Fugitive Days: A Memoir [Paperback]

Bill Ayers (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 28, 2003

Bill Ayers was born into privilege and is today a highly respected educator and community activist. In the late 1960s he was a founder of the militant activist group the Weather Underground. Living on the run, stealing explosives, and hiding from the law, Ayers was involved in the defining moments of his generation: the Days of Rage, SDS, the Black Panthers-and the explosion that killed his beloved comrade, Diana Oughton. Fugitive Days tells of these turbulent events, and of the tenacity with which Ayers slowly rebuilt his life after it all came apart. Ayers writes openly about his regrets and what he continues to believe was right. The result is a profoundly honest account of an incendiary chapter in our history.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

"Memory is a motherfucker," begins 1960s-era political activist and Weather Underground member Ayers, who went underground with several comrades after their co-conspirators' bomb accidentally exploded in 1970, destroying a Greenwich Village townhouse and killing some of the activists involved. Ayers (A Kind and Just Parent), now a Distinguished Professor of Education at the University of Illinois, grew up well-to-do, attended private schools and became politicized at the University of Michigan. He describes his spiraling New Left involvement as he became aware of what he casts as the injustice of U.S. involvement in Vietnam, inner-city race relations, and police brutality and battle tactics, especially in Chicago during demonstrations at the 1969 Democratic convention. The terrific first half of the memoir details 1950s and '60s U.S. culture his own childhood, shaped by images of the atomic bomb and TV war movies; the influence of Bob Dylan, Mao and Che Guevara on American youth but the book really takes off once he goes underground. He and his colleagues invent identities (often using names such as Nat Turner or Emma Goldman), travel continuously and avoid the police and FBI as Nixon bombs Cambodia and My Lai is ravaged. Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn raised two children underground before turning themselves in in 1981, when most charges were dropped because of "extreme governmental misconduct" during the long search for the fugitives. Written without self-righteousness or apology, this memoir rings of hard-learned truth and integrity and is an important contribution to literature on 1960s culture and American radicalism. (Sept.)Forecast: With advance praise from Hunter S. Thompson, Scott Turow, Studs Terkel and Rosellen Brown, plus a 20-city author tour, this ringing account should attract considerable review attention and solid sales.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Library Journal

"Memory is a motherfucker," writes Ayers (A Kind and Just Parent). In the 1970s, he was a head of the radical Weathermen and one of America's Ten Most Wanted, along with his wife, Bernardine Dohrn, but he is now a distinguished professor of education at the University of Illinois in Chicago. His memoir is a breath of fresh air in this self-absorbed age. Ayers discusses his reservations about the use of violence to achieve an end to violence (reservations he held then as well), but he is unrepentant in believing that America was the aggressor against North Vietnam and that right-minded people have an obligation to resist unjust wars. The book is uneven in tone, alternating fluffy passages about the passage of time with straightforward narration of Ayers's more than ten years on the lam. The sentiments expressed in the book still seem noble, however, regardless of one's opinions of the means used by Ayers's comrades. There are many lessons still to be learned from such narratives. Recommended. David Keymer, California State Univ., Stanislaus
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics) (January 28, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0142002550
• ISBN-13: 978-0142002551
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (60 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #317,124 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

86 of 107 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Interesting but ultimately disappointing, September 4, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Fugitive Days: A Memoir (Hardcover)

First, some straight facts. Ayers is, and was, a "radical from the sixities", but many of his radical actions were at the tail end of that infamous decade and a good portion of this book relates to the seventies, 1970 to '75, not the over-reported, mythical "60's". Second, he was not representative of "baby boomers" or even the anti-Viet Nam war movement and, though you can't tell it from the bio sketch or the book, he might even be too old to be a member of that much maligned group, the boomers.
Ayers was a key member of a small splinter group known as Weatherman. It can aruged that his group, and other "direct action" radicals, actually helped put an end to the serious, mass movement against the war in Viet Nam by going so far out in front of the understanding of the American public as to appear to have landed from some distant planet. To the older generation, they appeared to be the living, breathing, violent confirmation that the anti-war movement was unpatriotic and even bent on the ultimate destruction of the America. They were right about the war in Viet Nam, but probably little else.

All that said, this is a fast paced, quick trip through the minds of hearts of one sub-set of deadly serious radicals. Ayers is most honest in revealing his youthful fantasies about women, free love and about the attractions of beer, dope and a freewheeling way of life. He faithfully reconstructs the all too rapid, and slippery, path to radicalism taken by himself and his commrades (his term). He takes pride in their ability to live underground and elude the FBI, while planning and carrying out their clandestine actions.

This is a highly useful book for those who lived some measure of adult life in the time period and for those who, coming afterword, might not understand even a small fraction of what happened to the country. He takes us on a fast ride through the malleable minds of youth set on revolution or self destruction, whichever comes first.

Ultimately, however, to me this is a dishonest book by a man who demonstrates little or no growth from the period of his extreme youth and extreme politics. This is a difficult conclusion for me to assert, because I was a sometime active participant in the anti-war movement at about the same time as the author (though, I think, considerably younger than he). I briefly dated the younger sister of one of the main characters in the weatherman psycho-drama mentioned prominently in the book and I was entirely sympathic to their goal of ending the war. Despite the fact that the Weatherman were often times seen as borderline crazies even within the movement, I would like to believe that some good could come from such difficult times. I know that they believed they were out to save our country, in the same way that, a hundred years earlier, those who opposed slavery took on an unpopular, and dangerous, cause. If they had succeded, we might now call them heros.

Ayers, to my eye, explains little or nothing of the historical, social, poltical and personal decisions that led him toward smashing windows, building bombs and fighting hand to hand with the police. It/s as if he woke up one day and found himself to be a radical, one who was, somehow, personally, deeply charged with carrying out radical acts unlike any in American history. While the group was middle class and intelllectually oriented, there is no hint of educated people feeling their way toward difficult conclusions. What about the intervening 25 or so years? Has his thinking changed? Is he agast at his younger self? Aside from saying repeatedly that the weatherman actions were far in front of their abilities, he makes few, if any, apologies.

There is no critical looking back in this book, only an attempt to recreate the borderline insanity of youthful arrogance combined with a strong sense of mission that propelled a small group of people to believe that they could take the world by the tail and shake it till it did what they wanted. At one point in the book, he says he and a fellow radical wondered if their whole generation was doomed. No, Bill, you were doomed. The young people of that era have gone on to do many things, some good, some bad, some wonderful.

This book will do little to help people understand the why of what came very close to being America's second civil war. It is valuable, nonetheless, because it takes us behind the scenes, and, in a cusory fashion, into the brains of one radical group. It clearly demonstrates their dedication and determination to the cause, if not their intelligence. In a purely logical sense, the weatherman, and others, were completely correct in deciding that strong action was required to try to prevent the deaths of several million Vietnamese and tens of thousands of American soliders. They failed to realize, however, that they were completely incapable of taking strong enough actions to reverse the policy of their government and, instead, were entirely capable of turning much of the nation against the anti-war movement. No radical group was capable of action, of the nature envised by Ayers and others, that would have made one whit of difference to the government. A thousand three pound bombs, on a thousand days, was not enough. None should have ever been planted.

While the book is a disappointment, there are truths to be learned. Why did the radicals of that era believe, for example, that everything in life was connected to everything else and that all of life had to be put right in a flash? Where is the well of arrogance from which the belief can be drawn that anyone at anytime in the world could perform such a task? In this respect, the book is something of a desent into madness. We can only be glad that the seventies are long since over. A generation is not to blame for the bad results that occurred, but something deeper in the human condition and in the American need to search for perfection. Ayers doesn't have clue, nor is he looking for one.

69 of 90 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars The Ace Ventura of the ramparts, October 22, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Fugitive Days: A Memoir (Hardcover)

(...)

Okay: what do we have here with this book? The subtitle identifies it as "A Memoir," but that's not a very good generic fit. How many memoirs have you read wherein the author keeps pestering you every 5 pages with reminders that his account of his own past cannot be trusted or believed. Ayers does this with an interminable succession of italicized passages, each of them a high-flying poetic meditation on the gossamer nature of memory, the impossibility of accurate recall, the slipperiness of subjectivity, etc etc etc.
Ayers' first such declaration, on page 7, cannot be quoted here (...). Let us paraphrase it thus: "Memory is an Oedipal coefficient." On a regular basis throughout the book, Ayers renews his license to lie and dissemble with more and more and more of this italicized gibberish: "Memory is a house of mirrors, a land of make believe. . . . a delicate dance of desire and faith, a shadow of a shadow. . . . a way of forgetting, a way of filtering. . . . Memory is a marvel, quick as a monkey and just as silly. . . ." and so on and so forth. A solid 5% of this book is dedicated to rendundant declarations concerning the ineffable elusiveness of memory. [By the by, the above quotations are a fair sample of the cloyingly precious "fine writing" that permeates the book. ] Never for a second would it occur to the author that there are sources of information out there in the world in relation to which the veracity of his unreliable memory can be checked and controlled. It's indicative of the solipsism of Ayers' mind that not a single other work on the 1960s is cited in his self-serving --what shall we call it, autohagiography? Naughtobiography? It's obvious that Ayers feels that these repetitive prose-poems on the unreliability of memory place him and his book in a higher category of honesty than the run-of-the-mill memoirist, who might deny the influence of subjectivity. They don't. There's more accuracy, more honesty in the average "as-told-to" showbiz autobiography than there is here.

Anyway, true to his promise, Ayers omits from his narrative anything that might be of genuine interest or import to an understanding of his life and times. He's clearly gloatingly unrepentingly proud of his past (& especially of all of the Movement babes he shagged --oh boy do we hear a lot about this) but at the same time he evades any actual discussion of the criminal acts that are the basis of his sick claim to fame. Ayers can't actually talk about any of the bombings and robberies and stuff, not just because memory is a blind gerbil in swimming in a sea of cold pea soup or whatever, but because his persisting code of revolutionary omerta forbids it. "In our conflict," writes the tenured tough guy , his intact, " we don't talk; we don't tell. We never confess." Okay, so shut up, already.

There are so many genuinely interesting topics Ayers could have told us about: the internecine sectarian power struggles among various members of the Weather cult. The details about how he used family clout and money to buy himself out of trouble with the law. The process whereby he and alpha Weathergirl Bernadine Dohrn made the transition from the hard-rutting "Smash Monogamy" sexual politics of "the Movement" to bourgeois wedded bliss in Hyde Park. How's that work, Bill? Inquiring minds want to know. And hey, what kind of a family did Bill and Bernadine, erstwhile admirers of the Manson Family, ultimately spawn? On the latter subject, Ayers is characteristically coy: "We had our ways and weirdnesses, but that, too, is another story." More to the point, I'd guess, is that its a story that wouldn't easily accomodate the author's Ace Ventura-like vanity. Don't hold your breath for a more revealing sequel.

Here's what you ultimately get: Ayers' self-assessment of himself as a pretty neat and righteous guy. Oh sure, he admits to a few foibles ---"pride and loftiness"---- but these, he would have us know, should be measured against his many virtues: "confidence, passion, optimism and hope, some humor" (p. 284). Hey, what's a little "loftiness" mixed in with a cornucopia of traits like that? Another big pay-off is this: "We crossed the line and came back" (p. 263). Ayers is talking here about the fact that he and his Weatherpals used to plant bombs, but later they stopped. It would never occur to this egotist that it is not for him to say whether or not he and his accomplices have "come back." Let's ask the family of a certain slain Brink's security guard about that, shall we?

I don't know what else to say about this thoroughly diseased book. I read it with clenched teeth. My reaction had nothing to do with politics, except insofar that Ayers' manifest personality disorder is characteristic of the sectarian left.

46 of 60 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars I've rarely had such a (bad) reaction to a book, October 8, 2001

By 

"[e-mail]" (Golden, CO USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Fugitive Days: A Memoir (Hardcover)

Rarely do I have such a reaction to a book as I've had towards this one. Being someone who opposed the Vietnam War, my expectations were that it would be an enjoyable read - not a book I'd come to loathe.

Bill Ayers does a good job of taking his readers back to the chaos of that time in the early chapters of his book. And I congratulate him on his unswerving honesty towards himself and his cadre of comrades. But he is such detestable, manipulative, whiny, self-righteous holier-than-thou person that I suddenly see a lot more legitimacy in the words, "Love it or leave it."

I completely lost tolerance for him at the end when he brings up My Lai yet another time in the book and then asks when America will acknowledge the sacrifice Diana made toward ending the war - Diana who blew herself up or was blown up by another in their gang while planning to bomb a target in the US.

I wish I could rate this book zero stars. I wish I could get my money back.