Being Polite to Hitler by Robb Forman Dew

The title phrase occurs about halfway through the book. The year is 1953. Lavinia Alton, who has married into the close-knit family of Scofields and Claytors in the mid-Ohio town of Washburn, has committed the cardinal sin of expressing her political opinions (in this case, outrage at the execution of the Rosenbergs) in the midst of a Christmas gathering of relatives and neighbors. She has already offended their dress code; now she flouts their conversational norms that involve, among other things, turning a blind eye to bigotry.

The moment is emblematic of Robb Forman Dew’s approach, as she structures her book in expanding circles. At the center are a few independent individuals like Lavinia and, even more so, her feisty mother-in-law Agnes, a widowed schoolteacher nearing the end of her patience. In the middle are all those relatives and neighbors, so intricately interknit that I needed to spend half and hour drawing up a family tree to keep them all straight. [I now learn, however, that this book is the third in a trilogy with THE EVIDENCE AGAINST HER and THE TRUTH OF THE MATTER, so presumably the author's followers would have less trouble.] Beyond this circle are the events of the outside world: memories of the War, of the first atomic bombs, Eisenhower-era politics, the threat of polio, the doomsday clock, and fallout shelters. Indeed, the fallout shelter is a good metaphor for the community itself, as it tries to maintain an oasis of cheerful normality in a world with a traumatic past and uncertain future. The first two-thirds of the book are the portrait of an era, of a small-town middle America simultaneously turned in upon itself and facing outwards, enjoying the dawn of a new prosperity but paranoid about Cold War threats and Communist spies.

Then suddenly the year jumps forward to 1957, with Sputnik and school integration. It will jump again to 1963, with the Birmingham church bombing and the Kennedy assassination, and end with 1973 and Watergate (only more gracefully). The novel now becomes much more the story of Agnes Scofield, who has now acquired a partner, a dog, and a summer house in Maine. There are more events in this final section, but less connection; the book loses that intense focus on place and time that so distinguished it earlier — again I suspect the change in tone would matter less to those who read the whole trilogy. Is there an element of family biography here? Although given a different name, the nearby college to Washburn is clearly Kenyon, where the author’s grandfather John Crowe Ransom founded the Kenyon Review. Agnes’ brother-in-law Robert Butler teaches at the college, and real-life faculty members Robert Lowell, Peter Taylor, and William Empson make cameo appearances. It must have been a heady, even intimidating environment — but perhaps both Agnes and the author find peace in being able to escape from time to time.

Being Polite to Hitler; Dew, Robb Forman; Little, Brown and Company; $24.99