Piva's introduction is rife with poor punctuation and sentence structure that causes a careful reader's eyes no end of strain. (Perhaps the structural problems manifested later in the volume are the result of her evident lack of knowledge of what a well-edited piece should look like.) In her essay, Ms. Piva parrots a question raised by Mr. Silver in his derisive remarks about Berendt's stunning success; namely, "Can any town promote Murder to its lasting benefit?" Why she capitalizes "murder" one can only wonder.

In the largest story, "Behind the Moss Curtain," Silver attacks Berendt for profiting from something as sordid as murder. He lambastes Savannahians who have opened gift shops or written stories or made movies about the sort of event Berendt described so well in his novel. Quite a few times Silver asserts that "decent people" would not discuss such distasteful events, nor should they ask questions about them. Silver calls the narrative of Midnight "a cheap and nasty story about sad and pathetic people." (He describes those true events as "cheap and nasty" on three separate occasions in as many pages, causing one to wonder why he does not occasionally consult a thesaurus as he composes his work.)

The great and obvious irony of "Behind the Moss Curtain" (which neither Silver nor his editor seem to grasp) is that he has delivered an equally cheap and nasty story, and has contradicted his self-described "righteous indignation" by writing almost one hundred pages of the stuff that "decent folks won't discuss." "Curtain" revolves around the case of Jesse McKethan, the Butcher Murderer of 1945 who, apparently annoyed over his male lover's attempt at making a go of things with a girl, killed his young friend, cut his corpse into six pieces, and distributed them all over Savannah.

Mr. Silver's moral assault on Berendt and his fellow Savannahians about "profiting" from this brand of distasteful true-crime stories is utterly ridiculous. Unless, of course, Silver is confident that readers will refuse to fork over twenty-two dollars and change to prevent him from looking like a modern-day Pharisee. Ironically, if a reader agreed with Silver's moral position he would be excluded from purchasing Silver's book, and Silver would have violated his own ethics by discussing it, researching it, writing it and subsequently having it published.

Granted, since Silver is a local author in Savannah, his published work is no doubt constantly compared and measured by an unfair standard: what Savannahians call "The Book" (...) authored by their honorary citizen, John Berendt. This may explain why Silver harbors such disdain for Berendt, a Yankee outsider from New York. The light of a star, no matter how lovely and luminous, cannot be seen when the sun is shining in the sky right next to it.

The entire book (or at least the first half, which is all I could manage to slog through) is bursting with basic structural problems that even an amateur editor (like myself) would identify right away. One of Mr. Silver's most maddening tendencies is to suddenly switch from past tense to present tense and then back again. Reading his work is sometimes like watching a long and tedious tennis match where no one ever scores. Here's a paragraph from the story "Buster White's Big Fight" as an example. Note how the paragraph begins in past tense (indeed, the two previous pages were written in past tense) and switches mid-sentence to present tense.

"Buster returned to his hotel and was hanging around the lobby, figuring to catch a couple of Broadway shows and maybe pick up on a few road dates for Savannah so that his trip is not a complete loss, when he ran into Allie Frank, a fight manager from Philly who had a sideline selling diamonds with a money-back guarantee. Buster and Allie are talking about this and that and who is doing what to whom and whether it is the first or second time when Buster complains about his hard luck with Eddie Addis at TNT."

This back-and-forth, "nontensical" indecision is found throughout the stories in the book.

Another frustrating element of the writing is Silver's apparent assumption that his readers are quite stupid. Or at least that's how he made me feel when my eye fell on many of his speaker attributions. (Speaker attributions are the tags that inform the reader who is speaking: "This book has myriad problems," Steve said.) Here are a few examples that demonstrate:

"If the blood on the bags matches the leg, then I'd say the slayer works at Union Bag," Fitzgerald deduces. (Page 44)

"When was the last time either of you saw your son?" Brennan begins. (Page 45)

"Who was the last person to see Luther?" Brennan continues. (Page 45)

"Has Luther ever run off before?" Perkins follows up. (Page 46)

"Then what did you do, Jesse?" Fitzgerald prompts him. (Page 59)

"Jesse, how is it that you killed Luther at your house on 38th Street when you said in your statement that you killed him at 40th and Cedar?" Fitzgerald wants to know. (Page 67)

The problem with all of this deduction and prompting, beginning and continuing, wanting to know and following up, is that it all works to draw attention away from what is actually being said. At the same time, it superfluously explains things that are obvious to the reader. (Do I really need the author to tell me that Detective Fitzgerald wanted to know something when he asked his question?)

Ragged dialogue mechanics like this might be expected in the work of a hack writer, and the average reader would probably not even notice them, but I was surprised to find them in the work of a man whose first published book, Great Balls of Fire: The Uncensored Story of Jerry Lee Lewis, was an international best seller and was adapted to the big screen in 1989. Speaker tags like this slow the writing down, draw attention away from the dialogue, make the work look less professional, and constitute a quiet (albeit unintentional) insult to the reader. (Interestingly enough, Silver leaves it up to his readers to determine whether the word "nigger," used on page 68, is spoken from his perspective or from the viewpoint of one of his characters.)

While the characters and events described in the stories are compelling, Silver's book lacks something that Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil captured amazingly well: the throbbing soul of Savannah. Silver's stories could have taken place anywhere in the United States. I didn't get a feel for the city as I did when I read the rich descriptions contained in Midnight. This is remarkable because Silver has lived in Savannah most of his life and should be well qualified to offer us a deep sense of her beauty and distinction. Perhaps familiarity with his hometown is the undoing of his writing in this regard, as he may take things for granted that an outsider would marvel over.

The stories in Behind the Moss Curtain would be interesting in the hands of a skilled and unbiased writer, but they are presented to the reader awkwardly and with a prejudice that looks a lot like "sour grapes" in the wake of another author's vast success. Considering the hefty price tag I mentioned earlier, a reader would expect to have a nicely edited book of stories. Unfortunately this is not the case. While the book had potential, my assessment is that it's just another tourist trap, despite the fact that its author was a pleasure to converse with in that air-conditioned shop next to the Savannah River.