About book A Curious Man: The Strange And Brilliant Life Of Robert "Believe It Or Not!" Ripley (2013)
Curiously incurious, for a book called "A Curious Man."This is a biography of Robert L. Ripley, creator of "Believe It or Not"--the first in some fifty years. Thompson had access to a vast amount of archival material, both at Ripley Entertainment Industries and squirreled away at different libraries, in addition to conducting numerous interviews. Nothing wrong with his primary research.And he tells the story competently, for the most part. After a while, his trick of ending each section on a cliff-hanger became old. And the topic sentences of his paragraphs more than once did not fit with what he said in the rest of the paragraph. But even Homer nods. Thompson gives you a view of Ripley, a it of a drunk, a lot of a womanizer, insecure, and an early celebrity. But we never really get how he ticks--nor how he works in the culture of the time. This is definitely a biography and not a book of history--in part because the history Thompson brings into it is weak, but mostly because he does not bring history into it at all. If you want to know what Ripley was doing in a particular year, or what he thought of the deformed Chinese beggars he saw on his frequent voyages, this is the book for you. If you want to know his real name--LeRoy Robert, not Robert L.--and exactly when his first Believe It Or Not came out, Thompson has the goods. He details Ripley's complicated love life and uncomplicated love of alcohol--here you go.But, if you want to know why Ripley did what he did, or why he was popular, the book offers only superficial answers. Such as this, from page 131:“Just as Marco Polo’s fantastic tales of Asia had incited awe and disbelief, Ripley’s far-fetched travelogues and bold-ink cartoons, plus his likably odd personality, gave newspaper readers a new way of looking at the world. He was becoming a voice for the people, bringing the world’s weirdness to their doorsteps each morning.”To the extent that Thompson has an argument, it is that of Ripley's primary researcher, Norbert Pearlroth, who saw the facts Ripley reported as "fairy tales for grown-ups." In Thompson's telling, the world of the first third of the twentieth century was still vast, and people craved to know about it, and especially its oddities--a lust that Ripley (like his patron, William Randolph Hearst) somehow intuited. But this leaves so much to be explored!The world was not that large, certainly not in the way Thompson makes it seem: indeed, there were already lots of complaints about the smallness of the world. (Ripley remarked upon this fact more than once, as Thompson quotes.) Newspapers had been presenting oddities and the grotesque to readers for the better part of a century by the time Ripley started his cartoon--think of the all those illustrated police news of the 19th century. But Thompson seems to have no real sense of the history of journalism.He tries to salvage Ripley from charges of chauvinism--racial, national, and gendered--but claims that he was somehow complex never really add up. He seems a bog-standard American patriot--look, here, how Thompson can't get out of his own way in making his argument (page 126): “Ripley was hardly a typical yokel, even if it was becoming his shtick. He continued to boast that learning other languages was ‘more a pleasure than necessity” and that his California dialect had served him well. And while he enjoyed meeting new people from other lands, all conversations had to be conducted in English.” He does nothing to try to understand Ripley's fetishization of the Orient--fairly common at the time--but simply accepts Ripley's terms that China was 'exotic' and 'odd.'There are some interesting aspects to Ripley that he hints at, but never explores. Ripley was an early example of a celebrity, and the pressures on him as a celebrity are interesting to see--but Thompson just details these, not exploring them. Ripley also had a bunch of competitors and knock-offs, all plowing the same ground: strange but true. Science fiction often billed itself in similar terms, and the tendency would reach its peak int he mid-1950s with a rash of so-called true magazines.And this is different than the way oddities had been portrayed at the end of the 19th century--as Thompson again notes, but does not explore. P.T. Barnum thought trickery was a good thing. Ripley--and others--were invested in their oddities being true. (Not fairy tales at all, then.) What are we to make of this change? Did it say something about the culture at large? I'd say yes, but reading Thompson there's not even an acknowledgment that this is an issue, beyond him saying that Ripley disagreed with Barnum. Why? Does this account for some of his popularity? Who knows?It's nice to get some basic facts on Ripley, and fine, I guess, that they come in an era when writers are unafraid to show their subject's sexual hang-ups and other peccadilloes. But this book is only the beginning of any really true attempt to understand Ripley or his times. There are so many questions that could have been asked but were not. Disclaimer: I received this volume free from the Blogging for Books program, on the premise that I would write a review.This is a biography of Robert Ripley (nee LeRoy Robert Ripley), the cartoonist who created the Believe It or Not! feature. I was fascinated by the paperback reprints of the cartoons back in my boyhood, but knew little of the story behind the creatorThis volume covers Mr. Ripley’s life from barefoot poverty in Santa Rosa, California, to his early career as a sports cartoonist, through his discovery of a love for bizarre factoids and the creation of his famous comic strip to his worldwide fame. He became a world traveler, a millionaire, star of radio and newsreels and knew many beautiful women, all for doing something he enjoyed immensely.Of course, he also had his faults; Mr. Ripley was a heavy drinker, sexist, racist by our current standards (though progressive for his time), could not keep it in his pants, and had a tendency to fudge facts about his own life the way he didn’t the stories in his cartoons. He also became a more difficult person towards the end of his life as his health failed and his drinking and overwork caught up with him.The story of Ripley’s life is told in mostly chronological order, with little “Believe It!” factoids about the people and places mentioned. There’s also the story of various supporters of Ripley; most importantly, Norbert Pearlroth, Ripley’s main research person who found many of the factoids that appeared in the comic. (He actually stayed with the strip longer than Ripley himself!)There is a black and white photo section in the middle, but if you have a smartphone, you can download an app with audio and video clips from Mr. Ripley’s many public appearances. For those of you with multimedia capability, this will make the book a much better value for money. There are extensive end notes and an index as well.This biography benefits from the very interesting person at its center, and I would recommend it to any Believe It or Not! fans.
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Interesting Bio. Most interesting was that he refused to live with his wife!
—Stacey
Remember him? Interesting to read about him.
—Patsy
