1 option
State of grace : a memoir of twilight time / Robert Timberg.
Van Pelt Library F128.68.Q4 T56 2004
Available
- Format:
- Book
- Author/Creator:
- Timberg, Robert.
- Language:
- English
- Subjects (All):
- Timberg, Robert--Childhood and youth.
- Timberg, Robert.
- Football--Social aspects.
- History.
- Football.
- Football teams.
- Queens (New York, N.Y.)--Biography.
- Queens (New York, N.Y.).
- Queens (New York, N.Y.)--Social life and customs--20th century.
- Football teams--New York (State)--New York--History--20th century.
- Football--Social aspects--New York (State)--New York--History--20th century.
- Brooklyn (New York, N.Y.)--Social life and customs--20th century.
- Brooklyn (New York, N.Y.).
- New York (N.Y.)--Social life and customs--20th century.
- New York (N.Y.).
- National Book Committee.
- Manners and customs.
- New York (N.Y.)--Biography.
- New York (State)--New York.
- United States--Social life and customs--1945-1970.
- United States.
- Genre:
- Biographies.
- Physical Description:
- ix, 292 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm
- Place of Publication:
- New York : Free Press, [2004]
- Summary:
- The Nightingale's Song was Robert Timberg's riveting tale of well-intentioned but ill-starred warriors whose lives were colored by the Vietnam War and its aftermath. In State of Grace: A Memoir of Twilight Time, his long-awaited new book, he revives the powerful themes of courage, manhood, and loss in a strikingly personal exploration of America between the Good War and Vietnam. "It was the twilight of innocence, or what passed for innocence if you didn't look too closely," he writes. "America was at peace, looking confidently to the future, when it should have been holding its breath for what lay ahead."
- Using the New York City sandlot football team that he played for after high school as a rich metaphor for what was best about that bygone era, Timberg evokes in fine detail and vivid color a time and an America now largely lost. He writes of a world of girls, beer, and the proverbial Big Game, a world also defined by faith in tradition and institutions, including a still unsullied Catholic Church. State of Grace captures life on the threshold of Kennedy's Camelot, before the Beatles, before the Pill, but in the ever-expanding shadow of Vietnam, "a time when the path to an honorable future seemed as straightforward as playing hard, hitting clean, and not fumbling the ball."
- State of Grace is told through Timberg's own eyes as he moves from troubled youth to man, from running back on a team called the Lynvets to Naval Academy plebe to Marine officer headed for Vietnam. The story is also told through a collection of other characters-a genius of a coach overmatched when off the field; a driven quarterback sidetracked by booze; and an angry loner, fresh from the Army stockade, who reclaims his life on the gridiron. As Timberg writes, the team was where he and his fellow Lynvets "found a toehold on our better selves during a troubled time in our lives. Those snatches of pride and courage and strength we shared ... eventually grew within us, becoming the core of a decent manhood that might easily have eluded any one of us in other circumstances. There were times, for each of us, when it was all we had." Robert Timberg has his finger on the pulse of the generation that split along a fault line called Vietnam. Here he creates a poignant, provocative chronicle of that generation just before it blew apart and of a nation on the brink of dramatic change.
- Contents:
- 1 The Lynvets 7
- 2 Necessary Roughness 14
- 3 Living with Lenny Rochester 20
- 4 Father Cyclone 29
- 5 Think Pink 35
- 6 The Hoople 47
- 7 Switched at Birth 57
- 8 The Man from Mars 63
- 9 The Gold Dust Twins 70
- 10 Can't Do Math 81
- 11 Twilight Time 89
- 12 Morose Delectations 99
- 13 Hurricane Season 107
- 14 The Coach 123
- 15 "Let Me Have Steffens" 136
- 16 The C-I-R Brick 145
- 17 "Don't Shoot Me, I'm Only Sixteen" 153
- 18 Jersey On My Mind 158
- 19 Flying Tiger 168
- 20 Anchors Aweigh 174
- 21 The Loner 185
- 22 April Is Over 191
- 23 The Alumni Game 201
- 24 Ring of Valor 208
- 25 The Season of '61 215
- 26 A Date with Judi 222
- 27 Knight of the Open Road 226
- 28 The Princess and the Shoes 233
- 29 Crunch Time 239
- 30 The Catch 246
- 31 Distant Thunder 255
- 32 Mount Out 267.
- ISBN:
- 0684855615
- OCLC:
- 55877893
The Penn Libraries is committed to describing library materials using current, accurate, and responsible language. If you discover outdated or inaccurate language, please fill out this feedback form to report it and suggest alternative language.