RUBY BRIDGES AND NORMAN ROCKWELL

Yesterday was Ruby Bridges' 62nd birthday. In 1960, when she was six years old, Ruby Bridges, escorted by US Marshals to protect her from angry and violent crowds of protesters, integrated her local elementary school in New Orleans. Her courage, and that of her parents, and their desire to get her a better education, the education she deserved, not the second-rate 'separate but equal' variety, stands still as an abject lesson to us all. And don't forget when this took place it was already six years after the US Supreme Court's decision in 'Brown vs Board of Education, Topeka Kansas' had made segregation officially a violation of the US Constitution.

There was a very nice article about Bridges on the facebook page A Mighty Girl (you can link to it here) which told the story well, and provided numerous links for more information, as it is designed as an educational tool for young people. Following just a few of those links would provide a real lesson for anyone who doesn't know of or indeed remember those events of almost 60 years ago. And it sheds some harsh light on the present day, and our lingering inability to inhabit a world of equality.

But I was struck by the fact that there was no mention in the Mighty Girl piece of Norman Rockwell's painting, titled 'The Problem We All Live With', which was done as a centerfold for Look Magazine in 1964, almost four years after Bridges' first day at school. I can't think of why there wasn't, because the painting conveys visually some important truths about that moment, a moment powerful enough to shock and shame an older white artist, considered to be the essence of middle American sensibility, up there in western Massachusetts. Look gave Rockwell certain freedoms he didn't have at the Saturday Evening Post; I remember noticing that at a retrospective at the Dulwich Picture Gallery a few years ago, and Rockwell used that freedom.

In the picture, Ruby is the only person whose face you see, she looks resolute and innocent, and is walking naturally, as a child would walk to school. The four marshals are walking stiffly, with determination and in step with each other. But they are out of step with Ruby, and it is her stride which defines the painting, not theirs. On the wall behind her is scrawled 'nigger': perhaps this is why Mighty Girl avoided the painting, but it's important to see that because it puts the horrific context of that day's events, and the world from which they grew, into its chilling context. There is also a stain on the wall from a tomato thrown at Ruby; the stain partially obliterates the letters KKK on the wall.

The writing on the wall, indeed the tomato, are most likely Rockwell's creations. He also makes a couple of changes: adding a fourth marshal, probably for the symmetry, and changing the school satchel which Ruby was holding with such a natural, off to school attitude into a more old-fashioned notebook and ruler, which emphasizes her preparation for learning, and seems to make simpler the whole idea of heading to school, like a one-room school house rather than a big school where parents refused to let their children sit in the same classes with Ruby.

It's a painting that looks awkward on the surface, but I believe that is deliberate, because Rockwell is trying to emphasize the awkwardness, the unnaturalness, of the situation: that US marshals should have to be there to allow a young girl to do what should be the most natural part of any young girl's life: going to school in her community and being educated for the best the world has to offer. It's a brilliant piece of art, worthy of the exceptional bravery of a six-year old girl in Louisiana, 1960.

ANDREW ROSENHEIM'S FEAR ITSELF

Fear Itself, which is a great title, somewhat overstates the impact of this novel, whose strongest point is that it manages to capture much of the feeling of the pulp heroes of the late Thirties. Jimmy Nessheim, a German-American FBI agent, former college football star, and all-around good guy is very much in the tradition of Operator No.5 or Secret Agent X, a man of strong build, good looks, and not a whole lot of characterisation. He relies, like any good pulp hero, on his 'inner steeliness', and has a family right out of a Norman Rockwell painting. So when he finds himself engaged in infiltrating the Bund, and lands himself, inadvertently, in the middle of a political intrigue between J. Edgar Hoover and the head of his counter-intelligence, he acts more as a reflector than a protagonist himself.

This would be fine if we got more of the most interesting characters, who are the real ones: Hoover, his right-hand man Clyde Tolson, and William Stephenson, the Canadian chief of British intelligence in Washington, who is, as one might expect in a British novel, the true hero behind the story. There is even a chilling scene in which Heydrich frightens the life out of the German intelligence officer behind the book's secret plot, which turns out to be the assassination of FDR. Rosenheim has obviously done his research, and he has a firm touch when it comes to the pecadillos, both personal and political, of the FBI boss—it's a little bit of pre-war history that needs more telling.

The most interesting of the fictional characters, Harry Guttman, the counter-intelligence boss at odds with Hoover, is a Jewish outcast within the Bureau who's given a crippled wife as well as a thankless job, but who turns out to be just as two-fisted as our hero. The hidden plot, and the identity of the assassin, are not hidden particularly well, partly because the red herrings are built up too deliberately and too fully, and when Nessheim finally finds a true love, it's hard to believe he could be wrong. It might have been nice as well to get FDR slightly more on stage; he's an appealing character, and his contrast with Hoover might have been interesting. There's a prequel killing which is fairly clunky in plot terms, needing to be explained, but not very convincingly, a couple of hundred pages later, and there's the odd Anglicism, parenthetical aside, or unnecessary description (like Chicago's 'famous Loop') that pulp writers used to like because they were being paid by the word, but which slow things down. And one thing Operator No.5 could have told you, is that in a story like this, action is everything. Fear Itself is an interesting historical thriller, but not quite a compelling one.

Fear Itself by Andrew Rosenheim
Hutchinson, £14.99, ISBN 9780091796068