An editor at the New York Times writes of the days when giants with guitars roamed this cheatin’ Earth
By Janice Harayda
One of the Top 10 search terms that have led people to One-Minute Book Reviews this year is “Donald Murray,” the name of my late mentor and writing teacher, whom I have quoted on this site. Many visitors were looking for journalists who had studied with Don, an internationally known pioneer in the methods of teaching writing that he described in A Writer Teaches Writing www.oneminutebookreviews.wordpress.com/2007/01/01/.
So I’m happy to report that one of Don’s students, Dana Jennings, is the author of a new memoir, Sing Me Back Home: Love, Death, and Country Music (Faber & Faber, 272 pp., $24) us.macmillan.com/singmebackhome. Dana writes of growing up in New Hampshire in what he calls “the golden age of twang,” the years between about 1950 and 1970, when giants like Hank Williams, Johnny Cash and Tammy Wynette were turning out many of their most famous songs. Those of us who studied with Don can be a pretty tight group — “acolytes” would not be too strong a word of some of us — so I can’t review Dana’s book. But Publishers Weekly said this about it:
“The perfect country song, according to the late songwriter Steve Goodman, always had references to mama, being drunk, cheating, going to prison and hell-bent driving. Taking a page from Goodman’s songbook, Jennings, a New York Times editor, brilliantly captures the essence of country music in this hard-driving tale that is part memoir and part music history.”
To read about some of Dana’s favorite country-music songs, click here: papercuts.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/04/living-with-music-a-playlist-by-dana-jennings/. To read the New York Times Book Review review of Sing Me Back Home, click here: www.nytimes.com/2008/06/01/books/review/Kirby-t.html?_r=2&ref=review&oref=slogin&oref=slogin.
© 2008 Janice Harayda. All rights reserved.
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