West End

“West End” is not just a grand newspaper story but it’s a great American story.It is at once a coming-of-age tale, a celebration of newspapering at its most exuberant, and a lament for the end of a journalistic era of crusading editors and feisty newsmen who were as colorful as the larger-than-life characters they covered. Crockett White has a pitch-perfect ear for the rhythms of newsrooms, the argot of cops and con artists and the sad chords the human heart. His narrator, David Arthur, is a boy from the wrong side of the river in a Tennessee town at the advent of the Civil Rights era who’ll be given a tutorial in bare-knuckled reporting and no-holds-barred politics from hard-nosed mentors in city rooms and on campaign trails. On the way, he will encounter a cast of scoundrels, mountebanks and confidence men whom we’d recognize on any of Twain’s Mississippi riverboats. Their antics provide a political theater of the absurd, bouncing between boardroom farce and the bedroom variety, all of it told with rueful humor by a narrator who maintains a generous fondness for his flawed and failed characters whatever their foibles. Crockett White invokes the shade of Jack Burden, the compromised Southern newsman of “All the King’s Men,” as inspiration for his own beleaguered hero, but a more fitting analogy, for this reader, is Jay Gatsby. Because, essentially, this is a novel about class. Like young Jimmy Gatz, David Arthur will struggle to wrench himself from a hard-scrabble existence and force his way into a resistant social realm that he seeks to attain. And, like Gatsby, David’s bittersweet pursuit of a lifelong love, will be shrouded by the imperatives of status. What saves David Arthur is that his true love is not a woman but a newspaper or, rather, the romance of newspapering as it was practiced in the second half of the 20th Century. And, although besieged by the media chains who sapped the energy from the independent papers, David Arthur remains an unreconstructed rebel, an incorrigible romantic, and a noble one. In telling, his tale, Crockett White offers a riveting, narrative of life in the fast lanes of journalism. A master story-teller, he makes you want to turn the page. ---Jack Schwartz was formerly Book Editor of Newsday. “West End” is not just a grand newspaper story but it’s a great American story.It is at once a coming-of-age tale, a celebration of newspapering at its most exuberant, and a lament for the end of a journalistic era of crusading editors and feisty newsmen who were as colorful as the larger-than-life characters they covered. Crockett White has a pitch-perfect ear for the rhythms of newsrooms, the argot of cops and con artists and the sad chords the human heart. His narrator, David Arthur, is a boy from the wrong side of the river in a Tennessee town at the advent of the Civil Rights era who’ll be given a tutorial in bare-knuckled reporting and no-holds-barred politics from hard-nosed mentors in city rooms and on campaign trails. On the way, he will encounter a cast of scoundrels, mountebanks and confidence men whom we’d recognize on any of Twain’s Mississippi riverboats. Their antics provide a political theater of the absurd, bouncing between boardroom farce and the bedroom variety, all of it told with rueful humor by a narrator who maintains a generous fondness for his flawed and failed characters whatever their foibles. Crockett White invokes the shade of Jack Burden, the compromised Southern newsman of “All the King’s Men,” as inspiration for his own beleaguered hero, but a more fitting analogy, for this reader, is Jay Gatsby. Because, essentially, this is a novel about class. Like young Jimmy Gatz, David Arthur will struggle to wrench himself from a hard-scrabble existence and force his way into a resistant social realm that he seeks to attain. And, like Gatsby, David’s bittersweet pursuit of a lifelong love, will be shrouded by the imperatives of status. What saves David Arthur is that his true love is not a woman but a newspaper or, rather, the romance of newspapering as it was practiced in the second half of the 20th Century. And, although besieged by the media chains who sapped the energy from the independent papers, David Arthur remains an unreconstructed rebel, an incorrigible romantic, and a noble one. In telling, his tale, Crockett White offers a riveting, narrative of life in the fast lanes of journalism. A master story-teller, he makes you want to turn the page. ---Jack Schwartz was formerly Book Editor of Newsday. “West End” is not just a grand newspaper story but it’s a great American story.It is at once a coming-of-age tale, a celebration of newspapering at its most exuberant, and a lament for the end of a journalistic era of crusading editors and feisty newsmen who were as colorful as the larger-than-life characters they covered. Crockett White has a pitch-perfect ear for the rhythms of newsrooms, the argot of cops and con artists and the sad chords the human heart. His narrator, David Arthur, is a boy from the wrong side of the river in a Tennessee town at the advent of the Civil Rights era who’ll be given a tutorial in bare-knuckled reporting and no-holds-barred politics from hard-nosed mentors in city rooms and on campaign trails. On the way, he will encounter a cast of scoundrels, mountebanks and confidence men whom we’d recognize on any of Twain’s Mississippi riverboats. Their antics provide a political theater of the absurd, bouncing between boardroom farce and the bedroom variety, all of it told with rueful humor by a narrator who maintains a generous fondness for his flawed and failed characters whatever their foibles. Crockett White invokes the shade of Jack Burden, the compromised Southern newsman of “All the King’s Men,” as inspiration for his own beleaguered hero, but a more fitting analogy, for this reader, is Jay Gatsby. Because, essentially, this is a novel about class. Like young Jimmy Gatz, David Arthur will struggle to wrench himself from a hard-scrabble existence and force his way into a resistant social realm that he seeks to attain. And, like Gatsby, David’s bittersweet pursuit of a lifelong love, will be shrouded by the imperatives of status. What saves David Arthur is that his true love is not a woman but a newspaper or, rather, the romance of newspapering as it was practiced in the second half of the 20th Century. And, although besieged by the media chains who sapped the energy from the independent papers, David Arthur remains an unreconstructed rebel, an incorrigible romantic, and a noble one. In telling, his tale, Crockett White offers a riveting, narrative of life in the fast lanes of journalism. A master story-teller, he makes you want to turn the page. ---Jack Schwartz was formerly Book Editor of Newsday.

A little printer's ink in your blood or a twitch of political ambition in your body? If so, Crockett White's WEST END is a must read. Young David Arthur, an across the tracks newspaperman wannabe, is hired by one of Bluff City's two competing newspapers. He starts in the newspaper's basement morgue, but the job punches his ticket for the roller coaster ride of his life. He soon finds himself rubbing elbows with politicans great and small, society divas, bankers, swindlers, common crooks and some of the greatest smooth talking lawyers in the country. It's a page turner hard to put down and when it ends you'll wish there was more. Get the book! You'll like it

This a beautifully crafted novel of the that time not long ago when newspapers and politicians depended on one another. The author obviously knows the scene well and the characters whose ambitions and love affairs and ideals and successes and failures he draws with a fine pen. He is an excelent story teller who makes reading a pleasure.

This is a good book. I enjoyed it very much. I do think that those who grew up in Nashville as I did in the sixties will enjoy it even more because I can associate real people with the individual characters. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in the newspaper business and the politics that go along with it at that time in history. It is an interesting story.

I am a lifelong Nashvillian since 1952, and knew personally or by reputation many of the local characters portrayed in this book. I truly looked forward to reading it, and I was truly disappointed. I found it boring, and the attempts to change certain situations or characters rather pathetic. What could have been a fascinating novel to this native just did not deliver.

Our Book Club chose this book for our Jan. read. UGH! Many in the room were life long citizens of Nashville so they had a perspective we did not have. The character development was so complicated. Most did not finish.

West End is a multilayered work of art. Start with the 1960's, Camelot, civil rights, Watergate, and the commanding presence of newspapers. Mix in wily political maneuvering and a plethora of irresistible, often irreverent, characters and get the inside scoop of a fascinating slice of time via young David Arthur's rise from humble beginnings to editor of a major metropolitan newspaper. Top it all off with masterful writing that makes Crockett White's next offering a literary necessity. Excellent read!

​Crockett White’s WEST END is a fun read with a fascinating cast of characters. Back when reporters had speed graphic cameras and press cards in their hat bands, it follows a young journalist’s baptism of fire. The kid is plopped in the middle of an old time Southern political fight and the push for civil rights. His job was to cover a bright, charismatic U.S. Senate candidate who just couldn’t keep his zipper closed and no J-School will ever offer the real life education he received.​WEST END is a fast paced story with great sidebars that will keep you turning the pages all night. Get it – it’s well worth your time.Joann Hayes