Book Review: Midcentury Boy
Midcentury Boy: My Suburban Childhood from Ike to the Beatles. David Hoppe. Victory Dog Books, May 13, 2020, Trade Paperback and E-book, 180 pages.
Reviewed by T. L. Needham.
David Hoppe has delivered an engaging and elegantly written memoir of his childhood in the womb of Mount Prospect, Illinois, a new town on the western frontier of Chicago in the early 1950s. He laces his stories with poignant moments that most would recall as familiar to their childhood, such as the first dance in junior high and attempts to interact with the opposite sex, or blasting away at a model battleship with a BB gun to entertain an uncle who delights in the moment too. The book includes anecdotal stories and pictures of his family that add color and rich details, yet this story is not just about them. It is about the coming of age of this generation of the 1950s and 1960s.
As I read this story, it seemed familiar because many moments shared by the author are so similar to my childhood, given that I was born just a few years earlier in the mid-1940s. Then I realized that Midcentury Boy is more than a memoir. It is an allegory of life in every small town emerging on the frontier of major cities in post-war America. I soon felt more like I was reading a documentary than a memoir. And this is one that would make even Ken Burns proud.
Midcentury Boy, set in Mount Prospect, Illinois, could have been about Prairie Village, Kansas, or Grandview, Missouri, or any other small town around Kansas City, my hometown, that sprung up out of country cornfields. There is nothing special about Mount Prospect because it was not unique; it was typical of mid-century America. And that is what makes it so important. That this story is an allegory of the American experience in the mid-century gives it greater importance, not as a memoir, but as a social study venture to capture and understand an important time in history. Midcentury Boyreveals the emergence of a new American culture, based on unique geography, history, social culture, and economics. This is a book that would be beneficial to any social studies class studying this era.
As I read on, I also realized this story was a proverbial walk down memory lane. I greatly enjoyed the journey as my memories came surging up. Midcentury Boy is a brilliant, multi-layered book, and I highly recommend it to those born in any town in mid-century America and their descendants too.