Anyone's Daughter: The Times and Trials of Patricia Hearst (Hardcover)

~ (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Review

HERNAP was the FBI code for the Patty Hearst case, which Shana Alexander sets out to report as "a metaphor for America" with "a private meaning for me that continues to surprise." Indeed. Solipsism is one word for it: this is an astonishingly Shana-centered view. And "logorrhea," her word for the SLA's compulsion to write everything down, is another. In some 600 pages she processes HERNAP as an analogue to fairytale, medieval witch hunt, and Oedipus myth (Sophocles), for examples. As an expression of the topsy-turviness of the times ("real families withered and shattered, and pseudofamilies survived"), HERNAP partly vindicates her personally - for her shabby job of mothering a disaffected child who flees boarding school and is deposited with father and stepmother. Her child is society's child in the same way that Patty "could be anyone's daughter" (as "Tania" allegedly observed); Shana Alexander herself could have been Patty once. . . . And it all comes up in the course - if not properly in the context - of the trial, labeled HERNAP's Act III and adopted as the book's ordering principle for its "classic unities of time and space" (?). Opening with legal mechanics and climaxing on legal issues, the trial doesn't echo the actual progression of Acts I (kidnapping through FBI-capture) and II (jail and deprogramming), but advancing the story isn't Alexander's objective. She transcribes every day's testimony in accord with her resolve to be "impressionistic" and stick to "what interests me," and sometimes that's cameo-ing Patty (one morning "quattrocento," another "Edwardian"), but more often it's editorializing, in good faith, from her privileged position as confidante/leak-ee of assistant defense counsel Al Johnson, and from her vast store of HERNAP interviews. Shana Alexander talks to all parties except Patty - who was F. Lee Bailey's private property until the (never-materialized) publication of his book - and Mrs. Hearst, who dismissed Mrs. Alexander as an "adventuress." It's a mistake to dismiss Mrs. Alexander - she's a facile writer with a feel for the whole pop-cultural, confessional Scene. (Kirkus Reviews) --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 564 pages
• Publisher: Viking Adult; First Published edition (May 15, 1979)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0670129496
• ISBN-13: 978-0670129492
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.2 x 1.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds
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• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #2,100,716 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)