States of Despair

...To this reader , what The Book of America adds up to is a sad indictment, a reinforcement of the feeling that the '70s and early '80s are an era of dreary vacuity The Northern and Midwestern states, economically depressed and frequently corrupt, present a sorry sight of stagnation and decline The South has been growing, but this is cause for only muted cheers, the growth has come at the expense both of the North and of its own people North Carolina, for instance, now the nation's 10th largest state, has the highest percentage of manufacturing workers in the U S Yet it has lured business in with industrial wages that are the lowest in the country, and with a workforce that is the least unionized Some local observers have described the state's recent history as "industrialization without development ". The Plains states have lost their feisty spirit of populism and settled into a sterile complacency Nebraska, the state that was sending Senator Hruska to Washington in the '70s, used to elect men like George Norris, one of the great senators of the century The West, young, vigorous, expanding, uncertain, a gawky adolescent, is still trying to develop a spirit, and so far possesses no message to offer the rest of the country Meanwhile, it is beginning to encounter many of the problems that plague the East Sharpen the focus and the picture hardly improves During the '70s three states, Florida, Texas and California, accounted for almost half of the decade's total population increase For some, these Sun Belt states represent the America of tomorrow Pierce and Hagstrom, having examined this future, report that it doesn't work Florida's expansion has brought drugs, crime, social tensions, and a hint of chaos Texas' prosperity, the authors note, rests on a base of solid hypocrisy The champion of free enterprise and minimal government, the Lone Star State, or rather its wealthy elite, has reaped rewards from such Federally assisted industries as oil, aerospace, defense, and cattle-not to mention from the oligopolistic decisions of opec As for California, Pierce and Hagstrom write that "in a country swept by self-doubt, California seems to doubt the most " The ethos of this trio of growing giants may have been summed up by one of Florida's leading developers "If it ain't fun, the hell with it ". While all of this is depressing, one can find some consolation in the fact that a book which concentrates on the states lends itself willy-nilly to gloom Once praised by no less a figure than Louis Brandeis as laboratories for social and economic experiments, the states today are studies in desperation, clawing at each other in an effort to gain jobs (At a conference I attended recently on the revitalization of New York State, several participants argued with great vigor that the main forces affecting the area's economy-interest rates, trade, oil prices, multinationals-were beyond Albany's control, and that all the Statehouse could do was to create a favorable business climate by cutting taxes, weakening environmental protections and restraining unions) Visions will have to come from Washington...

...Besides their obvious liveliness, these remarks impart an unusual dimensionality to the accounts Most reporting in this country is neutral to the point of blandness, missing the essence of things out of fear of giving offense or appearing partisan (Trenton, New Jersey, for example, cannot be wholly captured in print unless one is willing to say, as Pierce and Hagstrom do, that it is "a strong contender for America's least attractive capital ") The journalism of The Book of America is more European than American in nature, mixing fact and opinion with the understanding that the two must be intertwined for the sake of genuine accuracy Inevitably, the authors' politics show between the lines, in their strong social consciousness, their sympathy for labor unions, their awareness of minority issues, their alertness to economic problems (including the touchy question of distribution), their environmentalism, and their support for positive government action They are, in short, New Deal or Hubert Humphrey liberals (indeed, Minnesota is the success story of the volume), and it is this perspective that provides the necessary glue...

...The Book of America does not always avoid the danger of becoming a mere miscellany Often, too, the authors allow their particular concerns to dictate the shape of their discussions, lending a casual and occasionally haphazard quality to the work After finishing a lengthy treatment of New York City, Pierce and Hagstrom go on to devote a paragraph or two to each of the upstate cities of Buffalo, Rochester, Svracuse, Utica, and Albany, apparently for no reason other than completeness Although each state gets its own chapter, a reader can never be sure what to expect or at what length The "Vermont" section runs through the standard categories of geography, history, economics, and politics," Alabama" focuses primarily on Governor George wallace The state of Kansas is allotted 8 pages, while Hawaii, with less than half the population, receives 18...

...It would be a mistake, though, to call the work a thesis book Pierce and Hagstrom are not pushing liberalism Their judgments derive from their perceptions, not the other way around They even avoid suggesting what they think their reports add up to-there is only a brief Introduction and no conclusion-so that readers are obliged to create their own overviews...

...what saves the volume from tailing apart into thousands of discrete pieces of information is the authors' readiness to make judgments The state of Michigan is counted "a disappointment For too long, men of much wealth but little sensitivity held the ultimate power in Michigan They lacked foresight and left it to the 1980s for all Michiganders to suffer the bitter consequences " Illinois is condemned for its endemic crime and corruption, and Ohio is depicted as having monotonously "plowed through history " Pierce and Hagstrom unquestionably enjoy their gibes Never do they seem to be having more fun than when they get the chance to be acerbic...

...American politics, always a savory subject for the connoisseur provides Pierce and Hagstrom with a choice array of characters-from the late Nebraska Senator Roman Hruska, who achieved immortality of a sort by arguing for the appointment of a mediocritie Supreme Court justice to speak on behalf of the country's mediocrities, to Congress' most diehard Nixon loyalist during the Watergate days, former Indiana Representative Earl ("Don't confuse me with facts, I've got a closed mind") Landgrebe The state houses are especially lush gardens, engendering such exotic flora as the late and revered speaker of the Illinois House, Paul Powell, who died in 1976, leaving an estate of $3 1 million on lifetime earnings of less than $300,000 Sprinkled throughout the book as well is a fair share of heroes and heroines-journalists risking everything for the cause of free speech, community organizers bucking powerful establishments against all the odds, and, yes, politicians jeopardizing, sometimes sacrificing, their careers to do what is right These are people to remind us that alongside its rogues and eccentrics, the U S breeds individuals whose common decency produces uncommon stature...

...One closes The Book of America, finally, believing that if the states did not already exist, no one would bother to invent them Several were the product of sheer happenstance Nevada was created because Abraham Lincoln needed additional states to ratify the 13th Amendment, the Dakotas were separated because the Republicans wanted to add four new Republican senators instead of two At present, many, perhaps most, lack any positive identity Take New Jersey (Henny Youngman would add "please'") Mired hopelessly in corruption, it survives simply as an enormous suburb Or Indiana Racist and provincial, it is so insecure it worries about being swallowed up by its neighbors Nevada has an economy built on gambling and such other "industries" as quickie marriages and open prostitution New Hampshire's single distinction is a Presidential primary, and West Virginia is a basket case Then there is Delaware A backwater at birth, it became a separate state because no one else wanted it, and has spent most of its history as the private fiefdom of the du Pont family With material like this to work with, no wonder Pierce and Hagstrom are at their best when they are being caustic...

...Writers &Writing STATES OF DESPAIR BY BARRY GEWEN NEAL R PIERCE and Jerry Hagstrom's The Book of America Inside Fifty States Today(Norton,910pp ,$25 00), is a hearty bouillabaise, rich in fact and anecdote, an enjoyable meal to be consumed in measured portions over a long summer The authors set out to capture the country's diversity-our constant search has been for those threads of individuality that set this state (or great city or great region) apart from the rest of America"-and in the process have produced a volume as undefinable and variegated as the nation Too idiosyncratic and impressionistic to be a reference work, too stern and prescriptive to be a vacation guide, The Book of America is a sprawling, state-by-state survey of everything that amused, intrigued, alarmed, delighted, distressed, diverted, and nonplussed two knowledgeable journalists in their several years of travel around the U S. Here is Lafayette, Louisiana, where teachers from Pans instruct young Cajuns in their native language of French, Colorado City, Arizona, an isolated community of uncompromising Mormons continuing to practice polygamy, and Mound Bayou, Mississippi, a black-run Southern town founded by former slaves that features a city hall adorned with carvings of Martin Luther King, Muhammad Ah and Hank Aaron Here, too, are Arkansas fundamentalists passing laws that mandate the teaching of creationism in the public schools, and Nevada prostitutes whose customers are transported to out-of-the-way bordellos by scheduled airline flights...