Man of Style

Look, I'm a narrative junkie as much as the next guy, maybe even more so. And I don't think I'm spoiling anything by pointing out that American Lion is a much more exciting book to read than the chosen Van Buren biography mostly because Meacham tells it as a story, quoting so often from letters that it reads sometimes as spoken dialogue (although, honestly, you could probably tell that just from a comparison of the titles).

So I feel a little bad to complain about Meacham's style, especially when I go back to the book itself and realize that he doesn't commit the offense nearly as much as I remembered him doing. Then again, the offense (which I'll reveal in the next paragraph) happened enough that I regarded it as one of the dominant features of the book.

Here it is, from page 176, the end of chapter 12:

"John Quincy Adams was preparing for a trip when word arrived of the mass resignations. Calling it the "explosion at Washington," Adams reported to his son that "people stare--and laugh--and say, what next?"

"It was a good question."

And here it is again, from page 320, the end of chapter 31:

"The great room seemed, for a moment, filled with flakes of snow. It had been a spectacular, enchanting day--of family ties and affection and gifts and grace. But like the snowball skirmish, which Mary Rachel found "exhilarating and inspiring" though "provokingly brief," the day was soon over. Emily saw the guests out, and the tired children were tucked into bed upstairs.

"She would be dead within the year."

Meacham doesn't end all his chapters this way--not even half of them--and yet that style, ending the chapter with a kicker sentence, dun dun DUN!, feels forced, like Meacham's trying to drive as much narrative as possible into his book. And while American Lion's ultimately a very readable book (something it shares with fellow Pulitzer winner John Adams), it shouldn't have to resort to such Saturday-melodramatics.