Fraternity
by Diane Brady (Spiegel & Grau)
How did two of America’s most accomplished African-Americans — Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Edward P. Jones — end up in the same class at Holy Cross, a small, Catholic liberal arts college in über-Caucasian Worcester, Mass.? One white priest.
“Even among the Jesuits, a progressive, intellectual, and typically outspoken order of the Church, John Brooks stood out,” writes Diane Brady, a senior editor at Bloomberg Businessweek, in “Fraternity.” Partly inspired by Martin Luther King, Brooks persuaded a skeptical faculty to admit a cohort of young black men shortly after the civil rights leader’s assassination.
He brought future notables such as Miami Dolphins running back turned lawyer Eddie Jenkins and New York City deputy mayor Stanley Grayson to Holy Cross, but Brooks’ early experiment in affirmative action is as striking for the problems it created as for the accomplishments of the students he found. In 1968, African-Americans stuck out in Worcester. Many were unprepared for college-level work or felt isolated. Within months, the black students had founded a student union and successfully lobbied for separate housing in what some criticized as a reverse version of Jim Crow.
Though Brooks is Brady’s protagonist, Thomas, who as a Supreme Court justice has opposed affirmative action, is the book’s most fascinating figure. Brooks testified on the justice’s behalf at his 1991 confirmation hearing, but it’s hard to imagine that the priest approves of many of his protege’s opinions. After recounting Thomas’ surprising participation in student strikes, Brady explains the genesis of his later views. “After receiving a full scholarship to Holy Cross, he went on to reject the belief than any ethnic minority should have the same opportunities that he had received,” she writes. “He felt that instead of being praised for what he had accomplished when given the opportunity, the fact that he had been given an opportunity because of his skin color had overshadowed the accomplishments.” Justin Moyer, The Washington Post
Every Day by the Sun: A Memoir of the Faulkners of Mississippi
by Dean Faulkner Wells (Broadway)
Dean Faulkner Wells spent most of her life as a footnote in the story of her uncle William Faulkner. Even at her own wedding, she writes in her memoir, “Every Day by the Sun” (Broadway, $15), “every eye in the church was on Pappy” as he walked her down the aisle. But as she grew older, Wells became something of a star herself, as an author, co-owner of a small publishing house, literary salon hostess and, perhaps most important, the “last primary source” about her famous uncle. Wells, who died last summer at 75, made no claims as an official biographer. “Every Day by the Sun” is simply an account of her experiences with the man who essentially raised her. Her father, William’s younger brother Dean, was killed in a plane crash months before Wells was born, and her stepfather, an abusive alcoholic, flitted in and out of her life before dying on skid row in Chicago when Wells was in her 20s.
As one might expect from a story about the Faulkners, “Every Day by the Sun” features plenty of high jinks involving booze and women. Yet Wells insists, “I never saw William Faulkner drunk.” There are beguiling tales about Faulkner’s struggle toward literary stardom — his days as a bitter postal worker who discarded any mail not sent first class and his efforts to write “As I Lay Dying” while working the night shift at a power plant. “William wrote on the back of a wheelbarrow he had turned upside down,” Wells reports.
Much of this may not be news to Faulkner scholars and aficionados. But Wells’ personalized rendition brings a warmth to the lore. In her telling, Faulkner is less a literary icon than a quirky uncle who took her sailing, escorted her trick-or-treating, showed her how to clean a gun, and drove her to and from school. When Wells was a Pee Wee football cheerleader, Faulkner even stayed to watch the games, sitting in the same seat, wearing his signature hat. Wells says “Every Day by the Sun” is a kind of thank-you note to her uncle — who, in taking care of her, “had fulfilled his promise to my father” — but it is also a testament to her own gifts as a writer. Nora Krug, The Washington Post
