would not should good

I AM IN THE MIDST of my own personal journey through the irascible and passionate life of John Adams. My obsession, and Patty will tell you I move from obsession to obsession, started with the HBO series John Adams, which is based on the David McCullough’s epic biography. Despite moments of expecting Paul Giamatti to burst out in lamentations about no fucking merlot while he was Vice President or President at times during the series, overall it has been good, but not spectacular. It achieves it goals of making the Revolutionary period of American history pustule bloody, snowy, muddy and teeth decayingly realistic. Some of the make up works well, like the aging of Laura Linney as Abigail Adams worked for me, while David Morse’s marbled mouth Washington looked like plastic surgery gone wrong to me.

I also listened to David McCullough read his own 1776. I had had this on audiobook for a while, but I had not dedicated myself to it to get into it. Having the details of the first part of the mini-series enabled me to get immersed in it sufficiently to let it carry me away. It is really the story of Washington’s army during the year, with other tidbits of Revolutionary information added to round out the story of the first year of war. McCullough’s reading betrays his ability for storytelling, and counterbalances the failings of many authors to read their own books successfully.

I also thorougly enjoyed Joseph Ellis’s critical and biographic sketch, Passionate Sage: The Character and Legacy of John Adams. I found that this provided a more concise view of Adams than the McCullough’s much more detailed and exhaustive tome, John Adams. I am listening to the McCullough’s book on audiobook, but it is not read by McCullough, so it has been ok. The audio version spans four Audible files, so it clocks in around nearly 30 hours of listening. The details and nuances of the book make the HBO mini series seem a bit too abridged and chopped up at times, but listening the book afterwards allows me to flesh out the scenes and images with a larger set of information about what was happening off screen.

And finally this morning, we drove down the Quincy, MA (prononced kwinzi) and visted the Adams National Historic Park. Actually, you get to visit three or four different sites. The visitor center nestles into a shopping mall of sorts and includes just the basic gift shop. You take a trolley bus to the Birthplaces, the houses where John Adams and John Quincy Adams were born, and get a guided tour by one of the park rangers. Then the trolley bus takes you over to Peacefield, or the Old House, where you get another guided tour of the house and the stone library (a building built to protect lots and lots and lots of books is a good thing in my opinion, so much so I had to ask Patty for one). You head back to the visitor center after the Old House tour. There is a church you can visit near the visitor center, but we skipped that. All in all, worth the $5 per person we paid for it. Seeing the old New England houses only made me appreciate the character and crooked floors of our house in Vermont.

I am continuing to explore and understand the character and legacy of John and Abigail Adams. What you learn from all the materials is that it is hard to separate the two of them. I am attracted to the irascibility of John Adams, especially as a New Englander, but I fear that I am more like his colleague (not sure I would say friend) Jefferson, who was much more reserved and more comfortable with the written word over the spoken word.