Esil's Reviews > The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace: A Brilliant Young Man Who Left Newark for the Ivy League
The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace: A Brilliant Young Man Who Left Newark for the Ivy League
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I'm trying to sort through my reaction to The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace. Jeff Hobbs writes about his former Yale roommate, Rob Peace, who was tragically killed at age of 30 likely as a result of his involvement in the drug trade. Robert was African American and grew up in a very low income crime ridden part of New Jersey. Hobbs recounts in meticulous detail Rob's life -- the neighbourhood he grew up in, his single mother's love and dedication, his bond with his father even after he was sent to jail on first degree murder charges, his multiple childhood friends, his education at Saint Benedict's high school, his admission and attendance at Yale, and the years after graduation when he worked at many jobs and was constantly angling to make money in part to feed his generosity to family and friends. Hobbs works hard to depict Rob's circumstances, what he did throughout his life and the minutia of many of his interactions with all the people with whom he came into contact. We know that he was incredibly smart, sailing easily through high school and Yale, was very dedicated to friends and family, loved traveling, had an element of aimlessness and despite his crazy intelligence was quite capable of making really stupid decisions. And all of this is fascinating and kept my interest as I faithfully listened to this book on audio. But in the end, I am left with the feeling that something is missing. I'm still not sure that I know Rob particularly well -- I am not sure that Hobbs -- who clearly had a lot of respect and love for his friend -- was ever able to access what made Rob tick. Perhaps Hobbs' own life experience and circumstances which are so different from Rob's mean that it was hard for him to access and really get at Rob's inner world. Or perhaps Rob was a guarded person that no one really got to know. But I'm left with a feeling of disconnect between the detailed account of Rob's like and the feeling that I never really got to know him. I do appreciate that Hobbs has not turned this book into a polemic about race and class. There's a lot of food for thought in Robert Peace's story about these issues -- but maybe in the end Hobbs' gift to Rob and his family and friends is that he's not merely portrayed as the sum total of his socioeconomic circumstances or as a statistic -- he was a complex guy -- so smart and "so fucking dumb" as one of his friends put it. The course of his life what not pre ordained by his initial circumstances -- his path to the end of his life is a complex mixture of circumstance, personality, family and choice.
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Reading Progress
February 18, 2015
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to-read
February 18, 2015
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August 24, 2015
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Started Reading
September 19, 2015
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So what do you think was the authors purpose in writing Robert Pearce's tragic life? Is it a cautionary tale? A quest for answers about what went wrong? An attempt to sav..."
Thanks Iris. That's partially what I found perplexing about the book. Apparently, at the time of Rob's death there was a fair bit of publicity and the author comments that there was a bit of a tendency in the press to say that you can't take the "hood" out of the kid. I think Hobbs was partially motivated to to show that there's far more to Robert -- and his friends and family -- than the stereotype of the neighbourhood he comes from. But I still felt like there was some analysis missing in Hobbs' approach to the story. It is hard to see this as a cautionary tale because Rob comes across as very unusual -- a very combination of smart, charming, dedicated to friends and family, arrogant, and lacking in a certain amount of savvy or sense of mortality.



Great review, Esil.

Thanks Bill. My 4 stars signal that it is definitely worth reading. And unlike a few negative comments on GR, I felt that the author approached this sincerely. My quibble may simply be with something intractable

Thanks Carol. Yes, it was definitely worth reading. The story of Rob's path is definitely interesting

Great review, Esil."
Thanks Dianne. I think you're right. Given that 400 hundred people showed up for his funeral, he touched many lives, but he definitely seemed to keep a lot to himself
So what do you think was the authors purpose in writing Robert Pearce's tragic life? Is it a cautionary tale? A quest for answers about what went wrong? An attempt to saving others from making the same mistakes?
I'll be curious to hear what you think...