Juicy, fascinating ... The Sullivanians is disjointed and sometimes repetitive, and it probably takes too many liberties in reconstructing word-for-word hearsay quotations dating back forty years or more. This is not a sleek or felicitous work, but it scarcely matters when so much of the reporting is this good, the story this pulpy and bizarre, the human behavior on display so appalling.
He gives us a keen bird’s-eye view ... Stille recounts with an almost claustrophobic intimacy ... A major amusement of The Sullivanians is how it conjures the bad old days of New York City in all its lurid colors ... A fascinating study of group dynamics and a highly competent historical account. Its only flaw, narratively speaking, is that this key party of self-actualizers features no particular cheerable hero or heroine — only survivors with varying degrees of rue, blinking as the light of hindsight intensifies.
Wonderful and troubling ... It is perfectly emblematic of the strange magic of Stille’s narrative style. He is a meticulous, dispassionate journalist and researcher, his tone calm and measured to a degree that it can feel almost cold. Yet within it is a warmth and compassion not just for human frailty and foibles, but for the hope people feel about their future, about their potential. It is a voice particularly sensitive to, and very good at portraying, youthful hope.
A dive into a little-known story ... Thoroughly researched...The Sullivanians is a valuable and comprehensive history of an American experiment in communal living. That said, this is not a work of literary nonfiction: The prose is straight-ahead, and in a story so ripe for rich scene-setting, few scenes are fleshed out or sensory details evoked. At times the book drags due to redundant quotes and anecdotes.
[An] amazing excavation ... Looming over the entire saga is the question of why anybody would go along with this lunacy, in some cases sticking it out for decades. It’s a question Stille addresses at many points in the book, and to which he offers different answers, depending on the individual ... Stille points out that the institute emerged at a time of ethically dubious psychological research, and draws interesting parallels with the Milgram and Stanford Prison experiments.
Many reporters claim to surface an under-told story, but Stille truly delivers ... Stille offers an exuberant and often moving journalistic account of how this project turned cultic, but he never quite seems to care that the cult started as a utopian Marxist-Freudian project —save that it adds to the wacko factor. Stille’s sometimes pat understandings of Freud and psychoanalysis leave a hole at the center of the story. This is not to say that Stille should have been a better historian, but without taking the particularities of Freud and psychotherapy seriously, the Sullivanians could be seen as a run-of-the-mill cult.
One of the most astonishing aspects of this story is the way it shows the practice of psychotherapy blurring into a form of social control ... Stille’s book and the story of the Sullivanians raise questions about just what we are seeking when we go to a therapist for help.
Stille interviewed multiple Sullivanians and poured over personal papers and court documents to develop a linear account of the group’s astonishing rise and decline. Readers will appreciate this in-depth, endlessly absorbing history of an obscure cult.
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay[/caption]
