John Waynes America Review

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John Waynes America ReviewThis is a maddening book, so full of promise it never really delivers on. Yet I've read it twice, something I don't usually do. Though some might argue, the subject is an important one: the mythic stature of John Wayne as American hero. Given his unparalleled popularity over the years, Wayne's elevation poses some serious questions. Namely, how did this fame come about, and what does the elevation of a cowboy actor to national icon reveal about ourselves. Understanding this revered status should at least tell us something about the mind-set of American men, if not women (Wayne has never been as popular with the latter as with the former, Wills observes). I think it helps to get at the way Wills presents the Wayne phenomenon to target three levels.
First, there is Wayne the person, the man. Wills doesn't devote much space to this level, though the book's subtitle, i.e. "The Politics of Celebrity", might suggest otherwise. Very little is presented of Wayne's personal life or controversial political stances. Most of what is presented are efforts to either debunk popular fictions from the early years, or to pass along opinions of others, which about the man are usually unflattering, (Ford's disapproval of Wayne's lack of war service). Clearly the author believes Wayne's mythic status comes from the screen and not from the private individual.
The second level is Wayne the actor, the commanding screen presence. Despite many insights along the way, Wills falters badly by spending way too much time on seemingly irrelevant details of John Ford's personality and film style, many of which (the diagrams of seating arrangements in "Stagecoach", for example), shed no light on Wayne the actor. Wills' s preoccupation with Ford to the exclusion of Wayne is a serious defect, which may imply that the author found Ford the more compelling of the two, and could not restrain himself. Yet it is not Ford who is enshrined in the national consciousness, it is Wayne.
The third level is the most important: Wayne the mythic figure, the mirror in which we catch our own reflection. Here Wills both succeeds and fails. He succeeds by linking the Wayne figure with some of our most enduring national myths: unbounded western horizons, uncorrupted primitive, Jeffersonian ideal. But here in the book's last chapter, which should bring together the preceding 300 pages but which is only 12 pages long, there is no real synthesis of what has gone before. There is no effort at showing how, despite the many pages given over to him, Ford' romanticized vision of the Old West shapes the Wayne myth, or how that same vision embodies enduring national myths, or how to a lesser degree Hawk's vision taps into those same legends through the Wayne figure. In short, Wills fails at this crucial third stage to adequately fill in the blanks between Wayne the actor and Wayne the myth.
I get the feeling the author intended a deeper work than is there in the result, but instead got sidetracked on underdeveloped details that end up shedding little light on the Wayne phenomenon. Too bad, because there is an important project still unfulfilled. Certainly Wills has the skills to bring it off. I only wish he had.John Waynes America OverviewThe Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Lincoln at Gettysburg brings his eloquence, wit, and on-target perceptions of American life and politics to this fascinating, well-drawn protrait of a twentieth-century hero. In this work of great originality-the biography of an idea-Garry Wills shows how John Wayne came to embody Amercian values and influenced our cultoure to a degree unmatched by any other public figure of his time. In Wills's hands, Waynes story is tranformed into a compelling narrative about the intersection of popular entertainment and political realities in mid-twentieth-century America.

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