Readers will have to forgive Mr. Cambell his obsessions. He brings race into the book with a dull frequency, sometimes to unintentionally comic effect. We're told that black St. Louisans including Chuck Berry, Miles Davis and Tina Turner "struggled for recognition behind such noted white St. Louisans as Williwam S. Burroughs, Kate Chopin, and T.S.Eliot." This is a double-bankshot of academic claptrap. Burroughs and Eliot barely count as sons of St. Louis, and Kate Chopin--who was she again? Oh, yes: a late-19th-century fiction writer retroactively declared interesting by feminist reputation fabricators. Only a captive of the faculty lounge could be under the impression that Kate Chopin was ever so celebrated that her fame overshadowed the genius behind "Johnny B. Goode."
-- Mark Lasswell, Wall Street Journal review of "The Gateway Arch" by Tracy Campbell (May 25-26, 2013)
-- sdh
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