Report From Practically
Nowhere (1959)
Written by John Sack
and Illustrated by Shel Silverstein
While searching
through the Advanced Book Exchange to see if I could get a good deal on Different Dances (which I still don't own, by the way: anyone want to help me out?)
I came across this book. Now, I'd found out a whole lot about Shel and his output by this point (May 3, 1999) but I'd never heard of this particular book.
So, on impulse, I ordered it and did some further research.
John Sack was born in 1930 in New York. He attended Harvard, graduating in 1951, and subsequently headed off to the Pacific to fight in the Korean War among the Army Reserves. At age twenty-two he
published his first book, The Butcher (1952), an account of how mountain climbers managed to tackle Yerupaja, then the only unclimbed mountain in the Americas. The next year he was on the staff of the Pacific Stars and Stripes for most of his army career, around the same
time that Silverstein was submitting cartoons three times a week for the army paper. Sack's second
book, From Here to Shimbashi (1955), a humorous account of Army life in Korea, was published by Harper & Brothers soon after he left
the army, following which he started writing short pieces for magazines like Harper's, Holiday,
The New Yorker, and Playboy.
Report from Practically Nowhere is a collection of 13 short pieces, most of which appeared
previously in Playboy starting in 1955. Each section describes Sack's descriptions and
observations of a tiny country that few people (then) had ever heard of. Of course, most people are
now familiar with countries like Lichenstein, Monaco, San Marino, and Andorra. Well, at least I have
heard of them. But some of the others--Athos(which made me think of other lost Musketeers) Amb, Swat, and
Lundy are unknown to say the least. In fact, I wonder if they even exist anymore, or at least some of
them might have been renamed. In any case, this book is a travelling memoir, as Sack visits these
hidden places and shows Americans (and other inhabitants of the Western World, or at least those
that had access to Playboy) what they are all about.
Silverstein's contribution to Report from Practically Nowhere is somewhat subdued. The
cover is his, of a man staring up, up, up at a country sitting on a hill that looks dangerously close to
falling over and toppling the poor sightseer. I was somewhat surprised that in 232 pages of text, there
were perhaps 20 drawings that I counted. Most of them were just direct illustration of text, but
sometimes Silverstein got in a good joke; like a picture of an incredibly busy street with the caption
of, "Why do I live here? Because it's quiet!". There is one particularly bizarre illustration of a
nobleman staring down the length of a toilet, but I am sure that will be explained once I read the
related chapter more closely.
In any case, Report from Practically Nowhere will be reprinted by backinprint.com in the next month or two. You can find out more info about the release of this book, and also about the life and career of John Sack, at his website.
After the publication of Report from Practically Nowhere, it seems that Silverstein and Sack didn't exactly stay in touch, beyond going to the occasional party or two. Later, Sack became a prominent contributor to Esquire
magazine, which published some pieces that would later become the Vietnam testimonial M
(1967) and the biography of Lieutenant Calley (in his own words), which was published in 1971 to a great deal of controversy, considering the touchy subject matter, as many felt Sack's book was far too sympathetic to the man who has been chiefly blamed for the My Lai massacre in Vietnam.
Two other books--The Man-Eating Machine (1973) and Fingerprint: An Uncommon Autobiography (1983) would be published afterwards, but Sack's piece de resistance was the 1993 book "An Eye for an Eye", which detailed his
research into the possibility that after the Holocaust, 80,000 Germans and Poles (and possibly other
nationals) died at the hands of some Jews who were acting on a vigilante mission. The book was
published in haste after Sack appeared on 60 Minutes, and was subject to such controversy
that it went out of print after only 4 years, and resulted in various cancellations of speaking
engagements, most notably at the Holocaust Museum in Washington in 1997. Luckily, An Eye for an Eye has made its way back into print, and undoubtedly the controversy surrounding its publication and content will rage once more.
I am continually amazed by the fact that Shel Silverstein seemed to
associate with people who were not only as interesting as he was but are as random a group as I have ever
heard of. Of course, when one had a career spanning over 45 years and involved so many different
creative outlets, one is bound to meet up with interesting people all over the place.
Back