Best-selling author and contributing editor for Vanity Fair magazine Howard Blum attempted to accomplish three things with “American Lightning,” his eighth book.
First was to write about the bombing of the Los Angeles Times building in 1910, a horrific event that took at least 20 lives and wounded dozens of others. The explosion was widely believed to have been set by men hired by the union in response to the newspaper’s hiring of scabs and their dismissal of union demands.
Second, Blum wanted to investigate the jury trial that followed this incident. Finally, he set out to create vivid portraits of three legendary figures who were involved with the case.
The early 1900s were an incredibly dangerous time in America. Labor and capital were on the verge of a full-blown war and acts of violence, like the bombing of the Los Angeles Times building, were becoming more frequent and taking place throughout the country.
In alternating chapters that generally run no longer than two or three pages and are filled with short, choppy sentences, Blum attempts to jump in and out of the lives of Clarence Darrow, who led the defense of the men accused of planting the bomb; Detective William J. Burns, who ferociously scoured the country searching for evidence to convict them; and moviemaker D.W. Griffith, who was hired by the Darrow defense team to create a movie that would help create sympathy for the accused. The two accused men, the McNamara brothers, were doomed to be hanged if found guilty of the offense.
Unfortunately, something must have happened to Blum while he was trying to finish this book; perhaps a failure of nerve or imagination. Maybe he simply became overwhelmed by the clever complexity of his book proposal, which would make any savvy editor drool. But ambitious plans are not a sufficient substitute for emotional resonance, the lifeblood of creative literary nonfiction, and here Blum falls short.
He seems unable to paint psychologically nuanced portraits of Darrow or Burns or Griffith, and we never feel access to their inner lives. Instead, Blum seems wedded to antiquated notions of masculinity and drive, and presents all the men in a manner that feels forced and somewhat contrived.
Blum depicts them as restless middle-aged men, desperate for another chance to grab the spotlight as younger men nip at their heels. Although there is undoubtedly an element of truth in his assessment, he somehow allows these simple banalities to negate the more intriguing parts of their character — the uniqueness of their dispositions, their politics, their personal behavior, their fears and obsessions, even their tenderness.
Blum portrays them as almost cartoonish silhouettes of men of a certain era. Even as a narrator, Blum remains hidden. We never feel his presence or sense his frustrations or understand his preoccupation with all of this, nor can we ascertain where his sympathies lie. Like his subjects, he evaporates on the page.
For example, Blum loftily describes Darrow, Burns and Griffith as “each deeply flawed, goaded by a powerful ego, each in his own way a practitioner of the actor’s craft, each possessing a unique genius. . . .” But he offers us little else. We hear some grumblings about Darrow’s leftist leanings and Burns’ uptight patriotism and Griffith’s wandering eye for the pretty ladies, but the men, like Blum, remain essentially hidden, unreachable and remote.
Blum had a terrific idea and it is clear that he intended to write a masterful meditation on the tense relationship between unions and capitalists a century ago. It is obvious he wanted to examine the growing class struggle of those times, labor’s flirtations with socialism and anarchy, and the role of various types of social activism as a means to securing decent wages for anxious working men. But he lost his way.
Elaine Margolin is a freelance book reviewer and essayist in Hewlett, N.Y.
American Lightning: Terror, Mystery, Movie-Making & The Crime Of The Century, by Howard Blum, $24.95