Review: America is facing a 'Deadline.' What to expect at the next Kentucky Author Forum

In her recent collection of essays, "The Deadline," Jill Lepore, a frequent writer for The New Yorker and professor at Harvard, presents readers with a feast of American times, places, and figures (historic and contemporary). Always, what she writes about is important, whether the subject is the mental state of one of the United States' greatest ninetieth-century writers or about one of our most recent problematic presidents.

The root idea of journalism is that one is writing of and for the day (jour in French), but a collection of journalistic pieces promises to be of more lasting interest. Lepore’s title suggests, we as a nation, may be facing a deadline.

"Prodigal Daughter" from Part One titles both the first section of essays and an autobiographical essay. The same organizing tactic works well for all 10 parts of the book; the reader is not showered with so many disparate ideas as to ask for shelter.

"Misjudged," the title of Part Two, is a section that explores, in separate essays, the inadequate judging of several figures, perhaps already known and of interest to the reader, including Herman Melville, Rachel Carson ("Silent Spring," 1962), and Judge Ruth Bader Ginsberg.

In Part Five, "Battleground America," an essay first published in 2012, we learn "In an average year, roughly a hundred thousand Americans are killed or wounded with guns."

Lepore, like many of us, has had a family, friendships, and parents who grew old, were treasured, and died. I loved being privy to the more personal parts of the essays, but I must say I am most grateful for the individual essay of Part Ten, titled “In Every Dark Hour,” on former President Donald Trump.

To build hope for our historic moment of serious national difficulties, Lepore first turns to the Roosevelt era: “New Dealers were trying to save the economy; they ended up saving democracy.” A large part of that salvation was a matter of turning to rational debate. Lepore sees democracy in the United States as facing a deadline; passionately, she calls for the articulation of reason and truth, before it’s too late.

The path to saving democracy, in the Roosevelt era, required many steps, a chain of many efforts that made other efforts possible, one of them being an NBC radio broadcast during which a variety of thinkers both argued and tried to explain the meaning of "democracy." Of course, they didn’t agree.

Lepore writes: “The broadcast was made possible by the workers who brought electricity to rural New Hampshire; the legislators who signed the 1934 federal Communications Act, mandating public interest broadcasting; the executives at NBC . . . the two ministers, the three professors, the former ambassador, the poet, and the journalist who gave their time . . . and agreed to disagree without acting like asses; and a whole lot of Americans who took the time to listen, carefully, even though they had plenty of other things to do."

In “The American Beast,” the strongest, final chapter of Part Ten titled In Every Dark Hour, Lepore targets Trump as a dangerous enemy of democracy conspiring to overturn the legitimate presidential election results, partly through the Department of Justice falsely “declaring some of the voting to be fraudulent.” The acting attorney general, Jeffrey Rosen refused: “The DOJ can’t and won’t snap its fingers and change the outcome of the election.”

Lepore also reports that before and on Jan. 6, when a joint session of Congress was to certify the results of the Electoral College vote that Joe Biden had won the presidential election, Trump and a lawyer named John Eastman had already “met repeatedly with Pence in the Oval Office and tried to recruit him into the conspiracy. Pence refused. At 11:20 a.m. on Jan. 6, Trump called Pence and again asked him, and again Pence refused."

On television on Jan. 6, millions of Americans witnessed the Trump-incited brutal and unlawful attack on the Capitol.

In "The Deadline," Lepore’s writing is as strong and bright-shining as steel. This is ferocious writing; this is committed-to-the-truth writing; this is writing so bold it even makes the reader a little braver; here is not only a forest of fact but also a well-spring of true patriotic feeling.

We’d all best pay attention.

Sena Jeter Naslund is the author of nine books including New York Times critically acclaimed, best-sellers "Ahab’s Wife"; "Four Spirits (a novel of the Civil Rights Movement)"; and "Abundance, a Novel of Marie Antoinette." Naslund served as the first Distinguished Teaching Professor at the University of Louisville and as the founding program director of the Spalding University MFA in Writing Program, re-named after her retirement The Sena Jeter Naslund and Karen Mann School of Writing. For nearly 50 years, she has edited The Louisville Review, a local, national, and international publication of contemporary fiction, poetry, and essays.

University of Louisville Kentucky Author Forum

WHAT: The University of Louisville Kentucky Author Forum presents Jill Lepore, a New Yorker columnist and author of "The Deadline: Essays" in conversation with U.S. Representative Jamie Raskin.

Lepore is the David Woods Kemper ’41 Professor of American History and Affiliate Professor of Law at Harvard University. She has been contributing to The New Yorker since 2005, writing about American history, law, literature, and politics. Lepore’s "The Deadline: Essays" collects 46 of her essays written over the last decade, including three unpublished ones, that offer a prismatic portrait of Americans’ techno-utopianism, frantic fractiousness, and unprecedented yet armed aimlessness.

Raskin is the U.S. Representative for Maryland’s 8th Congressional District. He serves as the Ranking Member on the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability. He served as the Lead House Manager in the second Senate impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump, which ended with a 57-43 vote to convict the president for inciting a violent insurrection against the government to overthrow the 2020 presidential election.

WHEN: Sept. 11. Wine and cheese reception, Carmichael's Bookstore pre-signed book sale, 5 p.m.; interview in Bomhard Theater, 6 p.m.; Q&A with audience in Bomhard Theater, 7 p.m.; dinner honoring Lepore and Raskin at Muhammad Ali Center, 7:30 p.m.

WHERE: Kentucky Center for the Arts, Bomhard Theater, 501 W. Main St.

COST: $35 for events before 7:30 p.m.; $165 package includes all events, plus dinner. Tickets, including discounted tickets for University of Louisville students, faculty, and staff, are on sale at The Kentucky Center, Monday-Friday from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., or call 502-584-7777 or visit kentuckyauthorforum.com

This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Kentucky Author Forum features Jill Lapore "The Deadline" author