J. EDGAR HOOVER: A GRAPHIC BIOGRAPHY

Rick Geary deploys his customary storytelling techniques — both haunting visual effects and careful research — in another series launched last year at Hill and Wang, for whom the cartoonist produced a biography, J. Edgar Hoover (102 6x9-inch pages, b/w; hardcover, $16.95). The high points in the career of the obsessive bureaucratic crime fighter are detailed and the concomitant evolution of the Federal Bureau of Investigation is traced as Hoover became a more and more ominous figure in the corridors of power, a keeper of files with the potential to blackmail even presidents. Hoover’s jealousies and feuds, his prejudices and irrationalities, his abuse of power and privilege are fully illuminated; likewise his possessive image-conscious attitude toward the FBI. It was largely his creation, but that scarcely justified his forcing Melvin Purvis out when Purvis proved more of a media celebrity in the crime-fighting 1930s than Hoover. “In the official histories of the Bureau, Purvis’ name would never be mentioned.”

About two allegations, Geary asserts he could find no evidence in support. Hoover was reluctant to take on organized crime, perhaps, it was once supposed, because the Mafia had something on him, something with which he was blackmailed into silence and inaction. “No evidence for this has ever been discovered,” Geary says. Hoover never married, lived with his mother until her death, and made a life-long intimate of his bachelor assistant, Clyde Tolson, even going on vacation together. The other canard Geary addresses is the allegation that Hoover was a cross-dresser or transvestite, if not homosexual as well, according to a story about his supposed appearance in dress and wig, requesting to be called “Mary,” at a private party in New York’s Plaza Hotel. But for Geary, the story is without merit. “Told by a single unreliable witness, it seemed, to many, out of character for the obsessively secretive Hoover.” More likely, Hoover simply suppressed his sexuality: “as an authoritarian personality, he was fearful of his own sexuality and would actively suppress any such desires.” Another Geary biography is due in the fall from Hill and Wang, this one about Leon Trotsky, the Russian revolutionary ousted and ultimately assassinated by the Communist Party of Joseph Stalin.