The Secret Parts of Fortune: Three Decades of Intense Investigations and Edgy Enthusiasms by Ron Rosenbaum

The Secret Parts of Fortune: Three Decades of Intense Investigations and Edgy Enthusiasms Reviews

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  HHS Staff

  It's hard for me to imagine an essay collection that is as thought-provoking, pleasurable, and varied (in equal proportions) as this one. Rosenbaum is a "buff buff"; in other words, he's fascinated by the phemonena that generate obsessive study. He's especially fascinated by such phenomena that have unanswerable questions at their heart. As such, the best pieces here concern the Dead Sea Scrolls and their effect on the men who've tried to unlock them; Lee Harvey Oswald and MaryMeyer, two murder victims at the heart of the JFK assassination; the Marcus Brothers, twin gynecologists who came to a mysterious end and inspired the film DEAD RINGERS; Henry Lee Lucas, who claimed to have serial-killed 600, only to recant and admit he was stringing along the Texas Rangers who were using him; Kim Philby, the double- (or triple-?) agent at the heart of the Cold War; the Skull and Bones Society; as Rosenbaum puts it, "Elizabeth Kubler Ross's Torrid Love Affair with Death"; and "The Octopus" that might/might not have gripped the Bay of Pigs, Watergate, "The October Surprise," and Iran-Contra--and the reporter who died trying to decide. That's only a few! Then there are Rosenbaum's own obsessions, like America's greatest unheralded "Great Novelist" Charles Portis, Rosanne Cash, Oliver Stone vs. Quentin Tarantino, and Vladimir Nabokov's PALE FIRE. Now that you don't have time to read entire books, you should find this, put it on your night stand, and read one essay a night (its 760 pages should keep you occupied for awhile). HIGHLY RECOMMENDED. Note: Also included is the magazine piece that turned into Rosenbaum's shattering EXPLAINING HITLER; you can decide if you'd like that book by reading the much shorter feature here.
  
  Reviewed by:
  Phil Overeem
  Language Arts teacher
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  Nicki

  I did not like the style of the author's writing. The book is a compilation of various articles written by Ron Rosenbaum about many different subjects. I found his writing to be a little bit scattered and difficult to follow (I'm not talking about each chapter being a different subject - I expect that in a compilation, obviously). Some of the articles were better, more concise, and more clearly written than others, and the subjects were interesting, but for the most part I found his writing too hard to slog through.
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  Tony Poerio

  Rosenbaum's writing is simultaneously dark, conspiratorial, exciting, and sometimes strangely uplifting. This book covers a lot of ground, and it's probably best read in short bursts. A little goes a long way and will leave you thinking about the strangeness that is life for a long time afterwards. I read it years ago, and I still find myself wondering about some of these stories. Highly recommended.
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  Craigtator

  A collection by a conspiracy connoisseur that includes essays on Pynchon, Nabokov, Skull And Bones, Hitler, Kim Philby, Miracle Dentists, Watergate, AND Burt Reynolds? Be still my beating heart!
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  Diann Blakely

  The Dixie Chicks are among Ron Rosenbaum’s passions, joining an extended circle that includes Shakespeare, about whom the New York cultural critic writes better and more deeply than any living American academic scholar, taking special note of what most of them don't--the "auditory imagination" at its best and sometimes most literal; the too-little-known Southern comic novelist Charles Portis, whose books Rosenbaum single-handedly campaigned to get back in print; “rave-mom poet” Ann Magnuson; and various human incarnations of the mystery of evil.
  
  Indeed, Rosenbaum’s post-Columbine column, “Pearl Jam and Littleton: The Theodicy of ‘Last Kiss,’ ” which ran in the NEW YORK OBSERVER, offered the most intelligent and ideology-resistant views of the student massacre that I read anywhere, in part because he has a poet’s mind: he not only resists the ease of conventional explanations, but he is also “able to amalgamate disparate experiences,” as T.S. Eliot (again) put the matter. Rosenbaum’s intelligence and erudition are dazzling, as readers of EXPLAINING HITLER: THE SEARCH FOR THE ORIGINS OF HIS EVIL But this new collection, , which includes his pieces on the above subjects, sets a new standard for cultural affairs journalism. The Dixie Chicks piece is stellar; and since Rosenbaum's specialty remains making the most highly intellectual topics accessible for the general reader--and vice versa, is it too much to say that we his privates be?
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  (originally published, in part, in the NASHVILLE SCENE)
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  Brian

  This book contains a few 5-star essays, but it is missing some of the best Rosenbaum essays available.
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  Matt Comito

  I may never not be reading this book