The Education of a Yankee: An American Memoir - Hardcover

Hale, Judson

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0060157526 ISBN 13: 9780060157524

Publisher: Harpercollins, 1987

Synopsis

The author, editor-in-chief of Yankee magazine, recounts his Boston childhood, education, experiences in the Army, and involvement with the family-owned magazine

About this title

Reviews

The life and times of an unusual New England family engage the reader wholeheartedly in this memoir. Editor-in-chief of Yankee magazine and Old Farmer's Almanac since 1970, Hale, born in Boston in 1933, recalls his privileged if offbeat heritage. When his older brother Drake, brain-damaged at birth, was sent to the Rudolph Steiner School in Switzerland, his parents were inspired to adopt Steiner's controversial experimental principles of education. Purchasing land in backwoods Maine, the family established a cultural-spiritual center that attracted such artists as the late Friedrich Schorr, then deemed the world's greatest Wotan, whom the author remembers singing the Wagnerian role in the wilderness with other guests from the Metropolitan Opera. Meaty anecdotes abound in the book as Hale comes of age, is a bit wild but finally settles and marries in 1958. That same year, his mother suggests to her brother that he hire this son on "the little magazine . . . Yankee," just founded by the family. It's a wonderful story, especially moving when Hale describes his first, only visit with Drake, who still lives in Basel. Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A common threada celebration of life as one finds it, a willingness to play the hand one is dealtruns through this pair of highly literate memoirs by two writers only a year apart in age but a whole continent apart in locale. Though their circumstances are wholly dissimilar, Hale and Houston each convey Thoreau's sense of having been "born in the nick of time." Born into a Boston Brahmin family in 1933, Hale ( Inside New England ) is the quintessential New Englander. As editor-in-chief of Yankee magazine and the Old Farmer's Almanac, he knows the Yankee character well, and his richly anecdotal autobiography demonstrates his development of such "Yankee traits" as ingenuity, frugality, and shrewdness. Though the tone is dry and Buckleyesque, these are poignant tales of tenacity in the face of trauma: the brain-damaged older brother Hale never knew; a childhood colored by enemas and Anthroposophy; his father's suicide; his wife's alcoholism. Both novelist (Love Life) and essayist (Californians) , Houston is concerned less with character traits than characters, of which there seems to be no shortage in his native Golden Stateguys like "The Hip Plumber," "The New-Age Barber," and "The Kung Fu Teacher with Eyes Like G. Gordon Liddy." But not all are casual acquaintances or longtime heroes like the aging Count Basie: the strongest portraits in Houston's gallery are those of his country music-playing father and his "dangerous" Texan uncle. Like Hale's fine memoir, Houston work is recommended. David Sowd, Stark Cty. District Lib., Canton, Ohio
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Harpercollins
• Publication date: 1987
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0060157526
• ISBN 13: 9780060157524
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 261