I have been an avid reader ever since I discovered the joy of the printed word at age six or seven and progressed from parsing Dick and Jane to deciphering cereal boxes. Who can say what sparked this insatiable hunger, which impelled me to devour books like a rampaging wildfire scorching all in its path or like the ravenous "Book Beast" emblazoned on the tee shirt given to me many years ago by a sister-in-law? Athletically inept, socially dysfunctional, painfully introverted, perhaps I was seeking to compensate for these self-proclaimed deficiencies or steered to things studious and cerebral by some dominant, ancestral gene.
While my peers flexed their muscles on the diamond and gridiron and charmed their way into the good graces of the opposite sex, I buried myself in a warm cocoon of make-believe, and sowed the seeds of my current fixation.
I pass it now every day on my way to work, the once-classically-grand Jones Memorial Library -- a mere shell of its glorious, if scarred, segregated legacy, its yellow-brick facade, white stone staircase and terrace, and imperious cupola still dominating lower Rivermont Avenue with a now-spectral gaze -- the bowels of which I scoured once or twice a week, the lower-level children's section, unearthing well-worn copies of, yes, the Bobbsey Twins (by Laura Lee Hope) and Thornton W. Burgess's one-hundred-plus animal biographies of friendly creatures like Peter Cottontail, Reddy the Fox, Johnny Chuck, and Sammy Jay. While these could hardly be deemed "thrillers," they were replete with enough primitive humor, engaging characters, crazy shenanigans, and precarious situations to keep this young reader enthralled. And they introduced me to the seductiveness of recurring protagonists, familiar personalities whose continuing adventures I was only too eager to sample.
After exhausting most of the titles in these mild-mannered series or simply outgrowing them, I entered into a phase of serious comic-book obsession. While I occasionally scanned a Disney's Mickey Mouse or a Looney Tunes' Bugs Bunny -- and some of their daffy cohorts -- for variety and Classics Illustrated only as a last resort, Superman, Batman, and their well-endowed stablemates -- Aquaman, Green Lantern, and the Flash -- were my heroes of choice; possessing extraordinary powers, consistently able to outwit and out slug their nefarious foes, delineated in living color, they were the video game stars of yesteryear and the real precursors of my adult crusaders.
I remember stacks of comic books, waist-high on an eight-year-old, neatly catalogued by publisher and subject, crowned by the solemn visage of a coonskin-capped Davy Crockett. I remember languidly rocking away a summer afternoon stretched out in a hammock on the back porch of 1226 Greenway Court, tracking the latest flights of Superman. I remember loitering at the magazine counter in Pearson's Drug Store on Boonsboro Road, stealing glances at the newest DC comics monthly editions before being swatted away, loath to expend my allowance on purchasing any, since there were too many for my pocketbook and since the publisher had had the audacity to raise the cover prices from ten cents to twelve cents and then to an exorbitant fifteen cents. I remember at summer camp anxiously awaiting the arrival of the Sunday New York Daily News sent by my father; wrapped in the comic section, it enabled me to follow the exploits of the chisel-faced Dick Tracy as he chased down Joe Period, Flattop Jr., and the Kitten Sisters.
I admired Dick Tracy, but, like other preteens, I could more closely identify with sleuths closer to my age, like the resourceful Hardy Boys, Frank and Joe. In a series of stirring if formulaic episodes, usually after taking a hand-off case from their baffled detective father, Fenton, they found missing chums, uncovered secrets in caves and old mills, deciphered marks on doors and sinister signposts, and solved airport, Shore Road, and hidden harbor mysteries, always narrowly escaping one imminent disaster after another.
By the time I discovered the Hardy Boys in the mid-fifties, at the age of eight, they were already thirty years old, the first three volumes in the series -- The Tower Treasure, The House on the Cliff, and The Secret of the Old Mill -- having been published in 1927, followed by thirty-two more by 1955. How long it took me to circle back and read every one -- as much as possible in order of publication, an eccentricity fostered by the creator's strategy of incorporating into each volume a summary of its predecessor's plot and a teasing introduction to its sequel -- I do not recall. I only know that I did it, up until the age of thirteen, when I finally outgrew these juvenile scribbles and closed my last book on the Hardy Boys, The Mystery of the Desert Giant. I checked them out of the library, or wheedled seventy-five cents or a dollar out of my parents to purchase the ones not available, six or seven of which I noticed a few days ago peeking from the basement bookshelves in the home where I now reside. Only one was still dressed in its artful comic-book cover, the rest nakedly clothbound in tan with brown lettering.
This naive lad reveled in the ingenuity and craftsmanship of one Franklin W. Dixon -- how smoothly his name rolls off the tongue -- Hardy Boys' historian, only to wake up one morning years later, sadly disillusioned, cheated by the shocking revelation that, like Santa Claus, there was no such person. For the Hardy Boys -- and all their youthful partners in crime-solving, Nancy Drew, the Bobbsey Twins, Tom Swift, the Dana Girls -- were the products of one imagination, Edward Stratemeyer (and later his two daughters, Edna and Harriet), and the syndicate he established to churn out these callow potboilers like tabloids off a printing press.
The Stratemeyers' method was to compose detailed ten-to-twelve-page plot outlines and farm them out to ghostwriters, who would submit completed manuscripts for a $100 to $125 stipend, waiving any royalty rights. The real talent behind the Hardy Boys was a struggling young Canadian journalist named Leslie McFarlane, who penned sixteen of the first twenty-four volumes. Often bored by the routine nature of the work and the necessity to conform precisely to the outlines and length dictated by the syndicate, McFarlane still managed to inject ample doses of humor, sophisticated composition, plot complexity, and nuanced characterization into the books, thus accounting in large part for their enduring popularity. Although surpassed in later years by Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys were racking up sales of one to two million books a year by the time the syndicate was sold in the the early 1980's.
Launched in adolescence, my reading career soared into the stratosphere. Like a homeless man unleashed in Golden Corral, I was eager to sample every salad, entree, side dish, and dessert. High school introduced me to Dickens and Shakespeare (whom I enjoyed but can't say ever read for pleasure); four years as an English major at Washington and Lee served up such delicacies as Sophocles, Wordsworth, Camus, Proust, Faulkner, and Thomas Mann. A trio of history courses even whetted my appetite for narrative history and biography.
As I observed my English professors in their element, not only was their love of literature palpable and contagious, even more intriguing was the realization that they were actually being paid to read books. With this in mind, I accepted a fellowship to Columbia University intending to pursue the scholarly life, until fate (or the Vietnam War) rudely intervened in the form of a notice to report for a draft physical. Abandoning the fellowship, I taught English for one year at Appomattox County High School in order to secure a deferment, and subsequently took a temporary job in the family business -- one that has lasted forty years. (Oddly enough, one of my favorite books is The Best and the Brightest, a title that surely has stood the test of time, David Halberstam's riveting account of how the Kennedy and Johnson Brain Trusts squandered 50,000 lives, billions of dollars, and their own credibility in the quagmire that was Vietnam.)
But my reading fever hardly abated; if anything, it intensified. Freed from the constraints of mandated study, settled into a nine-to-five routine, never enamored of television sitcoms or melodramas, shunning the community volunteer work that was to occupy me in later years, I found a bountiful world of books beckoning me.
My menu was diverse and comprehensive. Harboring illusions of recapturing my fellowship, I tackled classic works missing from my resume: Life on the Mississippi and Huckleberry Finn (Mark Twain); Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov (Dostoyevsky); War and Peace and Anna Karenina (Tolstoy); Jude the Obscure and The Mayor of Casterbridge (Thomas Hardy); Nicholas Nickleby and Our Mutual Friend (Dickens); Portrait of a Lady and The Turn of the Screw (Henry James); and Les Miserables (Victor Hugo).
As academia faded farther into the distance and the search for literary meaning began to grow tiresome, I dove into weighty tomes of non-fiction: Shelby Foote on The Civil War (3 volumes); Bruce Catton on Ulysses S. Grant (2 volumes) and The Army of the Potomac (3 volumes); Dumas Malone on Thomas Jefferson (6 volumes); Winston Churchill on World War II (6 volumes); Allan Nevins on The Ordeal of the Union (8 volumes); Page Smith on the Early American Republic (4 volumes); Geoffrey Ward (2 volumes), Arthur Schlesinger (3 volumes), and Kenneth Davis (5 volumes) on Franklin Roosevelt; Robert Remini on Andrew Jackson (3 volumes); Stephen Oates, David Hugh Donald, and Benjamin Thomas on Abraham Lincoln; Peter Massie on Nicholas and Alexandra and Peter the Great; Barbara Tuchman on The Guns Of August, Admiral Stilwell, and The Calamitous Fourteenth Century; William Shirer on the Third Reich and the Third Republic; Theodore White on The Making of Several Presidents; Ron Chernow on Alexander Hamilton, Washington, and Grant; Walter Isaacson on Kissinger, Benjamin Franklin, Steve Jobs, and Leonardo da Vinci; Robert Caro on The Years of Lyndon Johnson (5 volumes); and The Oxford History of the United States (8 volumes published to date).
If this sounds a lot like work (a misconception, really, since these are superb historians whose writing sparkles with expository clarity, vivid characterizations, dramatic intensity, and balanced interpretation), I cannot deny an occasional dalliance in more mundane popular fiction and gorging myself on tasty treats gleaned from best-seller lists and word-of-mouth recommendations.
When I heard he was a favorite of John Kennedy, I chewed through all of Ian Fleming's James Bond tales before the film Dr. No made him a household word. Having enjoyed Michael Crichton since the publication of his first book, The Andromeda Strain, I predicted to my two media-savvy sons after reading Jurassic Park that it would make a blockbuster movie. Throughout the 1970's and 1980's, I managed to consume my fair share of the output of best-seller stalwarts like Arthur Hailey, Frederick Forsyth, Ken Follett, Tom Clancy, James Michener, Leon Uris, Herman Wouk, John LeCarre, Lawrence Sanders, and John Irving.
With all those skeletons in my closet, I feel eminently qualified to expound upon the idiosyncrasies of a compulsive reader.
A compulsive reader always finishes a book he starts, no matter how absurd, dull, obscure, or irrelevant it may be.
A compulsive reader always has a book on stand by; when he finishes the one in hand, he immediately snatches it up, if only to read one page, since he must always be in a book -- never in between. He has six or seven others stacked in his bedroom, future selections, some of which have lain dormant for months, even years, as more delectable titles have intervened.
A compulsive reader keeps a mental list of at least twenty books he intends to read in the near future.
A compulsive reader treasures every spare moment as an opportunity to deposit more pages in his completion bank. He produces his book in the blink of an eye -- at physician offices, in Jiffy Lube and car wash waiting rooms, in airport and train station lobbies, on the elliptical machine at the YMCA, and on any occasion while waiting for his spouse to emerge from her dressing room.
Like a cow grazing virgin pasture, a compulsive reader spends hours browsing bookstores, always in search of that elusive, provocative, coveted title -- rarely buying -- to add to his ready-to-read supply. At dinner parties, his eyes and attention have been known to wander in the direction of his host's bookshelf to evaluate his tastes and see if he possesses anything worth borrowing.
The compulsive reader finally runs out of bookshelf space, and, perish the thought, finds himself compelled to resort to the library or to de-accessing his collection -- through trades, discards, or donations.
A compulsive reader not only reads books; he reads about books -- in newspapers, in magazines, and now, for hours, like a hog wallowing in the mud, in a stupendous waste of time, on line. In fact, these days, any pretender, with a little research, can converse intelligently about any number of books whose covers he has never cracked.
And finally, the compulsive reader suffers from the rare phobia: fear of the unread book, which he compensates for by an hysterical desire to read every book in sight and often fulfills -- like I did upon moving into my parents' home nineteen years ago. Finding their expansive shelf space stocked with not only their own collection but also with the remnants of twenty-four (three times eight) years of high school and college, I vowed to leave no volume unthumbed.
It took me about a year to read those fifty or sixty which were new to me -- my average annual output. In the past 40 years, since graduating college, I estimate I have read 2500 books -- a dubious accomplishment I don't encourage others to emulate.
Like any other habit carried to excess, compulsive reading can have negative repercussions. It's an inactive, solitary pastime which can isolate the bookworm from his partner and from other family members and in certain social settings from friends and acquaintances -- for no greater good.
For reading is merely a relaxing, pleasurable avocation -- and has no more intrinsic value than surfing the television or internet airwaves, listening to music, playing golf or tennis, or attending sporting events. If one's purpose is to acquire knowledge or to be a better informed person, he can probably learn more in a shorter period of time by watching any number of history, discovery, or news channels. Having read so many books, I can hardly remember even the most recent titles, much less their plots or contents.
Such obtuseness would tend to debunk the claim of scientific researchers that reading does indeed have a correlative benefit; by exercising the brain, it may delay the onset of dementia. In my case, however, I am fearful of the opposite effect -- acceleration into senility -- when I consider the depths to which my reading regimen has deteriorated. Other than the spasmodic intrusion of a work of history, biography, or purported literary merit (I've become an aficionado of Anthony Trollope -- fifteen books in five years), it consists of one mind-numbing thriller after another.
That's not to say there's no method to this madness. Why would a well-educated, reasonably intelligent, naturally inquisitive, frustrated scholar stoop to such triviality?
Well, for one thing, the suspense keeps my attention. Even after digesting five hundred murder mysteries, I still can never predict the outcome or identify the guilty party.
Secondly, if there is any morally instructive message to be gleaned from this genre, it is that the competent fictional treatment of criminal activity can illuminate the fine line between illusion and reality and reveal universal truths about human behavior. Are not some of the motives that drive people to success (and failure) in their personal and professional lives -- greed, sexual passion, unrestrained ambition, pride -- the same ones that drive others to dissemble, deceive, steal, and, in extreme cases, murder? Are not the qualities exhibited by the detective in his relentless quest to unmask the culprit -- persistence, judgment, analysis, courage, patience -- prerequisites for mastering all of life's challenges?
Accordingly, the crime writing I read must meet certain self-selected criteria.
While the plots may border on the improbable, hinge on dubious coincidences, culminate in the incrimination of a minor, unsuspected character, obscure relevant information, and countenance too many gratuitous killings, they must retain a semblance of credibility and evince some intellectual complexity -- which is why I reject international, political, conspiratorial inventions.
Characters -- primary and secondary -- must reflect genuine psychological insight, thinking and acting in ways consistent with their relationships and predicaments. Virtuous protagonists should be flawed and conflicted, and the motives of villains cleverly suppressed, so that the lines between good and evil are often blurred. Recurring characters should both evolve and retain a comfortable familiarity, so that coming back to them after an interlude is like reconnecting with old friends.
The best crime writers are no less polished and professional than those in other genres in their ability to depict individuals and settings visually; to employ imagery judiciously and creatively; to convey realistic dialogue; and to capture the essence of a character or situation, whether by means of an effusive, digressive, or economical style.
Here are thirty authors who seem to meet those criteria:
(I've read every crime novel by the first twenty and am well on the way to completing the body of work of the remaining ten.)
Elizabeth George, an American who writes multifaceted, psychologically intense British murder mysteries starring the chilly, analytical Scotland Yard detective, Inspector Thomas Lynley, of noble birth, and his softer, more sensitive, working-class assistant, Sergeant Barbara Havers (They are exceptional in Playing for the Ashes and Deception on His Mind);
Dick Francis (recently in partnership with his son, Felix, taking his franchise down a notch), whose forty-plus tales of British horse-racing (with double entendre titles like Reflex, For Kicks, and Longshot) repeatedly plunge attractive, innocent, interchangeable thirty-something males into desperate situations from which, drawing on latent reserves of ingenuity and courage, they fortuitously manage to extricate themselves;
Steve Martini, whose alter ego attorney, Paul Madriani, is as cool and efficient as his creator in unraveling the twisted cords of evidence binding the wrongly accused, although his latest adventure, Guardian of Lies, is a little more fanciful, propelling him from his staid Southern California courtroom south of the border into the clutches of international terrorists seeking to resurrect a decades-old nuclear weapon;
Richard North Patterson, who has ambitiously tested the limits of the genre, using it in a diverse array of intellectually stimulating -- and occasionally overtly didactic -- novels to explore serious timely issues -- like presidential politics, abortion (Protect and Defend), gun control (Balance of Power), capital punishment (Conviction), the Israeli-Palestinian controversy (Exile), and the tragedies of African kleptocracy and exploitation (Eclipse);
Daniel Silva, whose art-restorer-turned-Israeli-agent, Gabriel Allon, introduced in The Kill Artist, constantly -- and reluctantly -- lured out of retirement by his crusty master and mentor, Ari Shamron -- glides effortlessly across Europe, from palatial villas to dangerous back alleys to secluded safe houses -- saving popes, rescuing kidnapped diplomats, facilitating defections, extracting crucial information, eliminating enemies, and dodging countless assassination attempts with a calmness and determination that render him wholly credible;
Patricia Cornwell, whose best work, The Body Farm, is many years behind her, yet whom I can't give up on, in spite of plots that crawl at a snail's pace through filler pages of tortuous dialogue and gratuitous backstories and a self-obsessed cast of characters -- Scarpetta, Benton, Marino, and Lucy -- whose emotional antics have become tiresome;
John Sandford, pseudonym of the prize-winning journalist, John Camp, who has convinced me that the Minneapolis-St. Paul setting of his nineteen Prey novels (Start with the early ones: Rules of Prey and Eyes of Prey) is home to more serial killers than any other city in the world, all of whom, after 380 pages of grim reaping, diabolical scheming by deviant minds high and low, and convoluted cat and mouse games, are eventually brought to justice (but rarely to trial) by the tenacious, unflappable (and witty) Lucas Davenport and his investigative team;
Sue Grafton, whose plucky private eye, Kinsey Millhone -- besides tracking down a host of missing persons (and bodies), solving decades-old murders, rooting out extortionists, uncovering fraudulent insurance schemes, jogging regularly in order to assuage the guilt of an occasional cheeseburger, and surviving innumerable close calls -- has, over the course of her alphabet series, as in T for Trespass, matured from a rather dry transcriber of people and places into a keen observer of human nature;
Stephen Hunter, whose mystery thrillers chronicling the daring exploits of World War II marksman Earl Swagger and his Vietnam veteran master sniper son, Bob Lee ("the Nailer") -- particularly Time to Hunt, Black Light, and Pale Horse Coming -- conquering heroes who prevail over impossible odds, resonate with an exuberance that willfully leavens implausibility with satire and illustrate time and again that, "in certain circumstances, there's nothing more necessary than a good man with a gun and the guts to use it well" (unofficial Stephen Hunter website);
Michael Connelly, the best in the business, whose three early works, The Poet, Blood Work, and The Last Coyote are masterpieces of crime fiction, in the last of which series protagonist, renegade detective Harry Bosch uncovers some tragic family history and, in a recurring Connelly theme, recognizes the squalid underbelly of Los Angeles crime and politics as symbolic of a society mired in self-delusion and corruption;
Lee Child, whose ex-military policeman, Jack Reacher, 6'5" 250 lbs., stands as the quintessential Marlboro Man, restless and rootless, shirking cars, money, houses, and clothes (other than what's on his back), strong enough with his fists, dexterous enough with a blade, and accurate enough with a rifle to outfight, outwit, and outshoot the evildoers he encounters in his cross-country wanderings, saving lives and reputations -- and sacrificing many more in the process -- in these marvelous pieces of pure escapist fiction (I like Echo Burning and One Shot);
Robert Crais, whose witty, hip, greatest-detective-in-the-world (or at least Los Angeles), Elvis Cole -- with the laconic, imperturbable Joe Pike watching his back -- and demolitions expert Carol Starkey (star of two stand-alone Crais novels) a new love interest, after live-in girl friend Lucy Chenier (whom he met in Voodoo River) soured on Cole's violent lifestyle when her son was kidnapped (in The Last Detective) -- battles his own vulnerabilities and self-doubt while surviving one harrowing shootout after another;
T. Jefferson Parker, another talented Southern California crime reporter who, working the Pacific coast, has produced seventeen police procedurals featuring a changing cast of law enforcement officers who, as a rule, wind up deeply and personally embroiled in the cases they are investigating (Check out California Girl and Silent Joe);
Further north, in San Francisco, John Lescroart, whose intricately-plotted courtroom dramas (like Nothing But The Truth) invariably require the combined skills of bartender-turned-defense-attorney, Dismas Hardy, and his half-Jewish, half-black friend, Detective Lieutenant Abe Glitzky -- both of whom have family problems of their own to deal with -- to uncover hidden motives, overcome departmental and political interference, and vindicate the falsely accused;
Moving east, George Pelecanos, story editor for HBO's The Wire, who merges an intimate knowledge of the neighborhoods, stores, bars, music, and people of Washington, D.C., a sensitive and authentic voice, gritty prose, street-smart dialogue, and fast-paced narratives to paint a hard-boiled picture of urban life and explore the meaning of race, class, family, and work (Read his breakthrough generational tale, The Big Blowdown);
Deborah Crombie, a Texas native who has traveled to England and Scotland to research her locked-room mysteries featuring the dour Detective Superintendent, Duncan Kincaid, and his feisty female partner (now lover), Sergeant Gemma James, who must sift through numerous red herrings, plenty of suspects, and lots of secrets (as in Dreaming of the Bones) to catch their killers -- while keeping their own relationship in balance;
Ian Rankin, Britain's best-seller, whose moody, dogged, hard-drinking, chain-smoking John Rebus stalks the grimy underworld of Edinburgh, Scotland, often bucking his superiors, always juggling two or three cases at a time, in novels (like The Falls) that are "fast, gripping, often paralleling real events, and rich in character and social observation" (Gordon Brown, Times Online, April 17, 2008);
Peter Robinson, another Brit, whose plodding, introspective Detective Superintendent Alan Banks confronts cases of ever greater complexity (like the stunner Innocent Graves) -- plagued by an increasingly tenuous relationship with his wife -- in a picturesque rural village that belies the gore, deviance, and violence lurking beneath the surface, in finely-wrought pieces of character as well as crime;
Jo Nesbo, vocalist and songwriter, former stockbroker, reporter, and club footballer, creator of Oslo police detective Harry Hole, whose tortuous battles with his own alcoholism and insecurities mirror his relentless pursuit through Norway's frigid landscape of egregiously depraved and gratuitously violent serial killers, including The Snowman, who targets adulterous mothers, sets frozen replicas of himself outside their windows as warnings, and slays them in the most gruesome manner;
Greg Iles, architect of Southern Gothic, who recovered from a horrendous automobile accident in 2011 that resulted in a ruptured aorta and partial leg amputation to craft his magnus opus, the 2000-page Natchez Burning trilogy, in which idealistic attorney Penn Cage grapples with his physician father's apparent murder of his long-time black nurse and uncovers a bloody trail of illicit relationships, law enforcement corruption, racial killings, and age-old vendettas, all told in precise and powerful language;
Wilbur Smith, who, well into his eighties (and with the assistance of
co-authors) continues to churn out action-packed episodes in his
ongoing saga of the Courtneys, from their early seafaring days as
privateers and treasure hunters to their entrenchment in the economic,
political, and military infrastructure of their South African homeland,
each one replete with exquisite renderings of the native flora and
fauna, melodramatic love affairs, and constant struggles both physical
and psychological over land, wealth, and power;
Henning Mankell, internationally renowned, with over forty million in sales to his credit, most of them about his "melancholy, drunken, bullish" detective, Kurt Wallander (a name he plucked from the phone book), whose personal gloom and decay (he suffers from diabetes and, in his final case, the early stages of Alzheimer's) echo his creator's disillusionment with Swedish society, where the only redemption is found in the "common decency of ordinary people" and the ultimate foiling of "reassuringly wicked" criminals (Andrew Brown, The Guardian, October 5, 2015);
C. J. Box, whose genius consists of thrusting an idealistic, impetuous, and persevering Wyoming game warden named Joe Pickett into bizarre situations in which poaching, land-grabbing, trail guiding, off-season hunting, environmental exploitation, and the stalking of endangered species invariably culminate in one or more murders and often threaten the lives of his steadfast wife, three rambunctious daughters, and avenging guardian angel, all set amidst the gorgeous but at times inhospitable Bighorn Mountains;
Laura Lippman, like her original lead, the spunky Jewish-Catholic accidental private investigator, Tess Monaghan, a former reporter who, while moving beyond the standard "who done it" formula into a series of standalone works that are more character-driven and literary, has remained faithful to her gritty Baltimore roots, often drawing from real-life tragedies, as in the generational drama After I'm Gone, in which a convicted patriarch's disappearance connects to a delayed murder and the incrimination of several family members;
Archer Mayor, who employs his experiences as volunteer medical technician, local sheriff's deputy, and assistant state death examiner to concoct intriguing cases, usually two or three simultaneously, that send his unflappable detective Joe Gunther and his prize team at the Vermont Bureau of Investigation -- Willy, Sammie, and Lester -- into the lush, spare landscape of the New England countryside, the back alleys and dark corners of small towns under siege, and the hearts and minds of their quirky inhabitants, like the Tag Man, an eccentric cat burglar placed in a moral quandary when he stumbles upon a horrific scene during one of his nighttime forays;
John Connolly, Irish bartender turned American lyricist, as obsessed with the nature of evil as his protagonist, the indomitable Charlie Parker, is forever haunted by the shadows of his wife and daughter, whose killer he brought to justice in the introductory volume, Every Dead Thing, which planted the seeds of an evolving mythology that incorporates supernatural occurrences, heterodox religious sects, immortal saints and demons in human form, and secret pseudo mafias functioning as rogue police forces;
Donna Leon, whose love for her adopted Venice, ironic perspective on all matters Italian, and keen insight into the ambiguous nature of good and evil filter into every scene of Commissario Guido Brunetti's serial quest to do right amidst a society rife with corruption and hypocrisy, as exemplified in the stellar Drawing Conclusions, in which an investigation into the death of an elderly widow by apparent heart attack -- highlighted as always by verbal sparring with his professorial wife Paola while he enjoys her sumptuous cooking -- ultimately illuminates his "simple humanity, subtlety of mind, and refusal to succumb to the tyranny of bureaucrats and moralists" (Bill Ott, Booklist);
Philip Kerr, who thirty years ago sculpted a German model of Raymond Chandler's wise-cracking private eye, named him Bernie Gunther, and with the release of his Berlin Noir trilogy immersed him in the brutality of the Nazi regime and later in the bleakness of a postwar dystopia, ultimately expanding the series to fourteen, but only after an interlude during which he explored such diverse subjects as a modernistic skyscraper haunted by its own robots, a decimated society of the future dependent on stored blood transfusions for its survival, and the anti-Communist hysteria of the mid-sixties in which an assassin for hire and a disillusioned CIA agent stalk the newly-elected president, John F. Kennedy, in preparation for The Shot;
Harlan Coben, who after a couple of false starts gained traction with the invention of former basketball star turned sports agent turned sympathetic helpmate, Myron Bolitar, whose search for truth and justice -- aided by his wise-cracking, debonair, fabulously wealthy, partially psychotic, and ruthlessly protective sidekick, Windsor Horne Lockwood III -- inevitably leads to dangerous confrontations with mobsters, con men, thieves, murderers, and kidnappers, themes echoed in the author's subsequent independent works, in which typical New Jersey suburban families find themselves victimized by dark secrets from the past, mysterious disappearances, and vengeful neighbors, as in the convoluted but perfectly resolved Stay Close;
And finally, the godfather of them all, John D. MacDonald, prolific producer of more than 400 short stories and 65 novels between 1946 and 1986, most of the latter as original paperbacks, all of them animated by energetic, biting prose, plots that seduce and satisfy, characters that talk and think like real people, a "breathtaking knowledge of the contemporary world," and harsh commentary on the harm greedy developers and businessmen continually inflict upon his beloved Florida, best known for the brutally cynical, incurably romantic salvage specialist he dredged up at the behest of his publisher in 1962, Travis McGee, who lives in a fifty-two-foot houseboat, the Busted Flush, which he won in a poker game, and who earns his retirement money by exposing dirty deeds, recovering stolen property, and rescuing endangered damsels and dandies, each adventure colorfully recorded in aptly titled pieces like The Deep Blue Good-by and The Dreadful Lemon Sky (Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post, November 11, 2003).
While I make no claim that any of these writers will stand the test of time -- or even be remembered beyond the current generation -- in defense of my addiction, I summon no less an authority than George Orwell, who writes: "It is not only the great works that hold a place in readers' hearts; readable but less-accomplished works often have a longevity that their counterparts do not."
In an essay of the same name, Orwell defines "Good Bad Books" as "the kind . . . that have no literary pretensions but which remain readable when more serious productions have perished." He identifies two classic examples of the genre: Sherlock Holmes and Uncle Tom's Cabin, which, he observes, is full of "preposterous and melodramatic events" but is also "deeply moving and essentially true."
According to Orwell, escapist literature -- like contemporary crime fiction -- "forms pleasant patches in one's memory, quiet corners where the mind can browse at odd moments, but hardly pretends to have anything to do with real life." He notes that not all art need be intellectual in nature. "The existence of good bad literature -- the fact that one can be aroused or excited or even moved by a book which his intellect simply refuses to take seriously -- is a reminder that art is not the same thing as celebration."
And so, tonight, I celebrate, as I take up my newest thriller: The Turnaround, by George Pelecanos.
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Saturday, November 21, 2009
Who Shall Die
Like the pain from a chronic knee injury, which subsides for brief periods of time, tantalizing one with the blissful thought that perhaps this time it is gone for good, and then abruptly and rudely reasserts itself, capital punishment is back in the news.
In the space of two weeks, the state of Virginia lethally injected John Allen Muhammad, the notorious D.C. sniper whose 2002 random attacks terrorized the region and left ten dead, and electrocuted 60-year-old Larry Bill Elliott, convicted for the 2001 shooting deaths of 25-year-old Dana Thrall and 30-year-old Robert Finch -- ostensibly to win the love of a former escort and stripper, Rebecca Gragg, with whom Finch was involved in a bitter custody dispute.
Since 1976, when the Supreme Court overturned its 1972 ruling and declared the death penalty constitutional, 1181 felons have been executed. Texas, Virginia, and Oklahoma lead the thirty-five states which allow the death penalty with 444, 105, and 91 executions, respectively.
Having researched capital punishment several years ago and concluded that it is a flawed policy, vastly misunderstood and replete with inconsistencies and inequities, I had naively assumed that most clear-thinking individuals were similarly enlightened, and that, as a subject of controversy, it was largely passe.
Thus I was somewhat surprised when three friends voiced their enthusiastic approbation of John Allen Muhammad's execution. Of course, it's difficult to deny that, if anyone did, Mr. Muhammad deserved his fate, not only for engaging in an impersonal, cold-blooded rampage, but also for sparking universal fear and trembling in the consciousness of so many millions, in spite of the statistical improbability of any one of them becoming a casualty.
When I expressed my own reservations about the death penalty, two of my friends even confronted me with the same vexatious question: "Suppose it were one of your own children he had murdered. What would you say then?" One even vowed to seek her own violent retribution should the state fail to do its duty in response to her son's hypothetical slaying -- a necessary undertaking if the heinous crime happened to occur in one of the fifteen non-death-penalty states, such as West Virginia.
For death-penalty opponents, this argument -- a loved one as victim -- along with the inescapable challenge "What would you do in the case of Adolf Hitler?" -- seems to be the most difficult to refute. Who can say how such a tragedy would impact his so-called rational thinking? I could only console and fortify myself with my understanding of the death penalty's extremely problematic nature and with the realization that many persons lose family members at the hands of others who are never brought to justice, much less executed.
Such is the capital punishment's persistent conundrum -- and one of the strongest reasons for abolishing it altogether. While Gallup's most recent poll shows that 65% of Americans support the death penalty, they would be hard-pressed to characterize the practice as other than moribund, at least in most parts of the country. While 1181 executions since 1976 may seem like a large number, it's only 35 a year, over half of which are concentrated in three states. In fact, California and Pennsylvania have 678 and 226 inmates on death row, respectively, but have executed only 13 and 3 in over thirty years.
The disconnect here is that while 100 million Americans -- including my three friends -- when asked, favor the death penalty as a matter of policy, they are attentive only to the immediate case at hand and content to ignore or dismiss the host of murderers locked away in prisons, their thirst for blood apparently satiated by the meager thirty-five or so sacrificed annually at the altar of principle.
Could this be because their stance is grounded in emotions rather than intellectually based? Fifty per cent of those who favor capital punishment quote a Biblical verse as their reason: an eye for an eye, a prescription which, at first glance, expresses anger and passion, demanding that vengeful action be taken against violent criminals. In fact, a more analytical reading of the passage from which the phrase is excerpted suggests that its intent as a measure of justice is to apportion punishment according to the seriousness of the offense, to limit revenge to only an eye for an eye, to only one life for another, since it references an age in which it was not uncommon for wrathful families or clans to attack entire communities for wrongdoing committed against one of their members.
Further examination of the text might lead one to reject death as the appropriate punishment for murder altogether, since the evolution of modern society has deemed archaic a Biblical moral code that prescribed that sentence for such crimes as sorcery, bestiality, adultery, incest, homosexuality, and prostitution.
As in the forgoing analysis, the charge to death penalty abolitionists is to introduce reason into the discussion, to counteract the emotional, kneejerk reaction that erupts in response to the question: Do you favor or oppose the death penalty for persons convicted of murder?
Consider the following facts.
A sixty-five per cent approval rating for the death penalty does not translate into equivalent sentencing in actual capital cases. Capital juries, which must be comprised of persons willing to apply the death penalty, return the sentence in only about a third of trials in which the prosecutor seeks it.
Could the unwillingness of juries to impose death indicate an ambivalence that is not reflected in polling? Justice William Brennan thought so when he wrote: "When an unusually severe punishment is authorized for wide-scale application but, because of society's refusal, inflicted in only a few instances, the inference is that there is a deep-seated reluctance to inflict it. Indeed, the likelihood is that the punishment is tolerated only because of its disuse."
The Susan Smith case strikingly illustrates how enthusiasm for the death penalty can evaporate when nominal supporters actually confront a human being over whom they have the power of life and death. According to a Newsweek poll, at the end of Smith's trial, after she had been found guilty of cruelly drowning her two sons in a locked car, 63 per cent of respondents said she should be executed. Yet the jury voted unanimously to sentence her to life imprisonment -- strong evidence that it's much easier to demand execution in the abstract, from a safe distance.
One reason juries retreat from the death penalty is that they have options; they can recommend alternative sentences in capital murder cases, such as life imprisonment. In fact, support for the death penalty falls substantially -- from 65% to 47% -- when people are presented the alternative of life imprisonment without parole, and to 32% when the life sentence includes restitution -- the stipulation that a convicted murderer's prison earnings go into a victim's assistance fund.
The death penalty enjoys majority approval because it is a symbol of severe punishment for murder. But poll numbers suggest that, beneath the surface, what citizens really want is assurance that murderers will not be allowed to walk the streets again, and that the protection of society and compensation to victims is as important to them as revenge and closure.
While only 13% of respondents identify deterrence -- the theory that the threat of execution will restrain potential murderers -- as the primary reason for their support of capital punishment, proponents of the death penalty can not ignore this important fact: not a single investigation to date has produced any evidence that capital punishment -- or life imprisonment for that matter -- deters capital murders.
When comparisons are made between states with the death penalty and states without, the majority of death-penalty-states show murder rates higher than non-death-penalty states -- by as much as 40% in the years 2003 to 2007. In 2007, the murder rate in states with the death penalty averaged 5.8 per 100,000; in states without, it averaged 4.1 per 100,000.
And the numbers don't change when researchers factor in characteristics known to influence murder rates, such as unemployment, probability of arrest and conviction, and police force expenditures; when they measure the effects over time of death penalty abolition and restoration; when they analyze the rate of police killings -- which is punishable by death in every state which permits capital punishment; and when they test the results of swift executions versus delayed ones.
And why would they change, since it is doubtful that potential killers dispassionately weigh the costs and benefits of the deed they are about to commit. Most murders -- at least 90% -- are crimes of passion, and occur under the blinding influence of rage, hatred, jealousy, or fear. The threat of the death chamber -- or life imprisonment -- is unlikely to deter the mentally-disturbed or alcohol-intoxicated killer, the young gang member caught up in his macho sub-culture, the convenience store intruder whose robbery goes suddenly awry, or the unbalanced spouse who lashes out spontaneously in the midst of a domestic altercation.
In fact, implementing the death penalty may have a perverse, unintended consequence: brutalization. History shows that public executions of the past not only failed to deter; they incited drunkenness, revelry, fighting, and rioting. Today, prison wardens report an increase in disciplinary problems and violence in the days prior to and following an execution. Why else are executions now held in the middle of the night, if not to avoid sending a most distasteful message: it is acceptable to take the life of someone who has committed an egregious wrong against you.
One fundamental problem of the death penalty that even its staunchest proponents cannot deny is its arbitrary, capricious, and subjective imposition. Fifty per cent of those surveyed in recent polls admit that the death penalty is not carried out fairly, that blacks are more likely to be sentenced to death than whites, and poor defendants more likely than rich defendants.
Statistics confirm these assumptions. Roughly 16,000 murders are committed in the United States each year; 1600 convicted murderers are eligible for the death penalty; and 120 are sentenced to death -- not necessarily because their crimes are the most despicable, but because they are people of low social or minority status with limited resources. Ninety per cent are financially unable to hire attorneys to represent them at their trials.
Compare the cases of O.J. Simpson and Ernest Wayne Jones.
Simpson, millionaire celebrity, football hero, television pitch man, and movie star, was accused of murdering his former wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ronald Goldman, in 1995. In spite of the multiple victims, the vicious nature of the crime, and similar past incidents, the Los Angeles District Attorney's Office chose not to seek the death penalty, which resulted in the selection of a more lenient jury. The defense team included eleven lawyers, numerous private investigators, a handful of jury consultants, and a host of highly-paid expert witnesses who challenged every claim made by the prosecution and presented alternative interpretations of the evidence. The preliminary hearing lasted four months, the trial nine, producing 45,000 pages of testimony and costing the defense seven million dollars. The verdict was "not guilty."
Ernest Wayne Jones's trial took place down the hall from Simpson's. He stood accused of raping and stabbing to death his girl friend's mother. Jones was mentally disturbed and had a history of violence, having served six years in prison for a rape conviction. He had a public defender. The prosecution's DNA evidence was presented in a day by a witness who was never cross-examined, nor was any defense expert available to raise suspicion about contamination or bias. In a trial that lasted sixteen days, including a four-day penalty trial, Jones was found guilty and sentenced to death.
Unfortunately, in too many cases, money and competent legal representation make the difference between life and death.
Whether represented by a state-sponsored public defender or a court-appointed private attorney, indigent defendants are seriously disadvantaged. Whereas prosecutors have unlimited access to investigative assistance, defendants must file motions to fund investigations, to obtain laboratory analysis of physical evidence, and to hire psychologists and expert witnesses. Court-appointed lawyers are often grossly underpaid, inexperienced, and unfamiliar with the relevant law. Death sentences have been imposed when a defense attorney argued with co-counsel, referred to a client by a racial slur, examined a witness during whose testimony he was absent, slept during the trial, and became intoxicated.
Further impacting the unfairness of the capital justice system is a racial bias which operates against both blacks and whites. Studies indicate that an influential factor in capital murder indictments and death penalty sentencing is the victim's race. Murderers of whites are twice as likely to be charged with a capital crime than murderers of blacks, and four times as likely if the accused is black. Whether white or black, defendants convicted of killing whites are more likely to receive a death sentence than if the victim is black, and twelve times more likely if the perpetrator is black.
The per cent of blacks now on death row (42%) is dramatically disproportionate to their percentage of the total U.S. population (13%).
The prejudicial effects of race are most pronounced in the Southern states of Texas, Georgia, Louisiana, and Florida.
Under a system in which death is determined more by a throw of the dice than by the scales of justice, is it not conceivable that innocent persons might be condemned and executed? Hugo Badeau of Tufts University and Michael Radelet of the University of Florida have identified 416 people wrongfully convicted of murder and sentenced to death between 1900 and 1991. All were imprisoned; twelve were executed.
In 1987, a 52-year-old black man, Walter McMillan, was arrested in Alabama for the murder of 18-year-old Rhonda Morrison, eight months after the fact. McMillan claimed he was targeted because of his race, his involvement with a white woman, and his son's marriage to a white woman. Despite being placed at a fish fry on the day of the murder by twelve friends and relatives, McMillan was convicted on the testimony of three witnesses who received favors from the state and later admitted perjury. After Judge Robert E. Lee Key overruled the jury's sentence of life imprisonment without parole and changed it to death -- referring to "the brutal killing of young woman in the first flower of adulthood" -- new attorneys, not paid by the state, took over the case. When they found that the prosecution had illegally withheld evidence which would have proved McMillan's innocence, he was acquitted and released -- in 1993, after spending six years on death row.
In the summer of 1984, a nine-year-old girl was tortured, sodomized, and murdered near her home in Baltimore County, Maryland. Twenty-three-year-old crab fisherman Kurt Bloodsworth was convicted and sentenced to death, principally on the testimony of three witnesses who identified him as resembling a composite picture made of the attacker. Police ignored another man, David Rehill, who showed up at a mental health clinic several hours after the murder with scratches on his face and told a therapist "he was in trouble with a little girl."
Bloodsworth spent two years on death row before an appeal on a technicality resulted in a new trial. Although the state knew about Rehill, that information was not released to defense attorneys until days before the second trial. They did not have time to investigate and failed to ask for a postponement. The second jury never learned there was a potential second suspect and again convicted Bloodsworth, sentencing him to life imprisonment.
Seven years later, when a new attorney discovered testable material on the victim's underwear, two DNA tests revealed that semen stains could not have come from Bloodsworth. Released by court order, he became the first person to be exonerated from prison by use of DNA evidence, after serving nine years.
On March 18, 2009, in signing a bill to repeal New Mexico's death penalty statute, Governor Bill Richardson stated: "The system is inherently defective. DNA testing has proven that innocent people have been put to death all across the country . . . The sad truth is that the wrong person can still be convicted in this day and age."
Finally, contrary to what most Americans believe, that it is cheaper to execute a condemned criminal than lock him behind bars for life, the death penalty is far more costly than life imprisonment.
To be sure, the cost of life without parole is very high -- $25,000 per prisoner per year, or $750,000 to $1,000,000 over the life expectancy of a murderer incarcerated for thirty to forty years. These costs could be reduced if prisoners serving life sentences worked while in prison.
But the cost of capital punishment is far higher.
California estimates that it costs $90,000 more a year to house one inmate on death row, where each person must have a private cell and extra guards, than in the general prison population. Six hundred and seventy inmates on death row are costing the state an additional $60 million per year.
Capital trials cost considerably more than other criminal trials.
Maryland estimates that the average cost to taxpayers for reaching a single death verdict, including investigation, trial, appeals, and incarceration, is $3 million -- $1.9 million more than the cost of a non-death-penalty case. A 2008 study examined 162 capital cases that were prosecuted between 1978 and 1999, and found that those cases cost $186 million more than they would have had the death penalty not existed, which equates to $37.2 million for each of the five executions performed during that period.
In 2005, New Jersey concluded that since 1983 the state's death penalty has cost taxpayers $253 million more than would have been incurred had the state utilized a sentence of life without parole instead of death. Since 1982, there have been 197 capital trials in New Jersey, 60 death sentences, of which 50 have been overturned, and zero executions.
The most comprehensive study in the country found in 1993 that the death penalty costs North Carolina $2.16 million more per execution than a non-death-penalty murder case with a sentence of life imprisonment.
In spite of a report that showed that reinstatement of the death penalty would cost the state of New York $118 million, the Governor of New York fulfilled a campaign promise and made it law in 1995. The actual cost has now reached $160 million, $23 million for each person sentenced to death, with no executions in sight.
Why is the death penalty so expensive?
Almost all persons facing the death penalty cannot afford their own attorney. The state must assign them two public defenders and pay prosecution costs as well.
Since capital cases are far more complicated than non-capital cases, experts are needed to evaluate forensic evidence and the mental health and social history of the accused.
Because of the death penalty question, jury selection is much more time-consuming and expensive.
Trials last longer, requiring jury, court personnel, and attorney compensation. To minimize mistakes, those convicted are entitled to a series of appeals, at taxpayers' expense.
Yet, as this complex process plays itself out, consuming resources and straining courts and prisons, of those who do receive the death penalty, only one in eleven -- thirty-five a year -- is ever executed.
The true price of the death penalty must also be measured against its opportunity costs, as state officials forgo the funding of crime prevention, education, mental health treatment, victim services, and drug rehabilitation, in order to pursue capital convictions.
But, in the final analysis, abolishing the death penalty in the United States -- the only Western democracy where it is still legal, and the one with the highest crime rate -- requires that the American people be persuaded that government executions are not only financially costly; they are morally costly.
The trumpet of morality is sounded loud and clear these days when abortion, homosexuality, and the sexual peccadilloes of governors and congressmen invade the public arena -- but how often do the arbiters of righteousness denounce a policy -- capital punishment -- which contradicts one of society's most sacred values: the inviolability of human life?
To those who claim that the Bible authorizes, even prescribes, executions, I say: Mosaic law and later rabbinic traditions established procedural requirements so extensive and standards of proof so unreachable that, as a matter of practice, death was rarely imposed.
To those who declare that murderers have forfeited their right to life and must be paid in kind, I say: if killing is morally wrong, it is wrong for both an individual and the state -- except in the extreme necessary cases of self-defense, imminent danger, and the protection of society. I say: imprison these criminals for life, without parole, rather than sink to their level, deliver one cruel act for another, and slay them as they slew their victims.
To those who profess a pious morality and allege some abstract benefits of capital punishment, I say: morality can only be assessed in practice. And what I see is a deeply-flawed system in which the innocent are convicted, race and economics determine who shall live and who shall die, executions have no deterrent value, and funds are squandered that could be employed more productively.
To those who are incensed and appalled by a horrible crime, I say: anger does not outweigh all other considerations; justice must take precedence over revenge; and, in spite of the intensity of their feelings, there is no guarantee that punishment will be meted out fairly or rationally.
To those who promote retribution to comfort and gratify the victim's family, I say: his perpetrator's demise will not restore a loved one to life; not all survivors seek a vengeful execution; less than one per cent of murderers end up in the death chamber; and executions often bestow a disturbing celebrity status on the condemned and divert attention from the victim.
And finally, to those who question why they should even be concerned about a policy which has no impact upon them personally and which a majority of citizens support, I say: a human life is at stake, and taking it offers no tangible or spiritual benefits to society.
It's time to codify this country's de facto moratorium on death sentences and executions, both of which have declined 60% since 2000. It's time to act upon the recommendations of police chiefs and criminologists nationwide who have stated on the record that the death penalty does not reduce the number of murders and that it is one of the most inefficient uses of taxpayer money in fighting crime. It's time to redirect that wasted money towards programs that could make society safer. It's time to assure ourselves that never again will an innocent person be put to death at the hands of the state. It's time to abolish capital punishment.
In the space of two weeks, the state of Virginia lethally injected John Allen Muhammad, the notorious D.C. sniper whose 2002 random attacks terrorized the region and left ten dead, and electrocuted 60-year-old Larry Bill Elliott, convicted for the 2001 shooting deaths of 25-year-old Dana Thrall and 30-year-old Robert Finch -- ostensibly to win the love of a former escort and stripper, Rebecca Gragg, with whom Finch was involved in a bitter custody dispute.
Since 1976, when the Supreme Court overturned its 1972 ruling and declared the death penalty constitutional, 1181 felons have been executed. Texas, Virginia, and Oklahoma lead the thirty-five states which allow the death penalty with 444, 105, and 91 executions, respectively.
Having researched capital punishment several years ago and concluded that it is a flawed policy, vastly misunderstood and replete with inconsistencies and inequities, I had naively assumed that most clear-thinking individuals were similarly enlightened, and that, as a subject of controversy, it was largely passe.
Thus I was somewhat surprised when three friends voiced their enthusiastic approbation of John Allen Muhammad's execution. Of course, it's difficult to deny that, if anyone did, Mr. Muhammad deserved his fate, not only for engaging in an impersonal, cold-blooded rampage, but also for sparking universal fear and trembling in the consciousness of so many millions, in spite of the statistical improbability of any one of them becoming a casualty.
When I expressed my own reservations about the death penalty, two of my friends even confronted me with the same vexatious question: "Suppose it were one of your own children he had murdered. What would you say then?" One even vowed to seek her own violent retribution should the state fail to do its duty in response to her son's hypothetical slaying -- a necessary undertaking if the heinous crime happened to occur in one of the fifteen non-death-penalty states, such as West Virginia.
For death-penalty opponents, this argument -- a loved one as victim -- along with the inescapable challenge "What would you do in the case of Adolf Hitler?" -- seems to be the most difficult to refute. Who can say how such a tragedy would impact his so-called rational thinking? I could only console and fortify myself with my understanding of the death penalty's extremely problematic nature and with the realization that many persons lose family members at the hands of others who are never brought to justice, much less executed.
Such is the capital punishment's persistent conundrum -- and one of the strongest reasons for abolishing it altogether. While Gallup's most recent poll shows that 65% of Americans support the death penalty, they would be hard-pressed to characterize the practice as other than moribund, at least in most parts of the country. While 1181 executions since 1976 may seem like a large number, it's only 35 a year, over half of which are concentrated in three states. In fact, California and Pennsylvania have 678 and 226 inmates on death row, respectively, but have executed only 13 and 3 in over thirty years.
The disconnect here is that while 100 million Americans -- including my three friends -- when asked, favor the death penalty as a matter of policy, they are attentive only to the immediate case at hand and content to ignore or dismiss the host of murderers locked away in prisons, their thirst for blood apparently satiated by the meager thirty-five or so sacrificed annually at the altar of principle.
Could this be because their stance is grounded in emotions rather than intellectually based? Fifty per cent of those who favor capital punishment quote a Biblical verse as their reason: an eye for an eye, a prescription which, at first glance, expresses anger and passion, demanding that vengeful action be taken against violent criminals. In fact, a more analytical reading of the passage from which the phrase is excerpted suggests that its intent as a measure of justice is to apportion punishment according to the seriousness of the offense, to limit revenge to only an eye for an eye, to only one life for another, since it references an age in which it was not uncommon for wrathful families or clans to attack entire communities for wrongdoing committed against one of their members.
Further examination of the text might lead one to reject death as the appropriate punishment for murder altogether, since the evolution of modern society has deemed archaic a Biblical moral code that prescribed that sentence for such crimes as sorcery, bestiality, adultery, incest, homosexuality, and prostitution.
As in the forgoing analysis, the charge to death penalty abolitionists is to introduce reason into the discussion, to counteract the emotional, kneejerk reaction that erupts in response to the question: Do you favor or oppose the death penalty for persons convicted of murder?
Consider the following facts.
A sixty-five per cent approval rating for the death penalty does not translate into equivalent sentencing in actual capital cases. Capital juries, which must be comprised of persons willing to apply the death penalty, return the sentence in only about a third of trials in which the prosecutor seeks it.
Could the unwillingness of juries to impose death indicate an ambivalence that is not reflected in polling? Justice William Brennan thought so when he wrote: "When an unusually severe punishment is authorized for wide-scale application but, because of society's refusal, inflicted in only a few instances, the inference is that there is a deep-seated reluctance to inflict it. Indeed, the likelihood is that the punishment is tolerated only because of its disuse."
The Susan Smith case strikingly illustrates how enthusiasm for the death penalty can evaporate when nominal supporters actually confront a human being over whom they have the power of life and death. According to a Newsweek poll, at the end of Smith's trial, after she had been found guilty of cruelly drowning her two sons in a locked car, 63 per cent of respondents said she should be executed. Yet the jury voted unanimously to sentence her to life imprisonment -- strong evidence that it's much easier to demand execution in the abstract, from a safe distance.
One reason juries retreat from the death penalty is that they have options; they can recommend alternative sentences in capital murder cases, such as life imprisonment. In fact, support for the death penalty falls substantially -- from 65% to 47% -- when people are presented the alternative of life imprisonment without parole, and to 32% when the life sentence includes restitution -- the stipulation that a convicted murderer's prison earnings go into a victim's assistance fund.
The death penalty enjoys majority approval because it is a symbol of severe punishment for murder. But poll numbers suggest that, beneath the surface, what citizens really want is assurance that murderers will not be allowed to walk the streets again, and that the protection of society and compensation to victims is as important to them as revenge and closure.
While only 13% of respondents identify deterrence -- the theory that the threat of execution will restrain potential murderers -- as the primary reason for their support of capital punishment, proponents of the death penalty can not ignore this important fact: not a single investigation to date has produced any evidence that capital punishment -- or life imprisonment for that matter -- deters capital murders.
When comparisons are made between states with the death penalty and states without, the majority of death-penalty-states show murder rates higher than non-death-penalty states -- by as much as 40% in the years 2003 to 2007. In 2007, the murder rate in states with the death penalty averaged 5.8 per 100,000; in states without, it averaged 4.1 per 100,000.
And the numbers don't change when researchers factor in characteristics known to influence murder rates, such as unemployment, probability of arrest and conviction, and police force expenditures; when they measure the effects over time of death penalty abolition and restoration; when they analyze the rate of police killings -- which is punishable by death in every state which permits capital punishment; and when they test the results of swift executions versus delayed ones.
And why would they change, since it is doubtful that potential killers dispassionately weigh the costs and benefits of the deed they are about to commit. Most murders -- at least 90% -- are crimes of passion, and occur under the blinding influence of rage, hatred, jealousy, or fear. The threat of the death chamber -- or life imprisonment -- is unlikely to deter the mentally-disturbed or alcohol-intoxicated killer, the young gang member caught up in his macho sub-culture, the convenience store intruder whose robbery goes suddenly awry, or the unbalanced spouse who lashes out spontaneously in the midst of a domestic altercation.
In fact, implementing the death penalty may have a perverse, unintended consequence: brutalization. History shows that public executions of the past not only failed to deter; they incited drunkenness, revelry, fighting, and rioting. Today, prison wardens report an increase in disciplinary problems and violence in the days prior to and following an execution. Why else are executions now held in the middle of the night, if not to avoid sending a most distasteful message: it is acceptable to take the life of someone who has committed an egregious wrong against you.
One fundamental problem of the death penalty that even its staunchest proponents cannot deny is its arbitrary, capricious, and subjective imposition. Fifty per cent of those surveyed in recent polls admit that the death penalty is not carried out fairly, that blacks are more likely to be sentenced to death than whites, and poor defendants more likely than rich defendants.
Statistics confirm these assumptions. Roughly 16,000 murders are committed in the United States each year; 1600 convicted murderers are eligible for the death penalty; and 120 are sentenced to death -- not necessarily because their crimes are the most despicable, but because they are people of low social or minority status with limited resources. Ninety per cent are financially unable to hire attorneys to represent them at their trials.
Compare the cases of O.J. Simpson and Ernest Wayne Jones.
Simpson, millionaire celebrity, football hero, television pitch man, and movie star, was accused of murdering his former wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ronald Goldman, in 1995. In spite of the multiple victims, the vicious nature of the crime, and similar past incidents, the Los Angeles District Attorney's Office chose not to seek the death penalty, which resulted in the selection of a more lenient jury. The defense team included eleven lawyers, numerous private investigators, a handful of jury consultants, and a host of highly-paid expert witnesses who challenged every claim made by the prosecution and presented alternative interpretations of the evidence. The preliminary hearing lasted four months, the trial nine, producing 45,000 pages of testimony and costing the defense seven million dollars. The verdict was "not guilty."
Ernest Wayne Jones's trial took place down the hall from Simpson's. He stood accused of raping and stabbing to death his girl friend's mother. Jones was mentally disturbed and had a history of violence, having served six years in prison for a rape conviction. He had a public defender. The prosecution's DNA evidence was presented in a day by a witness who was never cross-examined, nor was any defense expert available to raise suspicion about contamination or bias. In a trial that lasted sixteen days, including a four-day penalty trial, Jones was found guilty and sentenced to death.
Unfortunately, in too many cases, money and competent legal representation make the difference between life and death.
Whether represented by a state-sponsored public defender or a court-appointed private attorney, indigent defendants are seriously disadvantaged. Whereas prosecutors have unlimited access to investigative assistance, defendants must file motions to fund investigations, to obtain laboratory analysis of physical evidence, and to hire psychologists and expert witnesses. Court-appointed lawyers are often grossly underpaid, inexperienced, and unfamiliar with the relevant law. Death sentences have been imposed when a defense attorney argued with co-counsel, referred to a client by a racial slur, examined a witness during whose testimony he was absent, slept during the trial, and became intoxicated.
Further impacting the unfairness of the capital justice system is a racial bias which operates against both blacks and whites. Studies indicate that an influential factor in capital murder indictments and death penalty sentencing is the victim's race. Murderers of whites are twice as likely to be charged with a capital crime than murderers of blacks, and four times as likely if the accused is black. Whether white or black, defendants convicted of killing whites are more likely to receive a death sentence than if the victim is black, and twelve times more likely if the perpetrator is black.
The per cent of blacks now on death row (42%) is dramatically disproportionate to their percentage of the total U.S. population (13%).
The prejudicial effects of race are most pronounced in the Southern states of Texas, Georgia, Louisiana, and Florida.
Under a system in which death is determined more by a throw of the dice than by the scales of justice, is it not conceivable that innocent persons might be condemned and executed? Hugo Badeau of Tufts University and Michael Radelet of the University of Florida have identified 416 people wrongfully convicted of murder and sentenced to death between 1900 and 1991. All were imprisoned; twelve were executed.
In 1987, a 52-year-old black man, Walter McMillan, was arrested in Alabama for the murder of 18-year-old Rhonda Morrison, eight months after the fact. McMillan claimed he was targeted because of his race, his involvement with a white woman, and his son's marriage to a white woman. Despite being placed at a fish fry on the day of the murder by twelve friends and relatives, McMillan was convicted on the testimony of three witnesses who received favors from the state and later admitted perjury. After Judge Robert E. Lee Key overruled the jury's sentence of life imprisonment without parole and changed it to death -- referring to "the brutal killing of young woman in the first flower of adulthood" -- new attorneys, not paid by the state, took over the case. When they found that the prosecution had illegally withheld evidence which would have proved McMillan's innocence, he was acquitted and released -- in 1993, after spending six years on death row.
In the summer of 1984, a nine-year-old girl was tortured, sodomized, and murdered near her home in Baltimore County, Maryland. Twenty-three-year-old crab fisherman Kurt Bloodsworth was convicted and sentenced to death, principally on the testimony of three witnesses who identified him as resembling a composite picture made of the attacker. Police ignored another man, David Rehill, who showed up at a mental health clinic several hours after the murder with scratches on his face and told a therapist "he was in trouble with a little girl."
Bloodsworth spent two years on death row before an appeal on a technicality resulted in a new trial. Although the state knew about Rehill, that information was not released to defense attorneys until days before the second trial. They did not have time to investigate and failed to ask for a postponement. The second jury never learned there was a potential second suspect and again convicted Bloodsworth, sentencing him to life imprisonment.
Seven years later, when a new attorney discovered testable material on the victim's underwear, two DNA tests revealed that semen stains could not have come from Bloodsworth. Released by court order, he became the first person to be exonerated from prison by use of DNA evidence, after serving nine years.
On March 18, 2009, in signing a bill to repeal New Mexico's death penalty statute, Governor Bill Richardson stated: "The system is inherently defective. DNA testing has proven that innocent people have been put to death all across the country . . . The sad truth is that the wrong person can still be convicted in this day and age."
Finally, contrary to what most Americans believe, that it is cheaper to execute a condemned criminal than lock him behind bars for life, the death penalty is far more costly than life imprisonment.
To be sure, the cost of life without parole is very high -- $25,000 per prisoner per year, or $750,000 to $1,000,000 over the life expectancy of a murderer incarcerated for thirty to forty years. These costs could be reduced if prisoners serving life sentences worked while in prison.
But the cost of capital punishment is far higher.
California estimates that it costs $90,000 more a year to house one inmate on death row, where each person must have a private cell and extra guards, than in the general prison population. Six hundred and seventy inmates on death row are costing the state an additional $60 million per year.
Capital trials cost considerably more than other criminal trials.
Maryland estimates that the average cost to taxpayers for reaching a single death verdict, including investigation, trial, appeals, and incarceration, is $3 million -- $1.9 million more than the cost of a non-death-penalty case. A 2008 study examined 162 capital cases that were prosecuted between 1978 and 1999, and found that those cases cost $186 million more than they would have had the death penalty not existed, which equates to $37.2 million for each of the five executions performed during that period.
In 2005, New Jersey concluded that since 1983 the state's death penalty has cost taxpayers $253 million more than would have been incurred had the state utilized a sentence of life without parole instead of death. Since 1982, there have been 197 capital trials in New Jersey, 60 death sentences, of which 50 have been overturned, and zero executions.
The most comprehensive study in the country found in 1993 that the death penalty costs North Carolina $2.16 million more per execution than a non-death-penalty murder case with a sentence of life imprisonment.
In spite of a report that showed that reinstatement of the death penalty would cost the state of New York $118 million, the Governor of New York fulfilled a campaign promise and made it law in 1995. The actual cost has now reached $160 million, $23 million for each person sentenced to death, with no executions in sight.
Why is the death penalty so expensive?
Almost all persons facing the death penalty cannot afford their own attorney. The state must assign them two public defenders and pay prosecution costs as well.
Since capital cases are far more complicated than non-capital cases, experts are needed to evaluate forensic evidence and the mental health and social history of the accused.
Because of the death penalty question, jury selection is much more time-consuming and expensive.
Trials last longer, requiring jury, court personnel, and attorney compensation. To minimize mistakes, those convicted are entitled to a series of appeals, at taxpayers' expense.
Yet, as this complex process plays itself out, consuming resources and straining courts and prisons, of those who do receive the death penalty, only one in eleven -- thirty-five a year -- is ever executed.
The true price of the death penalty must also be measured against its opportunity costs, as state officials forgo the funding of crime prevention, education, mental health treatment, victim services, and drug rehabilitation, in order to pursue capital convictions.
But, in the final analysis, abolishing the death penalty in the United States -- the only Western democracy where it is still legal, and the one with the highest crime rate -- requires that the American people be persuaded that government executions are not only financially costly; they are morally costly.
The trumpet of morality is sounded loud and clear these days when abortion, homosexuality, and the sexual peccadilloes of governors and congressmen invade the public arena -- but how often do the arbiters of righteousness denounce a policy -- capital punishment -- which contradicts one of society's most sacred values: the inviolability of human life?
To those who claim that the Bible authorizes, even prescribes, executions, I say: Mosaic law and later rabbinic traditions established procedural requirements so extensive and standards of proof so unreachable that, as a matter of practice, death was rarely imposed.
To those who declare that murderers have forfeited their right to life and must be paid in kind, I say: if killing is morally wrong, it is wrong for both an individual and the state -- except in the extreme necessary cases of self-defense, imminent danger, and the protection of society. I say: imprison these criminals for life, without parole, rather than sink to their level, deliver one cruel act for another, and slay them as they slew their victims.
To those who profess a pious morality and allege some abstract benefits of capital punishment, I say: morality can only be assessed in practice. And what I see is a deeply-flawed system in which the innocent are convicted, race and economics determine who shall live and who shall die, executions have no deterrent value, and funds are squandered that could be employed more productively.
To those who are incensed and appalled by a horrible crime, I say: anger does not outweigh all other considerations; justice must take precedence over revenge; and, in spite of the intensity of their feelings, there is no guarantee that punishment will be meted out fairly or rationally.
To those who promote retribution to comfort and gratify the victim's family, I say: his perpetrator's demise will not restore a loved one to life; not all survivors seek a vengeful execution; less than one per cent of murderers end up in the death chamber; and executions often bestow a disturbing celebrity status on the condemned and divert attention from the victim.
And finally, to those who question why they should even be concerned about a policy which has no impact upon them personally and which a majority of citizens support, I say: a human life is at stake, and taking it offers no tangible or spiritual benefits to society.
It's time to codify this country's de facto moratorium on death sentences and executions, both of which have declined 60% since 2000. It's time to act upon the recommendations of police chiefs and criminologists nationwide who have stated on the record that the death penalty does not reduce the number of murders and that it is one of the most inefficient uses of taxpayer money in fighting crime. It's time to redirect that wasted money towards programs that could make society safer. It's time to assure ourselves that never again will an innocent person be put to death at the hands of the state. It's time to abolish capital punishment.
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Long Live the King
'Tis the season, not for gift-giving, which is still two months away -- belying the sudden proliferation of store decorations designed to delude cautious shoppers into believing that indeed time is already running short -- but for masquerade, our once-a-year exercise in self-concealment, gamesmanship, and reinvention.
Who among us has not yearned for a secret identity, if not in recent years, certainly in childhood, when we disguised ourselves in the colorful garb of our favorite cowboy or superhero? I remember donning silvery six-shooters (with smoking caps), checkered bandanas, red and blue tights, and the signature cape, which, if one could only run fast enough with his arms and fists extended, should have effortlessly propelled him onward and upward, "faster than a speeding bullet." In fact, is it not Clark Kent's magical transformation from mild-mannered reporter to Man of Steel that is his most intriguing attribute?
Having outgrown Hopalong Cassidy and Superman -- although I suspect the latter has outgrown me, since I prefer the lead-footed, slightly-bulging, black-and-white George Reeves version to a svelte, boyish Brandon Routh/Christopher Reeve -- I now have a more adult costume stashed away in my closet, ready to extract at any appropriate (or inappropriate) moment, which, as fate would have it, presented itself two weeks ago -- a pre-Halloween treat, if you will.
Seeking exposure for the United Way and hoping to raise a little money, our CEO, Marie M., recruited thirty unsuspecting celebrities (at least they were after it was all over) to perform in costume as popular (for the over-fifty crowd, that is) rock-and-roll personalities -- the Drifters, Gladys Knight and the Pips, the Temptations, the Supremes, the Blues Brothers, the Village People, to name a few. Thankfully, no live singing was required -- only lip-synching, some primitive choreography, and enough talent to model with grace and brazenness sequined aqua-green dresses, shimmering salmon-pink sport jackets, needle-point high heels, and fancy fedoras. And, as much as they may claim to deny it, most participants so reveled in their role-playing and the ridicule heaped upon them by their comrades that they are planning a reunion and possible reprise -- further evidence of the undeniable allure of the masquerade.
Of course, what pantheon of rock-and-roll legends would be complete without an appearance by the King, of whom I have in recent years, partly by accident, partly by design, earned the dubious reputation of being an admirer, which entails, among other eccentricities, proudly possessing the requisite star-studded jumpsuit, complete with cape, wig, shades, necklace, and heavily medallioned belt, as well as hosting a theme party featuring a houseful of borrowed memorabilia, samples of authentic Elvis cuisine, and the sighting of an accomplished impersonator.
I bought the outfit online six or seven years ago, when a friend who knew of my budding interest in Elvis Presley asked me to join another cast of bogus rock and rollers assembled to roast a retiring public school official. The only equipment it lacked was a pair of white boots, which I unearthed amidst a riot of furnishings in the basement of the since-demolished Fine Arts Center. Actually the boots were black, but had been hastily coated with a thin layer of white paint, just enough to get the message across. While I thought they added to the costume's credibility, my wife held a different opinion, and surreptitiously trashed them a few months ago, leaving me no choice but to cram my feet into two lady's black and white saddle oxfords I picked up at a Goodwill store, or, better yet, into a pair of Uggs blue suede boots I borrowed from a female friend for Elvis's most recent gig.
If the latter were a little snug, they certainly fit the song I chose to perform, the same one I lip-synched years earlier in my Elvis debut: Blue Suede Shoes. It's well-known, short, and composed of simple repetitive lyrics, which even this musical simpleton can absorb in a quick study. The familiar YouTube video shows a youthful, casually-dressed Elvis strolling on stage, guitar in hand, looking around innocently before launching into an energetic, hip-swiveling rendition -- not easily replicated by a sixty-something, rhythmically-challenged, tone-deaf novice.
I have worn my Elvis outfit probably half a dozen times -- to a couple of costume parties, to a dinner party at which the suggested attire was "retro sixties," and most recently to a friend's theme party as a pale, non-singing substitute for the impersonator who failed to show. But surely the most memorable occasion was at a Schewel Furniture sales meeting held at the Roanoke Civic Center in February 2006.
The objective of the meeting -- which includes motivational skits, speeches, videos, and prize money -- is to build excitement and enthusiasm for a company-wide mattress contest. And my corporate staff believes that there is no better way to accomplish that than for my employees to see the boss make a fool of himself.
I am the opening act. Six hundred curious souls -- some of whom have come from as far away as two hundred miles -- sit in restless anticipation, not knowing what to expect, other than, from past experience, some lame attempt at humor. The lights dim. The curtain lifts. The music starts quietly and gradually increases in intensity until the ponderous tones of 2001: A Space Odyssey reverberate through the auditorium. Suddenly, a spotlight pierces the darkness, revealing a slight figure, draped in white, crouching in the center of the stage, his back to the audience. He rises slowly, turns around, a microphone tightly clenched in his fist, and, after a brief pause, to the accompaniment of muffled expressions of shock and awe, breaks out into Blue Suede Shoes. Long live the King. Elvis is in the building.
I became interested in Elvis Presley late in life, about twelve years ago, and it is an attachment that can only be characterized as improbable. While I must confess to listening intermittently to the soft, soporific sounds of the oldies "Love" station on XM radio -- between doses of news and sports talk -- I am not music fan. Contemporary music -- anything from the past twenty years -- is a mystery to me, and while I vaguely recall a few artists or songs from my high school and college years, once I have exhausted the Beatles, the Supremes, the Four Tops, and the Beach Boys, I am like a castaway adrift in an endless sea of silence.
As for Elvis Presley, until recently my feelings mirrored those of Erika Doss in her book Elvis Culture: "I hardly thought of him before and certainly had not grown up an Elvis fan . . . I put him in the past tense: fifties, fat, finished, forgotten." (Doss, p.22)
Of course, he had sung Hound Dog and Don't Be Cruel as a young man, and gone on to make a series of popular movies, notable mostly for their redundancy. His famous 1968 Comeback Special and Aloha from Hawaii concerts hardly pricked my consciousness, other than evoking a hazy image of the jumpsuit and cape he wore for the rest of his career. While millions were mourning his tragic demise, I barely noticed and regretted only its untimeliness.
In the years since his death, if I had been aware of Elvis Presley at all, it would have been as much of America perceives him: a weird icon, perhaps a t-shirt, a black velvet wall hanging, a commemorative dinner plate, the inspiration for numerous caricatures, impersonators, or imitators, the idol of thousands of devoted or misguided fans, or "the subject of a handful of TV movies: just one more confused star, an ordinary boy with a bit of talent and a lot of nerve who lost his way." (Griel Marcus, Dead Elvis, p.33)
All that changed for me when I stumbled across a book in the library entitled Last Train to Memphis: the Rise of Elvis Presley by Peter Guralnik. It's a remarkable, mesmerizing tale, five hundred pages that cover principally five years, 1954 through 1958, almost a day-by-day chronicle of the young singer's meteoric rise to fame and fortune: his initial recordings at Sam Phillips's Sun Records studio in Memphis; his early barnstorming days in the Southeast as a rockabilly singer, where he drew increasingly large and adoring crowds; his seduction by Colonel Tom Parker, who managed his transition to national rock-and-roll star and negotiated his contract with RCA; his television appearances on Stage Show, Milton Berle, and The Ed Sullivan Show, which showcased not only his musical talent but also his provocative performing style; his four early films, including Love Me Tender and Jailhouse Rock, which shaped his star image; and finally his induction into the Army and the death of his beloved mother, Gladys. He was the most famous man in America, and he was not yet twenty-four years old.
While I was captivated by the rags-to-riches story of Elvis Presley's origins and early career, what struck me upon reflection as even more fascinating was the unique immortality of Elvis Presley, his continuing presence in contemporary society, his problematic persistence as a mythical figure transcending race, gender, age, socio-economics, and nationality. Who can deny that Elvis lives on in many forms and manifestations, that the King is everywhere and that he is constantly reestablishing his claim to royalty?
Frank Sinatra said: "I'm just a singer. Elvis was the embodiment of the whole American culture." John Lennon said: "Before Elvis, there was nothing." Ronald Reagan said: "Elvis epitomized America. There will never be anyone like him." Margaret Thatcher said: "I loved his music because he was my generation. But then again, Elvis was everyone's generation and always will be." Leonard Bernstein called him: "The greatest cultural force in the twentieth century."
Elvis's record sales are in excess of one billion globally, more than anyone else in recorded history. Elvis still holds the record for the most chart singles, the most top ten singles, and the most weeks at number one. With the 2002 release of A Little Less Conversation -- a remix from the 1968 Presley film Live A Little, Love A Little -- Elvis passed the Beatles for the most number one hits.
More than 600,000 people travel to Graceland every year, making it the second-most visited home in the United States, behind only the White House. Nearly one-half of those visitors are under thirty-five.
Every year thousands of acolytes descend on Memphis to celebrate Elvis Week and observe a candlelight vigil on his death day, August 16th. On a typical year, 5000 participate; on an anniversary year, 25,000; on the twenty-fifth anniversary of Elvis's death, 70,000 showed up.
More than 3500 Elvis impersonators are officially licensed to perform in the United States. The total number of Elvis impersonators is estimated at over 20,000.
Elvis is the only performer to have been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the Country Music Hall Of Fame, and the Gospel Hall of Fame. His three Grammy awards were for gospel recordings.
There have been over 1400 books published about Elvis.
The National Archives has more than nine million photographs of Elvis Presley. The one of Richard Nixon shaking hands with him after appointing him an honorary member of the Narcotics Bureau (a copy of which hangs in my office) is the most requested.
Elvis can be sighted in six hundred fan clubs worldwide, two hundred in the United States, varying in size from a handful to the 1200 members of the Elvis Presley Burning Love Fan Club.
Paul McLeod and his son, Elvis Presley McLeod, call themselves the world's number one Elvis fans. In their 1853 white clapboard antebellum home in Holly Springs, Mississippi, named Graceland Too, they have amassed, they claim, ten million items of Elvis Presley memorabilia. They have also assembled the world's largest Elvis archives, filling more than 1000 notebooks with 40,000 newspaper clippings and collecting 11,000 video tapes and audio cassettes. (Doss, pp.33-40)
Dazzled by such testimonials and statistics, one is prompted to ask: What accounts for the implausible posthumous career of Elvis Presley, a man more revered in death than he was in life? Is there an intellectual explanation for this peculiar phenomenon? Drawing on the book, Elvis after Elvis: The Posthumous Career of a Living Legend, by Gilbert Rodman, let me try to answer that question.
First, Rodman claims that Elvis's Memphis home, Graceland -- today "the object of veneration for thousands of fans who visit every year, or wish they could" (Doss, p.86) -- "gave his stardom a highly visible, physical anchor in the real world." (Rodman, p.99)
"It has been linked in the public eye with him from the day he bought it in 1957 until the day he died . . . and beyond. From almost the first moment of his stardom, Elvis was associated with a very specific site on a map (not just a region or city, but an actual street address) in a way that no other star ever was -- or has been since . . . thus transforming his home into a publicly visible site of pilgrimmage and congregation." (Rodman, p.102)
Elvis's decision to remain in Memphis, as opposed to other stars who took up residence in Hollywood or New York City, enhanced his non-pretentious, regular-folks character -- a factor in broadening his appeal. As the only fish in a small pond, it placed him on a more prominent pedestal than he would have occupied in those other cities. And the visibility of his home and its central geographic location made it more accessible to fans and tourists than it would otherwise have been. (Rodman, p.106)
Graceland is the major force promoting and preserving Elvis's deification. "It serves as the destination for a holy pilgrimage, a sacred place that the true Elvis devotee is compelled to experience firsthand." (Rodman, p.116) Graceland is usually its visitors' sole destination, and many try to time their visits to coincide with Elvis holy days -- his birthday and his death day -- behavior which marks them as true pilgrims rather than mere tourists. (Rodman, p.118)
The holiness of Graceland is reinforced -- even defined -- by what Elvis fans do there. Besides walking through his house, gazing at his possessions, mourning at his grave site, even taking a piece of dirt home with them (Doss, p.89), many will participate in an Elvis-inspired ritual (Rodman, p.117) and leave gifts and offerings -- flowers, pictures, photographs, dolls, records, handwritten messages -- at the grave site or along the wall bordering the Graceland property. (Doss, p.99)
Whereas other fan communities must meet at convention centers or ballparks on specific dates, Graceland is a "real world site where Elvis fans can congregate and come to have a sense of themselves as a community with a stable, permanent existence . . . and where they are free to express their fanaticism without fear of embarrassment." (Rodman, pp. 120-128)
If Graceland has helped keep Elvis alive today, so have the multiple mythical images that inform our perception of him: his racial image, his sexual image, and his image as the embodiment of the American dream. What is most compelling about these images is the dual nature of each one -- black and white, male and female, communal and individualistic -- and how Elvis possesses the unique ability to encompass these dualities simultaneously. (Rodman, pp. 41-42)
Elvis's early career reflects a deep, intentional identification with black culture. He consciously courted black music, black musicians, and black audiences. His liberal borrowings from what the recording industry called "race music" -- rhythm and blues, black gospel, and soul -- set his popularity in motion. He created recording opportunities for many black musicians, such as Little Richard, who said years later: "I thank the Lord for sending Elvis to open the door so I could walk down the road." (Doss, pp.170-174)
By contemporary standards, Elvis "was doing something daring and dangerous . . . He was actively engaged in race mixing . . . He proved that black and white tendencies could coexist and that the product of this coexistence was not just palatable, but thrilling." (Rodman, p.50)
Counterpoint to the myth of Elvis as a figure of integration is the current myth of Elvis as a white hero, exemplified by his fan base, which is not only white but tends to see him as all-white: the Southern separatist, the all-American soldier, the country rocker, the Las Vegas showman dressed up in a white jumpsuit. (Doll, p.196) Little Richard inadvertently reveals the flip side of the coin (and his own contradictory feelings) when he says: "I know they called him the King of Rock and Roll, but if he is, who crowned him -- and why was I not invited? How can a white boy be the King of Rock and Roll?" (Rodman, p.49)
Rodman argues that "both myths are now active in the terrain of U.S. culture and have been since the early stage of Elvis's career . . . That is not to say that both are equally true, but only that they both work . . . for different audiences and different contexts. Each interpretation of Elvis's racial politics explains in part his cultural significance." (Rodman, p.56)
Similarly contributing to the Elvis mystique is a dual gender identification.
On the surface, Elvis appears to be an icon of masculine sexuality, "the man who brought overt, blatant, vulgar sexual frenzy to the popular arts in America . . . an incredibly virile superstud whom women were powerless to resist." (Rodman. p.56)
But critics have identified another side to Elvis's sexual image, that of the "teddy bear." Linda Rae Pratt claims that to women, Elvis projects "a quality of tenderness, vulnerability, and romantic emotion." (Rodman, p.60) His feminine side is clearly manifested in his early body movements and in his later style of dress.
He was the first male star to display his body as an overt sexual object, to become, like female performers, sexualized. (Rodman, p.67) Later, his costumes and face and eye treatment became obviously androgynous. "He wore ruffled pink shirts and black pants with pink stripes, deliberately choosing girl colors . . . He painted himself in black mascara and royal blue eye shadow . . . He had his nose fixed, spent hours doing his hair, and courted fashion designers to dress him up in glamorous gold lame tuxedos or fringed and jeweled jumpsuits." (Doss, p.127)
While Elvis Presley is the most widely impersonated celebrity in history, the adjective most commonly attached to the noun "impersonation" is female, and, "like a woman, Elvis is a marketed body, exhibited, put on display." (Rodman, p.70)
Few other celebrities have crossed the boundary of gender identification like Elvis has.
The third mythical image which is useful in understanding Elvis's posthumous career is the one that views him as the representative of a bicameral American dream, the two versions of which, the communal and the individualistic, in some respects stand in contradiction to each other, but which are both reflected in his unlikely ascent from the obscurity of a Memphis machinist's shop to fame and fortune.
The first version posits "a collective dream of America rooted in notions of community and based on hopes for upward mobility, equality, and freedom for broad segments of the population." (Rodman, p.83) Thus, social critics Greil Marcus and Dave Marsh ask us to imagine Elvis as shaping and invigorating this conception of the dream by inventing not only himself but a whole new community -- black and white, rich and poor, urban and country, and democratic -- to listen to and accept his music.
"When he sings American triolgy . . . the divisions America shares are smoothed away . . . The version of the American dream that is Elvis's performance is blown up . . . to contain more history, more people, more hopes." (Greil Marcus, Mystery Train, pp.124-125)
Thus Elvis, the poor, rural, white, working-class Southerner, becomes a source of racial and social enlightenment, a civil rights pioneer, building a better world for all of us. ( Chadwick, p.xiv)
But he also built a better world for himself -- and in doing so represents the other version of the American dream, the one rooted in notions of individualism, where upward mobility is the domain of the chosen few with talent and brains. And Elvis is "the classic American success story, rising from a two-room Tupelo shack to a marble-pillared mansion on a hill." (Rodman, pp.83-84)
Elvis stands in stark contrast to liberal and conservative politicians and commentators who see these two Americas as incompatible, who claim that a choice must be made between a Martin Luther King vision of an egalitarian and harmonious America and an individualistic one based on self-interest, crass commercialism, greed, and personal financial security.
"Elvis persists as a powerful symbol for anyone who's ever wanted a better life. He produced more music, sold more records, filled more auditoriums than the privileged. But he shut no door behind him. He allowed us all to think that he belonged exclusively to each one of us . . . His life was a statement that it is possible to come from nowhere, to make the big time, and still be true to who you are." (Chadwick, p. 236)
Elvis's continuing presence in contemporary society can be further explained by the far-reaching impact he had on U.S. popular culture.
In an obituary for Rolling Stone magazine in 1977, Dave Marsh wrote: "If an individual of our time can be said to have changed the world, Elvis is the one. In his wake more than the music is different. Nothing and no one looks or sounds the same. His music was the most liberating event of our era because it taught us new possibilities of feeling and perception, new modes of action and appearance, and because it reminded us not only of his greatness but of our own potential. If those things were not already so well integrated into our lives that they have become commonplace, it would be simpler to explain how astonishing a feat Elvis Presley's advent really was." (Rodman, p.157)
In 1956, when Elvis burst upon the scene, rock and roll was perceived as a threat to mainstream U.S. culture; now it is the essence of that culture, and used to sell everything from automobiles to raisins. (Rodman, p.167) Rodman argues that the centrality of rock and roll music in our lives is attributable to Elvis Presley; only he had the charisma, ambition, determination, talent, and instinctive media savvy "to transform the fifties musical genres, attitudes, and social practices into a coherent cultural formation." (Rodman, p.160)
Elvis created and symbolized a revolutionary message for his generation, and then bequeathed it to its successors: to embrace freedom, to treasure innocence, to evince a sense of humor, to laugh at, even mock, oneself.
Elvis taught audiences to question authority and, at times, to rebel against all forms of restraint. His costumes, his movements, and his facial expressions said to his fans that they were free to act and think and move in unconventional ways.
Finally, he called a new community into existence -- "a community centered around rock and roll" -- a youth community that would prove to have "the power to initiate far-reaching social changes . . . the anti-war movement, the second wave of the civil rights movement, feminism, the higher consciousness movement." (Rodman, pp.162-163)
In the words of Carl Perkins: "He never died and he never will. You don't change as much of the world as Elvis Presley changed it -- hair styles, clothes, moods, looks, sideburns. He cut a path through this world; he's going to be history, and he should be." (Rodman, p.162)
In a 1991 novel called Dixieanna Moon by William Price Fox, a young New Yorker and an old southern hustler join forces to stage the ultimate revival show. One night, driving through the South, they pick up an old Sun single on the radio. "Wonder what he was like," says the New Yorker. "He won't like anyone," replies his companion. "You start trying to compare Elvis to something and you can forget it . . . All you can do with a talent that big and that different is sort of point at it when you see it going by and maybe listen for the ricochet." Writes Greil Marcus, "We are the ricochet." (Marcus, Dead Elvis, p.39)
REFERENCES
Chadwick, Vernon, ed. In Search of Elvis: Music, Race, Art, Religion. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1997.
Doll, Susan. Understanding Elvis: Southern Roots vs. Star Image. New York: Garland Publishing Inc., 1998.
Doss, Erika Lee. Elvis Culture: Fans, Faith, and Image. Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 1999.
Guralnik, Peter. Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley. Boston: Little Brown and Company, 1994.
Marcus, Greil. Dead Elvis: A Chronicle of a Cultural Obsession. New York: Doubleday, 1991.
Marcus, Greil. Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock and Roll Music. New York: Penguin Books, 1977.
Rodman, Gilbert. Elvis After Elvis: The Posthumous Career of a Living Legend. London: Routledge, 1996.
Who among us has not yearned for a secret identity, if not in recent years, certainly in childhood, when we disguised ourselves in the colorful garb of our favorite cowboy or superhero? I remember donning silvery six-shooters (with smoking caps), checkered bandanas, red and blue tights, and the signature cape, which, if one could only run fast enough with his arms and fists extended, should have effortlessly propelled him onward and upward, "faster than a speeding bullet." In fact, is it not Clark Kent's magical transformation from mild-mannered reporter to Man of Steel that is his most intriguing attribute?
Having outgrown Hopalong Cassidy and Superman -- although I suspect the latter has outgrown me, since I prefer the lead-footed, slightly-bulging, black-and-white George Reeves version to a svelte, boyish Brandon Routh/Christopher Reeve -- I now have a more adult costume stashed away in my closet, ready to extract at any appropriate (or inappropriate) moment, which, as fate would have it, presented itself two weeks ago -- a pre-Halloween treat, if you will.
Seeking exposure for the United Way and hoping to raise a little money, our CEO, Marie M., recruited thirty unsuspecting celebrities (at least they were after it was all over) to perform in costume as popular (for the over-fifty crowd, that is) rock-and-roll personalities -- the Drifters, Gladys Knight and the Pips, the Temptations, the Supremes, the Blues Brothers, the Village People, to name a few. Thankfully, no live singing was required -- only lip-synching, some primitive choreography, and enough talent to model with grace and brazenness sequined aqua-green dresses, shimmering salmon-pink sport jackets, needle-point high heels, and fancy fedoras. And, as much as they may claim to deny it, most participants so reveled in their role-playing and the ridicule heaped upon them by their comrades that they are planning a reunion and possible reprise -- further evidence of the undeniable allure of the masquerade.
Of course, what pantheon of rock-and-roll legends would be complete without an appearance by the King, of whom I have in recent years, partly by accident, partly by design, earned the dubious reputation of being an admirer, which entails, among other eccentricities, proudly possessing the requisite star-studded jumpsuit, complete with cape, wig, shades, necklace, and heavily medallioned belt, as well as hosting a theme party featuring a houseful of borrowed memorabilia, samples of authentic Elvis cuisine, and the sighting of an accomplished impersonator.
I bought the outfit online six or seven years ago, when a friend who knew of my budding interest in Elvis Presley asked me to join another cast of bogus rock and rollers assembled to roast a retiring public school official. The only equipment it lacked was a pair of white boots, which I unearthed amidst a riot of furnishings in the basement of the since-demolished Fine Arts Center. Actually the boots were black, but had been hastily coated with a thin layer of white paint, just enough to get the message across. While I thought they added to the costume's credibility, my wife held a different opinion, and surreptitiously trashed them a few months ago, leaving me no choice but to cram my feet into two lady's black and white saddle oxfords I picked up at a Goodwill store, or, better yet, into a pair of Uggs blue suede boots I borrowed from a female friend for Elvis's most recent gig.
If the latter were a little snug, they certainly fit the song I chose to perform, the same one I lip-synched years earlier in my Elvis debut: Blue Suede Shoes. It's well-known, short, and composed of simple repetitive lyrics, which even this musical simpleton can absorb in a quick study. The familiar YouTube video shows a youthful, casually-dressed Elvis strolling on stage, guitar in hand, looking around innocently before launching into an energetic, hip-swiveling rendition -- not easily replicated by a sixty-something, rhythmically-challenged, tone-deaf novice.
I have worn my Elvis outfit probably half a dozen times -- to a couple of costume parties, to a dinner party at which the suggested attire was "retro sixties," and most recently to a friend's theme party as a pale, non-singing substitute for the impersonator who failed to show. But surely the most memorable occasion was at a Schewel Furniture sales meeting held at the Roanoke Civic Center in February 2006.
The objective of the meeting -- which includes motivational skits, speeches, videos, and prize money -- is to build excitement and enthusiasm for a company-wide mattress contest. And my corporate staff believes that there is no better way to accomplish that than for my employees to see the boss make a fool of himself.
I am the opening act. Six hundred curious souls -- some of whom have come from as far away as two hundred miles -- sit in restless anticipation, not knowing what to expect, other than, from past experience, some lame attempt at humor. The lights dim. The curtain lifts. The music starts quietly and gradually increases in intensity until the ponderous tones of 2001: A Space Odyssey reverberate through the auditorium. Suddenly, a spotlight pierces the darkness, revealing a slight figure, draped in white, crouching in the center of the stage, his back to the audience. He rises slowly, turns around, a microphone tightly clenched in his fist, and, after a brief pause, to the accompaniment of muffled expressions of shock and awe, breaks out into Blue Suede Shoes. Long live the King. Elvis is in the building.
I became interested in Elvis Presley late in life, about twelve years ago, and it is an attachment that can only be characterized as improbable. While I must confess to listening intermittently to the soft, soporific sounds of the oldies "Love" station on XM radio -- between doses of news and sports talk -- I am not music fan. Contemporary music -- anything from the past twenty years -- is a mystery to me, and while I vaguely recall a few artists or songs from my high school and college years, once I have exhausted the Beatles, the Supremes, the Four Tops, and the Beach Boys, I am like a castaway adrift in an endless sea of silence.
As for Elvis Presley, until recently my feelings mirrored those of Erika Doss in her book Elvis Culture: "I hardly thought of him before and certainly had not grown up an Elvis fan . . . I put him in the past tense: fifties, fat, finished, forgotten." (Doss, p.22)
Of course, he had sung Hound Dog and Don't Be Cruel as a young man, and gone on to make a series of popular movies, notable mostly for their redundancy. His famous 1968 Comeback Special and Aloha from Hawaii concerts hardly pricked my consciousness, other than evoking a hazy image of the jumpsuit and cape he wore for the rest of his career. While millions were mourning his tragic demise, I barely noticed and regretted only its untimeliness.
In the years since his death, if I had been aware of Elvis Presley at all, it would have been as much of America perceives him: a weird icon, perhaps a t-shirt, a black velvet wall hanging, a commemorative dinner plate, the inspiration for numerous caricatures, impersonators, or imitators, the idol of thousands of devoted or misguided fans, or "the subject of a handful of TV movies: just one more confused star, an ordinary boy with a bit of talent and a lot of nerve who lost his way." (Griel Marcus, Dead Elvis, p.33)
All that changed for me when I stumbled across a book in the library entitled Last Train to Memphis: the Rise of Elvis Presley by Peter Guralnik. It's a remarkable, mesmerizing tale, five hundred pages that cover principally five years, 1954 through 1958, almost a day-by-day chronicle of the young singer's meteoric rise to fame and fortune: his initial recordings at Sam Phillips's Sun Records studio in Memphis; his early barnstorming days in the Southeast as a rockabilly singer, where he drew increasingly large and adoring crowds; his seduction by Colonel Tom Parker, who managed his transition to national rock-and-roll star and negotiated his contract with RCA; his television appearances on Stage Show, Milton Berle, and The Ed Sullivan Show, which showcased not only his musical talent but also his provocative performing style; his four early films, including Love Me Tender and Jailhouse Rock, which shaped his star image; and finally his induction into the Army and the death of his beloved mother, Gladys. He was the most famous man in America, and he was not yet twenty-four years old.
While I was captivated by the rags-to-riches story of Elvis Presley's origins and early career, what struck me upon reflection as even more fascinating was the unique immortality of Elvis Presley, his continuing presence in contemporary society, his problematic persistence as a mythical figure transcending race, gender, age, socio-economics, and nationality. Who can deny that Elvis lives on in many forms and manifestations, that the King is everywhere and that he is constantly reestablishing his claim to royalty?
Frank Sinatra said: "I'm just a singer. Elvis was the embodiment of the whole American culture." John Lennon said: "Before Elvis, there was nothing." Ronald Reagan said: "Elvis epitomized America. There will never be anyone like him." Margaret Thatcher said: "I loved his music because he was my generation. But then again, Elvis was everyone's generation and always will be." Leonard Bernstein called him: "The greatest cultural force in the twentieth century."
Elvis's record sales are in excess of one billion globally, more than anyone else in recorded history. Elvis still holds the record for the most chart singles, the most top ten singles, and the most weeks at number one. With the 2002 release of A Little Less Conversation -- a remix from the 1968 Presley film Live A Little, Love A Little -- Elvis passed the Beatles for the most number one hits.
More than 600,000 people travel to Graceland every year, making it the second-most visited home in the United States, behind only the White House. Nearly one-half of those visitors are under thirty-five.
Every year thousands of acolytes descend on Memphis to celebrate Elvis Week and observe a candlelight vigil on his death day, August 16th. On a typical year, 5000 participate; on an anniversary year, 25,000; on the twenty-fifth anniversary of Elvis's death, 70,000 showed up.
More than 3500 Elvis impersonators are officially licensed to perform in the United States. The total number of Elvis impersonators is estimated at over 20,000.
Elvis is the only performer to have been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the Country Music Hall Of Fame, and the Gospel Hall of Fame. His three Grammy awards were for gospel recordings.
There have been over 1400 books published about Elvis.
The National Archives has more than nine million photographs of Elvis Presley. The one of Richard Nixon shaking hands with him after appointing him an honorary member of the Narcotics Bureau (a copy of which hangs in my office) is the most requested.
Elvis can be sighted in six hundred fan clubs worldwide, two hundred in the United States, varying in size from a handful to the 1200 members of the Elvis Presley Burning Love Fan Club.
Paul McLeod and his son, Elvis Presley McLeod, call themselves the world's number one Elvis fans. In their 1853 white clapboard antebellum home in Holly Springs, Mississippi, named Graceland Too, they have amassed, they claim, ten million items of Elvis Presley memorabilia. They have also assembled the world's largest Elvis archives, filling more than 1000 notebooks with 40,000 newspaper clippings and collecting 11,000 video tapes and audio cassettes. (Doss, pp.33-40)
Dazzled by such testimonials and statistics, one is prompted to ask: What accounts for the implausible posthumous career of Elvis Presley, a man more revered in death than he was in life? Is there an intellectual explanation for this peculiar phenomenon? Drawing on the book, Elvis after Elvis: The Posthumous Career of a Living Legend, by Gilbert Rodman, let me try to answer that question.
First, Rodman claims that Elvis's Memphis home, Graceland -- today "the object of veneration for thousands of fans who visit every year, or wish they could" (Doss, p.86) -- "gave his stardom a highly visible, physical anchor in the real world." (Rodman, p.99)
"It has been linked in the public eye with him from the day he bought it in 1957 until the day he died . . . and beyond. From almost the first moment of his stardom, Elvis was associated with a very specific site on a map (not just a region or city, but an actual street address) in a way that no other star ever was -- or has been since . . . thus transforming his home into a publicly visible site of pilgrimmage and congregation." (Rodman, p.102)
Elvis's decision to remain in Memphis, as opposed to other stars who took up residence in Hollywood or New York City, enhanced his non-pretentious, regular-folks character -- a factor in broadening his appeal. As the only fish in a small pond, it placed him on a more prominent pedestal than he would have occupied in those other cities. And the visibility of his home and its central geographic location made it more accessible to fans and tourists than it would otherwise have been. (Rodman, p.106)
Graceland is the major force promoting and preserving Elvis's deification. "It serves as the destination for a holy pilgrimage, a sacred place that the true Elvis devotee is compelled to experience firsthand." (Rodman, p.116) Graceland is usually its visitors' sole destination, and many try to time their visits to coincide with Elvis holy days -- his birthday and his death day -- behavior which marks them as true pilgrims rather than mere tourists. (Rodman, p.118)
The holiness of Graceland is reinforced -- even defined -- by what Elvis fans do there. Besides walking through his house, gazing at his possessions, mourning at his grave site, even taking a piece of dirt home with them (Doss, p.89), many will participate in an Elvis-inspired ritual (Rodman, p.117) and leave gifts and offerings -- flowers, pictures, photographs, dolls, records, handwritten messages -- at the grave site or along the wall bordering the Graceland property. (Doss, p.99)
Whereas other fan communities must meet at convention centers or ballparks on specific dates, Graceland is a "real world site where Elvis fans can congregate and come to have a sense of themselves as a community with a stable, permanent existence . . . and where they are free to express their fanaticism without fear of embarrassment." (Rodman, pp. 120-128)
If Graceland has helped keep Elvis alive today, so have the multiple mythical images that inform our perception of him: his racial image, his sexual image, and his image as the embodiment of the American dream. What is most compelling about these images is the dual nature of each one -- black and white, male and female, communal and individualistic -- and how Elvis possesses the unique ability to encompass these dualities simultaneously. (Rodman, pp. 41-42)
Elvis's early career reflects a deep, intentional identification with black culture. He consciously courted black music, black musicians, and black audiences. His liberal borrowings from what the recording industry called "race music" -- rhythm and blues, black gospel, and soul -- set his popularity in motion. He created recording opportunities for many black musicians, such as Little Richard, who said years later: "I thank the Lord for sending Elvis to open the door so I could walk down the road." (Doss, pp.170-174)
By contemporary standards, Elvis "was doing something daring and dangerous . . . He was actively engaged in race mixing . . . He proved that black and white tendencies could coexist and that the product of this coexistence was not just palatable, but thrilling." (Rodman, p.50)
Counterpoint to the myth of Elvis as a figure of integration is the current myth of Elvis as a white hero, exemplified by his fan base, which is not only white but tends to see him as all-white: the Southern separatist, the all-American soldier, the country rocker, the Las Vegas showman dressed up in a white jumpsuit. (Doll, p.196) Little Richard inadvertently reveals the flip side of the coin (and his own contradictory feelings) when he says: "I know they called him the King of Rock and Roll, but if he is, who crowned him -- and why was I not invited? How can a white boy be the King of Rock and Roll?" (Rodman, p.49)
Rodman argues that "both myths are now active in the terrain of U.S. culture and have been since the early stage of Elvis's career . . . That is not to say that both are equally true, but only that they both work . . . for different audiences and different contexts. Each interpretation of Elvis's racial politics explains in part his cultural significance." (Rodman, p.56)
Similarly contributing to the Elvis mystique is a dual gender identification.
On the surface, Elvis appears to be an icon of masculine sexuality, "the man who brought overt, blatant, vulgar sexual frenzy to the popular arts in America . . . an incredibly virile superstud whom women were powerless to resist." (Rodman. p.56)
But critics have identified another side to Elvis's sexual image, that of the "teddy bear." Linda Rae Pratt claims that to women, Elvis projects "a quality of tenderness, vulnerability, and romantic emotion." (Rodman, p.60) His feminine side is clearly manifested in his early body movements and in his later style of dress.
He was the first male star to display his body as an overt sexual object, to become, like female performers, sexualized. (Rodman, p.67) Later, his costumes and face and eye treatment became obviously androgynous. "He wore ruffled pink shirts and black pants with pink stripes, deliberately choosing girl colors . . . He painted himself in black mascara and royal blue eye shadow . . . He had his nose fixed, spent hours doing his hair, and courted fashion designers to dress him up in glamorous gold lame tuxedos or fringed and jeweled jumpsuits." (Doss, p.127)
While Elvis Presley is the most widely impersonated celebrity in history, the adjective most commonly attached to the noun "impersonation" is female, and, "like a woman, Elvis is a marketed body, exhibited, put on display." (Rodman, p.70)
Few other celebrities have crossed the boundary of gender identification like Elvis has.
The third mythical image which is useful in understanding Elvis's posthumous career is the one that views him as the representative of a bicameral American dream, the two versions of which, the communal and the individualistic, in some respects stand in contradiction to each other, but which are both reflected in his unlikely ascent from the obscurity of a Memphis machinist's shop to fame and fortune.
The first version posits "a collective dream of America rooted in notions of community and based on hopes for upward mobility, equality, and freedom for broad segments of the population." (Rodman, p.83) Thus, social critics Greil Marcus and Dave Marsh ask us to imagine Elvis as shaping and invigorating this conception of the dream by inventing not only himself but a whole new community -- black and white, rich and poor, urban and country, and democratic -- to listen to and accept his music.
"When he sings American triolgy . . . the divisions America shares are smoothed away . . . The version of the American dream that is Elvis's performance is blown up . . . to contain more history, more people, more hopes." (Greil Marcus, Mystery Train, pp.124-125)
Thus Elvis, the poor, rural, white, working-class Southerner, becomes a source of racial and social enlightenment, a civil rights pioneer, building a better world for all of us. ( Chadwick, p.xiv)
But he also built a better world for himself -- and in doing so represents the other version of the American dream, the one rooted in notions of individualism, where upward mobility is the domain of the chosen few with talent and brains. And Elvis is "the classic American success story, rising from a two-room Tupelo shack to a marble-pillared mansion on a hill." (Rodman, pp.83-84)
Elvis stands in stark contrast to liberal and conservative politicians and commentators who see these two Americas as incompatible, who claim that a choice must be made between a Martin Luther King vision of an egalitarian and harmonious America and an individualistic one based on self-interest, crass commercialism, greed, and personal financial security.
"Elvis persists as a powerful symbol for anyone who's ever wanted a better life. He produced more music, sold more records, filled more auditoriums than the privileged. But he shut no door behind him. He allowed us all to think that he belonged exclusively to each one of us . . . His life was a statement that it is possible to come from nowhere, to make the big time, and still be true to who you are." (Chadwick, p. 236)
Elvis's continuing presence in contemporary society can be further explained by the far-reaching impact he had on U.S. popular culture.
In an obituary for Rolling Stone magazine in 1977, Dave Marsh wrote: "If an individual of our time can be said to have changed the world, Elvis is the one. In his wake more than the music is different. Nothing and no one looks or sounds the same. His music was the most liberating event of our era because it taught us new possibilities of feeling and perception, new modes of action and appearance, and because it reminded us not only of his greatness but of our own potential. If those things were not already so well integrated into our lives that they have become commonplace, it would be simpler to explain how astonishing a feat Elvis Presley's advent really was." (Rodman, p.157)
In 1956, when Elvis burst upon the scene, rock and roll was perceived as a threat to mainstream U.S. culture; now it is the essence of that culture, and used to sell everything from automobiles to raisins. (Rodman, p.167) Rodman argues that the centrality of rock and roll music in our lives is attributable to Elvis Presley; only he had the charisma, ambition, determination, talent, and instinctive media savvy "to transform the fifties musical genres, attitudes, and social practices into a coherent cultural formation." (Rodman, p.160)
Elvis created and symbolized a revolutionary message for his generation, and then bequeathed it to its successors: to embrace freedom, to treasure innocence, to evince a sense of humor, to laugh at, even mock, oneself.
Elvis taught audiences to question authority and, at times, to rebel against all forms of restraint. His costumes, his movements, and his facial expressions said to his fans that they were free to act and think and move in unconventional ways.
Finally, he called a new community into existence -- "a community centered around rock and roll" -- a youth community that would prove to have "the power to initiate far-reaching social changes . . . the anti-war movement, the second wave of the civil rights movement, feminism, the higher consciousness movement." (Rodman, pp.162-163)
In the words of Carl Perkins: "He never died and he never will. You don't change as much of the world as Elvis Presley changed it -- hair styles, clothes, moods, looks, sideburns. He cut a path through this world; he's going to be history, and he should be." (Rodman, p.162)
In a 1991 novel called Dixieanna Moon by William Price Fox, a young New Yorker and an old southern hustler join forces to stage the ultimate revival show. One night, driving through the South, they pick up an old Sun single on the radio. "Wonder what he was like," says the New Yorker. "He won't like anyone," replies his companion. "You start trying to compare Elvis to something and you can forget it . . . All you can do with a talent that big and that different is sort of point at it when you see it going by and maybe listen for the ricochet." Writes Greil Marcus, "We are the ricochet." (Marcus, Dead Elvis, p.39)
REFERENCES
Chadwick, Vernon, ed. In Search of Elvis: Music, Race, Art, Religion. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1997.
Doll, Susan. Understanding Elvis: Southern Roots vs. Star Image. New York: Garland Publishing Inc., 1998.
Doss, Erika Lee. Elvis Culture: Fans, Faith, and Image. Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 1999.
Guralnik, Peter. Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley. Boston: Little Brown and Company, 1994.
Marcus, Greil. Dead Elvis: A Chronicle of a Cultural Obsession. New York: Doubleday, 1991.
Marcus, Greil. Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock and Roll Music. New York: Penguin Books, 1977.
Rodman, Gilbert. Elvis After Elvis: The Posthumous Career of a Living Legend. London: Routledge, 1996.
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