FRIDAY, AUGUST 27, 2010
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C3 BOOK WORLD
The Jung and the restless: A family memoir
by Carolyn See CHARLES MASON/THE WASHINGTON POST COOKIN’: Gov. Sean Parnell, who took the job after Sarah Palin resigned, and wife Sandy at the annual Governor’s Picnic in Fairbanks. Palin still holds sway in home state palin from C1
Republican National Conven- tion, she referred to herself as a “gal who knows the North Slope of Alaska.” The bus she rode across the country on her book tour featured Palin beaming in front of Alaska’s snowcapped mountains and spruce-spotted hills. More recently, she coined the term “mama grizzlies” to de- scribe women who want to pro- tect the nation from “fundamen- tal transformation” — because there are grizzly bears in Alaska. Her upcoming TV show on TLC is called “Sarah Palin’s Alaska.” By endorsing Miller on Face- book, boosting him on Twitter and making robo-calls for him against the heavily favored es- tablishment candidate, Palin risked sacrificing the founding pillar of her political creation myth. Instead, her wager paid off big. As of Thursday, Miller led Murkowski by roughly 1,600 votes. Murkowski has vowed that it is too early to concede and is hoping that the nearly 10,000 absentee ballots her campaign says have been re- turned will push her ahead of Miller. A source in the Murkowski campaign who spoke on the con- dition of anonymity Thursday said that while the senator was confident she would prevail af- ter the absentee ballots had been counted, she was also aware of two available options should she not make up the dif- ference. She could run as a write-in candidate, the source said, or she could take the place of the Libertarian Party candi- date, Fredrick “David” Haase. Haase, reached by telephone
Thursday, said that no one from Murkowski’s camp had so far reached out to him and that he was confident the senator, whom he preferred over Miller, would win. If she didn’t, though, he’d gladly step aside, he said, as long as she joined his crusade to overhaul Social Security and re- vamp the Federal Reserve. “If she came out and told the people of Alaska that was her mission,” Haase said, “I’d be a fool not to.” Whether Miller or Murkowski
ultimately prevail is, for Palin’s stature in Alaska, now beside the point. The former governor, whose presidential or other po- litical aspirations are undeter- mined, has demonstrated the sturdiness of her base. “Within conservative politics in Alaska, she is still a very for- midable force,” Miller said in a recent interview. “She’s certain- ly a net positive to any candidate running for office.” This was not the consensus
view leading up to the election. “I like Sarah,” Republican Don
Young, who has represented all of Alaska in the House of Repre- sentatives for nearly40 years, said in a July interview. “What pull she’s got, I don’t know.” Alaska’s Democratic and Re- publican senators were more certain that Palin, who in the lower 48 states is considered the state’s most prominent politi-
cian, was political history. “Palin was moments in time,” Sen. Mark Begich said in a downtown Anchorage coffee shop, also in July. He called it a “total misperception” that the former governor had any influ- ence over politics in the state. “She’s not establishment. I’m not sure what she is. She has a higher negative now than she’s ever had. She’s a net negative. I think for a lot of people, she quit. And Alaskans are not quit- ters.” Murkowski, who was vexed by
Palin’s endorsement of Miller, which was widely seen as moti- vated not just by Todd Palin’s friendship with Miller but by Pa- lin’s dislike of the Murkowski family, had sought to put it more diplomatically.
“If you ask Alaskans, they will talk about all of the politicians that represent them,” Murkow- ski said during a July campaign swing to North Pole, outside Fairbanks. Her father, Frank Murkowski, lost the governor’s mansion to Palin in 2006. “This is the first election since Gover- nor Palin has stepped down from office, and it’s her first se- ries of elections across the coun- try where she has weighed in, and it remains to be seen how that will play out in the state.” Not anymore.
From governor to kingmaker?
Last In July 2009, Palin an- nounced that she would be abandoning the governor’s man- sion to protect the state from the costs of politically motivated lawsuits against her. Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell (R), she said, would be inaugurated at the Gover- nor’s Picnic at Pioneer Park in Fairbanks on July 25. Next, she signed on with Fox, launched
the book tour, raised PAC money and bestowed endorsements on like-minded candidates. Exactly one year after Parnell
took office, Palin’s successor re- turned to Pioneer Park on the morning of July 25 with his fam- ily. Of the hundreds gathered, hardly anyone noticed him. Parnell donned a blue apron and took his place in front of an aluminum tray piled high with hamburger patties for picnic- goers, with whom he engaged in wooden nods and hellos. He did generate a ripple of excitement when his prongs flattened a yel- low jacket. “I have the greatest amount of
respect for Governor Palin, and I’ve seen her family dragged through the press and the media and I really don’t want to be a part of it,” Parnell said in an in- terview behind the grills. “I only want to do things that honor her.” He was less kind to the estab- lishment families who had ruled Alaska for decades. “That generation that found- ed this state is passing,” said Parnell, who lost to Young in the 2008 congressional primary. “And we want to adhere to their principles, but certainly a new generation is coming up. You see it at all levels — we have 29-year- old mayors. It’s just the natural transition.” Palin’s role as the potential kingmaker of that new genera- tion made for some awkward meetings at the end of the pic- nic. Murkowski and her hus- band, Verne Martell, who had been tasting barbeque on the other side of the park, cautious- ly greeted Parnell, the Palin loy- alist, and his wife, Sandy. Across the park, Joe Miller, bearded and baritone-voiced, bantered with a clutch of sup-
porters holding signs. When the coast was clear and Parnell and Murkowski had parted, he got in line for a hamburger. “It’s clear that there are a lot of people in the state that sup- port and respect Sarah Palin since the presidential race,” said Miller, who served as the Alaska Republican Party’s interior re- gional chair as Palin prepared to run for governor, during which time he developed a close friendship with Palin’s husband, Todd. “It is equally clear that there are folk that no longer support her.” “There is a ruling family, and
that has been reflected in the generational politics of the Mur- kowski family. Lisa’s appoint- ment by her father reflects that. It’s power perpetuated not just by family but by special inter- ests,” he said. “Palin is absolutely outside of that. She certainly came from outside of that mold when she ran for governor. In fact it was her campaign that cracked the establishment.”
Still in the spotlight MARK THIESSEN/ASSOCIATED PRESS
CATCH-UP: Lisa Murkowski was trailing Joe Miller after Tuesday and hoping absentee ballots would help her make up ground. Murkowski was vexed by Sarah Palin’s endorsement of Miller.
Palin’s show of strength may also give life to those who live off her fame. Levi Johnston, Palin’s near- son-in-law and persistent tor- mentor, has sought to exploit his relationship with Palin’s family for Palin-like fame. He sold news of his short-lived engage- ment to Palin’s daughter, Bristol, to celebrity magazines and par- layed his 15 minutes of fleshy fame in Playgirl into a reality show, the gimmick of which is that he is running for Palin’s old job as the mayor of Wasilla. The Johnston brain trust is housed in a drab office building across from Anchorage’s Alaska State Legislature headquarters and next to the Pioneer Bar and Gaslight Lounge. At the end of a dim hallway, a window is pa- pered with newspaper clips about Tank Jones, Johnston’s agent. Jones shares the office with Johnston’s attorney, Rex Butler, and a sign behind their shared reception desk reads, “You have the right to remain si- lent. . . . Use it!” While Johnston is using his candidacy for office in Alaska to gain publicity for his aspirations in Hollywood, Palin didn’t want Alaskan politics to get in the way of her own aspirations. Miller’s surprising showing al- lows her to have the best of both worlds. She gets to be a player without having to play. Palin made an appearance with other Alaskan dignitaries at the funeral of Ted Stevens this month, but for the most part the former governor lays low. Her lakefront house is hidden by a tall brown fence the Palins erected for privacy after politi- cal author Joe McGinniss rented the home next door. An impres- sive white satellite dish rises above the in-house studio where Palin can do her live television hits. And at the foot of the gravel road leading to Palin’s house, there is a large Joe Miller cam- paign billboard.
horowitzj@washpost.com
here’s nothing more endear- ing than a family memoir in which the author is actually fond of his family. It’s rare; it’s close to miraculous. If a person wants to write about his youth and his parents, it’s usually be- cause he has scores to settle. Af- fection turns the whole thing into amiracle. Because parents — God love them! — have been put on Earth to embarrass us half to death. Not that Micah Toub’s mom and dad don’t fit that bill. They’re both Jungian psychologists, and while Jung seemed important and relevant back when Toub’s par- ents were at the height of their re- spective careers, Toub gets pes- tered regularly these days by people who re- mind him that Jung is no longer taken very se- riously as a rigorous thinker. (Just to refresh your memory: Jung was first a disciple, then a colleague and later a competitor of Sigmund Freud back in the first half of the 20th century.) The key facts to re- member while reading this book are that Jung theorized about the “collective uncon- scious,” the importance of mythical archetypes that inhabit every mind; the “anima,” most usually in refer- ence to the feminine self that lurks inside every man; “synchro- nicity,” which leaves sweethearts eternally marveling about what it was, exactly, in this Big World that allowed them to meet in the first place; and finally, “individuation,” the process by which we separate from our parents and become our own independent selves. The narrative begins in a Colo-
T
rado suburb in the ’8os with a family where the parent-thera- pists often work at home. That “meant that waves and waves of screwed-up, crazy, lunatic weirdoes were allowed to enter our altar of rational normalcy,” Toub recalls. But home life was never all that rational or normal. What did pertain was a form of highly evolved psychological in- tegrity, a commitment to trying to find out what was really going on in life in any particular moment. “Being the son of a psychologist . . . meant saying exactly what you were thinking and feeling — it meant telling the truth,” Toub writes. The first chapter, “The Margin-
alized,” is a perfect mini-master- piece about how good intentions and the best belief systems just aren’t going to work out if some- one in the group isn’t prepared to go along with the program. The young Micah has an older, half- black, half-sister, who, in the fash- ion of all rebellious teenagers, is totally disgusted with her parents and family and everything that goes along with that package. (She detests anything and every-
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GROWING UP JUNG Coming of Age as the Son of Two Shrinks by Micah Toub Norton. 261 pp. $23.95
thing that seems in the least New Agey.) The situation has gotten so far out of hand that a family meeting is convened, in which Micah’s dad feels called upon to speak in his “fluffy-edged psychologist voice,” while his sister’s (unstated) posi- tion is: “I don’t want to talk about it and you can’t make me.” Her stepdad tries to get her to talk about the ceiling: “Why don’t you describe what you see?” he asks. “Perhaps you see a figure or a story in the shape of the plaster that will help us to know what’s happening with you?” Toub’s parents live in a land of stories, of living room floors dot- ted with meditation pillows, a strict macrobiotic diet (except for the family’s monthly jaunt to a seafood restaurant), a belief in spirit guides and man- dalas and what they signify — and above all, a touching belief that something big is going on beyond the everyday world. The wonderful thing Toub does here is stay away from the cheap-and- easy shot (except, per- haps, when he men- tions that his dad’s second wife divorces him because, she says, “I just can’t grow old with a man who owns a Tarot deck.”) He tries his best to show the reader that, past any surface goofiness, Jung’s theories pro- vide us with useful
tools to talk about the human con- dition. In the second half of this mem-
oir, Toub takes particular events in his life and describes them in terms of various psychological concepts: The shadow in his life turns out to be watching porn and gobbling sweets. A friend of his gets control of his anima by walk- ing around like the cutest girl in town instead of just lusting after her. A romance with a promising girlfriend is jeopardized by a live- ly familial conversation about in- cest, and so on. And yes, it is true that Micah likes his mom a little more than might be generally ac- ceptable, but hey, nobody’s per- fect! That’s what psychology is for, isn’t it? I hated to see this book end. I
loved every person in it, from the wistful dad with his “fluffy-edged” voice, to Toub’s kind and darling mom, his tolerant and loving ex- wife, even that volcanic teenaged sister, who refused to tell stories about the ceiling. “Growing Up Jung” is a gem.
bookworld@washpost.com
See reviews books regularly for The Post.
Sunday in Outlook
Tiger, tiger, still burns bright. The fountain of youth is just around the corner. Dreamers, anarchists and se- cret agents. My life as a Russian novel. And the remarkable common cold.
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