Finished the audiobook abridgement of A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France, and the Birth of America, by Stacy Schiff. It tells the tale of Benjamin Franklin’s mission to France after the…
Finished the audiobook abridgement of A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France, and the Birth of America, by Stacy Schiff. It tells the tale of Benjamin Franklin’s mission to France after the Declaration of Independence is signed, throughout the Revolution, and beyond. It’s an interesting subject matter, but a mixed bag as a book.
Franklin’s mission was hobbled the entire time by the combination of fierce infighting between different American factions, Colonial ambivalence as to how close we should actually get to France, trans-Atlantic communication lags (particularly during wartime), Congressional disarray and inexperience and parsimony, and France’s separate interests (along with its Bourbon ally, Spain) against England that made it less of an ally than a co-belligerent. Franklin’s health, his inclination more toward brilliant synthesis than management details, and his not-infrequent unwillingness to confront when needed or back down when needed, also caused problems.
On the plus side, though, was that very intellect, coupled Franklin’s incredible charm, and an unexpected but delightful adulation Franklin met in France (which treated him as a Socrates from the Frontier, though that fan following further alienated those Americans already ill-disposed to Franklin and/or France). Franklin both enjoyed that lionization and exploited it; arguably, it was the only asset that the American mission had at times, and made up for the prickliness and rough edges of the other diplomats-in-training that the US sent there, including Arthur Lee and John Adams. The French, though having their own ambitions, were definitely interested in anything that would cause England problems. And Franklin, though untrained as a diplomat (which came back to bite him more than once), managed to play that interest into money and supplies (and, eventually, troops and ships) that the Colonies desperately needed — though, at times, the factionalism and greed in those about Franklin, as well as his own inexperience and dislike for administrative detail, led to both money and material languishing on French docks.
Franklin never received, in his lifetime, full credit for what he’d done in France, criticized heavily in Congress by his enemies as decadent, dissolute, co-opted, or just plain malicious — which rivals included Lee and Adams. While the French treated his departure from France as a grand tragedy, and his death as an occasion for apotheosis, his return to the US met with very little official notice, his efforts and expenses went unrewarded, and his death was treated as diffidently by Congress (if not the populace) as was possible.
One final irony, when all is said and done, is that Franklin’s mission to France — resulting in a major war effort, major loans, and outright gifts, little of which was ever paid back by the US — ended up bankrupting that country. That, in turn, required Louis XVI to call the French legislature, which started the ball rolling toward the bloody French Revolution, for whom Franklin was an absent founding saint (and of which Franklin would have been horrified).
Schiff tells this story in detail (abridged over eight discs), but the book has problems, the biggest of which is the presentation. Schiff is breathless. Every sentence practically screams for an exclamation point, cranked up to 11 whether it needs to be or not. Every paragraph drips with absolutes and hyperbole, and is gaily festooned with metaphor and simile. Rather than be presented with the facts, we are meant to be incessantly transported by them.
This effect is aided and abetted, though not caused, by the dramatic reading of Jason Culp, who comes across as an enthusiastic DJ to Schiff’s prose, introducing Franklin’s life like it was the next item in the Top Ten Countdown. Culp’s reading is clear but rapid (though with a lack of gaps between some sentences that sounds like a recording artifact), and his use of accents and voices for the major players is only occasionally distracting.
Schiff’s book also comes across in an odd stream-of-consciousness fashion — not quite chronological, but also not thematic. Things happen, players come and go, events occur, Franklin acts or reacts. There’s little that draws the narrative together, minimal analysis or relationship from one part of the tale to the other, aside from the introduction and conclusion. As a result, the final picture of Franklin, the other cast, and the events themselves, feels muddied and indistinct. In some ways, that probably echoes how the mission itself went, but as a retelling it left me somewhat pleased as I popped the last disc in.
I’d give this book a B-, and the audio presentation of it the same.
