Frank Bergon

I requested this book from ER because it profiles people living in the San Joaquin Valley of California. I was curious because my uncle lived there from the early 1960's into the 1980's. As it turns out, Frank Bergon was growing up in the Valley about the same time.

The profiles Bergon writes are primarily about people he has known or has a connection with. He is certainly a good writer, has written 18 books, and earned a PhD from Harvard. In addition to writing he has taught at several universities, spending many years at Vassar.

While I liked reading the profiles, and they are of interesting people, after awhile they became repetitious. Sometimes he gets rather gushy and attributes a uniqueness to them as if similar people can't be found anywhere else. While that is just silly, I was flabbergasted when he bragged that people in the Valley are of different races and ethnicities. Did he miss that part about AMERICA being a melting pot?… (meer)

Frank Bergon, in Two-Buck Chuck & The Marlboro Man, writes a portrayal of characters from the San Joaquin Valley. The attempt to capture the diversity of characters, as the back of the book says, “all immigrants, migrants, their children, or grandchildren whose lives intertwine with the author’s”. Almost immediately we find a self-indulged boring tromp through the characters as filtered by Bergon’s biases. Historically, the book feels lazy. The historical events were often driving by anecdotal stories told by the interviewees. Throughout the narratives, there was always a John Wayne “pick yourself up by your bootstraps” feel. This is really where the book falls short. Characters such as the controversial, Fred Franzia, is cleaned up nicely to the point where I almost wanted to pick up a “two-buck chuck” bottle of wine so I could finish the book. Bergon is so closely tied to the Valley that his narratives struggle to find their way out of his own story.… (meer)