Having come to distrust the people who write book jacket summaries and create blurbs designed to catch a buyer's eye, I must say that "Through hell and high water" is perfectly apt for Beth Groundwater's new mystery, Deadly Currents.
While the rest of us have days when we wished we'd never gotten out of bed, and every now and then a wave of bad luck or karma swamps us but few can compete with Mandy Tanner's first few days on her new job as a river ranger. Groundwater launches this first entry in her new mystery series the way a starter's gun begins a kayak race and the action carries the reader along until, all too quickly, the final page is reached.
As a river ranger for the Arkansas Headwaters Recreation Area (AHRA), Mandy's landed her dream job; living in beautiful Salida, Colorado she is in the middle a year-round, outdoor activity paradise. But she's got to cope with a pair of deaths that threaten her job while her need to bring a killer to justice threaten her life.
Whitewater tour guides and local townspeople come to life, plenty of conflict is created and the sparks definitely fly. Mandy's feisty personality and need to do things herself requires she hold her own, first with her beloved Uncle Bill, who raised her after the accident that took her parents' lives and wants Mandy to continue working for his outfitting business. Then there's David, her older brother who's an accountant in Colorado Springs and feels guilty about letting Uncle Bill take responsibility for Mandy. Among the authority figures around whom Mandy needs to thread her way are her boss, Head River Ranger Steve Hadley, and Sheriff's Detective Victor Quintana who cooperates with the rangers but understandably has a few reservations about this young woman. Not least is the wanting-to-be-helpful, endlessly patient, and occasionally misunderstood guy in her life, Rob Juarez.
Placing Mandy in a real location which the author knows well and vividly describes, Groundwater deftly works Salida's signature event, FIBArk (per its website, anyway http://www.fibark.net/) into the novel's climax. Any questions about Salida as a picture perfect location for adventure and mystery will be erased by this round-up of "Time Warp Towns" from CNBC (http://travel.yahoo.com/p-interests-38846833)
Deadly Currents should appeal to fans of Nevada Barr's inimitable National Park Service mysteries with its awesome protagonist Park Ranger, Anna Pigeon. All in all, Beth Groundwater has created a winning combination of location and character that bodes well for the forthcoming titles in her Rocky Mountain Adventures mystery series from Midnight Ink. Look for the next one, Wicked Eddies, in Spring 2012.
Sunday, March 20, 2011
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Racing the Enemy: Stalin, Truman and the Surrender of Japan
Tsuyoshi Hasegawa (Professor of History and Director of the Center for Cold War Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara) has made an important contribution to the study of the final months of World War II and sets the stage for the next global conflict, the Cold War. Like S.M. Plokhy in The Price of Peace, Hasegawa draws upon documentation recently released from the archives of the former Soviet Union to examine that nation's relationship with its Allies and, in this case, the USSR's subsequent military activity in the Pacific.
Hasegawa moves deftly among a polyglot of official sources, memoirs, diaries, etc. be their origin Russian, American, Japanese, British and other participant.
The Potsdam Conference met after Germany's uncoditional surrender so the European portion of the war was over but some of the fiercest fighting in the Pacific continued. Japan prepared to fight to the last to prevent an invasion of the Home Islands and/or any change in the relationship between the Emperor and Japanese nation. At Yalta, Franklin Delano Roosevelt had tried to extract a firm commitment from Josef Stalin regarding the Soviet Union's entry into the war against Japan; Stalin said he would wait until after Germany's defeat.
FDR's successor, Harry Truman, was also very interested in the Soviet Union's plans for the Pacific but he attended Potsdam knowing that the U.S. was about to begin testing an unimaginably powerful new weapon, the atomic bomb. He undoubtedly shared some information with Winston Churchill who would have passed it on to Anthony Eden. How much their successors in the new Labour government, Prime Minister Clement Attlee and Foreign Minister Ernest Bevin, knew (or had absorbed) by the time the conference wound down doesn't come up. It's clear Attlee and Bevin had turned their attention to rebuilding their own war-devastated country; they were willing to let Truman, Stalin, Chiang Kai-Shek et al. deal with Japan.
Stalin played the old Neutrality Pact with Japan for all it was worth, buying time to move Soviet forces and equipment to their Far Eastern borders. The Soviets created the appearance of getting Chinese approval for a division of territories in Mongolia, Manchria and Korea. Meanwhile Truman and his advisors debated their options, the possible Russian replies, American public opinion and their desire to demonstrate the new superweapon. The geography of the Kurile Islands and the names of a few key bodies of water proved somewhat baffling to both the Russians and the Americans. Incredulously, the Japanese clung to a belief that the Russians would mediate for them and so the diplomats continued to meet, even as the Soviet troops crossed the borders and ignored white flags of surrender.
Wikipedia has an excellent article, citing numerous authorities on the subject:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrender_of_Japan
While Japan's surrender is not in doubt, the events leading up to it and following it, continue to be a source of debate. Professor Hasegawa use of available archival documents from the three major participants - Japan, Russia and the United States - fleshes out the key individuals involved and creates a dramatic thriller firmly grounded in scholarship. That is quite a feat.
Hasegawa moves deftly among a polyglot of official sources, memoirs, diaries, etc. be their origin Russian, American, Japanese, British and other participant.
The Potsdam Conference met after Germany's uncoditional surrender so the European portion of the war was over but some of the fiercest fighting in the Pacific continued. Japan prepared to fight to the last to prevent an invasion of the Home Islands and/or any change in the relationship between the Emperor and Japanese nation. At Yalta, Franklin Delano Roosevelt had tried to extract a firm commitment from Josef Stalin regarding the Soviet Union's entry into the war against Japan; Stalin said he would wait until after Germany's defeat.
FDR's successor, Harry Truman, was also very interested in the Soviet Union's plans for the Pacific but he attended Potsdam knowing that the U.S. was about to begin testing an unimaginably powerful new weapon, the atomic bomb. He undoubtedly shared some information with Winston Churchill who would have passed it on to Anthony Eden. How much their successors in the new Labour government, Prime Minister Clement Attlee and Foreign Minister Ernest Bevin, knew (or had absorbed) by the time the conference wound down doesn't come up. It's clear Attlee and Bevin had turned their attention to rebuilding their own war-devastated country; they were willing to let Truman, Stalin, Chiang Kai-Shek et al. deal with Japan.
Stalin played the old Neutrality Pact with Japan for all it was worth, buying time to move Soviet forces and equipment to their Far Eastern borders. The Soviets created the appearance of getting Chinese approval for a division of territories in Mongolia, Manchria and Korea. Meanwhile Truman and his advisors debated their options, the possible Russian replies, American public opinion and their desire to demonstrate the new superweapon. The geography of the Kurile Islands and the names of a few key bodies of water proved somewhat baffling to both the Russians and the Americans. Incredulously, the Japanese clung to a belief that the Russians would mediate for them and so the diplomats continued to meet, even as the Soviet troops crossed the borders and ignored white flags of surrender.
Wikipedia has an excellent article, citing numerous authorities on the subject:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrender_of_Japan
While Japan's surrender is not in doubt, the events leading up to it and following it, continue to be a source of debate. Professor Hasegawa use of available archival documents from the three major participants - Japan, Russia and the United States - fleshes out the key individuals involved and creates a dramatic thriller firmly grounded in scholarship. That is quite a feat.
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
The Shah and I
Asadollah Alam (1919-1978) served as Prime Minister of Iran from 1962 to 1964 and then was appointed Chancellor of Shiraz University. From that post he got bumped upstairs, so to speak, to serve as Minister of Court until ill health forced his retirement in 1977.
Alam was a member of an aristocratic Iranian family whose wealth and titles predated the upstart Pahlavis. He befriended Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who went on to succeed his father, Reza, as Shah of Iran when the British and Americans forced Reza to abdicate. As a trusted friend and political advisor, with connections to Parliament, the diplomatic community, the university, and world leaders on every continent, Alam was the Shah's conduit for nearly all the daily affairs of Iran, not to mention those of the Pahlavi family and their personal circle.
A diligent diarist (the best kind) Alam covers the years 1969 to 1977 with near daily entries, some quite detailed and candid. Each volumes was deposited by Alam annually in a Swiss bank. After his death, his wife and children retrieved the diaries and eventually arranged for their translation and publication. It must have been difficult for the Alam family to share these diaries, given the frequency with which Asadollah mentions spending time with his lover (never named) and other more casual encounters with young women often during those times he and the Shah got away from the confines of the palaces.
According to the introductory notes, the diaries were edited only to remove repetitive details of court life and in a few cases to suppress the names of individuals who were still living in Iran when the book was publishes. The end result is an unusually comprehensive document covering the last years of the Shah's reign representing personal and official perspectives. Chief among the virtues of this book are the diarist's less than diplomatic private reactions to the oil company executives, diplomats, military leaders, politicians, the rich and the famous, in office or out, who made Tehran a regular stop on jet-set itineraries and junkets.
Alam sincerely admired the Shah's accomplishments as a political leader. What's more he considered him to be the personification of the nation of Iran in much the same way the Russian Tsar or the Emperor of Japan were once held to be in their respective homelands. It's amusing to read about Alam and the Shah's efforts to predict the outcomes of party nominations and presidential elections and their resultant dealings with all the new people each successive president would appoint.
As the years go by Alam becomes increasingly careful how and when he presents new approaches to old problem. The result is that just when flexibility and speed are critical, the government slows down, awaiting one person to be deemed to be in a receptive mood. It's impossible to say how much Alam actually succeeded in moderating the Shah's opinions and ideas which grew increasingly conservative as the years passed. OTOH, it's fair so say he helped lower the Shah's blood pressure and ease those final years on the throne somewhat.
By the mid 1970's Alam's growing awareness of unrest that went much deeper than complaints about profiteering by local businesses or efforts to pin the "blame" on a few "leftists" aping the student demonstrations of American and Western European students of the previous decade. From this point on entries express increasing frustration with his inability to get the Shah to take steps to solve the problems, to share governance with elected officials, to curb the activities of the SAVAK or to allow a more representative government.
Alas, despite his sense that a storm was developing, he never accurately judged where it was coming from. It's pointless to speculate what his reactions would have bee had he lived 2 or 3 more years but a reader unfamiliar with the overthrow of the Shah and the establishment of a theocratic form of government in Iran could be excused if he or she were dumbfounded that the Pahlavi dynasty fell as a result of a growing Islamic fundamentalism. As described in the diaries Alam and the Shah were of one opinion --that Iran had successfully transitioned to a secular nation and with religious leaders united in support of the Pahlavi regime.
For a 2010 look at the situation in Tehran, take a look at this: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/16/100816fa_fact_anderson
I think Alam would have been pleased to learn that people are still hiking (and perhaps still riding horseback) in his beloved Alborz Mountains.
Alam was a member of an aristocratic Iranian family whose wealth and titles predated the upstart Pahlavis. He befriended Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who went on to succeed his father, Reza, as Shah of Iran when the British and Americans forced Reza to abdicate. As a trusted friend and political advisor, with connections to Parliament, the diplomatic community, the university, and world leaders on every continent, Alam was the Shah's conduit for nearly all the daily affairs of Iran, not to mention those of the Pahlavi family and their personal circle.
A diligent diarist (the best kind) Alam covers the years 1969 to 1977 with near daily entries, some quite detailed and candid. Each volumes was deposited by Alam annually in a Swiss bank. After his death, his wife and children retrieved the diaries and eventually arranged for their translation and publication. It must have been difficult for the Alam family to share these diaries, given the frequency with which Asadollah mentions spending time with his lover (never named) and other more casual encounters with young women often during those times he and the Shah got away from the confines of the palaces.
According to the introductory notes, the diaries were edited only to remove repetitive details of court life and in a few cases to suppress the names of individuals who were still living in Iran when the book was publishes. The end result is an unusually comprehensive document covering the last years of the Shah's reign representing personal and official perspectives. Chief among the virtues of this book are the diarist's less than diplomatic private reactions to the oil company executives, diplomats, military leaders, politicians, the rich and the famous, in office or out, who made Tehran a regular stop on jet-set itineraries and junkets.
Alam sincerely admired the Shah's accomplishments as a political leader. What's more he considered him to be the personification of the nation of Iran in much the same way the Russian Tsar or the Emperor of Japan were once held to be in their respective homelands. It's amusing to read about Alam and the Shah's efforts to predict the outcomes of party nominations and presidential elections and their resultant dealings with all the new people each successive president would appoint.
As the years go by Alam becomes increasingly careful how and when he presents new approaches to old problem. The result is that just when flexibility and speed are critical, the government slows down, awaiting one person to be deemed to be in a receptive mood. It's impossible to say how much Alam actually succeeded in moderating the Shah's opinions and ideas which grew increasingly conservative as the years passed. OTOH, it's fair so say he helped lower the Shah's blood pressure and ease those final years on the throne somewhat.
By the mid 1970's Alam's growing awareness of unrest that went much deeper than complaints about profiteering by local businesses or efforts to pin the "blame" on a few "leftists" aping the student demonstrations of American and Western European students of the previous decade. From this point on entries express increasing frustration with his inability to get the Shah to take steps to solve the problems, to share governance with elected officials, to curb the activities of the SAVAK or to allow a more representative government.
Alas, despite his sense that a storm was developing, he never accurately judged where it was coming from. It's pointless to speculate what his reactions would have bee had he lived 2 or 3 more years but a reader unfamiliar with the overthrow of the Shah and the establishment of a theocratic form of government in Iran could be excused if he or she were dumbfounded that the Pahlavi dynasty fell as a result of a growing Islamic fundamentalism. As described in the diaries Alam and the Shah were of one opinion --that Iran had successfully transitioned to a secular nation and with religious leaders united in support of the Pahlavi regime.
For a 2010 look at the situation in Tehran, take a look at this: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/16/100816fa_fact_anderson
I think Alam would have been pleased to learn that people are still hiking (and perhaps still riding horseback) in his beloved Alborz Mountains.
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Dorothy L. Sayers' Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries
http://www.facebook.com/#!/photo.php?pid=1024848&id=1513218725
My latest (re)discovery - the Lord Peter Wimsey series. A few weeks ago I started with the 3 starring Edward Petherbridge and Harriet Walthers which I'd seen on PBS Mystery in the late 1980's. I even managed to do a screen capture of Peter and Bunter (using my cell phone camera) in the Lagonda and to share it on FB. Truly a gorgeous car!
Once I finished rewatching Strong Poison, Have His Carcase and Gaudy Night, I began watching the even earlier Ian Carmichael series (dating from the mid-1970's).These were also very popular when shown on PBS but I missed them (maybe MPTV didn't carry Mystery then, although more likely I just didn't have time to watch much tv then). Over the intervening years never even heard of them. None of the stories involve Harriet Vane but various members of Peter's figure with the actor who played Mr. Bellamy in Upstairs, Dowstairs as Peter's older brother, the Duke of Denver. Ian Carmichael's Wimsey is different (older, more broadly comedic) but the character is still charming and Glyn Houston's Bunter is definitely much more believable.
The series is delightful providing one can forgive mid-1970's British productions from switching between film and video (this drove me nuts watching The Pallisers on the tv back in WFB but now I watch on the much smaller computer monitor so it's not as jarring. This earlier series includes a television version of my favorite Sayers' mystery -- The Nine Tailors. Reading about the bell ringing inspired me to order a CD of Christmas carols rung on handbells which I boxed up and put in storage in Milw (nowadays I could probably go online and find all sorts of recordings of actual church bells being rung but that was before Internet access.)
My latest (re)discovery - the Lord Peter Wimsey series. A few weeks ago I started with the 3 starring Edward Petherbridge and Harriet Walthers which I'd seen on PBS Mystery in the late 1980's. I even managed to do a screen capture of Peter and Bunter (using my cell phone camera) in the Lagonda and to share it on FB. Truly a gorgeous car!
Once I finished rewatching Strong Poison, Have His Carcase and Gaudy Night, I began watching the even earlier Ian Carmichael series (dating from the mid-1970's).These were also very popular when shown on PBS but I missed them (maybe MPTV didn't carry Mystery then, although more likely I just didn't have time to watch much tv then). Over the intervening years never even heard of them. None of the stories involve Harriet Vane but various members of Peter's figure with the actor who played Mr. Bellamy in Upstairs, Dowstairs as Peter's older brother, the Duke of Denver. Ian Carmichael's Wimsey is different (older, more broadly comedic) but the character is still charming and Glyn Houston's Bunter is definitely much more believable.
The series is delightful providing one can forgive mid-1970's British productions from switching between film and video (this drove me nuts watching The Pallisers on the tv back in WFB but now I watch on the much smaller computer monitor so it's not as jarring. This earlier series includes a television version of my favorite Sayers' mystery -- The Nine Tailors. Reading about the bell ringing inspired me to order a CD of Christmas carols rung on handbells which I boxed up and put in storage in Milw (nowadays I could probably go online and find all sorts of recordings of actual church bells being rung but that was before Internet access.)
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
WHAT TO DO WHEN BLOGGING BECOMES A CHORE
Must be why I never chose to try writing for a living -- there are far more entries in the draft file than in published form. I keep telling myself I've got to clean up the file; also tell myself I've got to write up books and/or dvd's before returning them to the library.
Both of these objectives seem to be about as achievable as staying on a diet. So, rather than worry about writing up each individual title, I think I'll just include enough bib info to serve as a memory aid (life's too short to reread or rewatch all that much). I'll chip away at the file of drafts little by little and collapse entries into each other, or simply list the titles in batches. Sometimes I enjoy rereading items I wrote a while back; other times I blue pencil so much, there's no point left.
These resolutions lead me to ask -- what's with the tendency to overdo things? to keep setting the bar higher all the time? to elaborate beyond Baroque and into Rococo (the spelling just doesn't look write but I'll accept wikipedia's choice, I never could remember if the 2nd "c" went at the end of the 1st or 2nd syllable.) Is it hard-wired into the human brain? seems self-defeating after a while. Simplify, simplify, simplify -- well let's see how long I can manage this new discipline.
Both of these objectives seem to be about as achievable as staying on a diet. So, rather than worry about writing up each individual title, I think I'll just include enough bib info to serve as a memory aid (life's too short to reread or rewatch all that much). I'll chip away at the file of drafts little by little and collapse entries into each other, or simply list the titles in batches. Sometimes I enjoy rereading items I wrote a while back; other times I blue pencil so much, there's no point left.
These resolutions lead me to ask -- what's with the tendency to overdo things? to keep setting the bar higher all the time? to elaborate beyond Baroque and into Rococo (the spelling just doesn't look write but I'll accept wikipedia's choice, I never could remember if the 2nd "c" went at the end of the 1st or 2nd syllable.) Is it hard-wired into the human brain? seems self-defeating after a while. Simplify, simplify, simplify -- well let's see how long I can manage this new discipline.
Monday, March 22, 2010
Anna Pigeon Rides Again
For anyone who isn't already a fan, let me point out that Hard Truth, published in 2005, is the 13th entry in Nevada Barr's series featuring Anna Pigeon, a crime-solving National Park Service Ranger. Anna moves from park to park as she travels up the hierarchy of job classifications within the NPS and, miracle of miracles, she ages along the way. One of my least favorite things about P.D. James' Adam Dalgleish series is that, even though Adam gets promoted, he doesn't age much. In the earliest books he wasn't exactly a youngster so, by now, he ought to be the oldest copper at the Met.
Hard Truth turned out to be lucky number 13 (hey, I'm a Nevadan now) for me. I'd lost track of this series as my reading preferences shifted to non-fiction and the occasional work of literary fiction. For years before, though, mysteries and science fiction were my preferred reading material if I had time; often all I could manage were magazine and newspaper articles and the occasional essay.
More than ever I admire the way Ms. Barr keeps Anna interesting without giving in to the temptation to soften her edges or attitudes. The basic plot is believable in a ripped-from-the-headlines sort of way and the narrative moves along with enough twists and turns to warm the mystery fan's heart. I appreciate the way the author handles multiple sensitive issues. Fans know to expect a wildlife, environmental or park management/resource allocation controversy or two to crop up but Hard Truth tackles a number of social issues and moves them into the park. As always readers get a glimpse inside the workings of a real park, in this case one of the most magnificent and heavily used (due to its proximity to Denver) parks in the system -- Rocky Mountain.
Since I lived in Denver for a year and the area became a family vacation destination later on, I have great memories of visiting the park making it very easy to envision the various places inside and outside the park where the action takes place. Barr always does a good job of describing the surroundings and fitting the mystery to the natural environment but since I've never been in the Carlsbad Caverns (Blind Descent) or the Dry Tortugas (Flashback), I had to work harder to come up with the scenic images. Of course, I read them back when the World Wide Web was barely a glimmer and I used a text-based interface then, not a browser that could handle images. Trying to see what the real place looked like involved a bit of effort; luckily my library had a complete collection of National Geographic magazines.
What I especially liked in this novel was the way Barr developed the supporting characters and made one of them, Heath Jarrod, a co-equal role in telling the story. This splitting of duties allowed Barr to build the suspense as Anna and Heath pursued their separate plot threads until it all came together with a literal crash at the end. Rarely has 324 pages flown by so quickly. By the story's end, Heath is Anna's surrogate for the anger and angst Anna would normally experience and express. I think the technique worked well and I hope the author continues to explore the creation of alter ego's.
I must confess to a good deal of confusion over the course of the first few pages. I assumed Heath was male because I'd never heard the name used for a female before (it could be a diminutive for Heather but it would have to be pronounced differently than the word for the biological/geographic entity is). Fans of 1960's tv will share my recollection that Heath was the name of the character played by Lee Majors in The Big Valley.
There are 2 more Anna Pigeon mysteries to for me to read and savor before the one that's scheduled for later in 2010 rolls off the presses; I picked up No. 14 at the library earlier this week. Here's hoping Nevada Barr makes an author tour out this way -- that's definitely one event I'd make room in my calendar to attend.
Friday, March 19, 2010
"Maybe it helps orient a dancer to the...
... harsh realities of of hoofing for a buck..." so mused Jack Cole on p. 121 of Glenn Loney's 1984 biography, Unsung Genius: The Passion of Dancer-Choreographer Jack Cole.
For a while I thought I'd found the reference to this book in Puttin' on the Ritz, a biography of Fred Astaire that I'd read recently, but there are only a couple of references to Astaire and nothing about the two dancers meeting. Loney mentions that Astaire's dancing style was not Cole's and that Cole did not care for Hermes Pan's choreography. Persistence retracing my path to the book paid off and I found the link -- a 1957 motion picture starring Gregory Peck and Lauren Bacall vehicle called Designing Woman, an alternately amusing and irritating representative of the battle-of-the-sexes genre. It's redeeming features, imo, were Ms. Bacall's wardrobe and a high voltage appearance by Jack Cole in one of his few acting gigs. His memorable performance sent me in search of biographical information online and then to Glenn Loney's biography.
There's an interesting Los Angeles Times article about Jack Cole's professional relationship with Marilyn Monroe with a bit of Cole biography and other career highlights: http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/arts/la-ca-marilyn-monroe9-2009aug09,0,5569636.story?page=2
I also found a photo of Jack Cole here: http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/h?pp/PPALL:@field(NUMBER+@band(van+5a51836)) One of these days I will figure out how to add illustrations to these entries. For the moment simply getting them written and published will have to suffice.
For a while I thought I'd found the reference to this book in Puttin' on the Ritz, a biography of Fred Astaire that I'd read recently, but there are only a couple of references to Astaire and nothing about the two dancers meeting. Loney mentions that Astaire's dancing style was not Cole's and that Cole did not care for Hermes Pan's choreography. Persistence retracing my path to the book paid off and I found the link -- a 1957 motion picture starring Gregory Peck and Lauren Bacall vehicle called Designing Woman, an alternately amusing and irritating representative of the battle-of-the-sexes genre. It's redeeming features, imo, were Ms. Bacall's wardrobe and a high voltage appearance by Jack Cole in one of his few acting gigs. His memorable performance sent me in search of biographical information online and then to Glenn Loney's biography.
There's an interesting Los Angeles Times article about Jack Cole's professional relationship with Marilyn Monroe with a bit of Cole biography and other career highlights: http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/arts/la-ca-marilyn-monroe9-2009aug09,0,5569636.story?page=2
I also found a photo of Jack Cole here: http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/h?pp/PPALL:@field(NUMBER+@band(van+5a51836)) One of these days I will figure out how to add illustrations to these entries. For the moment simply getting them written and published will have to suffice.
Backing up to Brandy III
OK, now I've had a chance to read Antiques Flee Market, the predecessor to Barbara Allan's Antiques Bizarre which I which I blogged about last week.
A great sigh of relief because here's the Brandy Borne I liked so much better. It's probably fitting I read these 2 entries in the Trash 'n' Treasures Mystery series out of order because I've been out of order all week long. The switch to DST derailed my adjustment from Central to Pacific Standard Time. You'd think that getting back an hour would have helped, but it hasn't so I'm going to blame it all on finishing Surely Your Joking, Mr. Feynman and The Beat of a Different Drum (more about those later.)
I loved Antiques Flee Market; I thought the whodunnit was better and appreciated hearing more about characters introduced in earlier books who were missing or walk-ons in Antiques Bizarre. Best of all, the 3rd volume showcased Brandy in all her relationship hits and misses, high-gear shopping expeditions, high-end designer name obsessions, Prozac insulation, etc., etc.
Giving Vivian 2 whole chapters in this book was super. Featuring her latest theatre production was so much better than just reading Brandy's acerbic comments on the doings at the local playhouse. Continuing on a theme, I loved having a map of Serenity (loosely based on the authors' hometown of Muscatine, IA?) as a frontispiece again. The church floorplan was ok but since the action happened on several different levels of that building, it wasn't much of a help. Since it was a library copy, I had to refrain from marking up which suspects were where.
Whatever the writing team of Max Allan and Barbara Collins have planned for their heroine's next adventure, I hope it gives readers more of the old self-absorbed Brandy (and correspondingly less new, nice Brandy). Perhaps, given Brandy's condition, the authors will have an excuse for letting Vivian Bourne share more of the story-telling.
A great sigh of relief because here's the Brandy Borne I liked so much better. It's probably fitting I read these 2 entries in the Trash 'n' Treasures Mystery series out of order because I've been out of order all week long. The switch to DST derailed my adjustment from Central to Pacific Standard Time. You'd think that getting back an hour would have helped, but it hasn't so I'm going to blame it all on finishing Surely Your Joking, Mr. Feynman and The Beat of a Different Drum (more about those later.)
I loved Antiques Flee Market; I thought the whodunnit was better and appreciated hearing more about characters introduced in earlier books who were missing or walk-ons in Antiques Bizarre. Best of all, the 3rd volume showcased Brandy in all her relationship hits and misses, high-gear shopping expeditions, high-end designer name obsessions, Prozac insulation, etc., etc.
Giving Vivian 2 whole chapters in this book was super. Featuring her latest theatre production was so much better than just reading Brandy's acerbic comments on the doings at the local playhouse. Continuing on a theme, I loved having a map of Serenity (loosely based on the authors' hometown of Muscatine, IA?) as a frontispiece again. The church floorplan was ok but since the action happened on several different levels of that building, it wasn't much of a help. Since it was a library copy, I had to refrain from marking up which suspects were where.
Whatever the writing team of Max Allan and Barbara Collins have planned for their heroine's next adventure, I hope it gives readers more of the old self-absorbed Brandy (and correspondingly less new, nice Brandy). Perhaps, given Brandy's condition, the authors will have an excuse for letting Vivian Bourne share more of the story-telling.
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BRANDY BORNE?
The first two books in Barbara Allan's Trash 'n' Treasures Mystery series, Antiques Roadkill and Antiques Maul were positively delightful. I've taken steps to rectify skipping the third entry Antiques Flee Market (i.e., I placed a hold on a copy at the SVPL). What can I say, I'm a fan which makes it hard to say that Antiques Bizarre was a let-down.
First off, the book is way too short; somehow, Brandy and her mom round up all the possible suspects long before I was ready to have the mystery solved. I'm not sure if this was due to the constraints of keeping the novel an homage to Agatha Christie, the publisher's demand for a short and breezy work or the authors' (Barbara Allan is a joint pseudonym used by Max Allan Collins and Barbara Collins) need to move on to other projects.
Because Serenity (guessing that the town is based on the Collins' hometown of Muscatine, Iowa, I found the wikipedia article with its photos most helpful) is recovering from a particularly severe spring flood, most of the action takes place atop one of the highest hills in town, providing a classic locked-room setting. In this case it is St. Mary's Church and the book opens with a suitable drawing of the main floor to allow those who so desire to trace the action. But this location tends to limit Brandy's and Vivian's opportunities to get as crazy with vehicles as they have in the past which is a disappointment (did Iowa law enforcement ask for this concession?)
The normally flamboyant Vivian is almost subdued and generally quite practical -- her mania is mostly confined to Brandy's fears that her mom will act up. Peggy Sue, Jake, and Tina are among the returning characters but their roles are cameos; of the supporting players only Sushi gets a lot of page time.
Even the prime suspects (the out-of-town bidders) are sketchy with little to distinguish one from the other. Ok, one is a glutton from Russia and another is a female representing a major auction house but the best one of the lot is eliminated early in the proceedings.
I think I could forgive/overlook all of the above if Brandy was unchanged but, like so many series characters (be they in novels, movies or tv shows), she's been softened. Off Prozac, being a surrogate mother, reconciled to her old boyfriend's return to his wife and daughter, tender-hearted when her ex-husband drops Jake off for a visit, minimal designer name-dropping, and even less concern about makeup add up to a Brandy who's in danger of turning into a dull girl. She's even surprisingly accepting of Peggy Sue's latest deception. If pp. 229-230 are correct, what Brandy has learned sets up an important element of the next book.
I gather the authors have submitted that manuscript to their publisher so there's hope that Brandy's flirtation with domesticity/nest-building will be over soon. Meanwhile, don't start reading the series with this entry unless you're a strict family values adherent or desperate for an Agatha-style locked-room mystery.
First off, the book is way too short; somehow, Brandy and her mom round up all the possible suspects long before I was ready to have the mystery solved. I'm not sure if this was due to the constraints of keeping the novel an homage to Agatha Christie, the publisher's demand for a short and breezy work or the authors' (Barbara Allan is a joint pseudonym used by Max Allan Collins and Barbara Collins) need to move on to other projects.
Because Serenity (guessing that the town is based on the Collins' hometown of Muscatine, Iowa, I found the wikipedia article with its photos most helpful) is recovering from a particularly severe spring flood, most of the action takes place atop one of the highest hills in town, providing a classic locked-room setting. In this case it is St. Mary's Church and the book opens with a suitable drawing of the main floor to allow those who so desire to trace the action. But this location tends to limit Brandy's and Vivian's opportunities to get as crazy with vehicles as they have in the past which is a disappointment (did Iowa law enforcement ask for this concession?)
The normally flamboyant Vivian is almost subdued and generally quite practical -- her mania is mostly confined to Brandy's fears that her mom will act up. Peggy Sue, Jake, and Tina are among the returning characters but their roles are cameos; of the supporting players only Sushi gets a lot of page time.
Even the prime suspects (the out-of-town bidders) are sketchy with little to distinguish one from the other. Ok, one is a glutton from Russia and another is a female representing a major auction house but the best one of the lot is eliminated early in the proceedings.
I think I could forgive/overlook all of the above if Brandy was unchanged but, like so many series characters (be they in novels, movies or tv shows), she's been softened. Off Prozac, being a surrogate mother, reconciled to her old boyfriend's return to his wife and daughter, tender-hearted when her ex-husband drops Jake off for a visit, minimal designer name-dropping, and even less concern about makeup add up to a Brandy who's in danger of turning into a dull girl. She's even surprisingly accepting of Peggy Sue's latest deception. If pp. 229-230 are correct, what Brandy has learned sets up an important element of the next book.
I gather the authors have submitted that manuscript to their publisher so there's hope that Brandy's flirtation with domesticity/nest-building will be over soon. Meanwhile, don't start reading the series with this entry unless you're a strict family values adherent or desperate for an Agatha-style locked-room mystery.
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
THE HUMBOLDT CURRENT by Aaron Sachs
Cornell University professor Aaron Sachs traces the shift in environmental activism from the cosmopolitan, global approach of explorer naturalist Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) to the lococentrism of 21st century advocates concentrating on wilderness protection and preservation of green spaces in urban areas in the aptly titled The Humboldt Current. Subtitled Nineteenth-Century Exploration and the Roots of American Environmentalism, the account begins in the final year of the 18th century when Humboldt sails from La Coruna, Spain at the start of an odyssey that takes him to Venezuela and much of South America, with 2 side trips to Cuba and a brief stay in the U.S. where he meets with President Thomas Jefferson and other notables.
Divided into 4 parts - EAST "Humboldt and the Influence of Europe", SOUTH "J.N. Reynolds and the "More Comprehensive Promise of the Antarctic"", WEST "Clarence King's Experience of the Frontier" and NORTH (George Wallace Melville and John Muir in Extremis", each part is completed by an "Excursion", a fascinating vignette in itself.
The word lococentrism frustrated me. Wikipedia doesn't define the word, but treats it as a typo for logocentrism. A google search turned up instances of the word in a bewildering array of scholarly articles that would only be accessible to a person using a very good academic library. The generally excellent index in The Humboldt Current does not list the term as an entry. So the best I can do is define negatively, i.e., it is the opposite of cosmopolitan. I suspect this is a less than complete understanding of the term but it addresses the loco part which doesn't necessarily convey crazy; rather it was derived from the Latin word for place - locus.
As a result of working in a natural history museum in a very German city for 31 years, I was introduced to Alexander von Humboldt years ago which puts me in a decided minority according to Sachs. Learning more about Humboldt and the impact his ideas and methods had on a series of naturalist-explorers with whom I'm more familiar made for a book that was a real pleasure to read. In my mind's eye I keep seeing the volumes of Kosmos (in sadly bedraggled bindings) in the DDC 500 section of the library. At some point Humboldt's writings must have been very influential at MPM -- perhaps the early curators used the books until their bindings fell apart. Of course the volumes might have already been beat up by the 1880's since it was the members of the mid-19th century Wisconsin Natural History Society (which also goes by a long German name that I'll surely misspell) who convinced the city to accept their collections and establish what was became known as the Public Museum of the City of Milwaukee, later the Milwaukee Public Museum.
Pardon the digression and back to the book -- I was charmed and captivated upon opening it to learn about the author's adventures in Nevada. I'd only been in Nevade for four days at that point and was making my first visit to the public library, when I checked out a book which began with the story of an effort to find Humboldt, Nevada -- talk about immediately connecting to a book!
Some impressions upon finishing the book -- it has a very helpful chronology and a long section of my favorite kind of notes those which give the source of the information or quote and a discussion of the more complex topics and controversial statements. Hopefully, this book has settled the confusion about J.N. Reynolds first name -- he opts for J for James rather than Jeremiah and John as some sources call the lecturer and explorer (the N is for Neilson) -- see p. 21 and Note 39 (p.382). How sad to go down to posterity with one's first name a mystery but this has been the fate of many 19th century science writers who preferred to sign their articles with first (and middle) initials rather than their given names.
Divided into 4 parts - EAST "Humboldt and the Influence of Europe", SOUTH "J.N. Reynolds and the "More Comprehensive Promise of the Antarctic"", WEST "Clarence King's Experience of the Frontier" and NORTH (George Wallace Melville and John Muir in Extremis", each part is completed by an "Excursion", a fascinating vignette in itself.
The word lococentrism frustrated me. Wikipedia doesn't define the word, but treats it as a typo for logocentrism. A google search turned up instances of the word in a bewildering array of scholarly articles that would only be accessible to a person using a very good academic library. The generally excellent index in The Humboldt Current does not list the term as an entry. So the best I can do is define negatively, i.e., it is the opposite of cosmopolitan. I suspect this is a less than complete understanding of the term but it addresses the loco part which doesn't necessarily convey crazy; rather it was derived from the Latin word for place - locus.
As a result of working in a natural history museum in a very German city for 31 years, I was introduced to Alexander von Humboldt years ago which puts me in a decided minority according to Sachs. Learning more about Humboldt and the impact his ideas and methods had on a series of naturalist-explorers with whom I'm more familiar made for a book that was a real pleasure to read. In my mind's eye I keep seeing the volumes of Kosmos (in sadly bedraggled bindings) in the DDC 500 section of the library. At some point Humboldt's writings must have been very influential at MPM -- perhaps the early curators used the books until their bindings fell apart. Of course the volumes might have already been beat up by the 1880's since it was the members of the mid-19th century Wisconsin Natural History Society (which also goes by a long German name that I'll surely misspell) who convinced the city to accept their collections and establish what was became known as the Public Museum of the City of Milwaukee, later the Milwaukee Public Museum.
Pardon the digression and back to the book -- I was charmed and captivated upon opening it to learn about the author's adventures in Nevada. I'd only been in Nevade for four days at that point and was making my first visit to the public library, when I checked out a book which began with the story of an effort to find Humboldt, Nevada -- talk about immediately connecting to a book!
Some impressions upon finishing the book -- it has a very helpful chronology and a long section of my favorite kind of notes those which give the source of the information or quote and a discussion of the more complex topics and controversial statements. Hopefully, this book has settled the confusion about J.N. Reynolds first name -- he opts for J for James rather than Jeremiah and John as some sources call the lecturer and explorer (the N is for Neilson) -- see p. 21 and Note 39 (p.382). How sad to go down to posterity with one's first name a mystery but this has been the fate of many 19th century science writers who preferred to sign their articles with first (and middle) initials rather than their given names.
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
DOOMSDAY MEN by P.D. Smith
Somewhere along the 2000-mile drive I recently took from Wisconsin to Nevada, I managed to lose my copy of Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman with just a couple of chapters of this intriguing memoir to go. Naturally one of the first things I did after finding a permanent residence here was to visit the Spring Valley branch of the Las Vegas - Clark County Library District and get a card. And one of the first books I requested via the library district's online catalog was Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman.
Since the book had to come from another LVCC library, I borrowed Spring Valley's copy of Doomsday Men by P.D. Smith, a British "independent researcher and writer." You can find out more about him at this website, www.petersmith.com. Now physics was one of my h.s. washouts and I was able to avoid it in college.
Basically I never found out if I could cope with the subject since fitting it into my schedule senior year was preventing me from taking the French and Spanish courses I wanted. The situation was not helped by the fact that the instructor, who'd been my freshman year homeroom and religion teacher, and I never got along with particularly well.
Turns out I might have stuck with it if P.D. Smith had written his book 40 years sooner. The late 60's were a fascinating period of time for the "science of the 20th century." Physicists had gone from being the "saviour scientists" of popular culture and the public imagination to being "Dr. Strangeloves." Over the course of 2 world wars and the Cold War, physicists had moved away from backwater lab benches and entered into a Faustian partnership with politicians and the military in order to continue their research.
Smith traces the history of the physics and its all-compelling search for the superweapon to end wars, a replacement for the chemical warfare which had failed to end the "war to end all wars." Discovery built upon discovery yet secrecy was also the order of the day. The author takes us on an exciting, incredible journey into effort to get to the heart of the atom and then the nucleus.
Along the way readers are introduced to a variety of fascinating and a few repellent characters but the most unforgettable physicist in Mr. Smith's rendering has got to be Leo Szilard, a Hungarian by birth, citizen of the Weimar Republic by choice and finally refugee from Hitler's Europe in England and then the U.S. Szilard knew everybody in the field in those years and his scientific insights and political attitudes have had enormous impact on modern physics, even if his name is less familiar than Einstein, Bohr, Heisenberg, Teller, Oppenheimer and others, all of whom Szilard considered colleagues, if not friends. From the Curies to General Curtis LeMay, Doomsday Men takes the reader on an eye-opening trip through 20th century battlegrounds, labs and research centers, and into the dead-dealing nexus of politics and big science.
Darn, I wish I could have worked that senior year schedule out a little better, not to mention been more willing to tackle a subject that required more work on my part than most of what I studied in high school.
Since the book had to come from another LVCC library, I borrowed Spring Valley's copy of Doomsday Men by P.D. Smith, a British "independent researcher and writer." You can find out more about him at this website, www.petersmith.com. Now physics was one of my h.s. washouts and I was able to avoid it in college.
Basically I never found out if I could cope with the subject since fitting it into my schedule senior year was preventing me from taking the French and Spanish courses I wanted. The situation was not helped by the fact that the instructor, who'd been my freshman year homeroom and religion teacher, and I never got along with particularly well.
Turns out I might have stuck with it if P.D. Smith had written his book 40 years sooner. The late 60's were a fascinating period of time for the "science of the 20th century." Physicists had gone from being the "saviour scientists" of popular culture and the public imagination to being "Dr. Strangeloves." Over the course of 2 world wars and the Cold War, physicists had moved away from backwater lab benches and entered into a Faustian partnership with politicians and the military in order to continue their research.
Smith traces the history of the physics and its all-compelling search for the superweapon to end wars, a replacement for the chemical warfare which had failed to end the "war to end all wars." Discovery built upon discovery yet secrecy was also the order of the day. The author takes us on an exciting, incredible journey into effort to get to the heart of the atom and then the nucleus.
Along the way readers are introduced to a variety of fascinating and a few repellent characters but the most unforgettable physicist in Mr. Smith's rendering has got to be Leo Szilard, a Hungarian by birth, citizen of the Weimar Republic by choice and finally refugee from Hitler's Europe in England and then the U.S. Szilard knew everybody in the field in those years and his scientific insights and political attitudes have had enormous impact on modern physics, even if his name is less familiar than Einstein, Bohr, Heisenberg, Teller, Oppenheimer and others, all of whom Szilard considered colleagues, if not friends. From the Curies to General Curtis LeMay, Doomsday Men takes the reader on an eye-opening trip through 20th century battlegrounds, labs and research centers, and into the dead-dealing nexus of politics and big science.
Darn, I wish I could have worked that senior year schedule out a little better, not to mention been more willing to tackle a subject that required more work on my part than most of what I studied in high school.
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
Vintage Sacks
Wow, I was going to post the next paragraph as a comment to the blog entry I thought I made months ago and discovered it was still in my draft file. Must have buried it under newer entries, Now I am resolved to look it over again, correct typos and publish it with intended comment leading off.
Antonia Fraser and her husband, Harold Pinter, visited Ollie [aka Dr. Oliver Sacks] at his "little dark-red clapboard house" on City Island, a most un Bronx-like section of the Bronx. The only other details she provides about the house was that it had a porch and "was extremely close to the sea. She also mentions that Sacks told her and Pinter that he swam "in and out of the moored boats like a seal." Fraser, Antonia, Must You Go? My Life with Harold Pinter, p.141. A line from Awakenings was the seed of inspiration for Pinter's play A Kind of Alaska which premiered at the NT with Judi Dench as Deborah.
A friend of mine occasionally bikes on City Island so I've asked him to check this out and send me a photo if he identifies the place. Of course, many of the houses on the island are near water and piers -- several films have been shot on City Island as was much of the final episode of the U.S. version of Life on Mars if you want some idea of the area. In any case, if I get a photo of Oliver Sack's [old?] house, I'll share it here.
Like many people I first became aware of the work of Dr. Oliver Sacks from the 1990 film, Awakenings. Memorably portrayed by Robin Williams, the film's neurologist finds that a new drug, L-DOPA, "awakens" patients who survived the 1917-1928 epidemic of encephalitis lethargica but have spent the intervening 30-40 years in a catatonic state. The movie was a fictionalized version of the book of the in which Dr. Sacks chronicled of his efforts in the late 1960s to help patients at Beth Abraham Hospital, a Bronx, New York hospital, which was providing long-term care for a sizable group of individuals who had contacted this form of "sleeping sickness."
Oliver Sacks is a master storyteller and Vintage Sacks shows him to great advantage. For readers who must read Sacks' work as soon as it is published, this collection serves to highlight the best and possibly refresh the memory. For those like me who haven't done as good a job keeping it up, it was a re-introduction to a remarkable human being and scientist who could have had a full-time career as a writer, if the mysteries of the human neurological system hadn't led him along another path.
Antonia Fraser and her husband, Harold Pinter, visited Ollie [aka Dr. Oliver Sacks] at his "little dark-red clapboard house" on City Island, a most un Bronx-like section of the Bronx. The only other details she provides about the house was that it had a porch and "was extremely close to the sea. She also mentions that Sacks told her and Pinter that he swam "in and out of the moored boats like a seal." Fraser, Antonia, Must You Go? My Life with Harold Pinter, p.141. A line from Awakenings was the seed of inspiration for Pinter's play A Kind of Alaska which premiered at the NT with Judi Dench as Deborah.
A friend of mine occasionally bikes on City Island so I've asked him to check this out and send me a photo if he identifies the place. Of course, many of the houses on the island are near water and piers -- several films have been shot on City Island as was much of the final episode of the U.S. version of Life on Mars if you want some idea of the area. In any case, if I get a photo of Oliver Sack's [old?] house, I'll share it here.
Like many people I first became aware of the work of Dr. Oliver Sacks from the 1990 film, Awakenings. Memorably portrayed by Robin Williams, the film's neurologist finds that a new drug, L-DOPA, "awakens" patients who survived the 1917-1928 epidemic of encephalitis lethargica but have spent the intervening 30-40 years in a catatonic state. The movie was a fictionalized version of the book of the in which Dr. Sacks chronicled of his efforts in the late 1960s to help patients at Beth Abraham Hospital, a Bronx, New York hospital, which was providing long-term care for a sizable group of individuals who had contacted this form of "sleeping sickness."
Oliver Sacks is a master storyteller and Vintage Sacks shows him to great advantage. For readers who must read Sacks' work as soon as it is published, this collection serves to highlight the best and possibly refresh the memory. For those like me who haven't done as good a job keeping it up, it was a re-introduction to a remarkable human being and scientist who could have had a full-time career as a writer, if the mysteries of the human neurological system hadn't led him along another path.
Glamour Girls
Glamour Girls of Sixties Hollywood : Seventy-five Profiles by Tom Lisanti (2008) is a title from McFarland Publishing's extensive film and television performing arts category (http://www.mcfarlandpub.com/about.html). Sometimes it's hard to believe any more can be written about Hollywood in the 1960's but new angles on the motion pictures and television shows of the era keep popping up. In this book author Lisanti profiles 75 actresses of the era, most of whom briefly (some in close to the blink of an eye) passed across the big and little screens. Each actress gets at least one nice photograph from her heyday, a short description of career highlights, a longer section on "groovy" roles of the 60's, background on their pre-Hollywood years, and a section - lengths vary - on their post-1960's life and career(s). 13 of the women are interviewed as well and these interviews are the most interesting part of the book, imo.
For me, the most amazing thing about this book was a fleeting appearance by actor Steven Rogers (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0734779/). Mr. Rogers is shown getting close to one of the lovely ladies who are under a beach umbrella in one of those mid-60's beach movies. Rogers portrayed Doc on the first season of a hugely popular tv series, Combat! (the actual title includes a stylized bayonet, but an exclamation point is as close as my keyboard will get) and I had a huge crush on him. He disappeared from the show at the start of its second season (a sob from my pre-teen self), opting for the cushier life of beach and ski movies for a few years before departing from show business. A quick check of the yahoo group, combatfan, failed to provide much information beyond the imdb info.
All in all this is a fun read for fans of American films and television shows of the 1960's aimed at the teenaged audience that was dominating the tv set at home, if not the box office of the local movie theatre. Unfortunately, library books with excellent photos of movie actresses (or actors) are apt to have been vandalized at some point during their shelf life. This copy of Glamour Girls was no exception. Happily, the high quality of the book production work, another McFarland seliing point, has prevented the excisions from becoming too noticeable unless the reader goes through from cover to cover. In this case it was only a few pages into the Introduction before I realized 4 pages were missing and missing pages continued through to the end, generally in 4-page blocks. A less well-constructed book would have likely fallen apart before it had circulated very many times.
I meant to stick a note in when I returned it to the library the other morning but forgot; I'll try to remember to look up the catalog record and see which library owns the copy I read and call about the condition. Perhaps they'll take it out of circulation and obtain photocopies of the missing pages or replace it entirely before it goes out-of-print. Once someone has removed pages or otherwise damaged a book, subsequent users tend to be less careful than normal.
For me, the most amazing thing about this book was a fleeting appearance by actor Steven Rogers (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0734779/). Mr. Rogers is shown getting close to one of the lovely ladies who are under a beach umbrella in one of those mid-60's beach movies. Rogers portrayed Doc on the first season of a hugely popular tv series, Combat! (the actual title includes a stylized bayonet, but an exclamation point is as close as my keyboard will get) and I had a huge crush on him. He disappeared from the show at the start of its second season (a sob from my pre-teen self), opting for the cushier life of beach and ski movies for a few years before departing from show business. A quick check of the yahoo group, combatfan, failed to provide much information beyond the imdb info.
All in all this is a fun read for fans of American films and television shows of the 1960's aimed at the teenaged audience that was dominating the tv set at home, if not the box office of the local movie theatre. Unfortunately, library books with excellent photos of movie actresses (or actors) are apt to have been vandalized at some point during their shelf life. This copy of Glamour Girls was no exception. Happily, the high quality of the book production work, another McFarland seliing point, has prevented the excisions from becoming too noticeable unless the reader goes through from cover to cover. In this case it was only a few pages into the Introduction before I realized 4 pages were missing and missing pages continued through to the end, generally in 4-page blocks. A less well-constructed book would have likely fallen apart before it had circulated very many times.
I meant to stick a note in when I returned it to the library the other morning but forgot; I'll try to remember to look up the catalog record and see which library owns the copy I read and call about the condition. Perhaps they'll take it out of circulation and obtain photocopies of the missing pages or replace it entirely before it goes out-of-print. Once someone has removed pages or otherwise damaged a book, subsequent users tend to be less careful than normal.
Sunday, November 1, 2009
Stanley Kubrick : a biography (John Baxter)
John Baxter's Stanley Kubrick : a biography made for absorbing reading. The book covers his life, films and relationships with members of the filmmaking community -- stars, producers, other directors, technical crews and, with varying degrees of success, the authors and screenwriters whose work he transformed into images on the big screen. As a group these writers tend to be Mr. Baxter's most revealing sources.
There haven't been too many people to whom the dictum Less is More applies better than to Kubrick and not simply in terms of the number of films he made over the course of his career. By the end of his life as this biography tells it, S. K. comes across as a cross between Howard Hughes and Greta Garbo with a penchant for secrecy, obsession with security and the limited number of associates allowed through the gates. In shunning the celebrity culture of Hollywood for the relative isolation which he needed to remain creative, Kubrick may have created more fascination with his life and work than he would have if he'd chosen to reside in Malibu.
There haven't been too many people to whom the dictum Less is More applies better than to Kubrick and not simply in terms of the number of films he made over the course of his career. By the end of his life as this biography tells it, S. K. comes across as a cross between Howard Hughes and Greta Garbo with a penchant for secrecy, obsession with security and the limited number of associates allowed through the gates. In shunning the celebrity culture of Hollywood for the relative isolation which he needed to remain creative, Kubrick may have created more fascination with his life and work than he would have if he'd chosen to reside in Malibu.
Needless to say, Kubrick wasn't an active participant in the making of this biography and the people who were interviewed by John Baxter were former associates, not people working with him during the researching and writing of this biography.
Published in 1997 by Carroll & Graf Publishers and distributed by Publishers Group West, this 399-page work includes some terrific illustrations and a section of notes for each chapter. Alas the specific reference aren't noted by page or phrase so any reader (or future Kubrick biographer) wishing to fact-check using this book will have a job to untangle the background information.
On a personal note I was amazed to learn that one of the addresses for the Kubrick family during Stanley's high school years and also the address of his future wife, Toba Metz, was 1414 Shakespeare Avenue in the Highbridge section of the Bronx. In the 1940's my maternal and paternal grandparents lived a few blocks south of the Kubricks. My parents were only 2 and 4 years older than Stanley but both attended Catholic high schools in Manhattan, not William Howard Taft H.S., the "neighborhood" public h.s. for this area where Stanley and Toba went to school.
Researchers interested in delving into the Stanley Kubrick story more deeply should visit http://www.arts.ac.uk/kubrick.htm, the website of the archive of the acclaimed film maker's personal papers. The Archive contains more than 1000 boxes of material, including scripts, props, costumes, photography, correspondence, equipment and research.
Friday, October 23, 2009
The Films of John Garfield
It's not fair to blame Thomas Pynchon and Inherent Vice but ever since discovering how Pynchon's P.I. Doc imagined himself as John Garfield, I've been on a bit of nostalgic Garfield trip that's led me into the fascinating world of theatre in New York in the years between the world wars. A Garfield biography led me to Howard Clurman's The Fervent Years. From there I found Cheryl Crawford's memoir, and onto A Life on the Stage by Jacob Adler, and a few other books about the fascinating world of theatre in New York from the late 19th century up to the early 1950's. Some of these I've written about on this blog, others I've just recommended to friends and family but maybe I'll make a few notes eventually.
Back to the subject at hand -- Howard Gelman's The Films of John Garfield (Seacaucus, NJ : Citadel Press, c.1975) is worth tracking down just for the superlative photos of Garfield that it contains. It starts off with a 3-page introduction by Abraham Polonsky in which Polonsky explains how he met Garfield and his partner, Bob Roberts, at their independent film company, Enterprise Productions, and convinces them to produce Body and Soul, scripted by Polonsky. The resultant film, directed by Robert Rossen is considered one of Garfield's finest.
Don't be misled by the title. Yes, each film receives 1 or more pages of still photographs and production details, background information on the film, a 1970's assessment of its effectiveness, a plot synopsis and excerpts from period review(s) of the film focusing on Garfield's performance). In addition, though, there's a 27-page chapter of biographical information, a chapter on Garfield's major theatrical performances, and one on the HUAC investigation with excerpts from John Garfield's testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee.
Back to Pynchon and Doc -- why would a youngish man of Italian (?) ancestry born in California identify so closely with John Garfield? How often does a person get to don a raincoat in sunny, Southern California? Is there something about being outsiders? Pynchon doesn't describe Doc's appearance so as I read the book, it was his attitude and p.o.v. that called to mind several people but none of these friends looked remotely like John Garfied.
Arguably, John Garfield was one of the first "ethnic" types to achieve leading man status in Hollywood motion pictures as well as a forerunner of those famous rebellious youthful heroes of the 1950's and 60's -- from James Dean through that trio of easy riders. He was an ambitious, self-driven young man who removed himself from the poverty of the Bronx, plunged headlong into the theatre (after dreams of a professional boxing career faded) and landed in The Group (the brainchild of Clurman, Crawford and Lee Strasberg). Eventually he got himself out to Hollywood, reportedly because Clurman gave the lead in Clifford Odets' Golden Boy to Luther Adler, rather than Jules Garfield, for whom Odet had written the part.
Becoming John Garfield and starring in a series of gritty Warner Brothers' films designed to appeal to the Everyman (and woman), JG had a meteoric career. Eventually, frustration with Warners typecasting, less-than-reasonable loans to other studios and a number of suspensions led Garfield to go the independent route. Sadly, the blacklisting badly hurt his studio as well as his opportunities to get important roles and JG returned to NY, the theatre, the HUAC appearances and a life that had spiraled out of control. His May 1952 funeral in NYC was reportedly the biggest celebrity-funeral since that of Rudolf Valentino's in 1926 (http://themave.com/Garfield/artc/nytimes.htm).
Being a bit literal-minded and because I'd seen Garfield wearing lots of trench coats in noir-ish settings over my movie-watching years, I read Inherent Vice thinking John Garfield had played at least one P.I. for Doc to want to channel. Mr. Gelman's book provided a good way to determine if John Garfield ever portrayed a private investigator. So, for the record, here are the occupations of the characters portrayed by John Garfield in each of his films (minus a few appearances as himself):
Footlight Parade (1933) - sailor, U.S. Navy
Four Daughters (1938) - pianist and drifter
Made Me a Criminal (1939) - boxer and ranch hand
Blackwell's Island (1939) - investigative journalist
Juarez (1939) - general fighting to overthrow Mexico's foreign rule
Daughters Courageous (1939) - con man and vagabond
Dust Be My Destiny (1939) - fugitive from the law
Saturday's Children (1940) - an inventor
Castle on the Hudson (1940) - gangster
Flowing Gold (1940) - oil-field worker on the run from the law
East of the River (1940) - small-time hoodlum
The Sea Wolf (1941) - seaman on a fishing vessel
Out of the Fog (1941) - gangster
Dangerously They Live (1941) - intern at a NY hospital who runs afoul of Nazi spies
Tortilla Flat (1942) - workingman in a small fishing village in Mexico
Air Force (1943) - Army Air Corps sergeant aboard a fighter bomber
Destination Tokyo (1943) - sailor aboard U.S. Navy submarine attacking Tokyo
The Fallen Sparrow (1943) - Spanish Civil War veteran
Between Two Worlds (1944) - Newspaper reporter
Pride of the Marines (1945) - WW2 U.S. Marine Corps machine gunner blinded in action
The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946) - drifter
Nobody Lives Forever (1946) -WW2 veteran and con man
Humoresque (1946) - violinist
Body and Soul (1947) - prizefighter
Gentleman's Agreement (1947) WW2 veteran experiencing anti-Semitism
Force of Evil (1948) - lawyer working for the mob
We Were Strangers (1949) - revolutionary and leader of a guerilla band in Cuba
Under My Skin (1950) -jockey barred from horse-racing
The Breaking Point (1950) -owner/captain of a sport-fishing boat
He Ran All the Way (1951) - small-time thief and murderer
Quite a range of occupations, quite a few films for such a short career, but nary a P.I. in the lot. But, thanks to The Films of John Garfield, I've a better handle on the film titles and characters so it's time to reread Inherent Vice.
Back to the subject at hand -- Howard Gelman's The Films of John Garfield (Seacaucus, NJ : Citadel Press, c.1975) is worth tracking down just for the superlative photos of Garfield that it contains. It starts off with a 3-page introduction by Abraham Polonsky in which Polonsky explains how he met Garfield and his partner, Bob Roberts, at their independent film company, Enterprise Productions, and convinces them to produce Body and Soul, scripted by Polonsky. The resultant film, directed by Robert Rossen is considered one of Garfield's finest.
Don't be misled by the title. Yes, each film receives 1 or more pages of still photographs and production details, background information on the film, a 1970's assessment of its effectiveness, a plot synopsis and excerpts from period review(s) of the film focusing on Garfield's performance). In addition, though, there's a 27-page chapter of biographical information, a chapter on Garfield's major theatrical performances, and one on the HUAC investigation with excerpts from John Garfield's testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee.
Back to Pynchon and Doc -- why would a youngish man of Italian (?) ancestry born in California identify so closely with John Garfield? How often does a person get to don a raincoat in sunny, Southern California? Is there something about being outsiders? Pynchon doesn't describe Doc's appearance so as I read the book, it was his attitude and p.o.v. that called to mind several people but none of these friends looked remotely like John Garfied.
Arguably, John Garfield was one of the first "ethnic" types to achieve leading man status in Hollywood motion pictures as well as a forerunner of those famous rebellious youthful heroes of the 1950's and 60's -- from James Dean through that trio of easy riders. He was an ambitious, self-driven young man who removed himself from the poverty of the Bronx, plunged headlong into the theatre (after dreams of a professional boxing career faded) and landed in The Group (the brainchild of Clurman, Crawford and Lee Strasberg). Eventually he got himself out to Hollywood, reportedly because Clurman gave the lead in Clifford Odets' Golden Boy to Luther Adler, rather than Jules Garfield, for whom Odet had written the part.
Becoming John Garfield and starring in a series of gritty Warner Brothers' films designed to appeal to the Everyman (and woman), JG had a meteoric career. Eventually, frustration with Warners typecasting, less-than-reasonable loans to other studios and a number of suspensions led Garfield to go the independent route. Sadly, the blacklisting badly hurt his studio as well as his opportunities to get important roles and JG returned to NY, the theatre, the HUAC appearances and a life that had spiraled out of control. His May 1952 funeral in NYC was reportedly the biggest celebrity-funeral since that of Rudolf Valentino's in 1926 (http://themave.com/Garfield/artc/nytimes.htm).
Being a bit literal-minded and because I'd seen Garfield wearing lots of trench coats in noir-ish settings over my movie-watching years, I read Inherent Vice thinking John Garfield had played at least one P.I. for Doc to want to channel. Mr. Gelman's book provided a good way to determine if John Garfield ever portrayed a private investigator. So, for the record, here are the occupations of the characters portrayed by John Garfield in each of his films (minus a few appearances as himself):
Footlight Parade (1933) - sailor, U.S. Navy
Four Daughters (1938) - pianist and drifter
Made Me a Criminal (1939) - boxer and ranch hand
Blackwell's Island (1939) - investigative journalist
Juarez (1939) - general fighting to overthrow Mexico's foreign rule
Daughters Courageous (1939) - con man and vagabond
Dust Be My Destiny (1939) - fugitive from the law
Saturday's Children (1940) - an inventor
Castle on the Hudson (1940) - gangster
Flowing Gold (1940) - oil-field worker on the run from the law
East of the River (1940) - small-time hoodlum
The Sea Wolf (1941) - seaman on a fishing vessel
Out of the Fog (1941) - gangster
Dangerously They Live (1941) - intern at a NY hospital who runs afoul of Nazi spies
Tortilla Flat (1942) - workingman in a small fishing village in Mexico
Air Force (1943) - Army Air Corps sergeant aboard a fighter bomber
Destination Tokyo (1943) - sailor aboard U.S. Navy submarine attacking Tokyo
The Fallen Sparrow (1943) - Spanish Civil War veteran
Between Two Worlds (1944) - Newspaper reporter
Pride of the Marines (1945) - WW2 U.S. Marine Corps machine gunner blinded in action
The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946) - drifter
Nobody Lives Forever (1946) -WW2 veteran and con man
Humoresque (1946) - violinist
Body and Soul (1947) - prizefighter
Gentleman's Agreement (1947) WW2 veteran experiencing anti-Semitism
Force of Evil (1948) - lawyer working for the mob
We Were Strangers (1949) - revolutionary and leader of a guerilla band in Cuba
Under My Skin (1950) -jockey barred from horse-racing
The Breaking Point (1950) -owner/captain of a sport-fishing boat
He Ran All the Way (1951) - small-time thief and murderer
Quite a range of occupations, quite a few films for such a short career, but nary a P.I. in the lot. But, thanks to The Films of John Garfield, I've a better handle on the film titles and characters so it's time to reread Inherent Vice.
Friday, October 2, 2009
Cheryl Crawford, "One naked individual"
In her 1977 autobiography, producer Cheryl Crawford (1902-1986) recounts her love of the theatre and overwhelming desire to become and stay part of this of world. Theatre represented an environment where she could express herself in ways that the Akron, Ohio of her childhood prohibited and the restrictive code of behavior imposed upon Smith College students. One Naked Individual : My Fifty Years in the Theatre traces Miss Crawford's triumphs, flops and failures (she defines the latter two conditions differently) as she assailed the barriers that existed against women as theatrical producers. Over the course of her career she moved back and forth between relative security of group work (but with limits imposed by others and frequent personality conflicts) and and the freedom enjoyed by the independent producer (along with sky-high financial risk.)
As Crawford explains, this autobiography is an exploration of her life by way of a mix of chronological and thematic strands. For readers who prefer a more chronological approach, the appendix comes in handy. Most readers, if they are familiar with Crawford's work, will recognize her from the musicals she produced. These are largely described in 2 chapters: "One Touch of Venus" and "Musical Adventures." The story of how of One Touch of Venus came to be such a smash hit is one of the most delightful in the book as she traces the production from its initial inception to its London premiere. A near siege aimed at getting Marlene Dietrich to play the goddess having failed, the stage is set for Crawford's initial meeting with Mary Martin, and an important lifelong friendship. From a disastrous opening in Boston Venus went on to win accolades, awards and audiences galore.
Since 1936 Crawford and Kurt Weill had nourished a hope of collaborating on a second work. Their first resulted in Johnny Johnson, a production that had been beset by difficulties raising money (a near constant strand in the book) and personality conflicts galore. Amidst these problems and distractions Crawford and Weill found themselves in agreement about the role and prospects for musical theatre, an interest that was secondary to her fellow Group Theatre directors. Crawford along with was a member of the triumvirate that ran the Group Theater. Impressed by the work of Stanislavsky and Mayerhoff and the theater scene in the Soviet Union, Crawford, Howard Clurman and Lee Strasberg led a strong company of actors wishing to expand their acting skills by presenting plays by young and little-known American dramatists. Thematically, the Group Theater wanted to put on plays that were relevant to to situation of American audiences during the Great Depression, a striking contrast to most of the Broadway productions, not to mention Hollywood films, of this period.
Miss Crawford writes that she had the "good fortune to be identified with many of the major theatrical enterprises of my time." In addition to the The Maplewood Theater, a stock company she ran for 3 seasons until WW2 gas restrictions impeded attendance, the list is a veritable What's What of New York Theatre: the Theatre Guild, the Group Theatre (aka The Group), the American National Theatre and Academy (ANTA), the American Repertory Theatre (ART), and the Actors Studio
Famous individuals fly across these pages with actresses figuring larger than actors. (In Body and Soul: The Story of John Garfield biographer Larry Swindell describes J.G.'s prolonged siege of Cheryl Crawford; here the effort gets a sentence.) Besides Mary Martin, Judith Anderson and Marilyn Monroe stand out from the crowd of names. But it's the playwrights who get the most attention with three dominating the later chapters of the book: "Gadg" as Elia Kazan was known (his college nickname of Gadget being shortened), Clifford Odets (whom Crawford first hired as an actor and sent out with road companies) and most movingly, Tennessee Williams or "Tenn" (whose photographic portrait suggests he was far and away the handsomest of the group.)
Speaking of photographs, there are 34 black-and-white ones reproduced with varying degrees of success on 16 glossy pages. Alas there were not more but these were carefully chosen and cover the time-frame of the autobiography from beginning to end. There's also a poem by Walt Whitman that begins "I know I am solid and sound...' quoted; Crawford describes this as her bulwark against uncertainty and attacks of the "blues."
Wistfully she explains "I had no private life to speak of, just occasional evenings with colleagues. A social life, not to mention a love life, takes time, and I had none to spare. It was a high price to pay." (p.112). Published in 1977 by Bobbs-Merrill, this 275-page autobiography is a fascinating page-turner. Chances are you'll have to look for copies at the library or o.p. dealers. I gather from a tag on a library book annotation site, Crawford is known in the lgbt community but there's no hint of serious personal attachments to anybody in One Naked Individual : My Fifty Years in the Theatre.
For researchers interested in looking at Cheryl Crawford's papers, the Billy Rose Theatre Collection of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts has the following inventory online: http://www.nypl.org/research/manuscripts/the/thecrawford.xml
As Crawford explains, this autobiography is an exploration of her life by way of a mix of chronological and thematic strands. For readers who prefer a more chronological approach, the appendix comes in handy. Most readers, if they are familiar with Crawford's work, will recognize her from the musicals she produced. These are largely described in 2 chapters: "One Touch of Venus" and "Musical Adventures." The story of how of One Touch of Venus came to be such a smash hit is one of the most delightful in the book as she traces the production from its initial inception to its London premiere. A near siege aimed at getting Marlene Dietrich to play the goddess having failed, the stage is set for Crawford's initial meeting with Mary Martin, and an important lifelong friendship. From a disastrous opening in Boston Venus went on to win accolades, awards and audiences galore.
Since 1936 Crawford and Kurt Weill had nourished a hope of collaborating on a second work. Their first resulted in Johnny Johnson, a production that had been beset by difficulties raising money (a near constant strand in the book) and personality conflicts galore. Amidst these problems and distractions Crawford and Weill found themselves in agreement about the role and prospects for musical theatre, an interest that was secondary to her fellow Group Theatre directors. Crawford along with was a member of the triumvirate that ran the Group Theater. Impressed by the work of Stanislavsky and Mayerhoff and the theater scene in the Soviet Union, Crawford, Howard Clurman and Lee Strasberg led a strong company of actors wishing to expand their acting skills by presenting plays by young and little-known American dramatists. Thematically, the Group Theater wanted to put on plays that were relevant to to situation of American audiences during the Great Depression, a striking contrast to most of the Broadway productions, not to mention Hollywood films, of this period.
Miss Crawford writes that she had the "good fortune to be identified with many of the major theatrical enterprises of my time." In addition to the The Maplewood Theater, a stock company she ran for 3 seasons until WW2 gas restrictions impeded attendance, the list is a veritable What's What of New York Theatre: the Theatre Guild, the Group Theatre (aka The Group), the American National Theatre and Academy (ANTA), the American Repertory Theatre (ART), and the Actors Studio
Famous individuals fly across these pages with actresses figuring larger than actors. (In Body and Soul: The Story of John Garfield biographer Larry Swindell describes J.G.'s prolonged siege of Cheryl Crawford; here the effort gets a sentence.) Besides Mary Martin, Judith Anderson and Marilyn Monroe stand out from the crowd of names. But it's the playwrights who get the most attention with three dominating the later chapters of the book: "Gadg" as Elia Kazan was known (his college nickname of Gadget being shortened), Clifford Odets (whom Crawford first hired as an actor and sent out with road companies) and most movingly, Tennessee Williams or "Tenn" (whose photographic portrait suggests he was far and away the handsomest of the group.)
Speaking of photographs, there are 34 black-and-white ones reproduced with varying degrees of success on 16 glossy pages. Alas there were not more but these were carefully chosen and cover the time-frame of the autobiography from beginning to end. There's also a poem by Walt Whitman that begins "I know I am solid and sound...' quoted; Crawford describes this as her bulwark against uncertainty and attacks of the "blues."
Wistfully she explains "I had no private life to speak of, just occasional evenings with colleagues. A social life, not to mention a love life, takes time, and I had none to spare. It was a high price to pay." (p.112). Published in 1977 by Bobbs-Merrill, this 275-page autobiography is a fascinating page-turner. Chances are you'll have to look for copies at the library or o.p. dealers. I gather from a tag on a library book annotation site, Crawford is known in the lgbt community but there's no hint of serious personal attachments to anybody in One Naked Individual : My Fifty Years in the Theatre.
For researchers interested in looking at Cheryl Crawford's papers, the Billy Rose Theatre Collection of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts has the following inventory online: http://www.nypl.org/research/manuscripts/the/thecrawford.xml
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Acting with Adler by Joanna Rotté
Joanna Rotté, a writer, actor and director, studied with Stella Adler for three years in the 1970's. A member of Actors Equity, she has a doctorate in theatre from the CUNY Graduate Center and is a professor of graduate-level theatre at Villanova University in addition to teaching at the Stella Adler Conservatory in New York City.
Ellen Adler, Stella's daughter from her first marriage to Horace Eliascheff, has contributed an unusual foreward that eschews tracing her mother's life or career. Ms. Adler devotes a few sentences to her mother and her three husband and devotes the bulk of the foreward to describing the Adler family burial plot in Mount Carmel Cemetery in Queens, N.Y. This is the final resting place of two major stars of the late 19th/early 20th century Yiddish theatre, Jacob and Sara Adler (Ellen's grandparents), their sons Jay, Abe, and Luther (he of the piercing stare) and daughters Frances (with her daughters, Pearl and Lulla) and Stella (along with her second husband, Harold Clurman. )
Acting with Adler is of interest to the casual reader for its insight into one method of teaching acting (sometimes referred to as "The Method"). Readers with an interest in the life and career of Stella Adler can glean some nuggets of information but this distillation of Miss Adler's ideas only makes me wish someone would write a proper biography. In the meantime Harold Clurman's The Fervent Years is the best substitute that I've found.
Ellen Adler, Stella's daughter from her first marriage to Horace Eliascheff, has contributed an unusual foreward that eschews tracing her mother's life or career. Ms. Adler devotes a few sentences to her mother and her three husband and devotes the bulk of the foreward to describing the Adler family burial plot in Mount Carmel Cemetery in Queens, N.Y. This is the final resting place of two major stars of the late 19th/early 20th century Yiddish theatre, Jacob and Sara Adler (Ellen's grandparents), their sons Jay, Abe, and Luther (he of the piercing stare) and daughters Frances (with her daughters, Pearl and Lulla) and Stella (along with her second husband, Harold Clurman. )
Acting with Adler is of interest to the casual reader for its insight into one method of teaching acting (sometimes referred to as "The Method"). Readers with an interest in the life and career of Stella Adler can glean some nuggets of information but this distillation of Miss Adler's ideas only makes me wish someone would write a proper biography. In the meantime Harold Clurman's The Fervent Years is the best substitute that I've found.
Paul Robeson by Martin Bauml Duberman
Paul Robeson by Martin Bauml Duberman. New York : Knopf, 1988. 1st ed. xiii, 804 p., [48] p. of plates .
Good thing I double-checked as I wrote a new FB that I'd blogged about this book when, in fact, this entry has been in draft form since September 2009.
This may be first book where I spent as much time reading the "Notes" as the text. 198 pages of notes printed in a small typeface and arranged in a double column make for a considerable amount of reading. Many of these notes provide highly detailed clarifications or contradictory evidence; readers ignore the notes at their own peril.
As Professor Duberman explains in the "Note on Sources", this level of information was necessary because so much of his research was based on the Robeson Family Archives (RA), a 50,000-item collection made by Paul Robeson's wife, Eslanda (Essie), and later organized by their son, Paul Robeson, Jr. Writing in 1988 Duberman hopes that the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center at Howard University will open the RA to general use shortly. He has attempted to assist future scholars by citing gaps or contradictions in the record and also pointing to valuable seconday sources. In addition to the documentary material in the RA, Duberman consulted the holdings of an additional 29 repositories and 30 privately-held collections of manuscript materials. He interviewed over 100 acquaintances and colleagues of Robeson, going back to high school and college classmates.
Paul Robeson was not a diarist nor was he a prolific correspondent; the years before he met and married Essie Goode are sparsely documented. For the later chapters of Paul Robeson's life, much of the documentation is provided by files from the FBI which Paul Robeson, Jr. was able to obtain under the Freedom of Information Act. Feeling there was additional FBI material that Mr. Robeson had not received and recognizing that access under FOIA had become more restricted, Duberman eventually filed a lawsuit against the FBI for materials relating to Robeson's physical and mental collapse. Sadly, the files received were inconclusive, leaving another avenue for future scholars to probe. Since this work was researched and published prior to the end of the Soviet Union, one can only hope that the opening of Soviet-era archives in Russia and Eastern Europe will provide access to additional unpublished material from these counties.
112 black-and-white photographs from family, friends and a wide range of other sources
Martin Bauml Duberman is Distinguished Preofessor of History at Leman College, The City University of New York and the author of ten previous books and a play.
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
The Blue Flower: A Novel
In The Blue Flower: A Novel Penelope Fitzgerald, winner of the Booker Prize for her novel Offshore, presents a richly detailed imagining of a brief period in the life of Friedrich (Fritz) von Hardenberg (1772-1801) better known by his pen name, Novalis. Drawing on literary and historical writings - correspondence, diaries and other documents - Fitzgerald depicts Hardenberg's family life and friendships during his university years and the start of his planned career, The position of mining inspector in the Harz Mountains has been chosen for him by his family as it will allow him to continue in his father's footsteps and keep the family landholdings together.
This period encompasses Fritz's "love at first sight" meeting with Sophie von Kuhn, the 12-year old step-daughter of a business associate of Hardenberg's mentor and teacher, Coelestin Just. Fitzgerald throws her readers into an unsettled historical period and an unsettling period for Fritz, given his tumultuous relationship with his father Sophie's age is less of an issue than modern readers are apt to expect, particularly once Friedrich agrees to wait until Sophie reaches an age specified by her family to formally announce their engagement. The bigger issue for the von Hardenberg family is Sophie's lower social status. Her father was a minor noble but following his death, her mother remarried ; her new husband is a one-time military officer who retired to the provinces with no particular distinction other than an outsize, booming personality.
Reading The Blue Flower, I was puzzled by Fitzgerald's use of "the" preceding certain names. Both Fritz's younger brother August Wilhem Bernhard ("the Bernhard") and Sophie's married older sister "the Mandelsloh" (the wife of an army lieutenant of that name and Sophie's companion and nurse) get this treatment. These two individuals were very important to Fritz and Sophie, respectively, so perhaps that's the reason for the emphasis.
According to the Afterword, Fritz informed his friends he would write under the name Novalis in Feb. 1798. Novalis was an old family name which translated as "clearer of new land." Three years later he was dead of the same disease which claimed his beloved and several of his brothers and sisters, pulmonary tuberculosis.
The Blue Flower is a delight to read, at turns tragic and comic, filled with unforgettable characters, set in a region torn by war, in 227 pages (including an illustration of the engagement ring), this novel also delineates the state of medicine in the late 18th century when it is beginning to emerge as a profession based on experimental science from its earlier wellsprings of observation, analogy and speculation.
Throughout Fitzgerald contrasts the protagonist's artistic aspirations with the practical demands of career and preparation for eventual inheritance and elevated social position in such a way that the plot is propelled forward at a gallop.
Published by Houghton Mifflin, Boston, c1995.
This period encompasses Fritz's "love at first sight" meeting with Sophie von Kuhn, the 12-year old step-daughter of a business associate of Hardenberg's mentor and teacher, Coelestin Just. Fitzgerald throws her readers into an unsettled historical period and an unsettling period for Fritz, given his tumultuous relationship with his father Sophie's age is less of an issue than modern readers are apt to expect, particularly once Friedrich agrees to wait until Sophie reaches an age specified by her family to formally announce their engagement. The bigger issue for the von Hardenberg family is Sophie's lower social status. Her father was a minor noble but following his death, her mother remarried ; her new husband is a one-time military officer who retired to the provinces with no particular distinction other than an outsize, booming personality.
Reading The Blue Flower, I was puzzled by Fitzgerald's use of "the" preceding certain names. Both Fritz's younger brother August Wilhem Bernhard ("the Bernhard") and Sophie's married older sister "the Mandelsloh" (the wife of an army lieutenant of that name and Sophie's companion and nurse) get this treatment. These two individuals were very important to Fritz and Sophie, respectively, so perhaps that's the reason for the emphasis.
According to the Afterword, Fritz informed his friends he would write under the name Novalis in Feb. 1798. Novalis was an old family name which translated as "clearer of new land." Three years later he was dead of the same disease which claimed his beloved and several of his brothers and sisters, pulmonary tuberculosis.
The Blue Flower is a delight to read, at turns tragic and comic, filled with unforgettable characters, set in a region torn by war, in 227 pages (including an illustration of the engagement ring), this novel also delineates the state of medicine in the late 18th century when it is beginning to emerge as a profession based on experimental science from its earlier wellsprings of observation, analogy and speculation.
Throughout Fitzgerald contrasts the protagonist's artistic aspirations with the practical demands of career and preparation for eventual inheritance and elevated social position in such a way that the plot is propelled forward at a gallop.
Published by Houghton Mifflin, Boston, c1995.
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Swept away with T. C. Boyle
Water Music by T. Coraghessan Boyle ; introduction by James R. Kincaid. New York : Penguin Books, [2006]. Originally published by Little, Brown and Company, 1981. 25th Anniversary Edition with a new introduction. (Kincaid is Aerol Professor of English at the University of Southern California.) "Map to illustrate Mungo Park's missions into West Africa (on 2 facing pages preceding the t.p.)
The citation for this novelized version of the life of Mungo Park in Richard Holmes' The Age of Wonder (more on this later) reminded me of my resolution to read more of T. Coraghessan Boyle's work. Several years ago I read Riven Rock and Road to Wellville but wandered off to read other authors. From his wikipedia entry I realize he's written a dozen novels so I've more than a few books to I have to read in order to catch up. OK, one of these days.
Back to Mungo Park and his fascinating life (the unusual first name stuck in my memory but prior to reading Mr. Holmes' book I lacked a context in which to place the famed English explorer.) Here in a most unconventional fictionalized biography, Boyle reimagines Park's life in parallel with the experiences with those of an orphan who grows up in the slums of 18th century. This fictional alter ego, Ned Rise, is a young man in a hurry to succeed who pretty much turns everything he touches into a mess (not all that dissimilar from Boyle's view of Park.) Along with real characters like Ailie Anderson Park, Mungo's wife who gives new meaning to the term long-suffering, and Joseph Bank, one-time explorer but now stay-at home president of the Royal Society, Boyle creates a batch of fictional characters including Johnson (Mungo's guide to the mysteries of the River Niger), Gleg (a Scottish physician who stays home and tries to stand by Ailie) and various friends and enemies of Ned Rise.
If you're a fan of T.C. Boyle's but missed this uproarious first novel, please read it; if his reputation as a modern great or the ponderous pace of the film version of Road to Wellville has turned you off , give Water Music a try. I think you'll be in for a treat.
The citation for this novelized version of the life of Mungo Park in Richard Holmes' The Age of Wonder (more on this later) reminded me of my resolution to read more of T. Coraghessan Boyle's work. Several years ago I read Riven Rock and Road to Wellville but wandered off to read other authors. From his wikipedia entry I realize he's written a dozen novels so I've more than a few books to I have to read in order to catch up. OK, one of these days.
Back to Mungo Park and his fascinating life (the unusual first name stuck in my memory but prior to reading Mr. Holmes' book I lacked a context in which to place the famed English explorer.) Here in a most unconventional fictionalized biography, Boyle reimagines Park's life in parallel with the experiences with those of an orphan who grows up in the slums of 18th century. This fictional alter ego, Ned Rise, is a young man in a hurry to succeed who pretty much turns everything he touches into a mess (not all that dissimilar from Boyle's view of Park.) Along with real characters like Ailie Anderson Park, Mungo's wife who gives new meaning to the term long-suffering, and Joseph Bank, one-time explorer but now stay-at home president of the Royal Society, Boyle creates a batch of fictional characters including Johnson (Mungo's guide to the mysteries of the River Niger), Gleg (a Scottish physician who stays home and tries to stand by Ailie) and various friends and enemies of Ned Rise.
If you're a fan of T.C. Boyle's but missed this uproarious first novel, please read it; if his reputation as a modern great or the ponderous pace of the film version of Road to Wellville has turned you off , give Water Music a try. I think you'll be in for a treat.
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