Review - J. Edgar Hoover: A Graphic Biography by Rick Geary
It’s hard to have much sympathy for the quivering little dictator J. Edgar Hoover and Rick Geary’s sober retelling of the man’s life doesn’t offer much to change your mind. By focusing on the fractured psychology behind Hoover’s strengths as well as his weaknesses, Geary paints a picture of the ways in which people over-compensate in their struggles against their own demons — and how they align themselves to systems beyond their psyche in order to justify them.
In “J. Edgar Hoover: A Graphic Biography,” Geary traces the legendary FBI chief’s rise to power as a Washington, D.C. native and son of a Department of the Interior employee. As Geary points out, Hoover was by no means a typical American, but he grabbed those virtues and held them close as tenets by which to build a career — whether the embrace was out of love or control is harder to say. For all his rhetoric pushing for ordinary American values, he seemed to have no connection with the people who lived by them — or people in general. With the exception of a few close male friends — innuendoes accepted but unproven — Hoover comes off as apart from the rest of the world.
So little of his personal life remained veiled that Geary can only really work with his public professional life, and these facts provide clues to the inner workings of Hoover while offering about as many hard answers about the complicated psychology of the man as they do about his possible homosexuality. He was orderly, he was a harsh taskmaster, he liked glory but did not like to admit so, he knew how to get publicity through propaganda filtered to Americans via popular culture and he really disliked communists.
As with any political examination, there are plenty of lines to be drawn between then and now and in Hoover’s case, a 40-year practice of spying on private citizens after being granted disgustingly broad powers to do so by Franklin Delano Roosevelt certainly qualifies. It was Hoover’s indulgence that provided Joe McCarthy with the names and information that painted such a dark moment in our nation’s history. Hoover also used this information to control hiring at colleges, as well as stalk members of the communist party in the effort to destroy their personal lives.
Obviously, this is not a glowing summation of the man’s career.
Geary has been given another opportunity to shine doing what he does best with the tale of Hoover — and as a work aimed towards young adult readers, he provides an early tour in the subtle corruption that power can lead to. Hoover’s misuse of the authority handed to him in order to further his personal ideologies at the cost of citizen’s rights is something that ought never be forgotten — the same story happens often enough and it’s happening right now and Geary is doing his part to keep the warning alive and the citizenry cautious.
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