Customer Reviews

Being Polite to Hitler: A Novel

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This final book in Dew's trilogy rounds out the life of Agnes Claytor, bringing her to her 74th year as the novel explores the impact upon her and her extended family of both fictional and historical events occurring between 1953-73 as well as the impact of memories accumulated from the distant past. As in her earlier novels, the author presents the story entirely through the characters' own thoughts and responses to the events impinging on their lives. By presenting everything through the minds of Agnes and others in her large extended clan, readers can gain a profound understanding of how we each create our own reality as we go through life, a reality so unique to each individual that no other person, no matter how loved or how familiar, can transcend the barrier created by our singular minds' interpretations of the world around us. We love our children, our spouses, and our friends, but we don't really 'know' each other except through our own responses to their behavior. In spite of this human limitation, we continue to form bonds, repeat rituals, and interact with one another to the best of our abilities. Through multiple generations of this extended family, Dew's trilogy plays out this paradox of human existence in a well-written, quiet, thoughtful, and heartfelt set of books. Each book can stand alone, but the richest benefit comes from reading all three, itself an example of the separateness/togetherness we experience as human beings.

Although this book is full of descriptions on who did what and when, there is no logical development of characters or plot. There is nothing that ties one description or incident to the next. It is a description of a family and a place and a time period of 1950's thu 1970's, with short descriptions of historical events that just happen in that time period, events with little impact on anyone. As the characters age, the family dynamics stay the same, nothing is ever resolved, the drunk is still a drunk, the nice guy is always the nice guy, the 70 yr old is as physically active as she was at 50. The characters are superficial and without depth.

I read this without having read the earlier books, so I did not have a prior knowledge of the characters.

There were a few pages in the book that were exceptionally well written, but there was no subsequent connection to what follows. There was no continuity.

It was boring!

Robb Foreman Dew's final book in her Washburn, Ohio trilogy takes place primarily in that mid-Ohio city, with side stories from other places in the US. Real characters as well as fictional ones react to real events - Sputnik, the Kennedy assassination, the polio epidemic, the Rosenberg trial, the desegregation of Little Rock Central High School - which make those "cozy" and yearned- after years seem not so great in retrospect. But the main events take place in Washburn, Ohio, home of the Claytor, Scofield, and Butler families Foreman Dew has introduced the reader to in her first book, "The Evidence Against Her" and followed up with in her second book, "The Truth of the Matter".

Agnes Schofield, a long-time widow, has raised four children (three of her own and her younger brother) and in 1948, all the children have returned to Washburn with families of their own. Some are getting along better than others, but all share a love and affection for both Agnes and the town that nurtured them. Agnes sees her children and contemporaries through loving, but realistic, eyes. As national and world events occur, these events are played out against the home scene in Washburn. They are played out, and both individuals and families are affected by varying degrees. Robb includes, as I wrote before, some real figures of the time - Wernher Von Braun - among others, though there is little, if any, connection between real and fictional characters.

Foreman Dew's book is a little exasperating because it is so well written in its spareness that it begs to be expanded to - say, "Gone With The Wind" - length. Her fictional characters are so well drawn that I was left with wanting more. I wanted more story and I wanted to know what happened to the characters. If I can be left with that hankering-for-more, then I consider the novel to be a great read.

The title phrase occurs about halfway through the book. The year is 1953. Lavinia Alton, who has married into the close-knit family of Scofields and Claytors in the mid-Ohio town of Washburn, has committed the cardinal sin of expressing her political opinions (in this case, outrage at the execution of the Rosenbergs) in the midst of a Christmas gathering of relatives and neighbors. She has already offended their dress code; now she flouts their conversational norms that involve, among other things, turning a blind eye to bigotry.

The moment is emblematic of Robb Forman Dew's approach, as she structures her book in expanding circles. At the center are a few independent individuals like Lavinia and, even more so, her feisty mother-in-law Agnes, a widowed schoolteacher nearing the end of her patience. In the middle are all those relatives and neighbors, so intricately interknit that I needed to spend half and hour drawing up a family tree to keep them all straight. [I now learn, however, that this book is the third in a trilogy with THE EVIDENCE AGAINST HER and THE TRUTH OF THE MATTER, so presumably the author's followers would have less trouble.] Beyond this circle are the events of the outside world: memories of the War, of the first atomic bombs, Eisenhower-era politics, the threat of polio, the doomsday clock, and fallout shelters. Indeed, the fallout shelter is a good metaphor for the community itself, as it tries to maintain an oasis of cheerful normality in a world with a traumatic past and uncertain future. The first two-thirds of the book are the portrait of an era, of a small-town middle America simultaneously turned in upon itself and facing outwards, enjoying the dawn of a new prosperity but paranoid about Cold War threats and Communist spies.

Then suddenly the year jumps forward to 1957, with Sputnik and school integration. It will jump again to 1963, with the Birmingham church bombing and the Kennedy assassination, and end with 1973 and Watergate (only more gracefully). The novel now becomes much more the story of Agnes Scofield, who has now acquired a partner, a dog, and a summer house in Maine. There are more events in this final section, but less connection; the book loses that intense focus on place and time that so distinguished it earlier -- again I suspect the change in tone would matter less to those who read the whole trilogy. Is there an element of family biography here? Although given a different name, the nearby college to Washburn is clearly Kenyon, where the author's grandfather John Crowe Ransom founded the Kenyon Review. Agnes' brother-in-law Robert Butler teaches at the college, and real-life faculty members Robert Lowell, Peter Taylor, and William Empson make cameo appearances. It must have been a heady, even intimidating environment -- but perhaps both Agnes and the author find peace in being able to escape from time to time.

After World War II, history seemed to speed up. How much could get crammed into the following 30 years? Well, only everything from Sputnik and JFK to the civil rights movement and Martin Luther King, Jr. to the turmoil of the late '60s and the fear-mongering of the Cold War. When protagonist Agnes Scofield hits 54 and starts pulling apart her identity, reconfiguring it in some meaningful way, the significant events of the postwar era help her mark off some of the significant events in the life of her average American family.

Robb Forman Dew likes families. She loves writing about them, taking them apart and analyzing their very structure. In Agnes's large family --- which consists of five kids, various paramours, neighbors and lifelong friends, as well as a variety of animals, including her trusted dog --- nothing is simple. Just as America finds its leaves variegated, so does the Scofield clan, several generations of them.

There are so many characters living in this book that I could barely get the covers to close when I finished reading. Along the way, during which Agnes remarries and sets the family on a new trajectory with this ignited decision, they all begin to find their voices, coupling and uncoupling and coupling back more times than a "Real Housewives" episode. Agnes's children create the mainframe for the action, but it's really the falling apart and coming together of the world at large that helps to inform the family's dramas and give them shape and focus.

The town in Ohio where they live, Washburn, seems to be an ode to Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio, where the biting and quietly emotional vignettes told us more in a few sentences than epic novels could have --- where the major course of American history comes to sandwich the good and bad of the normal, everyday lives of its inhabitants.

Dew writes with an understated style. She never dazzles you with her language, and yet, as the book deepens, bringing the worlds of the Scofields closer together with the activities of the US, it is this very simplicity that helps you find the positively powerful truths that are being acted out by the characters. BEING POLITE TO HITLER is a real piece of Americana, glancing over our contemporary shoulder to the generation just behind us that helped define the zeitgeist of these days we live in.

--- Reviewed by Jana Siciliano

Absolutely stunning novel so full of meaning and history that I could bearly read each page without wanting to stop, consider and take it in. This novel is wonderful reading, as well as an uncompromising insight into family dynamics. Ms Dew's sense of plot and timing is seamless.

Robb Forman Dew, a National Book Award winner for her book, "Dale Loves Sophie To Death," is an author whose ilk I have rarely experienced since college days in Classic American Literature. In fact, her book ought to be studied in colleges, it's that relevant today for understanding our social and political history, and its roots in post-WWII 1950's. This book stands shoulder to shoulder with those of Joyce Carol Oates, Margaret Atwood, Virginia Woolf and Carson McCullers.

"Being Polite to Hitler," is a story centered around the Scofield family of "small, ordinary town" Ohio. Through them, Ms Dew renders a microcosmic view of how everyday people might react to critical transitions and social upheavals such as civil rights, womens' issues, the Rosenbergs, Werhner von Braun, the atomic bomb, the Russians and bomb shelters, just to name a few. The unrelenting exposure to one scenario after another as these people deal with the day-to-day threats and complexities of the 1950's, builds a tension in the reader and brings to mind our lives in contemporary America in the latter decades of the 20th century. This is a cautionary story suited for our times as well as being nostalgic.

Characterization is perfection with female characters such as Agnes, the matriarch, who isn't as staid and boring as her grown children might think. My personal favorite, Lavinia, is the random voice of "women's lib" on the verge, 'though still fraught with "...being better than the Joneses," and the new wealth and commercialism of the decade. All of Robb's characters are to be cherished for their individuality and believability. What mother hasn't thought to herself somethng like Agnes's:

"But, what on earth possessed these people for whom she had been the best parent she could manage to be, for whom she had tried so hard to pretend wisdom, to mime adulthood--oh, Lord! Those children! Why weren't they safe by now? What were they doing? They rushed along through their lives, discarding the days like so many pieces of bad fish...Why were they so careless of their own contentment? Why weren't they willing to be happy all the time?"

Thank God, motherhood was taking a turn toward not feeling so guilty about everything their children did!

There is no question that Robb Forman Dew is a gifted writer whose work is rare and an edict for our times. Caught up in our everyday distractions we fail to "see" as the world and its complications spin by us. It is so much easier to be seduced into complacency by media which can lull us into believing, and cause us to be pacified if we blog or tweet, discuss the "situation" with our friends and family...or if we throw some money at it and pat ourselves on the back. Should we actually refuse to "be(ing) polite to Hitler," it would cut through our denial and require personal sacrifices, our actions, and true commitment. We might actually make a difference like Robb Dew and others who take a stand and stake their reputations on it.

As you can see, I was deeply moved by this book. It is a novel I can recommend without reservation to women and men. This book will be discussed from dinner parties to bookgroups to cozy lunch dates with significant others. Please do yourself a favor...don't miss it. In the meantime, I will be busy reading the other two novels in this trilogy.

Deborah/TheBookishDame

I borrowed this book from the library. It is the first book I have read written by Robb Forman Dew. I love the writing, this book spoke to me in a way that most recently written books have not. I will be buying her other books rather than getting them from the library. Ohter reviewers have discussed the book in depth and I don't feel the need to add anything.

As is true of all Robb Forman Dew's books, this is a delicious read. The prose is rich, the voice wise and utterly unsentimental. Dew's insights are startling--and impressive in their range from psychological to political--but she serves them up so graciously that the story never stumbles. We've met the courageous Agnes Claytor in the earlier two books of the trilogy, and Agnes continues to surprise us here, for example in her choice of lovers, and in her deft dance between social propriety and independence. Agnes is ethical, smart and pragmatic; she is never "cute." The comparisons with Mrs. Ramsay are apt. Like Woolf, Dew remains fiercely honest in her portrayal of love, marriage and parenthood. She also shows how historical events can infiltrate the daily mundane, causing ripples of change that may show up in, say, a preference for Dessert Rose dinnerware. The overall result is a profoundly satisfying, and illuminating, account of middle class life in post-WWII America.

Robb Forman Dew writes like a rhapsody. As Agnes makes her way through the minefields of the 50s,60s, and 70s, time becomes as fluid as family ties. A brilliant book from a brilliant writer.

This book can be read as part of the trilogy Robb Forman Dew has assembled about family life or independently, as it can stand fully alone and is a brilliant book, beautifully written, expressive and compelling. Who could not love Agnes and Sam? As a child of the era of which she writes, every word rings so true. I found it so compelling that I read it straight through. I think others will love it, as well. Read also The Time of Her Life andThe Evidence Against Her: A Novel as well as her National Book Award winning first published novel, Dale Loves Sophie to Death.