THE BROTHERS MOST LIKELY TO KEEP THEIR FEET ON THE GROUND WHILE FLYING THROUGH THE AIR

The Wright Brothers by David McCullough - Simon & Schuster (2015)

David McCullough’s long list of achievements and accolades is a biographer’s wet dream. Having won two Pulitzer Prizes—for Truman (1992) and John Adams (2001) respectively—McCullough is one of the foremost scholars of American history, and arguably the most successful of presidential biographers. His ambitions as a historian and a preservationist are not limited to the written word. McCullough has also narrated numerous documentaries by Ken Burns—including Emmy Award winner The Civil War and Academy Award nominee Brooklyn Bridge—along with the 2003 film Seabiscuit. Part of McCullough’s well-deserved success is owed to his ability to capture that hardened kernel of American determination. More than any other author I’ve encountered, McCullough knows the countenance of the ideal American Man. Hardworking, ambitious, unrelenting, mechanically innovative—the American Man never backs away from ‘impossible’ problems. This obstinate belief in one’s own capabilities and inevitable success is what has allowed America to advance from a wilderness to a democratic superpower in less than four-hundred years. It is also the fuel that saturates The Wright Brothers with an irresistible, patriotic energy.

Wilbur and Orville Wright were raised in Dayton, Ohio and remained devoted to their family and their hometown for the duration of their lives. Their father, Bishop Milton Wright, encouraged all his children to better themselves through reading and exploring new hobbies. When he brought home a toy helicopter from one of his many missionary trips, he unknowingly sparked a lifelong obsession in his two younger sons. Both Wilbur and Orville were self-taught engineers and supported their dreams of flight by running a successful bicycle shop in Dayton. In the back room of their small store, they experimented with original bicycle designs, tinkered with faulty machinery, and, when the itch to fly could no longer be suppressed, built their own homemade wind tunnel to test out various wing designs. In their early days of airborne experimentation, the Wright brothers worked amidst a discouraging cloud of pessimism and disbelief. Writes McCullough, 

Along with the cost of experiments in flight, the risks of humiliating failure, injury, and, of course, death, there was the inevitable prospect of being mocked as a crank, a crackpot, and in many cases with good reason…For more than fifty years, or long before the Wright brothers took up their part, would-be ‘conquerers of the air’ and their strange or childish flying machines, as described in the press, had served as a continuous source of popular comic relief.

In fact, it can be difficult for modern readers (myself included) to understand just how much was accomplished by the Wright Brothers and their contemporaries. Their contribution to the field of aviation allowed human flight to move from the realm of science fiction to the realm of tangible reality. This incredible rate of progress is clarified by McCullough in his concluding chapter,

Advances in aviation all the while had been accelerating faster than Orville or anyone of his generation had thought possible, and starting with World War I to a form of weaponry like nothing before in human experience…[Orville] lived to see aviation transformed by jet propulsion, the introduction of the rocket, the breaking of the sound barrier in 1947.

When the brothers first began testing their gliders on the rolling dunes of Kitty Hawk in 1900, they were ecstatic to record flights of 300-400 feet, and a trip lasting more than two minutes was considered a huge success. Over the next several decades they broke every record imaginable—distance flown, number of passengers, distance from the ground, and time spent aloft—and their final flights were several hours in length. The photograph of Wilbur circling the Statue of Liberty in his patented craft is one of the most iconic images in the American archive. It combines unabashed patriotism, mechanical ingenuity, and shrewd business acumen in one perfect compilation. For the Wright brothers, the desire to take flight was always about exploring new frontiers and pushing the boundaries of science. It was about solving impossible problems and feeling the rush of adrenaline that accompanies any dangerous activity. Perhaps Wilbur was fortunate to die when he did—at the age of forty-five—before he had to face his own contribution to warfare and destruction. Orville was not so lucky. In a late interview he tried to make sense of his conflicting feelings, 

We dared to hope we had invented something that would bring lasting peace to the earth. But we were wrong…No, I don’t have any regrets about my part in the invention of the airplane, though no one could deplore more than I do the destruction it has caused. I feel about the airplane much the same as I do in regard to fire. That is I regret all the terrible damage caused by fire, but I think it is good for the human race that someone discovered how to start fires and that we have learned how to put fire to thousands of important uses. 

By providing excerpts from the Wrights’ own letters and notes, McCullough is able to grant his readers access to the intimate thoughts and feelings of his subjects in a way most biographers can only dream of. Through their own words, the Wright brothers displayed a remarkable ability to remain grounded and calm even as they were immersed in fashionable society. Once the brothers could prove beyond a doubt that they had invented a relatively reliable flying machine—once they emerged from behind their paranoid curtain of secrecy—they became international celebrities. Aviation was, in its early days, a thoroughly aristocratic venture. The cost of renting open land and building large machines that would likely be reduced to a pile of splinters in less than five minutes prevented all but the rich and restless from making flight a serious hobby. Almost as impressive as the Wrights’ scientific achievements was their frugality and ability to construct their own materials. Even as they were introduced to princes, and invited to dine at the estates of the fabulously wealthy, the Wright brothers never lost their knack for saving money and keeping focused. With glittering jewels and bubbling champagne threatening distraction at every juncture, the Wright brothers could think only of how to fly further and spend more time in the air. They would not be seduced or softened by the cloying scent of luxury. Describing Wilbur’s success at Le Mans, McCullough writes, 

Not since Benjamin Franklin had any American been so overwhelmingly popular in France. As said by the Paris correspondent for the Washington Post, it was not just his feats in the air that aroused such interest but his strong ‘individuality.’ He was seen as a personification of ‘the Plymouth Rock spirit,’ to which French students of the United States, from the time of Alexis de Tocqueville, had attributed ‘the grit and indomitable perseverance that characterize American efforts in every department of activity.’

The newspapermen of France, England, and the United States scrambled for information and photos of the handsome, reticent brothers. There was something attractive—yet elusive—about the way they spoke little and were unfazed by extravagance. They provided, perhaps, a refreshing break from the exhausting claustrophobia of high society and the transience of material wealth. The Wright brothers were also making headlines during a fast-paced age of invention and exploration, when boundaries were routinely crossed both geographically and in the realm of knowledge. The fervor and excitement of the times—fueled by the widespread dissemination of newspapers—can best be gleaned from McCullough’s account, 

…the times were alive with invention, technical innovations, new ideas of every kind. George Eastman had introduced the ‘Kodak’ box camera; Isaac Merritt Singer, the first electric sewing machine; the Otis Company had installed the world’s first elevator in a New York office building; the first safety razor, the first mousetrap, the first motor cars built in America—all in the dozen years since Orville started his print shop and Wilbur emerged from his spell of self-imposed isolation…Then, too, there was the ever-present atmosphere of a city in which inventing and making things was central to the way of life.

There is a peculiar sense of nostalgia one feels when reading such descriptions. Now, when many of the most important discoveries are being made at the microscopic level—with nanotechnology and wafer-thin microchips—I find myself yearning for the days when balloons and flying machines were the talk-about-town. Granted, many of the smaller inventions are more efficient—I am happy to type this review on a laptop rather than a massive, groaning desktop the size of a filing cabinet—but a part of me wishes I had been alive when scientific experiments were spectacular and unpredictable. The Wright brothers were not always successful, and many of their flights ended in crashes and injuries, but they were never afraid to push the limits. David McCullough, in his phenomenal book The Wright Brothers, reminds us that some things really are worth risking life and reputation for. 

New York Times review

Q&A with Air & Space Magazine (Smithsonian publication)

S&S author profile

THE PRESIDENT MOST LIKELY TO SURPASS HIS OWN MYTHICAL PERSONA

The River of Doubt by Candice Millard - Anchor Books (2005)

Of the forty-three presidents of the United States, we most easily recall those who proved themselves adept at flitting between the public and private spheres of their lives. The men who float to the surface of our murky historical bog—Abraham Lincoln, George Washington,Thomas Jefferson—could more accurately be described as sets of conjoined twins that diverge like two sides of a single coin. The mythical public personas overshadow and outlive the enigmatic private individuals. Thomas-Jefferson-the-flawed-mortal-man is incinerated by the blinding brilliance of Thomas-Jefferson-the-‘Yeoman-Farmer.’ Despite the controversy surrounding his election, Andrew Jackson resides in our collective memory as a war hero, an unflinching democrat, and a true ‘man of the people.’ The most successful American presidents burst through their physical limitations to become immortal concepts—theories of governance containing inherent values and alterations of the American Dream. Hence, we are left with ‘Jeffersonian’ democracy—rooted in the agrarian ideal of a new Eden—or ‘Jacksonian’ democracy—personified in the figure of an aggressive, renegade outlaw. In times of peace and war we can resurrect our former leaders by dusting off the mythical reductions of personality which result from the merging of a person and an idea. It is significant, that despite the cool objectivity championed by democratic ideals, our early Heads of State articulated their thoughts—and themselves—in the bombastic rhetoric of myth and providence. In the twenty-first century, it can be easy to undervalue the importance of terms like ‘Manifest Destiny,’ ‘Chosen People,’ and ‘Garden of the World.’ But in the early days of American Independence, when large parts of the New World remained enticingly ‘unclaimed,’ the figureheads of American democracy were as much characters and allegories as they were real men. With every presidential election, the citizens of the embryonic nation redefined what it meant to be an ‘American Man.’ Theodore Roosevelt was no exception. 

In her bestselling biography The River of Doubt, Candice Millard does not attempt to gloss over Roosevelt’s life and distill his explosive personality from a handful of sporadic policy decisions. Instead, she takes a single journey and magnifies every detail to emphasize the correlation between Roosevelt’s public persona and his private ambitions. In the process, Millard portrays Roosevelt as perhaps the most honest and unaffected American president of his time. As he hacks his way through the strangling vines of South America, Roosevelt comes to occupy his own mythical shoes. He is not just a wealthy, soft-bellied politician who dons the guise of a cowboy to strut across the American stage. He does not purchase his masculine bravado. I will be the first to admit that I approached Millard’s remarkable account with the expectation that Roosevelt would be carried through the South American jungle on the backs of native Amazonians. I opened this book with the jaded pessimism of one who assumed Roosevelt’s earlier African safari involved a lot of careful corralling and pre-tranquilized prey. In fact, Millard’s meticulous documentation suggests that Roosevelt’s most debilitating insecurity was that his genuine interests and concerns would be seen as fake and ephemeral. By the author’s account, Roosevelt was actually more masculine and adventurous than his showy Rough Rider persona. Roosevelt was afraid that if he didn’t prove—beyond a doubt—that he was a true American hero, he would become an American joke. Writes Millard,

Though he had done great things during his two presidential terms—from negotiating an end to the Russo-Japanese War to making possible the construction of the Panama Canal—Roosevelt felt that he had not had an opportunity for greatness. ‘Of course a man has to take advantage of his opportunities, but the opportunities have to come,’ he told an audience in Cambridge, England, in the spring of 1910.

Roosevelt was born into New York high society. A sickly, feeble child, he could have easily spent his life in drawing rooms and social clubs, polishing elbows with the Manhattan elite and stuffing his park-side apartment with priceless works of art. From a young age, Roosevelt scorned this comfortable, effeminate lifestyle in favor of ‘strenuous activity.’ According to Millard,

Perhaps even more striking than the peaks and valleys of Roosevelt’s life was the clear relationship between those extremes—the ex-president’s habit of seeking solace from heartbreak and frustration by striking out on even more difficult and unfamiliar terrain, and finding redemption by pushing himself to his outermost limits. When confronted with sadness or setbacks that were beyond his power to overcome, Roosevelt instinctively sought out still greater tests, losing himself in punishing physical hardship and danger.

This form of self-flagellation will be familiar to any modern adrenaline-junkie. Following his embarrassing electoral defeat in 1912, Roosevelt was in desperate need of a harrowing adventure. When Father John Augustine Zahm—an ambitious priest with somewhat contradictory theological and scientific interests—suggested an exploration of the Amazon river basin, the former president must have felt the irresistible pull of destiny. The proposed expedition had all the ingredients to satisfy Roosevelt’s appetite. The ex-president had long been fascinated by the natural world and had himself contributed a sizable collection of plants and animals to the American Museum of Natural History. As the Age of Exploration came to a close, Roosevelt was also anxious to see his name stamped on the map of the world—to infiltrate and lay claim to an ‘undiscovered’ swath of land. He knew that if he were able to successfully navigate an unexplored tributary of the Amazon, he could cement his legacy in historical records and botanical encyclopedias alike. There was also the strategic position of South America to consider, and Roosevelt’s controversial dealings in Panama had already committed him to a lifelong pursuit of commercial and political alliances with America’s Southern neighbors. And then there was the mystery and the danger and the exotic thrill of the Amazon, where petty grievances and political humiliation could be forgotten in the endless fight for survival. When describing the deadly allure of the Amazon, Millard uses a vocabulary that clarifies Roosevelt’s fascination,

Far from its outward appearance, the rain forest was not a garden of easy abundance, but precisely the opposite. Its quiet, shaded halls of leafy opulence were not a sanctuary but, rather, the greatest natural battlefield anywhere on the planet, hosting an unremitting and remorseless fight for survival that occupied every single one of its inhabitants, every minute of every day. Though frequently impossible for a casual observer to discern, every inch of space was alive—from the black, teeming soil under Roosevelt’s boots to the top of the canopy far above his head—and everything was connected. A long, linked mat of fungi under the soil consumed the dead and fed the living, completing an ever-changing cycle of remarkable life and commonplace death which had throbbed without pause for millions of years—and of which Roosevelt and his men, knowingly or not, had now become a part. 

For reclusive readers like myself, whose idea of ‘adventure’ involves trying a new flavor of tea, this fertile scene is the stuff of nightmares. But for a restless man whose personal ambitions were frequently frustrated by condescending politicians and endless governmental debates, this was the perfect opportunity to show the world that he possessed ‘true grit’—that he was a real macho cowboy and not just another frivolous pawn in American politics. For a man who unapologetically itched for war, who fantasized about his accomplishments in the hyperbolic language of myth and legend, the Amazon would be the setting of his crowning achievement. The place where he would become something more than a man. The place where ‘Rooseveltian’ democracy would be born and immortalized. To conquer the River of Doubt—a geographical feature whose very name hung heavy with mystique—would be to redeem an embarrassed and emasculated president confronting the insecurities of middle-age. 

Millard’s depiction of the Amazon rain forest is wonderfully anthropomorphized. The Amazon is a living, breathing adversary bent on breaking and consuming its human invaders. Although the forest appears to Roosevelt’s team to be eerily empty, it is in fact covered by camouflaged masters of trickery and deceit. Almost as impressive as her nuanced portrayal of Roosevelt and his men is Millard’s sweeping panorama of jungle life. A large section of The River of Doubt is taken up by a detailed description of the incredible array of environmental adaptations on display in the Amazon. From a caterpillar whose markings make it appear exactly like the triangular head of a deadly viper, to the three-toed sloth whose branch-gripping claws are so specialized that the females cannot pick up their young, the Amazon provides an incomparable lesson in natural selection. In this section, Millard makes the most of her background as a writer and editor for National Geographic. In just one of an endless strain of fascinating paragraphs she writes, 

Rarely in the rain forest do animals or insects allow themselves to be seen, and any that do generally do so with ulterior motives. In a world of endless, life-or-death competition, the need to hide from potential predators and deceive sophisticated prey is a fundamental requirement of longevity, and it has produced a staggering range of specialized attributes and behavior aimed at manipulating—or erasing entirely—any visible form that an enemy or victim might see. So refined is the specialization of life in the rain forest that every inch of the jungle, and each part of the cycle of day and night, has plant, animal, and insect specialists that have adapted to exploit the unique appearance-altering potential it offers. 

Perhaps the most touching—and rehabilitating—chapter of Millard’s account is the one in which Roosevelt realizes he will likely die on the banks of the Amazon. Racked by malaria and dysentery, with an infection in his leg and supplies dangerously low, Roosevelt finally proves himself to be the hero of his imagination. He does not break down and reveal an internal coward. He does not insist on special treatment. Faced with almost inevitable death, Roosevelt does not cast aside his cowboy persona. At the crucial moment, Roosevelt refuses to be just another malleable political puppet—an aristocrat wearing the costume of a common man. In typical cinematic fashion, he resolved to ‘leave [his] bones in South America.’ 

Lying on his small, rusted cot, the injured ex-president talked about the dangers that they faced with or without their canoes. Then, without a trace of self-pity or fear, Roosevelt informed his friend and his son of the conclusions he had reached. ‘Boys, I realize that some of us are not going to finish this journey…you can get out. I will stop here.’

When Theodore Roosevelt eventually emerged from the jungle, he was a wasted version of his former self. He returned to the United States triumphant—having accomplished his goal to navigate the River of Doubt and make his contribution to the Age of Exploration—but he never regained his strength and his health deteriorated quickly. Although many Americans found his story too incredible to believe, those who travelled alongside him were adamant that his narrative was accurate. Moreover, they persistently claimed that the ex-president was every bit the hero he strove to emulate. Through scrupulous research, and by drawing from the personal accounts of multiple members of the expedition including Roosevelt himself, Candice Millard confirms that Theodore Roosevelt was a rare exception to the presidential rule. In The River of Doubt, man and myth are arguably indistinguishable, and the real Roosevelt outshines his idealized public persona. 

Candice Millard's website with links to essays and articles

Candice Millard talks about 'The River of Doubt' on NPR's Morning Edition

THE TWINS MOST LIKELY TO REDEFINE 'SIBLING RIVALRY'

The Silent Twins by Marjorie Wallace - Vintage Books (new ed. 1996)

Most readers will be unfamiliar with June and Jennifer Gibbons. Like many other cultural anomalies, their story has been quietly folded into the blended batter of history. But for a brief period in the late 80’s, they fascinated the world with their supernatural, enigmatic relationship and their inexplicable vow of silence. They were the inspiration behind French rock-opera Jumelles, and Kurt Vonnegut’s novel Slapstick. Their international fame—which burned as quickly and violently as a sparkler—was owed in part to the strange and intimate account written by Marjorie Wallace, a journalist for The Sunday Times, who entered their exclusive circle of trust over the course of two decades. Wallace’s sensitive treatment of the antisocial twins is also evidence of the catalytic power of investigative journalism. By publishing a series of articles titled ‘The Forgotten Illness,’ which included an abbreviated version of the Gibbons’ story, Wallace released a deluge of public outcry denouncing the institutional approach to mental illness in Great Britain. Wallace went on to found the mental health charity SANE, and to produce several documentaries focusing on the injustices inflicted upon the mentally ill. She was named ‘Campaigning Journalist of the Year’ in 1998, and ‘Medical Journalist of the Year’ in 2002. She was elected an Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists in 2001, and was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2008. Marjorie Wallace is proof that meticulous biographical studies can initiate social reform. She is proof that biographies can be more than well-documented exercises in literary stalking. She is proof that ‘small’ subjects do not need to be treated myopically.

June and Jennifer Gibbons were born in Barbados in 1963. Their father was an Air Force technician, and the family was constantly displaced as he was moved from base to base. They eventually settled in Haverfordwest, but the frequent relocations and the social isolation imposed upon black families in rural Wales meant that June and Jennifer grew up dependent upon each other. It took years before anyone recognized that their silence might be a problem. By that point, they had become thoroughly enclosed in their own world, governed by rules that made sense only to themselves. They obsessed over the same boys, converted their room to a gruesome doll hospital, and delved into witchcraft. Eventually, they turned to crime and were given what amounted to a life-sentence at the notorious Broadmoor mental hospital. They were condemned to indefinite confinement for setting a few small fires and stealing office supplies—a crime spree Wallace describes as ‘more pathetic than criminal.’ At Broadmoor, they were diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenics, a label which ‘fit awkwardly the profound and complex problems of their twinship,’ and medicated into stupefied submission. 

During their early years, the twins spoke only to each other and their interactions with the external world were severely limited. On the other hand, their internal communications were uncannily overdeveloped. They moved in perfect unison, even when separated by solid walls. They walked in a single-file line, with their heads bowed and their arms raised to shield their faces from the harsh view of outsiders. Their teachers thought they might share a single mind; they seemed to understand each other completely and act upon glances or slight changes in air pressure. They were difficult to tell apart. 

The adults in their lives did not see the inner turmoil because the twins were incapable of outward expression. Their silent, harmonious exteriors contained a seething ocean of conflicting currents. The desire to be an individual crashed against the desire to be absolutely identical. Love and dependence faced-off against pure, animalistic hatred. Neither twin could advance without the other. The simple act of opening a car door first could lead the betrayed twin to attack her ‘evil shadow,’ ripping the hair from her scalp and gouging bloody trenches in her cheek. Using the Manichean vocabulary of ancient literature, Wallace describes June and Jennifer as:

two human beings who love and hate each other with such intensity that they can neither live together nor apart. Like twin stars, they are caught in the gravitational field between them, doomed to spin round each other for ever. If they come too close or drift apart, both are destroyed. So the girls devised games and strategies and rules to maintain this equilibrium…Such games and rituals often embody sinister meanings which can lead the players into the darker side of life. There are penalties to be extracted, forfeits to be paid. Failure, punishment, even death await those who play too long.

The Silent Twins is an exceptional biography partly because of Wallace’s hyperbolic narrative voice, which arguably outlives the fame of her subjects. Mixing original imagery with the esoteric language of myth and destiny, Wallace effectively communicates the relationship between June and Jennifer Gibbons as they saw it themselves. It seems the only way to make sense of their ceaseless competition is to adopt the distorted perspective known to certain identical twins. By doing so, Wallace is able to grasp the psychological dimensions of the twins’ predicament in a way that professional psychiatrists—armed with a battalion of lofty condescension—never could. What certain jaded adults might see as nothing more than an exaggerated form of sibling rivalry, Wallace sees as a dramatic life-or-death struggle worthy of the gods of Ancient Greece.

But Wallace goes further. Like mad Captain Ahab, she penetrates the ‘pasteboard masks’ to uncover the ‘little lower layer.’ Wallace could have described the battles and reunions, documented the psychoanalytic reports, interviewed teachers and relations, and been done with it. The final product would still have been a biography. Instead, the peculiar urgency of Wallace’s account derives from what has been lost—what remains only in fragments. The irony of the situation is that none of the adults in their lives understood that the Gibbons were actually overflowing with words. Their external silence was merely an inevitable consequence of having too much to say and not knowing how to begin. Wallace uses the twins’ diaries—more than a million microscopic words printed on the pages of journals, loose papers, paper bags, and scraps of cardboard—to emphasize the failure of the psychiatric community in handling their case. In contrast to their teacher’s report that they showed ‘very little initiative and imagination,’ Wallace presents the twins as untapped veins of priceless creative potential. They are the embryonic authors that the bureaucratic world of the late twentieth-century chose to abort. They could have made a significant contribution to the reservoir of imaginary literature had their talents been encouraged, rather than diagnosed. Wallace’s account is especially damning because it points directly at what could have been—what we, as a culture, have lost because of an exaggerated fear of social aberration. Having scoured the internet for a complete copy of June’s ‘Pepsi-Cola Addict,’ I can only grieve its irreversible loss and cherish the remaining scraps:

There was subtle color in his bedroom; sable bricks beside yellow brimstone drawers, beside wood painted livid red. There was color in the faces, too, overlapping, blending and clashing so that the entire room displayed a world of zany popsingers. Style impassioned his thoughts in the form of pink graffiti that illuminated the name ‘PEGGY’ ten times on the freshly painted white door. 

Excerpts like this do not strike me as the ramblings of the mentally deranged. Through their novels and poems, June and Jennifer emerge as intelligent, insightful individuals with an acute understanding of complex human emotions and the struggle to communicate one’s thoughts effectively. How can we possibly expect art to survive and evolve in a world where editors tell hopeful authors that: 

Editors as a class dislike drunkards, lunatics, drug addicts, prostitutes and authors. Crippled or deformed key characters, unpleasant children, adolescents who smoke and drink…Intense suffering should be suggested by implication, not directly described.

The Silent Twins left me feeling uneasy precisely because Wallace underscores the similarities between those we canonize, and those we wrap in straightjackets. Why is it so easy to silence voices that should be heard? How many voices have already been lost? June and Jennifer Gibbons saw each aspect of their world in magnified detail. They found wholly original methods of description. Even their personal diaries, which Wallace describes as reflecting ‘the precision of Jane Austen and the macabre intentions of Edgar Allen Poe,’ are fountains of distinctive narration which may never flow again. With the destruction of their diaries, we lose access to an intense inner world which cannot be glimpsed from the outside. We see two identical girls lying in bed, but we do not see that:

she lay unmovable, I lay likewise, as though paralyzed by her stillness, her refusal to move. For I knew it was a refusal; it was not an inability. She had not lost her power to move. And all her perception was sharper than steel. So sharply cut, it sliced through to my own perception. They clashed, cutting into each other. Sinking in. Finding out. And so it was this. I read her mind, I knew all about her mood, in that split second I awoke from my unconsciousness to the sound of her perception; her perception which made mine ten times as sharp. 

On the day the twins were released from Broadmoor, Jennifer Gibbons died of a mysterious illness. In usual occult fashion, she predicted her death well ahead of time and infused her demise with a sense of destiny. Jennifer was a necessary sacrifice to June’s liberation. And yet, after spending more than a decade in a mental institution, June no longer dreamed of winning a Pulitzer. Years of drugs and disappointment, of being told that she was sick and unworthy, had robbed her of her creative energy. I think this is the lesson that makes The Silent Twins so disturbing. The evidence of pure, imaginative talent is there—radiating through the fragments and observations—but it will never progress beyond a juvenile state. Marjorie Wallace, with her strange words and her unrelenting gaze, does a better job at psychoanalytical description than even the most meticulous of the Gibbons’ doctors. She does not construct a wall against quirks and perversions, but sees them instead as indicators of imaginative depth. She is hesitant to diagnose, to limit the complexities of an individual mind by dropping it into a pre-assembled box. Her singular narrative voice and obvious identification with the twins enables us to see that the mental differences between distinguished journalist and condemned schizophrenic are rather insignificant. The point here is that reader, writer and subject are only separated by the categories imposed upon them by a capricious, neurotic system of taxonomy. 

SANE charity website

NPR interview with Marjorie Wallace

THE MAN MOST LIKELY TO FILL A SPIRITUAL VOID WITH SPACESHIPS AND HOLLYWOOD GLITZ

Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood & the Prison of Belief by Lawrence Wright - Vintage Books (2013)

Another alum of the Portland Arts & Lectures series, Lawrence Wright is a prolific religious scholar with an intimidating résumé. A frequent contributor to The New Yorker, Wright is also a screenwriter and a Pulitzer Prize winning long-form journalist. Although the subjects of his investigations range from Al-Qaeda to Satanic cults, the unifying element is an acute understanding of what draws people to organized religion. Wright understands that the most alluring (and dangerous) religious groups appeal to the seeker’s subconscious need for a structured ideological existence. Membership within a strict, codified organization excuses the individual from making decisions and considering difficult questions of morality and purpose. All the answers can be found within the pages of a book—or distilled from the cloying voice of a charismatic prophet. The world is a large and scary place and there is considerable comfort to be gained from following orders and serving the ‘greater good.’ It is especially easy to recline in the subservient position once you accept that the man giving orders possesses the key to salvation—along with an understanding of the universe that your puny mortal mind simply cannot fathom. For Scientologists, such is the figure of L. Ron Hubbard. 

Wright’s 2013 exposé Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief is a fascinatingly weird look into a religion that could only have emerged in twentieth-century America. Adapted into an HBO documentary in 2015, Wright’s thorough examination of the elusive history of Scientology reflects our fundamental obsession with celebrity culture, conspiracy theories, science fiction, and psychotherapy. And yet, despite the incredible amount of information contained within its pages, despite the inclusion of over two hundred interviews with current and former Scientologists, Wright’s book is equally intriguing for its ominous silences and omissions. Journalists who have approached Scientology have been subjected to harassment, blackmail, and defamation. Historical records—like those documenting Hubbard’s military career—have been falsified. Government agencies have been infiltrated, and information has been altered or destroyed. Former scientologists who have dared to sue the church for human rights violations have been drowned in countersuits. Any journalist who attempts to write about Scientology accepts the inevitable consequences and turns to face the coming storm with wary determination. Wright’s footnotes confirm his own experiences with harassment and set up a strange dialectic between the journalist’s meticulous investigation and the church’s unequivocal denial of the facts. When faced with substantial evidence and eyewitness accounts, the church’s go-to response is ‘that never happened,’ or ‘that is evidence of a government conspiracy.’ And if legal documentation is absolutely required, creepy gunpoint affidavits conveniently appear to confirm the unassailable moral integrity of the accused leaders. 

Wright’s book is not a biography of L. Ron Hubbard, but rather a biography of the living organism he perpetuated. Scientology’s strict adherence to Hubbard’s writing and his ‘technology’ leaves little room for interpretation or revision. Says Wright:

One must not stray from the path he has laid down or question his methods. Scientology is exact. Scientology is certain. Step by step one can ascend toward clarity and power, becoming more oneself—but, paradoxically, also more like Hubbard. Perhaps no individual in history has taken such copious internal soundings and described with so much logic and minute detail the inner workings of his own mentality…Hubbard’s habits, his imagination, his goals and wishes—his character, in other words—became both the basis and the destination of Scientology.

Everything that comprises Scientology ‘course work’ comes directly from the mind of its founder, who also holds the Guinness World Record for ‘Most published works by one author.’ In a way, Wright’s detailed depiction of Scientology also serves as a biography for its mysterious messiah—a kind of extrapolated mapping of his singular mind. Hubbard’s eccentric personality and varied interests are reflected in the schizophrenic development of his religion. Before he founded the church, Hubbard was an amateur explorer, a well-known writer of science fiction, and a (somewhat cowardly) naval officer. After the incredible success of his self-help guide Dianetics, Hubbard gathered his followers and sailed around the world, avoiding the IRS and seeking a spiritual haven for his fledgling religion. He searched for hidden treasure, surrounded himself with beautiful young ‘messengers,’ and participated in a military coup in Morocco. When he finally returned to the United States he began to advertise Scientology as a celebrity religion and actively courted some of the biggest names in Hollywood, including John Travolta, Isaac Hayes, and famed acting coach Milton Katselas. Hubbard fashioned Scientology in his own image. He wanted the new religion to be secretive, yet radiate glamour and wealth. He wanted beautiful women and dashing men as spokespeople for his revolutionary techniques. He wanted to seduce potential converts into prostrating themselves before a religion that promised results—results that would require a lifetime of spiritual and financial investments. 

The history of Scientology is coloured by its current condition. Since the death of L. Ron Hubbard, the church under David Miscavige has taken a sinister, militant tone when dealing with outsiders. Hubbard’s original teachings were certainly controversial and extreme, but it is unclear whether human rights violations have become more prevalent since the transition in leadership. Wright certainly seems to think so. While he portrays Miscavige and Tommy Davis as looming, well-dressed mobsters, he retains a certain amount of cautious respect for Hubbard. The difference between the messiah and the thugs seems to be the presence of independent thought. Hubbard might have been crazy. He might have been mentally ill. But there is no denying that he was an incredibly creative and productive individual who knew how to put a positive spin on even the most dire situations. To appeal to the Hollywood elite, Hubbard cleverly identified the most powerful components of the human psyche and severed them from their negative counterparts. Greed without guilt. Narcissism without shame. In this way he pardoned urges that traditional religions condemned. The loyal Scientologist can indulge in promiscuity, intoxication, and material extravagance because his physical body is nothing more than a vessel. He buys absolution with cold hard cash. And he is granted access to an exclusive club of chosen people who dazzle with showbiz glamor. If little else can be said for the Father of Scientology, he at least possessed a shrewd understanding of human desire. This relaxed interpretation of moral integrity does not, of course, apply to women or those lowly Scientologists who lack a claim to fame. 

To fill in the gaps left by a secretive, withholding subject, Lawrence Wright embarks upon several intellectual detours. He compares Scientology to other persecuted religious movements including Mormonism and Puritanism. In one fantastically grotesque section, he provides examples of similar messiahs who drove their followers to commit murder, terrorism, and mass-suicide. He also quotes numerous scholars in an effort to distinguish a ‘religion’ from a ‘cult’— emphasizing the murky boundary between the two. He touches briefly upon the history of psychiatry and Scientology’s bizarre crusade against psychotropic drugs. He wrestles with the existence of ‘brainwashing’ as a confirmable phenomenon. 

Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief is a biography of a man who is also an organization. The chaotic, contradictory nature of Scientology is reflected in the life of L. Ron Hubbard. Effortlessly migrating from mansions to mobile homes as his fortunes waxed and waned, Hubbard understood the fragility of the outside world and the mercurial tendencies of Hollywood. He was paranoid, outrageous, and indomitable. He was an unfaithful husband and an absent father. He saw himself as a performer—slipping into the roles of high-seas adventurer, amateur filmmaker, and religious messiah whenever he saw money to be made. He was, in many ways, the physical manifestation of all the uglier aspects of American pop-culture. Perhaps this is why it’s so easy to dismiss him and his followers as an annoying mob of wealthy, delusional zealots. Lawrence Wright is as fair as he can possibly be without abandoning the truth. If Scientologists wish to read a less damning portrait of themselves, perhaps they should unlock the compound, dismiss the armed guard, and let the world in a little. 

Going Clear: HBO Documentary Films

Lawrence Wright Speaking on NPR's Think Out Loud