Fugitive Days: A Memoir by Bill Ayers Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Fugitive Days: A Memoir
Book Review: Hazy Days
Summary: 1 Stars
I got really tired of the way Bill Ayers used joints as punctuation. What kind of a society would we find ourselves in if genuine protestors followed his model. Life in America is hardly doing time in "the belly of the beast"...not even in Hyde Park.Book Review: Here's an idea... Try telling the truth next time.
Summary: 1 Stars
Ayers admits that this book relies heavily on imagination, but he doesn't really provide much of an explanation (one assumes that it is tied to self-interest). The book was published right on the eve of 9-11, but far enough after Oklahoma City to lull the media (in New York, at least) into a false perception that it might still be possible to package the anti-establishment terrorism of the 60's and 70's as tastefully chic.What is most troubling about this book isn't that Ayers or Bernadine Dohrn (his Charles Manson admiring partner) are unrepentant about the violence and property destruction, but that the academic community has been so accepting of both these arguably socio-pathic individuals. It is difficult to imagine an abortion clinic bomber being invited to join the faculty of any university, yet the same principle applies.
Just as Ayers concedes, this book does not provide an honest and complete account of events. Other than the failure to mention the BLA and the killing of the parents of nine children, the most conspicuous omission is how these two fugitives against the bourgeois system shamelessly used their parent's money and influence to avoid serving time for their crimes after turning themselves in to law enforcement.
Book Review: I've rarely had such a (bad) reaction to a book
Summary: 1 Stars
Rarely do I have such a reaction to a book as I've had towards this one. Being someone who opposed the Vietnam War, my expectations were that it would be an enjoyable read - not a book I'd come to loathe.Bill Ayers does a good job of taking his readers back to the chaos of that time in the early chapters of his book. And I congratulate him on his unswerving honesty towards himself and his cadre of comrades. But he is such detestable, manipulative, whiny, self-righteous holier-than-thou person that I suddenly see a lot more legitimacy in the words, "Love it or leave it."
I completely lost tolerance for him at the end when he brings up My Lai yet another time in the book and then asks when America will acknowledge the sacrifice Diana made toward ending the war - Diana who blew herself up or was blown up by another in their gang while planning to bomb a target in the US.
I wish I could rate this book zero stars. I wish I could get my money back.
Book Review: Interesting but ultimately disappointing
Summary: 2 Stars
First, some straight facts. Ayers is, and was, a "radical from the sixities", but many of his radical actions were at the tail end of that infamous decade and a good portion of this book relates to the seventies, 1970 to '75, not the over-reported, mythical "60's". Second, he was not representative of "baby boomers" or even the anti-Viet Nam war movement and, though you can't tell it from the bio sketch or the book, he might even be too old to be a member of that much maligned group, the boomers.Ayers was a key member of a small splinter group known as Weatherman. It can aruged that his group, and other "direct action" radicals, actually helped put an end to the serious, mass movement against the war in Viet Nam by going so far out in front of the understanding of the American public as to appear to have landed from some distant planet. To the older generation, they appeared to be the living, breathing, violent confirmation that the anti-war movement was unpatriotic and even bent on the ultimate destruction of the America. They were right about the war in Viet Nam, but probably little else.
All that said, this is a fast paced, quick trip through the minds of hearts of one sub-set of deadly serious radicals. Ayers is most honest in revealing his youthful fantasies about women, free love and about the attractions of beer, dope and a freewheeling way of life. He faithfully reconstructs the all too rapid, and slippery, path to radicalism taken by himself and his commrades (his term). He takes pride in their ability to live underground and elude the FBI, while planning and carrying out their clandestine actions.
This is a highly useful book for those who lived some measure of adult life in the time period and for those who, coming afterword, might not understand even a small fraction of what happened to the country. He takes us on a fast ride through the malleable minds of youth set on revolution or self destruction, whichever comes first.
Ultimately, however, to me this is a dishonest book by a man who demonstrates little or no growth from the period of his extreme youth and extreme politics. This is a difficult conclusion for me to assert, because I was a sometime active participant in the anti-war movement at about the same time as the author (though, I think, considerably younger than he). I briefly dated the younger sister of one of the main characters in the weatherman psycho-drama mentioned prominently in the book and I was entirely sympathic to their goal of ending the war. Despite the fact that the Weatherman were often times seen as borderline crazies even within the movement, I would like to believe that some good could come from such difficult times. I know that they believed they were out to save our country, in the same way that, a hundred years earlier, those who opposed slavery took on an unpopular, and dangerous, cause. If they had succeded, we might now call them heros.
Ayers, to my eye, explains little or nothing of the historical, social, poltical and personal decisions that led him toward smashing windows, building bombs and fighting hand to hand with the police. It/s as if he woke up one day and found himself to be a radical, one who was, somehow, personally, deeply charged with carrying out radical acts unlike any in American history. While the group was middle class and intelllectually oriented, there is no hint of educated people feeling their way toward difficult conclusions. What about the intervening 25 or so years? Has his thinking changed? Is he agast at his younger self? Aside from saying repeatedly that the weatherman actions were far in front of their abilities, he makes few, if any, apologies.
There is no critical looking back in this book, only an attempt to recreate the borderline insanity of youthful arrogance combined with a strong sense of mission that propelled a small group of people to believe that they could take the world by the tail and shake it till it did what they wanted. At one point in the book, he says he and a fellow radical wondered if their whole generation was doomed. No, Bill, you were doomed. The young people of that era have gone on to do many things, some good, some bad, some wonderful.
This book will do little to help people understand the why of what came very close to being America's second civil war. It is valuable, nonetheless, because it takes us behind the scenes, and, in a cusory fashion, into the brains of one radical group. It clearly demonstrates their dedication and determination to the cause, if not their intelligence. In a purely logical sense, the weatherman, and others, were completely correct in deciding that strong action was required to try to prevent the deaths of several million Vietnamese and tens of thousands of American soliders. They failed to realize, however, that they were completely incapable of taking strong enough actions to reverse the policy of their government and, instead, were entirely capable of turning much of the nation against the anti-war movement. No radical group was capable of action, of the nature envised by Ayers and others, that would have made one whit of difference to the government. A thousand three pound bombs, on a thousand days, was not enough. None should have ever been planted.
While the book is a disappointment, there are truths to be learned. Why did the radicals of that era believe, for example, that everything in life was connected to everything else and that all of life had to be put right in a flash? Where is the well of arrogance from which the belief can be drawn that anyone at anytime in the world could perform such a task? In this respect, the book is something of a desent into madness. We can only be glad that the seventies are long since over. A generation is not to blame for the bad results that occurred, but something deeper in the human condition and in the American need to search for perfection. Ayers doesn't have clue, nor is he looking for one.
Book Review: Let's send Bill back underground
Summary: 1 Stars
There's a certain fascination to this book, but its not the one that the posturing ninny who wrote it was aiming at. Ayers is a moral idiot, incapable of shame or embarrassment. He says here that he has no regrets about planting bombs, and that he cannot rule out the possibility that he will do so again. Here's a fun question to think about: do we, as Ayers' potential victims, have the right to make a pre-emptive strike against him?