Wednesday, December 01, 2004
THE READING ROOM
Books, Recommended or Otherwise
American Taboo
Philip Weiss
New York: HarperCollins, June 1, 2004
ISBN: 0060096861
Rittenhouse Rating: Highly Recommended
In American Taboo Philip Weiss relates the too-long suppressed story of the murder of Deborah Gardner, a Peace Corps volunteer killed in Tonga by her P.C. colleague, Dennis Priven, a man who, astonishingly, still walks the streets of Brooklyn, N.Y., that after playing the system, in the South Pacific and here at home, like the proverbial violin.
This is a remarkable story, most notable for prompting readers to question their hypothetical response to a tragedy involving two friends. Although not a melodrama, the bad guys in this story are plainly evident, most clearly in the persons of Mary George, a “must place” Republican hack with a penchant for religious proselytizing and bizarre hallucinations; the “Bird Lady,” a P.C. volunteer who, judging from a photograph published in the book, looks every bit the part; and, front and center, Priven, among the most despicable men to have walked the face of the earth. (Priven, by the way, works for the Social Security Administration in Brooklyn.)
American Taboo has been assigned a rating of “highly recommended,” but had Weiss’s topic been something other than the unjusticed murder of Miss Gardner, a subject that deserves ample publicity to the widest possible audience, I would have attached a rating of “recommended.”
I fault Weiss for his failure to enliven the many characters (And I mean that.) populating this story, for his idiosyncratic punctuation and sentence structure, and at least three displays of obvious homophobia. Of course, on the last point we must keep in mind that Weiss has written, and presumably hopes to continue to write, for Esquire, and we all know how uncomfortable they are with “all that.”
(Rittenhouse Reading-Room Ratings: Must Reading, Very Highly Recommended, Highly Recommended, Recommended, Not Recommended.)
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JAMES MARTIN CAPOZZOLA
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James Martin (Jim) Capozzola launched The Rittenhouse Review in April 2002, TRR: The Lighter Side of Rittenhouse, HorowitzWatch, and Smarter Andrew Sullivan in July 2002, and Bulldogs for Kerry-Edwards in October 2004. He is also a contributing member of President Boxer.
He received the 2002 Koufax Award for Best Post> for "Al Gore and the Alpha Girls" (published November 25, 2002). Capozzola's record in the Koufax Awards includes two additional nominations for 2002 (Best Blog and Best Writing), three nominations for 2003 (Best Blog, Best Series, and Best Writing), and two finalist nominations in 2004 (Best Blog and Best Writing).
Capozzola’s experience beyond the blogosphere includes a lengthy career in financial journalism, securities analysis, and investment research, and in freelance writing, editing, ghost-writing, and writing instruction.
He earned his bachelor's degree in political science from the University at Albany and a master's in foreign affairs from the University of Virginia.
Capozzola lives in Philadelphia with his bulldog, Mildred.
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