The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace (audible) is the amazing story of Robert Peace, a prodigy who grew up in inner city Newark, got into Yale, excelled there and ended up dead as a drug dealer back in Newark.
It’s a journey into a world that I’ve never really known, except for the Yale section which seems pretty accurate. The author, Jeff Hobbs, Rob’s Yale roommate wrote this story mainly to understand what happened to Rob and to share it with others. After Rob’s funeral, many people saw this amazing man as just another drug dealer but Jeff started getting so many stories that he decided to write a book. Jeff does the most amazing job digging through the story. He interviews Rob’s drug dealer friends who were forbidden from attending the wedding. He interviewed Rob’s boss when he was a drug dealer. He interviewed Yale masters and deans. And he got a whole lot of material from Rob’s secret society friends who he’d told his life story.
What’s amazing is that as much as you’d like the author to give an answer, he doesn’t. It’s frustrating but makes it that much more worthwhile. It’s a book about listening, not talking. Jeff talks about not giving answers here:
Maria Popova talks about how rare it is to not give answers and live with uncertainty in the first of her 10 Learnings from 10 Years of Brain Pickings. She says that we live in a culture where people are pressured to have an opinion, even when they have no basis for that opinion. Because they’re uncomfortable saying “I don’t know,” they fake it and just regurgitate something they read or saw on TV. They don’t invest the time to truly have their own opinion because they don’t feel comfortable staying in that nebulous zone of uncertainty. But, she says, “It’s infinitely more rewarding to understand than to be right — even if that means changing your mind about a topic, an ideology, or, above all, yourself.” For a great little blog post on the value of uncertainty, read Maria’s musing on John Keats and “Negative Capability.”
If you want to see the opposite, take a look at this guy who thinks he has the answer. In one of the most jarring questions I’ve seen in a long time, he wants Jeff to comment on his theory that Rob Peace had a death wish. It’s clear that the questioner is not comfortable living with uncertainty.
Read the book and wallow in this unfamiliar space with wonderful characters, no answers and no heroes.