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The Time Mom Met Hitler, Frost Came to Dinner, and I Heard the Greatest Story Ever Told: A Memoir
He was predestined for literary greatness. If only his father hadn’t used up all the words.
As the son of the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet laureate Richard Eberhart, Dikkon Eberhart grew up surrounded by literary giants. Frequent dinner guests included, among others, Robert Frost, Dylan Thomas, Allen Ginsberg, W. H. Auden, T. S. Eliot, and Sylvia Plath. To the world, they were literary icons. To Dikkon, they were friends who read him bedtime stories, gave him advice, and, on one particularly memorable occasion, helped him with his English homework.
Anxious to escape his famous father's shadow, Dikkon struggled for decades to forge an identity of his own, first in writing and then on the stage, before inadvertently stumbling upon the answer he'd been looking for all along--in the most unlikely of places.Filled with unforgettable stories featuring some of the most colorful characters of the Beat Generation, "The Time Mom Met Hitler, Frost Came to Dinner, and I Heard the Greatest Story Ever Told" is a winsome coming-of-age story about one man's search for identity and what happens when he finally finds it.
As the son of the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet laureate Richard Eberhart, Dikkon Eberhart grew up surrounded by literary giants. Frequent dinner guests included, among others, Robert Frost, Dylan Thomas, Allen Ginsberg, W. H. Auden, T. S. Eliot, and Sylvia Plath. To the world, they were literary icons. To Dikkon, they were friends who read him bedtime stories, gave him advice, and, on one particularly memorable occasion, helped him with his English homework.
Anxious to escape his famous father's shadow, Dikkon struggled for decades to forge an identity of his own, first in writing and then on the stage, before inadvertently stumbling upon the answer he'd been looking for all along--in the most unlikely of places.Filled with unforgettable stories featuring some of the most colorful characters of the Beat Generation, "The Time Mom Met Hitler, Frost Came to Dinner, and I Heard the Greatest Story Ever Told" is a winsome coming-of-age story about one man's search for identity and what happens when he finally finds it.
320 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 2015
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347 people want to read
About the author
Dikkon Eberhart
5 books11 followersNew title!
The Time Mom Met Hitler, Frost Came to Dinner, and I Heard the Greatest Story Ever Told
Memoir, Tyndale House Publishers, June 2015.
I’m a literature guy—from Day One.
In my new book, you’ll read about the literary crafting of my name by my poet father, Richard Eberhart. Dad was a winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the Bollingen Prize, and others. He served as United States Poet Laureate and for many years as New Hampshire Poet Laureate.
Dad’s poetic voice gave me a rhythm, a rhyme, and enriched me with poetic references. My poet father molded me as I sought to know our Father.
In my book, you’ll read stories of my encounters with famous poets, actors, folk singers—even a famous spy—and with the others who were drawn to Dad’s and Mom’s cordiality.
I’m a God guy.
I followed God—in the negative or in the positive—through early agnosticism, through many years of Reform Judaism, through a later flirtation with Orthodox Judaism, and then finally, in older age, into evangelical Baptist Christianity.
Read about how Dad’s poetic soul made this pilgrimage easier and harder at the same time.
I’ve had a few careers.
Lots of writer day jobs—cab driver, gardener, baker, sales clerk, chef, teacher.
Once, in Paris, I was a photo model—read the book.
After earning a doctorate in religion and art, I did a stint as a seminary administrator. Then—the career job—I spent 28 years selling books and software to lawyers in Maine, New Hampshire, and northeastern Massachusetts, first for Shepards/McGraw-Hill, then for Loislaw, and finally for Thomson/West.
As a young writer, I published novels, On the Verge and Paradise. Later, I published feature pieces and weekly restaurant reviews for Maine’s largest newspaper. I founded my own publishing company—Barquentine Books—and published two editions of a Maine dining guide, DB Eberhart’s Maine Menu Guide.
Now retired from legal sales, I concentrate on writing.
I am blessed by my family.
I’m married to Channa Eberhart—we’ve passed 40 years—who is now a partially retired commercial real estate appraiser.
We are grateful for our four children and for our son-in-law and three grandchildren.
I’m a writing guy.
Always have been.
Can’t help it.
Like it.
Writing allows me to objectify my experience. Thus I can manage it, shape it, and communicate it back, either in non-fiction or fiction. When I do this well enough, it gives pleasure to my readers.
Writing allows me, at least sometimes, to find the truth.
Sometimes truth hides behind what is more easily seen. Explorers find what they expect to find, not necessarily what is there.
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June 2, 2015
What a gorgeous book! I enjoyed reading about Dikkon Eberhart growing up in the shadow of a lot of the 20th century's greatest poets, from Frost to Sylvia Plath, T.S. Eliot (one of my personal favorites) to Allen Ginsberg. Growing up in the shadow of his father, who was also a poet, isn't easy. I love how Dikkon shares openly about how lonely he felt, despite the high profile people he grew up around and the loving family wife and children he had as an adult. This book is a rare glimpse into an era gone by. Those who love literature and poetry, this one if for you!
I received this book from Tyndale in exchange for my honest review.
I received this book from Tyndale in exchange for my honest review.
October 22, 2017
This man has had such a fascinating spiritual journey. Nominal Christian or maybe "nothing" then he became Jewish and then went to a Baptist church and came to faith in Christ. Not only his spiritual journey is inspirational and rather unbelievable, but his life journey also intriguing. I had never heard of his father who was a famous poet. I do not understand poetry at all. The author is a "literary" guy as he identifies himself and that is very true. I love books, reading, classic literature, all kinds of books but poetry is like art to me, a mystery. Recently, I listened to an art history professor explain famous paintings of the sea. I thought, "This is what I need to do regarding poems as well." His testimony as a believer in Christ made me smile and also believe that God can reach a person that seems far from finding Christ. I appreciate that hope. This was another book that I so enjoyed picking up each day to read. Really engaged me.
July 10, 2015
The title of this book grabbed me, and I knew I had to read it. Eberhart, the son of a Pulitzer Prize winning poet doesn't disappoint as he tells about growing up surrounded by literary greats like Allen Ginsberg, T.S. Eliot, and Robert Frost. But I also love the story of how this well-educated writer became a Christian after many struggles and seeking for a long time. Finally, the Greatest Story Ever Told just "makes so much sense." Read this book for the history, for the literary intrigue, or for the spirituality, but read it!
June 14, 2016
I wish I could remember who told me about this book, part essay, part literary history, part memoir, part spiritual travelogue. As the author asks questions about his role, his life, his identity as a poet's son, he grapples with a journey that leads to questions about his identity as the Father's son.
Key quotes:
-Without intending it, my father and his Greek-minded friend had sentenced me to a lifetime of worry and self-doubt. I could never claim victory in the war I launched against myself to defeat that doubt. I was much like another Greek, the mythical King Sisyphus, who was sentenced by Zeus to spend eternity pushing a giant boulder up the side of a mountain, only to have it roll back down again each time the boulder was just inches from the top.
Encounters like these were endless, but I could empathize with poor old King Sisyphus. It’s no small task perpetually breaking bread with greatness, trying to keep up with greatness’s chatter, but coming up short of it time and time again.
Any man with the ability to catch a wind as it blew and with the vision to sail it cunningly could make the prairie hum. George A. Hormel was one such man.
A.L. could help people decide. Every business needs people to decide. A yes helps the business and the customer directly. A no may help the competitor, which in the end helps the business by forcing it to improve. But a maybe is death. A.L. was a no-maybes guy...Unlike his father, Dad was not a no-maybes guy. Dad was a poet. Poets love maybes. A poet’s maybe is the linguistic and aesthetic well from which creative juices flow. If you want to find the home of a poet’s muse, figure out the location of that poet’s maybe.
New Signatures was an anthology, as it was presented as a sort of anti-Eliot publication T. S. Eliot being the leader of the esoteric school of, as Dad used to disdain it to me, effete intellectual thinking. Dad was a feeler first, and while he liked Tom Eliot personally and was flattered by Eliot’s interest in him, Dad thought that the man was literarily a cold fish. Here’s how he summed up Eliot’s work: “If you are writing only for those who may catch every recondite allusion in your footnotes footnotes to a poem, forsooth! then your audience is mandarin indeed.”
And he had offered a first answer to my plaint. “But still I don’t get it about Jesus.” “Jesus,” he said, “is the love in the fellowship.” “Oh!” I said no more. But I made what was the beginning of a connection. That’s who had been passing among the pews.
Looking back on this event as an adult, I can understand the cute side of it, and I remember being pleased that I was thought to have been mature. But I also remember being confused about how easily the event which had frightened me was turned into a tale to amuse dinner guests and others. I received additional compliments from those guests again, how mature. But this was an early experience of what was a theme in my family’s life: the overshadowing of the reality by the created story.
-It takes so short a time to get married, We noticed no change in the tide.
-It is the wisdom of the heart that I was absorbing there in that consecrated seaside chapel, there in that home of our greatest Father. From the instant we are conceived, our parents are teaching us. They are our most intimate guides regarding the fundamentals of life. Some of their teaching goes awry, yes. Some of their actions are painful, yes. But for most of us, during most of the time, our parents fill our hearts with good. They fill our hearts that’s the point. We cannot gain wisdom purely from the head, although secularists think we can. We cannot gain morality purely from the head, although atheists think we can. No, we absorb wisdom and morality into our hearts first, from those who embody them for us from our beginnings.
-Dad’s most frequently anthologized poem during the first two-thirds of his career was “The Groundhog.” He wrote it in 1934, when he was thirty and had found the dead animal in a field in Pennsylvania. It’s a death poem: Dad’s greatest theme. Dad told me that he wrote three poems that same day, all of them seeming to him to be of equal power. He said he did not change a single word in “The Groundhog” “Or maybe I changed one, but that’s all.” “The Groundhog” made my father famous, but the other two poems were scarcely noticed by the world. Why? Now and then he would go back and lay the three pieces of paper next to one another and gaze at them. Maybe, he thought, he might see something in the penmanship that would suggest why one of these poems was God-sent and the others were not, but he could never find a difference in the handwriting nor in anything else that was material. It wasn’t the handwriting, or the ink, or the paper, or the time of day, or the angle of the sun, or the rumble in his stomach because he had missed lunch. It was something else on a different plane entirely. One of those three poems ought to endure in English literature forever. Two will not. Why? It’s a God thing.
-In his last published interview, when Dad was ninety-five, he said, “The young poet should go on writing poetry and finding out what is his true nature and what is his destiny. What is his soul. Since God Almighty has to do with all of us, this young poet is put on earth by the immortal Truth. But it is his human job to discover his human truth. There must be some kind of mystery in which Shakespeare became Shakespeare, Milton became Milton, Keats became Keats. How incredible that these people appeared on the face of the earth! But they did. But why did they? And isn’t it strange. And is there any answer to it? Who can know?”
-F. R. Leavis and of I. A. Richards, each of whom was formative of a then-important new posture of literary criticism called New Criticism. New Criticism advocated close study of the poem itself without any attention paid to the person or the context of the poet. Dad was then, and he remained, deeply skeptical of the efficacy of removing the maker from the made.
-My wife and I loved California’s physical beauty the bones of the earth showed through its tan, dry skin. We loved fruit we had never seen before, beautiful as jewels. We loved striding down a trail up in the foothills and stopping to speak intimately with some fellow strider going the other way, until we noticed that no last names were exchanged. A last name points to a past. We striders, it seemed, had no pasts. I was troubled that we should consider ourselves motes and spindrift of the Universal Consciousness, with no actual history of our own.
-However, there was one thing that was apostasy. There was one thing which absolutely they would not tolerate: religious belief. That particularly dark heresy pierced Virginia Woolf to the quick. When T. S. Eliot converted to the Church of England, Woolf cut him severely. To her sister, Woolf wrote, “I have had a most shameful and distressing interview with poor dear Tom Eliot, who may be called dead to us all from this day forward. He has become an Anglo-Catholic, believes in God and immortality, and goes to church. I was really shocked. A corpse would seem to me more credible than he is. I mean, there’s something obscene in a living person sitting by the fire and believing in God.” [3] So sneered this heroine of literary feminists . . . and future suicide...
My fundamental belief was that it is good when someone discovers that he believes in God. To believe in God one must acknowledge that one has a history and an actuality of one’s own. As a boy, I had not known Eliot...
Woolf had sentenced Eliot to literary and social death when he affronted her atheism. But some of Eliot’s verse I had found to be thoughtfully religious “Journey of the Magi,” for example. So I went back and I reread Eliot, and I realized that his next major poem after “The Waste Land” could be said to answer that poem’s frightening emptiness of the human condition. “The Hollow Men” could be said to lay out starkly the two existential choices before us humans. This was a new idea to me, and it was exciting...
Here are the closing lines of “The Hollow Men” This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends Not with a bang but a whimper. Perhaps the poet who wrote those lines knew in his heart that he had only two roads before him, between which he must choose. Perhaps Eliot stood there in his yellow wood and he looked down each road as far as he could, to where they bent in the undergrowth. One road led to suicide; the other road led to God. I’m happy that, by the time I knew him, Eliot had taken the one that made all the difference.
-Religious ceremonies exert their power on those who live them. Prayers work. When you pray to God, God notices you. When God notices you, you sense it, and you yearn to please Him more. You yearn to please Him by praying harder, by welcoming Shabbat more intensely, as the bridegroom welcomes the bride (a frequently used Jewish metaphor for the act of welcoming Shabbat). You become more ceremonious in your Shabbat preparation, more thorough, more delighted. You long for Friday evening as you never did before. You study God’s language and find that you are praying in what had been to you a foreign tongue, but is His own.
-“We know what we’ve lost. We don’t know what we’ve gained.”
-There, at The Visionary Farms , I loved my father for being human and for being flawed. I loved him for being a poet and for being grand, and for loving the muse just as much as he loved his own son, who was also a lover of the muse the muse who is one more manifestation of the ultimate Father of us all.
-I myself lived a life of quiet desperation. And yet, in this church this morning, I sensed that these people around me, somehow or other, these people around me were free from quiet desperation.
-I particularly remember an electrician who wired our barn office: he cast off downheartedness when he was blue. He just cast it off. When questioned about this odd nonchalance, he reported to me that he gave his troubles over to the Lord. “God’s in charge,” he averred, “not me.” How charmingly innocent , I remember thinking. And then I remember thinking: But what if he’s right ?
-“We’re like the youngsters. But we can’t get our arms around God’s neck. It’s too far to reach. God’s too other. We’ll get burned if we actually touch God. So what we need is exactly what God gave to us. He gave us Himself in a way that we can grasp Him and struggle with Him. He gave us Himself, but as one of us . He made Himself man but was actually God at the same time. That is, God became Jesus. “So Jesus is the translation . He’s God we can grapple with. And when we do, we are held so tight by Him that we know we absolutely know there’s something stronger and bigger and more powerful than we are, no matter how angry or frightened we are, and that the stronger and bigger Thing loves us enough to wrestle with us, and to test us, and that we are therefore safe...
“And here’s the other side of it. Much as we want to wrestle with God, and we have Jesus instead to wrestle with, we also hate that we need His protection. We want to do everything all on our own. So we hate Jesus as much as we love Him, and we kill Him. But we can’t get rid of Him the guy just won’t stay dead. And that fact proves He was God after all, in the first place. Then there’s nothing left for us to do but to worship Him...
“But what’s happening to me now is that God is getting harder to understand for me, not easier. And as He gets harder, Jesus is stepping forward for me. Because He is more necessary now than ever, as the translation.”
-One difficult precept is Bible-believing Christianity’s certainty of its rightness. That certainty comes to the Christian only by the movement of the Holy Spirit within, and it comes only when the person has been called.
-Both Dad and I suffer from an innate tendency to elevate what are ordinary human occurrences into symbolic hyperbole. We do this, first, because we love the words that we can surround them with how wonderful we find that creativity! but, second, we do it because we are afraid that we might be just ordinary, flawed human beings after all. I was sixty years old when I answered four questions from Pastor Dan and acknowledged that I am, in fact, just an ordinary, flawed human being after all. As an ordinary, flawed human being after all, I answered yes to Pastor Dan’s four questions because I needed forgiveness and love of a greater nature of a redemptive and a salvific nature than what I received from my ordinary, flawed human-being father. I needed forgiveness and love that comes only from our ultimate Father. The difference between Dad and me is this. Dad delighted in Christian thought and in the poetic ecstasy that may arise from it and from the natural world that surrounds us. At the same time, he agonized about the power of death over our human desires. He asserted again and again that there is an equal struggle in the universe and in the human soul between the power of good and the power of evil. We are devil and angel, as he so often preached. We have the intelligence to yearn after redemption, but our intelligence sometimes blocks our success at finding it. Art creating a beautifying answer while using our own creativity art was the answer for Dad. I, on the other hand I knew myself to be eternally damned. It took me many years of increasingly strict Judaism before I was able to articulate this concept, even in my mind. It wasn’t until Dad died and I was truly lost that I was compelled from outside of myself, one March morning in Maine, to cross the road and to learn I could be eternally saved. Then it took me nine months of intense study and testing to make my way to eternal salvation; yet then I was born anew. Dad was a man who could hold two opposite truths in his mind at the same time; he was a poet. For him, that’s how it worked. That’s how he trained me. I was not at ease with that training, though I was habituated to it and though I loved my dad. For me, at last, there is a single salvific statement, which now acts within my life. God wins.
Key quotes:
-Without intending it, my father and his Greek-minded friend had sentenced me to a lifetime of worry and self-doubt. I could never claim victory in the war I launched against myself to defeat that doubt. I was much like another Greek, the mythical King Sisyphus, who was sentenced by Zeus to spend eternity pushing a giant boulder up the side of a mountain, only to have it roll back down again each time the boulder was just inches from the top.
Encounters like these were endless, but I could empathize with poor old King Sisyphus. It’s no small task perpetually breaking bread with greatness, trying to keep up with greatness’s chatter, but coming up short of it time and time again.
Any man with the ability to catch a wind as it blew and with the vision to sail it cunningly could make the prairie hum. George A. Hormel was one such man.
A.L. could help people decide. Every business needs people to decide. A yes helps the business and the customer directly. A no may help the competitor, which in the end helps the business by forcing it to improve. But a maybe is death. A.L. was a no-maybes guy...Unlike his father, Dad was not a no-maybes guy. Dad was a poet. Poets love maybes. A poet’s maybe is the linguistic and aesthetic well from which creative juices flow. If you want to find the home of a poet’s muse, figure out the location of that poet’s maybe.
New Signatures was an anthology, as it was presented as a sort of anti-Eliot publication T. S. Eliot being the leader of the esoteric school of, as Dad used to disdain it to me, effete intellectual thinking. Dad was a feeler first, and while he liked Tom Eliot personally and was flattered by Eliot’s interest in him, Dad thought that the man was literarily a cold fish. Here’s how he summed up Eliot’s work: “If you are writing only for those who may catch every recondite allusion in your footnotes footnotes to a poem, forsooth! then your audience is mandarin indeed.”
And he had offered a first answer to my plaint. “But still I don’t get it about Jesus.” “Jesus,” he said, “is the love in the fellowship.” “Oh!” I said no more. But I made what was the beginning of a connection. That’s who had been passing among the pews.
Looking back on this event as an adult, I can understand the cute side of it, and I remember being pleased that I was thought to have been mature. But I also remember being confused about how easily the event which had frightened me was turned into a tale to amuse dinner guests and others. I received additional compliments from those guests again, how mature. But this was an early experience of what was a theme in my family’s life: the overshadowing of the reality by the created story.
-It takes so short a time to get married, We noticed no change in the tide.
-It is the wisdom of the heart that I was absorbing there in that consecrated seaside chapel, there in that home of our greatest Father. From the instant we are conceived, our parents are teaching us. They are our most intimate guides regarding the fundamentals of life. Some of their teaching goes awry, yes. Some of their actions are painful, yes. But for most of us, during most of the time, our parents fill our hearts with good. They fill our hearts that’s the point. We cannot gain wisdom purely from the head, although secularists think we can. We cannot gain morality purely from the head, although atheists think we can. No, we absorb wisdom and morality into our hearts first, from those who embody them for us from our beginnings.
-Dad’s most frequently anthologized poem during the first two-thirds of his career was “The Groundhog.” He wrote it in 1934, when he was thirty and had found the dead animal in a field in Pennsylvania. It’s a death poem: Dad’s greatest theme. Dad told me that he wrote three poems that same day, all of them seeming to him to be of equal power. He said he did not change a single word in “The Groundhog” “Or maybe I changed one, but that’s all.” “The Groundhog” made my father famous, but the other two poems were scarcely noticed by the world. Why? Now and then he would go back and lay the three pieces of paper next to one another and gaze at them. Maybe, he thought, he might see something in the penmanship that would suggest why one of these poems was God-sent and the others were not, but he could never find a difference in the handwriting nor in anything else that was material. It wasn’t the handwriting, or the ink, or the paper, or the time of day, or the angle of the sun, or the rumble in his stomach because he had missed lunch. It was something else on a different plane entirely. One of those three poems ought to endure in English literature forever. Two will not. Why? It’s a God thing.
-In his last published interview, when Dad was ninety-five, he said, “The young poet should go on writing poetry and finding out what is his true nature and what is his destiny. What is his soul. Since God Almighty has to do with all of us, this young poet is put on earth by the immortal Truth. But it is his human job to discover his human truth. There must be some kind of mystery in which Shakespeare became Shakespeare, Milton became Milton, Keats became Keats. How incredible that these people appeared on the face of the earth! But they did. But why did they? And isn’t it strange. And is there any answer to it? Who can know?”
-F. R. Leavis and of I. A. Richards, each of whom was formative of a then-important new posture of literary criticism called New Criticism. New Criticism advocated close study of the poem itself without any attention paid to the person or the context of the poet. Dad was then, and he remained, deeply skeptical of the efficacy of removing the maker from the made.
-My wife and I loved California’s physical beauty the bones of the earth showed through its tan, dry skin. We loved fruit we had never seen before, beautiful as jewels. We loved striding down a trail up in the foothills and stopping to speak intimately with some fellow strider going the other way, until we noticed that no last names were exchanged. A last name points to a past. We striders, it seemed, had no pasts. I was troubled that we should consider ourselves motes and spindrift of the Universal Consciousness, with no actual history of our own.
-However, there was one thing that was apostasy. There was one thing which absolutely they would not tolerate: religious belief. That particularly dark heresy pierced Virginia Woolf to the quick. When T. S. Eliot converted to the Church of England, Woolf cut him severely. To her sister, Woolf wrote, “I have had a most shameful and distressing interview with poor dear Tom Eliot, who may be called dead to us all from this day forward. He has become an Anglo-Catholic, believes in God and immortality, and goes to church. I was really shocked. A corpse would seem to me more credible than he is. I mean, there’s something obscene in a living person sitting by the fire and believing in God.” [3] So sneered this heroine of literary feminists . . . and future suicide...
My fundamental belief was that it is good when someone discovers that he believes in God. To believe in God one must acknowledge that one has a history and an actuality of one’s own. As a boy, I had not known Eliot...
Woolf had sentenced Eliot to literary and social death when he affronted her atheism. But some of Eliot’s verse I had found to be thoughtfully religious “Journey of the Magi,” for example. So I went back and I reread Eliot, and I realized that his next major poem after “The Waste Land” could be said to answer that poem’s frightening emptiness of the human condition. “The Hollow Men” could be said to lay out starkly the two existential choices before us humans. This was a new idea to me, and it was exciting...
Here are the closing lines of “The Hollow Men” This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends Not with a bang but a whimper. Perhaps the poet who wrote those lines knew in his heart that he had only two roads before him, between which he must choose. Perhaps Eliot stood there in his yellow wood and he looked down each road as far as he could, to where they bent in the undergrowth. One road led to suicide; the other road led to God. I’m happy that, by the time I knew him, Eliot had taken the one that made all the difference.
-Religious ceremonies exert their power on those who live them. Prayers work. When you pray to God, God notices you. When God notices you, you sense it, and you yearn to please Him more. You yearn to please Him by praying harder, by welcoming Shabbat more intensely, as the bridegroom welcomes the bride (a frequently used Jewish metaphor for the act of welcoming Shabbat). You become more ceremonious in your Shabbat preparation, more thorough, more delighted. You long for Friday evening as you never did before. You study God’s language and find that you are praying in what had been to you a foreign tongue, but is His own.
-“We know what we’ve lost. We don’t know what we’ve gained.”
-There, at The Visionary Farms , I loved my father for being human and for being flawed. I loved him for being a poet and for being grand, and for loving the muse just as much as he loved his own son, who was also a lover of the muse the muse who is one more manifestation of the ultimate Father of us all.
-I myself lived a life of quiet desperation. And yet, in this church this morning, I sensed that these people around me, somehow or other, these people around me were free from quiet desperation.
-I particularly remember an electrician who wired our barn office: he cast off downheartedness when he was blue. He just cast it off. When questioned about this odd nonchalance, he reported to me that he gave his troubles over to the Lord. “God’s in charge,” he averred, “not me.” How charmingly innocent , I remember thinking. And then I remember thinking: But what if he’s right ?
-“We’re like the youngsters. But we can’t get our arms around God’s neck. It’s too far to reach. God’s too other. We’ll get burned if we actually touch God. So what we need is exactly what God gave to us. He gave us Himself in a way that we can grasp Him and struggle with Him. He gave us Himself, but as one of us . He made Himself man but was actually God at the same time. That is, God became Jesus. “So Jesus is the translation . He’s God we can grapple with. And when we do, we are held so tight by Him that we know we absolutely know there’s something stronger and bigger and more powerful than we are, no matter how angry or frightened we are, and that the stronger and bigger Thing loves us enough to wrestle with us, and to test us, and that we are therefore safe...
“And here’s the other side of it. Much as we want to wrestle with God, and we have Jesus instead to wrestle with, we also hate that we need His protection. We want to do everything all on our own. So we hate Jesus as much as we love Him, and we kill Him. But we can’t get rid of Him the guy just won’t stay dead. And that fact proves He was God after all, in the first place. Then there’s nothing left for us to do but to worship Him...
“But what’s happening to me now is that God is getting harder to understand for me, not easier. And as He gets harder, Jesus is stepping forward for me. Because He is more necessary now than ever, as the translation.”
-One difficult precept is Bible-believing Christianity’s certainty of its rightness. That certainty comes to the Christian only by the movement of the Holy Spirit within, and it comes only when the person has been called.
-Both Dad and I suffer from an innate tendency to elevate what are ordinary human occurrences into symbolic hyperbole. We do this, first, because we love the words that we can surround them with how wonderful we find that creativity! but, second, we do it because we are afraid that we might be just ordinary, flawed human beings after all. I was sixty years old when I answered four questions from Pastor Dan and acknowledged that I am, in fact, just an ordinary, flawed human being after all. As an ordinary, flawed human being after all, I answered yes to Pastor Dan’s four questions because I needed forgiveness and love of a greater nature of a redemptive and a salvific nature than what I received from my ordinary, flawed human-being father. I needed forgiveness and love that comes only from our ultimate Father. The difference between Dad and me is this. Dad delighted in Christian thought and in the poetic ecstasy that may arise from it and from the natural world that surrounds us. At the same time, he agonized about the power of death over our human desires. He asserted again and again that there is an equal struggle in the universe and in the human soul between the power of good and the power of evil. We are devil and angel, as he so often preached. We have the intelligence to yearn after redemption, but our intelligence sometimes blocks our success at finding it. Art creating a beautifying answer while using our own creativity art was the answer for Dad. I, on the other hand I knew myself to be eternally damned. It took me many years of increasingly strict Judaism before I was able to articulate this concept, even in my mind. It wasn’t until Dad died and I was truly lost that I was compelled from outside of myself, one March morning in Maine, to cross the road and to learn I could be eternally saved. Then it took me nine months of intense study and testing to make my way to eternal salvation; yet then I was born anew. Dad was a man who could hold two opposite truths in his mind at the same time; he was a poet. For him, that’s how it worked. That’s how he trained me. I was not at ease with that training, though I was habituated to it and though I loved my dad. For me, at last, there is a single salvific statement, which now acts within my life. God wins.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 7, 2015
admit that I picked up The time Mom met Hitler, Frost came to dinner, and I heard the Greatest Story ever told by Dikkon Eberhart because of the cover. It was too interesting, too poetic not to read it.
Unfortunately, I only made it half way through before I realized that I didn't care about the story. Had I been a fan of, or even had heard of the poet Richard Eberhart, I think I would have enjoyed this memoir more. I would have known more of where Dikkon Eberhart was coming from.
Instead, all I felt through the first half of this book was name dropping. Frost this, Ginsberg that, and so on. Yet none of these encounters, none of these memories seem to hold substance. Yes, Eberhart met and grew up around literary geniuses, but the meetings within the book are so fleeting and seem so insubstantial. I felt like every page dropped a new name but there was no story behind it.
Granted, I am not a big reader of poetry. So I may have been prejudiced even before I began reading. Again, I feel like those who are poetry lovers would have felt more immersed in the reading of the book. Besides the well known poets listed, I didn't recognize the other people mentioned, so their name dropping meant nothing to me.
Eberhart did have an interesting upbringing. His memoir does impart some wisdom and fun stories. But for the most part it didn't interest me enough to continue reading it. A poetry lover would probably feel completely different and would probably recognize each and every person that Eberhart mentions in the book. That could make all the difference for a reader!
This book was sent to me by Tyndale Publishing in exchange for my honest review.
Unfortunately, I only made it half way through before I realized that I didn't care about the story. Had I been a fan of, or even had heard of the poet Richard Eberhart, I think I would have enjoyed this memoir more. I would have known more of where Dikkon Eberhart was coming from.
Instead, all I felt through the first half of this book was name dropping. Frost this, Ginsberg that, and so on. Yet none of these encounters, none of these memories seem to hold substance. Yes, Eberhart met and grew up around literary geniuses, but the meetings within the book are so fleeting and seem so insubstantial. I felt like every page dropped a new name but there was no story behind it.
Granted, I am not a big reader of poetry. So I may have been prejudiced even before I began reading. Again, I feel like those who are poetry lovers would have felt more immersed in the reading of the book. Besides the well known poets listed, I didn't recognize the other people mentioned, so their name dropping meant nothing to me.
Eberhart did have an interesting upbringing. His memoir does impart some wisdom and fun stories. But for the most part it didn't interest me enough to continue reading it. A poetry lover would probably feel completely different and would probably recognize each and every person that Eberhart mentions in the book. That could make all the difference for a reader!
This book was sent to me by Tyndale Publishing in exchange for my honest review.
June 22, 2015
I received a complimentary copy of this book from Tyndale Publishers for the purpose of review.
Dikkon Eberhart is the son of award winning poet Richard Eberhart. As a child during the Beat generation, his world was populated with literary giants such as T.S. Eliot, Robert Frost, Allen Ginsberg, Dylan Thomas and a host of others. The elder Eberhart was a respected and renowned poet, honored as he served his country during WW2, and loved by his vast circle of friends. He was a giant who cast a long shadow over his son's life. Being the son of a poet proved to be a difficult assignment for Dikkon and he struggled to come out from under his father's name into his own.
The book is a series of anecdotes, mostly light and entertaining, filled with colorful characters and unique experiences. His life is literally made an open book as he shares moments that shaped his thinking and challenged his life philosophy. It is an honest telling of his journey from the shadows of his earthly father's fame into the light of his heavenly Father's grace.
This book was a refreshing read although not one I would actively recommend. His journey is interesting (in particularly his eventual coming to Jesus, which makes it worth the read), but it falls a little flat in its telling. It did not make a lasting impression on me. Is it a good book? Yes. Is it a must read? Not in my opinion.
You can read the first chapter by clicking this LINK.
Dikkon Eberhart is the son of award winning poet Richard Eberhart. As a child during the Beat generation, his world was populated with literary giants such as T.S. Eliot, Robert Frost, Allen Ginsberg, Dylan Thomas and a host of others. The elder Eberhart was a respected and renowned poet, honored as he served his country during WW2, and loved by his vast circle of friends. He was a giant who cast a long shadow over his son's life. Being the son of a poet proved to be a difficult assignment for Dikkon and he struggled to come out from under his father's name into his own.
The book is a series of anecdotes, mostly light and entertaining, filled with colorful characters and unique experiences. His life is literally made an open book as he shares moments that shaped his thinking and challenged his life philosophy. It is an honest telling of his journey from the shadows of his earthly father's fame into the light of his heavenly Father's grace.
This book was a refreshing read although not one I would actively recommend. His journey is interesting (in particularly his eventual coming to Jesus, which makes it worth the read), but it falls a little flat in its telling. It did not make a lasting impression on me. Is it a good book? Yes. Is it a must read? Not in my opinion.
You can read the first chapter by clicking this LINK.
December 24, 2015
Yes, as other reviewers have written, there is a lot of name dropping in the beginning, but it helps to set context for the rest of the book. Beautifully written, enjoyed it very much.
June 28, 2017
Dikkon Eberhart’s The Time Mom Met Hitler, Frost came to dinner, and I heard the Greatest Story Ever Told reads like the biographies posted in the Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry only from a child’s perspective. Because his father, Richard Eberhart was a well known poet, who socialized with poets like Robert Frost and Allen Ginsberg, Dikkon was able to hob nob with these men and women as a young boy. He writes about how he figured out what one of Frost’s poems meant, and even though Frost bought his explication, his teacher didn’t.
The Time Mom Met Hitler is a fascinating account of what it was like to grow up in a famous father’s home. Unlike some who find themselves with endless anger over their celebrity dad, Dikkon tells an honest but loving story about what it was like to establish a separate identity. The reader feels his pain when Allen Ginsberg commented that Dikkon sounded exactly like his father when he recited a poem as a tribute, without intending to mimic his father’s voice.
This book is also a conversion story, telling how Dikkon came to believe Christianity and how that faith eases guilt that dogged him since he was a young adult. The Time Mom Met Hitler offers insight into how to make peace with a strong, famous father. I highly recommend it and am very much looking forward to Dikkon’s next book. But in the meantime enjoy reading his blog: http://www.dikkoneberhart.com/blog.html
I also loved this book because of all the wonderful memories it brought back of our frequent visits to Maine.
The Time Mom Met Hitler is a fascinating account of what it was like to grow up in a famous father’s home. Unlike some who find themselves with endless anger over their celebrity dad, Dikkon tells an honest but loving story about what it was like to establish a separate identity. The reader feels his pain when Allen Ginsberg commented that Dikkon sounded exactly like his father when he recited a poem as a tribute, without intending to mimic his father’s voice.
This book is also a conversion story, telling how Dikkon came to believe Christianity and how that faith eases guilt that dogged him since he was a young adult. The Time Mom Met Hitler offers insight into how to make peace with a strong, famous father. I highly recommend it and am very much looking forward to Dikkon’s next book. But in the meantime enjoy reading his blog: http://www.dikkoneberhart.com/blog.html
I also loved this book because of all the wonderful memories it brought back of our frequent visits to Maine.
August 18, 2020
I borrowed this as an ebook from a library (so I never actually saw the cover) because the title was intriguing. Some of the stories were interesting although I kept wondering why the author (a salesman who wrote two novels and the son of a famous poet) bothered to write an autobiography. If I had seen the actual book or looked up other reviews I would have noticed that it was published by Tyndale and understood that it was a conversion story. I love a good conversion story, but this was not that good. Despite attempts to attach significance to an accident he failed to prevent as a young man, the conversion felt tacked on rather clumsily in the last few chapters. I'm sure Dikkon Eberhart is sincere and he obviously loves his family, but this book was probably not worth the time I spent reading it.
September 30, 2017
I actually would have given this 3 1/2 stars. It was very interesting, well written but got slow in some parts. Dikkon Eberhart grew up the son of the Pulitzer winning poet Richard Eberhart. His house was always filled with interesting characters. Dikkon spent decades trying to forge his own identity. I would recommend this book if you love poetry and a little slower read.
January 23, 2020
I read The Time Mom Met Hitler, Frost Came to Dinner, and I Heard the Greatest Story Ever Told: A Memoir by Dikkon Eberhart twice several months ago. I've been thinking about it ever since, wondering how to write a review that would do his book justice. As an author, I'm humbled to admit that I've settled on the fact that I cannot. I'll admit I've been suffering comparisonitis, even about writing a review! Forgive me now for the weak structure of my review and for my seemingly disjointed thoughts because while I might appear to be all over the place, I assure you, Eberhart's memoir was not.
First, Eberhart's prose is welcoming, smooth, and poetic. The reader can't help but sink into his words and storytelling. In fact, from this point on, I'll refer to the author by his first name because his memoir makes him feel like a lifetime friend.
Second, Dikkon's point of view pulled me in immediately. I laughed, worried, and contemplated with him from beginning to end. As an author and English Literature major, I was enthralled by his first-hand accounts of family friends, Robert Frost, T. S. Eliot, Robert Lowell, Dylan Thomas, and more. (If only I could travel back in time and correct a few of my professors and tell them what Robert Frost intended when he wrote The Road Less Travelled.) The stories he shares about his family, including his relationship with his poet laureate father, were so vivid, I could imagine his memoir as a documentary. I even imagined his voice narrating the book while I read along, making it a memoir I might re-read once a year. It relaxed me, and yet, it made me pause and compare his life to mine.
Something happens in Dikkon's life that he regrets for years. It is one of those whisper-moments, a second where you know something is off or wrong, but you trust that someone else has his/her finger on the button, ready to act, because why wouldn't he/she be on top of things? You wonder, What do I know? Who am I to question someone's job and performance? In Dikkon's instance, someone else didn't have a watchful eye, and a life-changing event occurred. It's a resonating moment, because I've had a moment like this, one where I sensed something was wrong, but I over-thought, hemmed and hawed, and I didn't say anything until it was too late. This resonating moment is the reason Dikkon's memoir sits solidly with me months later. We share a regret, or life-lesson, and found peace and forgiveness via somewhat similar routes, proving to me, once again, that there is no right or wrong way to grieve and heal.
One final seemingly disjointed comment. Dikkon shares a poignant moment with his wife, Channa, after unexpected news about their new baby. These wise words will always stick with me, and I've repeated them several times to friends and family members who are facing life changes and challenges:
"We know what we've lost. We don't know what we've gained."
Thank you, Dikkon Eberhart, for being you and for sharing your life story. It will remain with me always.
First, Eberhart's prose is welcoming, smooth, and poetic. The reader can't help but sink into his words and storytelling. In fact, from this point on, I'll refer to the author by his first name because his memoir makes him feel like a lifetime friend.
Second, Dikkon's point of view pulled me in immediately. I laughed, worried, and contemplated with him from beginning to end. As an author and English Literature major, I was enthralled by his first-hand accounts of family friends, Robert Frost, T. S. Eliot, Robert Lowell, Dylan Thomas, and more. (If only I could travel back in time and correct a few of my professors and tell them what Robert Frost intended when he wrote The Road Less Travelled.) The stories he shares about his family, including his relationship with his poet laureate father, were so vivid, I could imagine his memoir as a documentary. I even imagined his voice narrating the book while I read along, making it a memoir I might re-read once a year. It relaxed me, and yet, it made me pause and compare his life to mine.
Something happens in Dikkon's life that he regrets for years. It is one of those whisper-moments, a second where you know something is off or wrong, but you trust that someone else has his/her finger on the button, ready to act, because why wouldn't he/she be on top of things? You wonder, What do I know? Who am I to question someone's job and performance? In Dikkon's instance, someone else didn't have a watchful eye, and a life-changing event occurred. It's a resonating moment, because I've had a moment like this, one where I sensed something was wrong, but I over-thought, hemmed and hawed, and I didn't say anything until it was too late. This resonating moment is the reason Dikkon's memoir sits solidly with me months later. We share a regret, or life-lesson, and found peace and forgiveness via somewhat similar routes, proving to me, once again, that there is no right or wrong way to grieve and heal.
One final seemingly disjointed comment. Dikkon shares a poignant moment with his wife, Channa, after unexpected news about their new baby. These wise words will always stick with me, and I've repeated them several times to friends and family members who are facing life changes and challenges:
"We know what we've lost. We don't know what we've gained."
Thank you, Dikkon Eberhart, for being you and for sharing your life story. It will remain with me always.
February 10, 2017
"Art, creating a beautifying answer while using our own creativity."
First and foremost : How amazing it must've been for Dikkon Eberhart to grow up under the influence of people who are winsome masters of the English language poetry. Dikkon shares his encounters with a lot of prominent and distinguished literary characters in a succinctly concise prose. He shares with the reader an intimate information which involves, the confused, mildly-deranged, mentality and psyche of a prepubescent, teenage boy. And how looking up to his father, Mr. Richard Eberhart greatly influenced him by beseeching him for guidance and affirmation throughout his journey of becoming a young-adult.
It's not until the reader gets to the latter of the story line that we truly see how things settle; and most especially, how Dikkon Eberhart discovers his "song"-purpose in life-after soul searching throughout his entire life.
The memoir talks of acquired wisdom, it might even supply answers to questions we don't even realize we had. This is the kind of book which will make, us readers delight with the leisure of recreational reading.
First and foremost : How amazing it must've been for Dikkon Eberhart to grow up under the influence of people who are winsome masters of the English language poetry. Dikkon shares his encounters with a lot of prominent and distinguished literary characters in a succinctly concise prose. He shares with the reader an intimate information which involves, the confused, mildly-deranged, mentality and psyche of a prepubescent, teenage boy. And how looking up to his father, Mr. Richard Eberhart greatly influenced him by beseeching him for guidance and affirmation throughout his journey of becoming a young-adult.
It's not until the reader gets to the latter of the story line that we truly see how things settle; and most especially, how Dikkon Eberhart discovers his "song"-purpose in life-after soul searching throughout his entire life.
The memoir talks of acquired wisdom, it might even supply answers to questions we don't even realize we had. This is the kind of book which will make, us readers delight with the leisure of recreational reading.
July 13, 2015
Then she looked at me with that deep, human, gestative wisdom that many women have, and which I don't.
"We know what we've lost. We don't know what we've gained."
Within and outside of its context concerning a certain newborn's genetic condition, it could take me quite a minute to unpack an observation like the "lost and gained" one, spoken by the author's wife. But there are a number of statements that gave me pause while reading The Time Mom Met Hitler, Frost Came to Dinner, and I Heard the Greatest Story Ever Told: A Memoir by Dikkon Eberhart. Yes, it's a mouthful, and it's one of those nuanced but personable, intelligent and beautiful memoirs that makes you think and evaluate life, especially your own.
Literature and poetry enthusiasts and artists can find particular pleasure in reading about how the author relates to literary greats, to the arts, and to his father, a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet. Added to that, the themes of struggling with one's identity and looking for answers to longstanding inner turmoil are universal.
Though its desired effect wasn't lost on me, I thought the amount of earlier material repeated word for word later on in the book was a little much.
Still, the memoir is wonderfully woven overall, as well as entertaining, human, and redemptive.
_____________________
Tyndale House provided me with a complimentary copy of this book for an honest review.
"We know what we've lost. We don't know what we've gained."
Within and outside of its context concerning a certain newborn's genetic condition, it could take me quite a minute to unpack an observation like the "lost and gained" one, spoken by the author's wife. But there are a number of statements that gave me pause while reading The Time Mom Met Hitler, Frost Came to Dinner, and I Heard the Greatest Story Ever Told: A Memoir by Dikkon Eberhart. Yes, it's a mouthful, and it's one of those nuanced but personable, intelligent and beautiful memoirs that makes you think and evaluate life, especially your own.
Literature and poetry enthusiasts and artists can find particular pleasure in reading about how the author relates to literary greats, to the arts, and to his father, a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet. Added to that, the themes of struggling with one's identity and looking for answers to longstanding inner turmoil are universal.
Though its desired effect wasn't lost on me, I thought the amount of earlier material repeated word for word later on in the book was a little much.
Still, the memoir is wonderfully woven overall, as well as entertaining, human, and redemptive.
_____________________
Tyndale House provided me with a complimentary copy of this book for an honest review.
October 25, 2015
My mother read this and then bought a copy for me, and my aunt, and possibly at least one other person, because she liked it so much that she needs to share it with everyone. I was a little leery of it because it was obvious from the first that it was a "come to Jesus" memoir, but I found myself enjoying the book despite my reservations.
Eberhart's memoir is peopled with many literary icons he had the privileging of meeting throughout his life, many of them through their connection to his father, the poet Richard Eberhart. His writing style is nearly lyrical in places, poetic in senses as he leads the reader through his life.
For me, the weakest part was his transition into Christianity. Some of his discussion about God, particularly earlier in the book, was very interesting and thought-provoking, but as he started talking about his own conversion to Christianity, I felt like I lost the connection with the author's voice that I'd had throughout the rest of the book.
Overall, it's a good read, and I really enjoyed it, but the quality of the book was a little uneven in places.
Eberhart's memoir is peopled with many literary icons he had the privileging of meeting throughout his life, many of them through their connection to his father, the poet Richard Eberhart. His writing style is nearly lyrical in places, poetic in senses as he leads the reader through his life.
For me, the weakest part was his transition into Christianity. Some of his discussion about God, particularly earlier in the book, was very interesting and thought-provoking, but as he started talking about his own conversion to Christianity, I felt like I lost the connection with the author's voice that I'd had throughout the rest of the book.
Overall, it's a good read, and I really enjoyed it, but the quality of the book was a little uneven in places.
August 7, 2016
SPOILERS! This book was seriously wonderful. I could not believe the people that he grew up surrounded by and having conversations with. Being able to discussed the meaning of "two roads diverged in the woods..." with the author himself? Incredible. What I found most interesting, however, was not the little stories and the long, ever-growing list of literary geniuses he was blessed to interact with, but instead the very personal and minute details of the more "regular" parts of his life. The guilt he felt over the train tragedy; his marriage and children; his struggle with faith; his changing relationship with his father. These were the things that I found truly, beautifully written. Overall, I loved how by the end of the book, the last part of the title becomes infinitely more meaningful than I first realized - in that the Greatest Story ever told is that of the Gospel, the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The way that he, his wife, and at least one of his children came to be born again Christians after growing up in such different religions and cultures. A really honest, amazing book.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 21, 2015
I loved reading about the author's interactions with various poets who have long been special to me. As a poet myself, I grew up reading a lot of their work, and being inspired by them. To get to see a little more "human" side of them was fascinating.
It was sad to read how Dikkon, surrounded by all these famous people, as well as his own family, often felt lonely as a child--almost unseen by his parents at times. Some of those stories definitely tug at the heartstrings.
I could also relate to his spiritual search, as I spent many years of my life on that same type of journey. Reading his joy and excitement at finding his answers was one of the high points of the book.
The title and cover of the book were what originally enticed me, but the story inside is what drew me in and kept me reading to the end. If you're a fan of poets and the literary world, this is the book for you.
I received a copy of this book through the Tyndale Blog Network in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions are entirely my own.
It was sad to read how Dikkon, surrounded by all these famous people, as well as his own family, often felt lonely as a child--almost unseen by his parents at times. Some of those stories definitely tug at the heartstrings.
I could also relate to his spiritual search, as I spent many years of my life on that same type of journey. Reading his joy and excitement at finding his answers was one of the high points of the book.
The title and cover of the book were what originally enticed me, but the story inside is what drew me in and kept me reading to the end. If you're a fan of poets and the literary world, this is the book for you.
I received a copy of this book through the Tyndale Blog Network in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions are entirely my own.
January 5, 2016
I have walked along the stone wall in the woods where Robert Frost lived. I have quoted T.S. Elliot in my presentations. I lived through the sixties and watched the cultural revolution. But in none of these did I have a personal encounter or front row seat. Dikkon Eberhart did! Further, his Poet Laureate father, Richard Eberhart, attracted all manner of literary types who came into the family's home. Fascinating tales of these encounters are wonderfully described within the pages of this astounding book. However, the theme and purpose for the life that is Dikkon's goes way beyond encounters with writers and shapers of literary trends. He came up close and in person with the Great Artist, the Word Himself. The journey into faith had remarkable meandering ways and yet each step led to the next in destiny's grip, with the irresistible love leading unyieldingly to the relationship for which Dikkon was created. You will find refreshingly honest, transparent and unexpected twists and turns that read like a mystery - which indeed, it is.
January 2, 2016
If history and literature floats your boat, then be sure not to miss this memoir ‘The Time Mom met Hitler, Frost came to dinner and I heard the Greatest Story ever told’ by Dekkon Eberhart. The author is of course the son of the Pulitzer Prize–winning poet Richard Eberhart, who was raised surrounded by literary legends. Dinner guests included, among others, Robert Frost, Sylvia Plath, Dylan Thomas, Allen Ginsberg, W. H. Auden, and T. S. Eliot. To Dikkon, they were friends who read him bedtime stories, gave him advice, and, even helped him with his English homework. In this memoir we get to see the human side of these famous poets. But in Dikkon’s personal life he was often lonely, living for years in the shadow of his father’s fame, and strugging to create an identity of his own. Read more here: http://latteslacedwithgrace.com/2016/...
December 11, 2015
I found "The Time Mom met Hitler, Frost came to dinner, and I heard the Greatest Story ever told" through a random online search and was immediately intrigued. When our local bookstore had a reading and book signing just a few months later I was in! Dikkon Eberhart's memoir of growing up with a Pulitzer Prize winning father, Richard Eberhart, and finding his way to his Christian Faith is a great read. Throughout the book I felt like a welcome observer into his innermost world, and each moment and question and challenge is so humanly relatable I found myself laughing, and crying, and nodding my head along with the book. I would recommend this to anyone of any background who enjoys memoirs, or just a really good story.
August 15, 2015
As the son of the Pulitzer Prize–winning poet Richard Eberhart, Dikkon Eberhart grew up surrounded by literary giants. Dinner guests included Robert Frost, Dylan Thomas, Allen Ginsberg, W. H. Auden, and T. S. Eliot, who flocked to the Eberhart house to discuss, debate, and dissect the poetry of the day. To Dikkon, they were friends who read him bedtime stories, gave him advice, and helped him with his English homework. Anxious to escape his father’s shadow, Dikkon struggled for decades to forge an identity of his own, first in writing and then on the stage, before stumbling upon the answer he’d been looking for all along. One word - boring! And very self serving
September 10, 2015
While the last few chapters seem to reiterate what has been said previously, The Time I met Hitler, Frost came to Dinner, and I heard the Greatest Story ever told, is a compelling read, partly because of the personal glance into the lives of well-known artists as well as his own relationship with them, but more importantly because of Dikkon Eberhardt's own poetic and aesthetic ability to share his own heart regarding the true purpose and meaning of life. I admire his honesty and congratulate his success!
January 3, 2017
Delightful Read with fascinating anecdotes
Such a charming and well thought out memoir, full of interesting stories relating to many well-known names in the literary and acting worlds. (The Blythe Danner story was my favorite.)
I also especially loved his progression of searching through various faiths for ultimate truth. His heart cry is I'm sure familiar to many.
Whether or not you are a Jesus-follower, if you love human interest stories and well-written books, you'll enjoy this read.
Such a charming and well thought out memoir, full of interesting stories relating to many well-known names in the literary and acting worlds. (The Blythe Danner story was my favorite.)
I also especially loved his progression of searching through various faiths for ultimate truth. His heart cry is I'm sure familiar to many.
Whether or not you are a Jesus-follower, if you love human interest stories and well-written books, you'll enjoy this read.
July 24, 2016
This book moved me. The author invites you into his mind, his colourful life and his struggles. He may have been surrounded by literary greats but his struggles are no different to anyone else - in Particular when it comes to finding identity. This book is sprinkled with delightful stories which made me smile, deep pondering which made me think and seek my own meanings on the issues and last but not least gave me an insight into the authors soul (it's always a privilege when people share a part of themselves with you). This book is definitely worth a read.
March 18, 2016
Humorous family stories, but often a bit too much name dropping. The struggle with choosing a career seemed to be caught up in trying to his father. This book would be interesting to people who like poetry. It is not refined theology. It may be a personal faith journey. I wonder what will happen in another five years.
I will be ready to read Dikkon's next book. If he stays true to form, he will probably be a Buddhist.
I will be ready to read Dikkon's next book. If he stays true to form, he will probably be a Buddhist.
July 6, 2016
I'm not usually a fan of memoirs, but there were parts of Eberhart's memoir that were particularly poignant. My father also read this book, and we've enjoyed some great conversations about Eberhart's journey to faith, and more importantly, to Christ.
December 1, 2024
As I believe that no memoir is any less enjoyable than other; this is a fantastic read.
Only, I didn't like how it took a religious turn at the end.
EDIT: **December 1, 2024**
Memoirs that I don't find enjoyable exist! Apparently those written by actors (maybe I shouldn't generalize again).
Only, I didn't like how it took a religious turn at the end.
EDIT: **December 1, 2024**
Memoirs that I don't find enjoyable exist! Apparently those written by actors (maybe I shouldn't generalize again).
July 19, 2015
Dikkon meets Christ
Interesting stories and compelling enough to keep me reading. Loved all the twists and turns. It made me want to go back and re-read a lot of poetry.
Interesting stories and compelling enough to keep me reading. Loved all the twists and turns. It made me want to go back and re-read a lot of poetry.
February 17, 2016
Interesting memoir, very well written ... I enjoyed all the literary references and the author's spiritual journey even if he reaches different conclusions than I have in my own life.
November 26, 2016
Fascinating memoir of growing up among the mid-century poets, and a good book for the writers who struggle to write.
April 25, 2017
The time Mom met Hitler, Frost came to dinner, and I heard the greatest story ever told: a memoir by Dikkon Eberhart, is a 300-page memoir telling the story of Dikkon Eberhart. His father, Richard Eberhart, was a Pultizer Prize-winning poet, who also was the United States Poet Laureate from 1959-1961. Growing up, Dikkon frequently met literary and society icons around the dinner table. But being surrounded by these icons left him uncertain how to lead his own life.
I requested this book from Tyndale House Publishers in exchange for an honest review, but I really wasn't quite sure what I was requesting at the time: short stories? Historical fiction? Memoir isn't a genre I read much anyway, so I had no preconceived notions when I read it.
The author has a clean, professional style and keeps the pace moving well, with plenty of interesting incidents and a good sense of what details to include in a story and which ones to leave out. As an English major, I recognized most of the people mentioned in the story, but none of them really jumped out at me.
If you like memoir or the late 20th century, this is a good book, but I have no plans to reread.
I requested this book from Tyndale House Publishers in exchange for an honest review, but I really wasn't quite sure what I was requesting at the time: short stories? Historical fiction? Memoir isn't a genre I read much anyway, so I had no preconceived notions when I read it.
The author has a clean, professional style and keeps the pace moving well, with plenty of interesting incidents and a good sense of what details to include in a story and which ones to leave out. As an English major, I recognized most of the people mentioned in the story, but none of them really jumped out at me.
If you like memoir or the late 20th century, this is a good book, but I have no plans to reread.
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