GMTODAY - Books - Mequon native Rick Perlstein

M any a young person has moved to New York to make their mark as a writer, only to join the ranks of waiters and waitresses. Mequon native Rick Perlstein, on the other hand, will probably never find himself working for tips. He has published in Lingua Franca, The Nation, The Village Voice and The American Prospect—and that’s just for starters. His book “Before the Storm: The 1964 Barry Goldwater Campaign and American Culture” is set to be published in the spring by Farrar, Strauss and Giroux. The book grew out of an article he wrote titled “Who Owns the Sixties” as well as a book review of a work titled “Infinite Jest” by David Foster Wallace, described by Perlstein as a “literary event in 1996.” Important people are saying complimentary things of Perlstein. David Kennedy, winner of the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for history, wrote, Perlstein’s book is “a must read for anyone interested in the intertwined fates of conservatism and liberalism in the politics of the last half-century.” There’s no reason to disagree. Perlstein seems to have caught the front car on the uptown express train when it comes to his favorite subject: revisionist history of the turbulent 1960s. “Before the Storm” is not a sympathetic portrayal of a man defeated in his bid to become president of the United States. Putting it archly, Perlstein studies Goldwater, Nixon and other conservatives to understand the enemy. One of his theses is that the Goldwater camp, though missing a stint in the White House, set in motion events and thinking that led to what Perlstein considers a right wing ascendence in everything from ultra-conservative, religious and political ideas, to the dismantling of welfare. Perlstein came to New York in 1994, after earning a bachelor’s degree at the University of Chicago and attending graduate school at the University of Michigan working toward an American Cultural Studies degree. He is the son of Sandi and Jerry Perlstein, recently retired owners of Bonded Messenger Service. The Perlsteins have raised three other creative children: Linda, a writer for the Washington Post; Ben, who has his own jazz band known in Milwaukee as “The Benjamins,” and Steve, a publisher. They grew up in the Bayside and Fox Point areas and attended Nicolet High School. Perlstein, like most writers, is a voracious reader. Especially high on his list are political books. He begins with “American Earthquake: A Chronicle of the Roaring Twenties, the Great Depression, & the Dawn of the New Deal” by Edmund Wilson. Two contemporary works read are “Blood of the Liberals” by George Packer and “The Other America” by Michael Harrington. Since politics is always somehow aligned with one market theory or another, he reads non-fiction like Thomas Frank’s “One Market Under God”and Juliet Schor’s “The Overspent American.” He also likes Robert Lane, author of “The Decline of Happiness in Market Democracies.” Robert Frank’s recent book “Luxury Fever” is another recommendation. Perlstein vs Goldwater Work called political “must-read” Story and photography by Judith Steininger Mequon native Rick Perlstein: important people are saying complimentary things. NOTABLE READER He has completed Philip Roth’s “The Human Stain,” a fictional study of how “the fabric of a university is rent by racial speech.” Not willing to commit himself to an all out endorsement of Saul Bellow, despite his being a Nobel laureate, Perlstein recently read “Ravelstein,” a thinly disguised novel about Bellow’s nemesis Allan Bloom, a one time colleague of Bellow’s at the University of Chicago. He also read James Atlas’ “Bellow: A Biography.” Perlstein describes it as a “literary dust off in New York.” Translation? If you like notoriety, a dust off is a good thing. His “absolutely favorite book is ‘Moby Dick’ by Herman Melville because of Melville’s gentle pedagogical tone.” With a grin, Perlstein said he could commiserate with a statement Melville made that “dollars damn me,” which proves that some conditions aspiring writers and struggling artists suffer through never change. Two other novels he likes, albeit from widely separated eras, are the Victorian George Eliot’s “Middlemarch” and contemporary Cynthia Ozick’s “The Puttermesser Papers.” The latter Perlstein describes as a “dark, comic tale about the New York Civil Service.” He’s been known to write serious articles for and hang out with the intelligentsia at the “Village Voice,” and he says “tell them I love ‘The Onion’.” Perlstein lives in Brooklyn’s Park Slope section, a neighborhood full of writers like Paul Auster (author of 34 books including “Music of Chance,” a novel, and “Art of Hunger,” non-fiction about writing) and assorted wannabes. Perlstein wrote a charming vignette for the New Yorker Magazine (Sept. 25, 2000) about a young, Turkish medical student’s attempts to meet the reclusive Auster in Park Slope. Perlstein also continues to play jazz piano describing himself as a “Sunday duffer” now, but, with a laugh, recalls his glory days playing a bar in Milwaukee called “The Virginian.” “We were really big with the Marquette crowd,” he recalls.