Customer Reviews

Heartland

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

First, this is not a written book; it's a transcribed one. Lotsa stream-of-consciousness & digressions that left me with the impression that Mr. Sahl was doing a night club routine into a tape recorder, & then somebody transcribed it. Who knows, maybe most books are written this way, but it's real obvious here.

Sahl was one of the first post-WWII political humorists, who cut his teeth on the beat-jazz subculture of 1950s San Francisco. Although by the late 70s, when he had a short-lived radio show on WRC in WDC (some of his best stuff was segue exchanges with Willard Scott), he seemed to have morphed into a right-of-center curmudgeon, he was originally an undogmatic radical who admired JFK, Castro, Albanian premier Enver Hoxha, & Ronald Reagan; as old-time Chicago radio host Jack Eigen called him, a professional nonconformist.

There is little here that was not recycled on his radio show. (He's actually hosted countless radio & TV shows in many cities.) Seven or eight years after the fact, there is little doubt that he holds New Orleans D.A. Jim Garrison in high regard, & if only 1/10th of what Sahl writes about being blacklisted for his association with Garrison is true, it's enough to make you swear off network TV forever. As Sahl writes, "Television is never more false than when it tries to be honest."

Lotsa inside info. on the entertainment industry & enough politics to shake the faith of the Gen-Xers that believe there's always been MTV & that American history began with Ronald Reagan. Despite the 30 years since since this book was published, when you read that a "social democratic President would have to bomb China to prove he's not a communist," there's an eerie prescience that might make you wonder whether those pop-op words "liberal" & "conservative" aren't being grossly misappropriated.

The second half of the 1970s were a bleak time in America. We had already survived a series of high profile assassinations, a protracted Southeast Asian war, wage and price freezes, various artificial shortages (like toilet paper) and real ones (the Oil Crisis), Watergate and the overthrow of a president, and were now enduring a caretaker Chief Exec famous for trippng over himself. He would be followed by a nice guy who meant well but proved to be ineffective.

In 1976, when HEARTLAND, Mort Sahl's cathartic autobiography was published, the apathy many of us felt was offset by the Disco craze and an after-work party-till-you-drop culture. Mort's book may not have specifically reflected the "what's the use?" attitude of that moment in time, but it certainly fit in, and in some ways was an antidote to general "malais" (J. Carter's word) for anyone willing to listen.

Yes, this famous iconoclast recounts sad events of his life, the years he couldn't find work due to an unswerving belief that JFK's death was the result of a conspiracy, but he also reminds us to ever honor our fallen heroes, the leaders and 56,000 killed in Vietnam, and to stay true to our convictions and ourselves.

He names the celebrities, supposed friends or devotees, who abandoned him at a time of need, how he went from earning a million dollars a year to less than 15K, lost a TV talk show and LA's most popular radio program, and more-- all for staying on message about the Warren Commission and other dubious "facts" related to 11/22/63. Although not fully apparent from HEARTLAND as the ordeal wasn't yet over, Mort Sahl is a martyr for a cause who managed to survive his martyrdom. And although we still don't know exactly why JFK died or who was responsible, thanks to Mort and a few others, it's widely believed that Lee Oswald wasn't the lone nut our government represented him as during those Warren hearings.


I was familiar with a few of his VERVE comedy albums, but knew little of Sahl's history or personal life prior to reading this work. After the fact I have nothing but respect for this witty, super-intelligent and above all BRAVE man. Thanks, Mr. Sahl!

Highly recommended.

It seems that "heartland" is written more like a jazz
composition, than an autobiography. mort knew lots of famous and powerful
people, mentioning some of them, particularly Hugh ("call me
hef") Heffner. for instance, the fact that jack Webb ("dragnet" --
badge 714 -- incidentally, the number of home runs hit by babe Ruth)
usually, only left his house to go to the studio, and had a really
state-of-the-art sound system for back then. Mort had a wonderful
television show around the late sixties - early seventies on
Metromedia. really enjoyed watching him with the chalk board
expounding on the political spectrum, and he always kept coming
back to the "right-wing social democrats"! he really did spend too
much time on the Kennedy assassination, since we'll never know if
Oswald and ruby were lone kooks or not. this obsession became tiresome
after awhile, and certainly hurt his ratings.
from Wikipedia: "Sahl, whose father was an FBI Administrator,
was born in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The family soon moved to Los
Angeles, California. Sahl joined the ROTC unit at Belmont High
School (Los Angeles, California) and also was on the staff of
the school's newspaper. After high school, Sahl enlisted in the
United States Air Force and was stationed in Alaska. In 1950, he
graduated from University of Southern California with majors in traffic
engineering and city management [how surprisingly boring!]. He
then began performing standup comedy at the hungry i nightclub in
San Francisco".
from me again: i remember a scene from a rat pack movie, where mort sahl had only one line before being blown away! also, liked mort in the fox hole with bobby Darin imparting the lowdown in some war
movie. i could only give "heartland" 4 stars just because of the
lack of information . seems that mort prefers to be some sort
of mysterious phantom -- a chimera.
lastly, correction for Wikipedia:
mort sahl on werner von braun's book: "i aim for the moon".
mort: "but he missed and hit London".