Memories of the Great and the Good |
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Alistair Cooke
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Pages: 288 (Paperback)
ISBN: 1862054525
Pub: Pavilion Books
Pub date: 2000-09-14
Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 176531
Editorial Review:
"The great and the good" is a happy phrase that takes in a general appreciation of some people who are great at one thing and other people whose character is the fascinating thing about them. Few would argue with the assertion that the author of this volume about men and women of great distinction is himself worthy of such categorisation. Alistair Cooke's extraordinarily long journalistic career (including broadcasting his Letter from America to BBC Radio 4 listeners for more than half a century) leaves him needing little introduction, on either side of the Atlantic or, indeed, the English Channel (a correspondent for Le Monde in France described him as "the best journalist in the world").
During his life Cooke has encountered many luminaries of the 20th century and this volume comprises 23 brief portraits, taking in, among others, writers, statesmen, generals, scientists, musicians and sportsmen, who have made the strongest impressions on him. His style will be familiar to many; succinct, engaging and deeply perceptive, it is never less than a pleasure to read. The warm respect he feels for his subjects shines throughout all; as he makes clear, he does not adhere to the belief "that the business of literary and historical criticism is the cutting down to size of the famous", and the dignity of his subjects is enshrined in each vignette. The collection though, is not intended merely as a series of eulogies, nor in any sense as a definitive list of the greatest figures of the 20th century. They are, rather, very human renderings, capturing from unexpected angles a group of unconnected yet exceptional characters, as Cooke experienced them, whose stories can teach us much about both human nature and the nature of the past century. --Alisdair Bowles
Reader Reviews:
A Partial Review (28/28 people found this helpful)
"Memories of the Great and the Good" is a collection of essays that, as much as introducing the more casual and less public sides of nearly two dozen luminaries, reveals the evolution of America and of Alistair Cooke. The pieces stretch from 1951 through 1999 and the most useful advice, repeated both in discussing Churchill's love of war and hatred of the idea of women's suffrage, and in dismissing the alleged racism of golfer Bobby Jones, is to beware the "shame of seeing a man out of his time." One reporter recently dubbed Cooke the Dorian Gray of journalism, perhaps both for having been silver-haired and apparently the same age for as many decades as not, and because it is difficult to tell to what time the man himself belongs.
Even though he is my grandfather, I can be no help on that score; in recent years I have seen the replacement of a knee and an angioplasty (both of which he has mentioned in his weekly BBC "Letter from America") leave him as sprightly as I have ever known him.
Each essay reflects the time of its creation, whether that was 1967 or 1999. The 1974 piece on Duke Ellington mentions a visit to the bandleader's flat "on the swagger side of Harlem," and comments, "There is such a place," the Duke being at the top of "the hierarchy of Negro social status." Yet the 1999 piece on FDR is most memorable for an account of the unexpected, unseen, and contemporarily unpublishable view of the president being carried out of a car and limping, assisted, into a giant hall. By urging the reader to look at his subjects in their times, he sometimes implicitly admonishes himself for failing to do so. "Wodehouse at Eighty," for one, shows the father of Jeeves unquestionably out of his time, an anachronism as viewed--and, to be honest, caricatured--by Cooke, in his early fifties at the time. In other essays he steps almost too much into the times and shoes of his subjects, for example when mirroring the outlook of Erma Bombeck, whose career "was that of her generation--brace yourselves!--mother and housewife." While many of the pieces attempt and succeed at portraying the individuals 'in their time,' a large number of the pieces were written far after 'their times' as obituaries, which should not be surprising as Cooke shares with every nonogenarian the fact of having seen an extraordinary number of players both step onto the stage and then take their bows and make their exits some time later.
Combined with this historical span, what is truly worthy about this book is that, like his earlier "Six Men," it displays the extraordinary degree of access which he, as a foreign correspondent par excellence, enjoyed with a dizzying array of figures. George Bernard Shaw is in a behind-the-scenes committee discussing the pronunciation of proper "BBC English." "The General"--Eisenhower-- sits on his back porch, commenting on his golf and waiting for Cooke's t.v. crew to reposition themselves. And Duke Ellington is in his boxers and a towel, devouring breakfast at two p.m. These are the kind of stories that I've heard come out over drinks in his study, or on Christmas afternoon in Vermont, as if they were the most pedestrian, ordinary experiences ...
"Memories of the Great and the Good" offers a rare look, at Cooke (long an icon of Britain to Americans and in icon of America to Britain) and at many of the most important actors on the stage of the twentieth century. I truly hope you will enjoy it.
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