BELFAST, BOXING & EAMONN MAGEE: MY MEDIUM/LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS ESSAY

Last November I was commissioned by the London Review Of Books to write a long essay on The Lost Soul Of Eamonn Magee, a biography of the Belfast boxer. As I filed the piece, the book was joint winner of the William Hill prize for sports book of the year, which I thought might get it into print quickly. As it happened, I got the proofs of the story, very nicely edited, in March. But it got bumped from its scheduled publication then, and when I checked on it four months later, was told it was now out of date, and with summer holidays at the paper about to begin, it was killed.

The story itself is certainly not out of date: whether you consider it about Magee himself, about boxing in general, or about Northern Ireland and the society and culture in which Magee grew up. So the essay is now up at Medium, you can link to it here. Read it and if you like it, please give it a clap.

ROBERT F KENNEDY, THE LAST CAMPAIGN: MY LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS ESSAY

My essay on the 50th anniversary of the RFK assassination is on the LRB Blog, you can link to it here. It's a little different from the one I originally wrote. Partly in layout: I led with the John Stewart quote, then explained who Stewart was. But mostly in detail: I went in to a little more description of the three assassinations I mention, to draw out their similarities, but I can understand why LRB wanted to keep
the focus tighter on the story of that campaign as well as the what ifs had Bobby not been murdered.

The RFK assassination is in many ways the most perplexing of those three. On the face of it, the evidence of conspiracy is the most obvious, but in most ways it remains the hardest to prove. I had started to write a separate essay recapping where we stand, and another drawing the parallels in the modus operandi in all three murders, recurring themes of conspiracy and cover up, as it were. But each time I got bogged down in the minutiae of what remains a conundrum for most people.

My suspicion of Bobby was real at the time. My lack of enthusiasm for Humphrey was just as real. By 1970, and in the wake of the student strike, the futility of protest began to tempered by what seemed democratic political progress; eventually George McGovern would use changes in the primary and convention process (spearheaded by his campaign manager, Gary Hart) to capture the Democratic nomination. McGovern was the man who had stepped forward to lead the 1968 delegates already won by Bobby; that he and Eugene McCarthy could never reach an accommodation that would raise a viable challenge to Humphrey is, in a nutshell, the most lasting legacy of Bobby's death.

McGovern's nomination in 1972 was probably the high point, or the last high point, of Sixties protest. McGovern, of course, would be trounced by Nixon in the '72 election; no October Surprise was necessary, though the Watergate break-in, like Russian interference in 2016, was swept under the carpet until well after the election results were known. When Nixon was finally toppled, there was no danger a McGovern would replace him.

I probably should also have added a line about the idea that Bobby was convinced his brother's killing had been the result of conspiracy. He would have known who the likely suspects were, and where to look for them and their accomplices. That in itself may have put the target on his back.

AT MOUNT RUSHMORE: My London Review of Books Essay

Sunday in the National Park with Donald. I wrote about the encounter Nate and I had at Mt. Rushmore with the Trump triumphal float last Sunday. It's up at the London Review Of Books blog; you can link to it here.

I had originally begun with a long paragraph starting with the protests and deaths in Charlottesville, and giving a summary of how, over the past 50 years, America has got to this point, but the piece as published is better without the attempt at historic analysis, which in any case I have written here before.

Viewing Mt. Rushmore, we felt the America the way people used to believe it was, or at least should be. Even a cynic like me could feel sincerely about the promise and the greatness of the nation. The Trumpmobile crew were gleefully tearing about everything about that America, under the guise of making it great 'again', and without the slightest sense of irony, celebrating that destruction. They were feeling empowered, almost strutting in the face of those whom they knew they were offending, and to watch them empowered further by the park rangers broke my not so knee-jerk patriotic heart.

MADELEINE LE BEAU AT THE LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS

My piece on Madeleine LeBeau (and her first husband, Marcel Dalio) is now up at the LRB Blog, in a slightly edited format (removing most of the background about Casablanca, which the more erudite LRB audience is presumed to know, as everyone should!). Here's the link.