I have more to say about the late Lee Sandlin, whose work I
extolled in “A poet of
fact.”
For decades Lee seemed doomed to be another of those writers
who is famous for not being known. It was not until something like 25 years
after he began being printed by the Reader that he got a regular review gig (in
the Wall Street Journal’s culture pages) and a book contract. Lee’s Henry
Stanley was probably Ira Glass of This American Life, who as editor included
“Losing the war” in the collection, The New Kings of Nonfiction.
He had a promiscuous curiosity. Visiting his web site at http://www.leesandlin.com/ is a bit like
visiting Lee, in that you leave feeling you haven’t read quite widely enough,
or thought diligently enough. Mike Miner, the venerable Reader editor and columnist, noted that Lee was basically a raconteur, which in this
country is usually translated as “self-infatuated blowhard.” Certainly Lee could dominate a room by talking about what interests him
but he redeemed himself from any imputation of bad manners by interesting you in it
too.
Any good-ish writer hopes that his next book will be his
best. The fact that Lee never finished his is a particular disappointment
because of the possibilities the topic suggests – the life of clergyman John Murray Spear, the American Spiritualist who attempted to build an electrically powered Messiah.
The reviewer’s necessity is the reader’s reward,
and Lee gave intelligent consideration of a couple of Illinois-related books
that he otherwise might not have bothered with. One is Rising
Up from Indian Country, Ann Durkin Keating’s 2012 history of the Fort Dearborn “Massacre.” The
other is the University of Chicago Press’s 2014 repackaging of a 1975 essay, “WWII:
A Chronicle of Soldiering” written by Robinson’s James Jones; that led Lee
to reconsider Jones’ novel Some Came Running, about a World War II vet very like Jones
coming home to a place very like Robinson.
Oh yes — Lee’s estimable wife, Nina Sandlin,
promises that she will be posting more of his stuff on that site.
This article appears in Jan 29 – Feb 4, 2015.
