"All along, I have told myself, 'So long as you are in pursuit of the truth, you can be doing no wrong. ... It's quite another (thing) to be the truth bearer. There's a reason people don't like revisionist historians.'"
These two lines from the first couple of paragraphs of the last chapter of "After Visiting Friends" by Michael Hainey pretty much summarize the story line of this young man's journey into the mysterious life of his long-dead father.
Hainey, a journalist and deputy editor of GQ Magazine, was 6 years old when his uncle and other family members came to the door of his family home in Chicago very early one morning and told his mother his father had died. The death was attributed to a heart attack, and said to take place on the street a few miles from the Chicago Sun-Times, where Robert Hainey worked as night-slot editor.
But things don't add up, including the fact that the reported location was several miles away from the newspaper office in an area that would not have been a logical route home for the elder Hainey; the fact that none of his fellow paper employees professed to having any knowledge of the circumstances of his death; that his mother was notified by his uncle rather than the police; and the fact that all obituaries published in all newspapers about the elder Hainey's death said he died while visiting "friends."
"After Visiting Friends" was published in 2013 by Scribner, a subsidiary of Simon and Schuster. It details the true story of the decades-long search by the author to find the truth about his father's death, and, in doing so, his father's life.
This story is an extremely compelling look at the different ways in which we each process grief, and how we react when we find something is not the way we feel it should be.
But of far more interest to me was the detailed historical account of the history of print media, and the in-depth look at two of the greatest publications in this country, the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun-Times.
Most of the information detailed in the book takes place in the old days of print journalism, when the relationship between newsmen and police officers was considered a partnership for the good of the public; a time when people trusted the news they read in the newspaper, because they considered reporters to be trustworthy, unbiased sources.
Hainey's death takes place in 1970, at about the time newsmen began to realize that simply taking the word of the police department that what happened was actually the way it was, and at times even conspiring with police officers and government officials to change the "truth" of an event, might not actually be in the best interest of the public. The things triggering this change of heart on the part of the news establishment included the Rev. Martin Luther King and the Watergate break-ins. Ironically, as news reporters changed their tactics and began digging for the "truth," the public began to look at newsmen as being the enemy. "The bearer of truth. The destroyer of illusions."
And woven through these insights into the dark and seedy world of newspaper reporting is the poignant and compelling human story of a boy who grew up desperately wanting to know more about a father he barely remembered. After he passes the age of 35, the age at which his father died, and he realizes he is not also going to die at that age, Michael Hainey begins contacting those who were closest to his father in life, moving from point to point on a jagged line until he manages to connect that one dot that gives him that one name that makes the whole thing fall into place.
If you have any interest at all in the history of newspapers, this book is a worthwhile read. If you like a good, clean, heartfelt story about a life journey that brings a boy to the point where he can finally become the person he was meant to be, this book is a worthwhile read.
There are a couple of things I should warn about in this book, however. For those of you who, like me, want to know more about Hainey's mother, and how she came to where she found herself in all of this, you will be disappointed. Hainey investigated the life of just about everyone in this book as far as he could go, except his mother, and I think that was a mistake.
The other thing is the style in which the book is written. For those of you who remember the old television series "Dragnet" and the choppy, short statement, matter-of-fact manner in which information was given and sought by the main character Joe Friday ("The facts ma'am, just the facts"), that is the style used throughout this book, and it is distracting to the reader, especially at first. It takes about 50 or 60 pages for the reader to get into the rhythm of the writing style, and you might even be tempted to give up on reading the book as a result.
Because of these two things, which are not minute but are actually glaring details to the reader, I have to give this book a rating of 8 out of 10. But it is definitely worth reading for the human experience and the historical information which is not readily available in many places, and I recommend this book for everyone.
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