Keeping Faith: The Memoirs of Jimmy Carter By Jimmy Carter

Keeping Faith: The Memoirs of Jimmy Carter
By Jimmy Carter
Copyright 1982

Jimmy Carter is a prodigious memoirist, writing several autobiographical accounts of his life. Keeping Faith is a memoir of his presidency and opens not at the beginning of his presidency, but on its final day.

Carter chooses an unusual format to recall his presidential years. Traditionally, presidents move in chronological order, starting at the beginning and moving through the issues and crises as they presented themselves. Instead, Carter takes one issue at a time and provides narrative and commentary on them.

I didn’t think this particular format worked. It made for dry reading. When you read the memoirs of former presidents like Nixon, Ford, and Clinton, you get to know those men through their thoughts, their expressed frustrations, and their expressed ideals. Carter’s approach has him saying, “I proposed this. Congress did this. I said that and he said this.” It is all very dry and the man who is Jimmy Carter remains an enigma.

Jimmy Carter had a brutal presidency and one not known for great achievements. The Camp David Accords stand as perhaps the one reach for greatness that Carter made and as perhaps one of the great diplomatic achievements of the twentieth century. Shamefully, Carter’s retelling of the events make it almost impossible to appreciate the accords for what they were.

Carter was known as a detail man. He micromanaged every facet of his administration. In telling the story of the Camp David Accords, Carter spares no detail, no matter how mundane. My eyes glazed over as I read blow by blow accounts of meetings between the parties. There were way too many details and not nearly enough analysis. Almost half of the book deals with Camp David and there was certainly much more going on in the four years of the Carter administration.

Carter does not reveal much about the relationships he had with his close advisors. He does discuss Bert Lance and that relationship in great detail because Lance’s scandal was a tremendous blow to the administration that placed a premium on honesty. But Carter’s chief of staff, Hamilton Jordan, was a colorful character who was prone to saying and doing the wrong thing. Carter provides no insight into what it was like to work with Jordan. We scarcely get to know his closest advisors with the exception of Zbigniew Brzezinski who was National Security Advisor and Cyrus Vance who was his first secretary of state.

Carter also gives very short shrift to his domestic agenda and relations with Congress. To read Carter’s memoirs, one would believe that Carter had warm relations with Tip O’Neill and Robert Byrd. It was quite the contrary. Carter enjoyed four years of Democratic rule in both chambers of Congress, but could not get a domestic agenda passed. This was because he did not and would not understand how Congress worked. This was in an age when the prerogatives of the legislature meant more to its members than party loyalty. Carter never got that and, in writing his memoirs, it appears he still doesn’t understand why he met with so much resistance from his party.

Carter had to feel some angst over the state of the economy during the latter half of his presidency. It was certainly in shambles. Unemployment was double digits, interest rates were sky-high, and inflation was out of control. Add to it an energy shortage and you have the makings of an economic calamity. Carter does not comment on this at all. He does discuss his efforts at passing an energy program, but provides scant detail as to what this program was. Nor does he provide any analysis as to why it failed to pass. The economy, as bad as it was, is barely mentioned.

Where Carter is at his best in writing about his years in the White House is in describing the events that led up to the Iranian hostage crisis and measures he took to secure their release. The book opens with his very last minute efforts to push through the transfer of funds to Iran to secure their release. In later chapters, he describes the American relationship with Iran and the Shah and how it deteriorated. The conflict between diplomats, the military, and security officials that followed the fall of the Shah is fascinating and Carter tells it well.

Here, Carter does make the reader sympathize with him. He was clearly anguished by the plight of the hostages and spared no effort in trying to secure their safe release. He also clearly describes the abortive military effort to rescue the hostages and how it failed. This failure was unfairly laid at the feet of Carter by the American public and led to a rapid deterioration of his approval. Carter does not complain and in retrospect, it was quite unfair. I respect the man for having made the bold attempt at rescue.

What I was looking forward to the most was a narrative about the Crisis of Confidence speech – or the “Malaise Speech” as it is commonly known. Not before or since has a national presidential address been so poorly conceived and delivered and I was curious to see how Carter would defend it.

He chose not to defend it. In his telling, it was all a grand success. The reality was much different. When he cancelled his scheduled address to the nation on energy and retreated to Camp David, he created an air of crisis where none existed. That is not necessarily bad. A manufactured crisis can serve a president well. But when you start inviting poets and ministers to advise you as Carter did during his retreat, you appear to be a leader full of self-doubt. When you are the president, you can admit error. But you can never admit to a lack of self-confidence. That is how it appeared to the nation.

Then the speech itself was delivered. It resonated well as a call to action. Then, pundits and opponents began to parse it. Upon closer examination, Carter seemed to be blaming the American people for the state of woe in the country. He accepted no responsibility. He made no exclamation of meeting the challenges facing the nation. Ronald Reagan used its text to malign Carter as a man out of touch with his country. The crisis of confidence was not in themselves, Reagan said. The crisis of confidence was in the man in the White House.

Carter’s bitterness toward Reagan seeps into his memoir. While this is a natural human emotion, it is not statesmanlike and Carter comes off looking somewhat petty. Reagan was considerate to Carter as the outgoing president and Carter refuses to acknowledge this.

Carter does express a great deal of warmth for Gerald Ford and, on several occasions, talks about the support Ford lent him as president. He also seems to hold Richard Nixon in high regard, discussing his advice in foreign affairs and the long trip the two took together to the Begin funeral.

The Carter presidency is soon due an unbiased and thorough examination by scholars as passions fade about the man and his presidency. They will soon begin that dispassionate analysis that we are now getting of Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon. A president’s memoirs lend themselves to this process. But Carter’s offer scant information to historians that’s not already available. Historians look to memoirs for a man’s passions, prejudices, anguish, and pride. Carter leaves little for historians to work with in this dry tome.

The Queen of Bedlam By Robert McCammon

The Queen of Bedlam
By Robert McCammon
Copyright 2007

Three years after Matthew Corbett freed the falsely accused witch of the Fount Royal settlement in the Carolina colony, Matthew Corbett has relocated to New York City. He is a clerk to a distinguished magistrate and a young man about town. He is also a bitter, angry young man bent on revenge against Eben Ausley, the evil head of the orphanage where he grew up.

As Matthew stalks Ausley through the streets of New York, cataloging in his mind Ausley’s comings and goings and gambling losses, he stumbles into a murder mystery. A serial killer is working the streets of New York and his nom de guerre is The Masker. He has already killed a doctor and, as Matthew stalks his quarry through the streets, he comes across a second murder – that of a local merchant who was well respected in town.

Loving a good mystery and always determined to see justice done, Matthew devotes his spare time to the solving of the Masker murders. He comes to the attention of a local businesswoman who runs a “problem solver” agency – private investigators. Matthew is hired as a junior associate of the Herrald Agency and put into rigorous training in fighting and self defense.

He also comes to the attention of the widow of the businessman who was murdered. She offers him ten shillings to find her husband’s killer. Matthew gives up clerking and turns to private sleuthing.

His first official case for the Herrald Agency is to visit a nearby asylum where an elderly woman is housed. She is incommunicative, but is kept in regal comfort by a mysterious benefactor. In talking to her, Matthew quickly establishes a link between the Masker murders and the mysterious Queen of Bedlam.

The case takes a stranger turn when Aubrey himself is the victim of a Masker murder with Matthew in pursuit. He stalks the murderer to the home of a local lawyer and acquaintance. The lawyer, dubious of Matthew’s suspicions, allows him to search the home. He finds nothing.

As the case evolves, Matthew soon unravels underhanded and unethical business practices in the New World spanning between New York and Philadelphia. In doing so, he comes to the attention of a mysterious, villainous criminal empire headed by a faceless Dr. Fell. He and the daughter of a local printer are taken prisoner by Dr. Fell’s men and are confronted with the prospect of becoming quarry in a hunt carried out by young orphans brandishing daggers. In the end, and unlikely alliance of good and corrupt comes together to save the day and Matthew escapes. He returns to New York to unmask the Masker and solve the crime.

He returns to the Bedlam asylum for one final meeting with the Queen. He brings with him the answer to her mysterious question and ties up all the ends. He looks forward to advancing in the Herrald Agency and moving on to new adventures while avoiding the mysterious Dr. Fell who now has it in for him.

I enjoyed McCammon’s second installment of the Matthew Corbett series every bit as much as I did the first. As I stated in my review of Speaks the Nightbird, I am not a fan of mysteries. Nor am I much of a fan of historical fiction. But I am a fan of Corbett and a huge fan of Mr. McCammon.

I don’t read enough mystery fiction to be an expert on how they should be written. I have read enough to recognize telegraphed clues, obvious suspects, thin red herrings, and ex deus machina and how it ruins the book. The reader is not going to find that in the Corbett series.

Just like Speaks the Nightbird, McCammon keeps the reader thinking. The red herrings are well disguised and not discerned easily. The clues are well disguised and cleverly contrived. There are several mysteries within the mystery and more than a few subplots which McCammon brings together delightfully at the end. If McCammon keeps writing mysteries, I’ll certainly keep reading them.

Recurring characters can be a mixed bag for writers. Too often, they become like the Hardy Boys. Same people who never change solving the same mysteries with different venues and different clues. Corbett evolves under McCammon’s treatment. He’s no longer the naïve youth just a few years out of the orphanage. He’s older and angry to a large degree. His anger directed at Eban Aubley serves to make him a human and plausible character rather than a caricature hero dedicated to truth, justice and the American way.

McCammon does not let that bitterness and anger undermine what we like about Corbett which is his dogged determination to do what is right. The problem of Aubrey is sorted out nicely to lend itself to the mystery, resolve the reader’s – and Matthew’s -- desire for justice for the fiend, and to leave Matthew’s hands clean.

Corbett gets a sidekick of sorts in The Queen of Bedlam that promises to add future dimensions to new Corbett adventures. Hudson Greathouse, a senior partner at the Herrald Agency, is Matthew’s superior and trainer and sometimes antagonist. He’s the opposite of Matthew in that he’s surly, a brawler, and cocksure. The addition of Greathouse increases the awareness of Matthew’s shortcomings and enhances his strengths. The partnering lent itself well to Matthew’s development in The Queen of Bedlam and promises to make the next book in the adventures of Matthew Corbett, Mister Slaughter, more interesting as it promises Matthew’s further development.

As Stephen King once said, people are much more interesting than monsters. In the hands of a lesser writer, Matthew Corbett could be the same character confronting a new monster each week on the same station. That would be boring. With McCammon at the helm, Matthew Corbett promises to be an evolving character meeting new and different situations. That is a promising prospect for his fans.

The Girl Next Door By Jack Ketchum

The Girl Next Door
By Jack Ketchum
Copyright 1989

David is a preteen boy living in suburbia. He has his friends in the neighborhood and they do the things preteen boys do. His parents are in a loveless marriage and it bothers him. He does his best to endure.

His next door neighbors are his best friends. Donnie and Ralph are not quite as sophisticated in their thinking, but are good guys. Their mother, Ruth, is the ultimate cool mom. She lets the boys drink in her home and keeps their secrets.

One day, David discovers Meg – Ruth’s niece. She and her sister, Susan, have come to live with their Aunt Ruth after their parents were killed in a car accident. Susan is left disabled by the accident. But Meg is pretty and David is immediately smitten with her.

Ruth, however, is not. She takes an instant dislike to Meg and what she sees as Meg’s rebelliousness. The confrontations start out as shouting, then slapping. Soon, things turn much more violent and ugly.

Meg is locked in the basement. Donnie and Ralph take turns hitting her. She is strung up, made to stand on her toes. All of this is done under Ruth’s direction. Meg is starved, forced to eat feces, and urinated upon in her basement dungeon. David observes passively. He is disturbed by his passivity and even participates to a limited degree. He notes that Ruth is becoming increasingly unstable. The more unstable Ruth becomes, the worse it gets for Meg.

Soon, other neighborhood kids join the abuse as it spirals deeper into madness. The phrase, “I fuck, fuck me,” is burned into her stomach. She is molested and eventually raped by the boys. Susan is made to watch. Ruth promises Meg that any misbehavior on her part will result in Susan having to endure her torture. Susan eventually falls into a near catatonic state as her sister is tortured and raped. Eventually, Ruth burns her clitoris with a hot iron to destroy in Meg any sexual desire, having branded her a slut.

Finally, David can take no more. He remembers those early feelings of desire he felt for Meg and resolves to rescue her. His plans go awry and his friends and Ruth turn on him, imprisoning him as well. Finally, the final confrontation ensues and David extracts a measure of justice for poor Ruth.

The Girl Next Door was a singular reading experience for me. I read it in one sitting, unable to put the book down. Ketchum’s ability to tell a story and compel the reader to move forward despite being horrified is unmatched in my reading experience.

The story opens with such innocence -- similar to Stephen King's The Body and Apt Pupil. A preteen boy with a troubled homelife finds a pretty girl and falls for her. He thinks about her constantly. He falls in love for the first time.

The neighborhood kids are just as wholesome at first. They play rough games. Some of them are a little scary, but in a fun way. They are enjoying the springtime of life.

So, when events fly downhill to the depths that Ketchum descends, it's all the more shocking.

It may sound like torture porn. It may sound as if it is cheap whacking material for the sexually depraved. The Girl Next Door is none of that. Ketchum finds just the right words to horrify. The action unfolds in a spellbindingly compelling manner. But his prose is not cheap. There are no cheap thrills in this book. Every horror, every action lends itself to the dread the reader feels. And just when it seems the horror is going to reach an unspeakable level of depravity, Ketchum’s first person narrative backs off in an incredibly imaginative way.

Ketchum leaves his reader emotionally exhausted. There is no happy ending. David, the narrator, is left permanently scarred by what he witnessed and by his passivity, allowed to happen. There is no recovery for him. There is no moving on.

And there is no moving on for the reader. I don’t think a sane person can say the enjoyed the experience of reading The Girl Next Door. However, one can appreciate the fact that they’ve read something entirely unique. They can appreciate that they’ve read a masterfully told story. They can appreciate that they made it to the end because reading this book will leave you feeling different about what you read in the future.

The Girl Next Door is not for casual fans of horror. Reading this book without having digested many of the works of Stephen King, Robert Bloch, H.P. Lovecraft, Edgar Allan Poe or Dennis Etchison would be like getting on the biggest, baddest roller coaster at the amusement park without having ever ridden the bumper cars. One must be used to the shocks, the violence, and the depravity that is an important part of modern horror to venture into Ketchum’s masterwork. One must know what else is out there before they can measure The Girl Next Door against it because, while better horror books have been written, none have been so gripping.

The story is loosely based on the real life story of Sylvia Likens who was tortured to death by her aunt and neighborhood children in Indianapolis in 1965. Ketchum changes up quite a few things to make the story original, but the striking similarity is there. When you know that a real life teenage girl had to endure such tortures, it makes the book even more horrific.

For true fans and connoisseurs of horror, The Girl Next Door is a must read. It will leave you emotionally exhausted, doubting the morality of your fellow man, and completely worn out. However, this is all worth it to read such a masterfully crafted story so compellingly told. Jack Ketchum is a master of the craft with few peers.