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The Red, White, and Blue
The title suggests the poster-paint colors with which Dunne portrays America in the last quarter-century. Let red stand for Leah Kaye, radical feminist lawyer; white, for Benedictine Father "Bro" Broderick, trendy celebrity priest; and blue, for long-suffering ex-husband and brother, Jack Broderick, "a successful failure" as a writer. The pilgrimages of the former two take them from the execution of a black radical through elections in a Latin American country to their murder by "a human time bomb" Vietnam veteran. Only then does Jack briefly awaken from his "passion for the vicarious." The novel aspires to the acerbic nihilism of Ambrose Bierce, from whom its epigraph, but contents itself with knocking down straw men, the opportunistic leading the naive on behalf of the unworthy in an essentially static portrait in black.
- GenresFiction
475 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1987
6 people are currently reading
81 people want to read
About the author
John Gregory Dunne
20 books142 followersJohn Gregory Dunne was an American novelist, screenwriter and literary critic.
He was born in Hartford, Connecticut, and was a younger brother of author Dominick Dunne. He suffered from a severe stutter and took up writing to express himself. Eventually he learned to speak normally by observing others. He graduated from Princeton University in 1954 and worked as a journalist for Time magazine. He married novelist Joan Didion on 30 January 1964, and they became collaborators on a series of screenplays, including Panic in Needle Park (1971), A Star Is Born (1976) and True Confessions (1981), an adaptation of his own novel. He is the author of two non-fiction books about Hollywood, The Studio and Monster.
As a literary critic and essayist, he was a frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books. His essays were collected in two books, Quintana & Friends and Crooning.
He wrote several novels, among them True Confessions, based loosely on the Black Dahlia murder, and Dutch Shea, Jr.
He was the writer and narrator of the 1990 PBS documentary L.A. is It with John Gregory Dunne, in which he guided viewers through the cultural landscape of Los Angeles.
He died in Manhattan of a heart attack, in December 2003. His final novel, Nothing Lost, which was in galleys at the time of his death, was published in 2004.
He was father to Quintana Roo Dunne, who died in 2005 after a series of illnesses, and uncle to actors Griffin Dunne (who co-starred in An American Werewolf in London) and Dominique Dunne (who co-starred in Poltergeist).
His wife, Joan Didion, published The Year of Magical Thinking in October 2005 to great critical acclaim, a memoir of the year following his death, during which their daughter, Quintana Roo Dunne, was seriously ill. It won the National Book Award.
He was born in Hartford, Connecticut, and was a younger brother of author Dominick Dunne. He suffered from a severe stutter and took up writing to express himself. Eventually he learned to speak normally by observing others. He graduated from Princeton University in 1954 and worked as a journalist for Time magazine. He married novelist Joan Didion on 30 January 1964, and they became collaborators on a series of screenplays, including Panic in Needle Park (1971), A Star Is Born (1976) and True Confessions (1981), an adaptation of his own novel. He is the author of two non-fiction books about Hollywood, The Studio and Monster.
As a literary critic and essayist, he was a frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books. His essays were collected in two books, Quintana & Friends and Crooning.
He wrote several novels, among them True Confessions, based loosely on the Black Dahlia murder, and Dutch Shea, Jr.
He was the writer and narrator of the 1990 PBS documentary L.A. is It with John Gregory Dunne, in which he guided viewers through the cultural landscape of Los Angeles.
He died in Manhattan of a heart attack, in December 2003. His final novel, Nothing Lost, which was in galleys at the time of his death, was published in 2004.
He was father to Quintana Roo Dunne, who died in 2005 after a series of illnesses, and uncle to actors Griffin Dunne (who co-starred in An American Werewolf in London) and Dominique Dunne (who co-starred in Poltergeist).
His wife, Joan Didion, published The Year of Magical Thinking in October 2005 to great critical acclaim, a memoir of the year following his death, during which their daughter, Quintana Roo Dunne, was seriously ill. It won the National Book Award.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
December 29, 2011
If there is a point to this book the author is taking forever to get to it. I am about 2/3rds through and have been itching to just toss it aside. am trying to finish it just for the sake of completing it... no idea if I can stick with it though
October 1, 2017
I've long been a fan of Joan Didion's essays, so I thought I'd give her husband a shot. For those of you who like well-written fiction by a guy with an absolutely first-class sense of humor, check this out.
October 7, 2022
Wow! John Gregory Dunne has to be the best author discovery of 2022 for me. This book, while apparently selling well and garnering strong reviews 35 years ago, seems to be somewhat forgotten. There are barely any reviews on here and it isn't mentioned in most of the articles I can find online about Dunne. I think it's a neglected classic that should be rediscovered.
This is a big, sprawling novel that spans three decades in American history, the 1960s to the 1980s. It's set in a fictionalized version of our shared reality and focuses on the Broderick clan, a dysfunctional group of so-called elites. The patriarch is Hugh, a rough and tumble old school democrat whose vast fortune buys him access to all the inner corridors of American power. Hugh's daughter, Priscilla, marries the president's brother and has an affair with the president, who's kind of a JFK-esque figure. Augustine, aka "Bro," becomes a celebrity priest, who champions social justice causes, wears designer garments, and is a friend and confidante of the wealthy and the powerful. And there's our narrator, the person "writing" this memoir, Jack. Jack thinks of himself as a neutral. He prefers not to get deeply engaged in things. He's a disappointment to his father, content to live off his inheritance. At the beginning of the book, he shamelessly uses his father's name to get a job as a columnist for a San Francisco paper. The column is condescending trash; it buys him a kind of minor local celebrity.
It is at this point in the story that Jack meets Leah Kaye, a rabble-rousing radical lawyer in the heyday of the 1960s cultural revolution. Leah has opened a public interest law firm she calls, with some irony, the "Justice Department" and is just ascending to mega fame as a result of her representation of Mercury Baker, a criminal she portrays as a black revolutionary at war with a racist police state. (He is, in fact, on trial for masterminding the torture-death of a snitch inside prison). Jack finds himself drawn to Leah. While their marriage does not last, their ongoing connection remains the emotional core of the book.
Dunne's book takes us on a whirlwind tour through an American landscape that is violent and absurd. There is a good deal of black humor, bitter irony, tragedy, and at times an overriding sadness. Notable stops include a botched execution at San Quentin, several surreal Hollywood parties, a worker's strike in southern California, a tour of duty as a reporter in Vietnam, and more.
The book builds towards a bloody climax that reminds the reader of our adventure in El Salvador and the assassination of Harvey Milk. There are colorful characters galore, including Clark Gable's son, now going by Gabel and styling himself as a communist revolutionary, a nightmarish Vegas entertainer named "Buddy," your standard, crude and world-weary Hollywood producer, and so on. The book is crude, vulgar, witty, and savage in its portrayal of American ideals all at the same time. It's also written in a "book within a book" way that accurately depicts the unraveling of memories themselves, as our narrator seeks to understand how and why things have ended up the way they have.
Highly, highly recommended.
This is a big, sprawling novel that spans three decades in American history, the 1960s to the 1980s. It's set in a fictionalized version of our shared reality and focuses on the Broderick clan, a dysfunctional group of so-called elites. The patriarch is Hugh, a rough and tumble old school democrat whose vast fortune buys him access to all the inner corridors of American power. Hugh's daughter, Priscilla, marries the president's brother and has an affair with the president, who's kind of a JFK-esque figure. Augustine, aka "Bro," becomes a celebrity priest, who champions social justice causes, wears designer garments, and is a friend and confidante of the wealthy and the powerful. And there's our narrator, the person "writing" this memoir, Jack. Jack thinks of himself as a neutral. He prefers not to get deeply engaged in things. He's a disappointment to his father, content to live off his inheritance. At the beginning of the book, he shamelessly uses his father's name to get a job as a columnist for a San Francisco paper. The column is condescending trash; it buys him a kind of minor local celebrity.
It is at this point in the story that Jack meets Leah Kaye, a rabble-rousing radical lawyer in the heyday of the 1960s cultural revolution. Leah has opened a public interest law firm she calls, with some irony, the "Justice Department" and is just ascending to mega fame as a result of her representation of Mercury Baker, a criminal she portrays as a black revolutionary at war with a racist police state. (He is, in fact, on trial for masterminding the torture-death of a snitch inside prison). Jack finds himself drawn to Leah. While their marriage does not last, their ongoing connection remains the emotional core of the book.
Dunne's book takes us on a whirlwind tour through an American landscape that is violent and absurd. There is a good deal of black humor, bitter irony, tragedy, and at times an overriding sadness. Notable stops include a botched execution at San Quentin, several surreal Hollywood parties, a worker's strike in southern California, a tour of duty as a reporter in Vietnam, and more.
The book builds towards a bloody climax that reminds the reader of our adventure in El Salvador and the assassination of Harvey Milk. There are colorful characters galore, including Clark Gable's son, now going by Gabel and styling himself as a communist revolutionary, a nightmarish Vegas entertainer named "Buddy," your standard, crude and world-weary Hollywood producer, and so on. The book is crude, vulgar, witty, and savage in its portrayal of American ideals all at the same time. It's also written in a "book within a book" way that accurately depicts the unraveling of memories themselves, as our narrator seeks to understand how and why things have ended up the way they have.
Highly, highly recommended.
August 3, 2009
This book is a non-linear and baffling caper through 3 decades of American history (late 1950's through early 1980's). I am not sure exactly what the point was, or if any of it was intended to be allegorical. If so, then it's about the tensions of evolution of an upwardly mobile society full of discrimination, and how the defenders of the disadvantaged and the existing power struggle interrelate. Often the writing seems to have been performed simply for its own sake, and there are lots of interesting images and turns of phrase, but the plot is overall disjointed and hard to follow. It almost assumes it will be read in one sitting, because there are no real places where the reader can pause to catch his breath, or he's (I've) lost the thread of thought.
August 18, 2018
Not my cup of tea. It's easier to say I "read" it than to delete it here.
May 16, 2012
ISBN 0312909659 - There's a Kennedy-esque-ness to this book in some ways, but it's much more a Kennedy-wanna-be. Dunne can't seem to fit all the Kennedy into one family, so spreads it out over two connected clans.
Jack Broderick, the narrator, is the son of Hugh, a self-made billionaire who only becomes free to pursue his goals when his wife dies. He has high hopes for his three children - and even before the book begins, the sons have pretty much failed him. Only the daughter comes close, by marrying the president's brother. President Fritz Finn and his family are more the Kennedy-type than the Brodericks, but the two families are close and remain that way even after the death of Jack's sister. With Hollywood connections, lots of money, the fringe "revolutionary" elements of the 1960s and politics playing an obviously large role, the Kennedy-like images are all there.
Bro, Jack's brother, is an unusual priest with a high profile and connections around the world. Jack meets and marries Leah, an outspoken radical Jewish lawyer. She remains his one real love, even after their divorce. After the end of their marriage, Jack finds himself in Vietnam, where he interviews servicemen. Those interviews are later turned into a bestselling book which plays a surprising role in the rest their lives. When Bro and Leah are murdered, the killer and his connection to Jack ties the entire story neatly together.
The story skips around so much that it's sometimes hard to tell where you are in the timeline, who is married to who, and who is alive or dead at that point - and it's really hard to care. That a chapter begins with the phrase "Let me digress" is sort of silly; half of the book or more is the narrator digressing. The language in the book is a little rough, if you're the type who cares, with racial slurs and "bad words" for parts of the anatomy abounding. Almost everyone seems to have slept with almost everyone else in the book, but it's the 1960s and probably not surprising. Still, rampant sex and swearing will be outweighed by good writing and a good story - sadly, The Red White and Blue has neither.
- AnnaLovesBooks
Jack Broderick, the narrator, is the son of Hugh, a self-made billionaire who only becomes free to pursue his goals when his wife dies. He has high hopes for his three children - and even before the book begins, the sons have pretty much failed him. Only the daughter comes close, by marrying the president's brother. President Fritz Finn and his family are more the Kennedy-type than the Brodericks, but the two families are close and remain that way even after the death of Jack's sister. With Hollywood connections, lots of money, the fringe "revolutionary" elements of the 1960s and politics playing an obviously large role, the Kennedy-like images are all there.
Bro, Jack's brother, is an unusual priest with a high profile and connections around the world. Jack meets and marries Leah, an outspoken radical Jewish lawyer. She remains his one real love, even after their divorce. After the end of their marriage, Jack finds himself in Vietnam, where he interviews servicemen. Those interviews are later turned into a bestselling book which plays a surprising role in the rest their lives. When Bro and Leah are murdered, the killer and his connection to Jack ties the entire story neatly together.
The story skips around so much that it's sometimes hard to tell where you are in the timeline, who is married to who, and who is alive or dead at that point - and it's really hard to care. That a chapter begins with the phrase "Let me digress" is sort of silly; half of the book or more is the narrator digressing. The language in the book is a little rough, if you're the type who cares, with racial slurs and "bad words" for parts of the anatomy abounding. Almost everyone seems to have slept with almost everyone else in the book, but it's the 1960s and probably not surprising. Still, rampant sex and swearing will be outweighed by good writing and a good story - sadly, The Red White and Blue has neither.
- AnnaLovesBooks
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews