The Education of Arnold Hitler Review

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The Education of Arnold Hitler ReviewFocusing on the coming of age of Arnold Hitler, Marc Estrin follows Arnold's life from elementary school in Mansfield, Texas, in the late 1950s (where John Howard Griffin, the author of Black Like Me, did his experiment in racism in 1960), through high school in the 1960s, Harvard University in the late 1960s, and the tumult of the post-Vietnam era in the 1970s. Here Estrin explores the nature of identity--how we find our true identities, how our identities are shaped by those around us, and how false perceptions of our identities are developed by others.
In his early years, Arnold was the most popular, most successful student in his class, and when he became a football star in a town that lived for football, his reputation and adulation were secured. It was not until he received a scholarship to Harvard, and exposure to a wider world, that he experienced, firsthand, the prejudice that black students, recently integrated into his Texas high school, had taken for granted. Jewish students would not share a room with him, and East Coast WASPs rejected him. His success in Mansfield did not carry over to Harvard, where his unfortunate name became more important than his identity.
Estrin describes in often hilarious detail the day to day life of Arnold Hitler, always connecting him to the history of the period--the Tet offensive, the Harvard occupation of the administration building by the Students for a Democratic Society, the professors who gave seminars on how to avoid the draft, the Watergate scandal, and the My Lai massacre. He meets fellow Harvard student Al Gore, MIT professor Noam Chomsky, and Leonard Bernstein, father of one of his girlfriends. After graduation, he goes to New York, where his "education" in life's realities continues.
Estrin's episodic novel could have been a great collection of interrelated short stories. His keen observation of the world around him casts light on the period and on the inherent racism and prejudice against "otherness" which dominated, and he analyzes the period with a scalpel. Arnold himself does not engender much empathy, however, and his crises do not feel very compelling since the simple expedient of changing his name would have avoided them. His "epiphanies" feel artificial, and his exploration of religion and cultural history feels like a fiction writer's construct to give broader scope to the novel. Readers unfamiliar with the period from the late sixties to late seventies may gain insight into a seminal period in American history; for those who lived through it, it may feel a bit stale. (3.5 stars) Mary Whipple
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