The Grave of Alice B. Toklas

Historian and journalist Friedrich excels in developing social portraits of an age that are either very grand in scale, like Before the Deluge (1972), about Berlin in the 1920's, and City of Nets, about Hollywood in the 1940's, or, oppositely, scaled-down to eye-level intimacy, like the 13 essays collected here. These eclectic ""reports from the past,"" written over a period of 30 years, cover such topics as a literary friendship with Alice B. Toklas; a love of classical music, especially that of Mozart and Scarlatti; a fascination with the durability of Monte Cassino; a well-earned suspicion about the way news magazines gather their facts (Friedrich was editor for both Time and Newsweek); and a valedictory piece about James Baldwin's Paris. What informs them all is a shared sense of self-exile, the psychological inheritance from a father who fled his native Germany out of loathing for Hitler. One of the touching and amusing stories in the collection tells of the son's attempt to overcome deep feelings of guilt because of his German heritage, by taking his young daughter to see Wagner's Parsifal. Molly, freed from the link of the past that kept her father in thrall, simply sat, absorbed in rapture. History, both personal and cultural, has also made Friedrich intensely aware of the need to atone for past injustices. The title piece is a tender portrait of Toklas, who, a few years before her death, befriended the shy, ambitious young author. However, when it was time to repay her kindness with friendship, he ""felt an irresistible need to escape."" Too self-absorbed to realize how the old need the young for sustenance, for ""a hand for someone to hold on to,"" the young Friedrich returned to America, haunted by guilt and the desire to set things right. In the engaging tribute, he does exactly that. A collection of essays gracefully reasoned and expressed.