Customer Reviews

thinking out loud: on the personal, the political, the public and the private

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I picked up this book after hearing Ms. Quindlen speak at Barnard Collge, our alma mater. While I spoke to her briefly I must embarrassingly admit that I had not read her. After hearing her read one of her essays aloud, I rushed right out and bought the book and preceeded to have several sleepless nights as I fought to finish the book. This is not to say that her prose is hard to get through; quite the opposite, as a matter of fact. Her points are made so clearly and judiciously that I was in a constant state of disbelief. It took me awhile to get through because I kept reading and rereading essays, each time thinking, "Wait a minute, that's what I think! (I just couldn't phrase it as well)" I also kept calling my best friend (also a Barnard grad) to read essays, passages, and even single sentences that I thought were amazing.

Above all this collection proves that there is a humanistic point of view that could serve as the basis of a presidential campaign platform, for it represents in its totality the true spirit of the American people. Ms. Quindlen's opinions seem driven by compassion and empathy, not the rules of religious institutions or political parties whose decrees rarely take into account America's pluralist history and unjust past. These essays should be read by all, especially junior high and high school students who are forming their beliefs about ethics, morals, religion, politics, etc. This would be a wonderful book for parents who want to raise intellectually, culturally, and politically aware children to read and discuss with their teens.

How appealing it is to read a serious work of political commentary by a woman as courageous and compassionate as Anna Quindlen. What sets her apart from other feminist authors is her grasp of middle-American values (love of home and family, reverence for the struggles of her immigrant ancestors and at least a qualified loyalty to the Catholic church) and her insistence on humanity and compassion as the supreme qualifications for political and cultural leadership in our society. She brilliantly assimilates the best of the Sixties counterculture, the Civil Rights Movement, and Feminism, (not to mention the traditional Democratic liberalism of FDR and the New Deal) and combines them in a distinctive voice that is always delightfully irreverent and accessible.

As playful and witty as Quindlen can be, however, it would be a mistake to assume that THINKING OUT LOUD is a frivolous book. Some of the essays collected here address crimes so horrifying and brutal that it's hard to imagine even Anna Quindlen being untouched by pessimism and despair. What's most extraordinary, however, is that even in essays such as "The Perfect Victim" (about the rape of the Central Park Jogger) and "A Changing World" (about the racially charged murder of a black teenager in all-white Bensonhurst)Anna Quindlen insists above all on celebrating the humanity of the victim. Quindlen is a genius at capturing the details behind the story, as well. From her point of view, the humanity and larger than life heroism of the Central Park jogger can be summed up in the fact that she was a Wellesley graduate, Wellesley symbolizing the ideals and aspirations of humanistic, upwardly mobile middle class feminism. Conversely, the brutality and subhuman cruelty of the Italian boys of Bensonhurst she automatically connects with the contempt for higher education and upward social mobility displayed by the proudly working class males in ethnic enclaves like Bensonhurst.

It's only natural, of course, that as a Barnard graduate Anna Quindlen sees higher education as valuable and rewarding in moral as well as material terms. Middle class kids who excell in academics are taught from a very early age to view working class kids with different skill sets as pathetic failures at best, contemptible losers at worst. These are clearly the values that Anna Quindlen accepted unthinkingly as a little girl. Still, it's regrettable that in her essay on the first Gulf War, "Summer's Soldiers," she refers to Gulf War soldiers (like myself) as "not smart, not rich, not directed enough for college." This is exactly the kind of thoughtless, dismissive, seemingly out of touch comment that can be twisted by a cunning conservative commentator (such as Bill O'Reilly or Rush Limbaugh) to suggest that liberals are smug elitists who hold all working class people in contempt. Such unfortunate gaffes undermine the anti-war movement in any war, because they widen the regrettable but undeniable gap between the progressive leadership of the anti-war left and the great mass of the American people.

Anna Quindlen dismisses the patriotism of more than a hundred thousand Gulf War veterans with a sneer, on the argument that they're not college educated and therefore can't understand the core values of a democracy. Yet she writes with almost religious fervor about her immigrant Irish ancestors, who came to this country not only ignorant of democracy but (for the most part) completely illiterate. Does she really imagine the soldiers who fought the Gulf War were any less patriotic or unselfish than the Famine Irish who came here unable even to write their own names?
My own ancestors were Jews from Eastern Europe. The literacy rate among the Jews at the turn of the last century was much, much higher than that of the Famine Irish of the 1840's, and the Jews never engaged in ethnic cleansing and mass murder of black women and children as the Irish did with astonishing gusto during the Draft Riots of 1863. Yet no one would suggest that Jews made "better" Americans than the Irish.

Anna Quindlen is a gifted, eloquent spokesperson for the values of democracy, yet she has a selective memory about certain aspects of the Irish experience in America. She condemns the violent racism of Italian Bensonhurst with regal hauteur and ice-cold contempt, like Queen Victoria turning up her nose at Jack the Ripper. Yet in another column she acknowledges with almost disturbing cheerfulness that she grew up in a neighborhood "where a Jewish family would have been a rarity and a black family an impossibility." The boys of Bensonhurst used murder to keep their neighborhood all white -- what weapons did Anna's parents use? Does she know? Does she even care? Perhaps in her mind, racism is okay as long as you "want better things" i.e. to send your daughter to college.

On repeated readings, one gets the impression that what Anna Quindlen finds most repulsive about the boys of Bensonhurst is not that they were willing to stoop to murder but that they were defending a working-class neighborhood, not a middle class one. Her loathing for the murderers of Bensonhurst is not really that of the Union Army soldier for the Confederate soldier, where both sides have clearly put everything at risk and are equally willing to make the ultimate sacrifice, but is more analogous to the slaveowner's snide contempt for the white-trash overseer. She has lived in all-white neighborhoods all her life, yet she almost unthinkingly scapegoats working class males, equating their class pride with racial hatred and racial violence. But the equation is not complete unless you factor in the fact that upper class whites take the right to live in "exclusive" neighborhoods for granted.

The subject of race is a constant thread in THINKING OUT LOUD. Anna Quindlen champions Affirmative Action with all the zeal of a Union Army colonel holding to the last at Little Round Top. Yet again, it's interesting that she sees no contradiction between her own girlhood -- all those years in secluded innocence at the all white, all girl, all Catholic private schools she so clearly cherished -- and the multi-racial future she wants for other people's children. I'm not saying I disagree with Anna Quindlen, not at all. I'm just thinking out loud that she didn't insist on going to public school when she was a teenager, in order to make friends with black kids (like my father) or Jewish kids (like my mother). I wonder exactly when it was she discovered that black women were her "sisters." It wasn't when she was serving as an infantryman in Vietnam, and it wasn't when she was a Freedom Rider in Alabama. Anna Quindlen writes about the Civil Rights movement as if it's "her" achievement -- as if somehow she deserves the credit. Yet all of her essays, even the most touching and entertaining, make it painfully clear that she is the product of racial privilege, and that her view of blacks is condescending and paternalistic, closer to that of an "enlightened" slaveowner like Scarlett O'Hara than that of a white-trash renegade like the notorious slave-stealer Huck Finn.

Anna Quindlen's collection of essays explores everything from raising children to the latest on Congress and the role of the government. I thoroughly enjoyed reading these outtakes from Quindlen's column in the N.Y. Times, and appreciated her insight and humor in what could be a mundane and highbrow column. I highly recommend it to those who want to learn how to write, those who want to read for pleasure, and those who want to think about the state of society... all at the same time

Although Anna Quindlen's views rarely veer off standard liberal-feminist territory, her reasons behind her opinions are refreshing. She deftly weaves her own personal experiences as well as the experiences of others into her commentaries. She does not rely on statistics or historical data, but on real life. It's an unusual approach that allows her words to stick with the reader longer than that of typical opinion writers.

I am a huge fan of Anna Quindlen so I enjoyed this book. However, readers should be advised that if they are searching for the more "personal" side of Ms. Quindlen, her writings on life, love, parenting, that we know from her "Life in the 30's" columns or "Living out Loud" book, they might be disappointed by the heavily political and social commentary in this collection. This is more "Quindlen on politics and the Supreme Court" than it is about life at large.

There is much discussion of Catholicism, abortion rights, and various "hot button" poli-social issues so I would HIGHLY recommend that anyone perusing this selection as a gift is sure to read it themselves first before sending it of to Aunt Gertrude or Grandma.

Although these essays were written in the early 90's, reading them with today's perspective may give you a sense of how the world got where it is today.

Although the book's high-quality writing reflects what is to be expected of Quindlen, this collection of essays is now quite out-of-date, as would be expected of a book consisting of newspaper columns written in the early 1990s. Nonetheless, it makes for some interesting reading by providing an insightful (and intuitively on the mark) prelude to the political, social, and cultural climate of today.

Like most people who talk incessantly about their children, Anna Quindlen is a terrific bore. Over and over again, we learn that her three children are "the greatest joy" of her life. We're happy for her at first, but in the end we just don't want hear any more.

When she finally forces herself to change the subject (or is forced to by her long-suffering editors), she'll write something like "adolescence is a tough time for parent and child alike" or "people are troubled by abortion, even outright opposed" or "they say that traveling broadens the mind and I believe it." Really?

Vladimir Nabokov wrote that it is always the second rate writer who appears to be the old friend, popping up to reassure us with the obvious. And so it is with our friend Anna. In this collection of her New York Times columns from the 1990s, there is never an opinion that surprises or any indication of research done beyond a cursory glance at CNN. When choosing her subject matter, she relentlessly runs with the pack. When all the other columnists are writing about the Gulf War, the Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill scandal, and the presidential elections, there she is writing about those events too.

In the introduction, Quindlen tells us that she grew up enamored with the columnist Dorothy Thompson and she seems to have modeled herself after her. In particular, Thompson's supposedly broad range of interests: "what struck me was her willingness to write about the Third Reich one day and nasturtiums the next." However, is Thompson really a good model to follow? If anyone remembers Dorothy Thompson, it is because of "The New Russia," a highly misleading book on Stalin's paradise, based entirely on a canned tour of the country and on press releases that were translated by the Soviets especially for Thompson.

Quindlen does actually stop talking about her children long enough to make pronouncements on foreign affairs. Back in 1992, she calls for the "Eurocentric" United States to do something about the famine in Somalia, even though "there are no easy solutions" to the problem. Luckily, despite the fact that the US has a "peculiar myopic ignorance" and is even a little racist when it comes to Somalia, Anna can sort out the moral issues for us. "We lost sight of the best reason to involve ourselves in foreign affairs-because it is sometimes obviously the moral thing to do, " she writes in the column entitled "Somalia's Plagues." Needless to say, Quindlen has never been to Africa and what she knows about Somalia appears to have come only from the newspapers and from the heads of foreign aid agencies. And it is not too surprising that Quindlen doesn't have anything to say about the subsequent US intervention into Somalia, which was disastrous. But then again, she has a column to write, one about her three children, who are the greatest joy of her life.

Indeed the first reviewer couldn't have said it better. Quindlen suffers from self-involved, self-satisfied writing. She's so taken with her rather mundane reflections, average in their insight, and lackluster "poignent moments" she works so hard to construct, that she cannot see the inviting realm of ideas -- just out there, apparently beyond her reach.

Ho Hum, Anna.