Estimated read time: 4-5 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
"Michael Jackson speaks to and for the monstrous child in us all."
So goes the summation by Pulitzer Prize winner Margo Jefferson in her new, relatively short but effective treatise about the pop star. This slim volume titled "On Michael Jackson" comes from Pantheon and runs 138 pages.
Jefferson, in quick, cut-to-the-bone strokes, examines Michael's bizarre, brutal working childhood and adolescence, and how that formed and deformed his own and the public's image of him. Nobody comes off well, certainly not Michael's parents, Joe the brutal taskmaster and Katharine the religious "pacifier."
Jefferson, an African American and an admirer of Jackson's work - - certainly the first 10 years -- pinpoints many essential career moments, the fabulous original style, his slow, then warp-speed transformations, his hubris, childishness, arrogance and bewilderment -- all of which led to his child molestation trial of this year. He got off -- got away with it, as his bete noirs Diane Dimond and Nancy Grace insist -- but the cost was everything that meant anything: his career and his reputation.
Jefferson also bravely writes of the reality of some children -- that at ages 12, 13, 14, 15 they are not necessarily "innocent." They are curious. She writes: "They have sexual desires, impulses and they want to act on them. I am not trying to turn Michael's accuser, Gavin Arvizo, into a youthful seducer. I am simply trying to say there was almost no public acknowledgment of these everyday facts, known to anyone who has had a child, spent time with children, or remembers being a child."
This book is a serious work. And Michael Jackson's rise and fall deserves examination. His trial was the most significant "celebrity happening" of 2005. You'd have to go back to silent films, to the destruction of Fatty Arbuckle on rape charges, to find even a slight comparison.
There are usually second acts in American public life. That the curtain seems to have fallen with such finality for Michael -- for whom fame and "love" was everything -- this is the grandest of show biz Grand Guigol. (He now lives in self-imposed exile in the Middle East, among wealthy sheiks.) Not to dismiss the pain of his alleged victims, but I find Michael, his story, it's outcome, all desperately tragic and unhappy. There's not a winner to be found.
And while musing on music icons, I suppose we'd be remiss in not mentioning the massive new book, "The Beatles" by Bob Spitz. At 860 pages (sans notes) this is an impressively exhaustive work. Everything you ever -- and possibly never -- wanted to know about the Fab Four is here for general delectation.
Do we end up knowing any more than we have always assumed about the Beatles -- especially John Lennon and Paul McCartney? Paul was the big schmoozer, the slick flashy showman and not-so-deep egomaniac. John was the bitter, brooding, tortured, angry, jealous egomaniac. George and Ringo (especially Ringo) are dealt with in a somewhat condescending manner. There's detail piled upon detail and it might be best -- if you know at least some Beatle lore -- to dip into this book piecemeal. Try the Liverpool years or the first trip to America or the initial immersion in drugs or the advent of the much-aligned Yoko Ono. Each era fascinating in itself. The book does bring back the frenzy and influence of the Beatles -- and their transformation from silly mop tops to accredited geniuses by the time they parted after only seven years as a group. "The dream is over," said John Lennon after the Beatles split. Not even close.
The other day we commented that Barry Landau was writing a book on White House china. It seems he has already done that! He is now working on a series titled "200 Years of the American Presidency." Book one is about White House menus from George Washington to George Bush. Book two will discuss inaugurations and book three covers presidential style. HarperCollins has its tongue hanging out for all of these works from the prolific Barry.
Landau praises Jackie Kennedy's good sense of humor and claims to have many personal keepsakes from the late first lady, saying that in the days before her death, she prophetically encouraged him to write his books.
Tribune Media Services
(C) 2005 Buffalo News. via ProQuest Information and Learning Company; All Rights Reserved
