Invitation to readers

INTERACTIVE!

What do you remember about the summer of 1968?
Perhaps you have a memory about something that seems like it should have happened in 1968?
Add your comment to those below.

Memory and history

Memory is much messier than history.
Memory is a trickster, like Coyote, Raven, Brer Rabbit, or Jack the Giant Killer. Some stories say Coyote created the world; some say he burned it. Certainly he made stuff up to suit his own ends. Memory operates with a self-indulgent instinct, creating a world to suit its own needs, often making a mess. So don't trust it.
My memories of the summer of 1968 include the Movement office basement, fund-raising for the SCLC march on poverty using tactics that seemed shady to me, and eating a big dinner for $1 at the Crystal, which some people remember as the Crystal Grille. I don't remember the "Grille" part. I remember snatches of Chicago: the bandshell, Grant Park at night. I went to see Rosemary's Baby and found out afterward about the shootout in Glenville.
In The New York Review of Books last year, journalist Janet Malcolm wrote this:
"Memory glimmers and hints, but shows nothing sharply or clearly. Memory does not narrate or render character. Memory has no regard for the reader. If an autobiography is to be even minimally readable, the autobiographer must step in an subdue what you could call memory's autism, its passion for the tedious. He must not be afraid to invent."
That seems true to me. So does the first line Chapter 1 of Fugitive Days, Bill Ayers' memoir:
"Memory is a motherfucker."
I remember Bill. I probably saw him in the summer of 1968. But nothing is sharp or clear. There's no incident in the novel sparked by something he did or said -- at least I don't think so. He wrote a good memoir, though, a book I'm grateful for.

history & fiction: The Thinker

Most of the historical events in the book are dated accurately: students took over Columbia on April 23rd; Cleveland police and Black nationalists had a deadly shoot-out in Glenville on July 23rd; the Chicago police charged the bandshell audience on August 27th. But dates don't make fiction.
People want to know the history behind the novel's account of blowing up the Thinker at the Cleveland Museum of Art. The plaque under the statue states it was the work of "vandals" at about 1:00 am March 24th 1970, and states that the vandals were never found. An Art Museum staff person told me they used a nine-inch pipe bomb. Until she did, I was imagining a bundle of dynamite sticks. Wrong. Explosives stuffed into lead pipe with a ten-foot fuse did plenty of damage.
I've found The Thinker fascinating since I was small. Look at him, a giant man pondering all the trouble in the world -- and he's naked, completely exposed!
It made sense to include the Thinker in a novel of 1968, the year so much exploded. For the first couple of drafts the actual explosion was in an epilogue, because the book had to end in December '68. I was sticking close to historical fact, and my characters were stewing around like real people do; the plot wasn't working, however. One of the jobs of fiction is to transform inner stewing and sensations we live with all the time into events, dramatic and decisive. Vague longings become action. The novel still lacked that inner engine that a novel has to have, thrumming along with the pulse of the reader. I talked about the difficulties with writer Rodger Kamenetz, who suddenly said, "Ivy gets to blow up the Thinker." Gets to.
When I swallowed and digested that enormous idea, I realized I could put the bomb in Ivy's hands at the beginning of the book and move the explosion back sixteen months (what's sixteen months, after all?). And suddenly the book had a solid shape and an image of the naked giant permanently changed and pondering empty space. In deciding to keep the statue the way it was, Sherman Lee had recognized The Thinker as Cleveland's icon for the era. How could I not use it?

anniversary at the height of spring

Just got back from Cleveland, where my sister showed me some of the recent Plain Dealer coverage of the fortieth anniversary of the Kent State shootings May 4, 1970. I was not there, but I have friends who were, and I remember calling one of them during that scary time (maybe May 5th?). The news focused on new analysis of a reel-to-reel tape: chanting, gunfire, screams. It was all over ("four dead in Ohio") in less that 20 seconds. For the first time (oh, what computers are able to do with sound these days!) analysts were able to pick out a command to fire -- which explains why sixteen national guardsmen dropped to their knees and fired M1 rifles simultaneously.
At the time there was an investigation and a trial; no one could be found at fault. Now of course it would be difficult if not impossible -- and maybe pointless -- to re-open the case.
The PD articles are interesting but not surprising. We lived in a polarized country where soldiers perceived demonstrating students as dangerous & menacing and the anti-war movement perceived the soldiers as mindless and eager to kill. Both groups had evidence, and both were utterly wrong. That's how polarization works: we divide an issue into Two Sides, theirs and ours, and they become demons.
I saw some demonization close-up/first-hand during the last election. It's as dangerous now as it was forty years ago.