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The Crow and The Eagle: A True Fable
Author: John Danenbarger
Illustrations by: William Cloutman
Publisher: Stormblock Publishing
Published: 2003
Pages: 58; Binding: Hardcover
Price: $19.95/CAN$29.50
(Order Here)
Best Attribute: Bob Turley Story; Inspirational Thinking
Worst Attribute: Bird-brained gimmick; Pricey |
Once Upon A Time, Aesop told fables using animals to avoid being put to death by the rulers of his city-state in ancient Greece.
It is unlikely that anyone will do in Mr. Danenbarger for telling the tale of Bob Turley, the Cy Young winning Yankees pitcher who went on to found the term insurance giants A.L Williams/Primerica. Yet for using the device of a fable to do it, we might want to slap him in writers' irons and send him to the literary brig for a week or two.
"The Crow and the Eagle" is part fable, part business book, part inspirational, part Horatio Alger story, part sports biography. That's a lot to work into a crisp 58 pages that, like Turley himself, ultimately succeeds along the way through a few failures.
The book is divided into two parts: The "Feather Tale" and "Visits"
Feather Tale
"Feather Tale" is the fable of a crow and an eagle who meet in a deep elm tree. The eagle tells the crow that he too, was a crow once. He offers the crow a glimpse at what it takes to be an eagle by telling the story of "Bob" (Yankees great Bob Turley) who persevered through a tough neighborhood and few breaks because he could visualize himself as a professional baseball player, and later, as a successful businessman.
The crow wants to keep his beak to the grindstone, but becomes interested in knowing more about Bob and why he prospered. Secretly he wouldn't mind being an eagle either, we come to find out.
Jonathan Livingston Seagull this is not. The dialogue of the crow and eagle is stilted and a forced at times: Dialogue is not Danenbarger's strong suit. Many passages of the crow's are painful, bordering on the stereotypical. Fortunately he's just the foil for the eagle's pronouncements about success, so his gawks and barbs are mercifully short.
It is the eagle who provides us with a saving grace.
For when he starts to tell the sub-plot of Bob Turley's life through the eagle's astute eyes, Danenbarger becomes less self-conscious of the devices of the fable.
Free from the fetters of bird-brained dialogue, it soars through the tale of this great pitcher's early years and his rise to success through self belief in the face of adversity.
The eagle's tale gives us a look at Turley as a person who did not let his short burst of sports fame consume the rest of his life. He went on, through trial and error, to succeed in the insurance business by creating demand for a new insurance product, term life. His achievement came as much through his honesty and his great character as it did from his hard work and his nurture of a great, out-of-the-box idea that revolutionized the insurance industry.
The Turley portion of the story is such a good read that it only makes you more painfully aware of the device of the fable every time that Danenbarger has to bring us out of the spell of a great life story and baseball tale to return to the gimmick that transitions the "fable" from short chapter to short chapter.
The crow's tale unfolds in just 30 pages. Danenbarger never fleshes out the crow or the eagle to give them enough substance that we care much about the either of them, or how Bob's story is a motivator for either of their lives. The message of the fable is quite simple: Crows are those of us who stay where we are, afraid to move forward. Eagles soar, think out of the box, play for the Yankees, and run great insurance companies.
If they ever put a quiz in at the end of the book, please check "Eagle" under "What do you want to be when you grow up?"
Turley's tale is what keeps you reading through the fable. The next 19 pages move into a new section that is uplifting and inspirational.
Visits
In Visits are boxed Turley's thoughts on subjects as wide-ranging as "Life" to Turley's takes on greats like Whitey Ford and Mickey Mantle. Each thought is followed by an eagle's-eye and crow's-eye point of view on Turley's takes. It's a bit jarring since the crow is changed by the story in the previous section, yet makes crow-like pronouncements about Turley's philosophies in the second section.
Our Take
Oh, for an editor who could take Danenbarger under his wing, pun intended, for a little advice and some badly-needed focus.
An inspirational tale, it would have made a great book even at more than double its length. He should have worked it a bit more to flesh out the fable to make it as rich and meaningful as the Turley sub-plot, and incorporate some of the stories of "Visits" into chapters that elucidate the eagle's story a bit more fully and a bit better.
Many of Danenbarger's observations are astute and to the point. Even in its brevity, the author clearly delivers the essence of the powerful ideas for living and success in Turley's life story that moved him to write the book.
In spite of the gimmick, Danenbarger's bio of Bob Turley and his takes on Turley's wit and wisdom in the second section make the book soar above its limitations, and, like its hero, succeed in the face of a bit of self-inflicted adversity.
Cloutman's illustrations between the covers are simple and effective. The front cover art, though, looks a little too pencil-rough and should undergo an upgrade in another printing, in our opinion.
"The Crow and the Eagle" has only one other crow-like limitation: Its hefty $19.95 price for a concise 58 pages sitting under hard-cover. We would give it a whole extra thumbs up (to three out of five) for a more realistically priced hardback or a nifty paperback alternative.
- Brian Ross
