Dan WakefieldReseñas

Imagine a past you must have known, even if you weren't there. Birney, Illinois. Population 4,742 -- Moose and Odd Fellows -- Welcome! It is December 7,1941. Ten year-old Artie Garber is our guide. His brother Roy is the hero and Roy's girl Shirley is the love interest. Artie's mother and father are midwestern parents of the best kind. Roy goes to war; Artie is charged with keeping an eye on Shirley. He and his friends watch the skies for German planes, and the streets for spies. Shirley falls for another guy. Artie tries to intervene, and understand. Roy comes home from the war. Life is no longer a small-town basketball game. It is a simple story (perhaps) of awakening and loss and growth. The scenes, the sounds and images, the ambiance of Birney, are at once lost in time and with us today, over 50 years later, for here is a nearly perfect work of art.

I guess if you grew up in Indianapolis, as I did, this book is a must read. He gets the anomie of young people there right. I was a decade or two later than he was, and left in my early 20s, as do the main characters in this book. I was also a Unitarian, so I was liberated from the religious nonsense around me, only vaguely aware of it. I was, to my shame, also only vaguely aware of the racism and anti-semitism of the time and place. It was lessened in the Unitarian church, and not spoken of openly in my family or circle. I was also only vaguely aware of the depth of sexism that surrounded me. I became more aware of it as I went through college and in later years.
This book reminded me of On The Road. The first time I read Kerouac's book I didn't even notice the sexism. The second time I read it, I hated it for the sexism. The third time, years later, I saw the sexism and still thought it was a great book. As I read Going All the Way, I hated the sexism and did not think it was a great book, but do think it has its moments. Some of his descriptions of the confined feeling of being in Indianapolis, young, not sure how to get out on ones own, and at the mercy of the conventions of the time and place, are devastating.
The two main characters bear a vague resemblance to Kerouac's fictional self and Neal Cassidy, except they are stuck in Indianapolis, where a man who grew a beard may as well go out naked or peddle Communist literature, and certainly could not swim in a pool without somehow contaminating it. (Much as pools were segregated by race.)
I also note that the two main characters are drinking most of the time. Not lightly, but seriously. So most of the time they are driving, they are drunk. That they crash a car at one point is hardly surprising. It reminds me that the only places one could afford to be in as a young person in Indianapolis were bars, and I was not old enough to go to them when I was there. Restaurants were few and too expensive, there were no coffeeshops. (In college, we sometimes resorted to standing on the elevated porch around the War Memorial building and gazing with disgust at the park north of it, which was decorated by the American Legion with military vehicles and militaristic symbols. It wasn't much, but it got you out of the house.)
I found it perplexing that the main characters had gone to college and served two years in the military and still cared so much about their high school reputations and those of others, but I think this is probably realistic.
In the edition I have, Wakefield apologized to men and woman reading his book for his depiction of girls and women, though I imagine it was accurate among boys and men he knew at the time. I heard a recent interview with the man, who at 88 has also grown considerably concerning his attitudes about race--a change that probably began when he reported on the Medger Evers trial for the Nation magazine, and which has moved forward considerably in the past couple of years (2020, 2021).
This edition also has an introduction by Kurt Vonnegut, with whom Wakefield was friends. Vonnegut, whose family was nominally Unitarian, is more like the Indianapolis context in which I grew up, and gave me hope, growing up that one could be OK after growing up in Indianapolis.
So Wakefield left, returning only much later. The two main characters in Going All the Way left, Vonnegut left, and I left, Indianapolis. I suppose it is safer now for unconventionality and broader thoughts, and that it was not the only place that was so awful in America in the 1950s, but I could not navigate it as a young person, and do not plan a return.

The quintessential coming of age novel, Dan Wakefield shows that he knows youth, at least youth of a different era. The two main characters, Sonny and Gunner are caricatures of the ‘50s teens searching for themselves. Both have finished college and stints in the military and come home only to decide a person really can’t do that. They vow to strike out for the Big Apple to realize all of their dreams. Sonny’s epiphany at the very end of the novel shows his growth as a character and leaves the reader with a feeling of relief for what will become of him even though we never see the results of that epiphany. Dan Wakefield places his story in 1950s Indianapolis, his home town. The novel shows Wakefield never forgot where he came from, and aside from Kurt Vonnegut, Indianapolis never claimed a more talented writer.

The main title's to be taken literally: Dan Wakefield is describing a nation that's simultaneously at war and at peace. His method for doing this was interviews, mainly with folks who were active in--well, almost anything. Interview subjects included Vice President Humphrey, Ray Mungo (before he wrote about becoming "famous"), members of the Detroit teachers union, anti-communist activist Don Lobsinger, and many others. The book investigates and discusses a number of subjects, but the main subject was the Vietnam war.

I first read this book when it was new--first an excerpt in The Atlantic, then the paperback edition soon after it was available. I loved it back then, and remembered it as kind of like Steinbeck's Travels with Charley or William Least Heat Moon's Blue Highways.

Fifty years later I don't like it so much, and the parallels to the Steinbeck and Heat Moon's books are weak, though not non-existent. This time I found it difficult to read, and can't entirely say why. Saying Wakefield was against the Vietnam war probably doesn't do him justice, but the book comes off as partisan in ways that bother me--even though I opposed the war when I was twenty, and still believe it a mistake.

A valuable book, methinks, to someone interested in the country's temper in 1968. Not so much to anyone else.½

Drawing on examples from religion, philosophy, and literature, and exercises such as journaling and right-brain drawing, CREATING FROM THE SPIRIT teaches us that the key to creation is clarity of body, mind, and spirit. Wakefield also challenges the "dangerous Darvon is" of drugs and alcohol as false agents of inspiration.

The writing was somewhat artless, which was both good—not gushy or overly romantic, which would have been the kiss of death for the subject—but also not fiercely compelling. Still, overall it was a fun read. It relates to my job in a kind of tangential and interesting way—these are the old guys I work for—so I was in the market for this kind of reminiscence. And the chapter on sex and Freudian analysis cracked me up.½

Dan Wakefield writes nostalgically about his time in New York City from his college days at Columbia until he leaves for Boston on a Nieman Fellowship in 1963, and makes the reader feel nostalgic too. Nostalgic for the days when rents were affordable, when jazz greats were playing in smoky clubs in the Village. where there were five or six thriving daily newspapers and the printed word was king. Dan Wakefield was seemingly in the midst of it all: writing for Esquire, drinking with James Baldwin and Norman Mailer and listening to the tragically great Billie Holiday. Those days are long gone and will never come again. It's nice that talented writers like Wakefield have captured the mood and ambiance of the time so we can visit vicariously.

While not bad, I enjoyed this more as a slice of life from the early '70s than for its literary qualities. The prose is smooth but unremarkable, yet it gives you a good sense of what it must have been like to be a 30-something regular guy at the beginning of that decade.

I really want to quip about this book being a 300-page discussion of sexual dysfunction. The main character, Sonny Burns, is a soldier returned from the Korean War (although he never left the US during his service) to his hometown of Indianapolis, Indiana. As a resident of Indiana, I really enjoyed the local references throughout this book and the historical period it evoked. I could sympathize with Sonny to a degree, but one of his problems in his failed relationships is a focus on women as bedroom partners and not people, which I suspect contributed to his dysfunctions throughout the book.

Two former soldiers who served during the Korean War meet each other on the train going back home to Indiana. Willard 'Sonny' Burns - the photographer for the school newspaper when he was in high school - was a quiet, shy and rather introverted student, whose high school years were wholly unremarkable. Sonny has grown into a quiet, shy and rather introverted adult - preoccupied with thoughts of sex and women. Tom 'Gunner' Casselman - the typical 'Big Man on Campus' when he was in high school - was incredibly popular, with the type of reputation that inspired awe in his peers.

For good or ill, Sonny and Gunner search for love and fulfillment throughout their travels in middle America. They form an unlikely friendship after that first meeting on the train. In fact, it comes as a huge surprise to Sonny.to discover that Gunner truly respected him in high school. Sonny's unpretentious and inconspicuous demeanor was the quality that Gunner most admired. What follows is a coming-of-age novel about growing up in a time before free love, Vietnam and AIDS.

I must say that I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book; quite a bit more than I was actually expecting I would. It was a very funny story, although in my opinion, Sonny and Gunner's friendship was probably not the most advantageous relationship for either of them. This book was a best-seller in 1970, and is considered to be Dan Wakefield's most famous novel. I give this book an A+!

Going All the Way was made into a movie in 1997 and won an award at the Sundance Film Festival. It starred Jeremy Davies as Sonny and Ben Affleck as Gunner.

Dan Wakefield was a successful writer of novels, non-fiction, and screenplays when he awoke to a private life that was disintegrating around him due to alcohol, depression, and isolation. On a balmy spring morning in Hollywood, a month or so before his forty-eighth birthday, Dan Wakefield woke up literally screaming. His private life had been crumbling for years and alcohol barely numbed the pain.

Those horrifying morning screams drove him back to Boston, his former home, where he changed his entire life. He stopped drinking, started exercising, and discovered, much to his surprise, the power of Christianity. Dan had become an atheist while in college, and did not return to church until 1980 - when he initially heard a Christmas Eve sermon that seemed directed especially at him.

This book is about Dan Wakefield's return to his past life: his boyhood in Indiana, his student years at Columbia University being taught by Mark Van Doren, his bitter disappointment with Freudian psychoanalysis, his sexuality, and his writing career. It is also the story of a spiritual pilgrimage, a courageous and comforting return to faith.

Getting into the flow of the story was slow going for me at first; there were a couple of places during my reading where I thought that the pace was slower than I would have liked, but that could have just been my own experience while reading this book. Overall, I actually enjoyed this book much more than I thought I would. I give this book a B+!

Dan Wakefield, a best-selling writer and reporter, developed this book out of his own extensive experience in leading adult ed. classes in writing your own spiritual autobiography. Wakefield wrote his own spiritual autobiography, "Returning: A spiritual journey" (1988), which received positive reviews and remained in print for a decade.

I have used this book to lead spiritual autobiography classes almost annually since 1994. Wakefield's process works, he offers excellent suggestions in how to structure a class, and he provides great samples of writing from people who have taken his class. Highly recommended.

Spoilers, (are they possible)? I read this because Den did & loved it's picture of NYC. It is pretty romanticized. All the woman are lovely, at least all the women that he notices. Obviously he had his own problems, he describes cutting one wrist toward the end of his time in NYC and says he hadn't done that for a while...but he didn't tell us about the previous time(s) or even why. He talks about how everybody went to psychoanalysis because of sex, but he describes a great sexual encounter and then silence. It just doesn't feel real, just an imagined wonderland. And you wonder about the internal lives of the others too. But on the surface it is an amusing tale of the writers who made it in the 50's, in a scattershot & unsystematic & not very thoughtful style.

In this book Wakefield explores miracles of all sorts within all religious persuasions. The book is extremely well-written.

While reading the first chapter I was on the point of giving up the book since I found it too cerebral, but it became more interesting for me as we really got into the miracles.

The chapter about Lourdes is perhaps the most memorable for me. It turned out that though miracles of physical health are few and far between, many who visit Lourdes return transformed in faith and outlook.

But there was a tale of an outstanding miracle at Knock, “the Irish Lourdes”, where a lady suffering from MS, who had been paralyzed from the waist down for three years, experienced a wondrous instant miracle, rose from her stretcher and walked. The muscles in her legs had been wasted, but she was healed, and remained so. In the church she had been placed under a statue of our Lady of Knock, and had prayed to her not for a cure, since she knew she was going to die, but for her children, when she had heard a “whispering” voice telling her to get up.

The book contains a chapter about miracles of healing, one on miracles of recovery from alcoholism and addiction in general, and chapters on miracles of love, creating, encounter, presence and, finally, everyday miracles.

This is an absolutely inspiring, spiritual book, which will cleanse your soul (if you read it). I recommend it strongly, despite my initial reservations.

This is a much-needed book on what some people call the "religious left," which has more to do with feeding the poor, attaining civil rights and justice, providing shelter and medicine for the homeless and sick - things Jesus asked us to do - rather than what the "religious right" is all about, which is gaining power through politics, wedging issues to divide denominations, spending millions of dollars on minority-discriminating agendas, etc. - things Jesus would not want us to do.

This important book hits the road running and doesn't slow or stop until you finish. Immediately, I wanted to look up more books on following Christ rather than Fundamentalism. After reading this, I became sad for the many people who have been sucked into the religious right's mentality of anger and hate. They have single-handedly put a distaste of Christianity and religion in the minds of millions of liberals, who haven't been exposed to what Christianity is really supposed to be about. I hope, through resources like this, the religious right's demented and perverted version of Christianity will diminish so that Christ can actually shine through the many compassionate Christians of the world.

The final male generation to wear ties and jackets during their post-teen literary and lifestyle revolt is celebrated with a nostalgic look at the village: sex, jazz, alcohol and real writing (real according to Wakefield; he didn't like Kerouac's writing, but grew to respect him, somewhat). Wakefield liked writing that kept meter and rhyme as it blasted the 50's corporate lifestyle. He accounts for the New York literary 1950's with the mingling of midwestern book reading WWII vets and Brooklyn Jews at Columbia and then through their migration down Manhattan to the village as they got jobs--real paying, writing jobs at leftie journals (not like the newly arrived beats who just experienced the village and maybe did some drugs too). Then everyone got promotions, more money, and children so they had to leave NY to the beats. Wakefield seems to have interviewed everyone from the 50s in some bar or another down in the village when he wrote the book. Not a bad assignment.

A significant book in contributing to my on-going growing awareness of how life is to be lived - a subtle and deep philosophy akin to "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" ... and "True Believer".

My generation always thinks it began to happen here in the late 1960s. Turns out NYC was pretty cool and interesting place in the Fifties, Mad Men notwithstahding, I grew up reading Wakefield’s journalism here, and this book shines,

Interesting, but it seemed too long to me - its not really a long book, in terms of pages, but I just couldn't read too much at one sitting.

Well, I can't do any better than the two reviewers on Amazon (below) -- in fact, I would've begun my review the way S. Kiritz did by saying, "I loved this book!" It's one of those rare histories/memoirs that really offers a window onto an era, while actually inspiring us to think creatively of our own time. And bless Dan Wakefield's heart for undertaking the sheer hard work that producing this book entailed.

By Stewart Kiritz "bookish" (CA USA)
I loved this book! Then again I loved "Wonderful Town," and "Manhattan." I was born in New York, and remember sneaking away to take the subway from the Bronx at age 8 in 1950 to catch glimpses of the glittery awsomeness of Manhattan. Leaving New York in 1954, I returned as an adult much later and made friends who had been part of the dizzying scene of the fifties ...intellectuals, bohemians. Reading this book so vividly recreates an era that, as the cliche says, will be no more. Perched between the Gotham of the 1930's, the art deco towers, the Met, the Frick, and the Space Age of the 1960's there was a post-war mecca for the arts and letters. New York was the center of it all. I have no idea how this book will be perceived by those who have not experienced this period, at least in some way. Perhaps that is the story of some of the reviewers who didn't like it. But for me, the book is like candy.

When the written word mattered..., July 18, 2003 By A Customer
I found this book inspiring, funny, and beautifully written. It carried me to a time, before cell phones, the internet, dvds and instant communications, when the written word mattered, when books and magazines and letters were greeted with high anticipation and made a difference in people's lives. When books mattered, ideas mattered, friendships were the stuff of life, and art was not only a creative expression but an affirmation, a challenge to take the high road, to live life to the fullest. This book will put zest in your soul. I recommend it highly.

"You really don't have to worry about Dan Wakefield's new novel....What he's up to seems a little risky at first. But he knows what he's doing in this story about the Middle American Home Front during World War II. And in the end of what turns out to be the best of his novels to date (the earlier ones were 'Going All the Way,' 'Starting Over,' and 'Home Free'), he pulls it off."

-- Christopher Lehmann-Haupt
The New York Times, June 24, 1982