WWW.WEDNESDAY

WWW. WEDNESDAY asks three questions to prompt you to speak bookishly. To participate, and to see how other book lovers responded, click here. 

1. What are you currently reading? JFK: Coming of Age in the American Century, 1917-1956 by Frederik Logevall. This is Volume 1 of what promises to be a comprehensive biography of President Kennedy. As of today I'm with him in high school at Choate. So much has already been written about the rivalry between the two oldest Kennedy boys, Joe Jr. and Jack, and how the parents clearly favored and extravagantly believed in Joe. (There's a telling passage in this book where, when Rose is shown evidence that her second son has a higher IQ than her eldest, she just dismissively says she doesn't believe it.) 

 

What Logevall makes clear is that the rivalry didn't so much damage the future President as shape him. The attention and pressure his parents put on Joe gave him room to develop his own personality, to become the most original character in the clan. The humor, insouciance, creativity and detachment that President Kennedy would display on the world stage seem to have flourished during an adolescence of benign neglect.

 

So far this book is serious but not dry or scholarly. I'm grateful for that. So much published about the Kennedys is, well, crap. Even QAnon feels the need to drag them into murky conspiracy theories to ennoble their tripe. But this book is refreshingly anchored in objectivity, context and fact. I'm sure I'll have more to say about it next week.

2. What did you recently finish reading? A Night to Remember by Walter Lord. The night in question begins before midnight on April 14, 1912. That's when Titanic's lookout spotted the iceberg. It ends about five hours later, before sunrise on April 15, when Carpathia begins picking up survivors. Mr. Lord tells the story of the ship through the eyes of those who were there. It's engaging because it has so much heart and humanity. I'll never forget the passage about the women in the lifeboats, just before 2:30 am, seeing the ship ... their belongings ... their loved ones ... go under. Numbed by cold, numbed by emotion, all they could find to say to one another was variations on, "She's gone." (Except for Lady Duff Gordon, Lifeboat #1, who rather ridiculously said to her secretary, "There is your beautiful nightdress gone.")

While this is not a new book -- first published in 1955 -- it included many new-to-me tidbits. For example, I'd never before read what it was like for passengers on Carpathia that night. In the predawn hours, they heard all this remarkable activity: food preparation, doctors readying makeshift infirmaries, engines sounding first as though they'd stopped then like sped up ... They had no way of knowing what was going on and no one told them anything except, "Stay in your cabin. Captain's orders!" How frightened and vulnerable they must have felt!

That's the thing: if you pick up this book, expect to feel -- denial, dread, disbelief, relief, joy, regret, courage, cowardice, gratitude ... I believe every human emotion is within this slim book.

 3. What will read next? Something a bit lighter!