Vernon Can Read! A Memoir

Rating:
Summary: "... I have stayed the course"
Review: "Vernon Can Read!" is a joy to read for anyone with the slightest interest in the serious issues in American life for the past fifty years. This is an amazing book. As a very young man, Vernon Jordan deftly understood what America's potential could be. He continued to express the ordinary angers at the injustices commonplace after only "one biblical lifetime (seventy years) after slavery". But, most importantly, he had the savvy and personal intuition that constitutional democracy and life's natural transit through time-space could be leveraged in ways yet unattained. Here is an engaging memoir of the personal journey through that reality. Like others who knew Vern from old school days, we can attest that it is told with modest, personal authenticity of those events and relationships and their choices that shaped the future of a brave, decent and honorable man who has become a legendary figure of our time -- too often a rare combination. In addition, some readers may find here another testament, "food for thought" in his family's tradition, on nurture versus nature. It is one of the greatest stories of Coming of Age in America, and America is by far the better for it.

Rating:
Summary: Withdrawn Lawer writes without emotion
Review: At one point Vernon reflects on a gathering of contemporaries during the 1970s. Asked to speak openly about himself and his emotions during a gathering (Author quips~ in a very seventies fashion) Vernon got so fed up at the gathering and being asked to open up to others that he said "This isn't going to happen" got up and left. And I think the same mentality carried oven when Vernon Can Read was written. Mr Jordan never had the propensity to open up and let the reader feel emotionally involved in this book, and in his life. As we watched him hop job to job and talk in acronyms(for entirely too long), we got a very two demensional character, as if we were being led on a slide show of Vernon's life. He comes off as being brash, self-important and rude in some spots, but the reader never got to appreciate his rudeness or infact to really get to know him. His reputation led me to read the book, but this was also the downfall of Vernon Can Read, the author tried to uphold his reputation while witholding frankness and vulnerability. In the end I was left clamoring for the guy who got drunk at Kathering Graham's house and was belting out tunes with Clinton (picture in the Book), but instead I got a lawer showing slides of his life.

Rating:
Summary: We need the Unauthorized Biography.
Review: This book is an unfortunate piece of near puffery: much form, much superficiality, little substance. But what does one expect from a Power Broker? Truth or Dare?

In keeping with the unwritten Power Broker Creed, Mr.Jordan reveals very little about the inside mechanations that made him who he is (as opposed to who he was). That is to say, the book speaks volumes about those life experiences that made Vernon Jordan the moderate civil rights leader he was years ago, but says exactly nothing about the transition from that leadership role, to the man who had the president's ear (not to mention the man who kept his secrets)and the ear of the REAL powerful people in this global econonmy: the corporate mavens for whom Vernon was (is?) paid handsomely to dish out advice and counsel to.

We never hear in any detail about how Jordan quietly but persistently accumulated the power he achieved and, indeed, what motivated him in this pursuit. And no, I was not interested in any Monica dirt: Monica and the whole presidential thing, was (and is) beside the point when it comes to a rigorous Jordan analysis. That whole episode merely served as a template (and not a particularly good one) for the kind of back scratchery at high level that Jordan has been doing for years.

But then again, what does one expect? People like Jordan (and mind you, I am a big fan of his)live by the aforementioned unspoken creed: power is best accumulated and exercised quietly. Thus, one does not reveal the secrets of the kingdom to just any average reader (by the way Vernon, what really does go on at those Bildeberg confrences?).

We will not get the whole unexpurgated version of Jordan's life until some biographer decides to swim against currents and put one together.

Those of us interested in reading something much more telling than Jordan's superficial telling of the story of his life will have to wait. Just as we similarly anxiously awaited biographical treatments of other quiet power brokers in the Clark Clifford, Tommy "the cork" mode (the wait is soon over for those of us interested in Tommy the cork and, thanks to the same author, was over several years ago for a good analysis of Clifford's life. CLifford's own biography, Counsel to the President, left much to be desired, too).

As a high school to college level autobiographical treatment of the life of an important figure in post-world war II america, Vernon Can Read suffices. As anything deeper, it does not.

Vernon can certainly Read, but what Vernon wrote certainly leaves alot to be desired.