LOYALTIES by Carl Bernstein; Simon & Schuster; 262 pages; $18.95
In the 15 years since he helped topple a President, Carl Bernstein has become famous more as a celebrity than as a journalist. He has been pictured on the gossip pages with a procession of notable women. He was portrayed by Dustin Hoffman in All the President's Men, based on the Watergate book he co- authored with Bob Woodward, and, as a fictional character, by Jack Nicholson in Heartburn, based on a cleverly barbed novel by his former wife, Nora Ephron. All the while, he was waging an off-and-on struggle with a project that he described to friends as "an account of the witch-hunts leading up to the McCarthy era."
Now the book is finally out, and it turns out to be far more personal than that. It is a candid and powerful inquiry into his parents, their union activities during the 1940s and their secret membership in the Communist Party. As Bernstein explains to his father, "It's a very personal book. It's not a history book at all." In fact, it is a book about writing a book, a book about Bernstein writing the book that his parents did not want him to write.
A good memoir should produce shocks of recognition that are both intimate and historical, revealing truths about a person and about his times. Bernstein provides both, in abundance. Juxtaposing excerpts from declassified FBI files with tales of a childhood thrown into turmoil by the early postwar Red scares, he has created a new genre -- what might be called the investigative memoir. It combines the journalistic thrill of Watergate with the emotional punch of that most basic of literary themes, a boy's search to understand his father.
Bernstein, who was born in 1944, recounts his Washington childhood in a family of politically progressive Jews. Upon returning from the Army at the end of World War II, his father Alfred became active as an organizer for the United Public Workers of America, a left-wing union representing federal employees. After President Truman, in an effort to satisfy political pressures, issued the loyalty order of 1947, the elder Bernstein's life was dominated by defending public workers summoned before the loyalty boards and accused of being Communists.
Soon his parents' loyalty was questioned. In 1951, in front of a Senate committee, Alfred invoked the Fifth Amendment when asked if he was a member of the Communist Party. His wife Sylvia, also active in progressive causes, did the same three years later in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee. The family found itself shunned by many of its neighbors, friends and even relatives. The FBI kept the Bernsteins under surveillance for years (Bernstein's bar mitzvah is duly described), accumulating 2,500 pages of files that pop up in the book.