B8


B Jonathan Yardley


this wise, honest and utterly engaging memoir, she “struggled . . . mightily” with the impulse to break away from the musical bonds of her family. Small wonder. By the late 1970s, when she was in her early 20s and embarking on that career, her father, Johnny Cash, had become one of the most celebrated musicians in the country, and her stepmother, June Carter Cash, was right on stage beside him. Making the burden even heavier, June’s forebears, known professionally as the Carter Family, were among the founding royalty of country music, right up there with Jimmie Rodgers and, in the second generation,


Duet with the ‘Man in Black’ “F


COMPOSED A Memoir By Rosanne Cash Viking. 245 pp. $26.95


or the first fifteen years of my own career,” Rosanne Cash writes in


Hank Williams. For any child of any famous star in any art form, remaining true to one’s roots while at the same time establishing a presence of one’s own can be a formidable challenge, all the more so when, as in Rosanne Cash’s case, one’s love for that famous parent is deep and unconditional. On the one hand, she wanted to be known as


Rosanne Cash, not just as Johnny Cash’s daughter, but that’s just what she was and is, and she’s obviously as proud of it as she could be. “He cast an obviously large shadow,” she writes, “and it was hard for me to find my own place outside of it, or to be comfortable when the shadow was the first thing people noticed about my life or my work.” What’s remarkable is that she’s somehow managed to combine the two, to be at once herself and her father’s daughter. The wonderful music she writes and performs has country at its heart, as of course his did, but it also draws upon rock, folk, blues and even the faintest hint of jazz. Johnny Cash had his share of the world’s problems, chief among them an addiction to drugs against which he struggled for much of his life, but he seems to have been a loving, attentive, concerned father to the four daughters he had with his first wife, Vivian, and the son he had with June. “When I was a day out of high school,” Rosanne writes, “my father took me on the road. It was something of a graduation gift, and a chance to catch up on some of the time we had lost.”Her account of that journey should be quoted at length: “Traveling the world, watching him perform, and singing on the bus were also the basis for a serious education. Early on he made a list of a hundred essential country songs, which he instructed me to learn, a wide-ranging selection that ran from old history-lesson songs like ‘The Battle of New Orleans’ through classics like Hank Williams’s ‘I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry.’ As I was ushered into this treasury of song, it was thrilling to learn more about my father through his great love for the music. I learned to play guitar from my stepmother’s sister Helen, from Mother Maybelle Carter, and from Carl Perkins, all of whom were on the road with dad at the time. Each day I spent many hours in dressing rooms, practicing chords and the old songs they taught me. I discovered a passion for songwriting that remains undiminished to this day and that led me into my life as a writer and singer — into my family’s vocation.”


Last year, 31 ⁄2 decades later, Rosanne — by


then a star of considerable brilliance — recorded a dozen of those songs on an album called “The List,” a surpassingly beautiful piece of work that “represents a kind of resolution, of so many seemingly disparate but intimately related themes and struggles in my life, both musical and personal.” It is her way “to say yes” to his legacy, and: “I wish he had been alive to hear The List, and to see me say yes to all of it, and more than that, to revel in it as if it were a secret passed from parent to child, and a key to a particular familial mystery.” As by now you doubtless have figured out, from the passages quoted above, Cash isn’t just a writer and performer of songs, she’s a writer, period. When she was a seventh-grader at a Catholic school in California, an assignment she wrote “on metaphors and similes” turned the corner for her. Reading it years later, “I could feel the thrill of my twelve-year-old self coming off the page, a nascent writer in love with language as if language were a potential lover.” Indeed, a metaphor she created for that paper found its way, years later, “into a song I was writing, ‘Sleeping in Paris.’ ” This is how she describes her evolution as a writer and performer: “I have been lucky. I have also been driven by a deep love and obsession with language, poetry, and melody. I had first wanted to be a writer, in a quiet room, setting depth charges of emotion in the outside world, where my readers would know me only by my language. Then I decided I wanted to be a songwriter, writing not for myself but for other voices who would be the vehicles for the songs I created. Then, despite myself, I began performing my own songs, which rattled me to the core. It took me a long time to grow into an ambition for what I had already committed myself to doing, but I knew I could be good at it if I put my mind to it. So I put my mind to it.” Her resistance to performing was real and


Rosanne Cash isn’t just a writer and performer of songs, she’s a writer, period.


deep. The “draining, peripatetic life my dad was leading” did not appeal to her, and the “bone-crushing exhaustion, the constant vulnerability to media misinterpretation or even slander, and the complete obliteration of any semblance of a private life were not things I wanted for myself,” but “I just kept doing it until it felt like home. I worked out a lifetime of self-doubt and musical and emotional vulnerabilities under the spotlight.” In time she realized that “the arena I thought was a circus of humiliation actually held half the available light of what was intended for me, for my whole life.” It hasn’t always been a smooth ride. As a girl she had to cope with “my father’s drug addiction and the collapse of my nuclear family, the two central catastrophic events of my childhood, which have cast their long shadows over my life since.” Her first marriage, to the gifted songwriter and singer Rodney Crowell, produced three daughters to whom she is devoted, but it ended in divorce; “ultimately, we both had to belatedly grow up, and we recognized that we couldn’t do it together.” Subsequently, she married John Leventhal, a producer, with whom she has one son. The serenity of her happy new marriage was interrupted three years ago when she underwent complicated and risky brain surgery; recovery was long and difficult though ultimately successful, “but I don’t recommend it as an elective adventure.” Now in her mid-50s, Cash has learned life’s lessons well. “We all need art and music like we need blood and oxygen,” she writes. “The more exploitative, numbing, and assaulting popular culture becomes, the more we need the truth of a beautifully phrased song, dredged from a real person’s depth of experience, delivered in an honest voice; the more we need the simplicity of paint on canvas, or the arc of a lonely body in the air, or the photographer’s unflinching eye.” Amen to that, and amen as well to this beautiful and stirring book, of which one thing can be said for sure: Dad would have been proud of it, and her. yardleyj@washpost.com


KLMNO


SUNDAY, AUGUST 8, 2010


WASHINGTON BESTSELLERS HARDCOVER


FICTION 1 THE GIRL WHO KICKED THE HORNET’S NEST


2 THE HELP (Amy Einhorn, $24.95) 10


(Knopf, $27.95). By Stieg Larsson. The Millennium Trilogy ends as Salander hunts for her failed assassin.


55


By Kathryn Stockett. A frank chronicle of the lives of several black maids working in a town in 1960s Miss.


3 STAR ISLAND (Knopf, $26.95). By Carl Hiaasen 4 THE REMBRANDT AFFAIR (Putnam, $26.95) 5 FLY AWAY HOME (Atria, $26.99) 1


Mayhem ensues when a washed-up pop star’s stunt double is kidnapped by mistake in South Beach.


2


By Daniel Silva. Gabriel Allon’s secluded retreat is derailed by news of murder and a stolen masterpiece.


3


By Jennifer Weiner. A senator’s wife, and her two wildly different daughters, reassess their lives after scandal.


6 PRIVATE (Little, Brown, $27.99). By James Patterson


and Maxine Paetro. An elite P.I. firm, run by a former CIA agent, tackles a murder that hits close to home.


7 THE SEARCH (Putnam, $26.95). By Nora Roberts 8 SIZZLING SIXTEEN (St. Martin’s, $27.99) 4


A dog trainer and canine search-and-rescue volunteer finds romance, but is also stalked by a serial killer.


6


By Janet Evanovich. Gambling has become a matter of life and death for Stephanie Plum’s cousin, Vinnie.


9 SUPER SAD TRUE LOVE STORY (Random House, $26)


By Gary Shteyngart. A bookish guy falls for a younger woman in this satire of a digitally enslaved America.


10 THE LION (Grand Central, $27.99) 7


By Nelson DeMille. A Libyan terrorist, whose nom de guerre is the book’s title, hunts agent John Corey.


NONFICTION/GENERAL 1 SH*T MY DAD SAYS (It, $15.99). By Justin Halpern


2 STRENGTHSFINDER 2.0: . . . ONLINE TEST FROM


GALLUP’S “NOW, DISCOVER YOUR STRENGTHS” (Gallup, $21.95). By Tom Rath


3 THE OBAMA DIARIES (Threshold, $25) 3


By Laura Ingraham. The conservative pundit tackles the Obama mystique via a set of faux diary entries.


4 WOMEN FOOD AND GOD: AN UNEXPECTED PATH TO


ALMOST EVERYTHING (Scribner, $24) By Geneen Roth. Tackling compulsive eating.


5 THE BIG SHORT: INSIDE THE DOOMSDAY MACHINE


(Norton, $27.95). By Michael Lewis The murky world of financial derivatives.


6 GETTING CHANGE RIGHT: HOW LEADERS TRANSFORM


ORGANIZATIONS FROM THE INSIDE OUT (Jossey-Bass, $27.95). By Seth Kahan


7 OUTLIERS: THE STORY OF SUCCESS 8 SUCCESSION: ARE YOU READY? 51


(Little, Brown, $27.99). By Malcolm Gladwell Assumptions about success challenged.


1


(Harvard Business School, $18). By Marshall Goldsmith A primer for corporate executives in passing the baton.


9 MEDIUM RAW: A BLOODY VALENTINE TO THE WORLD 10 CHELSEA CHELSEA BANG BANG


(Grand Central, $25.99). By Chelsea Handler A new batch of essays from the comedian.


Rankings reflect sales for the week ended Aug. 1, 2010. The charts may not be reproduced without permission from Nielsen BookScan. Copyright © 2010 by Nielsen BookScan. (The right-hand column of numbers represents weeks on this list, which premiered in Book World on Jan. 11, 2004. The bestseller lists in print alternate between hardcover and paperback.)


6


Paperback Bestsellers at voices.washingtonpost.com/political-bookworm


8


OF FOOD AND THE PEOPLE WHO COOK (Ecco, $26.99) By Anthony Bourdain. Sequel to “Kitchen Confidential.”


13 2 20 16 9


A son gleans wisdom from his 73-year-old dad; the inspiration for a forthcoming sitcom.


23 1 5


TUESDAY IN STYLE: Per Petterson


HELAYNE SEIDMAN FOR THE WASHINGTON POST


 Read a profile of Rosanne Cash in today’s Arts & Style section.


DEBORAH FEINGOLD


LITERARY CALENDAR AUGUST 10-13, 2010


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Bartleby’s Books Old & Rare Books We Buy Collections & Estates Autographs & Manuscripts


www.bartlebysbooks.com 1132 29th St. NW. (202) 298-0486 Mon.–Sat. 10:30–5:30, Sunday 12–4


SECOND STORY BOOKS’ ROCKVILLEWAREHOUSE TAKE AN ADDITIONAL


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2467 18th St. NW in Adams Morgan 2 floors of quality books on all subjects. Come see our classical CD collection.


Idle Time Books Open 11AM-10PM everyday 202-232-4774 EDITING


BOOKS EDITED, Ready for Agents and Publishers. E-books, dissertations and reports. Call 24 hours. CBS. 800-721-0720


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Home delivery makes good sense. 1-800-753-POST


SF


10 TUESDAY | 5 P.M. Zane reads from and signs her new erotic novel, “The Hot Box,” at B. Dalton Booksellers, Union Station, 50 Massachusetts Ave. NE, 202-289-1724. She will also read on Wednesday at 7 p.m. at Borders Books-Largo, 913 Capital Centre Blvd., Largo, Md., 301-499-2173. 7 P.M. Ellen Bryson reads from and signs “The Transformation of Bartholomew Fortuno,” her debut novel, at Politics and Prose Bookstore, 5015 Connecticut Ave. NW, 202-364-1919.


11 WEDNESDAY | 6:30 P.M. Nikolas Kozloff, an expert on South America and a former fellow at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, discusses and signs his new book, “No Rain in the Amazon: How South America’s Climate Change Affects the Entire Planet,” at Busboys and Poets, 2021 14th St. NW, 202-387-7638. 7 P.M. Roseanne Cash reads from and discusses her new memoir, “Composed,” at the Sixth & I Historic Synagogue, 600 “Eye” St. NW, in an event sponsored by


Politics and Prose Bookstore. Two tickets come with purchase of the book at P&P; otherwise, tickets are $10 each. For details, call 202-364-1919. 13 FRIDAY | 7:30 P.M. The Metropolitan Washington Old Time Radio Club is sponsoring a reading and discussion with actor Arthur Anderson about his new autobiography, “An Actor’s Odyssey: From Orson Welles to Lucky the Leprechaun,” at Trinity Episcopal Church, downstairs parish hall, 2217 Columbia Pike, Arlington, Va. Anderson, the real-life inspiration behind the film and novel “Me and Orson Welles,” began his career in Welles’s 1937 Mercury Theatre on Broadway, appeared in numerous radio and television programs and, for 29 years, was the voice of Lucky the Leprechaun in the General Mills commercials for Lucky Charms cereal. For details, call 202-333-8456.


For more literary events, go to washingtonpost.com/gog/ and search “book event.”


BOOK WORLD THIS WEEK


COMING IN STYLE


MONDAY | In Faithful Place, Tana French’s new thriller, the missing girlfriend of a Dublin cop is found dead 22 years after they were supposed to run away together.


TUESDAY | The hero of Norwegian writer Per Petterson’s new novel, I Curse the River of Time, tries to reconnect with his dying mother.


WEDNESDAY | Poor Pluto gets some love in Michael Byers’s novel of astronomy, Percival’s Planet. A Beefeater


and a 181-year-old pet are among the characters in The Tower, the Zoo, and the Tortoise, a charming new novel by Julia Stuart. And — watch out — the Comic Monster Novels are coming!


THURSDAY | Robert A. Heinlein: In Dialogue With His Century, by William H. Patterson Jr.


FRIDAY | The Girls of Murder City: Fame, Lust, and the Beautiful Killers Who Inspired “Chicago,” by Douglas


Perry.


SATURDAY | The Thieves of Manhattan, by Adam Langer, is a rollicking satire of the book-publishing industry. voices.washingtonpost.com/political-bookworm


6


Read our blog, Political Bookworm, which focuses on books that stir the national political conversation.


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