Review: (1) Ian Frazier, Tales of Adventure for Boys

Boys‘ dreams of glory in the post-adventure-story age

Johnny Whitaker and Jodie Foster as Tom Sawyer and Becky Thatcher in the cave. Tom Sawyer, Don Taylor, dir. (1973)

Boys dream of glory—of doing bold, dramatic, action-hero-type things, and winning the admiration of other kids, especially girls. For some boys, life revolves around glory, although today it’s not called that. Probably now it’s thought of as just doing cool stuff. Whenever I see a piece of graffiti in a place that must have been dangerous to get to, I picture the glory-seeking kid who put it there, and I admire and fear for him. In later years the Internet has changed the scene. Today kids use phones to record daring stunts, other kids see the videos online, and other dreams and even-more-daring stunts ensue.

For my generation, back in the 1950s and ’60s, dreams still sometimes spring-boarded off books. There were books about being a detective (the Hardy boys), a sports hero (Chip Hilton), or a brilliant young scientist (Tom Swift), among others. For me, the main inspiration was The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, my favorite childhood book, in which Tom goes from one glorious exploit to another: he outsmarts his friends into whitewashing his fence, shows up at his own funeral, saves a man falsely accused of murder, etc. I especially admired the deeds he performs for his classmate and love interest, Becky Thatcher. When Becky steals a look at a medical text that the schoolmaster keeps locked in a desk, and accidentally tears a page, Tom sees her do it. She has never been in trouble and is terrified of being found out. The schoolmaster discovers the damage. As he questions the class, student by student, he gets to her. Just as her face is about to betray her, Tom jumps up and shouts, “I done it!” The master whips him extra-vigorously but Tom is so transported by glory he barely notices. Later Becky says, “Tom, how could you be so noble!”

Bliss! I dreamed of doing something like that for my own crush in fourth grade, a dark-haired, dark-eyed girl named Patty Bee, but somehow the right circumstances never came up. (Incredibly, the author of the Chip Hilton books, a famous coach named Clair Bee, was said to be Patty Bee’s uncle.) In fact, those particular opportunities for glory seemed to have disappeared from the culture. Becky Thatcher features in the plot as a damsel in distress. Tom rescues her not only in the torn-book incident, but when they get trapped in the cave later. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer came out in 1876. But today I think the damsel-in-distress plots are completely gone.

Margo Sage-El, the owner of Watchung Books, a store near my house in Montclair, New Jersey, tells me that in general, as far as she knows, books that play to boys’ dreams of glory have disappeared, too. Books about girls finding empowerment and success (real or fantasy) seem to have replaced them—and that’s all to the good. But do the heroines of those books win glory at the end? I hope so; I believe that every kid should dream not just of empowerment and success but of deathless, legend-creating glory. In actual life, opportunities for it do pop up sometimes. They are rare, like extraordinary confluences or coincidences in the natural world. If as a child you’ve daydreamed about glory, you might be able to spot a glorious chance when it comes along.

I was thinking about this recently, on the fourth anniversary of the January 6 attack on the Capitol. During that event I had spotted what seemed a glory opportunity in its natural state.

The rioters were smashing their way into the building, resulting in injuries to Capitol Police officers and the death of one rioter. Events hung in uncertain balance. A bunch of rioters began to chant, “Hang Mike Pence! Hang Mike Pence!” They were angry because he had said he would not break the law in the counting of the electoral vote. Some rioters carried a gallows with a hangman’s noose. Soon the insurgents would be in the Senate chamber.

Here was the chance: imagine what Mike Pence could have done. As Security hustled other officials out, he could have refused to go. Pence was the presiding official of the Senate, after all. He could have said he wouldn’t abandon his post, then maybe stepped onto a desk and waited, arms crossed. When the rioters burst into the hall, he could have confronted them, saying something cinematic like, “You lookin’ for me?” Then he could have ordered them to leave immediately or lie down and wait to be arrested. If he failed to cow them, possibly they would’ve attacked and killed him—but they were blowhards and almost certainly would have folded. If he had judged the risk worth taking, and had prevailed, he would’ve come off as heroically brave and won glory all across the US, red state and blue. He might even have saved the Republican Party from Trump and become the next president.

What was running through Pence’s mind? He grew up in Columbus, Indiana. Some Midwestern boys have pursued glory as big as the continental sky (George Custer, William Jennings Bryan, the Wright brothers). Did Pence have any glory dreams on January 6, or ever?

The question can be kind of answered by reading his autobiography, So Help Me God, which came out the year after the Capitol attack. As per the title, Pence’s public and private self emphasizes his faith. His family raised him Catholic, with an ethic of service and loyalty. His dad was a decorated Marine veteran from the Korean War. The son never served in the military and does not present himself as an assertive guy. He’s modest, affable, sometimes stuffy. Dreams or deeds of glory do not figure in his account of his life. His most remarkable youthful feat came when his fraternity brothers at southern Indiana’s Hanover College were living in ways that he saw as rowdy and dissolute. By then he had become a born-again Christian; inspired by this, he somehow persuaded his frat bros to stop their partying and participate in study clubs and sports and intramural activities. Soon his frat had the best GPA on campus. (How about that as a surprise ending to Animal House II?) Such a turnaround must be a rare event in Greek history. I’ve never heard of another like it …

Stay tuned for Part Two!

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Ian Frazier’s Paradise Bronx, an exploration of Bronx geography, history, and artistic invention, was published last fall. He has appeared in Book Post writing on lists, Charles Portis, and Trotsky in the Bronx.

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