A Walk Toward Oregon: A Memoir

by Alvin M. Josephy Jr.

From the distinguished historian -- celebrated for his writings about the American West and American Indians -- an account of his journey across the twentieth century.

Impassioned participant in and acute observer of the life of his times, Alvin Josephy takes us from the New York of the teens and twenties to the 1990s on the Oregon ranch where he has found his heart's home. His "walk" leads him to Harvard during the hopeful days of the New Deal; to scriptwriting for MGM in Hollywood and menial work on Wall Street in the Depression; through a job with the Herald Tribune (for which he interviewed Leon Trotsky); to the wartime landings on Iwo Jima and Guam, which he covered as a Marine Corps combat correspondent; to an antiwar march with Martin Luther King, Jr.; to his profound involvement in Native American and environmental causes.

Josephy tells how it was that he found his true calling -- becoming an advocate for American Indians and the land they once called their own. In a wonderful way, he gives witness to two He renders the excitement of the go-go industrial expansionist nation that came into being in the first half of the century and burst onto the world after the war. At the same time he chronicles our growing awareness of another America -- the land and people who had no voice as the country around them grew.

His astute understanding of the events he witnessed and became part of, and the spirited, evocative quality of his narrative, combine to capture the life, the turmoil, the problems, progress, setbacks, and satisfactions, of this American Century.

A Walk Toward Oregon will move and delight readers who have lived these years themselves, as well as the young who want to know firsthand what came before them. It will stand as an indispensable document of our time.

Genres: Biography

352 pages, Hardcover

First published February 1, 2000

About the author

An American historian who specialized in Native American topics. He served as a combat correspondent during World War II and was awarded the Bronze Star for his coverage of the U.S. capture of Guam. His interest in Native American history started during an assignment from Time Magazine.

Reviews

[Anson Cassel Mills]

Like the more gifted Bernard DeVoto (who might have been his teacher at Harvard had not the Depression intervened), Alvin Josephy (1915-2005 ) mucked about in journalism and fiction writing for some years before finding his métier doing history—in Josephy’s case, the history of American Indians. Not surprisingly, Josephy writes gracefully, and parts of his memoir—the stories of his New York City childhood and his heroic World War II service, for instance—carry real emotional punch. Nevertheless, Josephy easily slides over important subjects he doesn’t care to discuss, such as the dissolution of his first marriage, the difficulties of writing history from oral tradition, and decisions he made as editor of American Heritage.

Furthermore, although Josephy is proud of his New Deal liberalism, he pulls punches when describing the political personalities of his era. For instance, he describes Harry Bridges as “a tough Australian-born dockworker” and Howard Fast as a “successful author honored for his writings by the Soviet Union” without noting that both were Communists. In other words, early on the reader begins to suspect that Josephy’s political views were either more naïve or a bit further to the left than he cared to admit. Also depressing is his glorification of all things Indian, including Native American superstition—as if rattles and medicine bundles were privileged in a way that the mumbo-jumbo of Mexican Catholic priests was not.

Josephy worked at Time magazine a few years after Whittaker Chambers, the nemesis of Alger Hiss, had resigned. Josephy’s family was nurturing, Chambers’ dysfunctional. Josephy’s autobiography is nicely structured, Chambers’ Witness (1952), misshapen and overlong. Nevertheless, in Chambers’ autobiography we encounter a soul, here only the persona of a facile writer lucky enough to have chosen a topic popular in his own era.

[Adam]

An autobiography from a driven, energetic, confident writer and journalist. Of course one might expect that presentation of subject from an autobiography, but Alvin Josephy did cover a lot of ground:

In his early years he crossed paths with H.L. Mencken, which set the stage for his journalistic career. As a young student at Harvard he headed a group to get FDR elected (soon having to drop out of school during the Depression), tried his hand unsuccessfully on Wall Street, moved to work as a screenwriter in Hollywood, associating with contemporaries such as Olivia de Haviland. Back as a writer he drove down to Mexico to interview Leon Trotsky for the Herald Tribune, then worked in radio journalism in New York. In WWII, as a Marine, he fought in the Pacific, including landing on Iwo Jima as a war correspondent. Later he marched with MLK in an anti-war rally. After working for Time Magazine for a spell, and eventually moving to a ranch in Oregon, which had been the daydream of his early years, he became involved in Native American culture and issues as well as environmental conservation, and wrote several books detailing the history of local tribes such as the nearby Nez Perce.

A good example of one who took advantage of the relative benefits that life offered him and really made the best of them, while never demonstrating arrogance or unkindness in his successful adventures.

[Keith]

The autobiography of the foremost historian of Native America for a number of decades from 1960 onward. He led an extremely interesting life and has told the story well.