Washington Post Book Reviews
For You
Saturday November 13, 2010
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A BIOGRAPHICAL GUIDE TO THE GREAT JAZZ AND POP SINGERS
Will Friedwald
Pantheon
ISBN 978-0375421495
811 pages
$45
Reviewed by Dennis Drabelle
In this mammoth volume, jazz critic Will Friedwald does for jazz and pop vocalists what David Thomson has done so brilliantly for the movies in his "New Biographical Dictionary of Film." As with Thomson, the organization of Friedwald's book invites readers to flip to their favorites, and I foxtrotted off with Peggy Lee. Allotting her eight double-columned pages, Friedwald starts off by dividing all "great American female singers" into two groups: jazz singers such as Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald, and pop singers such as Judy Garland, Doris Day and Rosemary Clooney. He continues: "But there's only one singer who can be said to truly belong to both groups: to be considered one of the all-time pop superstars as well as genuine jazz royalty." She is, of course, Peggy Lee. This is both incisive and useful -- providing a way to ground in reason one's instinctive admiration for Lee's ability to make almost any kind of song her own.
The author also acts as a consumer guide, steering the reader toward particular songs or albums. Interested in hearing "scat" singing at its best? Ella Fitzgerald is the performer without peer, but her list of recordings is dauntingly long. Friedwald has the answer, however, sending you to "the single most exciting record of Fitzgerald's career ... Lullabies of Birdland. ... Fitzgerald's swing and her time are perfect -- astonishingly so, almost superhuman: You can't find a metronome with time this good. That's probably the key reason why her scatting uninterrupted for three to five minutes is so vastly entertaining." "Vastly entertaining," for that matter, isn't a bad label to stick on Friedland's book.
Dennis Drabelle can be reached at drabelled(at symbol)washpost.com.
Copyright 2010 Washington Post Writers Group
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VALLEY FORGE
Newt Gingrich and William R. Forstchen
438 pp
ISBN 978-0312591076
438 pages
$27.99
Reviewed by Nicholas Delbanco
Newt Gingrich has an easy way with words; he's silver-tongued as well as silver-haired. This is his seventh novel, the second in a projected "George Washington series" and a sequel to "To Try Men's Souls." William R. Forstchen, his collaborator, is the author of more than 40 books -- a prodigious number -- and the title page of "Valley Forge" also acknowledges the work of Albert S. Hanser as a contributing editor. This is a text that several hands have fashioned and many eyes have scanned.
Which makes it all the more troubling that it's so slipshod and rushed. Few attributes of a review are less attractive than pedantry, and this reviewer doesn't want to play grammarian throughout, but there are so many lapses that I need to growl a little. Time after time, the language here slides into imprecision. "Over the distant ridge by the Mueller farm he could see puffs of smoke and the echo of gunfire" suggests that one can "see" an "echo." "The smoke seemed to trap the thunder of battle, pressing in on their ears so it felt as if they would burst" suggests that the smoke exerts physical pressure, entering the ear.
No single instance matters much, but there are a hundred such gaffes. So the reader who hopes to enter fully into the world of Valley Forge is caught up time and time again by its haphazard language, its flag wavering instead of waving and its musket-powder wet. One wishes this were not the case, since it's a darn good yarn. These were more than cardboard villains or wax-figure heroes.
The winter of 1777 was brutal; Washington's battered Continental Army endured privation in stark contrast to the luxury of Loyalists in Philadelphia -- and Valley Forge is hallowed ground. The large cast of characters -- Martha Washington, the Marquis de Lafayette, Mad Anthony Wayne among them -- are vividly rendered, and the research rings true.
Historical figures and invented ones interact quite plausibly, too. But there's a connection between clarity of thought and clarity of diction; a thing worth saying is worth saying well. This "Contract With America" has so many suspect clauses and contingencies in its fine print that my best advice is: Reader, beware.
Nicholas Delbanco is the Robert Frost Distinguished University Professor of English at the University of Michigan. His new book, forthcoming in January, is "Lastingness: The Art of Old Age."
Copyright 2010 Washington Post Writers Group
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