Flying Close to the Sun: My Life and Times as a Weatherman | 
| Author: Cathy Wilkerson
Publisher: Seven Stories Press
Category: Book
List Price: $26.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  11 reviews
Sales Rank: 272751
Media: Hardcover
Edition: A Seven Stories Press 1st Ed
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 416
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.5
Dimensions (in): 8.5 x 6 x 1.4
ISBN: 1583227717
Dewey Decimal Number: 322.42092
EAN: 9781583227718
ASIN: 1583227717
Publication Date: September 1, 2007
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Product Description
“On the morning of March 6, 1970, in the subbasement of 18 W. 11th Street in Greenwich Village, a piece of ordinary water pipe, filled with dynamite, nails, and an electric blasting cap, ignited by mistake?”
So begins this stunning memoir of a white middle-class girl from Connecticut who became a member of the Weather Underground, one of the most notorious groups of the 1960s. Cathy Wilkerson, who famously blew up and escaped from a Greenwich Village townhouse, here wrestles with the legacy of the movement, at times looking at contradictions of the movement that many others have avoided: the absence of women’s voices then and in the retelling; the incompetence and the egos; the hundreds of bombs detonated in protest which caused little loss of life but which were also ineffective in fomenting revolution. While proud of many of the accomplishments of the 1960s, years later Wilkerson examines why, in 1970, she in effect accepted the same disregard for human life practiced by the government. In searching for new paradigms for change, Wilkerson asserts with brave humanity and confessional honesty an assessment of her past?of those heady, iconic times?and finds hope and faith in a world that at times seems to offer neither. Cathy Wilkerson was active in the civil rights movement, Students for a Democratic Society, and the Weather Underground. In 1970, she, along with Kathy Boudin, survived an explosion in the basement of her parents’ townhouse that killed three Weathermen, forcing the two underground. For the past twenty years she has worked as an educator teaching teachers in the New York City schools.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 6 more reviews...
 A Detached, Opaque, Passionless Account of a Passionate Era June 21, 2008
If you want to know about the endless internecine conflicts in SDS, you'll find lots to absorb you here. If you're looking for an account that captures the energy of that era and the emotional evolution of a participant, look elsewhere. The writer's clunky, oddly detached, heavily rhetorical style doesn't engage the imagination; it comes to life only briefly, when she describes the townhouse explosion from which she escaped. She spends a lot of time exonerating and justifying herself in retrospect, chronicling the many reservations she said she had about Weatherman's tactics and analysis but that she suppressed at the time. Not much illumination of the era or of the writer.
 Impassioned autobiography June 1, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
A great tale of radicalization. The meditative Wilkerson, from the start at the center of the action, is judgmental of herself and of strategies of the Vietnam War and civil-rights activism. She doesn't try to get inside the heads of her fellow SDS and Weather activists, instead substituting minutia about herself. This can make for a very narrow narrative, but it keeps the history tight, more of an impassioned autobiography than speculative memoir.
 Raises Questions But Provides No Answers, Little Insight March 7, 2008
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
Cathy Wilkerson is best known to the world today as one of the two survivors of the March 2, 1970 bomb explosion at a Weatherman safe house in New York City which killed three of her friends and collaborators.
Wilkerson writes an interesting narrative of her transformations from a WASPy 1950's era Swarthmore College grad into a professional activist to a street fighter, then a terrorist, a wanted fugitive, a mother, a prison inmate, and today a NYC math teacher. Wilkerson gives the most emphasis in her book to the first three, and it is an emphasis that will probably be of most interest to readers.
Wilkerson notes throughout her book that the New Left had a tendency toward bullying tactics for both organizational governance and in formulating programs of action [p.205]. This tenancy was extreme in the case of SDS in general and the Weathermen in particular. To wit: "It was a [leadership] style that embraced certainty as a primary credential for leadership." Wilkerson detects this tendency but never struggles against it and never says why, either. This is a issue I would have liked to see her address.
Another issue that Wilkerson identifies but never addresses in depth is the whole idea of SDS as an organization for the long-run. As a student-based organization SDS had the fatal flaw that being a college student is a transitory phase in most people's lives. At some point people want to stop going to classes and get on with their lives. So where does the committed student activist go then? [p.236]
Thanks, Ms Wilkerson. Why so long in coming? January 9, 2008
3 out of 8 found this review helpful
As a student of the era, this account by Cathy Wilkerson has been a long time coming. Often the social change of the late Sixties gets filed under "Civil Rights Movement" and "Anti-War Protests", and not enough attention is given to the Women's Movement. Ms. Wilkerson's point of view is important because it adds to the very short list of women who have told their side of the SDS/WUO.
For the reader less familiar with the era, the amount of violence directed at those in the movement can be shocking. As Ms. Wilkerson relates the loss of life at the hands of the government and authorities, we are reminded that 4-Dead-In-Ohio is only a small part of the price that was paid in pursuit of freedom and justice. There's no real need beyond this to understand where the anger and sense of desperation originated that drove groups like the Weather Underground to violence.
Although some have criticized the literary quality of this book, I found it quite a good read; a sincere memoir not from a professional history writer, but from a key architect of a piece of history.
Social change is never linear or instantaneous, but comparisons of the Sixties to the present show the dramatic effects of the aforementioned movements. Politics aside, there are two minority candidates making serious bids for the White House. The military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy is crumbling from the bottom up, as the young men and women of today make it clear that the sexual preference of the person watching their back is not an issue. Along with this optimism about our progress, there is still a recognition that many needs for serious change abound; this book adds to the volume of information that will help the next generation of revolutionary thinkers bring about serious non-violent social change.
Interesting yet flawed January 9, 2008
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
Flying Close to the Sun was an interesting look at how SDS and other anti-war activists decided that confrontation, even violent confrontation was the only true way to exact meaningful politcal change. It also showed that many new leftists were anti-Vietnam war but not anti-war. I am sure many would be all too comfortable in the culture wars of today.
Ms. Wilkerson comes across as a person with strong beliefs and a true committment to back them up with action. Yet, she also comes across as self-absorbed and naive. She didn't seem concerned that her father's town house had been destroyed and that other innocent people could have been killed. She acknowledged that her cohorts had shown terrible judgement in messing with explosives but didn't seem to realize the town house explosian damaged the anti-war movement and helped move this country to the right.
The book was still a great read and did a nice job of describing the political climate of the late sixties. It showed, through her own strainted family relations, the dynamics of what was then labeled as the "generation gap." Yet, at times I thought the book wasn't reflective enough even though it looked back events almost 40 years old.
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