JFK'S LAST HUNDRED DAYS by THURSTON CLARKE
CHRISTINE TRZYNA BOOK REVIEW
Any writing on a well known subject (The Sinking of the Titanic, Elvis Presley, the Presidency and Assassination of President John F. Kennedy) is challenged by all those who have tackled it before. This year a number of JKF books are out to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of his death. Are publishers just trying to Capitalize on this or is it more? Could the American Reader be harkening back to a time when the typical citizen believed in his President?
Thurston Clarke was brilliant on focusing on JFK's last hundred days of life, as a President of the United States, because the reader senses in this a countdown to the inevitable. Indeed, that focus makes us anxious because we already know what is going to happen, the death of a President by assassination, an event that is still controversial to this day. Thurston managed to build suspense despite our already knowing what is going to happen.
For a writer the challenge is how to tell the same old story it a different way, perhaps through his own writing style that simmers up from their own personality and character, and in this Thurston Clarke has exceeded all expectations. The focus here is on the humanity of the man and how he had changed as person within the historical context of the Presidency and his marriage to Jackie. Readers around the subject as I am, will take in stride some of the reportage and note the difference in how certain issues are opened without defensiveness.
Haunting are the many times that JFK acknowledged, considered, and spoke about possibly being assassinated, as if he knew, and you know, sometimes people do know that they are going to die.
The last chapter brought all that momentum to the sad climax of the immediate aftermath of the announcement that our American President was slain. The event was impactful, the writing even more so in the delivery of a succession of scenes from around the country and around the world. I cried, and I knew I wasn't just crying for JFK, or what once was, but for our United States of America, which seems to be in so very much trouble now.
Was it innocence that the American public had? How could that be in this era of developing Civil Rights? What made a Harvard educated man who never carried cash or credit cards with him because all bills got paid one way or another, who was shielded from poverty for much of his life, acknowledge the poor and understand that poverty is an issue tied to Civil Rights?
Sometimes I think it was, first and foremost, because of his personal experience of bodily pain, disability, something that he (and his family) sought to dismiss. Many people in as much pain, without advantage, suffer their whole lives in poverty, unable to find an employer who will have them. He knew he would not be elected or considered a viable President if people knew what ailed him, and what ailed him was a lot.
As I continued to read this book, my promise to myself that I really would get up and do the dishes went unkept, as did my promise that I would take my dog for a really long walk. I admit to be a slug of a woman who laid around in an unmade bed until I finished the book. My dog sat with her head down on a pillow watching me, waiting with patience. But not a lot of you have that much luxury, so for you my excerpts.
Christine Trzyna
JFK'S LAST HUNDRED DAYS by THURSTON CLARKE C 2013
The Transformation of a Man and the Emergence of a Great President.
Penguin Press New York 2013 Publisher
