City and Country, Boy and Man

Excerpt, from internet log "The Art Notes of a Solitary Walker"

2011-08-10T13:13:00.002-05:00

I've been planning a new internet log, intended to focus on visual art; and here is something written for it...

Leonardo: The Court Genius, Born Outside Law

The Life of Leonardo da Vinci, Part 1 and 2
(A 2-disk, five part documentary-drama by Renato Castellani)
RAI, 2003

Leonardo of Vinci was born to a lusty, successful father who claimed him and a peasant girl mother who was kept from him; and the claim of Leonardo's father was not embraced by the man’s other children, Leonardo’s ten brothers and two sisters, and those siblings used Leonardo’s illegitimate state to keep Leonardo from the estate first his father then his uncle willed to him. The solitary Leonardo had a desire to learn and a talent for drawing; and he seemed to need to build a genuine knowledge base in order to proceed with his work, whether it involved art or engineering. He studied nature, particularly the human anatomy, even dissecting corpses. Religious paintings—such as his “Last Supper”—brought and sustained his fame. The Italian Renaissance master had popes and princes for his patrons, and a place at court, something that must have given him some assurance and pride. Yet, he seems to have grown up without the security in home that many people take for granted, and the political fortunes of his patrons—sometimes high, sometimes low—affected his own state; and those shifts in position could have renewed a sense of vulnerability. That may have affected him: it may be part of why he did not finish many of his projects. He had the curiosity and passion, but did he have the discipline and focus? If you do not receive lasting commitment from others, you do not have a model for it, or even a reason for it—it does not seem real. That insecurity can have an impact even upon things you imagine will be transcendent—at least that is what I am inclined to think, in general, and in particular, having watched the multi-part motion picture by Renato Castellani on the life and work of Leonardo, who painted the “Mona Lisa” and imagined air flight, underwater boats, and armored tanks centuries before others did.

Why did I decide to see a film on Leonardo? I realized that, other than an ad for a distant museum show, I had not seen or heard his name recently and had not thought about him in years—and was beginning to forget him. I am ambivalent about biographies and memoirs, thinking their concerns more likely to be gossip and self-indulgence, rather than significant fact, or true insight; and that the distorted perspective found in many biographies and memoirs can have a detrimental effect regarding the understanding of artists, writers, and thinkers, with the emphasis shifting from philosophy and practice to psychology. When Leonardo’s “Last Supper” is considered, Renato Castellani’s film narrator points to the centrality of Christ in the picture, and the high place of an early loyal disciple and the lowest place given to Judas; and these are appropriate and relevant (aesthetic and ethical) notes. Leonardo’s biography is not a theme in the painted picture. Often the concern of people with an artist’s biography has to do with their inability to deal with the artist’s greatness—they want to bring the artist down to their level, and prefer to look at the failures in his private life. However, it cannot be declared too frequently that an artist’s greatness is often rooted in his pursuit of his own values and visions, and ability to win support for those; and his failures in life often exist because the people in his life refuse cooperation (compromise of artistic principles can endanger work, but compromise of personal principles can be the thing that allows a relationship to survive). Not much is known of Leonardo’s erotic life, so his childhood familial life is looked to for obvious personal conflict and drama. It seems to me that Leonardo was lucky to have a father who recognized his creative talent and found an artist with whom the precocious boy could apprentice: that is a rare life-making response, rather than life-destroying one. Yet, a biographical and historical documentary, such as this, presents a strong sense of the world in which the artist moved. Some of the scenes are historical, informational, and others are acted drama. The locations, costumes, casting, and acting do bring the viewer close to the time in which the man and painter lived. (I liked the landscapes and buildings, and found myself wondering about the temperature in the rooms, and how men could go about in such heavy jackets, and about the practical implications of their tights.) It is impossible not to conclude that whatever continuity existed in Leonardo’s life began in his own imaginative mind and questing spirit.

Documentaries get less attention than fiction feature films, but remain important for intellectual and political purposes. They offer a concentration of analysis and experience, a fundamental seriousness, that does not have always a large place in the culture; in reading literature, the thought of the writer meets the thought of the reader, and in seeing documentaries the thought of the filmmaker and his subject/s meet the thought of the viewer. It is rewarding, but also demanding. We are far from the time when the major television networks presented documentaries as a regular part of their mission; and the films and videos that get theatrical release and critical attention tend to be on controversial subjects. Home viewing on personal equipment augments that. I still recall one of my favorite documentaries, many years after seeing it in a downtown Manhattan theater: the original civil rights series Eyes on the Prize; and appreciate the other documentaries I have screened recently, including America’s Castles, Art of War, Barack Obama, Daughters of Afghanistan, King Arthur (His Life and Legends), Men Get Depressed, Muse of Fire, Opera Stories, Shakespeare’s Soliloquies, and Why Shakespeare? I thought Charles Ferguson’s recent documentary, Inside Job, on the origin of the banking crisis was great—beautiful, smart, and useful. In watching actor Philippe Leroy as Leonardo in the documentary-drama, and seeing the artist’s exploration of art, science, and even philosophy, something of Leonardo’s life and work were restored to me, an accomplishment that provides a foundation for further exploration.

The painter Leonardo’s competition with the younger and angrier Michelangelo, a great sculptor, was interesting, as well—for the differences in their personalities and work; and it reminded me of other, later competitions, possibly inevitable competitions, among artists (writers and singers too) of different generations, philosophies, and styles. Everyone wants the space in which to do his or her own work, the space, the respect, and the reward; and an emerging artist often sees older masters as gatekeepers and threats—and sometimes bores. I did find myself wondering what Leonardo’s work would have been like if the questions he asked—the knowledge he sought—had been provided already, had been inherited. Would he have been more productive, or less?

"September Song"

2009-09-08T12:31:00.003-05:00

“Oh, it's a long, long while from May to December
But the days grow short when you reach September
When the autumn weather turns the leaves to flame
One hasn't got time for the waiting game”
--“September Song,” a Sinatra standard

…I was listening to a jazz talk on the radio and the host was saying that she had interviewed an opera singer who took issue with Sinatra’s emphasis on consonants instead of vowels when he sang, one of the few technical criticisms the host had heard of Sinatra. I wondered if that emphasis was Sinatra’s rejection of easy beauty—of an enveloping femininity—and his affirmation of a fundamental masculinity. Who knows? Sinatra was able to be eloquent and direct, sensual, combining the different aspects of human nature, of mind and instinct…

…Fame is a tool, and when partnered with intelligence and talent it can yield cultural authority—but when you have no cultural authority the frustration can lead to the use of curses and insults for their crude force (believing any force is better than no force)…

“The days grow short when you reach September” Sinatra sang: and Septembers have been significant for me—of course, they have been significant for everyone. School classes often begin in September. Cultural events often begin to deepen and multiply in September. I first left Louisiana and arrived in New York in September; and last September left New York and arrived in Louisiana…

The best thing I have done in the last year is to review my appreciation for literature, reading the language and vision of people who have seen or imposed an order on the world (or on how they think about the world), people who have found or made meaning.

So much else remains undone, or if done then unrewarded…

…I have been reading a book on theatre, which includes an argument for experimental plays: but, I do not think difficult, obscure work can be the central work of any culture, unless the desire is to create a mystery cult—requiring special introductions, guides, interpretations. A religion of obfuscation and revelation—something that must be taken on faith rather than established with proofs. Rituals appropriate for nighttime and old caves, not daylight and open fields…I would like to think that it is possible to be profound and understood—and that is what I have believed about the best literature…

Encore: A Story for Children: "Postcards from Exile"

2009-09-08T11:48:00.001-05:00

“Postcards from Exile,” A Story for Children

Original City and Country Post: Friday, September 5, 2008

Note: I wanted to write a story for children that would be about and also offer intelligent pleasures, pleasures rooted in learning and knowledge. I wanted to write a story that would recognize some of the real world complexity that children live with, such as family members who do not always get along and sometimes live apart. I imagined that each item below would be treated as an individual page, with some pages illustrated with colorful drawings, while other pages showed only text. (I wrote this copyrighted story, Postcards from Exile, in year 2001, and sent it to a wide range of illustrators, editors and publishers, but no one pursued the project; and, later, there was an animated children's television program with a similar scenario--and I wondered if that was a coincidence or if someone I shared my story with had given it to others...)

Postcards from Exile

1. I sometimes get postcards, notes, and letters from my uncle, my father’s brother, who lives in New York and travels on planes, boats, and trains…

2. He sent me a postcard from France of the Eiffel Tower.

3. He sent me a postcard from India of the Taj Mahal.

4. I live in Louisiana, a state in the southern part of the United States. I live in a house with my father, my mother, and my older brother.

5. My uncle wrote me a note that says, “Home is where you feel free to breathe deep and laugh loud. Home is where you feel free to wear old clothes or walk without shoes. Home is where you feel free to be alone or invite friends. Home is where you feel free to do or not do—almost anything.”

6. He wrote, “Even though you feel free at home, if you make a mess at home, or in another place, you still have to clean it up, or else you will have nothing but messes and won’t be able to move or do anything.” That’s what my father and mother say too. I try to clean up whatever mess I make.

7. In our house, we have a playroom, but I play in other parts of the house too. We all have to try to take care of the house. This is where we live, where we eat and bathe and sleep, where we talk and play and sometimes work.

8. In Louisiana, people grow cane to make sugar and syrup, and grow pepper to make hot sauce, and there are also salt mines and oil fields. We say we’re the sweetest and spiciest state in the union, in the United States.

9. The places my uncle visits are different from where I live. His postcards show unusual things, a painting of people in old timey clothes, a man on a camel, a woman weaving a basket, a large waterfall, weird buildings and other things I do not see where I live.

10. One of his postcards is of a jaguar sitting on a bunch of leaves in South America. It looks like a tiger to me.

11. He sent me a postcard of pretty water high on a rocky hill. The postcard said it was one of five Amir Lakes in north Afghanistan. A-f-g-h-a-n-i-s-t-a-n. I can write Afghanistan but it’s hard for me to say it. My mother can say it.

12. My uncle wrote in a letter, “A postcard is a picture of a place or thing that anyone might visit. If there’s a person on the postcard of a strange place, someone you don’t know, he just seems part of the place, a place you might visit one day.” I know that. Well, I know that now. He also wrote, “A personal photograph is a picture of a place where I have been, and it shows me in it, where I was, how I looked, and what I was doing. When you know the person in a photograph, you notice him first, and then you notice where he was when the photograph was taken. A postcard is about the present and future, about what is and what might be. A personal photograph is about yesterday, about what used to be.” This is the way he writes and talks. He’s always trying to teach me something. I like learning but not all the time.

13. My father has a wife and children but my uncle does not. My uncle has friends and a special lady friend.

14. My uncle and his friends get together for laughs and games and talks, just like my friends and me. They go to different places together to eat and see shows and hear music, and sometimes his friends go to his home and other times he goes to theirs.

15. My uncle went to Switzerland with his friend Bob. He sent me a photograph of the two of them dressed in big, thick shiny clothes with hats and big glasses called goggles on their faces, standing on skis on a lot of clean white snow. (It hardly ever snows in Louisiana.)

16. In a letter from a while ago, my uncle wrote, “Bob and I met in college. He was nice and smart and funny and I chose him as my friend. We studied together, talked about books together, went bicycling and hiking and to movies together, and we talked about girls together. We loaned each other money, and jackets and ties, for important dates. We were friends, and we were often together. Even though we work in different places now, we still get together.” College is school for big kids, for big people.

17. My uncle says that letters are for when you have a lot to say. His letters are sometimes long but they are interesting to me.

18. My uncle went to Italy with his special lady friend, Sandra, and sent me a photograph of them in a small boat, a gondola, in the city of Venice. G-o-n-d-o-l-a.

19. He wrote in a letter, “Sandra and I met at work and talked about what we did there and also what we did during our weekends. I liked her and chose her as a friend. We had dinners together. She finds joy almost everywhere she looks. I chose her as a special friend. We cook for each other, give each other gifts of books and clothing, and we walk and talk in the park together, see plays together, shop together for paintings by young artists, play basketball together, and together go to hear people play music. We learned to speak Italian together. I like the careful way she treats people, and I like the way she looks. We might choose to be together always.”

20. He told me that he had a lot of good times traveling while alone and with his friends. He said he had good times at his home in New York too, but he thought maybe childhood, being my age, might be the best time of all. I don’t know if that’s true. He gets to do whatever he wants, or almost everything.

21. I do some of the things I want and things my mother and father tell me, like my homework and cleaning my room and saying “Thank you” and “Please,” even when I don’t want to say that.

22. My uncle went to Africa. He sent me a postcard of people dressed in clothes with these tiny squares of colors on them, yellow, green, orange, and other colors. The people were dancing. That looked like fun, but I remember my uncle wrote that childhood is “maybe like a Saturday afternoon. Good things happen but you don’t always think about how good they are until it’s no longer Saturday. Maybe childhood is like an ice cream cone. You have to enjoy it while it lasts. Maybe childhood is like a furry bear or a broken toy or a cheery song. Maybe I don’t recall very well what childhood is like and you have to tell me.”

23. I write to my uncle sometimes but my letters are not like his. I tell him what I did at school and that I played jump rope or dolls or checkers or dress-up with my friends but there’s not much I have to teach him. Except about childhood. I guess I teach him about that.

24. My father has a wife and a son and a daughter. My uncle, his brother, does not have a wife or children. He has friends. My father lives in Louisiana, in the country. My uncle lives in New York, in the city. My father does not like to travel. My uncle does. They are different and they do not always agree. My father likes to eat meat and my uncle likes fruits and vegetables. My father doesn’t like to read a lot and my uncle always carries a book when he visits. They sometimes argue about who should lead the United States, sounding like boys arguing about who should be baseball team captain. My father and his brother are different, but my uncle and his friends are more like each other.

25. My uncle says that a mother and father choose to have children but the children don’t choose each other. Brothers and sisters don’t choose to be brothers and sisters but friends choose to be friends. I did not choose my brother, but I like him most of the time. The best time my father and his brother have is when they listen to old timey music, music from when they were as small as I am. They try to dance. They laugh and hug then. My uncle does not visit often.

26. My mother says my uncle lives in exile. I asked if that was a place in New York but my mother said no. My mother said exile is a feeling. Exile is when you are in a new place because the old place where you used to be is not a good place for you to be any more. It is like having happiness and underneath the happiness is sadness—you are smiling but there’s a frown near the corner of your mouth. The frown comes out when you go back to the place where you don’t want to be. My mother says there aren’t as many things for my uncle to see and do where we live as there are where he lives. I know that.

27. I have not been to New York, where my uncle lives. In New York, there is the Empire State Building, the Statue of Liberty, big baseball stadiums, and places where there are lots of drawings and statues, and an ice skating rink. There are horses with carriages in a park, and a lot of tall buildings and a lot of people. People from all over the world live in New York.

28. When my uncle calls, he speaks to my mother longer than he speaks to my father. My father and my uncle talk about the weather and work and the next time my uncle will visit. When my mother talks to my uncle, her voice goes low and they talk about his friends and where he is and she asks him if he’s taking care of himself.

29. One of my uncle’s postcards was of a pyramid in Egypt. It looks like a big triangle made of bricks. My mother says Egypt is one place she’d like to go.

30. Another postcard was of a big rock in a park in this country, in California. The rock is called Halfdome and the park Yosemite. Y-o-s-e-m-i-t-e.

31. I would like to travel sometime, but my father says we will wait until I’m older.

32. I would like to travel with my father, my mother, and my brother. Maybe we could go to one of the places where my uncle travels to when he’s there. Maybe India, maybe Italy.

33. I have a postcard from him of the leaning tower of Pisa in Italy.

34. My uncle’s postcards are special to me, because he shows me places I have not been, places where I might go when I get bigger.

35. One of my favorites is of a waterfall near trees. The sun is shining and there’s a rainbow in the sky. It’s a picture of Victoria Falls in Africa.

36. A yellow and blue fish, called a queen angelfish, which lives in the waters off a Caribbean island, is very pretty on a card he sent. C-a-r-i-b-b-e-a-n. My father said that when we travel we might go to an island. Maybe we’ll travel after I learn to say all these names with no trouble.

37. I like giraffes too. There are a lot of giraffes in Africa. I have a postcard with giraffes on it.

38. I don’t think that I would like seeing a lion, but I have a postcard of one lying down some place in Africa.

39. I have a photograph of my uncle with some of his friends in an eating place in Spain. He said that there weren’t a lot of other people in the picture because a lot of people sleep in the afternoon there. He said that sometimes he slept in the afternoon too. I wouldn’t travel just to sleep somewhere else.

40. Sometimes, I think of my uncle before going to sleep in my bed, and I dream of some of those places he has told me about. I dream.

(DG, November 2001)

President Obama's Speech to Students

2009-09-08T11:43:00.003-05:00

Prepared Remarks of President Barack Obama Back to School Event

Arlington, Virginia September 8, 2009

The President: Hello everyone – how’s everybody doing today? I’m here with students at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Virginia. And we’ve got students tuning in from all across America, kindergarten through twelfth grade. I’m glad you all could join us today.

I know that for many of you, today is the first day of school. And for those of you in kindergarten, or starting middle or high school, it’s your first day in a new school, so it’s understandable if you’re a little nervous. I imagine there are some seniors out there who are feeling pretty good right now, with just one more year to go. And no matter what grade you’re in, some of you are probably wishing it were still summer, and you could’ve stayed in bed just a little longer this morning.

I know that feeling. When I was young, my family lived in Indonesia for a few years, and my mother didn’t have the money to send me where all the American kids went to school. So she decided to teach me extra lessons herself, Monday through Friday – at 4:30 in the morning.
Now I wasn’t too happy about getting up that early. A lot of times, I’d fall asleep right there at the kitchen table. But whenever I’d complain, my mother would just give me one of those looks and say, "This is no picnic for me either, buster."

So I know some of you are still adjusting to being back at school. But I’m here today because I have something important to discuss with you. I’m here because I want to talk with you about your education and what’s expected of all of you in this new school year.

Now I’ve given a lot of speeches about education. And I’ve talked a lot about responsibility.
I’ve talked about your teachers’ responsibility for inspiring you, and pushing you to learn.
I’ve talked about your parents’ responsibility for making sure you stay on track, and get your homework done, and don’t spend every waking hour in front of the TV or with that Xbox.

I’ve talked a lot about your government’s responsibility for setting high standards, supporting teachers and principals, and turning around schools that aren’t working where students aren’t getting the opportunities they deserve.

But at the end of the day, we can have the most dedicated teachers, the most supportive parents, and the best schools in the world – and none of it will matter unless all of you fulfill your responsibilities. Unless you show up to those schools; pay attention to those teachers; listen to your parents, grandparents and other adults; and put in the hard work it takes to succeed.

And that’s what I want to focus on today: the responsibility each of you has for your education. I want to start with the responsibility you have to yourself.

Every single one of you has something you’re good at. Every single one of you has something to offer. And you have a responsibility to yourself to discover what that is. That’s the opportunity an education can provide.

Maybe you could be a good writer – maybe even good enough to write a book or articles in a newspaper – but you might not know it until you write a paper for your English class. Maybe you could be an innovator or an inventor – maybe even good enough to come up with the next iPhone or a new medicine or vaccine – but you might not know it until you do a project for your science class. Maybe you could be a mayor or a Senator or a Supreme Court Justice, but you might not know that until you join student government or the debate team.

And no matter what you want to do with your life – I guarantee that you’ll need an education to do it. You want to be a doctor, or a teacher, or a police officer? You want to be a nurse or an architect, a lawyer or a member of our military? You’re going to need a good education for every single one of those careers. You can’t drop out of school and just drop into a good job. You’ve got to work for it and train for it and learn for it.

And this isn’t just important for your own life and your own future. What you make of your education will decide nothing less than the future of this country. What you’re learning in school today will determine whether we as a nation can meet our greatest challenges in the future.
You’ll need the knowledge and problem-solving skills you learn in science and math to cure diseases like cancer and AIDS, and to develop new energy technologies and protect our environment. You’ll need the insights and critical thinking skills you gain in history and social studies to fight poverty and homelessness, crime and discrimination, and make our nation more fair and more free. You’ll need the creativity and ingenuity you develop in all your classes to build new companies that will create new jobs and boost our economy.

We need every single one of you to develop your talents, skills and intellect so you can help solve our most difficult problems. If you don’t do that – if you quit on school – you’re not just quitting on yourself, you’re quitting on your country.

Now I know it’s not always easy to do well in school. I know a lot of you have challenges in your lives right now that can make it hard to focus on your schoolwork.

I get it. I know what that’s like. My father left my family when I was two years old, and I was raised by a single mother who struggled at times to pay the bills and wasn’t always able to give us things the other kids had. There were times when I missed having a father in my life. There were times when I was lonely and felt like I didn’t fit in.

So I wasn’t always as focused as I should have been. I did some things I’m not proud of, and got in more trouble than I should have. And my life could have easily taken a turn for the worse.

But I was fortunate. I got a lot of second chances and had the opportunity to go to college, and law school, and follow my dreams. My wife, our First Lady Michelle Obama, has a similar story. Neither of her parents had gone to college, and they didn’t have much. But they worked hard, and she worked hard, so that she could go to the best schools in this country.

Some of you might not have those advantages. Maybe you don’t have adults in your life who give you the support that you need. Maybe someone in your family has lost their job, and there’s not enough money to go around. Maybe you live in a neighborhood where you don’t feel safe, or have friends who are pressuring you to do things you know aren’t right.

But at the end of the day, the circumstances of your life – what you look like, where you come from, how much money you have, what you’ve got going on at home – that’s no excuse for neglecting your homework or having a bad attitude. That’s no excuse for talking back to your teacher, or cutting class, or dropping out of school. That’s no excuse for not trying.

Where you are right now doesn’t have to determine where you’ll end up. No one’s written your destiny for you. Here in America, you write your own destiny. You make your own future.
That’s what young people like you are doing every day, all across America.

Young people like Jazmin Perez, from Roma, Texas. Jazmin didn’t speak English when she first started school. Hardly anyone in her hometown went to college, and neither of her parents had gone either. But she worked hard, earned good grades, got a scholarship to Brown University, and is now in graduate school, studying public health, on her way to being Dr. Jazmin Perez.

I’m thinking about Andoni Schultz, from Los Altos, California, who’s fought brain cancer since he was three. He’s endured all sorts of treatments and surgeries, one of which affected his memory, so it took him much longer – hundreds of extra hours – to do his schoolwork. But he never fell behind, and he’s headed to college this fall.

And then there’s Shantell Steve, from my hometown of Chicago, Illinois. Even when bouncing from foster home to foster home in the toughest neighborhoods, she managed to get a job at a local health center; start a program to keep young people out of gangs; and she’s on track to graduate high school with honors and go on to college.

Jazmin, Andoni and Shantell aren’t any different from any of you. They faced challenges in their lives just like you do. But they refused to give up. They chose to take responsibility for their education and set goals for themselves. And I expect all of you to do the same.

That’s why today, I’m calling on each of you to set your own goals for your education – and to do everything you can to meet them. Your goal can be something as simple as doing all your homework, paying attention in class, or spending time each day reading a book. Maybe you’ll decide to get involved in an extracurricular activity, or volunteer in your community. Maybe you’ll decide to stand up for kids who are being teased or bullied because of who they are or how they look, because you believe, like I do, that all kids deserve a safe environment to study and learn. Maybe you’ll decide to take better care of yourself so you can be more ready to learn. And along those lines, I hope you’ll all wash your hands a lot, and stay home from school when you don’t feel well, so we can keep people from getting the flu this fall and winter.

Whatever you resolve to do, I want you to commit to it. I want you to really work at it.

I know that sometimes, you get the sense from TV that you can be rich and successful without any hard work -- that your ticket to success is through rapping or basketball or being a reality TV star, when chances are, you’re not going to be any of those things.
But the truth is, being successful is hard. You won’t love every subject you study. You won’t click with every teacher. Not every homework assignment will seem completely relevant to your life right this minute. And you won’t necessarily succeed at everything the first time you try.

That’s OK. Some of the most successful people in the world are the ones who’ve had the most failures. JK Rowling’s first Harry Potter book was rejected twelve times before it was finally published. Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team, and he lost hundreds of games and missed thousands of shots during his career. But he once said, "I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed."

These people succeeded because they understand that you can’t let your failures define you – you have to let them teach you. You have to let them show you what to do differently next time. If you get in trouble, that doesn’t mean you’re a troublemaker, it means you need to try harder to behave. If you get a bad grade, that doesn’t mean you’re stupid, it just means you need to spend more time studying.

No one’s born being good at things, you become good at things through hard work. You’re not a varsity athlete the first time you play a new sport. You don’t hit every note the first time you sing a song. You’ve got to practice. It’s the same with your schoolwork. You might have to do a math problem a few times before you get it right, or read something a few times before you understand it, or do a few drafts of a paper before it’s good enough to hand in.

Don’t be afraid to ask questions. Don’t be afraid to ask for help when you need it. I do that every day. Asking for help isn’t a sign of weakness, it’s a sign of strength. It shows you have the courage to admit when you don’t know something, and to learn something new. So find an adult you trust – a parent, grandparent or teacher; a coach or counselor – and ask them to help you stay on track to meet your goals.

And even when you’re struggling, even when you’re discouraged, and you feel like other people have given up on you – don’t ever give up on yourself. Because when you give up on yourself, you give up on your country.

The story of America isn’t about people who quit when things got tough. It’s about people who kept going, who tried harder, who loved their country too much to do anything less than their best.

It’s the story of students who sat where you sit 250 years ago, and went on to wage a revolution and found this nation. Students who sat where you sit 75 years ago who overcame a Depression and won a world war; who fought for civil rights and put a man on the moon. Students who sat where you sit 20 years ago who founded Google, Twitter and Facebook and changed the way we communicate with each other.

So today, I want to ask you, what’s your contribution going to be? What problems are you going to solve? What discoveries will you make? What will a president who comes here in twenty or fifty or one hundred years say about what all of you did for this country?

Your families, your teachers, and I are doing everything we can to make sure you have the education you need to answer these questions. I’m working hard to fix up your classrooms and get you the books, equipment and computers you need to learn. But you’ve got to do your part too. So I expect you to get serious this year. I expect you to put your best effort into everything you do. I expect great things from each of you. So don’t let us down – don’t let your family or your country or yourself down. Make us all proud. I know you can do it.

Thank you, God bless you, and God bless America.

Encore: Experts and the Importance of the Arts

2009-09-01T11:36:00.006-05:00

I have fallen out of the world at different times, for different reasons: away from conversation, away from friendships, away from shared obligations—falling at tremendous speed, sometimes with amusement, with pride, with relief, sometimes in fear, in pain, in rage; and it is art—dance, drama, film, literature, music, paintings, poetry, and sculpture; the beauty, intelligence, order, passion, and truth of art—more often than not that has pulled me back into the world. The arts do not come to me, or to us, out of magic: they are the works of cultivated men and women: women and men who have been cultivated by the discipline of artistic practice, if not by significant education and acquisition of other formal manners and habits. The arts are repositories of humanity, of humane thought and feeling.

Culture is what has interested me—what I wanted to talk about, write about, create: and the diverse arts and their appreciation are at the core of culture. I have asked several cultural workers in the last year to discuss the subject…

Friday, April 3, 2009

Elizabeth Alexander, Poet

Elizabeth Alexander published her first book of poetry, The Venus Hottentot, in 1990, followed by the poetry collections Body of Life (1996), Antebellum Dream Book (2001), American Sublime (2005), and, with co-author Marilyn Nelson, Miss Crandall’s School for Young Ladies and Little Misses of Color (2008), a book for young adults. In her poetry Elizabeth Alexander captures the ideas, the moments, the perceptions, and the sensations, that are missed, usually, in the first and second drafts of history, the real stories of human lives. I found her American Sublime a particularly beautiful book and was surprised that her essays in The Black Interior were as interesting, as impressive. Alexander, who teaches in Yale’s African American Studies department, has a second, more recent, book of essays, Power and Possibility. She is a writer to watch, and to listen to, as much of America learned when she participated in the inauguration of President Barack Obama; but, more significantly, she will be, for a very long time, a poet whose work is to be read. There have been appreciative and critical comments made about the poem she wrote for that historic day in January, and I was curious to know what Elizabeth Alexander herself had learned from the experience (I sent her an e-mail query at the end of March and she quickly responded).

Daniel: What did you learn about public poetry as a result of your inauguration experience?

Elizabeth Alexander: "From the literally thousands of letter and emails I have received form strangers, I learned that so many people are open and receptive to public poetry. They meet it as it comes to them and respond with their own words, feelings, stories. That has been very powerful and affirming of the ability of art to have a place in the everyday lives of Americans."

Saturday, March 28, 2009

Acadiana Film Festival

The Acadiana Film Festival taking place at different locations (Cite Des Arts, and Grand 14 Theater, Lite, and the Natural History Museum, among them) in Lafayette, Louisiana, scheduled for April 16th through 19th, is focused on the craft, content, and pleasure of films, present and future, with programs attractive to film professionals and the general audience. There are workshops for film and sound editors, for actors on developing characters, and discussions on music composition and marketing an idea for a film (pitching stories), and the festival provides a location tour, as well as music receptions, and, most importantly, film premieres and screenings, with the subjects of films including hurricane Katrina and Mardi Gras, writer Kate Chopin and singer Patti Smith, coastal land loss restoration and plate lunch restaurants.

A few days ago, I asked one of the organizers, Jana Godshall, about the Acadiana Film Festival, and the expected audience:

Who are the likely attendants of the film festival (artists, educators, students, others)?

Two days ago (Thursday), the festival director Jana Godshall answered, "All of the above. We have artists, educators, students, producers, musicians, composers, directors, actors, writers, city and state entertainment industry representatives and not only that,...simply film enthusiasts. Anyone who enjoys independent cinema, as we have tons of free screenings open to the public Thursday through Sunday, April 16-19th," and she added, "our line up is great this year. we have so many feature film, shorts, documentaries, panels, workshops, parties, networking opportunities."

Godshall works with festival coordinator Julie Bordelon, and can be reached at: Acadiana Film Festival, 101 W. Vermilion St., Lafayette, La 70501; and, more information about the festival is available online (search: Acadiana Film Festival).

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Monica Hairston of the Center for Black Music Research

Below is a query submitted to Monica Hairston of the Center for Black Music Research, from me. I am interested in a range of disciplines and fields, but few things give me the pleasure of music, all kinds of music, including jazz, independent rock, and music from other countries; and, of course, I am open to learning more about the things that interest me. I am aware, as well, that too frequently African-American music, as with much else, is thought of in terms of stereotypes. I wondered recently if a scholar could suggest new avenues of learning, for myself, for others; and, consequently, I asked the Center for Black Music Research's Monica Hairston, What have been some areas of black music that require more research and thought? The center is devoted to researching, preserving, and sharing black music, from wherever it emerges; and I thought the center's executive director Monica Hairston, who received a master's degree in music from the University of Georgia and is a doctoral candidate at New York University, and whose own interests include jazz and popular music (and feminism, ethnomusicology, etc.) would have an illuminating perspective. In February I sent her my query and I was grateful to receive the busy scholar's answer yesterday!

Daniel: What have been some areas of black music that require more research and thought?

Monica Hairston of the Center for Black Music Research: "A couple of areas that come to mind immediately include the following:

Historically: Any topics eighteenth century and earlier. Black musical history doesn’t begin with African American spirituals. From Vincente Lusitano to the Chevalier de Saint-Georges, black musicians and composers populate all historical eras and all corners of the globe.

Culturally: Issues of gender and sexuality. Men and women can have differently-gendered experiences of the same phenomena. These experiences often manifest in or are refracted through music and music-making."

Thursday, February 12, 2009

Scholar Aram Goudsouzian on Sidney Poitier

Professor Aram Goudsouzian teaches in the department of history at the University of Memphis, and he wrote a comprehensive book, Sidney Poitier: Man, Actor, Icon (University of North Carolina Press, 2004), which manages to be both inspiring and sad at the same time. He was recently kind enough, earlier today, to answer a question about Sidney Poitier and the actor's relationship to his own scholarship.

Daniel: What led you to write about Sidney Poitier and how do the issues raised by his life and work relate to yours?

Aram Goudsouzian: I am interested in how popular culture shapes our attitudes about race, and in how race shapes our perceptions of popular culture. African Americans have historically found voices in entertainment and sports that were suppressed in more formal political arenas, and Hollywood has such profound, if often unacknowledged, effects upon the broader culture. The arc of Sidney Poitier’s saga particularly appealed to me because it carries through this entire period of racial upheaval. His persona transcended black stereotypes as comic buffoons or faithful sidekicks, and his dignity resonated with an emerging generation of African Americans and liberal whites who challenged racial convention in the 1950s. By the early 1960s, he seemed to embody the principle of racial equality, winning worldwide fame while lending Hollywood its sole black icon. Yet Poitier’s onscreen characters had to be ultra-virtuous heroes who exhibited unique restraints, fettering suggestions of black anger or sexuality. So by the late 1960s, one decade after getting considered a cutting-edge progressive figure, Black Power radicals and college students had tabbed him an “Uncle Tom.” I think his life and work still shape our popular understanding of black public figures today, none more so than President Obama. He seems to fulfill the same white liberal fantasies as Poitier, only on the most visible stage in the world.

Saturday, November 15, 2008

Ideal Film Culture in Louisiana?

Several weeks ago I asked several questions of diverse persons involved with Louisiana culture; and here are two answers to a single question regarding Louisiana film culture...

Daniel queries Alexandyr Kent, film reviewer:
What would a more ideal film culture look like, or be, in Louisiana?

Alexandyr Kent: That’s tough to answer for me. I’d begin by looking at the habits of movie-going itself.

We have enough movie theaters, generally speaking, and it’s nice to see the fall and winter lineups featuring popular arthouse/foreign films. It’s nice to see commercial appreciation for high-quality films.

Primarily, though, I think most moviegoers see movies as escapism or light entertainment. There’s nothing wrong with that. What worries me, however, is that some viewers may not be concerned with a movie’s potential seriousness of purpose (or its misrepresentations of society, culture, history, desire, etc.). I’d like to hear more conversations – by both viewers, reporters and critics – about subject matter and film form, and less about celebrity PR. It’s wishful thinking, but healthy doses of intellect and skepticism never hurt anyone.

If you attend theaters like the Prytania in N.O., like the Angelika chain in Dallas or New York, like the Robinson Film Center in Shreveport, they encourage a deeper engagement in the medium. They encourage, but do not force, deeper inquiry.

I wish multiplex chains would do this in a more overt way, and I think it would start by simply offering consumers appropriate spaces – like restaurants, cafes, coffeeshops, bars or ice cream counters – to digest what they see. Audiences often seem to be in a rush to leave the theater.

By their very design, many multiplex movie theaters don’t encourage consumers to pause and reflect, and that’s a shame to me. Look, on the other hand, at how bookstore chains like Border’s and B&N have encouraged customers to linger by adding cafes, comfy chairs and programming kids’ events and book signings. Bookstores and movie theaters are not mirror-image businesses – you don’t have to buy a ticket to get into a bookshop -- but they have a lot to offer one another when it comes to designing an experience.

Daniel queries Susie Labry, an actress, singer, and film community activist:
What would a more ideal film culture look like, or be, in Louisiana?

Susie Labry: I would like to see more professionalism in the film industry. I want to see our culture preserved and maintained and respect for one another’s cultures as we are a diverse culture and that is what makes it interesting. I want to see history and culture maintained and preserved. Want to see more Louisiana talent used. I want to Louisiana music and more sets used here. I want to see the workers work together as family and yet have healthy competition and quality. There needs to be a balance where both Employers and Employees and Contracts all benefit all. I want to see us as Louisiana unique, not mainstream and looking like everyone else. Just as colorful and exciting as its original music and food industry. Preserve our way, music, food, architecture, history, etc.

Stray Thoughts: Serious and Light

2009-08-26T13:15:00.007-05:00

Senator Ted Kennedy has died, and is being saluted as an effective liberal politician, someone who achieved a lot of good legislation and embodied significant public values, as a man who had personal flaws but faced and grew beyond them.

There has been another recent report about the murder of an investigative Russian journalist: some people still believe you can kill the truth, or kill knowledge, by killing a person.

The spirit-killers are evil but think they are good. The spirit-killers are ignorant and worse but think they are wise. The spirit-killers act out of hatred, selfishness, stupidity, but imagine themselves heroic, pious, sacrificing. The spirit killers want us to give up art for mundane duties, to give up brave fellowship for prejudice, to give up individuality for witless conformity. The spirit-killers speak words of poison and call that concern, duty, pride. The spirit-killers may be male or female, of any skin color, religion, or class. The spirit-killers may seem young but they are old, as putrid as death. The spirit-killers- destroy but cannot create. The spirit-killers’ true energies are envy and resentment—and time reveals their evil.

With the recent economic turmoil in the United States, there has been severe criticism of capitalists and capitalism to an extent that would have been suspect years ago, in better times (methods and morals have been questioned). It makes you wonder, Why wasn’t honest criticism of the financial system tolerated before its recent crisis? Why didn’t the financial press do its job? (I did some work for a financial news service years ago—and met incompetent and immature people there, so probably should not bother with that last question.) Why is it that when people steal out of want, out of sheer greed, they are not despised, but when people steal out of need, out of a desperate attempt to survive, they are despised?

A lot of people are chauvinists of one kind or another, but I have been struck again by the chauvinism of certain black male intellectuals: they define themselves in ways that suggest racial, gender, and sexual prejudices, ways so deeply rooted that those ways seem to be beyond the criticism if not awareness of those intellectuals. Some have commented on the president as if he were an ordinary street fighter (not understanding why he doesn’t talk tough and use power, instead of collaboration and diplomacy, to get his means). They judge other artists and intellectuals similarly: not understanding the complex goal, the subtle strategy.

I have been enjoying pianist and singer Judy Carmichael’s NPR radio program “Jazz Inspired,” in which she talks to creative people about their work: she asks terrific questions, full of importance and insight. (Sometimes I have liked Herman Fuselier’s radio program on zydeco music on KRVS as well.)

Streisand has a new album (scheduled for September 2009 release: Love is the Answer); and she is being featured in Parade magazine, the article available online.

I have received and have begun to “look at” Marc Robinson’s study of American theatre, The American Play (Yale, 2009). In recent days, I have read two novels, Salman Rushdie’s The Enchantress of Florence and Roberto Bolano’s The Skating Rink. (I am thinking of developing a web log devoted principally to the reading of, and commenting on, literature: the Garrett Reader.)

Bliss, a Turkish film I saw last year at a special screening in Manhattan and raved about, has been playing in the city again as part of a regular screening and getting good reviews!

Failures of Love

2009-08-26T12:36:00.004-05:00

My mother (a unique combination of intelligence and ignorance, love and hatred) had two daughters: one is dead and one lives; and the first I grew up with and the second, much younger than me, I did not. I was living in New York when my sister died and things were such in my life that I did not travel south for the funeral, but as part of my commemoration of that death I did write poetry and fiction. (If you want to know what is important to a writer, look at what he writes and how.) I have not ever felt entirely comfortable or safe in Louisiana: not in the past, not now—and I felt many things upon my return last year and being in social situations was not one of my goals, for various reasons. Thinking, writing, cultivating some sense of a career in a difficult time have been primary. (One writes to stay sane, not only for money in the present or future.) Not long after my return to the south, there was a memorial church service for people who had died, including for my deceased sister and, as I am an atheist and I felt too raw about my own life circumstances, I chose not to attend: that choice was hard for some to understand, though not much was said about it. That decision has been characteristic of my decisions here: individualistic, regardless of the responses of others. After a few brief attempts, I have not established a relationship with the surviving sister, though for years in the north I would send her notes and things I had written and sometimes books by others that I thought would be helpful (my mother did say a few months ago that this sister felt that I hadn’t been there for her: I wonder who she imagines has been there for me?). Here, I have not been inclined to cultivate relationships old or new—which makes me an impossible person. I have not been enthusiastic about presenting myself in situations in which I might feel vulnerable. How do you give an account of yourself when your most important investments have not proved sustaining in a way that anyone recognizes? How do you justify yourself? The awful thing is that I recall several adults who behaved when I was growing up as I do now (independent and self-protective or distant, selfish, hostile) and I was either not fond of them or I was critical of them—and it is a terrible irony to do things that you feel compelled to do (or more precisely: fail to do things) that constitute choices that you yourself would not have liked or understood in times past. I am in the place in which I was born: but I am not home.

Failures of Fact

2009-08-26T11:59:00.002-05:00

Before arriving south, I transmitted a great amount of queries regarding work in different areas, hoping that would make finding opportunities easier: but the economy here is smaller than that in the north and some publishers have experienced the same problems being felt elsewhere (thanks to the competition of new media and the loss of advertising). I did speak with an editor of a small paper, and researched several stories, none of which ended in published articles (in more than one case, a subject did not want to be interviewed on record or there was not enough information to go on):

One proposed subject for an article was the development of a boat-for-hire project along the Bayou Teche. That involved the water’s dams and locks: with the federal government likely to give over to the parish control of the locks, there was new opportunity. One of the locals, someone who had been successful in the funeral industry, had an idea for a luxury boat service, something that might appeal to vacationers, and he was aware of a second Louisiana citizen who was living in Idaho but who had an idea for offering boats for hire as exists in Europe. The first person, the funeral industry mogul, had undertaken a project years ago in which a nice boat and food and fishing had been offered for rent (I spoke with him: he had a highly rated boating crew and chefs and the possibility of fishing and golfing as part of the package: but, the high cost for using the boat, about $1800 a day, and the limited, mostly local, advertising that he did, and the fact there the boat was only used for about three or four trips a year, made it a very ambitious, interesting, but not sustainable enterprise, which had been written about by local papers when it was in service years before). He gave me the contact information for the second person, the Idaho woman; and she said she didn’t want to go public yet, explaining, “I have a dream to one day offer people this type of waterway experience. The business plan proposal is in the rough stages.”

Another subject had to do with homebuilding: in 2007, a company had planned to build three energy efficient homes a day, offering about 1,000 jobs to the local area. Needless to say, it did not reach that goal then or now; and the executives involved refused to be interviewed (they would not take or return phone calls or e-mails)—so it is not clear if the area could not sustain such plans or if the American economy, with the much-publicized problems in the home sales and mortgage industries, could not sustain that.

One local (St. Martinville) high school has two prom activities, one for whites, one for blacks; and it has been that way for years. (The actor Morgan Freeman knew of a similar situation in his native southern town, and offered to pay for a single prom, was refused years ago, but recently the town accepted and, apparently, the students enjoyed the single, shared prom.) I left messages for several people involved with prom planning at the local school under consideration and none returned my call but I did speak with the principal (he’s been principal for 8 years), and he told me that only one event is recognized by the school (the prom principally attended by blacks) and that the other (for whites) is a private party; and that prom planning begins the previous year (there are about 100 student attendees, plus guests; and no alcohol is served and students are required to stay until the end—to eliminate possibilities for trouble). Of course, he said he never heard any complaints regarding the existence of these two events. (Did the other people not return my many calls because they did not have his permission; or because they were too busy?) I felt as if the principal was just trying to put the best face on the situation, trying to discourage attention, but I did speak to a black student who said the white prom event is sponsored by the parents of involved students and is more expensive. She said the students there can wear what they want but at the official event dress is more monitored. She said she didn’t see why there couldn’t be just one prom but guessed that it was just tradition; and she thought that black and white students got along well at the school in St. Martinville.

During the last year , I have written articles on film and music and books that have appeared or are scheduled to appear in print and online, none of them local Louisiana publications.

Encore: Criticism, As Companion to Art; and As An Establishment Tool

2009-08-26T10:58:00.003-05:00

On the web pages of City and Country, Boy and Man, “Criticism, As Companion to Art” appeared previously on April 21, 2009; and “Criticism, As An Estatablishment Tool” appeared April 27, 2009.

Criticism, As Companion to Art

I have thought of art as a necessity; and I have thought of criticism as a companion to art, and it has become a necessity as well.

I see a film and read a review of it--before seeing or after; and sometimes, if I find the film interesting enough I write a review of it. I listen to music and try to imagine how I would describe it to a friend or a disinterested acquaintance. The content I discover in a work of art or entertainment, and the pleasure I find, is deepened and extended by a review--or a bunch of reviews.

Criticism is the recovery, in language and thought, of objects from the near and distant past; and it provides context, an explanation of genre, and a disclosure of artistic strategies that are social as much as they are aesthetic. Critics can help us to understand the current work of an artist in light of standards established by the artist's own work as well as the tradition or traditions to which he or she belongs; and criticism can celebrate the highest manifestations of craft, as it introduces us to new talent or reminds us of the existence of neglected or obscure artists: describing the rare qualities of each artist.

There is little more valuable culturally than the reinterpretation of misunderstood or maligned artists, sometimes offering retrospective summaries of artists' careers: that reinterpretation can tell us as much about ourselves, our society, and our values as anything, illuminating the politics of art.

We can learn about the nature of experimental art (what is to be gleaned from it); and about false radicalism, when experiment exists merely to impress and not to express or teach. We can be reminded that art has a spirituality, that it is infused, always, with the human spirit. We can learn about each other--through folk art, international art, expanding knowledge. Criticism can help us to understand how artists express themselves in ancillary words (in books, speeches, interviews) and how that complements or contradicts their works? And criticism can help us to appreciate, to sympathize with, to tolerate, how practical matters--money and power--affect the artistic world. Criticism can be a companion to art, to us.

Criticism, As An Establishment Tool

It may be less so today than it is has been in the past, thanks to the social changes of the 1960s and 1970s and the cultural and theoretical leaps of the 1970s and 1980s, but criticism can be an establishment tool: a way to reaffirm conservative traditions and values. Criticism can be a way of solidifying the status quo, of policing works, things, and people who are different. Sometimes those people who are different are people who belong to traditional minorities--but sometimes they are people whose cultural interests are different: people who prefer Rembrandt to installation art or video; people who prefer European classical music and jazz to indie rock and hip-hop. Criticism can be used to mock, to shame. It can be used to disseminate prejudice. It can express malice and resentment toward figures of mastery, toward what is perceived as safety and security in a society that is impressed by hedonism and riot. Criticism can be a way for the mediocre to join together against excellence. It can be a form of laziness, a rebellion against having to recognize the abundant, diverse talent in the world. It can be an establishment tool simply by encouraging things as they are, the prevalence of the lowest common denominator in much of popular culture.

Encore: A Glossary of Values

2009-08-26T10:45:00.002-05:00

Writer’s Note: “A Glossary of Values” was begun several years ago, circa 2002-2003, and this version was completed in October 2008, and appeared on the pages of the web log City and Country, Boy and Man October 22, 2008.

A GLOSSARY OF VALUES

Art – work created and crafted for aesthetic pleasure; work of beauty, depth, energy, insight, intelligence, relevance, and truth

Beauty – fineness of form; an attractive, suggestive wholeness, having physical and spiritual appeal; affectingly sensuous

Civility – a sensitive or intelligent regard for others that shapes manners and relationships; the desire and habit of avoiding injury to others; and avoidance of vulgarity and cruelty

Common Sense – assumptions based on experience; intuition; ordinary logic

Compromise – resolution of conflict or disagreement; settling for less than one’s original intention or goal in order to maintain cordiality, peace, or another important aspect of a relationship

Context – the preceding and/or surrounding history, ideas, and relationships; environment

Contradictions – conflicting ideas and feelings; the discordance between ideas and reality

Democracy - civic participation; sharing of responsibility in government, in public representation and activity

Economics – wealth generation and distribution; financial relations in a society; the system—the laws, rules, practices, and beliefs—involving money in a community, city, state, or nation

Evidence – observed fact; books and documents; trial and testing; expert testimony

Fairness – balanced or objective treatment; justice; a valuation rooted in established criteria

Form – structure; organization

Generosity – the act of giving out of choice, instinct, bounty, uncompelled giving; an open way of being, and a special sympathy of insight

Honesty – adhering to facts, intention; candor, clarity, directness; truth

Imagination – creativity, dream, invention; an ability to give vision to what does not yet exist or to see the connections between what does exist

Innovation – new forms of thought or product; experiment; changes in received orders

Intelligence – thinking ability; criticality; the capacity to weigh experience, analysis, observation, intuition, and other sources of information

Integrity – being true to the best, deepest, highest aspects of one’s character, discipline, philosophy, and character; dependable, recognizable quality;

Intellectual Rigor – thorough criticality of both details and overall structure and content

Intergenerational – the relationship between differing age groups; the potential of recognizing or responding to ideas, events, facts regardless of age

Justice - fundamental fairness, in interpretation and treatment, and regarding rewards and punishments

Knowledge - fact, truth, propositions for which there is proof; a body of evidence and insight; a tradition of knowing, speaking, and writing.

Lyricism – musicality of language; elegant and poetic diction

Multicultural – the presence of cultural diversity; an appreciation of artistic and philosophical traditions from different nations

Nuance - complexity, difference, subtlety; variety of experience, perception, and texture

Observation - what can be known through the senses and/or by study

Passion – a great intensity of feeling inspired by an idea, object, or person; an obsessive regard

Pleasure – the act or feeling of being pleased; elation, enjoyment, entertainment; a rise in spirit, a lightness of being

Power – authority, convention, and force; forms of power often work to undermine, deceive, stereotype, embarrass, intimidate, misinform, smash—as power often does whatever it takes to maintain itself

Quality - character, integrity, wholeness

Resources – useful character(s), ideas, artifacts, books, information, and tools; material that can enable one to make desired gains

Security – a belief in or sense of well-being, of necessary resources; the satisfaction of survival needs; ability or facility for self-defense and self-preservationSensuality – appeal to the senses; the facility to have or to provoke pleasant physical sensations

Spirituality – of the spirit; perception of life beyond surfaces; an abstract apprehension of the connection between living things

Subcultures – the shared habits, relationships, rituals, and values among people who aren’t dominant in a civilization or society; minority, rather than majority, culture; and often subcultural energies and forms reinvigorate the dominant culture

Technique – ability to do what is required by a given art or discipline

Tradition – the inherited culture, logic, and philosophy of an art or nation; the ongoing discourse within a discipline, with its own particular grammar and vocabulary and object or objects of concern

Understanding - comprehension; clear, right, judgment

Virtue - evidence or nature of being fine, good, right

Wackiness - eccentricity; an appreciation for, or inclination to, absurdity or wild imagination

Xenial - hospitality

Youth - early life; the spirit of possibility

Zest - energy, enjoyment, pleasure

Ian Mackenzie's novel City of Strangers

2009-08-13T15:41:00.002-05:00

City of Strangers by Ian Mackenzie
Penguin, 2009

Can a novel be sustained without an unusual event? Individuality is channeled into different areas, into writing and business, in the fiction City of Strangers, which is set in a New York of both elegance and squalor; and the novel focuses on a writer who is asked to write a book about his father, who was decades ago a Nazi sympathizer, in a post 9/11 world of resurgent racism. The writer, Paul, is newly divorced and has a financial world success of a brother facing corruption questions. The novel City of Strangers, with its depicted street tensions, restaurants, museums, and the rest of it, is written with a language of attention and detail, of breath and muscle, of desire and fear and anger, argument and confession. The central character is a man, Paul, who clings to relationships and emotions that others want to leave behind. Violence enters Paul’s life as we all fear, and he is pushed to defend himself smartly, viciously. What occurs is unusual—and challenges expectation, if not belief.

Howards End by Edward Morgan Forster

2009-08-10T11:18:00.004-05:00

E. M. Forster’s Howards End
Penguin Books, 2000

The early twentieth-century novel Howards End is about conflict and resolution as it relates to ideals and reality, nation and society, men and women, art and nature, intellect and impulse, and wealth and poverty. Several families who embody different values and classes meet and are contrasted: friendships, love affairs, and financial relationships evolve and are at stake. The novel Howards End is an honest and imaginative attempt to come to grips with modern English society and what it seemed to be becoming—in terms of the development of capitalism and city life and their impact on individual opportunities and choices. Forster was aware of much and that awareness was invested in his novel—and calls to the reader’s own awareness. Howards End is a genuinely engaging and deeply impressive novel.

The life of the mind that is created for Margaret and her sister Helen, with art and theatre and reading and discussion, comes out of genuine observation, while the money-making, property-hoarding, and status-consciousness of Henry Wilcox and his family is equally believable. The vulnerability of the poor clerk Leonard Bast, who wants to belong to a world of culture, is too recognizable. With these characters the novelist E. M. Forster creates a story of human relationships in which larger forces—not only human psychology but environmental nature and spirituality, as well as social progress—are at work. It is, really, a very large vision, an exacting task: making the novel an aesthetic object, and something of use, a resource for understanding.

Stephen L. Carter's novel Jericho's Fall

2009-08-07T12:31:00.002-05:00

Stephen L. Carter, Jericho’s Fall
Knopf, 2009

I liked Stephen Carter’s first three fiction novels, The Emperor of Ocean Park, New England White, and Palace Council, novels that could be considered a trilogy, as they shared some of the same characters, focusing on a segment of educated and wealthy African-Americans we do not see much of in literature. His books are intelligent entertainments and yet what is surprising, thrilling, and troubling is the degree to which conspiracies and conspiracy theories are at the core of these books. That corresponds to the paranoia of a victimized minority as well as the political analysis of certain radicals. Carter’s novel Jericho’s Fall is about an aging, seemingly ill government man, now retired, who threatens to reveal state secrets and financial secrets. His former lover, a young woman, returns to attend his death bed. His daughters are there, one of them very hostile. They are all under surveillance, and in danger. Where is the evidence the great man has and what will he do with it?

The novel moves fast through conversations and acts, featuring intriguing characters, and often there is believable emotional weight as well as interesting political speculations. Carter’s use of language (in narrative and dialogue) is at a high-level with only of few points of stiffness. However, near the story’s end, I found the leading character’s response to a fatal event too lacking in affect—his coolness then is unlikely, not quite human, even for someone whose work has required monstrous calculations. Yet Stephen Carter’s work is engaging for his ability to suggest the kind of characters who can create or earn and hold and handle great wealth and power. The reader does not feel the cheapness or emptiness that can accompany reading such depictions, the exploitative flavor. Carter has a genuine and admirable talent. In the novel, as the great man’s enemies circle, approach, and attempt to do their worst, we read something that allows us to imagine the consequences of certain amoral ways of being in the world.

The Human Stain by Philip Roth

2009-08-04T14:05:00.003-05:00

Philip Roth, The Human Stain
Houghton Mifflin, 2000

The Human Stain considers individuality versus collectivity, secrecy versus disclosure, and social constraints versus freedom, and its author Philip Roth has a sense of invention equal to his ideas: the invention not only illustrates his ideas, it fulfills a view of humanity. Every novel recreates the world, and The Human Stain is a book written out of Philip Roth’s full intelligence, observations, and sympathy, a book, entertaining, rich, wise, that both accepts and protests human society. Philip Roth questions society with a persistence that indicates a genuine radicality. In The Human Stain, Philip Roth depicts the failure of intelligent professionals to use reason and morality when it matters most: in a real situation occurring on campus. A man who has helped to make the reputation of the college in which he works, Coleman Silk, is ruined by an obviously bogus charge of racism. Colman Silk, a professor of the classics, of Greek tragedies, has a life that is both strangely and believably complex (charged with racism, he is actually a light-skinned African-American passing for white; and he is having an affair with a woman half his age, a woman who claims to be illiterate). Coleman’s life demonstrates a variation of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, being the life of a man living in the world without full notice. Roth’s novel, as well, uses the Clinton administration and the Monica Lewinsky scandal as one frame, allowing the writer—through that and Coleman’s late life affair—to explore the madness and refreshment of sex. Good fiction always seems to fight the fact that it is fiction, drawing on power from dynamic, real world sources, while taking flight with human imagination, as this one does.

The human stain is blood, semen, skin; it is fundamental fact and what is made of it. I wish James Baldwin were here to read such a book: I imagine he would applaud Roth’s claiming the character, the subject, and showing, once more, how confining and crazy a matter race is, and the resources of American personality—while dynamically dealing with masculinity and sexuality. Depiction of Coleman Silk’s early life presents women who are vivid and embody different aspects of experience, different values, teaching Silk something about himself and the world. So many people’s values and interpretations are less complex than human experience, compelling them to reject what they cannot comprehend (instead of modifying their values and interpretations, they reject experience). Sophistication, like a genuine education, involves mastering many things that are important and difficult because they are real, and not just if and when they please. Faunia, the college custodian and farm worker who becomes Coleman Silk’s last lover, calls the human stain the trace that humans contain and leave behind.

Roth, as a writer, renews his (our) sense of who and where the characters are as the novel continues. Faunia does a dance for her lover and her body is described in terms of what has marked her body (work, lovemaking). She, who has been mistreated in other relationships, requests nothing more than a sexual relationship from Coleman, but she is not simply a body, she is a mind and spirit and she seems to know more than people who are better placed. Faunia thinks of how the charge of racism is not simply an event, but how it works backward to taint an entire career and life. Roth imagines what is beneath the surface of a woman who has been abused and who is often dismissed by others, showing her depth and her limitation. It is Faunia who thinks of the human stain as what the human being contains and leaves behind, the human trace. Both Coleman and Faunia are threatened by her former husband, who is himself traumatized by his experience in the Vietnam war.

Philip Roth seems to want to enrich our sense of the present by increasing our knowledge of the past—the pagan Greek roots of western civilization, the rigorous intelligence too: we must accept complexity, contradiction, multiplicity, plenitude. Roth captures perfectly the petty, imperceptive judgments of the politically correct (such as of feminists who judge without knowing a French woman intellectual, their colleague, a woman whose surface is glamorous and whose exile is profound and whose flaw is dangerous: a woman whose mind is her gift and her trap). Roth allows every character her/his story, with understanding and fulfillment, fulfillment in acceptance of knowledge or ignorance, in acts of love or hate; and he dramatizes demonology, how individuals are interpreted as villains by communities. He is carrying on an American tradition—the critique of American ethical thinking.

The ability to take moral offense is the only power some people have—but they rarely take offense at the workings of institutions or communities that have power over them or in which they participate: rather, they take offense at individuals, often strangers. Their moral sense is rooted in self-interest, and in weakness. I am tempted to call this a bitterly wise book.

What Do People Do When They Are Free? (Comments On Culture and Politics)

2009-07-30T12:39:00.019-05:00

Are the resources of civilization dependable, pervasive—or are they only present in isolated circles, active in the lives of the privileged—or the very humble? What do people choose to do when they have significant resources; when they are free? Shakespeare and Henry James and other writers asked those questions, giving us characters well-placed enough, intelligent and sensitive enough, resourceful enough to ask and answer those questions. We ask those questions of the famous and the fortunate, of the gifted, of the strange. It is why we are curious about and suspicious of them. It is why we some of us do not often respect the fact that private life is one thing and public life another, subjecting the private life of the distinguished to the gossipy and the puritanical, to crude ways of learning and judging.

Established attitudes and philosophies, whether of appreciation or repudiation, liberty or repression, tend to cloud judgment: one can affirm or deny new phenomena, regardless of its fundamental qualities, for reasons having to do with its superficial conformity to established patterns. Consequently, artists and intellectuals consider and practice rebellion, subversion. It seems to me, as well, that what is subversive subtext in the arts of one generation becomes part of the dominant form and content for the next generation—and possibly inconsequently for subsequent generations.

Artists and intellectuals do not follow—they lead: we lead—and sometimes we have so much we want to achieve that our own intensity frightens others. They understand so little of what goes into art or disciplined thought. They do not understand the commitment or the sacrifice (or that artists may require a certain stability but do not require normality). They do not understand the work itself. Writing, for instance, requires discipline and passion, imagination and insight—and it is not trivial. Unfortunately, I used to live in close proximity to someone who thought she was a writer because she kept a diary of her dull life: such incomprehension is enough to inspire laughter so profound one ends in tears. In the last several months, I have been trying to return to a novel I began writing—and I have learned anew how difficult it is to be creative…

The novel Glover’s Mistake by Nick Laird (Viking, 2009) is focused on friendship, love, betrayal, and technology in London, and shows how corrupting loneliness and self-pity can be, and the ways the internet can be used for sabotage and deception. The lead characters are David, an extremely shy man, his flatmate Glover, and David’s former teacher, a famous artist named Ruth, with whom Glover becomes involved with. David presents in himself a destructive view of a critic and blogger, and Ruth, whose work as an artist seems clever but slight, is no model either: David, though quite smart, is narrow in perspective, hateful, and Ruth is work-obsessed in ways that are respectably serious and vainly silly, self-indulgent. (Glover’s religious orientation makes him simple and intolerant.) The novel is intelligent and contains some truth but lacked something—grace? spirit? wisdom?

On Harvard literature professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., after a false claim of burglary and being arrested in his own home. Jan Ramsey, editor of New Orleans’ Offbeat magazine: “I’m afraid I’d have to question why a policeman would arrest a man once he found out he was not an intruder, but was in his own home. Yes, Mr. Gates was angry (rightfully so) and ‘sassed’ the cop. But there are just too many cops out there (speaking from numerous personal experiences) who take it upon themselves to bust innocent people because they (police) are offended by what someone says to them. Smarting off is not necessarily questioning their authority, and it certainly isn't an offense punishable by law. I’m not saying all policemen do this, but I’ve known way too many people who were thrown into jail for asking a simple question, like ‘What’s your badge number?’ I've also known too many African-Americans who have been harassed by cops simply because they are black. I think we might invest in more sensitivity training and less testosterone-driven response from the people who are supposed to be enforcing the law.”

Apparently, singer-songwriter Chico Debarge performed last Sunday in New York’s Central Park; and he has a new album, called Addiction.

…Some of my favorite summer songs are Sly and the Family Stone’s “Hot Fun in the Summertime,” Ephraim Lewis’s “Summer Lightning,” and Diana Ross’s interpretation of Leonard Cohen’s and Sharon Robinson’s “Summertime.”…

Diana Ross turned 65 earlier this year and is one of the more interesting and valuable women of her era, of our time, though she is not always recognized as such. (How many women are celebrated as they age?) Of course, we have not been living in a heroic age these last few decades: it has been an ignoble time and the Mary Wilson Syndrome has prevailed. The Mary Wilson Syndrome: Mary Wilson is a fool and a mediocrity—but her particular kind of stupidity (her ignorance, prejudices, and resentments) are shared by others, so when she speaks those others experience her as telling the truth. Diana Ross, a woman of genuine accomplishment, has a fine intelligence—but that is rare, and when Ross speaks, though she may be perfectly logical and clear, that articulation can be less resonant. Mary Wilson has built a career on being mediocre, on claiming victimhood, on nothing more than shared resentments. Years ago, many people wanted to be better than they were, more accomplished, more intelligent: but these days, many people prefer to be comfortably stupid.

Louisiana music has been celebrated, though its diversity is not always commented upon: the new fiddle music album by Linzay Young and Joel Savoy, features traditional south Louisiana folk music (and the album cover has a good photograph of the two men, with Savoy looking strikingly handsome, like a young Henry Fonda, with a face that exudes dignity, brooding intelligence, purpose). The women’s group Bonsoir Catin’s new album Vive L’Amour, from Valcour (as is the Young/Savoy music), is also traditional; and has an attractive cover too, as does every Valcour release I’ve seen. Which reminds me of an interview I heard with a young musician in which he discussed the burden of tradition: wondering if he was making the music as it had been made in the past, and how free of that worry he felt when he was doing newer music, which included contemporary rhythms and electronic experimentation. The new Bad Chad and the Good Girls album (from Soul of the Boot Entertainment) features such experimentation and I’m not sure what I think of it. (Although I thought that I was listening to a wide range of music—folk, indie rock, jazz, world music, and some popular music—I realized that I hadn’t been listening to anything like that.) Kenny Cornett and Killin’ Time’s Flat Fleet album (CSP Records), which came up months ago, is of early and famous rock songs (and again, I can see both the appeal and limits of tradition there). Certain forms of music are fine as long as you have an alternative to them—but if they are your only frame and resource, they are too limited to provide a full perspective of the world or of life’s possibilities (that is often true of older forms, such as folk music, and newer forms, such as hip-hop).

It has been reported that Vibe magazine is ceasing publication: and now, something or someone else will have to be at the forefront of marketing music for morons. Is that unfair? Yes, not all the music reported on was dumb, sexist, homophobic, and violent, though much of it was. Vibe was a consumer magazine of popular journalism covering hip-hop and rhythm-and-blues. I hope the music and the journalism covering it will be better in the future—and that the music will be judged by its best forms rather than its worst, the way other forms of music are. (For me, regarding hip-hop, the best would include A Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul, Queen Latifah, P.M. Dawn, mostly artists active in the early to mid 1990s.) [Writer's Note: In August 2009, there was a subsequent report that the magazine would appear online, and then in print quarterly.]

Limiting African-American commentary to “black subjects” demonstrates disrespect for African-American intelligence and subverts the establishment of African-American cultural authority.

Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing has an anniversary this year, having been released in 1989. That was an important film and is still worthy of comment, though it’s not my favorite of his works. Spike Lee is not the best African-American filmmaker of his generation, but he’s the most important—he has asked significant questions about America and the place of people of color in it. He has, like James Baldwin before him, taken on the burden of African-American history, and the weight has both deformed and empowered his work. If more artists took on such questions, it is possible that the art produced would in time be better (as most things do with practice)—we would see a variety of styles and subjects, but with only a few artists doing so, the art produced tends to be overwhelmed by the issues involved.

I admired James Baldwin for many qualities, such as his eloquence and his honesty; however, when it came to film he wrote a piece on Ingmar Bergman that I liked, but he spent the bulk of his film commentary complaining about American films of decades past. I wondered more than once why he didn’t focus on international film and the independent American films that progressively addressed the issues he raised. The mid-1970s book that he did on film, The Devil Finds Work, would have been richer had he dealt with some of the more interesting films being made at the time the book was written and published.

“I was a solipsist and a narcissist and much too arrogant,” he said. “I have a lot more compassion now, but it took a long time” admitted film critic Andrew Sarris, thinking over his early career, in the New York Times (the article by Michael Powell was placed online July 9th; and in print July 12th). That is the same early career that Sarris’s volunteer publicist Kent Jones and others are eager to defend (I used to read Sarris’s Village Voice work and even his later New York Observer work, but it is hard for me to have much regard for someone who feuds with a dead woman, as Sarris has for a long time). Sarris, a dinosaur, will now be writing for Film Comment: that publication and its editor, like Jones, are eager to eat his droppings.

I’m not fond of biographies these days but Shawn Levy has a new biography of Paul Newman and it looks as if it’s not disrespectful of the actor, whom I like very much, and I’m thinking of reading it.

I’m curious about Meryl Streep’s new film, Julie and Julia, focusing on the work of chef Julia Child.

It has been announced that the beautiful, smart, and sometimes tough actress Charlize Theron is planning to make a movie of Christopher Buckley’s novel Florence of Arabia, a satire.

The online Art Daily has announced that in Amsterdam “The Van Gogh Museum is hosting the first retrospective in thirty years of Belgian artist Alfred Stevens (1823-1906) from 18 September 2009 until 24 January 2010. Stevens was one of the most well-known artists in Paris in the second half of the 19th century. He caused a furore with his paintings of elegant, intriguing and distant women.” (The two illustrations used on the site are gorgeous, the kind of images I imagine Henry James would have loved.)

Reverend Ike, who celebrated prosperity as an important part of his ministry has died. (I remember him as being very funny.)

According to The Economist business week e-newsletter (July 30th): Microsoft and Yahoo have formed a business partnership to bring together their internet search and advertising capacities. Housing sales rose in June. Verizon is cutting 8,000 jobs.

Joe Conason has an article on the online Rasmussen Reports arguing that President Obama should ask Bill Clinton for help in defending his health proposals. What nonsense. (Conason should have written article about how sound Obama’s proposals are: instead, he’s merely championing his own desire for the same old white messenger. It’s time for something new and someone new—that’s what the election was about. Change is difficult and we’re in the midst of it now.)

The Economic Policy Institute has produced analysis of the health care debate and the ideas involved, available online; and I’m hoping to get a chance to review that material soon.

Philip Roth's novel Indignation

2009-07-27T13:52:00.003-05:00

Indignation by Philip Roth
Houghton Mifflin Company, 2008

Yesterday I completed reading a review copy of Kazuo Ishiguro’s Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall, scheduled for September 2009 distribution: the stories are enjoyable, and by using music as a reference in the different stories, the book performs a study of art, appreciation, and celebrity in our time, saying things we might be afraid to say as we do not want to be thought hateful or weak. Last week, I read Philip Roth’s 2008 novel Indignation.

Indignation is the story of a smart Jewish boy whose father’s worries alienate the boy and drive him away from their New Jersey home to an Ohio college. There the young man meets a crazy, sexy blonde and has his first sexual experience. His conflicts with others, including authority figures, leads to moments of self-affirming anger—that are also self-endangering.

Indignation is a coming of age story, a college novel, a Jewish family story, a war story, and a tale of American individuality—the kind of individuality that leads to both brilliance and self-destruction. It is easy to conclude that Roth has an easy mastery of his material—and is able to anticipate and fulfill (or defeat) a reader’s expectations. I found myself having a reservation about the book—thinking the story too small, or too conventional, only to have the story explode that reservation in the next few pages. I thought the students too insular, too self-involved, and then they indulged themselves in a panty raid and the college president offered a scathing analysis on the real context of their lives, on all the important facts and values they were ignoring, addressing and vanquishing my reservations.

Indignation, about learning and sex and life and death, is a good book: it has its value, and its resonance. However, I wonder about the use of a crazed, precociously sexual young woman in fictions depicting the 1950s, as a symbol of both experience and experience repressed. Books tend to represent these women as exceptional—and yet there seem to be so many in books. Is that a male misunderstanding of female sensibility—or a cliché writers cannot let go?

African-American Philosophical Fiction (Suggestions)

2009-07-17T11:14:00.003-05:00

Last year, I circulated this notice:

...I am interested in compiling a bibliography primarily focused on African-American short, philosophical fiction stories: short stories in which explored are facts, ideas, issues, myths, questions, and relationships involving or regarding being, existence, knowledge, logic, and, also, aesthetics, ethics, values, and wisdom. I am interested in stories in which characters are conscious or become conscious of the complexity of mind, self, society, and life, and grapple with that complexity or those complexities, whether the forms of the stories in which those characters appear are conventional linear narratives or experimental. How does the individual come to understand life and mind, and then incorporate his or her understanding into his or her actions and relationships with the world, whether those relationships are intellectual, intimate, familial, social, or political? Do you know of such stories, new or old, and would you pass on the titles of the stories and the authors’ names?... I would love it if the information you provided were complete, including publication information and a summary of the story (such as author’s name, story title, magazine/journal/book title, page number, publication issue number, year published, name and location of publisher, and ISBN or ISSN—with the principal theme and/or plot identified); but—if you do not have that detailed publishing information, nor the time and patience to acquire it, that is not necessary: the story title and the author’s name are a good start. (If there are unpublished stories you are aware of, for each please supply me with the author’s name, the story title, and author’s contact information as best you know it.)...

And I received some responses, including these:

Randall Kenan, “Let the Dead Bury their Dead”, in Let the Dead Bury their Dead (San Diego & New York: Harcourt Brace and Company, 1992), pp. 271-334. ISBN: 0 15 650515 0This is a fabulous story that is based around the oral history of two old African Americans about the history of their town. On each page, beneath their account, Kenan offers lengthy footnotes – an obvious wink to white, dominant discourse, but many of the footnotes are fictional. At various points through the narrative, Kenan also includes diary extracts from the slave holding white family whose runaway slave founded the community that the African Americans are discussing in their oral history. The story raises issues of memories vs facts, modes of discourse etc. When I teach this it is also fascinating to ask students which part of the story they were most drawn too (oral history or footnotes) and about the order in which they read them – oral first then footnotes, or a simultaneous reading. Ultimately, it touches on many, if not all, of the issues that you are interested in – indeed, you may already be fully aware of Kenan’s work.

Best wishes

Sarah Robertson

Dr Sarah Robertson
Senior Lecturer of American Literature
University of the West of England
(August 9, 2008)
--------------------------------

You might want to check out John Holman, a wonderful but under-appreciated writer with two books (Luminous Mysteries and Squabble) who directs the creative writing program at Georgia State University in Atlanta. He fits your prescription perfectly. Also look into Sefi Atta at her Web site. She was born in Nigeria, now lives in Meridian, Mississippi.

All best,

Frederick Barthelme
(August 10, 2008)
---------------------------------

There are many, many such stories, which I think meet your requirements.
I can, right away, think of 5 to share:

1. Toni Morrison’s short story "Recitatif"
2. Arna W. Bontemps’s “A Summer Tragedy”
3. Alice Walker’s “Advancing Luna and Ida B. Wells”
4. Zora Neale Hurston’s “The Gilded Six Bits”
5. Richard Wright’s “Big Boy Leaves Home”

Good Luck!

All best,
Sandy Alexandre
(August 10, 2008)
-------------------------

I forward your inquiry to Reggie Young of the English Department who specializes in African-American literature. The only material we have in the archives collection which would be relevant are the stories of Ernest J. Gaines. Most of those have been published.

Bruce Turner
Head of Special Collections, Edith Garland Dupré Library,
University of Louisiana at Lafayette
(August 11, 2008)
--------------------------

I don’t have time to give you all the info you request, but look at the first known work of Af. Am. fiction: Douglass' “Heroic Slave.”

Also look at Du Bois' stories, esp. “The Coming of John” in Souls.

All of Ralph Ellison’s short fiction is central to your interests.

Charles Chesnutt short stories are also central.

There’s a lot more, but these are a good start.

Best,
John Stauffer
(August 14, 2008)
--------------------------

My suggestions:
“The Coming of John” by W.E.B. Du Bois in The Souls of Black Folk (a stand-alone short story in the book)
“One Man’s Initiation” by Paul Laurence Dunbar in the modern library Sport of the Gods and Other Essential Writing by Paul laurence Dunbar ed Shelley Fisher Fishkin and David Bradley (Random House)

Sorry that other commitments prevent me from spending any more time responding to your query.

SFF/Shelley Fisher Fishkin
(August 17, 2008)
-----------------------------

My top two picks would be:

The chapter entitled “The Ethics of Living Jim Crow” from Richard Wright's Black Boy and the story “The Coming of John” from Souls of Black Folk by W. E. B. Du Bois.

Dr. Anna Stubblefield
Chair, Department of Philosophy
Rutgers University-Newark
(January 9, 2009)

Great Novel: The Known World by Edward P. Jones

2009-07-15T10:12:00.008-05:00

The Known World by Edward P. Jones
Amistad/HarperCollins, 2003

I had heard very good things about Edward P. Jones’s novel The Known World and I had thought of reading it at different times, though I had a reservation to believing that a novel depicting slavery would be as original or as satisfying as I wanted any novel to be. Jones’s book is, in fact, as near perfect a novel as I have read in quite a while, a book that allows the reader to confront a complex, difficult history (a time of slavery, in which some of the slave-owners are black), and a book in which the writer adds enough beauty and wisdom that one can bear it.

Wisdom cannot exist without the acceptance of the facts of human life, and The Known World seems a wise book. Edward P. Jones makes American history his, illuminating public practices of power and private deceptions of the psyche. Edward P. Jones’s The Known World presents an appreciation of nature, unique economic and social relations, and subtle movements among people: a freshly imagined world. It is a book of small, brilliant enchantments but also horrific reversals of fortune that read like justice delivered. Jones possesses an easy mastery of difficult matters of craft and of human relationships, of style and of content. Jones suggests the diversity of black life even during slavery. Jones presents a world in which an unexpected African-American refinement is achieved and sustained, though achieved with some moral contradictions (these are people whose refinement does not preclude owning other people); and it is a world in which the decencies of people of European descent include ignorance and prejudices that can seem infinite. The Virginia writer captures the cruelty of families broken and separated as property.

Edward Jones tells stories within stories within stories, and has the interesting (and yet gratifying) oddity of naming the destinies of his characters long before the novel’s end. There is extraordinary foreshadowing: a father shakes his young son in angry disappointment, and later when that son is a man the father, again in angry disappointment, hits him and hurts him (the father cannot believe his son would accept and perpetuate slavery). It is a bitter irony that the father, a man who bought his own freedom and that of his family is sold again into slavery by a hateful (white) man who resents the father’s pride. (That is historical fact and also allegory: as with much else in the novel, such things did occur.) The violations of the social order—when “races” mix—can be so unnerving to some that they themselves feel crazy. This is a book full of history, imagination, and life.

Even the incidental characters are interesting: a boy who rules his country family with honesty and rudeness; an exploited woman who becomes a prostitute and who inadvertently brings disease to a great land-owning family. In Moses, a slave separated from a woman he loved, and made an overseer, there is suffering and pride—and a frustrated hope when he becomes involved with someone who could free him if she chooses.

Yet, despite the writer’s significant talent, the book’s ending—which involves nearly cataclysm as well as deliverance and revelation—is a stretch of the imagination that may be a little too much. I am not sure about that ending, and it is worth thinking about, as is so much of this novel, Edward P. Jones’s The Known World.

Politics, Culture

2009-07-09T14:19:00.006-05:00

I had not been paying much attention to New York politics, which has been roiling recently: apparently, the New York state senate is in conflict, with the Democrats and Republicans fighting over governance. The Democratic governor has appointed a lieutenant governor, Richard Ravitch, as part of a strategy to break the tie-vote between the parties (as well as have him preside over the senate). There are legal challenges to the appointment being planned or made.

Massachusetts is contesting the federal “defense of marriage” legislation said to discriminate against same-sex partnerships (its attorney general is suing in regard to the denial of federal benefits, according to the New York Times, July 8, 2009).

Sarah Jessica Parker is planning with Bravo a television series on obscure artists competing for a gallery exhibit, cash grant, and museum tour, according to The Art Newspaper. (It is rarely a bad idea to focus on good but obscure artists; and yet I cringe at the possibility that this project will be too much like other reality television programs that emphasize the worst in its participants. Apparently there is a concern for quality content and art experts will participate.)

In the July 7th Rex Roberts Film Journal International review of the movie Sacha Baron Cohen’s Bruno, about a gay journalist search for fame, the critic stated, “Cohen’s targets are so broad, there’s little sport in skewering them,” and the reviewer asked, “Does Cohen want to have his strudel and eat it, too, in the sense that he promotes the very stereotypes he purports to mock?”

I heard some songs from the music group The Mars Volta’s album Octahedron, and am curious to hear more: the music sounds spacious, and the singing wildly expressive. More on the music beat: The new album by the singer Maxwell, BLACKsummers’night, is apparently doing well in terms of sales (though I have read mixed reviews of the album, though I liked the single I heard). It is Maxwell’s first album in eight years; and Maxwell is one of the few neo-soul artists who seem to have returned (other artists making their mark when he did years ago included Dionne Farris and D’Angelo). Filter magazine has reported online that Mazzy Star’s Hope Sandoval will release an album, Through the Devil Softly (Nettwerk), in mid-September.

Books Set in the South

2009-07-09T13:21:00.004-05:00

Charlaine Harris, Dead and Gone
Berkeley/Penguin, 2009

James Wilcox, Heavenly Days
Viking, 2003

Tim Gautreaux, The Next Step in the Dance
Picador, 1998

I have been reading a book on Ralph Waldo Emerson, Emerson’s Liberalism, by Neal Dolan, and looking at a second book on classicism and African-American literature, Ulysses in Black, by Patrice Rankine, two very serious books (scholarly and seemingly good) from the University of Wisconsin Press, but the three books that I have completed reading are novels that are set in Louisiana, the most effective of which is The Next Step in the Dance, although the book with the most progressive (socially critical, honest) vision may be Dead and Gone, a fantasy fiction.

Dead and Gone, a novel by the Arkansas-resident Charlaine Harris, focused on the telepathic Louisiana waitress Sookie Stackhouse, is full of action, possibly too much action (a lot of physical confrontations and grisly events). Harris’s earlier Sookie Stackhouse novels carried more detail about character and southern life as well as the gothic entertainment of a narrative featuring vampires and werewolves. This new book is still a page-turner but what is fascinating here is how the supernatural divisions mirror recognizable prejudices: a group of spiritual separatists resorts to brutal violence in the service of social apartheid. That is genuinely scary—the hatred suggested is believable, as a corollary to racism and homophobia.

James Wilcox’s comic novel Heavenly Days is centered on a group of unstable relationships: no marriage fits established patterns and the sexual orientation of several characters remains ambiguous. A southern social world involving elegant properties, university life, women’s concerns, weight watching, religion, and unique businesses is presented. It is a fast-moving novel. The most serious aspect may be its treatment of a conflict involving political correctness in the filling of an academic position, but, for me, the novel is amusing without carrying a correspondent compelling heft. The book is an appealing satire, one that may benefit from reading a second time, and it is an accomplishment (the book achieves an aura of sophistication not typically identified with the south), but I wish that it had more impact when I closed the last page.

The Next Step in the Dance has a lot of believable texture, really creating a sense of a real though unique world: one in which marriage, family, place, and religion are important. The book is full of cousin and cousin that—the kind of thing that pleases many southerners but stresses my nerves. The two central characters Paul and Colette, a mechanic and bright pretty girl, are vivid, as they tug against their limitations and yearn toward their possibilities. This is a genuine novel—it allows the writer to introduce us to people we would not know otherwise, and we see them struggle for love and forgiveness, for money and stability. The writer creates a vision of community that is both redemptive and convincing (I must say, it brought tears to my eyes several times: but thinking of it now, I am a bit wary of that effect). Rather than a comedy of remarriage, it is a drama of remarriage, showing the tests people must go through to know, accept, and love each other. It is a conservative book, in that it affirms staying in the world one is born in.

Michael Jackson Spoke to Our Spirits

2009-07-09T10:11:00.008-05:00

Our spirits are frustrated, if not repressed, in different areas of our lives: and art is a realm of freedom and confirmation.

For days after the announcement of Michael Jackson’s death it still seemed like a mean-spirited rumor, or a painful dream, regarding this man, a man of great talent and great conflicts, a man who wanted to be less and less real and more and more art.

I remember being a boy, and with my sister and cousins, listening and dancing to Michael Jackson’s music, enjoying his televised performances, and devouring magazines featuring he and his brothers—we knew their names, likes, and dislikes. When I was 18, I liked French film, modern art, rock music, Chekhov, jazz, John Irving, Toni Morrison, Gore Vidal, African music, Tennessee Williams, Bob Marley, Diana Ross, and Michael Jackson. Now, years later, I no longer read John Irving or listen to much Bob Marley, but I still like the music of Michael Jackson. Two weeks ago, I was lying in bed in my mother’s house, after many years of being away, and looking out the window, trying to think about goals for my future, listening to NPR when the news came on, Thursday at 6pm, that Michael Jackson had suffered cardiac arrest at his rented home, been taken to a hospital, and pronounced dead.

I liked that immediately radio programs hosted by Brian McKnight and Keith Sweat contained tributes to Jackson’s music. Flipping the radio dial, I was amused to hear the song “Pretty Young Thing” played over and over; and I wondered if anyone had a sense of irony about that (I recognized that it was being heard, very obviously, as a heterosexual male affirmation of desire). The Steve Harvey show on Saturday also contained warm tributes. (NPR had good interviews with Ann Powers, Jason King, Lenny Kravitz, Bryan Monroe, and Kelefa Sanneh, who was perceptive enough to note a particularly inventive song on the Invincible album.)

However, some media took it as an opportunity to revisit in detail whatever controversy and scandal had existed in Jackson’s life. Of course, public reputations are developed not only in response to observations and reported facts but by the monotonous repetition of certain attitudes and myths that force human ambiguity and complexity into caricature or demonology. The tabloid trash the public (and journalists) had dined on for years was being vomited up and digested anew.

In an interview Al Sharpton insisted that Michael Jackson was a genius not a freak—a claim that was made with a voice of strength rather than sentimentality, even more touching for that reason, but not entirely convincing. Does anyone know a black man is gifted if he doesn’t turn himself into a spectacle, into some kind of freak? I mean, Little Richard, James Brown, Jimi Hendrix, and Prince all loudly announce their difference—yielding larger than life images and larger than usual spaces in the dominant culture.

Yet, and yet again, it is Motown that produced black artists who embodied a recognizable humanity, a fullness of personality and potential: Stevie Wonder, Diana Ross, Smokey Robinson, and Marvin Gaye. Their work embodies an intelligence, sensitivity, and sensuality—not only significant artistry but a humanity and civility—that is the very best of virtues available in any civilization. That was Michael Jackson’s inheritance. Did he claim enough of it?

Great claims have been made for Michael Jackson’s ability to surmount barriers, but others hurtled across some of those barriers before he did: not only the greats of Motown but also Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington and Nat King Cole and Lena Horne and Ethel Waters and …. It is not necessary to diminish or disrespect the accomplishments of others in order to praise Michael Jackson, who was great and whose greatness is only beginning to be defined or understood. Michael Jackson was, for instance, both a subtle and a passionate singer, as he was both a subtle and dynamically expressive dancer. He was a maker of new images and a synthesizer of old images. He seems to have sold more recordings than anyone in history. It is humbling, as well, to realize that often, for an artist, the same amount of belief, energy, and time goes into a work that is perceived as a failure as goes into one perceived as a success.

It was startling to hear on the day of Jackson’s memorial service a discussion on NPR featuring rock critic Bill Wyman and music journalist Nelson George in which Wyman claimed that Jackson was less significant than Elvis Presley because Elvis had created rock and roll: such a ridiculous assertion—that dismissed (black) Ike Turner, Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, and Fats Domino, on behalf of a popular (white) latecomer; and which flies in the face of Presley own declaration that he was doing what the colored people had been doing for years; such a ridiculous assertion should have been enough to disqualify Wyman from any further comment: but when has arrogant stupidity ever disqualified a white man from anything? One can look around and conclude that arrogant stupidity is a job requirement. Speaking of which: the vain and spiteful Robert Christgau, who produces online posts full of dumb self-obsession and uncontrolled self-promotion and makes a habit of complimenting well-placed colleagues and disdaining less successful ones, made a statement in which he suggested that based on the claim that he and his wife did not hear any Jackson music or discussion while on vacation in Vermont, Michael Jackson is less universal and universally acclaimed than has been declared by some. What an idiot! Christgau and Wyman and their ilk should have retired long ago. Luckily no one depends on these people for fundamental insights of any kind. Nelson George spoke of Jackson’s distinctive use of his voice, of his innovative creativity in video, of his cultivation of a global audience.

It is important to critique both the artist and his audience and his critics—as the values brought to art are ideological as much as aesthetic and personal. Some critics use (white) rock music to affirm white male appetite and privilege and they find various claims with which to dismiss black popular music. Black music tends to be valued for its relation to roots (a form of primitivism—a celebration of the noble savage, though this is masked by dubious notions of authenticity) and it is also valued for commercial sales (the ability to make money, rather than the ability to carry a style and content—values and virtues—that appeal to many). Often, Black music is valued in ways that do not support black authority or black intelligence. And, black critics tend to abandon black artists who are embraced by mainstream culture—though this is often when black artists need them most, both for their loyalty and for their critical clarity. How many black artists and black critics have a recognized critical authority—able to define ideas, styles, standards, and projects, as important? Wynton Marsalis insisted on his own critical authority and infuriated many, including arrogant stupid white men and black musicians who wanted to work without thinking of a wide range of concerns. The brilliant, idiosyncratic (and sometimes troubling) Armond White has infuriated many for similar reasons. Few black artists and critics are brave enough to make critical assertions in as direct a manner: rather, they hope that the work they do will speak for them, though that work sometimes goes unread or unheard and is sometimes, not infrequently, misperceived and misrepresented…

Michael Jackson has inspired much attention, emotion, and thought; and he will inspire more. Why? He was unique, he was great. Why? Our spirits are frustrated, if not repressed, in different areas of our lives: and art is a realm of freedom and confirmation.

The Unbearable Success of Michael Jackson

2009-06-26T11:05:00.005-05:00

The first music recording that was given to me was William Bell's "You Don't Miss Your Water (Till the Well Runs Dry)," but the first music recordings that were bought for me were Diana Ross's "Ain't No Mountain High Enough" and Michael Jackson's "I'll Be There." I do not recall if I'd requested the Diana Ross and Jackson 5 songs or if they were surprises that went with the new record player, my first record player, which I received for a birthday. I listened to the Bell song, the first song I played, and which I still remember, but I loved "Ain't No Mountain High Enough" and "I'll Be There" and I love them still.

Michael Jackson was a singer, a songwriter, a producer, he was a businessman and a philanthropist--he was a great artist of popular music. It is hard not to be ambivalent about people who are great, as they are often strange: it is sometimes strangeness that compelled them to be great, and sometimes it is greatness that made them strange. I have not stopped liking Michael Jackson's music, the old or the new music; but, although I felt a measure of concern and sympathy, I had become ambivalent about Michael Jackson the man. The changes in his face and the constant rumours and scandals made him too strange to me--I accepted that he would be unpredictable, but unpredictability is not a quality I value in others.

Michael Jackson wanted transcendence, as many of us do. The idea of transcendence is a beautiful idea, an important and seductive idea, but it may be a false idea, a lie. Instead of a moment of connection and illumination, it may be only temporary forgetting of all the things that make us who we are--very particular human beings in this time and this place. No one can live in a place of forgetfulness always---without becoming mad or monstrous.

What it means to be black is perpetually discussed but rarely accurately described or honestly expressed. I would name W.E.B. DuBois, Richard Wright, James Baldwin, Ralph Ellison, Lorraine Hansberry, and Toni Morrison, with a few others, as people who have come close to explaining and exploring what it means with authority and insight. As surprising as it may be to some, Michael Jackson expressed better than most what it means--it was in his voice, in the tenderness and rage that can be heard in many of his songs, in the ambition and terror that we could perceive in him and in his work. He was a man of tremendous pride, talent, and vulnerability. He was unique but he was also one of us. He was innocent--and there are many ways for the innocent to be broken in this world: and the most obvious is to become like the world, to change one's self to fit someone else's idea of value. Michael Jackson belonged to a tradition of blackness that was about both assimilation and self-improvement (and it can be hard sometimes to tell the difference between the two). I think it was James Baldwin who said that it is difficult to live with a bad reputation and that every black child is born with one. Indeed it is hard to live with people willing to believe the worst of you, even after you have given them the best. The meaning of what it means to be black may be changing (and evidence for that may be the election of the American president, Barack Hussein Obama, a man of intellect, masculinity and sensitivity, with private commitments rooted in love and public power founded on ethics); and it is sad to think that Michael Jackson will not live into that new time--although Jackson may have been, already, like too many of us, too much shaped by the past.

I love Michael Jackson and I love his music more--and I am sorry to say goodbye to him so soon: but I am glad that he is done with the trouble of this world, no more weeping, no more wailing, he is done with the trouble of this world.

Iran

2009-06-24T12:41:00.005-05:00

I have been thinking about my own alienation, my own sense of terrible drift, but the larger matters of the world, such as the recent election in Iran and the claims of vote tampering, the resulting street protests, the punitive violence...produce a sense of both tragedy and possibility...

On the web site of Qantara.de, about the prospects for dialogue between Iran and the west (specifically the United States), Peter Philips states, “Too much conflict material has accumulated over the course of the past 30 years and as a result, another four years should not and cannot be allowed to pass without addressing these problems, especially because no-one actually knows what will happen at the end of this period. What is more, grounds for a dialogue already exist: Iran does not want to be told what to do and this is exactly the line that Obama has adopted” (“No Alternative to Dialogue,” June 15, 2009).

The online newsletter Flavorpill’s managing editor Leah Taylor writes of a timely New York exhibit: “The Chelsea Museum presents what has to be one of the timeliest exhibitions in its history: Iran Inside Out. With violence and political unrest roiling in that country, this exhibit takes a closer look at its inherent contradictions, tradition, culture, identity, and struggle — especially as faced by its younger generation of artists. Fifty-six Iranian artists (including those still living in the country, as well as those scattered across the diaspora) present 210 works, organized around themes like gender and sexuality (‘From Iran to Queeran’), or war and politics (the satiric ‘In Search of the Axis of Evil’)” (Flavorpill, June 2009)

Meanwhile, Iranian.com offers the perspectives of some Iranians, those “Iranian expatriates who care about their identity, culture, music, history, politics, literature and each other, as well as friends and family living in Iran.”

Random Thoughts On A Very Hot Day

2009-06-17T12:56:00.008-05:00

Artists love the content and craft of art rather than the business of art, though fame and fortune grant an artist various forms of authority and security and are aided by the business of art (and the whole machinery of marketing and sales). Funnily enough, hype is effective because it mimes genuine enthusiasm and passion…True criticism involves identifying, exploring, and evaluating the structure, content, and spirit of a work—and it is forever in danger as it works with knowledge against ignorance.

I heard an interview with Woody Allen yesterday on National Public Radio (NPR). His voice was pleasantly deep, and it was amusing to hear him distinguish himself from his characters (he claims he is less intellectual, more ordinary—the guy on the couch with a beer watching a sports game). Woody Allen said that people like to them of him as an intellectual, and that an intellectual image might add to the enjoyment of his films for some. It is true that human beings are referred to increasingly as brands—reputations, products; and that’s the triumph of capitalism: an enslavement to marketing and public opinion...Woody Allen’s new film is Whatever Works, starring Larry David...I recall many years ago having an argument with a couple of friends about whether the very famous Woody Allen was an independent or mainstream filmmaker—they said the former, I said the latter, though now he seems to me to have been both, which may be one definition of a good and successful artist. Meanwhile, there is a bicycle film festival tonight at the South Street Seaport in Manhattan, featuring bike movies and parties (the film festival is from June 17 through 21).

I used to know someone who tried to dismiss science fiction as a matter of course—she was trying to take a superior attitude to a genre she was ignorant of, a genre that imagines possible futures in both human relations and technology (imaginings that often come true), a genre that requires imagination and intelligence to be rewarding to the viewer or reader. Science fiction puts vision to hope and fears, problems and the knowledge needed to address them. Reading recently Daniel Shaw’s Film and Philosophy: Taking Movies Seriously, I was pleased to see these lines: “Science fiction is the most philosophical of literary genres, because it so often concerns itself with questions about the criteria for personal identity, the difference(s) between humans and machines, the implications of present trends for the future of the human species, the dangers of technology and social control mechanisms, and the possibility and significance of contact with alien species” (page 44). Some works are so good they exclude people who do not have the sensibility to appreciate their qualities.

Thirty years ago the Rolling Stones were controversial for claiming in a song that black girls wanted to have sex all night long: now black rappers call black women whores and bitches...Some Girls was a great album—is a great album, as were Diana Ross’s The Boss and the first Rickie Lee Jones album, all music from that time, the late 1970s.

The crisis in health care is like every other crisis—manufactured, claimed one conservative radio talk show this week. These conservative shows—whether devoted to religion or politics—spend a great deal of time misrepresenting the president of the United States, Barack Obama. The constancy of their dishonest, hateful, ignorant, manipulative talk is an example of evil, a far from banal evil...In an article on bitterness and its reasons and roots, a professor of literature, Christopher Lane, writes in Psychology Today in “Bitterness: The Next Mental Disorder?” about politics: “The Bush administration led the country into a protracted, illegal war, based on trumped-up evidence; ignored memos that said the country faced credible terrorist threats; locked up large numbers of suspects afterwards without trial or due process; lied to its citizens about the widespread use of torture; eliminated every sensible, necessary check on financial regulation to prevent a fiscal meltdown; mocked the facts of climate change; and sat on its hands as Hurricane Katrina devastated a large city” What did the conservative talk show hosts have to say about any of that?

Encore: United Daughters of the Confederacy

2009-06-17T11:32:00.005-05:00

Barack Obama was elected president of the United States, and he is the forty-fourth president; and much has been made of him being the first African-American president, a distinction trumpeted so much on his inauguration day that it sounded like an official title. I thought the iterations of the man's ethnicity were a sign of how simple rather than how sophisticated Americans are, but days ago, I was in a south Louisiana library that is getting rid of some of its magazine stock and I saw copies of the United Daughters of the Confederacy magazine being sold for ten cents, and I looked through some of them and bought two copies as historical items. The United Daughters of the Confederacy publications are dated 1972 and they are reminders of how recently racism has been a proud fact of southern life.

The members of United Daughters of the Confederacy were not only old women whose fathers or grandfathers were involved with the American civil war on the side of slavery, but individuals who were very young, and both female and male, in 1972 (there are photographs of members in the magazine; and, I wonder, where are they now?). The September 1972 United Daughters of the Confederacy magazine issue features a "Beliefs of Our Forefathers" article on page 29 under the rubric "Children of the Confederacy," a regular feature of the publication. In the article on confederate beliefs, the writer, who goes by her husband's name, and styles herself "historian and news editor," Mrs. Charles L. Deevers, discusses a confederate "catechism" that includes a defense of states' rights, saying that what led to the war between the states was "the disregard of those in power for the rights" of the southern states, the right to self-regulation. She, Mrs. Deevers, asserts that the "people of the south did not believe that slavery was right, and many felt that the south could work out their own problems and would eventually free the slaves because they were becoming the white man's burden." The writer discusses the economic concerns of slave holders (the economic loss if enslaved Africans were freed; and the high tariff proposed by northerners) and the "historian" Mrs. Deevers insists that enslaved Africans were well-cared for because they were valuable property ("They were well cared for because they were important to their owners") and goes on to note the "many stories" of kindness shown to Negroes; but, she says the Dred Scott decision "caused more trouble" and Abraham Lincoln's election "was the final blow." These unreconstructed views are interesting to read, though repellent; and I am reminded--thanks to Wayne Parent's book Inside the Carnival: Unmasking Louisiana Politics, from LSU Press, 2004, that even after the 14th and 15th amendments to the Constitution were passed, the south resisted respecting Africans and African-Americans; and southern states passed laws to disenfranchise blacks and prevent voting and civic participation, an exercise of states' rights, matters that made necessary the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. (I recall, too, W.E. B. DuBois's commentary on the south's behavior after the civil war in The Souls of Black Folk.)

In the November 1972 issue of the United Daughters of the Confederacy magazine, in an article under the heading "Children of the Confederacy" on education by "historian" Mrs. Charles L. Deevers (page 27), the author Mrs. Deevers notes that there were no public schools in the south before the war, that planters' children were educated at home, that northern textbooks drove "intelligent" southern male teachers out of the teaching profession (just as later, southern boys were inclined to leave the classroom for the battlefied), that a southern or confederate teaching assocication was formed in 1862, that girls schools were expensive, etc. It is a rather feeble attempt to affirm white southern intelligence and education, the kind of thing that is rebutted with even small research or logical thinking. For instance, in the book The History of Southern Literature, edited by Rubin, Jackson, Moore, Simpson, and Young, from LSU Press, 1985, Lewis P. Simpson in "The Mind of the Antebellum South" and Elisabeth Muhlenfeld in "The Civil War and Authorship" discuss the limits of southern intellectual and literary life. The south did have artists, intellectuals, and scientists, but because of their irrationalism and pride--because of their commitment to refusing to register or respect the humanity of Africans, and the southern dependence on and defense of slavery--the antebellum south had few lasting or significant intellectual or literary accomplishments. It is a great example of how response to others can lead to self-betrayal: limiting the empathy and imagination with which we view others can lead to intellectual limits that curtail what we can think and do.

It was just a few years after 1972, when Jimmy Carter was inaugurated, an event I watched with my class: and one of the students, a southern white boy, said something on the order of, "Well, we have the niggers to thank for that." (It may have been the same white boy who wrote me, just weeks ago, wanting to get in touch with me, his old classmate. I wonder sometimes, more and more, if other people do not remember the things that I recall.)

Politics, the struggle over resources and values, a struggle that determines the social order, is a realm of compromise and reconciliation at its best; and Barack Obama is a figure of reconciliation. Obviously the election of Barack Obama is a sign of enlightenment, though it does not augur a perfect age or a perfect people: for one thing, the United Daughters of the Confederacy remains an active group, with an online presence, and its current leader states, "I am a member of The United Daughters of the Confederacy because I feel it would greatly please my ancestor to know that I am a member. It would please him to know that I appreciate what he did and delight his soldier love to know that I do not consider the cause which he held so dear to be lost or forgotten."

(Original Post: January 29, 2009)

Southern Ignorance, Louisiana Hate

2009-06-12T09:25:00.008-05:00

I grew up in Louisiana, so it is impossible for the state to disappoint me: I left as soon as I could, and, after decades away, I have been back for almost a year--more than enough time to be reminded of all of the reasons I left. I took a long walk home from St. Martinville the other day (June 8), walking on La. highway 347, and turned down a road, La. highway 680, that I think marks the half-way point of my walk and I heard the word nigger. I thought I might have been mistaken--I looked around and I saw a man and two children outside a brick home, the third house facing highway 680 from the turnoff, after the houses with mailboxes 1010 and 1020 in front of them: a brown brick house with a blue truck and a small boat in the yard (box 1030? box 1034?). As I neared the home and people, I saw the (white) man playing golf with the two tanned (white) children, boys, and the man loudly sang out, "In the jungle, the mighty jungle, the lion sleeps tonight" and I knew his voice could carry the distance and he had wanted the attention, wanted me to hear him--and I knew the word had come from him. There were no other people outside at any of the nearby homes. I wondered if something in my perceived attitude had brought this on--but realized this man doesn't know me, will not know me. I thought it odd that someone would enthusiastically, at this late date, display hate and ignorance before his own children: and then I thought it funny that in the age of Obama--when more (black) children will be committed to education and high aspirations--that this white man and his people have committed themselves to ignorance and hate--and will be lost in an educated, multicultural world.

[SUBSEQUENTLY, I wrote:

A Letter to the Editor

To Whom It May Concern: On Louisiana Racism

(c) 2011

It was April 12th, an anniversary, the one-hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the beginning of the American civil war, the military conflict inspired by the South’s commitment to the enslavement of Africans and those of African descent. I had read an article on the war in Time magazine (April 18, 2011) about the ongoing disagreement about the interpretation of that war, but other than that had not given the day much thought. It was history and I had my own concerns—getting an agent for a novel I finished about a struggling African-American woman filmmaker, submitting a survey article on recent films to a web magazine, sending out notes for freelance assignments, and getting in touch with diverse friends in far-flung places, all things I worked on when I walked into the Louisiana town of St. Martinville on April 12 and visited the library, which has an internet connection I lack out in the country. The internet is a connection to news of real civilization, to cosmopolitan life and the intellectual conversations and great museums and foreign films and serious literature and ordinarily sophisticated newspapers I miss, all things that were easy to access when I lived in New York. I had finished writing a short piece the week before on Amede Ardoin (Mama, I’ll Be Long Gone, a new retrospective recording), the great early twentieth-century Louisiana Creole musician whose work is the foundation on which many Cajun musicians built their songs and whom, reportedly, was beaten viciously by white men after a white woman gave Ardoin a handkerchief with which to wipe his brow during a dance performance; and I had submitted that article on Ardoin, with other varied music commentary, via electronic mail to an editor. On Tuesday, April 12th, I read an e-mailed note from an acquaintance asking me to read his online article on jazz and race and to give my opinion; and I, who have studied and written about international culture, read his jazz and race essay and told him that I thought it was an important subject but that I wished that African-American writers would demonstrate getting beyond race by thinking and talking about other things—and actually getting beyond race. I would be reminded a few hours later why that is impossible.

I had arrived in town in the late morning, and left town in late afternoon; and I was almost halfway on my walk back home when I was looking away from the oncoming traffic for a minute toward the road on which I would turn—and, though my thoughts tend to be the solitary, melancholy complaints and considerations of most artists who are not rich or famous and find themselves in a cultural backwater, I was thinking that the walk felt easier and quicker than I had anticipated, and there would be less traffic after I turned onto the next road, and of what I would do when I arrived home. I was wearing light green pants with a dark green shirt, and I had a walking cane in my right hand and twirled it; and rather than poor and tired, for a moment I probably looked carefree. Suddenly, I felt a hard hit against the upper part of my stomach, just below my ribs, and I looked down to see liquid on my shirt and lower arm—then I looked behind me and saw an open can of orange soda leaking on the ground, and looked further back to see a sleek, small black car driving away. Unfortunately, I did not see the license plate. (Would reporting it to the St. Martinville sheriff’s office do any good, the sheriff’s office to which I had reported the theft of my bike without results, the sheriff’s office that had stopped me previously on one of my walks, for no good reason? Note: I conflate the sherriff's office and the police department: the uniform of the officers who stopped me were dark, as was that of the officer to whom I reported the theft; whereas the sherriff's office uniforms are usually pale.) I was near the spot where someone, months before, had called out “nigger” as I walked. I took the towel out of my pocket, and began to wipe my shirt and arm, then looked back at the car driving away, and realized that this had been intentional. Some sick, stupid person was offended by the sight of a young-looking African-American male who seemed free and happy: the myth of the happy Negro is one the old South promoted for years—but the thought of a free and happy Negro is one some in the new South still find vexing, apparently. (You would think that someone riding in a nice, new car would be confident enough to ignore someone compelled to walk—but no.) Of course, some people dislike angry Negroes, happy Negroes, sad Negroes, intelligent Negroes, ignorant Negroes, well-dressed Negroes, shabby Negroes, any Negroes. I had been warned that other people of color riding a bike or walking had been attacked by bigots, some in big ugly trucks, with small ugly minds; and although I hoped to be exempt from that kind of experience, a lifelong hope and a hope not disillusioned for the first time, I cannot say I was surprised. Anyplace in which citizens have to be wary of that kind of behavior on an ordinary day is a stinking, swampy cultural backwater. Who knows what drives such hostile people? How often do blacks and whites have an honest conversation about anything of consequence in Louisiana? I grew up in Louisiana, spent decades in New York, and returned for different reasons, one of which was to finish a book project, and nothing like what occurred that afternoon on the Louisiana road had happened to me in New York, a place in which—whatever its difficulties—some equal and honest conversation is possible and happens daily. Of course on this particular afternoon, it did not matter what my attitude or thought might have been—it never does with prejudice: you simply fill in your own attitudes and project them onto the other person. For instance, you abduct people from the country in which they live, love, and work, and you force them into a chattel state, exploit their labor for your lasting economic benefit, creating family and industrial wealth, and beat and rape and kill these enslaved people and their descendants, and then convince yourself that your victim is the immoral one. Unacknowledged guilt, like disrespected pain, can turn into rage, I suppose.

In Louisiana, the civil war continues, though its skirmishes are often personal and petty; however, ignoring the presence and repressing the power of African-Americans in civic and political life are prevalent and more significant. While one can hear the insane conservative talk on the radio, and read the lying and vile conservative commentary (of people who voted for notorious racist David Duke but did not vote for eminently qualified and well-intentioned native son Barack Obama) presented as respectable editorials in newspapers, one rarely hears the cogent and critical perspective that many African-Americans have in public. There are few political representatives who embody and articulate the lasting concerns of African-Americans: the desire for equal opportunity and treatment, and the need for good education for children and decent jobs for adults, so that good futures are possible. The irony is that blacks and whites, especially Creoles and Cajuns, have things in common: a relationship to the land and similar foods and music (and sometimes listening to black and white voices on local public radio, one of the few resources for complex consciousness and culture in the state, it can be hard to discern significant differences—the kind of thing that happens when there have been common experiences). Neither silences nor words ensure safety and security; and yet an individual can live in a perfect hell and think of it as heaven.

It is obvious that black people think so much about race because white people do. I was reminded of the kind of question one of my favorite authors, the late great writer James Baldwin, used to ask: what is it that white people do among themselves to make them so evil, so crazed and cruel, when dealing with other people? Certainly people who are happy, or who have spiritual peace, do not act like that. (I am not religious, but I imagine that if a moral god did exist he would damn such a people with hurricanes and floods, with crop drought and pestilence, with the breaking of industrial machinery leading to the spoiling of water and wildlife and even human fatality—things that never happen in Louisiana.) I tried to imagine what that person in the little sleek black car might have been feeling. Hatred? Cruelty? Mockery? Humor? I do not know—I cannot know. I only can speculate. That afternoon, I had to force myself to remember the people of different ages, ethnicities, and genders who have been kind to me on various days as I walked, someone they did not know, offering a ride or simply waving at someone who has lost that habit of hand. I felt a certain danger and worry but I continued walking, thinking about other things, but I returned to what happened. The pain in my chest returned me to what happened, even as my dark green shirt dried while I walked under the hot sun. (There seemed to be no stain on my shirt, but the next morning there would be a bruise on my chest.) For several weeks I had been thinking that many people do not know that black men have feelings; and this was more proof. However, I was glad that I did not cry when I arrived home that afternoon or later that night, as I was half-afraid I might—dealing with cruelty and stupidity day after day, month after month, is dismaying and exhausting. I want to be let alone: my lifelong anthem, and, of course, a song that no one will help me sing. Tears do not do much good, whereas thinking often does. I recall what I told the jazz writer before that afternoon experience of mindless and reflexive racism: the most important thing is to see and appreciate the differences in the abundance of human existence and natural life. April 14, 2011]

Culture, Here and Elsewhere

2009-06-05T13:29:00.009-05:00

President Obama’s recent trip to Saudia Arabia and Egypt acknowledges the importance of the Muslim world and makes possible a new dialogue, encouraging new politics. Interestingly, “Muslim Voices: Arts & Ideas,” is a ten-day festival, June 5 through 14, 2009, devoted to Muslim culture, involving important New York institutions: Asia Society, Brooklyn Academy of Music, and New York University Center for Dialogues.

The Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts with The Museum for African Art has an exhibit, June 4 through September 14, on “Perspectives: Women, Art and Islam,” and on June 6th there is a talk at the Contemporary African Diasporan Arts museum in downtown Brooklyn by the exhibiting artists from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m.

“The art, the history, the traditions and the geographies of the Islamic world from the Far East to the Iberian Peninsula are the subjects of the exhibition The Worlds of Islam in the Aga Khan Museum Collection,” reports ArtDaily.org from Madrid, Spain.

The American Folk Art Museum on 53rd Street in Manhattan will be open, free, tonight for three hours, beginning at 5:30 p.m. Meanwhile, The Art Newspaper reports that museum shows in different parts of the United States, dependent on funding by private patrons, are being cancelled, due to the economic downturn and its effect on wealth.

Blues singer Koko Taylor and actor David Carradine have died, and both will be missed, and while Taylor is more important to her art form that Carradine to his (she is considered the queen of the blues and though respected he does not have anything resembling a similiar place in film or television), it is he who has been getting the network television attention, although NPR has noted her passing.

Amy LaVere’s album Anchors & Anvils begins with the most dramatic song—“Killing Him,” about a woman who kills the man she loves, a man whose responses have been making her crazy—and there are other songs on the album about domestic conflicts: ending the album with the song would have given the entire album the scope of an unfolding tragedy, but in our time, artists (in literature and film as well) are encouraged to present the most dramatic scene first—to engage public attention—whether or not that works aesthetically.

I saw, one evening this week, a PBS special featuring European classical musician David Garrett, blond, youthful, very casually dressed, performing live from Berlin before a large audience, a performance interesting for his commitment to blending classical music and rock. He is a very good musician and an even better entertainer (it’s obvious he loves sharing his music, which is key to entertaining).

It looks like singer Mariah Carey has been getting some good reviews for her acting performance in the new film Tennessee. (I have had a fondness for Carey for a long time.)

The International Federation of Film Critics—FIPRESCI—offers online reports on film festivals, including this year festival in Istanbul in April: “…The new Turkish cinema, as seen in the festival, shows an astonishing diversity of themes, styles, handwritings; and it shows an amazing number of debutants — such as Asli Özge, whose first fiction feature Men on the Bridge (Köprüdekiler) won the main prize, the 'Golden Tulip' in the national competition, over new films from established directors like Yesim Ustaoglu, Reha Erdem, Semih Kaplanoglu and Erden Kiral. Without any doubt, Men on the Bridge is an excellent debut which should make its mark, and which deserves the prize ... even if it seems a little unfair to prefer it to new films from Ustaoglu (Pandora's Box) and Erdem (My Only Sunshine)…” (May 2009 report)

David Hudson at IFC’s The Daily continues to produce a film digest worth reading, covering everything from festivals to film criticism to film productions plans. [Writer's note: Hudson, formerly of Greencine Daily, announced in late June 2009 that he would no longer proceed with The Daily at IFC in its existing format.]

C.D. Wright has won the 2009 Griffin Prize for international poetry: the prize, given every year, is estimated at a value of $50,000.

Newsweek has an article on Oprah Winfrey’s giving air time to people involved in alternative health therapies, a critique; and, Winfrey, is number two rather than number one on the list of powerful media people put out by Forbes: and last night talk show host Craig Ferguson attributed both facts to the need for controversy to sell magazines in an age when print media is suffering great declines. It’s fascinating how transparent that is.

Two CW shows “The Game” and “Everybody Hates Chris,” both featuring black characters, are being cancelled; and fans of both programs are outraged: they are entertaining shows, and, apparently, popular, but the network seems to want a different demographic. (Erin Evans at the online magazine The Root has an article on the subject.)

There was a local Louisiana television news report about Chinese drywall that has caused a problem for residents, and the legal issues involved (people will sue). It is another in a series of problems with Chinese products—everything from dolls to toothpaste has been an issue in the last few years, suggesting a lack of care and an equal lack of proper regulation. It’s an irony that a culture once known for craft has grown slack in an age of mass production—and fascinating that the Japanese seem to have found a way to continue high standards with new technology. (The subject is worth more research and thought.)

Louisiana State University may have to eliminate as many as 1900 jobs, due to state budget cuts, reports Louisiana’s Independent Weekly and television station WAFB. Education and health care are often sacrificed in difficult times, an unfortunate choice as that will affect the future...

Footnote: Derek Walcott on human nature, race, and writing

2009-05-28T17:04:00.005-05:00

There are many things to be discussed, important and trivial, such as the president's Supreme Court nomination and Kris Allen as the winner of American Idol, the probability of global warming and the possibility of significant local hurricanes and the fun of summer, but for me and for the moment some singular comments from Derek Walcott (though not about any of those particular topics) will stand in for some of the available complexity...

“It’s wrong to blame the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade entirely on the whiteman,” he (Derek Walcott) stressed. “That’s a lie; it does not tell the complexity of what happened. The reality is the opposite. It’s a two-way evil. The African-American has to get beyond that lie or exaggeration of blaming all the oppression on the white man. There were blacks, who owned slaves in America. It's a perverse nuance of human nature to blame the other man.” Derek Walcott blames not race but human nature. What else does Walcott say? “Plato did not want writers and poets in his Ideal Republic because they criticise too much,” Walcott stressed. “They find it difficult to keep quiet. It’s not necessarily courage that makes poets to criticise; it’s just inevitable that they have to criticise. That’s what is admirable about poets and writers. Writers are not very courageous by nature; all of us are cowards. But there’s a point at which the cowardice is not important. There’s a point where he says ‘the voice that I’m hearing in my head cannot be suppressed; so, I'll put it down in a corner of my cell or in a toilet paper or in a matchbox’. I’'s still cowardice; he’s still afraid he'd be caught. Poets and writers are guardians of heritage; they preserve heritage but heritage is an examination of the truth.” (“Reparation Is An Absurd Concept – Walcott,” by Anote Ajeluorou, Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2009).

Odds and Ends

2009-05-20T14:53:00.007-05:00

“How the Light Gets In: A Philosophical Festival at Hay” is being held in the United Kingdom, May 22 through May 31, 2009. Featuring Simon Blackburn and Anthony Grayling among others, it is billed as the United Kingdom’s first philosophy and music festival. Obviously, this seems a good way of bringing philosophy to the people.

Next April in 2010, there is scheduled to be a two-day conference, April 5 through 7, in Australia, at the University of South Australia, on emotional geographies: the public notice I received said that “We invite papers that interrogate emotion, society and space from diverse disciplinary and multidisciplinary backgrounds. We are interested in specific case studies as well as theoretical examinations of the nature of connections among these terms. The conference will be an exciting place to think about new ways of studying the natures, cultures and histories of emotional life. We welcome individual papers as well as panel proposals. We are happy to receive papers that engage in experimental as well as traditional formats.” I like the focus on the emotions, which remain mysteries and powers despite centuries of contemplation and trouble. Queries or abstracts of 300 words can be sent to CPCSGlobalisation -- at unisa.edu.au by July 17, 2009.

“I detest theory in criticism. Theory killed poetic criticism in France and Derrida’s Deconstruction theory has had a disastrous effect on criticism in this country and has completed the ruination of English departments by continuing what had started as a misreading and misunderstanding of the “New Critics”. Robert Graves said once that a poet writes poems for his friends, and I agree. And he also writes criticism for those same friends. The friend for whom I write is my ideal reader, intelligent, informed, sensitive, objective, and possessing above all sound and tasteful judgment,” declares William Jay Smith, in interview with the Contemporary Poetry Review (May 2009).

The New York Times recently had three different articles on novelist Colson Whitehead (Sag Harbor). Clearly, the paper has adopted him (it is a demonstration of how establishment power works).

With a poetry gathering at the White House and Mrs. Obama’s appearance at a ballet event in New York, the Obamas consistently seem to be affirming culture.

There is a Francis Bacon exhibit at the Metropolitan museum in New York, now until August 16th, a centenary exhibit, saluting the painter’s birth and his accomplishment.

The music group Green Day is at the top of the Billboard magazine charts, according to an online May 20th Billboard article, with the album 21st Century Breakdown, “selling 215,000 in an abbreviated three-day sales week.”

The Hartford Courant’s Thomas Kintner on Diana Ross, May 17: “Even in her middling moments, Ross was a more than able singer, gently kneading the notes of her 1973 hit "Touch Me In The Morning," and applying a precise yet informal caress to the slinky “It’s My House,” even when the song became repetitive while floating toward its finish. The pliability of her voice showed in the way she worked out “Love Child,” and she applied a crisp edge to the juicy bob of “More Today Than Yesterday.”……The day before, May 16, in an article “Becoming the best” in Nigeria’s publication Punch, Gogo Majin had written about Ross: “I watched Diana Ross perform live on television during her last visit to Nigeria. I took note of several things, some of which include the fact that she looked really great for a woman her age, and the ease and effortlessness with which she performed (she was completely at home on stage). But most important to me was the fact that despite several years of performing at shows around the world, her voice was still in great shape. The quality of her voice, live on stage, was as good as listening to her on CD. I am talking about the smoothness of her tone, the ability to hit all her high notes and her voice control.”

I heard Louisiana writer-musician David John (Dege) Legg interviewed on radio station KRVS yesterday (he writes for the Independent Weekly and has the band Black Bayou Construkt). It was a smart, amusing interview, though possibly too infatuated with ideas about “cool” and the cultural “underground.”

There is a lot of talk now about the television program “American Idol” and whether Adam Lambert or Kris Allen will be selected. I had not watched “American Idol” until recently, in the last several months. I can see how Lambert’s win would have some social significance (for his androgynous iconography, which some might consider transgressive) but I prefer Allen’s sound and look.

Encore: "Trouble, according to James Carter" (Fiction)

2009-05-13T11:16:00.004-05:00

(c) Written by DG, 2002

1.

“There are some things that are certain—not only death and taxes, but also fucking, eating, and shitting, greed, exhaustion, and poverty,” said the managing editor, an overweight, ruddy-faced bore who imagined himself a wit. James smiled tightly at him, hoping this little lecture had a point that had something to do with his own work. As far as James knew, the editor seemed to imagine that these epigrams were to be taken in by James and remembered and would someday become one with the very structure of James’s mind—but James knew this would not happen.

“With the way things are in the economy, businesses closing, people being laid off, dire predictions, the homeless shelters and food pantries and soup kitchens are crowded. I’d like you to do a story on this,” said the managing editor.

I really do not want to do this, thought James. Give me an executive who has lost his job, or someone trying to keep a company going, or a labor union leader or secretary struggling to pay her bills—somebody with hope. I don’t want to visit a homeless shelter or a soup kitchen. What is there to say? People are suffering. People are always suffering. Why pretend this is new, and why pretend to care? Give people education and opportunities to work and reduce the reasons for their suffering, and give me a political scandal, a fashion show, an innovative computer, an alcoholic sports star, a literary masterpiece, a film premiere, a historical discovery, or a new building going up: those are my subjects.

James returned to his desk, wondering where to start. He logged onto the internet to do a quick search of resources—institutions, experts, books, and articles. He called the office librarian to tell her what he was working on, what he’d found, what he thought he needed, and his deadlines for research, active interviewing, and various drafts. James then called his friend Pete and asked him if he wanted to have dinner later, but Pete said, No, that he had to work late. When James looked up again, he saw Calvin at his desk putting things in a box, looking angry, determined, and sad.

James stood and walked over to Calvin. James was apprehensive, fearful.

“What’s going on?” asked James.

“I’ve just been fired,” said Calvin.

“Why?”

“Because I didn’t turn in my expense reports on time. Because I yelled at the receptionist for mixing up my messages. Because I took a too adversarial stance toward corruption in my reporting. Those are some of the things the Redface told me. They’ve wanted to fire me for a while—I’m not acquiescent enough for their taste; so they just wracked their brains to come up with a bunch of junk to accuse me of,” said Calvin.

“I can’t believe it,” said James, though he knew there was a clique of people in the office who were always trying to make everything as simple as their own minds. “The idiots.”

The two looked at each other; they’d miss working together.

“Do you want to have lunch? I can walk out with you,” said James.

“Would you do that? It’s not a very politic thing to do,” said Calvin.

“I want to—and I’m hungry,” said James.

Calvin laughed.
When Calvin had gathered his things, and the two men walked out, all eyes were on them; and when James looked back at the looking eyes, the eyes looked down or looked away. The Redface was the only one who held James’s gaze.

James and Calvin ate at a small sushi bar. Calvin liked sushi, and that was why they chose the place, but once they began to eat—standing, hunched over their food, people all around them in the small place—they realized that they had made a mistake. If they’d gone to a larger, quieter place, they both would have been more comfortable. Yet, neither said anything about the place; they talked to each other beyond their discomfort about the work they had hoped to do in the office, about trying to deal with the pettiness there, and about what Calvin was going to do now. “It’s amazing how quickly a man’s life can change,” said Calvin, who said he thought he would try freelance writing and editing. “As long as I’m working, you can use me as a reference, and if you need money, let me know, and if I have it, it’s yours,” said James. Calvin was glad to hear that, and a smile crossed his face, banishing for a moment his more intense feelings.“What are you going to do?” asked Calvin.

“I’m going to try to do my job,” said James, both of them knowing this would not be easy, as James’s sense of mission was not entirely that of his editor’s, and his editor’s mission was not entirely that of James. But then, what drove James was not simple—news, truth, pleasure, meaning, a critique of power, history, prophecy—and what drove his editor—beating the competition in being the first to deliver the news, surprising the reader, raising the number of subscribers and newsstand sales, impressing the publisher—was also not entirely simple, though it was possibly much more obvious.

“I know Sharon will be glad that I’m not there anymore,” said Calvin.

“Her only goal is to try to make the office safe for her unquestioned inadequacies,” said James.
James laughed, and said, “I don’t know how people like that get so far and stay so long. She delegates most of her work to others and spends most of her time on the phone,” said Calvin.
When they said goodbye, neither James nor Calvin was happy, neither was relieved.

James made an appointment to interview the executive director of a homeless organization, and after work he stopped by a poetry and music event organized for attendants of a mental health program that worked to get people off the streets and into homes and jobs. He thought the music was good—very rhythmic—and the poetry plain and dull, but he liked the sense of camaraderie between the attendants. He didn’t introduce himself or take notes; he knew he would be back. Leaving the building, located on the edge of Manhattan’s East Village, above the bowery, James thought about the tickets he’d bought for a music concert for the coming weekend. His friend Pete had backed out because of work, and James hadn’t found anyone else yet to go with. He couldn’t ask Gail without asking her husband, and he didn’t have a ticket for her husband, nor was he fond of the ill-informed, blunt man. Too often, when you had a married friend, you were forced to deal with the spouse as well despite lack of rapport.

On his way into his office the next day, he stopped by a couple of churches to ask about their soup kitchens, coat drives, and food pantries. Most of the church offices were closed and he left notes, but one church office was open, and the woman there was direct: “We see all kinds of people—high school dropouts and college graduates, different ethnicities, married couples, singles, whatever. People are hungry, and we feed them,” she said. “They need clothes and we give them the clothes our parishioners leave with us. We shouldn’t have to do this, and they shouldn’t need to come here, but that is the way the world is, that’s the way it’s been, and maybe that’s the way it will always be.”

With that summarizing impulse she’d get on with the Redface, thought James. Yet, he could not say she was wrong. She was trying to be clear, and she was; and James realized once more that we’re all trying to produce knowledge or wisdom and it might be too late. If a child hasn’t learned wise and generous ways, he may not be able to adapt to them when he’s a man—his bad habits may be his very own nature: this may be why it’s so hard to change anyone, why it’s so hard to change the world.

Leaving the office, he reconsidered this conclusion. He thought that children were sometimes limited in their perspectives because of lack of experience, and because information was kept from them, but that men and women had the perspective and freedom to change—to change themselves and others.

James waited in the open air on a square marble bench near a bulbous sculpture in a cement park surrounded by seven office towers, one out of which he had come after leaving his desk and its work, and another his friend Gail would leave to join him. James was pleased the sun was shining, as the breeze off the nearby water was cool. He wondered what kind of mood Gail would be in. She had been up for a job at a small television station committed to social issues, but had not been given the job. A personnel committee made up of two managers and two support staffers had reviewed her work, resume, and colleagues’ response to her, and they recommended Gail for the job. The executive director in her office had not agreed, and so she did not get the job. Gail and the executive director had disagreed before, disagreements that were matters of policy, procedure, and personality. Instead the job Gail wanted had gone to someone who had been eliminated earlier in the process, someone the committee had decided was not even one of their top three choices, a man Gail had not considered a friend but a friendly colleague. Yet when Gail arrived, she smiled and said, “How is my friend, the misanthropic humanist?”

James laughed. “I’m well, though you seem, amazingly, in a much better mood than I am.”“It’s their loss,” said Gail. “I applied, I was found gifted and worthy, and I was not appointed, so it’s the organization’s loss. I still have my televised nightly discussion program and I’m going to continue to do my work.”

James listened and thought about what she said. She was in a better mood than he was. He was still thinking about Calvin, still thinking about the injustice of that, of how Calvin’s good work had meant nothing, and now Gail was giving him further evidence of injustice. Where would they eat?

James was having a salad at his desk. The salad was full of chunks of chicken, croutons, thin slivers of carrots and other vegetables, olives, and a thick dark oriental dressing—delicious. He was thinking about his lunch date with Gail the day before, about Calvin, about the office he himself continued to work in and the exaggerated exclamations of pleasure and outraged complaints over minutiae there, the indifference to genuinely important matters, the jockeying not so much for relationships with the powerful but for appearances of relationships with the powerful—no one really wanted to know the publisher, but they wanted to seem to be in his favor. Once James and the man were in an elevator together, and, James, incapable of thinking of anything to say after briefly describing the story he’d been working on, went on to describe an Italian film retrospective he was attending, having seen four of twelve scheduled films. The two of them spent the remainder of the elevator ride talking about the difference in the mood of Italian films compared to American films. James knew he had squandered an opportunity to advance a professional goal, but he was pleased that he had the kind of conversation with the publisher that he might have had with a friendly acquaintance. James smiled upon thinking that it was not the kind of conversation he could tell most of his coworkers about; they wouldn’t understand why it pleased him. He smiled; and then the grimaced, for this was another example of how and why he was something of a misfit. He finished his salad, and then went to work on his afternoon story, the retiring of a French designer after thirty years of big business and bigger headlines, headlines about nervous breakdowns, drugs, ill-chosen lovers, and great clothes.

James called his friend Pete, whom he had been invited to see the Italian films, and who had said he’d try to see something, but Pete had managed not to see a single film. James doubted Pete would be interested in going to the Whitney for a free exhibit, but James would ask him anyway, and when he did, Pete said “No, I have to work.”

James asked, “Do you have to work, or do you choose to work late?”

Pete said, “I have to—I have a project I have to finish and there aren’t enough hours in the day for me to do it.”

“Do other people there work such long hours?” asked James.

“Some people do,” said Pete.

Pete said they’d get together soon, and told James to stay in touch.

James left several messages for Calvin, and when they finally talked, Calvin explained that he hadn’t been seeing anyone, that he was trying to assess where he was, and what he wanted to do. He found it painful to talk about being fired, even to someone who respected him and understood that he hadn’t done anything wrong of significance. He also said that he didn’t see any available job that he really wanted and felt as if he had to choose between getting an important job he didn’t like that might be overwhelming or getting an unimportant job he didn’t like but could easily manage. He decided to try to get work proofreading, but wanted to avoid temporary office clerical assignments. He said, “I’m not that desperate yet. Some people think any job is better than none, but I disagree: some jobs undermine who you are.”

When James and Pete got together, they went to a comedy club, where women comedians insulted men in general and those in the audience in particular, and the two men, drinking and making comments between the comedy sets, had a great time, honest, intimate, and thoughtful.
James had begun publishing a series of articles on the unemployed, the hungry, and the homeless. James thought the best piece was on a mother’s attempts to keep her children in school with good grades despite the family’s living in a homeless shelter. He was still interviewing people for the series. Reading over the interview transcripts of a man who had come out of jail and was depending on soup kitchens for daily sustenance, James sat in the company cafeteria not far from Sharon, a managing editor, and her staff, two young women and a man. It was supposed to be a casual editorial meeting they were having but sounded like a gossip session, with professional evaluations mixed with ignorant perceptions. At one disturbing articulation, James looked at the group and they looked at him, seeing his disapproval. He soon left the table, and on his way back to this desk stopped by the mailroom to get express mail envelopes and overheard the mailroom supervisor’s comments to his staff. The supervisor was tall and slim with thinning blond hair and a pimple near his mouth, and James thought he looked like photographs of Paul Verlaine, the poet who left his wife for another poet, Rimbaud. It was obvious to James that the African American assistant, Jerome, was being given menial tasks while the Irish American, Michael, was being given tasks requiring more thought and management skill. James knew both men had begun working there around the same time, and he’d had conversations with them, and he knew the African American was ambitious to move up in the company. Jerome was confident but not a braggart; he was boyish and quick, with sensitive eyes, and James imagined he could be easily disappointed—wasn’t I easily disappointed at his age? James asked the supervisor if Jerome might help Michael, suggesting this would cut the time it took to get the assigned work done. He knew this suggestion might be seen as intrusive but thought what it entailed possibly had not been imagined and might be helpful. Jerome looked hopeful, while Michael merely waited. The supervisor looked offended, and said, “I’ve made my assignments, but I’ll consider more task-sharing in the future. In the meantime, I’ll think up a list of story ideas you might want to pursue.” James smiled and left. Well, that didn’t help, James thought.

James took a cab ride from Greenwich Village to the Metropolitan Museum. He never grew tired of observing the city and its people.

His thoughts drifted from the city to a conversation he’d had with the Redface, a conversation that could only worry him.

The Redface had said, “I’ve tried to influence you, to point you in a direction that complements me and serves this office, but you seem sometimes to resist that. It’s as if you’re determined to be independent.”

James, hearing the complaint, had smiled without joy.

“When I hired you, you seemed so grateful for the job,” said the Redface.

“I was glad that you hired me and excited about the work,” said James.

“Aren’t you grateful now?” asked the Redface.

“I’m still glad that you hired me and I still feel I have something to contribute,” said James.

“We’ve gotten good responses to a lot of my stories, even a couple of award nominations—and you had no complaints of significance at the time of my last performance evaluation three months ago.”

“I’m always re-evaluating everyone,” said the Redface with a smile.What a stupid face, thought James, who watched the man’s face show in quick succession surprise, alarm, and a sense of accomplishment in response to what he’d seen in James’s face. He wants to alienate me now, thought James. Why do I know enough to know that, and not enough to change my responses?
James heard the taxi driver say something. “What?” asked James. The man repeated his pleasantly empty question. James answered, and they rode on to the museum.

There were a lot of people outside the Metropolitan Museum, some of them invited guests who were just arriving but many of them simply there to watch the celebrities arrive. James disliked making his way through crowds, but he had been looking forward to this event for months. He had on a new black suit, new white shirt, new black tie, new shoes, and new cologne.

Inside, he saw faces he had seen on movie screens and in magazines, some he’d seen walking in Soho or entering the stage door of a Broadway show, a few he had interviewed, and some he had worked with who had gone on to bigger things. James saw statesman Henry Kissinger and journalist Christopher Hitchens sharing cigars together in one part of the large hall, laughing and puffing away, and he saw former vice president Al Gore and activist Ralph Nader in another corner, with Gore patting Nader’s shoulder affectionately as he spoke. James saw the model and businesswoman Iman talking with her husband David Bowie, a musician James had liked since he was a boy, and James hoped he could think of something smart to say later to Bowie. James heard someone say that he’d had a 1958 Cabernet Sauvignon at dinner the previous night. James saw one of New York’s grand ladies, Brooke Astor, elderly and frail, but with an utterly joyous look on her face, and he vaguely remembered reading something about her foundation’s plan to give away its remaining assets. When had he read that—a year ago, two, five? Walking past another society lady, Nan Kempner, he heard part of actress Catherine Deneuve comments and realized she was talking with film director Andrew Techine, whose work he liked. James saw singer Diana Ross talking with the model Naomi Campbell, their faces excited, and he wondered what they were talking about—war in Africa, poetry, cosmetics? Or perfume? The place was full of scents. James saw waiters passing by with trays of champagne, which they brought to the famous faces first. He was curious as to whether they were also serving wine, which he would prefer. “I loved Pamela Todd’s book, Celebrating the Impressionist Table—great paintings, very good recipes,” someone said. James looked around and saw someone with a glass of red wine, asked him where he got it, and went in that direction. Not far from tables filled with glasses, he saw novelist Toni Morrison and the essayists Cornel West and Henry Louis Gates Jr. huddled together. He said hello to them, and Gates nodded. James understood that violinist Joshua Bell would perform and he wondered where and when that would be. Walking away form the wine table, James saw Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter and one of his writers, David Kamp. James sipped his Chianti. He saw the painter Ross Bleckner and music executive David Geffen talking with singers Natalie Merchant and Michael Stipe. What was that thing Stipe was wearing? James saw the journalists Utrice Leid and Clayton Riley and stopped to ask them about their latest projects, sipping as he listened. Golfer Tiger Woods was talking with boxer Muhammad Ali—how Calvin would like that, as he was wild about golf—wild about golf? Sounds like a perversion, but Calvin had become an enthusiast of the sport. That was Marisa Berenson! Were those two the Hilton sisters? James recognized in the crowd Bill Gates, Alan Greenspan, Richard Parsons, Donna Karan, Calvin Klein, Gore Vidal, John Updike, Caryl Phillips, Wynton Marsalis, Cassandra Wilson, Valerie Simpson and her husband Nick Ashford, Jude Law, Charlize Theron, Gwyneth Paltrow, Cate Blanchett, and Giovanni Ribisi. On James’s way to a table to pick up grilled slices of chicken, which he wanted to couple with bits of blue cheese, James saw and avoided Percival Everett, who hadn’t liked the profile James had done of him a couple of years ago. The piece was something James had thought would please the writer but Everett had said it was more concerned with his personal life than his work. When James reached the food table, he forgot about the chicken and put on his plate scallops glazed and topped with almonds and shallots, and a small serving of a gratin of peas, tarragon, and pistachios. Before the night was over, James would see and hear Rudolf Guiliani, David Dinkins, and Ed Koch, New York mayors, break into an aria from Tosca, seeing who could hit the highest note.

2.

Weeks after the museum gala, James entered the Redface’s office, thinking about the previous night’s celebration of Calvin’s new job and wondering what this meeting with the Redface would be about, barely noticing the sound of Frank Sinatra singing “That’s Life” that was playing low on the stereo behind the man’s chair. James hated surprises.

James sat down and opened his notebook, poised to write. The Redface affected seriousness but James could see he was pleased with himself, fatuous; he almost hoped that James would share the enthusiasm he felt for what he would say. The man was quick, direct, and he said, “James, you’re being here is no longer working. I’ve been trying to put together a team here and you aren’t a team player and your work has suffered because of it—it expresses you more than it expresses this institution. We have to let you go.”

“You have to?” asked James.

“Yes,” said the man, disliking the editorial implications of the question as much as the logical correction it suggestion. He went on. “I’ve asked the personnel office to extend your insurance benefits for three months and to give you whatever reasonable support you might need upon your separation from this office, which will be effective in one hour. A security guard can help you gather your things, if you like.”

“No, I don’t like,” said James, standing up. “I’ll gather my own things.”

James put resumes in the mail, and he made phone calls; his life was now not about work but about seduction—trying to interest employers in what he had to offer as a worker. He spent his days following up on job possibilities he found in newspapers and on the internet; and he sometimes went to films or museums for the distractions and took long walks at the end of the day to use up his extra energy and to think.

One day James found himself being extraordinarily polite to everyone he met, a newspaper vendor, a waitress in a breakfast diner, and a subway booth clerk. James realized this was a false benevolence that had come out of his own sense of injury; he was offering care to others when he wanted it for himself. He restrained himself.

James was in a bookstore one night, browsing, his friend Pete having backed out of a plan to meet for a drink. James bumped into a woman he hadn’t seen in years. They went to a bar for drinks, a bar full of Polish-American locals, and he told her what had happened to him, and she told him about her own disappointments and frustrations. She had been hired for what seemed a dream job, but the company went through a sudden downturn and she was reassigned to the kind of job she’d had when she first began her career. The newspapers were full of similar stories—of innovations that undermined traditional sectors of the economy, of new companies begun in good times that didn’t produce enough of a profit when things went bad, and of dwindling consumer confidence that affected consumerism that then affected staffing levels. The woman’s face, pale, with baby fat at her cheeks but tiny lines at the corner of her eyes, was well intentioned, sensitive, and hopeless; she had not thought of how to change her life. They talked past midnight, and he woke up the next morning in her bed, remembering everything, miserable. He thought about sex more often now, and when he pursued it, it brought a sense of adventure and a quick sharp pleasure, but it solved nothing.

After putting two hundred resumes in the mail at the post office, James went back to the clerk’s window to get a money order check for a telephone bill he wanted to pay. Soon after handing over a fifty-dollar bill, a man in a wheelchair asked James to move back so the man could pass, but James hadn’t received his change yet and was afraid of a mix-up if he moved away from his money or out of the clerk’s line of vision. The man in the wheelchair—middle age, bearded, short, with a somewhat thick though not fat body—looked at James, who had only moved a little, and said, “Some people are so rude.” James looked down at the man as he rolled away—should James swallow the presumption and the shock of pain he felt? James called out loudly, “You crippled idiot.” A woman near James looked disapproving, while a man nearby laughed.

James often used a copy center downtown to reproduce his portfolio, and the first time there he argued with a young woman behind the counter. She didn’t seem in the mood to be helpful, and he wasn’t in the mood to tolerate the slightest disrespect. Their argument was short and ugly and they repeated it on two or three of his visits. Once he heard her say to her supervisor, “We’re going to have trouble with that one.” Weeks passed and James didn’t say anything at all to her and finally he tried ordinary greetings and she returned them. One day he’d been working quietly, collating materials, and felt something and looked up and saw she was staring at him and he smiled. She blushed. She was a small pretty woman, Venezuelan, with a slight accent; and, to him, her face was sensual and surly—passionate. James began talking to her when he was done with collating, and he asked her when her break was, and if she’d like to go out for a coffee, and she said yes. He was surprised at how easy they found their way to bed, but realized that because his mind was full of so many things—culture, philosophy, and politics—sex was usually not the first thing he thought of; but for his generation and those younger, many of whom were concerned with a lot less than he was, sex was one of the few things they thought about. In bed, she was like a woman both begging for and fighting her own pleasure, afraid and demanding, and James found this very exciting, though a part of him observed it from a distance, as if for later consideration.

Before his friend Gail had called him with the news, James had heard it over a local arts radio station he listened to. The program director and the executive director of the television station she worked for had been fired, along with several of their assistants, and Gail had been appointed interim program director. James was pleased for her, but not as happy as he would have been if his own life had been as he wanted; and so he saw her ascension also as if from a distance. The appointment had been made not by an executive director or a personnel committee, as was customary, but by the chairman of the board of the corporation that owned the station. There were already protests outside the station’s offices of people who feared corporate intervention would weaken the station’s programs. The station had been known for its independence—for its coverage of the arts, progressive politics, eccentric personalities, obscure news, and advocacy of free speech rights. Gail had gone on the air to reassure the public that the station’s mission would continue undisturbed, but though she was a known journalist, and someone who had covered issues important in various communities, her words did not placate the demonstrators. When Gail called him, she said, “I have the job I was entitled to, and now I have the chance to do some good work for the station.”

James hadn’t eaten in two weeks, and his energy had diminished, his face was drawn, his body was learner, and he suffered headaches, when he got a tiny check for an article he did for a local giveaway paper on a recent special community board election. He cashed the check at a storefront check-cashing service and went to a local Chinese restaurant for chicken in garlic sauce. Hours later at home, in the bathroom, he read from Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil—“A human being who strives for something great considers everyone he meets on his way either as a means or as a delay and obstacle—or as a temporary resting place. His characteristic high-grade graciousness toward his fellow man becomes possible only once he has attained his height and rules. Impatience and his consciousness that until then he is always condemned to comedy—for even war is a comedy and conceals, just as every means conceals the end—spoil all of his relations to others; this type of man knows solitude and what is poisonous in it”; and James pushed out of his bowels tiny rabbit-like pellets. James thought of what he wanted—individuality, self-expression, the pursuit and exploration of an intellectual mission with a social purpose and appropriate rewards—and he thought of his own anger, distrust, and impatience when faced with obstacles and these feelings had made him sometimes, too often, politically clumsy: he had paid the people he disliked the tribute of honesty when he might have been a hypocrite, but hypocrisy would not have caused them to question themselves, their values, or their sense of reality. A human being who strives for something great considers everyone he meets on his way either as a means or as a delay and obstacle—or as a temporary resting place.Having read his fill of the book, taken a walk outside, and had a little something to eat, James called his friend Pete and asked him if he had time to get together during the weekend—maybe they could meet in a park and talk for an hour, or have a cup of tea somewhere. Pete said, No, he was busy with work, and as James put away the phone, he knew that he and Pete were not friends and had not been friends for years.

3.

James had applied for jobs in person and through letters, faxes, and electronic mail. He had sought reporting jobs and work in the various industries he’d previously worked in, but he found nothing.

James had drunk glasses of water to fill his belly and had taken aspirins for the headaches, but he was ravenous; he thought he was going mad with hunger.

It had been months since James had spoken to Pete, longer than that. He had not spoken to Calvin recently. James realized that he’d left several messages for Calvin that Calvin had not responded to—queries, invitations. James’s friend Gail, who was still enduring protests outside her office, and slanderous reports in the press—in which she was accused of egocentricity, professional favoritism, and political shortsidedness, in addition to being a corporate pawn—had loaned him money for rent, and he didn’t feel comfortable calling to ask for more.

The first time James entered a soup kitchen, one run by a national charity group with local offices, he felt lucky. Being served was roasted chicken, with potato salad, gravy, and string beans, and it all looked good and tasted good. He, dressed simply but neatly and carrying a canvas bag with his notebook and a magazine, took a seat across from a man seated alone, and James began to eat, glad he’d come even after the man opposite him started mumbling irrationally to himself. In time, James would see the range of food offered: food that was surprisingly good or quite bad, with little in between, with the worst being a tasteless stew of stringy chicken rumps over unsalted pasta.

Many of the people who came here were what he expected: homeless men and women, old people, toothless people who had been drug addicts, women whose salaries were not enough to sustain a life, and young men whose families abandoned them after they had lost jobs or gone into crime or jail. But there were also people who seemed ordinary, able, clean, and sane; they simply were hungry and wanted to eat.

Some of the people were quiet, and kept to themselves; and others acted as if this were a great social occasion, a chance to see and speak with good friends. James was not interested in them, in their oddly plump, weary, indistinct middle-age faces, nor in their comments—“I hate to throw food away, I hate to see food wasted, I won’t have any more food as I’m watching my weight, The powdered milk is so useful.” They were smart about pretending that frugality was chosen, or that if they didn’t get what they wanted here there remained options at home. James sat and ate, his attention entirely on the food, and when he wanted a second plate of food he asked for it. He would not pretend he was here for any other reason. Their friendliness, as he’d seen, might be followed suddenly by suspicion, fear, unsolicited self-defense, or even mockery.

One man had misplaced a bag and immediately thought it was stolen by one of the other people in the dining hall; but it was only on a chair underneath his coat. James thought, Paranoid people are worried about injury but they don’t realize that the injury they’re worried about is actually in the past, not the future; the wound is already there, misunderstood, unhealed. The man has already lost something and that is why he is here.

James couldn’t stand these conversations; he preferred silence to banality. He sat at a table, and took out a magazine, and was happy to see that the three people seated there whom had already eaten get up and leave, but then three more took their place. A chatty woman among them talked about having twins with a man who worked in a local beauty shop, something that surprised one of her tablemates.

James was surprised to find that the magazine he read carried an article about Gail, in which she was said to have fired people who questioned her authority—questioned her authority? A couple of them had called her a bitch on the air—and in the article she was also chided for being overweight: what does being overweight have to do with anything? James saw also that the co-anchor on one of her programs was being demonized as well, discussed as if he were bordering on the violent and insane simply because he was angry at being constantly insulted—he had talked about simply trying to do good journalism despite the surrounding controversies and had received nasty calls and letters and even threats.

At one point the chatty woman turned to James and asked if he’d been here a few weeks ago for a particularly good meal and he simply nodded yes. As soon as he had eaten, he folded close his magazine, wished them a good day, and walked outside into the gray, cold day.

At home, James put on a John Lee Hooker album, liking the wit of the blues, and he liked the drama, but when he heard the song “House Rent Blues,” with its story of a lost job, late rent, a disapproving landlady, homelessness, and an undependable friend, he turned it off. He took out a manuscript an editor had sent him to proofread, a small job.

He was having trouble concentrating after two hours and was glad to get Gail’s call. She laughed when he asked how she was. “Well, I’m not sure who on staff is for me, or who is against me. Someone will offer me a word of support and then I’ll turn into his program and hear him attack corporate puppets and women who put knives into men’s backs in order to advance and then conclude with how these words refer to situations near and far.” She laughed again. “I’d find this more acceptable if someone would say exactly what it is I’m doing that they object to, but instead they offer generalities and rhetoric.” James wondered if she was being ingenuous—if she was resisting seeing herself as part of institutional power, the appointment, the face, the tool, of a corporate board, as some of her colleagues claimed. Maybe she saw further—that all of them, and most people, worked for a large company. Toward the end of their talk, she did sound weary, and he realized she was surprised and confused by what had happened. How could people have once supported the idea of her becoming program director, and now that she was director not give her the chance to actually perform the job without obstruction?

James was late getting to lunch. He had spent the morning revising his resume, one of countless versions. After revising his resume, he had done some internet searches, using as key words names of past acquaintances; and he found that some of the people he had known had gone on to advanced degrees, television anchor positions, book contracts, prestigious teaching jobs; and he was depressed further. What had he been doing with his life? What had he to show for the years besides some published clippings and more free-floating worries and bad memories?

James passed a woman with two suitcases in tow, her everyday baggage, and he walked into the building, hoping that there was a decent lunch served. The woman, an office worker in the reception area, who usually told the men entering the building to take off their hats, was at the entrance. Thin, almost old, pious and tough, she stood at the door barring latecomers, and said in an angry burst, “No, no more. It’s over with—lunch is done.” James turned away, and began to think of where he would eat for the rest of the week, planning each day.

James decided to walk to the local library. James remembered a recent interview in which he had been asked whether he had journalism experience, a weird question in light of the fact that the ad requested an experienced journalist. Why else would he have been called for the interview? The interviewer was clearly surprised to see someone who looked like him apply, a fact that both amused and angered James. Inside the library James saw a man working on a craft project involving beads—he seemed to be making some kind of mat. James recognized the man from a soup kitchen he’d eaten in. James looked through some new magazines, then thought of borrowing some music, something different, and he walked to the music section and was suddenly overtaken by the smell of excrement, he looked around and saw an old man in layers of filthy clothes. To confirm this as the source, he walked near the man—yes, confirmed. James borrowed some Brazilian music, and thought he’d stop for a minute to look at some essay collections and hours passed before he left the library. James saw a guard tell a man he could not sleep in the library. The man, with piercing green eyes, tanned skin, light brown hair with a little white in it, was thin, obviously malnourished, and in dirty blue jeans; he stood up and left but returned about ten minutes later; and he saw James, sat across from him, and asked him where he was from. James told him, and the man said he thought he was from somewhere else—and then the man opened a book in front of himself, closed his eyes, and slept. When the man awoke, James took out of his bag a list of soup kitchens and gave it to the man. “This might be helpful to you. Sometimes it’s been helpful to me.” The man looked at it and said, “Thank you.”

James was using a reference computer in the library one afternoon, trying to gather together some books he thought he’d use in a proposal for a writing grant. He thought he might try to write a book on an Ohio-born writer who wrote about rather mad families caught between ambition and circumstance. Next to him sat a tall, tanned young man. James looked twice at him. James had seen him before, but didn’t know his name. He hung around with another man James thought crazy. James looked at him twice as the man had dyed his hair—what color is that? A light orange? The man sensed James looking and returned his gaze. They smiled. They worked silently next to each other, but a tension was in the air. James wondered if he should say something, either about what he was working on or ask the man bout his own concerns. James had become reticent to say anything about himself since losing his job, so he said, “Working on anything interesting?”

“I’m just printing some Japanese anime,” said the man, turning his computer screen toward James, who saw illustrations of half-nude women.

“Interesting,” said James.

The man laughed.

The tension, however, was not dispelled. Each attended to his concerns, but there was something remaining to be said. What could James say to this man, a stranger, someone he did not know, and someone he suspected he had little in common with? Every once in a while he felt this kind of thing—a connection having nothing to do with reason, nothing to do with will—and he dismissed it, but now that he was idle, now that his emotions were so obviously unfocused and unresolved in so many ways, he found these impulses harder to dismiss. James looked over at the young man, and then down into the man’s lap where he saw the man was aroused. After a brief exchange of looks, comments, and gestures, they went back to the apartment the man, Santiago, shared with his girlfriend, who was at work, and amid low laughter and high-spirited lust they drank liquor and fucked. James was charmed by the man’s energy and joy; and he felt as if he were lying down with an affectionate but dangerous animal.

“Does your girlfriend know about this side of you?” asked James.

“What’s there to know? It’s not like I’m going to fall in love with any guy,” said Santiago. “I don’t give guys flowers or taken them out to candlelit dinners. I hang out with guys sometimes and sometimes we play basketball and sometimes we fuck,” he said.

James looked out of one of the windows, onto the streets he’d be entering soon.

“You’re intelligent, sensitive, free. What do you want to do?” asked Santiago.

James was startled. He hadn’t expected that perception or the honesty, and he stumbled, “I don’t know. I just want to get a job that doesn’t involve too much humiliation.”

Walking in the neighborhood, James came face to face with a boy he had been seeing in the area for years. James had first seen the boy when he was about ten, chubby, and carrying a football, and now he was twenty-five, dressed all in black with longish hair, affecting a Manhattan style that was not entirely current. It was odd to have seen someone grow older without having any connection to him. When the boy was young, he had seemed open, pleasant-natured, and now he seemed a little closed, private, moody. James had seen this transformation in other boys. It might have been the narrowing of the focus of their energies that had led to this—they went from being interested in each other and everything to being interested principally in work, sports, women. James himself had not changed very much since he had first seen the boy—a fact he attributed to not being married or having kids, things that exhausted a man—and it was obvious that the boy recognized him. James said hello to the boy and asked about what he was doing and they talked about the weather, rock music, Manhattan, the too dull neighborhood. An hour later, when James kissed the back of the boy’s neck, after ruffling his thick dark hair, as James’s cock smoothly pushed in and out of the boy’s freckled pink ass in the boy’s bedroom, which still seemed the room of an adolescent, James felt a terrific sense of conquest. James was happy to substitute this sexual conquest for professional conquest, at least for a few minutes, but then he wondered if such a feeling—so small, so conscious—wouldn’t make the experience bitter to him later, and he knew then what he would do. When he whispered in a rush of words in the boy’s ear that he wanted the boy to fuck him, the boy seemed surprised, then disturbed, and finally he grinned.

When James spoke with Gail on the phone, they inevitably discussed what had been happening to her, but James tried to remind her about other things—about restaurants she might try, about films that were opening, about books to read, about places she might travel, about other jobs she might consider. He wanted her to remember that there was a wider world.
So they talked about different things, then Gail said, “I think Susan Sunshine”—and they laughed again at the name, which Gail had mocked in the past—“I think Susan Sunshine is behind a lot of the protests.” Sunshine was a reporter with a cult following—she presented herself as the girl next door but was known for aggressive reporting and had grilled the U.S. president so thoroughly several newspaper columnists had wondered if she had disrespected his office. “She wants to control this station—she used to, through the former program director,” said Gail.

James wasn’t sure he believed in human puppetry. Sunshine might have had indirect influence, but indirect control?

A mutual colleague of Gail’s and the woman claimed that Gail was jealous of Sunshine. James thought Sunshine self-consciously good, sweet, smart, but her audience read her eager grin as warmth and her plain hairstyle and clothes as integrity and read Gail’s precise diction as artificiality, her confidence as imperiousness, her girth as transgression, and her knowledge as foreign ideology. Gail’s proper Trinidadian upbringing was working against her in their eyes.
The protests against the television station where Gail worked, surprisingly well financed and well organized, had continued so long that newspapers were no longer even pretending to try to get the other side of the story. They had been bombarded with calls and e-mails and printed material from the protesters for so long, they were saturated with their version and simply reproduced it in their stories. Gail had even been recast in her own life story as someone incompetent and power-driven, somehow both clueless and so thoroughly calculating she had fooled many of her current coworkers and the public.

The harassment of board members by the protesters—calls at home and office, protests outside their children’s schools—had led some board members to resign and others to consider firing Gail but as yet there wasn’t enough board support for removing her from her position.
“I think our work is to report the news—yes, critically, intelligently—but to report it, not to be it or to make it, but Susan wants to make news. She thinks reporters are inevitably part of their stories and should advocate a position,” said Gail.

“Well, you’ve done advocacy journalism too,” said James.

“Sometimes it’s appropriate,” said Gail.

The truth was that power had changed her—or, if not power, the circumstances of power. She had gone from being hopeful though chastened, to trying to articulate a vision staff and viewers could rally around, to being defensive, to being controlling about what was said on the air by her staff about the controversies, to being unable to tolerate dissent. The atmosphere inside the television station had become calm but fearful, professional but without intimacies or the honesty that comes with intimacy. Gail had been treated unfairly; and that became the foundation from which she thought and acted.

Gail said, “You tell me I’m brilliant and strong—we agree about that—but you’re even more pleased by the fact that I’m not afraid to be tough or difficult.”

James laughed. It was true.

“You think many of us are complex, and that when that complexity is revealed it creates difficulty, and that’s why people are afraid to reveal complexity. They don’t want the difficulty or the punishment that might come with it,” she said.

“Yes, yes, yes, yes,” said James.

They both laughed.

It was the middle of the morning, and there were snow flurries. In yesterday’s mail there had been a telephone bill, which remained on James’s mind—how would he pay it? How would he pay to get his clothes cleaned? How would he pay his taxes? James gritted his teeth as he walked, wondering if his shoes would soon be soaked.

James saw a puppy take a bone under a car, where the dog huddled near the front right tire. James stopped to watch, thinking about the smallness of the dog and its obvious hunger. He walked on and a woman, who had seen him watching said, “I don’t know whose dog that is. He’s just eating those chicken bones.” James smiled at her. He thought about the dog’s tenacious gnawing at the bone, about his huddling against the tire, and felt sympathy. This is pathetic—I’m projecting myself onto a puppy, he thought.

A man was milling outside of the small trailer that operated as a food pantry, and James walked in his direction. James had seen the man before, inside, but this was the first time he noticed the man had a scar on his left lower cheek. A knife wound? The man had dark, intense eyes. He looked at James’s face, then at his coat, his scarf about his check, his pressed pants, his shining shoes; he looked skeptical. James saw the look and wanted to say, not everyone in need or trouble looks or sounds broken. But this is what they seemed to want, to see your need abject. James had been handing out his resume to businesses in the area, and so he was clean, shaven, and dressed very presentably but not especially well by his usual standards. He had sat down earlier in a real estate office to discuss the possibility of selling real estate, but had been told it would be about three months before he would be likely to make money he could live on. He would have to be able to afford training, licenses, a desk, and he would not get a salary but would make commissions. That was another dead end.

James asked the scarred man if the pantry was opened and the man said, No.On his way home, James stopped at a supermarket. He had no money on him, but it had become his habit to tour the aisles of food and clothing stores he couldn’t now afford, seeing the things he hoped to be able to afford again one day in the future. These were tours akin to brothel or museum visits, with most of the pleasure taking place in his mind, not on his lips or tongue. James realized he had a headache, remembered he was out of aspirin at home, and was almost surprised when he found himself picking up a a bottle of aspirin and slipping it into his coat pocket. A block away from the store, he smiled, pleased. I’ll have to do that again, he thought. He retrieved the bottle from his pocket, broke the plastic seal, and put the two white bitter tablets on his tongue.

The radiator in James’s bedroom kicked on; it was as if the house were breathing. James thought the heat was less than in previous years, and he knew that was because he was behind in his rent. He thought of this as he heard Gail say, “Two people can have the same strengths, do the same kind of work, but if they belong to different social groups, they’ll get a different reception, different rewards. We are individuals but we’re not appreciated as individuals.”James said, “No, we’re not.”

Gail had told him about finding herself, thirsty, at her office approaching a water fountain as Susan Sunshine neared the same fountain to drink. Gail had gestured, deferring to Susan, who drank first. As Susan was bent drinking, Gail couldn’t resist adding, “You think you’re entitled to public recognition and admiration.”

Susan had straightened, a look of surprise on her face, and said, “People recognize my work. Do you resent that?”

Gail said, “You’re not the only one who does relevant work. Do you feel at all guilty about the unequal attention you get?”

Susan said, “Would you?”

Gail had not answered. She had moved passed Susan, drank water, and then walked away.Gail said, “She’s oblivious—she assumes power is her right.” She paused, and asked, “How are you James?”

“I’m tired,” he said. “I’m very tired. The life I’m living is not the life I planned,” said James. He laughed sadly. “I’m no longer the hero in my own story—I’m more of a case study, a statistic. I guess not everyone’s allowed to be a hero.”

Gail said, “We’re individuals but we’re not appreciated as individuals.” She was quiet a moment. “You’re still a hero to me.”

“And you are to me,” he said.

The corporate board of the company Gail worked for had elected new members, many of them whom were either sympathetic to the protesters or who simply wanted the protest to end and were willing to make a sacrifice for that. Gail could see that when the new board had its first meeting in two weeks, she’d likely be the ritual’s sacrifice. She announced that she was resigning to write a book and consider other professional opportunities. James read a report of the board election and resignation in the morning paper and intuited the rest.

James saw a man alone making karate gestures and mouthing words, clearly crazy. The man crossed the street, and though a bus was coming he stood in the middle of the street, unzipped his pants and took out his prick and began to urinate.

When James entered the soup kitchen in the church basement, a nervous young man was speaking with someone. James assumed this nervousness was because he was new to such spare accommodations, but in the midst of James’ meal—spicy chicken wings, buttery whipped potatoes, string beans with other vegetables—the young man sat down next to him and began talking the social service program he was with and about health benefits James might qualify for. James asked him if he had a card, and after the man handed over a card and pamphlet, James said, “I’ll review these and if I need anything, I’ll call you.” The young man tried to continue talking. James asked, “Have you eaten the lunch? The young man said, No. James said, “Well, you should eat. This is really good, and I’m going to finish my delicious meal, which is why I’m here, and if I need anything I’ll call you.” The young man then tried to shake James’s hand, and James said, “I can’t—my hands aren’t clean: I’m eating.” The man kept his hand out as if it was okay, he didn’t mind James’s hand but James repeated his words. Would the man shake someone’s greasy hand in other circumstances? He must be new to his job, James thought. With his small build, light brown skin, small mobile eyes, cheekbones, short-cropped hair, and quiet manner, there was a resemblance to James, but the man saw in himself no resemblance to James or anyone else here. He’s so uncomfortable he’s dangerous, thought James. You can destroy someone with disappointment and pity, James thought. If I had been weaker. If I had been having a very bad day.

James received a small check for a proofreading job he did, and decided to go to a party. It had been months since he’d gone to a party. He’d had a bleak spring and a terrible summer—he had not known that a summer could be terrible.

James walked into the party and saw people smoking marijuana and doing powdered cocaine. He had rarely smoked the first and had never tried the second but he knew that tonight he would do both; and he did.

The noise in the party was no longer aggravating; it seemed far away. James no longer felt as if he would cry if someone asked him where he worked. James imagined the hands of a nearby clock spinning quickly, an acceleration of time. He noticed a man watching him and thought the man looked hostile and wondered if the man, whom he did not know, wanted to kill him. James suddenly imagined himself in a closed coffin, face up, the lid a few inches from his eyes, the coffin filled with cobwebs and dirt. Could he be feeling afraid and sleepy and sexually aroused at once?
Every day for a week, James thought of calling the party’s host to ask about getting more of the drug. He went to bed late one night having decided that he would do that the very next day.
James woke up the next day and turned on the television to find the towers where he and Gail used to work on fire. Two planes had flown into them. James smiled: there was justice on earth.James lay across his bed, reading Simone DeBeauvoir’s interview in a Paris Review anthology: “When one has an existentialist view of the world, like mine, the paradox of human life is precisely that one tries to be and, in the long run, merely exists. It’s because of this discrepancy that when you’ve laid your stake on being—and, in a way you always do when you make plans, even if you actually know that you can’t succeed in being—when you turn around and look back on your life, you see that you’ve simply existed. In other words, life isn’t behind you like a solid thing, like the life of a god (as it is conceived, that is, as something impossible). Your life is simply a human life.” He suddenly felt pressure in his stomach, and went to the bathroom; and moments later, after realizing he was almost out of toilet paper, he gazed down, seeing the thick snake-like turd in the white bowl, and bent to flush the toilet.

James stood in the food pantry line. After James was given a small bag of canned vegetables, a box of raisins, and some apples, he thought, So much humiliation for so little in return.

This world is too small for me, thought James.

(April 2002)(c) DG

Dark Side of the World

2009-05-13T10:58:00.005-05:00

“My future lies in back of me...”
--Ashford & Simpson’s “Dark Side of the World,” as sung by Diana Ross

“I can't go on, I'll go on.”
--Samuel Beckett’s “The Unnamable”

My own thoughts:

Certain cultures are able to encourage our ambitions, and fulfill out hopes; and other cultures frustrate them, make them improbable if not impossible.

Sometimes we are encouraged to substitute principles for our preferences, which could be a form of discipline or self-betrayal.

The desire for self-protection can lead to self-marginalization. The unhealthiness of isolation is something that becomes more pronounced with time. It really affects one’s perspective and spirit. It affects what seems important and urgent. One can begin to mistake the personal for the universal, the trivial for the significant. Self-marginalization leads to self-destruction.

I have thought of different kinds of writing as useful, valuable, but the fact is that certain kinds of writing are privileged and other kinds are taken for granted. Often essays and reviews are ways of claiming aspects of the world, of culture, but it is fiction and poetry that are more often (and, more deeply) claimed by the world, by culture, and even that literature does not have the power it held in the past. It’s painful to do work that you value but come to find has little or no presence in the life of others and yields no practical rewards.

Art, Politics, Life

2009-05-01T13:43:00.011-05:00

It’s a beautiful day here in the south, warm, though there are some clouds. I am anxious about the things I am always anxious about, even as I find moments of pleasure in the things that usually give me pleasure (and I don’t, now, amazingly find a conflict between the two: it’ just the nature of my existence today)…I received and have begun reading Phillip Lopate’s book on Susan Sontag, Notes on Sontag, and my response is thus far mixed (His favorable comments about Sontag’s intellect and unique commitment I appreciate, but some of his negative arguments are shallow, especially regarding personal matters and certain intellectual judgments; and there is a certain stupidity and vulgarity in trying to look at an artist and intellectual’s behavior as if it were on the same level as her work—artists control their work but that control does not extend to other people and the larger world). It’s sad that Sontag seems to have inspired as much resentment as admiration; and each says a lot about the person who feels it. I don’t know how far I will go with reading this or if I will try to develop a thorough response. As well, I have been listening to singer-songwriter’s Marshall Crenshaw’s Jaggedland with some fascination, as his is a name I have heard for years (he released his first album in 1982), without my having a good sense of his work, which, with this album, has a certain subtle sensuality.

Many people were concerned about Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal’s proposed cuts to the state’s art budget. (I sent in a written call for arts supports to various public officials, as did others.) The journalist Walter Pierce reports for Louisiana’s Independent Weekly (“Lawmakers Undo Jindal Arts Cuts”): “Arts councils, arts presenters and artists statewide are breathing a sigh of relief and keeping their collective fingers crossed after the state House Appropriations Committee this week restored $3.3 million to Decentralized Arts Funding, the state’s principal means of distributing grant funding to artistic and cultural endeavors administered by both public and private entities. The restoration is the full 83 percent of funding the Jindal administration cut from the budget. It came through an amendment by Rep. John Schroder, a Covington Republican, to House Bill 1, the massive appropriations bill that funds state government for the next fiscal year” (May 1, 2009).

In Louisiana, there is a lot of emphasis on sports and other physical things, such as hunting and fishing. It is nice to have some attention paid to the arts, and the introduction of the arts to young people and what they manage to do. “Skyler Pham, a senior at Magnet Academy for the Cultural Arts in Opelousas, has been named the grand prize winner of the 2009 River of Words Poetry Contest sponsored by the Library of Congress’ Center for the Book. It is the world’s largest competition for youth poetry and art. Pham’s poem, ‘Sisyphean,’ addresses the theme of watersheds. The Opelousas native’s poem was selected for the prize by Robert Haas, former U.S. poet laureate and winner of a 2008 Pulitzer Prize,” reports the Independent Weekly in Louisiana (“Acadiana Teen Wins National Poetry Award, May 1, 2009). As well, elsewhere, William Farley, an 18 year-old, won the 2009 Poetry Out Loud recitation contest sponsored by the Poetry Foundation and the National Arts Endowment, with a reading of “Danse Russe” by William Carlos Williams, about a middle-age man.

David Hudson at IFC’s online digest The Daily notes some of the new films that are opening now: The Limits of Control, Revanche, Three Monkeys, The Merry Gentlemen, Eldorado, Wolverine, and Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, however adding that there seems to be more quantity than quality (May 1, 2009).

According to ArtDaily.org,…in Australia, in the town of Paddington, the country’s most important photography awards were distributed: The winners included a critic’s choice award for Gary Heery’s photograph of actress Cate Blanchett. Other winners at Paddington’s Australian Centre for Photography were “Katerina Mantelos for her image ‘Athina, 98 years of life’, Vincent Long for his image ‘Generation Y’ and Janyon Boschoff for his image ‘Urban Camouflage.’”

On May 26th and May 27th (Tues. and Wed.), a free film festival featuring student documentaries, the Truth Be Told Documentary Film Festival, will be held in Tishman auditorium at The New School in Manhattan (66 West 12th Street). This summer, there will be a free film festival focusing on environmental and nature protection: Films on the Green, taking place in New York parks. In Louisiana, at the Robinson Film Center there will be filmmaking summer camps (at a cost).

“Culture, especially in its rarefied incarnations, has never been a high priority for the mainstream press. Criticism is a strange bird in an enterprise devoted to ‘objectivity’ and mass readership,” says Andras Szanto in the article titled “With newspapers in terminal decline, what future for arts journalism?” (The Art Newspaper, available online April 29, 2009; print, May 2009, Issue 202). Szanto acknowledges, “More people than ever are reading and writing about art, thanks to the web.” He speculates on how to sustain this, how to fund it, regarding the participations of institutions and writers and advertisers.

Following the American Society of Magazine Editors awards, the New York Times Stephanie Clifford reported that, “The winners of the general excellence award were Reader’s Digest, Field & Stream, Wired, Texas Monthly, Foreign Policy and Print. The general excellence awards are categorized by circulation, from the more than two million (Reader’s Digest) to the under 100,000 (Print)” (April 30, 2009).

Scheduled for Friday, May 15 at 8 pm, at the Angel Orensanz Foundation, 172 Norfolk Street (south of Houston), in Manhattan, according to a notice from the New York Institute for the Humanities, the humanities institute at NYU “teams up with those young twinned musical powerhouses, The Knights, a dynamic NYC-based orchestra, and Brooklyn Rider, the borough’s premier string quartet, for an evening circling around the theme of Schubert and Solitude. That theme receives an achingly sublime evocation in Argentine-Lithuanian/Jewish MacArthur-Award winning composer Osvaldo Golijov’s recent “She Was Here,” an orchestral re-envisioning of four Schubert songs, to be performed by the Knights, with Tehila Nini Goldstein, soprano. Golijov, who will be present, will discuss the taproots of this recent project, his debt to and sense of Schubert’s singular genius, with Fred Child, host of NPR’s Performance Today.” The themes and performances of other pieces will be discussed as well, including Beethoven’s “Coriolan Overture,” Schubert’s own “Death and the Maiden,” Philip Glass’s “Company,” Charles Ives’s “Unanswered Question,” and Golijov’s “Night of the Flying Horses.”

Mark Goldenson started an internet TV network for games called PlayCafe, and things didn’t go well: “Producing quality content every day is a herculean task, especially live. The idea of creating both the content and technology for PlayCafe seemed achievable, but TV networks focus on distribution and studios on production for good reason: both are hard,” says Mark Goldenson in “10 Lessons from a Failed Startup,” for the web site Venture Beat (April 29th, 2009).

Everyone has been concerned about the flu epidemic, which we were told first began in Mexico but more information is beginning to come out. “Mexico’s top government epidemiologist said Wednesday that it is ‘highly improbable’ that a farm in the Mexican state of Veracruz operated by Smithfield Foods Inc. is responsible for the nation’s swine-flu outbreak. Miguel Angel Lezana, the government’s chief epidemiologist, said in an interview that pigs at the farm are from North America, while the genetic material in the virus is from Europe and Asia,” write Ana Campoy and Lauren Etter, “Expert Says Farm Isn’t Flu Origin,” The Wall Street Journal (April 30, 2009). I heard one report this morning that said it should not even be referred to as swine flu as pigs do not have this flu although some of the genetic makeup of the flu does contain pig genetic material as well as that of other creatures.

In an “African Gene-map Findings” post at the web site African Loft, it is stated that “A ten-year study by scientists has found Africa to be the most genetically diverse continent in the world. The team of international scientists believes that modern humans evolved in south-western Africa, near the coastal border of Namibia and Angola. They also took samples from four African-American populations, and found that most of them were of West African ancestry. The team led by Sarah Tishkoff from the University of Pennsylvania studied genetic material from 121 African populations” (May 1, 2009).

How translatable is knowledge, how translatable are standards? How central is literacy? “In countless American communities, flyers are routinely full of major misspellings, more than a few people are only fitfully comfortable with e-mail, and few read newspapers above the tabloid level. Life is fundamentally oral. People from places like this (which include Appalachia and the rural white South, as much as black and brown inner cities) get next to no reinforcement from home life in acquiring comfort with the written word beyond the utilitarian,” declares the usually conservative John McWhorter in “Moving Beyond Bias,” a piece I want to read more of on African-Americans and standardized tests (The New Republic, online April 22, 2009). After invoking scholar-activist W.E.B. DuBois, John McWhorter says, “People like Du Bois did not dedicate their lives to paving the way for black people to be exempt from tests. Sure, the tests may not correlate perfectly with firefighters’ duties. But which falls more into the spirit of black uplift that you could explain to a foreigner in less than three minutes: teaching black candidates how to show what they are made of despite obstacles, or banning a test of mental agility as inappropriate to impose on black candidates?”

Someone who is a man of excellence by almost any intelligent, sensible standard is Barack Obama; and this week marked his first one-hundred days in office—and I watched the press conference he gave on Wednesday, the night of the one-hundredth day. He spoke about a new generation facing challenges, a new generation with the power to make different decisions. It often doesn’t pay to bet against youth and he has that on his side. “To a greater extent than among older voters, support for Obama among voters under the age of 30 was based on issues and ideology. The main reason so many young people were attracted to Barack Obama’s candidacy was because of his ideas,” writes Alan Abromowitz in “The Obama Generation,” from Rasmussen Reports (May 1, 2009). Alan Abromowitz offers statistics and observations regarding the liberal attitudes of young people and affirms, “The primary reason for the distinctive political behavior of younger Americans today is that their political attitudes differ significantly from those of their elders.”

The Cato Institute has given diverse analyses of President Obama’s first one-hundred days in office, a mixed response, depending on the issues involved. However, earlier in the week, April 27th, 2009, in a “Public Opinion Snapshot,” the Center for American Progress’s Ruy Teixeira reported that “In a just-released Pew Research Center poll, the president’s favorability rating stands at 73 percent, with just 24 percent viewing him unfavorably.”

What Makes A Writer Necessary?

2009-04-29T10:38:00.003-05:00

I think of writing as the creation of beauty and the cultivation of craft in language, as self-expression and social communication and political practice, and I also think of it as a form of spiritual sustenance--but what makes a writer necessary? I would have said honesty, intelligence, sensitivity, eloquence and imagination when I was much younger; and I would have added range and mastery of subject matter and philosophical heft a few years ago, but now I am not so sure. Are writers and their work necessary to most people?

100 Hundred Days, 100 Nights

2009-04-28T13:02:00.006-05:00

“The world, which is the private property of a few, suffers from amnesia. It is not an innocent amnesia. The owners prefer not to remember that the world was born yearning to be a home for everyone,” says the writer Eduardo Galeano in an interview (“Through the Looking Glass”) with Parul Sehgal, online at Publishers Weekly (April 27, 2009).

This week marks President Barack Hussein Obama’s first one-hundred days in office, during which the Democratic president has made or supported a wide range of initiatives (one tally has the count at more than one-hundred), initiatives involving the economy, education, health care, international relations and more. Meanwhile, the longtime Republican senator from Pennysylvania Arlen Specter has become a Democrat, reports The New York Times (April 28, 2009); and that seems as symbolic an event as any.

The Journal of the History of Philosophy, a quarterly publication from Johns Hopkins University Press that is focused on the history of western philosophy, is looking for a new editor to serve a five-year renewable term, beginning July 1, 2010. The contact is Prof. Al Martinich, search committee chair (Professor Martinich is located at the University of Texas in Austin).

The web allows everyone to be a curator, claims Jim Richardson, a scheduled speaker at a June conference in Malaga on “communicating the museum” (The Art Newspaper, online April 32, 2009; Issue 202, May 2009).

Festival International took place this past weekend in Louisiana, beginning April 22nd and ending April 26, a very impressive event featuring musicians from around the world, particularly from Francophone countries. Next year’s Festival International is scheduled for April 21-25, 2010.

I am looking forward to listening to new music by Marshall Crenshaw and Jill Sobule, among others; and am still enjoying Andrew Bird and Death Cab for Cutie.

This Tuesday afternoon, today at 3 p.m., the poet C.K. Williams is reading his poetry in Alexander Hall, the Richardson auditorium (Princeton University) in New Jersey. Kevin Young follows in the same place at 5 p.m. As well the legendary (and incendiary) Jayne Cortez is reading her poetry tonight at Dixon Place, 161 Christie Street, in New York, 7 p.m., part of a program featuring Anne Waldman and Cara Benson.

This morning I watched a television news program and topics included film and music and there were even a few books mentioned but there was not literature, not fiction. I was trying to remember the last time I heard a discussion of literature as part of mainstream television. Didn't such books used to be discussed? Literature has become more marginal to our lives.

Is Anybody There?, a film starring Michael Caine, opens on Friday, May 1st, as does X-Men Origins: Wolverine, with Hugh Jackson. Atom Egoyan’s film Adoration opens a week later, May 8th, as does Carlos Cuaron’s soccer film Rudo Y Corsi featuring Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna; and Ron Howards Angels & Demons, starring Tom Hanks, will play beginning May 15th. (Source: Roger Moore, Orlando Sentinel, April 28, giving release dates through August 2009)

The African Film Festival is held in New York in April and May; and there are film screenings scheduled for Columbia University for May 22nd through 25th, 2009: including screenings of the acclaimed film Shoot the Messenger. It is true that African films are shown at other times of the year and some of those dates can be seen with a visit to the AFF calendar at the web site of African Film Festival New York.

Enemies

2009-04-28T13:00:00.000-05:00

Sometimes we have good intentions but make enemies anyway. Sometimes just wanting to achieve independence and integrity in our own lives frustrates those who want to control and exploit us; and they develop a great dislike for us and our activities.

Male Sensitivity

2009-04-27T12:40:00.003-05:00

I think that it is hard, still, for many people to tolerate male sensitivity. Men are expected to be active, to do something, or to be stoic, silent and strong, rather than to be articulate and expressive about difficult matters that concern and trouble them. It is one reason why men become loners; and one reason why some men become artists--to have a place in which to put their feelings. It is hard for some people to accept that a man is not simply cursed with sensitivity (too weak to be anything else) but that he chooses to be sensitive; and that does not include a desire for suffering but it can include an acceptance that suffering may come--and suffering is to be lived through and lived through honestly, with acknowledgement, with candor, with intelligent pragmatism as well as the belief that things can, should be, and will be different, that suffering will end.

Art in Movies: Incognito; and Mona Lisa Smile

2009-04-27T12:09:00.005-05:00

I saw on the small screen two films that took place in the art world this past weekend, a nice bit of film programming from the CW network: John Badham’s Incognito, starring Jason Patric as an art forger and Irene Jacob as an art expert; and Mike Newell’s Mona Lisa Smile, with Julia Roberts as a college art teacher and Kirsten Dunst, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Julia Stiles as her students. Each film managed to ask some good questions about art--what is it, why is it made, how is it understood and evaluated, and what is its ultimate worth?

The first film, Incognito, was a late 1990s crime thriller with some romance, and the second was a "teacher-who-inspired-me" story with feminist themes and some romance. Love is the universal subject, so those uninterested in the subject of art had something that might engage. Art is such a special subject and as I began to watch Incognito, I thought about how rare it is to hear sustained discussion of art in a popular medium and how hard it must be for a film director to know what tone to take (I wasn't sure that the tone at the beginning of the film wasn't off--but that may have been me just becoming acclimated to the subject, a subject I think about often but do not expect to hear spoken of by many others). I thought that Incognito seemed like an update of the kind of suspense film that Cary Grant used to make (Jason Patric is a good-looking man but he doesn't have the charm or spirit of Cary Grant, or even of Hugh Grant, whose movie Four Wedings and A Funeral was screened as well on Sunday; and there could have been more of, and more to, Irene Jacob). Incognito looked good, it was intelligent, and there was nothing "wrong" with the acting (I look forward to seeing the film again, at some point), but the film lacked that extra something--a bit of spirit and style that can make a competent film into a good film or a good film into a great one.

In Mona Lisa Smile, a film from a few years ago, Julia Roberts supplies the idiosyncratic spirit and style that makes an entrancing film object, a movie star. She understands what a film requires and she gives it. Her performance as the art teacher balanced wanting to be liked in a new place, wanting to do a good job, wanting to be true to rigorous intellectual standards, and also being subject to insecurities and physical attraction. She brings a liberal sensibility to a place that is conservate in old-fashion terms (marriage and bland conformity are respected goals). The circumstances and issues that both films present are the kinds of things that recur in different generations, in different cultures: the battles are won or lost but the war goes on. I think both films handled the issues involving art very intelligently (appropriate care was taken), possibly handling the subject of art better than they handled other matters touched on. Both films have their predictable aspects (in some instances, predictability might be another word for form or logic). I enjoyed both films, and am glad I saw them.

Criticism, As An Establishment Tool

2009-04-27T11:51:00.005-05:00

It may be less so today than it is has been in the past, thanks to the social changes of the 1960s and 1970s and the cultural and theoretical leaps of the 1970s and 1980s, but criticism can be an establishment tool: a way to reaffirm conservative traditions and values. Criticism can be a way of solidifying the status quo, of policing works, things, and people who are different. Sometimes those people who are different are people who belong to traditional minorities--but sometimes they are people whose cultural interests are different: people who prefer Rembrandt to installation art or video; people who prefer European classical music and jazz to indie rock and hip-hop. Criticism can be used to mock, to shame. It can be used to disseminate prejudice. It can express malice and resentment toward figures of mastery, toward what is perceived as safety and security in a society that is impressed by hedonism and riot. Criticism can be a way for the mediocre to join together against excellence. It can be a form of laziness, a rebellion against having to recognize the abundant, diverse talent in the world. It can be an establishment tool simply by encouraging things as they are, the prevalence of the lowest common denominator in much of popular culture.

Earth Day, etcetera

2009-04-22T14:41:00.010-05:00

Today, April 22, is Earth Day, a commemoration that began as an environmental education day in 1970 at the behest of Gaylord Nelson, a United States senator: an estimated twenty million people participated in the first Earth Day and it is sometimes called the beginning of the modern environmental movement.

Wendy Weinstein at Film Journal International has given the film The Soloist, directed by Joe Wright and starring Jamie Foxx and Robert Downey Jr, about the friendship between a journalist and a homeless musician, a very mixed review.

The Los Angeles Times, in association with UCLA, is sponsoring the Festival of Books, scheduled for this coming weekend, April 25th and 26th.

The Ford Foundation is providing ten-million dollars for the establishment of a new foundation to support indigenous American artists, according to the April 21 New York Times. (It is nice to have that news during a time when is watching the new documentary on PBS about the brutal historical treatment of native Americans.)

Yesterday, the Southern Poverty Law Center released a report titled Under Siege that focuses on poor Latino workers in the American south, based on surveys conducted with 500 low-income Latinos, legal residents and those not recognized by law, in Nashville, Charlotte, New Orleans, rural southern Georgia, and towns in northern Alabama. According to the Center’s web site, “The survey findings, coupled with accounts from in-depth interviews, depict a region where Latinos are routinely cheated out of wages by employers and denied basic health and safety protections. They are racially profiled by overzealous law enforcement agents and victimized by criminals who know they are reluctant to report crime to these same authorities. Even legal residents and U.S. citizens of Latino descent said racial profiling, bigotry and other forms of discrimination are staples of their daily lives.”

Personal Notes, Southern Blues

2009-04-22T13:03:00.007-05:00

I am not happy to be in Louisiana today. I was in New Iberia yesterday, leaving the library and riding my bike on the sidewalk as the street was too crowded with cars, and a oldish—in her 50s? early 60s?—blonde, extremely pale woman in white shorts was coming toward me and she clutched her purse, which was on the farthest side of her body away from me already. After I passed her, I turned and looked at her go down the street and saw that she was no longer clutching the purse. The mental illness of too many “white” people continues. It does not help that in news reports criminals are identified by race, rather than age, height, and distinguishing marks or dress. (How helpful is it to say only that a black male or white male committed a crime, if there are more than two of either in any locale?) I must say, the purse-clutching is not as prominent here as in New York but it is annoying as it often is just so impractical, such nonsense (it is always contextually inappropriate: there is always some physical detail that makes theft unlikely or impossible even if one wanted to steal—such as purse-clutching in an elevator: where is one to go with the purse in a closed elevator, inside a building with other people around?).

According to the Associated Press (April 22, 2009), “The Tangipahoa Parish School Board will vote Monday on the final version of its multi-million-dollar school desegregation plan.” A school desegregation plan in year 2009—still? The plan is due April 30 in New Orleans, and will likely include school construction and renovation, and is motivated by a 1965 school desegregation case.

I was on the bike two days ago, and someone called out to me: a man doing work on a large agricultural truck (his job, a blue-collar job). He said my name and asked if I remembered him—I did not recognize him, and he gave his nickname, which I vaguely recalled, and then he gave me his full name and I knew who it was, though he, of course, did not look at all the way he did when I last saw him, when we were both very young men. (I am slim, so am more recognizable.) He told me that not much is going on in Louisiana. He made a comment about my riding the bike (rather than driving a car), and added that I’d been one of the smartest people. I told him that I had been here for only a couple of months, that I had been living in New York, and that I didn’t drive. (I did not say: I had not planned to come back to Louisiana without significant money or power—but, as Frank Sinatra used to sing, “That’s Life.”)

Blueprint Louisiana advocates a knowledge-based economy for Louisiana and states the problem as this: “Louisiana’s economy is driven mostly by ‘old’ industry sectors that, while they remain essential to our economy, are not growing sectors. In fact, more recent trends in these industries have been toward fewer full-time employees, either through improved efficiencies, a reduction of fixed costs or a shift of capital investment overseas. While many other states have increased their focus on knowledge-based industry sectors that will grow substantially in the coming decades, Louisiana has lagged in this pursuit. As a result, Louisiana now has little internal capacity to grow jobs in these ‘new economy’ sectors. This is confirmed by our low rankings in the numerous indexes that measure and assess states’ readiness for and participation in the new economy.”

According to the Associated Press (April 22), Louisiana lawmakers will be reconsidering film industry tax incentives: “If the Legislature takes no action in its session opening Monday, the current 25 percent tax credit for movie and TV show makers will drop to 20 percent next year and 15 percent in 2012. That’s a scenario those heavily invested in the industry say would be disastrous.”

The Public Affairs Research Council of Louisiana (PAR) published the Guide to the 2009 Louisiana Legislature, a pocket-sized that includes biographical information and photographs of Louisiana’s legislators, statewide elected officials and congressional delegation, with committee assignments and contact information. Copies are $10 each plus tax and shipping, from: PAR at P.O. Box 14776, Baton Rouge, LA 70898-4776. Order forms can also be faxed to (225) 926-8417, or requests can be sent by e-mail to connie@la-par.org.

New Orleans City Business (April 22) reports that a couple of Louisiana towns have been included in Relocate America’s “Top 100 Places to Live” list: Metairie and Mandeville and Bossier City.

In March 2009, the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities gave its Humanities Book of the Year Award to writer Ned Sublette for his book The World That Made New Orleans: From Spanish Silver to Congo Square.

I have been listening to the new recordings of two Louisiana musicians, Allen Toussaint (The Bright Mississippi, a very elegant recording of some jazz standards) and Buckwheat Zydeco (the smart, fun Lay Your Burden Down, featuring zydeco and popular music songs, even a Springsteen song!).

There is a crawfish festival scheduled for the Louisiana town of Breaux Bridge at Parc Hardy in early May 2009, and, in May also, a Bunk Johnson jazz festival in New Iberia, with an artwalk in downtown Lafayette May 9th, a Juneteenth celebration in Opelousas at the Farmer’s Market for June 20th, and a July 4th parade in New Iberia. There is a bluegrass music event planned for August 8th at the Rice Theatre in Crowley. A cultural festival, featuring reggae music, is slated for August 29th and 30th in Carencro’s Pelican Park, with a zydeco festival parade scheduled for Opelousas’s South Park in early September, and an arts and crafts show at Shadows-on-the-Teche in New Iberia, October 3rd. The Festivals Acadiens et Creoles is to take place October 9th through 11th in Lafayette.

Criticism, As Companion to Art

2009-04-21T13:42:00.004-05:00

I have thought of art as a necessity; and I have thought of criticism as a companion to art, and it has become a necessity as well.

I see a film and read a review of it--before seeing or after; and sometimes, if I find the film interesting enough I write a review of it. I listen to music and try to imagine how I would describe it to a friend or a disinterested acquaintance. The content I discover in a work of art or entertainment, and the pleasure I find, is deepened and extended by a review--or a bunch of reviews.

Criticism is the recovery, in language and thought, of objects from the near and distant past; and it provides context, an explanation of genre, and a disclosure of artistic strategies that are social as much as they are aesthetic. Critics can help us to understand the current work of an artist in light of standards established by the artist's own work as well as the tradition or traditions to which he or she belongs; and criticism can celebrate the highest manifestations of craft, as it introduces us to new talent or reminds us of the existence of neglected or obscure artists: describing the rare qualities of each artist.

There is little more valuable culturally than the reinterpretation of misunderstood or maligned artists, sometimes offering retrospective summaries of artists' careers: that reinterpretation can tell us as much about ourselves, our society, and our values as anything, illuminating the politics of art.

We can learn about the nature of experimental art (what is to be gleaned from it); and about false radicalism, when experiment exists merely to impress and not to express or teach. We can be reminded that art has a spirituality, that it is infused, always, with the human spirit. We can learn about each other--through folk art, international art, expanding knowledge. Criticism can help us to understand how artists express themselves in ancillary words (in books, speeches, interviews) and how that complements or contradicts their works? And criticism can help us to appreciate, to sympathize with, to tolerate, how practical matters--money and power--affect the artistic world. Criticism can be a companion to art, to us.

Seeing Things

2009-04-17T13:32:00.004-05:00

“I think my basic job as a critic is to get people out of the house, to get them interested, energized, inspired, or riled enough to just go see what I’m talking about,’ says New York Times art critic Roberta Smith to Irving Sandler in The Brooklyn Rail (April 2009). Smith talks about her early career and influences (including Sanford Schwartz, Pauline Kael, and Edmund Wilson). Smith also says, “I believe in individual taste, but taste-making is a kind of fiction. It’s just a way to organize things that as time passes are going to fall apart again.” There are more, and more complex, comments in the worthwhile interview, available online.

In an interview with Eliane Raheb, a Lebanese filmmaker and a founder of an Arab film festival called “Ayyam Beruit,” the journalist Mona Sarkis of Qantara.de asks Raheb about new Arab films. The "Ayyam Beruit" festival yields thousands of attendees every two years. Eliane Raheb speaks about a film category referred to as author cinema; and Raheb says, “We have noticed that author cinema is one of the true and rare mirrors of our identity. The truly authentic films are being made by filmmakers who express their individual vision of human beings with stories and experiences that seem unique to them and through which they question ‘reality’. This is, for example, the case in The One Man Village by Simon al Habre or low-budget fiction films like Ein Shams by Ibrahim Battout.”

David Hudson, formerly of the web log Greencine Daily, is now presenting his film commentaries and notes and assorted links, through The Daily at IFC (Independent Film Channel); and as of today he’s got items on Jean-Pierre Melville’s Leon Morin, Priest; Armando Iannucci’s In the Loop and Eran Riklis’s Lemon Tree and more…

Isn't it interesting, and good, to learn something we did not know?

Marc Broussard, musician, with writer Cody Daigle

2009-04-17T11:47:00.004-05:00

Cody Daigle is a south Louisiana writer, and I have been reading his diverse, intelligent, lively work in The Times of Acadiana and sometimes in The Daily Advertiser; and I was impressed, just yesterday, with a piece he did on the musician Marc Broussard, whom he interviewed (Times, April 16). In the interview article, Broussard talked about his work, the music business and its single-minded search for "hits," and the peculiar reception Broussard's work gets in Louisiana: "I've grown up around this scene all my life, so I've seen bits and pieces of the irreverence to what's going on on stage but I'm not sure why it goes on." Yet, the balance of the piece is about Broussard pleasure with the state of his career and his life in Louisiana. It's worth reading for its candor.

Unanswered Questions

2009-04-17T11:44:00.002-05:00

Greg Kot of “Sound Opinons,” What developments would you like to see in how music is reported and evaluated?

Gerald Early, essayist and Washington University professor, Do you think that the essays and reviews published by African American writers in established publications demonstrate intellectual, literary, political, and temperamental range; and what developments would you like to see?

Cecil Doyle of KRVS, How long have you been producing radio programs, and what have been some of the high points and frustrations?

Jane Ciabattari, National Book Critics Circle president, What kinds of things can writers, editors, and publishers do to make literary criticism more significant for others?

Wilson Savoy of the Pine Leaf Boys, How do you see your work, and the work of other Louisiana artists, in relation to the larger world?

Eddie Glaude author of In a Shade of Blue, What do you imagine political activism and political writing will look like, following the election of Barack Obama, in the years to come?

Frank Wilderson, author of Incognegro, What is the focus of your forthcoming book, Red, White and Black: Cinema and the Structure of US Antagonisms?

Manthia Diawara, NYU Africana Studies chairman, In what ways would you like to see African culture integrated in the lives of African-Americans?

Jesse Kercheval, author of Cinema Muto, What are some of the similarities and differences between poetry and film; and how did you approach these disciplines in your own work?

Irene Vandever of the Arts and Humanities Council of Southwest Louisiana, What are the principal arts of Louisiana and what might be their appeal to the larger world?

A. Deniz Balgamis, co-editor of Turkish Migration to the United States, What are the complexities—contradictions and possibilities—within Turkish modernity?

Lucious Fontenot of Valcour Records, What are some of the similarities and differences between Creole and Cajun music in Louisiana?

Alain Locke, scholar

2009-04-16T14:48:00.004-05:00

Ross Posnock, on Alain Locke in the article "Black Is Brilliant," in The New Republic, posted online yesterday, April 15:

"Locke regarded his iron confidence as his birthright as a proper and proud member of an old free black family of educators. The son and grandson of highly cultivated people on both sides, Locke was nearly blase about entering Harvard in 1904. His letters home from college bear little evidence of anxiety. By 1912 he was a professor of philosophy at Howard, where he would teach for four decades."

Posnock's article is a review-essay in response to the new Harris/Molesworth biography of Alain Locke. I have admired Locke for years, and am hoping to read the rest of Posnock's article on the man soon. For the last two weeks, I have been doing a little writing on music and film, and trying to imagine the future...Locke remains an inspiring figure.

Elizabeth Alexander, Poet

2009-04-03T11:31:00.005-05:00

Elizabeth Alexander published her first book of poetry, The Venus Hottentot, in 1990, followed by the poetry collections Body of Life (1996), Antebellum Dream Book (2001), American Sublime (2005), and, with co-author Marilyn Nelson, Miss Crandall’s School for Young Ladies and Little Misses of Color (2008), a book for young adults. In her poetry Elizabeth Alexander captures the ideas, the moments, the perceptions, and the sensations, that are missed, usually, in the first and second drafts of history, the real stories of human lives. I found her American Sublime a particularly beautiful book and was surprised that her essays in The Black Interior were as interesting, as impressive. Alexander, who teaches in Yale’s African American Studies department, has a second, more recent, book of essays, Power and Possibility. She is a writer to watch, and to listen to, as much of America learned when she participated in the inauguration of President Barack Obama; but, more significantly, she will be, for a very long time, a poet whose work is to be read. There have been appreciative and critical comments made about the poem she wrote for that historic day in January, and I was curious to know what Elizabeth Alexander herself had learned from the experience (I sent her an e-mail query at the end of March and she quickly responded).

Daniel:
What did you learn about public poetry as a result of your inauguration experience?

Elizabeth Alexander:
"From the literally thousands of letter and emails I have received form strangers, I learned that so many people are open and receptive to public poetry. They meet it as it comes to them and respond with their own words, feelings, stories. That has been very powerful and affirming of the ability of art to have a place in the everyday lives of Americans."

April, National Poetry Month

2009-04-03T11:15:00.002-05:00

April has been National Poetry Month, established by the Academy of American Poets, since 1996, an opportunity to read and celebrate poetry and learn more about the nation’s historic literature and the work being made now. Poets Out Loud is a web site featuring poets reading poetry, sponsored by the publisher W.W. Norton, which published Robert Pinsky’s anthology on poems to read out loud. There are, also, recommendations for teachers in how to present poetry at Scholastic’s online page and that of TeacherVision.

Poets Jorie Graham, Mark Strand, and Rose Styron participated in the Academy of American Poets April 1st event at New York's Lincoln Center, “Poetry and the Creative Mind,” reciting poetry, as did trumpeter Wynton Marsalis (reading Sterling Brown’s “Riverbank Blues”), actress Maggie Gyllenhaal (reading Akhmatova), scientist Harold Varmus (reading John Donne) and others, an official beginning to April as poetry month.

Foolishness

2009-04-01T12:42:00.013-05:00

I awake today in Louisiana, rather than New York. It is April Fool’s Day. Apparently, the top internet searches for the day, thus far, regard fashion model Heidi Klum’s pretending to be an ordinary worker for the television special “I Get That A Lot”; the story of a woman who starved her son for refusing to say “Amen” at mealtime; Sarah Palin’s replacement by Newt Gingrich for a scheduled Republican dinner; the retirement of automaker General Motors’ chief executive officer; and the death, as a result of heart disease, of actor-singer Andy Hallett (“Angel”). Several of these topics suggest mediocrity of mind—but, then, it is April Fool’s Day.

Yesterday, was Arts Advocacy Day. I have thought often that troubled people require more art not less; and Morris Dickstein’s article on culture during the great economic depression of the 1920 argues that. In today’s Los Angeles Times, cultural critic Morris Dickstein recalls, “The engine of the arts in the ‘30s was not escapism, as we sometimes imagine, but speed, energy and movement at a time of economic stagnation and social malaise. When Warner Bros. -- which avoided bankruptcy with its lively and topical gangster films, backstage musicals and Depression melodramas -- promised a 'New Deal in Entertainment,' it was offering the cultural equivalent of the New Deal, a psychological stimulus package that might energize a shaken public” (“How song, dance and movies bailed us out of the Depression,” April 1, 2009).

Of course, money itself makes up for a lot (if it cannot buy friends, it can help you forget you do not have any). New Scientist, Issue 2700: “In a study to be published soon in the journal Psychological Science, [Kathleen] Vohs and psychologists Xinyue Zhou of Sun Yat-Sen University in Guangzhou, China, and Roy Baumeister of Florida State University, Tallahassee, found that people who felt rejected by others, or were subjected to physical pain, were subsequently less likely to give a monetary gift in a game situation. The researchers then went on to show that just handling paper money could reduce the distress associated with social exclusion, and also diminish the physical pain caused by touching very hot water” (Mark Buchanan, “Why Money Messes with Your Mind,” March 18, 2009).

Louisiana has a unique cultural heritage (it has been multicultural always), and is known especially for its food, language, and music; and it is a culture that gets a lot of enthusiasm but not always adequate financial support: and, Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal is proposing a budget that makes severe cuts in the state’s arts funding for the coming year; and the Louisiana Partnership for the Arts is asking concerned citizens to write state legislators and ask them to restore arts funding and support the arts.

According to ArtDaily.org: “This spring, from now through May 24, the New Orleans Museum of Art presents ‘A Discourse in Abstraction: Jennifer Odem and NOMA’s Permanent Collection,’ an exhibition of new sculpture by the New Orleans-based artist juxtaposed with modern and contemporary works from the permanent collection.

‘A Discourse in Abstraction’ is the first in a series of exhibitions dedicated to highlighting Louisiana contemporary art. Situated in dialogue with abstract paintings from NOMA’s permanent collection, Odem’s works position themselves at the crossroads between monumentality and playfulness. Combining materials such as Hydro-stone with flocking fiber, Odem’s sculptures walk the line between extreme contrasts.”

The Hollywood Reporter has announced the many of the big media companies are experiencing a decline in the value of their stock. As well, Bloomberg says that Time Warner is no longer the largest media company, in terms of financial returns (that would be Disney, followed by News Corps). And, it is said that Conde Nast is letting a bunch of receptionists go and Forbes is planning staff cuts. It is always sad when hard-working people lose their jobs—it’s less so when billionaires lose a few dollars.

Blender, the music publication, is going out of business. I was not a fan. Its sensibility was relentlessly superficial. The “consumer guide” approach, so affixed to current taste expressed as snark, is part of the reason for the diminishment and disrespect of popular music criticism. Hardley remembered is the tradition of thoughtful criticism and cultural intrepretation—lengthy and logical, explanatory and exploratory.

Even some of the better publications do not serve us well. I think of how the New York Review of Books ignored Barack Obama for months and months and then, when Obama was winning in the presidential campaign, the publication used writer Daryl Pinckney (his books: High Cotton, Out There) to play catch-up and introduce its audience to the man and his ideas. Meanwhile, now, President Obama is in England, meeting with the world’s top foreign leaders (there’s a nice photograph of him and his wife with the queen of England, following his meeting with the British prime minister). In England, there are mass demonstrations against capitalism, against things as they are.

Words

2009-03-28T13:56:00.009-05:00

In New York at multiple sites, the PEN World Voices Festival will take place from April 27 through May 3rd, with more than one-hundred and fifty writers from forty countries.

Late last year, the University of Chicago published Alain L. Locke: Biography of a Philosopher by Leonard Harris and Charles Molesworth. Locke, a Harvard trained philosopher, was one of the movers behind the Harlem Renaissance.

Robert Bolano’s novel 2666, Dexter Filkins factual The Forever War, and Patrick French’s Naipaul biographer received awards from the National Book Critics Circle for excellence in 2008.

The March 2009 issue of Poetry Internatinal (Poetry International Web) has poetry from Australia, Ireland, Portugal and South Africa.

There is a free “Philosophy and/as Literature Conference” in London at the King’s College River Room on May 5th and 6th this year, beginning at 9.30am and ending at 5.30pm. The work of Adorno, Iris Murdoch, Plato, Proust, and Richard Rorty will be discussed as well as such questions as “What would be the significance of identifying features of reasoning intrinsic to philosophy but not to philosophical literature?” and the topic “Responding to Fiction as a Form of Self-Knowledge.” Coffee, tea and lunch will be served. If you want to attend please e-mail Christopher Hamilton, with reservation details (one or both days): Christopher.hamilton@kcl.ac.uk

Acadiana Film Festival

2009-03-28T12:09:00.009-05:00

The Acadiana Film Festival taking place at different locations (Cite Des Arts, and Grand 14 Theater, Lite, and the Natural History Museum, among them) in Lafayette, Louisiana, scheduled for April 16th through 19th, is focused on the craft, content, and pleasure of films, present and future, with programs attractive to film professionals and the general audience. There are workshops for film and sound editors, for actors on developing characters, and discussions on music composition and marketing an idea for a film (pitching stories), and the festival provides a location tour, as well as music receptions, and, most importantly, film premieres and screenings, with the subjects of films including hurricane Katrina and Mardi Gras, writer Kate Chopin and singer Patti Smith, coastal land loss restoration and plate lunch restaurants.

A few days ago, I asked one of the organizers, Jana Godshall, about the Acadiana Film Festival, and the expected audience:
Who are the likely attendants of the film festival (artists, educators, students, others)?

Two days ago (Thursday), the festival director Jana Godshall answered, "All of the above. We have artists, educators, students, producers, musicians, composers, directors, actors, writers, city and state entertainment industry representatives and not only that,...simply film enthusiasts. Anyone who enjoys independent cinema, as we have tons of free screenings open to the public Thursday through Sunday, April 16-19th," and she added, "our line up is great this year. we have so many feature film, shorts, documentaries, panels, workshops, parties, networking opportunities."

Godshall works with festival coordinator Julie Bordelon, and can be reached at: Acadiana Film Festival, 101 W. Vermilion St., Lafayette, La 70501; and, more information about the festival is available online (search: Acadiana Film Festival).

Events in Louisiana Film Appreciation

2009-03-28T11:56:00.010-05:00

In October 2008, I asked several persons involved in Louisiana culture questions about the impact of film, including, What are five important events in the development of film appreciation in Louisiana in the last five years?

Here is the response of film critic and journalist Alexandyr Kent (of the web log Louisiana Movies):

"For northwest Louisiana, the opening of the Robinson Film Center is a sign that film appreciation is, well, appreciated. The nonprofit’s challenge will be to sustain interest – or more bluntly put, sustain funding – as the entertainment dollar continues to be pulled in new, unpredictable directions.

Last year’s return of the New Orleans Film Festival, I think, can’t be underestimated.

The growth of the film industry – throughout La. – has probably drawn some La. viewers to look more critically at film.

We’re also seeing high schools and colleges add courses and programs in film study and filmmaking. That’s good.

Generally speaking, as cable/satellite TV continues to grow viewership, more people are being drawn to nonmainstream movies."

Shakespeare's King Lear

2009-03-27T12:13:00.003-05:00

Children are born, educated, mature, and they go to work and have their own children, and in the midst of those basic activities are love and hate, ignorance and knowledge, possibility and disappointment; and our arts reflect those facts, those states. Our arts are embodiments of experience and reflection, and the extent to which they are honest and wise is a register of their integrity and use, their necessity.

I have often thought that it is a sign of respect to tell the truth about matters of importance, but some people receive the truth as an insult, preferring flattery, preferring false ideology. I was reminded of that while watching a televised production of Shakespeare's "King Lear," directed by Trevor Nunn with Chris Hunt and starring Ian McKellen as the king, in a play about a father who rewards daughters who fear and flatter him, a father who disinherits the daughter who loves him but tells him the truth without embellishment (Romola Garai plays well Cordelia, the daughter who loves her father despite his disapproving rage). Pride leads Lear astray, but it is also age that diminishes his mind, age that asks for a simple view and a simple response (in the early scenes McKellen's egocentric king reminded me of a grand baby). There is a parallel story in the play, focusing on an ambitious, bastard son (the seductive and lethal Edmund, played by Philip Winchester) who gets revenge on his father and brother--for a time. As the play is a tragedy, there are all kinds of betrayals and deaths. Shakespeare's ability to create situations that fully express the noble and the savage aspects of humanity is what keeps him current.

Miscellaneous Notes on Art, Society, Politics

2009-03-20T14:35:00.010-05:00

Interesting: the presidents of the United States of America and of Israel have made appeals to Iran for a different kind of discourse and relationship, reports the New York Times, March 20, 2009. (However, there may be more comment now about Obama's incidental remarks regarding his bowling ability and its likeness to the Special Olympics. There is something questionable about taking every comment to task, even those said briefly, lightly, in humor by someone known to be sensitive.)

The European Union is troubled by the possibility of France’s protectionist policies regarding its car industry, according to the BBC.

Amnesty International has reported, March 18th 2009, that hundreds of people in the African country of Gambia have been accused of witchcraft, detained and forced to drink a strange mixture which has led to sickness. Apparently, the president of Gambia believes in witchcraft, and encouraged a witch hunt following the death of one of his relatives. Such a fact makes a publication such as African Studies Quarterly, or a film director such as the late Ousmane Sembene, or active musicians like Femi Kuti and Angelique Kidjoe, very important as symbolic representatives of African modernity and reason, and important as resources for alternative leadership.

Good news from Africa: “Somalia, long dogged by conflict, is ‘back from the brink’ following a peace pact, the top United Nations envoy to the Horn of Africa nation told the Security Council today, calling for a three-pronged approach targeting governance, security and development to ensure stability,” states a March 20th article from the United Nations News Centre, accessible online. The peace pact established is the "UN-facilitated Djibouti Agreement" between the Transitional Federal Government and the Alliance for the Re-Liberation of Somalia. The article calls for international aid for Somali, which has a rich coastline and promising business aspects.

“Society doesn't need newspapers. What we need is journalism,” states Clay Shirky, in a thoughtful piece (“Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable”) on the web pages of Edge: The Third Culture (March 17).

Bobby Jindal has vowed to reject some of the federal funding provided by President Obama's recovery package; and a few other governors have declared the same intention. Would they react differently with a better grasp of history? “The hardened antipathy of today's Southern politicians to public investment is especially ironic given the South's history. I'm reading Roger Biles' interesting book The South and the New Deal, and he makes a compelling case that public works programs were critical to pulling the South out of the Great Depression and allowing it to catch up with the rest of the country economically,” says Chris Kromm of the Institute of Southern Studies (“Kromm Report,” Facing South, online March 18).

Harper's magazine featured a good article on John Cheever's significant work and sad life, recently. Lee Siegel's piece on critic George Steiner in the New York Times was honest and intriguing too.

A recent PopMatters.com article discussed the need for sharper criticism of video games and used film critic Pauline Kael as a model of criticism, citing qualities it considered strengths and weaknesses. It's a stimulating read and a nice tribute to Kael's ongoing relevance.

The new Julia Roberts-Clive Owen film, Duplicity, written and directed by Tony Gilroy, received a very warm, even excited review, from the New York Times’s A.O. Scott today; and other reviews (such as in the Los Angeles Times and Variety) seem as welcoming. There have been good reviews for I Love You, Man starring Paul Rudd, as well.

The saddest news recently has been the death of Vanessa Redgrave’s daughter, Liam Neeson’s wife, the actress Natasha Richardson, in a ski accident. The accidental death of a bright and talented person carries a special weight: it is easy to see the lost gifts and promise, easy for the loss to read as an inescapable sign of unpredictable destinies.

Sarah in "Music and Friends," from A Stranger on Earth (Fiction)

2009-03-19T13:54:00.003-05:00

Sarah sat on a bench in the park, amused, curious, dismayed, and repelled by the people she saw. She watched nannies and the babies they cared for, and thought many of the children adorable, though when they began to cry or be demanding she wished she could make them disappear. She saw and heard a couple of young men enthusiastically engaged in a conversation about music—whether Devendra Banhart was a celebratory and satirical visionary or merely foolish, in which they talked about Gilberto Gil, Caetano Veloso, and the Beautiful South—that made her wonder about the other things they cared about. listened to the inane conversations some of the girls were having—loud, bragging, full of curses, the kind of conversations she used to think typical of boys. She had been reading a book of poems by Denise Levertov and a letter from her Uncle Thomas, one he had dictated to his friend Mark. She wished that she could visit him; she wished many things. What good was it to keep thinking about the matter, if she could not do anything differently? She read a few poems by Levertov, and returned to the letter, again and again, a torment that ended when Timothy walked toward her: his smile made her smile.

“Mind if I sit here?” he asked, as he was lowering himself onto the bench.

“No,” she said, with a mild laugh.

She stuck the letter into the back of the book, which he looked at.

“Mm, Levertov,” he said. “I haven’t read her in a while. Do you like her a lot?”

“Sometimes,” said Sarah.

“Why?” he asked.

“I like her assurance. She seems to know who she is, what she feels, what thinks, and what’s important in the world,” said Sarah. “She has a spiritual wholeness. It’s very calming, very healing, to read her work.”

Timothy smiled, and he looked thoughtful, sad, and then pleased before he said, “I always thought there was a lot of romance in her work, that she made things seem better and simpler than they were.”

Sarah looked at him. She looked hurt, and was silent, and she looked around and then back at Timothy, and she asked, “Do you think conflict and difficulty and lack of faith indicates depth, or confusion, lack of imagination and intellect?”

Timothy laughed, and said, “Wait, wait, I didn’t say I didn’t think she was good or that the opposite tact was right.”

“What do you think?” she asked.”

“It’s true that we often think that if something is complex, even difficult, that means that it is more crafted and more true to experience, to society and life,” he admitted, “and that’s partly an instinctive response to all the cliches, ideologies, platitudes, and spiritual stuff we are fed, and I do look for complexity in work, for some representation of the real conflicts that are in the world, but I also think that not everything is in doubt, that we have to believe something, that we have to have a mission.”

They looked at each other. Were they going to accept their friendship, their affection and respect for each other and assumption that each meant well, or were they going to fight?

“What’s your mission?” she asked.

Were they going to fight?

Timothy said, “I just want to write and teach.”

“It was good that you learned that early, and that you found the place for it—here, in the university, that you didn’t assume you could do that as easily or as well in the ordinary working world,” she said, ending in a tone that surprised her in its bitterness. Sarah looked away. What could she say now? What would explain that tone, or restore the usual spirit they shared?

“Yes, it was lucky, I guess, though it was what everyone expected,” said Timothy.

“Did they?” she asked, and she wanted suddenly to end this conversation. What was it like to move in a world in which people knew what was right for you—truly?

“Yes,” he said. “They knew I liked to learn and to talk and that to do something else would mean I’d be losing something that made me who I am,” he said.

I’m not furious with him, Sarah reminded herself. I don’t have to be nasty to him, she thought.

Timothy looked at her, and he wondered what he should say. They were talking but they did not seem to be having the same conversation. He took a chance and asked, “Did you not have anyone who believed in you?”

Sarah looked around. She wanted to lie, say something pleasant, something less damning than what she was inclined to say: she could not think of anyone. She said, “It’s not that no one thought I was intelligent or might do something useful.” She paused, and then said, “Use is not always value. No one seemed to think I was important or that anything I was likely to do was going to be important.”

“That’s sad,” he said.

Sarah could accept that, especially as he did not seem false or pitying.

“What do you want to do now?”

“I wish I could study,” said Sarah. “Being here reminds me of that,” she said. “I cannot accord it. I have been sending out resumes—and it seems I’ll be lucky to get a low-paying job. It’s strange. I couldn’t afford school and the usual bills.”

“It must be very frustrating,” he said. “Of course, you know, you’re much smarter than most of the students in my classes.” He smiled, and said, “Smarter than some of my professors.”

Sarah laughed.

“It’s an irony,” he said. “It makes me wonder about how we end up where we do.”

“I know,” said Sarah, looking away. She was afraid she was going to cry, or say something, make a confession, that she would regret. She did not want to be seen as needy, as wounded, but what else might she be? Foolish? Lost? There was no way of seeing where she was as ideal.

(c) DG

Poem

2009-03-19T13:28:00.002-05:00

Talking to Myself

In any one of your moods,
you might denounce
seductions of the mind,
citing the cruelty
of the enlightened.

You might curse love
or praise hate
or deny feeling.

Like a true romantic
you intend to allow yourself
no illusions.

You do not know the root
of your torment
but everything mirrors
who you are: what you praise
and what you curse.
You are like a god.
You are like a madman.
You are like anyone of us.

If I could touch you,
I could tell you
but you are beyond reach.
Only the poem knows
where you live--not the poet.

I imagine that you pace
a circle of days
dreaming of tomorrow, trapped
on the straight line
your mind traces.
I want to tell you,
There is no progress,
only return and return,
but you have been told
and are yet faithless.
Either side of the road
is the same road
but it's yours, as you know
with pride and pain.
Will you believe in what
you cannot know?
and what might save you?

One day you will talk to me
and I might listen.

(c) DG

Fiction Excerpt, "Music and Friends"

2009-03-19T13:08:00.003-05:00

In the chapter "Music and Friends," from the proposed novel A Stranger on Earth, a chapter focused on two old men, both musicians, Thomas and Mark: one is dying, and the other is his caregiver, and they prepare for death and its aftermath, including a possible inheritance for the dying man’s niece, Sarah. The chapter includes remembrance of the men's earlier days...

“One of the interesting things about jazz is that every phrase, every moment, can be delectable,” said Thomas, standing and rubbing a cloth over his saxophone and looking down into the face of an admiring woman.

“The music is that—it’s delicious,” she answered.

She had stopped him when he was returning from the rest room, during the band’s break. The club was half-empty, but the audience seemed to be with the band. It was a relaxed night. The men had things they were worried about—paying the rent, the next gig, but they were in a good mood.

Mark passed Thomas and the woman as he made his way out of the club. He wanted a few minutes away from everyone—he wanted to be outside. Mark wondered how Thomas had the energy for playing when he was so busy running his mouth, filling words with all that hot air. He wondered if Thomas would be having breakfast with the woman the next morning. He did not seem to have much discrimination about where he set his instrument down.

“Is the music just for a small group of people, or is it for everybody?” asked Thomas.

“It’s for whoever is willing to put the time into understanding it,” said Fred, a gregarious, and plump trumpet player.

“That’s right, that’s right,” said Nathan, the drummer.

Nathan’s affirmation was not one that Mark thought much of. Nathan was one of those people who agreed with whatever half-intelligent thing anybody said, even if it conflicted with what he had just agreed with five minutes before.

“Only some people are going to know what the music comes out of—the way of life, the relationships, the values, out of which the music comes,” said Kent, the trombonist, a lean and professorial man.

“Do I need to know that to enjoy Mozart? Do I really need to know that to enjoy Coltrane?” asked Mark.

“I’m surprised at you,” said Kent. “You’re always reading history.”

“It interests me—and it does give me a deeper understanding, but I would still like Mozart and Coltrane if I knew nothing about their lives and circumstances,” said Mark.

“You’ve got contradictions,” said Kent, disapproving.

Mark looked worried for a moment, then laughed. “Don’t we all,” he said. “Don’t we all.”

It seemed to Mark as if there was an attempt at some kind of artificial purity in Kent. He recognized it in him as he recognized it in himself. Was it fair to call it artificial, just because they had not been able to fulfill their ideals yet?

“People like what we do,” said Nathan.

“Now they do. What if we decide to do something else?” asked Kent. “Are they going to try to deal with it for what it is; or are they going to act like what don’t know what we’re doing?”

“You planning changes Kent?” asked Fred.

“Changes will happen. If we’re deep into the music,” said Kent.

“Why do they have to be difficult?” asked Fred.

“They don’t have to be, but if they’re really original they might be,” said Kent.

(c) DG

Monica Hairston of the Center for Black Music Research

2009-03-17T14:35:00.012-05:00

Below is a query submitted to Monica Hairston of the Center for Black Music Research, from me. I am interested in a range of disciplines and fields, but few things give me the pleasure of music, all kinds of music, including jazz, independent rock, and music from other countries; and, of course, I am open to learning more about the things that interest me. I am aware, as well, that too frequently African-American music, as with much else, is thought of in terms of stereotypes. I wondered recently if a scholar could suggest new avenues of learning, for myself, for others; and, consequently, I asked the Center for Black Music Research's Monica Hairston, What have been some areas of black music that require more research and thought? The center is devoted to researching, preserving, and sharing black music, from wherever it emerges; and I thought the center's executive director Monica Hairston, who received a master's degree in music from the University of Georgia and is a doctoral candidate at New York University, and whose own interests include jazz and popular music (and feminism, ethnomusicology, etc.) would have an illuminating perspective. In February I sent her my query and I was grateful to receive the busy scholar's answer yesterday!

Daniel:
What have been some areas of black music that require more research and thought?

Monica Hairston of the Center for Black Music Research:
"A couple of areas that come to mind immediately include the following:
Historically: Any topics eighteenth century and earlier. Black musical history doesn’t begin with African American spirituals. From Vincente Lusitano to the Chevalier de Saint-Georges, black musicians and composers populate all historical eras and all corners of the globe.

Culturally: Issues of gender and sexuality. Men and women can have differently-gendered experiences of the same phenomena. These experiences often manifest in or are refracted through music and music-making."

Music Movements and Musings

2009-03-17T14:18:00.006-05:00

I still remember Chuck Berry, Jimi Hendrix, Gordon Jeffries, Joan Armatrading, and Fishbone, as well as lesser known musicans such as Eye and I and Follow for Now, all part of the rock music tradition, a tradition that is more multicultural than usually thought: and, Ben Harper, Tricky, The Smyrk, and Janelle Monae are among the participants in the South by Southwest music conference in (Austin) Texas this week; and there’s going to be a discussion of “black rock” featuring Rob Fields of the site Bold as Love with Kandia Crazy Horse and Daphne Brooks.

Sometimes I've loved Bob Dylan; and sometimes I have been annoyed by how earnestly and indulgently other people love him. My favorite Bob Dylan albums are probably Blonde on Blonde, Blood on the Tracks, and Time Out of Mind, albums I like for the songs and for Dylan's tone of voice, honest, intimate, wise. Bob Dylan has a new album coming out next month, in April: Together Through Life, reports PopMatters.com (Justin Brooks, March 17). I wonder how good it will be (I wasn't particularly fond of Modern Times, his previous album to this new one.) As well, the magazine Magnet announces that the remaining members of the band the New York Dolls (singer David Johansen, guitarist Sylvain Sylvain, with producer Todd Rundgren) are releasing a new album ‘Cause I Sez So, due in May.

I do not know or like the music group Coldplay as much as others do, though I was impressed by a recent televised music performance. Coldplay will begin a North American tour in mid-May, in Florida (West Palm Beach) and end it in Florida as well, August 6th, according to Billboard (David Prince, March 17, 2009), with stops in Georgia, Alabama, Virginia, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and New York, among other American and Canadian locales.

Financial Data

2009-03-17T13:33:00.006-05:00

“President Obama defended his proposed $3.6 trillion budget on Tuesday against critics who say it is too ambitious, declaring that American families cannot always choose which crises to tackle first and neither can he as president,” begins a March 17, 2009 New York Times article by David Stout (“Obama Defends Budget Proposal"). Obama's point is obvious—and should not have to be said. (Some of his critics have seemed ignorant to me, and some have seemed malicious, and some have seemed self-serving. It is also odd that he is expected to undo eight years of damage in less than two months.)

Time magazine has picked twenty-five people to blame for the American economy’s collapse and allowed readers to vote for each online, proportioning blame: and thus far Phil Gramm is first, Christopher Cox second, Angelo Mozilo third, Joe Cassano fourth, and Franklin Raines fifth. Bernard Madoff is eighth. Stan O’Neal is eleventh. George W. Bush is fifteenth, and “the American consumer” is sixteenth, Alan Greenspan seventeenth, and Hank Paulson eighteenth. Bill Clinton is twenty-third. Such a list is interesting, amusing; and, seriously, I certainly think those involved in the mess, now and in the past, should be identified, but it would be more useful to examine the workings of the financial system (to provide a history and analyses) and to compare it to alternatives.

U.S. Congressman Barney Frank, chairman of the house financial services committee, wants to better regulate the country’s financial system, and may begin writing legislation to do so as early as May, reports the New York Times.

Companies are beginning to suspend investment in 401 (k) retirement plans for their employees—because of the cost. As well, the value of these investments have diminished with the chaos in the stock markets. “The average 401(k) plan at the end of 2007 held about $65,000, but half of them held less than $19,000, according to a trade group, the Investment Companies Institute. They would hold much less today because of stock market falls. The suspensions mean that individuals can continue to contribute to their plans, but their companies will not,” reports Deborah Brewster, the Financial Times (March 10, 2009). Of course, I never trusted investment in stock as a main form of financial security (stock investment is gambling).

The Obama administration's economic stimulus package has had positive effects, already: “Before enactment of the recovery package, at least 34 states began closing their shortfalls by reducing services to their residents, including some of their most vulnerable families and individuals,” declares the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (“An Update on State Budget Cuts,” by Johnson, Oliff, and Koulish; updated March 13, 2009). Some states,now, are using stimulus/recovery package funds to reverse previously made budget cuts in public services. “Policymakers in at least 9 states, including Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Maryland, Oregon, South Carolina and Virginia have already advanced or enacted plans to use these funds,” says the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. There is a about a $350 billion shortfall, and the recovery package gives states about $140 billion, so states will still be making some budget cuts. However, I hope to see the results, which I expect to be significant, of the increased federally funded investment in education and infrastructure, etc.

Following a New Orleans Times-Picayune article about post-Katrina housing, and the failure of a program to provide housing following the devastating hurricane (the goal was for 18,000 living spaces, a partial replacement of the 81,000 lost—but only 1,073 were restored, the New Orleans paper reported). Harry Shearer in the online Huffington Post states, “So the contractor collected almost as much money for administration as it disbursed for actual repair of housing units. But the program's goal, ‘fallen well short of,’ was to restore less than a quarter of the housing units lost in the flooding. Blame, should one care to assign it, can fall almost equally on the state, on the private contractor, and on the Feds, for not realizing that the affordable housing crisis in New Orleans called for perhaps a more ambitious goal.”

How open is Louisiana state business to review? “While some of the budget categories allow expenditures to be tracked down to the private-sector vendor providing a service or product, not all of the categories contain this level of detail. Moreover, there is no indication what product or service was provided for the expenditures and there is very little salary information available beyond summary totals by budget unit,” states the Public Affairs Research Council of Louisiana, regarding the Louisiana Transparency and Accountability (LaTrac) database; and the research council calls for more financial transparency in the hows and whys of official financial expenditures in the state (“PAR names Top Five Sunshine Solutions,” March 12, 2009). March 15 through 21 is “sunshine week,” a period affirming open government; and the Public Research Council of Louisiana is promoting focus on the public records law (minimizing, clarifying); reasonable costs for public records; pretrial mediation for disputes involving public records; and online access to meetings, as well as greater financial transparency.

Facts and Fictions: Distractions from Depression?

2009-03-13T13:37:00.007-05:00

Sad news: the writer James Purdy has died at age 94. I love his strange, poetic and very funny books: Eustace Chisholm and the Works, In A Shallow Grave, Mourners Below, On Glory's Course, etc.

On a much lighter note: Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson has a new movie opening today, Race to Witch Mountain, a family film about well-intentioned space aliens who come in the form of children. The film has gotten some mixed reviews. I have seen some of Dwayne Johnson’s work and enjoyed it, and I liked him in the interviews I saw this week.

“The world’s best dealers bring their finest pieces to this most influential of art and antiques fairs and this attracts collectors and museum curators from around the globe who cannot risk staying away,” declares ArtDaily.org, of the Maastricht art fair, March 13 through 22nd, 2009, in the Netherlands (Limburg province)

The Bronx Council of the Arts is providing a tour, Saturday Culture Trolleys, to take interested persons to seventeen free cultural events, including artist studio visits, on March 14th, 12 noon to 5pm, beginning from Hostos College’s Longwood Art Gallery, at 450 Grand Concourse and 149th Street. (Riders will get Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird and be able to participate in a trivia contest with literary prizes.) Sounds great!

Unfortunately, the Metropolitan Museum in New York, a favorite of mine, is eliminating some of its staff, due to the current economic crisis which has diminished its large financial endowment, which pays some salaries.

The Conference on Southern Literature will be held April 2nd through 4th, 2009, in Chattanooga. Tennessee. Participants include poets Wendell Berry and Rita Dove and fiction writers Edward Jones and Barry Hannah (about one thousand writers and readers attend in all). Most of the events will be held at the Tivoli Theatre on Broad Street.

In Seattle, April 16th through 19th is the Experience Music Project’s conference, focused on dance music, and featuring Nona Hendryx and Diane Warren with a range of critics, scholars, and writers. It’s great that Hendryx, who made and released a new album with Patti Labelle and Sarah Dash, her long-ago partners, is getting some of the attention she deserves.

I have been enjoying Andrew Bird’s album Noble Beast. It seems a musician’s attempt to make the best music he can.

The American Religious Identification Survey says that more Americans are claiming to be disbelievers, about 15%, according to the Council for Secular Humanism's March 2009 online newsletter. Only 15%?

Rasmussen reports that only 34% of Americans believe the U.S. will be the most powerful nation in the world by the end of the twenty-first century. Is that pessimism or realism; and how will it affect the way Americans think of, and respond to, the rest of the world?

An Afternoon's Notes

2009-03-06T13:53:00.016-06:00

In “Between Critical Rationalism and Eastern Wisdom,” an essay on the web pages of Qantara.de, Alessandro Topa considers Iranian philosophical tradition (March 5, 2009). There are articles at the online magazine there, as well, on Gaza, Iraq, and Turkey.

This past Wednesday in New York began a nineteen day “Celebration of the African American Cultural Legacy,” at Carnegie Hall and other sites, curated by opera singer Jessye Norman, featuring a wide range of African American music, from classical to hip-hop.

A spirited tribute to Stevie Wonder took place at the White House, and was broadcast by PBS recently, with the first lady introducing the program and the president presenting the performer with an award for his music. Performers such as Esperanza Spalding, Tony Bennett, India Arie, Martina McBride, Anita Johnson, and Paul Simon were there. Bennett's roughened voice was commanding and I didn't like Diana Krall's voice (too low and oddly accented), the duo of Mary, Mary did a funky version of "Higher Ground" and McBride's "You and I" was very good (she gave it jazz and country aspects), and I liked Paul Simon's singing and guitar playing. Stevie Wonder's performance of his own work was quite good.

Responding to Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal’s criticism of the Obama stimulus package allowing a $50 million funding increase for the National Endowment for the Arts, Jane Alexander, in an interview with CNN, argued that the NEA has been underfunded for years and that increased funding is going to people (artists) who are workers and family providers and consumers of various goods and services in the larger economy(March 4, 2009).

“In More Than Just Race, the Harvard sociologist William Julius Wilson recaps his own important research over the past 20 years as well as some of the best urban sociology of his peers to make a convincing case that both institutional and systemic impediments and cultural deficiencies keep poor blacks from escaping poverty and the ghetto,” writes Richard Thompson Ford in a review of Wilson’s book More Than Just Race (the article is called “Why the Poor Stay Poor” in the New York Times Sunday book review section, in print March 8; online March 6). It is hard not to wonder why such an obvious point must be made again and again: is prejudice that resistant to fact?

On writer John Cheever's legacy: “Cheever’s novels, like his journals, belong to his lewdness and his pain, and it is easy to see why they have never been as popular as his stories. They are blunter instruments than the polished scalpels of his short fiction; they can be sloppy, challenging, even inscrutable, but they hit the reader with great force. In his stories, Cheever tried to make sense of the world and of other people; in his novels, he mostly tried to make sense of himself. Naturally, the world was more interested in reading about itself, but it would do well to revisit John Cheever’s patient, determined attempt to understand and make peace with John Cheever,” writes Stefan Beck near the end of his review-essay on the collected works of John Cheever and a new Cheever biography, appearing in The New Criterion, March 2009.

Performer Chris Brown has been charged with two felonies, involving an altercation with his girlfriend, the singer Rihanna. These two have had, before this terrible incident, the most innocent and glamorous images of today's performers. It is an irony that people who represented the sunniest aspects of human experience are now, in their own lives rather than in their work, associated with the darkest facts of life: aggression, conflict, pain, violence. It seems impossible to escape the more troubling inclinations of human nature and it seems better to be aware of those conflicting traits and to acknowledge them, as the repressed seems to return always.

There was a good profile of film critic Armond White by Marc Jacobson in New York magazine, February 15. (White is known for his odd and insistent responses to film and film culture, responses that are sometimes thought of as brilliant and other times thought of as perverse.) Armond White reviewed with praise Molly Haskell's book on the film Gone With the Wind, a book from Yale University Press, Frankly, My Dear, in the March 1 Sunday New York Times book review (online Feb. 26).

Scheduled: On March 7th, in New Iberia, Louisiana, is a Shadows-on-the-Teche arts and crafts festival; and there will be a Cinema on the Bayou Film Festival March 25 through March 29 in Lafayette, Louisiana.

Yesterday, I saw a snake in the backyard, near my mother's house, a black and gold snake. I prodded it with a long pole to dissuade it from coming nearer and that worked for a short time, but I suspect it may approach again...It was six months ago that I began this log, "City and Country, Boy and Man," documenting aspects of New York life and my planned travel to Louisiana; and since then it has included short fiction and excerpts from a proposed novel, poetry, film reviews, political comment, descriptions of Louisiana, observations about family, theatrical play excerpts, a glossary of values, notes on the election of Barack Obama, articles on African culture, music comment, book criticism, and questions and answers featuring a few excerpts such as film critic Alex Kent and historian Aram Goudsouzian on Sidney Poitier. The move south has helped me to survive a little longer, but it has involved an iteration of things I cannot get away from, certain facts: I prefer life in the city to life in the country; I am interested most in work involving intellect and culture; I am not inclined toward unconditional love of anyone (particular character and qualities engage me); and I am inclined to withdraw and be withholding when I am uncomfortable (when I cannot be my preferred self, I'd rather not be any self); and time is passing, passing, passing...

The Uses of Intelligence and Sense: News and Notes

2009-02-26T13:37:00.017-06:00

In a web article for Filmmaker magazine (February 25, 2009), Nick Dawson writes about film director Astra Taylor, whose her first film was Žižek!, about Slavoj Žižek, following her sharing duties for other film productions: "With her sophomore feature, Examined Life, Taylor once again brings together her two main passions: film and philosophy. The title is derived from a quote by Socrates (who deemed that 'the unexamined life is not worth living'), and over the course of the film Taylor introduces us to eight contemporary philosophers who delve into the issues and problems of the modern world. Though Cornel West talks to Taylor as they drive around New York, the other seven participants – Avital Ronell, Peter Singer, Kwame Anthony Appiah, Martha Nussbaum, Michael Hardt, Judith Butler, Sunaura Taylor and Žižek – hold forth on foot, as Taylor conceived the film as 'philosophers on walks.' Going against the norm of 'serious' documentaries tending to be depressing, Taylor here creates a film of substance that is nevertheless light on its feet." I am pleased to see that the film director has included such a varied group of thinkers; and it is encouraging to have one more avenue for the introduction of significant contemplations. The Filmmaker piece includes an interview with director Astra Taylor, in which she says, "The thing that attracts me most about philosophy and filmmaking is that both those disciplines are concerned with shifting perception, shifting the way you see a problem when you have a new theory – it's illuminating, you suddenly see the world in a new way. And going to a really good documentary film can have the same effect: your whole sense of the world is different."

"A dynamic new school of thought is emerging that wants to kick down the walls of recent philosophy and place experimentation back at its centre. It has a name to delight an advertising executive: x-phi. It has blogs and books devoted to it, and boasts an expanding body of researchers in elite universities. It even has an icon: an armchair in flames. If philosophy ever can be, x-phi is trendy. But, increasingly, it is also attracting hostility," announce David Edmonds and Nigel Warburton of Prospect magazine (March 2009).

I love to hear news that Americans are recognizing and responding to other cultures, as I think that is not only intellectually stimulating, but politically necessary: it is easy to despise what you do not understand and harder to hate what you do. And there is such good news from Washington: "From the Arabian Gulf to the Levant to North Africa—this region of the world is the birthplace of human civilization and features extraordinary diversity in geography, traditions, landscape, religion, and contemporary aesthetics," according to the web site of the Kennedy Center, which is presenting an Arab arts festival, "Arabesque: Arts of the Arab World," February 23 through March 15, 2009, in Washington, the District of Columbia. The notice continues, "In cooperation with the League of Arab States, the three-week festival brings together artists, many of whom are making their U.S. debut, in performances of music, dance, and theater, as well as exhibitions featuring art installations, fashion, a soundscape, cuisine, a marketplace, and much more." The literature portions of the program are scheduled to discuss audience, language use, fantasy, gender, and national politics.

It is especially important to remember the diversity and riches of the world in difficult times, and in places in which the culture most available may be too simple. I have been enjoying the beautiful, soothing music of Ancient Future (Planet Passion), Matthew Montfort (Seven Serenades), and Mariah Parker (Sangria), world music produced by Ancient-Future.com Records.

Christian John Wikane writes for PopMatters.com about Diana Ross’s early solo work: "Despite their historic significance, Everything Is Everything and Surrender have been widely unavailable for nearly 40 years, though each album made a very brief appearance on CD in the mid-’80s. Hip-O Select has lovingly dusted off the masters, dug through the vaults, and re-released the albums in stunning expanded and re-mastered editions. These albums offer a wealth of undiscovered gems in the sorely underappreciated Motown catalog of Diana Ross" (Feb. 26).

Carl Wilson at his blog Zoilus has declared, "I've put together a quick (well, not so quick) cultural history on how musicians have tried to transform human speech into music through the ages (but particularly, often thanks to technology, in the 20th century)," and that history is interesting reading (they are part of a February 19 posting).

There a great Picasso exhibit at London’s National Gallery, and an exhibit of Cezanne, whom Picasso and many others admired, at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, reports ArtDaily.org. The Yves Saint-Laurent/Pierre Berge art and antiques auction has broken sales records, yielding a little more than $483 million, according to the Art Newspaper. Meanwhile, the High Museum of Art is cutting staff and salaries (Atlanta Business Chronicle), and the Walters Art Museum is eliminating staff as well (Baltimore Sun).

Chris Edwards of the Cato Institute, worrying about the increase in federal spending and government size, claims there’s a gap between Obama’s rhetoric and policy, but the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities' writers Iris Lav and Nicholas Johnson state that if states refuse the funds the federal budget is making available that refusal could undermine economic recovery. (Comments are available online, at the organizations' sites.)

Apparently even the well-known conservative David Brooks did not like Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal’s Tuesday night response to President Obama’s policies, reportedly calling it stale and insane. Others have piled on. "How many Americans know that Jindal boasted of participating in an exorcism that purged the spirit of Satan from a college girlfriend?" wonders Max Blumenthal of The Daily Beast, Feb. 25.

In an article on the New Orleans CityBusiness blog titled "Council Plan Seen as Racist," Deon Roberts writes about a mayor-council conflict involving Mayor Ray Nagin, "Nagin, early in his administration, created a panel that involved a public representative to award the contracts, which total $150,000 or more. On Feb 5, the council decided it wanted the awarding process to be totally open to the public, and it adopted an ordinance to make the process adhere to the state’s open meetings law. Nagin vetoed the ordinance. Now, the public is waiting to see what the council will do now"(Feb. 26). Some people think the council is trying to sabotage the mayor's authority.

Frank B. Wilderson, III, a professor of African American studies and drama at the University of California, Irvine, has received the 2008 American Book Award for Incognegro: A Memoir of Exile and Apartheid, and has announced a forthcoming writing project, Red, White and Black: Cinema and the Structure of US Antagonisms.

The stock of the New York Times is now considered junk by investors. The Washington Post fourth quarter profits plummeted 77 percent, reports Associated Press. These publications have been important, and are not now without their uses or influence, but how many of us care as much now about the fate of these elite institutions when there are so many exciting alternatives, as we cared before when many waited for their public recognition and support, these elite media institutions that for so long were indifferent to our ambitions, concerns, and needs? We are alive, feeling and thinking and working, in a world of changed possibilities, of new resources and unexpected obsolescence.

Film Comments: The Great Debaters & Notes for an African Orestes

2009-02-25T13:10:00.004-06:00

Excerpt from "Once More, with Feeling: Denzel Washington’s film The Great Debaters and Robert Rosenstone’s book History on Film/Film on History"

“Like the shape of Africa,/ the raison d’etre of Art is a question mark,” poet Melvin B. Tolson wrote in the poem “Delta,” Harlem Gallery (Collier Books, 1969; 28). It may be impossible to reduce any art worth contemplating to a simple idea or explanation, but part of the value of The Great Debaters is its giving form and spirit to questions that have haunted too many of us concerning the place of African-Americans in the world. Are we to be discouraged by circumstances and expectations, or inspired to excel and exceed them? Are we to be whole or forever condemned to self-division—“a half-breed,/ a bastard of Barbarus and Cultura,” as Melvin Tolson described a character in “Upsilon,” Harlem Gallery (105). The principal characters in The Great Debaters choose excellence and are exhilarating and touching because of it (and their challenges and doubts are merely some of the dragons that every hero has to slay, but heroes they are); and the film pays tribute to them, and offers encouragement as well as pleasure to its viewers, something the actress Jurnee Smollett realized when she said to Movies Online: “it’s giving voice to the voiceless, putting lips to something, and that’s one thing that makes you so proud to be part of a film like this, because you’re giving a salute to everyone who has come before you.”

Excerpt from "Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Notes for an African Orestes"

In Notes for an African Orestes, we see Pasolini in Africa, mostly in Tanzania but also in Uganda, looking for casting and locations (he thought of using sites in Dar es Salaam in Tanzania, and Kampala in Uganda, as Athens). Pasolini has a severe handsomeness, and, attentive, he speaks quickly and smartly, as he explores the culture, commenting on how the transformation of the furies, the Erinyes, into the Eumenides, the benevolent, is a metaphor for African political experience. Tanzania, between Kenya and Mozambique in eastern Africa, near the Indian Ocean, and rich in iron, coal, diamonds, gold, and gas, was formed as a nation after Tanganyika and Zanzibar won their independence from England in the early 1960s, and Tanganyika and Zanzibar united in 1964. The country has more than one-hundred tribes, making up the Bantu people, who speak Swahili and English in addition to diverse Bantu languages. The Tanzania that Pasolini visits is poor; and it remains poor. It is an irony that many people farm (coffee, tea, cassava, corn, cotton, nuts, tobacco, wheat), but that less than ten percent of the land is conducive to farming. It might be easier to think of Tanzania as a probable place for a Greek play if one recalls that few Greeks participated in democracy—those who did were like a village within a town. If one thinks of democracy as a dynamic process involving consciousness and choice, one can see how promising this could be for Africa, which, following colonialism, has seen so many despots (such is the case for Uganda, which Pasolini considered for his proposed feature film).

All texts (c) DG: the texts were written in July and August of 2008.

Generational Purposes

2009-02-25T12:57:00.002-06:00

Excerpt from "A review of Michael Winterbottom's Tristram Shandy"

I know what some of the members of my generation are doing, and I know a little something about who they are: Paul Begala, Ralph Carter, Joan Chen, Thomas Haden Church, George Clooney, Nadia Comaneci, Douglas Coupland, Dinesh D’Souza, Kim Deal, El DeBarge, Melissa Etheridge, Laurence Fishburne, Wayne Gretzky, Woody Harrelson, Bonnie Hunt, Peter Jackson, K.D. Lang, David Leavitt, Carl Lewis, Wynton Marsalis, Chi McBride, Dylan McDermott, Christopher Meloni, Isaac Mizrahi, Rick Moody, Jeremy Northam, Barack Obama, Alexander Payne, Scott Ritter, Dennis Rodman, Henry Rollins, Tim Roth, Arundhati Roy, Douglas Rushkoff, Campbell Scott, George Stephanopoulos, Isiah Thomas, Steven Weber, Irvine Welsh, Forest Whitaker, and Michael Winterbottom. Many of us do: as people whose work has achieved some renown, they are allowed not only personal fame but individuality, a measure of freedom and fulfillment. Those of us whose efforts have been less well rewarded (thus far) might feel a certain indifference to the world’s glance and judgment—genuine or cultivated indifference. Of course, as with much else, money makes this indifference easier to achieve; without money, the world often still has the power to irritate and to irritate with little relief. What the world offers many, rather than the freedom of individuality, are socially recognized—if not always socially accepted—false selves: selves rooted in simple notions of purpose, place, and personality, with the responses to one’s public situation being all that is understood as one’s personality; selves that have little to do with one’s own perceptions, philosophy, or private personality. In a word, stereotypes. Think of class, skin, gender, religion, or national origin, accept these as existential facts, as elemental aspects of being, and you need not ever have another independent or honest thought again.

(c) DG, 2006

The President's Speech to Congress

2009-02-25T11:26:00.004-06:00

“Volcano monitoring likely saved many lives - and significant money - in the case of the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines (where the United States has military bases), according to the USGS,” the United States Geological Survey, writes senior writer Andrea Thompson of LiveScience.com, in an article following up on Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal critique of government funding of volcano monitoring in the recently passed economic recovery package legislation. (Louisiana is not known for its educational successes and recently a science group objected to some of the state's policies regarding science, or, more precisely, anti-science.) Jindal’s comments, part of the Republican response to President Barack Obama’s speech to Congress last night, were a litany of Republican ideological points promoting wealth and ignoring the real needs and concerns of ordinary people in a time of crisis. Of course, Jindal plans to take a lot of government money for various state projects, though he is, reportedly, refusing money that will help the unemployed. It was an interesting choice having Jindal give the Republican response, as many well-informed people fault him for leaving Louisiana to travel around the country for Republican fundraisers and conferences while problems go untended in Louisiana. President Obama made his own motivation and policies as clear as anyone could; and an early poll suggests most viewers and listeners understood that and approved. I was fascinated by the ritual address, and the ovations the president received (how odd it must be to have one’s remarks continually saluted with a standing ovation).

Hollywood's Academy Awards, and More: Appreciations and Repudiations, Part Three

2009-02-23T14:43:00.015-06:00

The film industry Academy Awards program, televised last night on ABC, has found a way of making each actor-nominee in the most prominent categories feel like a winner, by personally addressing and describing her (his) performance before the official winner is announced: it was very nice to see past winners in the best actor and actress and best supporting actor and actress categories introduce the nominees. I thought most of the program was entertaining, and I didn’t turn away from the show with the empty feeling I sometimes have after watching an awards program (I still thought the show was too long by about two hours). Hugh Jackman was an entertaining host; and it was good to witness the wins in the major categories, specifically that of Penelope Cruz, Kate Winslet, Sean Penn, and Heath Ledger, and I liked seeing Beyonce, Anne Hathaway, Nicole Kidman, Alicia Keys, Will Smith, Robert DeNiro, and Meryl Streep. The lovely Penelope Cruz, in an elegant vintage dress, gave a charmingly sentimental acceptance speech. Heath Ledger's family was dignified and (spiritually) healthy with its comments upon his posthumous award. Kate Winslet, who with age is becoming more handsome than beautiful (there is such strength and intelligence in her face), was obviously gratified to win, and Sean Penn seemed well-intentioned and was both sharply political, affirming equal rights, and sometimes obscure.

The New York Art Resources Consortium is providing material online from the libraries of three museums, The Frick, the Brooklyn Museum, and the Museum of Modern Art, at an online site called Arcade. Meanwhile, the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C., is showing federally-funded New Deal paintings, according to ArtDaily.org.

No Line on the Horizon: the music group U2 is making its new album available for listening on its MySpace page; and the band is planning a stadium tour for the summer.

Last Friday night, I saw Sarah McLachlan and Duffy on PBS’s “Austin City Limits,” and I thought Sarah McLachlan’s presence very strong—emotional, musical, sensual; and her voice was particularly impressive, as she played guitar and piano. I had listened to Duffy’s music in New York, liking some of it and not sure about the rest (was she too imitative of past music?), but I was disappointed watching her on Friday: I didn’t like the way she sounded, looked, or moved, finding her intonation and pitch frequently uncertain or unpleasant; and her gestures were busy, excessively choreographed.

The four-day, annual conference of the Association of Writers and Writing Programs was held recently in Chicago, February 11 through 14, 2009. There’s a Festival of New French Writing at Manhattan’s New York University, February 26 through 28, with the participation of E.L. Doctorow, Philip Gourevitch, Francine Prose, Bernard-Henry Levy, Emmanuel Carrere, and Jean-Philippe Toussaint.

“It’s not that Americans aren’t interested in the world at all. It’s just that we seem to want someone else to do the heavy lifting required to make a cultural connection. As the Peruvian-born writer Daniel Alarcón observes, Americans would rather read stories by an American about Peru than a Peruvian writer translated into English,” notes writer Aviya Kushner in the article “McCulture,” from Winter 2009 The Wilson Quarterly, available online.

There’s a new philosophy blog called Matters of Substance, focused on metaphysics, at Blogger.com (look for “substantial matters”); and, though not yet well-known, if it is as good as it promises to be, it will provide interesting reading.

Criticism can describe and evaluate the form and content of a work, theory, or experience, and criticism may be an art but is not a popular art; and criticism, which reveals the mind of the critic as much as the object of contemplation, is done both well and badly these days and sometimes it is hard to know the difference. As everyone is aware, there’s a lot of mutual masturbation involved within the communications media, both online and print, so that work that might not be distinguished still gets supported. For instance, media sites that are well-funded such as Slate and Salon received respect before they had done anything to deserve it; and, consequently, habits good and bad continued, without significant critique. One can read some of the self-important, unnecessary political musings of Joan Walsh at Salon, and clueless attempts to identify the cultural zeitgeist by Jody Rosen at Slate, and wonder if they have editors or even attentive readers.

Everyone is concerned about the American economy; and one notices that some journalists seem afraid to be optimistic despite the daily attempts by the new presidential administration to take decisive actions (journalists seem to both want something to be effective and to disbelieve in anything being effective). Now, Henry Blodget argues for the nationalization of American banks, at the Huffington Post.

President Barack Hussein Obama continues to make overtures to the Republic party, while its members play politics-as-usual. Obama and his administration attempt to address the important economic matters feeding the current crisis involving jobs, banks, housing, and health care; and the president has a small summit of leaders gathered today at the White House to discuss the economy and fiscal responsibility; and, among other things, one of his goals is to discuss how to cut the federal budget deficit.

"Music and Friends": A Stranger on Earth, fiction excerpt

2009-02-23T14:10:00.003-06:00

Writer's Note: "Music and Friends" is a chapter in a proposed novel, A Stranger on Earth, a work-in-progress; and here is the beginning of that chapter.

Thomas had asked Mark to bring him his personal papers—banking records, insurance policies, pension records, mortgage papers, and other things, and though weak, Thomas read them, and read them, and read them again. Thomas made calls, he wrote notes, and he told Mark to remember certain things—Give people photocopies of this stuff, if they ask, and if they want to see an original, don’t let the original out of your sight. This is New Orleans—people will do what they can get away with. My father had a son with a woman other than my mother—I never knew the boy. If he or somebody connected to him comes ‘round, I have nothing for them. It’s in my will—they get nothing—no money, no thing, nothing. I have a niece in New York—there’s some money for her. She used to write me. She hasn’t written me in years, but I liked her letters. She was a smart girl—Sarah. I want her to have a little something. See that she gets it. It’s in my will. There’s a copy of the will in the courthouse. There’s a copy of my will in the bottom drawer here. There’s copy of it written on the back of a music sheet I sent to the congressional library—“The Blues Is Nothing but a Good Man Saying What He Saw.”

Mark heard what his friend had to say. He supposed he would not forget it, but he made notes when he left Thomas’s bedroom and went into his own. Mark did not know what he was going to do when Thomas died. There had been years to think about it—but he did not know, now, what he was going to do. Mark thought of their careers, of their lives. They were hardly more than boys, though each thought himself a man when they had met at the same audition. Mark had been the serious one, the one who thought that Armstrong and Gillespie were too much the entertainer and Parker and Coltrane bad examples for their use of drugs. He loved their music, but none was an icon for him—he was going to be his own hero. Thomas just wanted to play—he wasn’t about representing anything, and Thomas was the one who had the early success. Doors, wallets, and women’s legs opened for Thomas. Mark did the apprentice thing, learned under flawed masters, played in cheap clubs, and got small-time contracts—and that entire hard work ending up giving him some kind of legend he had not anticipated. By the time the big money started to come his way, he and Thomas had found each other again, weren’t so rude about each other’s differences, respected each other talents, and Thomas began to be sick—his body began to cave in on itself. Mark had come to help out a little until Thomas got better or until one of Thomas’s people came to take care of him—and Thomas never got better and the people who came wanted to help Thomas into the grave and Mark ending up staying for twenty years. Mark ended up saying no to the big gigs and big money and did small records for small labels that let him alone, or almost alone, to live his life—and he ended up taking care of the fun, shallow bastard who meant no real harm and had become his best friend.

Mark put the dishes in the sink. He let the water run. He poured liquid soap over the frying pan with its tiny grit of bacon stuck to the bottom, its slight brown fried foam of egg on the sides. He put his fingers under the flow of water, testing for heat. He thought about the hopes he had years ago for the music, the conversations about the music’s relation to folk, blues, and classical, literary and sculpture, to history and politics. He had wanted a high art that people would finding meaning and pleasure in. He wasn’t the only one—he thought of Abbey and Max, of Archie, of Anthony. He wondered if musicians weren’t the only people who really cared about the music, who really saw it as important. Weren’t the others just using it, using it for dancing, for easy fun, using it to justify a false idea of who they were, using it to intimidate people? It was a path to freedom, and they could not see it. Mark picked up the wash cloth and began to scrub the plates first. He went back and forth between using paper plates and regular dishes. The plates came clean easily. He scrubbed the forks, careful to remove the grease near the printing of the maker’s name. The music was for everybody, but who wanted it? Mark picked up a spatula and scrapped it against the bottom of the frying pan, then scrapped the sides of the pan, before washing the spatula. The children today were listening to another kind of music, simpler music, what somebody called music for morons. Why did things always have to begin at the bottom? Why did they often have to stay there? Why couldn’t you just hand the next generation the task as you had completed it, and let them go on and develop that? Mark looked up from his task and looked out of the kitchen window. He saw small garden of vegetables—potatoes, egg plant, string beans—and the few fruit trees (apple, plum, fig), and the garden chair next to the garden. He thought he might take a book and sit outside for an hour or two. Would Thomas be alright inside? Would he want to try to sit outside today? Mark wanted some fresh air. He opened the window. It was not enough. He looked down and scrubbed the frying pan. He reached below the sink and pulled out some powdered cleanser and sprinkled some into the pan. The scrubbing became easier. You had to have the right tools to make things come right.

(c) DG

Richard Wright, Author

2009-02-23T13:51:00.008-06:00

Writer's Note: When I was very young, before I was 18, Richard Wright became an important writer for me, someone who wrote with honesty, intelligence, and passion about his life in the south and his own ambitions and conflicts as well as insightfully about the world... Here below are my comments on a biography of Richard Wright, and notes on Wright's career and reading interests.

Hazel Rowley. Richard Wright: The Life and Times. New York. A John Macrae Book/Henry Holt and Company. 2001. 626 pages. ISBN 0-8050-4776-X.

“Is this the dirt road,/Winding through windy trees,/That I must travel?” asked writer Richard Wright (1908-1960) in a haiku, #131, written near the end of his life. Wright’s haikus were not published in a book, Haiku: This Other World, until more than three decades after his death, and they are one more testament to what was not known about this famous writer while he lived. Wright’s lyrical and polemical autobiography Black Boy and his grim ideological urban drama Native Son may be well-known references in American literature courses but exclusive consideration of them have given us a narrow view of the author, who also wrote the comic, experimental fiction Lawd Today!, the existential novel The Outsider, and Savage Holiday, a novel featuring no African Americans, as well as books on Africa, Asia, and Europe—Black Power, The Color Curtain, and Pagan Spain.

Richard Wright, born to a sharecropper father and schoolteacher mother in Mississippi, endured a childhood of poverty, familial misunderstanding, religious dogmatism, and racial prejudice. He distinguished himself when young by writing a short story that was published, and being selected as a representative of his grade school class. Reading H.L. Mencken in the late 1920s introduced him to literary and social criticism, and to writers such as Dreiser, Lewis, and Anderson. Wright moved to Chicago, where he worked in the post office. He became a member of the John Reed Club and through it met other writers, and became also a member of the Communist Party—and then moved to New York, where he wrote for a party publication. Wright’s first book, the short story collection Uncle Tom’s Children, was published in 1938 and received good reviews. Two years later, Native Son was published and thus Wright became an important American writer. Wright married the white Ellen Poplowitz in 1941, published Black Boy in 1945, and visited France the next year and moved there with Ellen in 1947, where he would live, work, and die.

Hazel Rowley’s biography of Wright may not be elegant or eloquent—it is rather plain and slow-moving—but it is the most factual and fair, the most intelligent, biography of Wright that I am aware of, and it allows future generations to inherit a Wright who is whole, at once man, thinker, and writer. Richard Wright was handsome, likable, and hardworking, with a voice that ranged from high to baritone, a man with the cool confidence of a jazz musician—he liked to talk and laugh and be with friends, who included Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. (One friend, Gertrude Stein, betrayed him by introducing him to a thief and then by refusing to acknowledge the theft of Wright’s property, which included penicillin for Wright’s daughter.) Wright was, surprisingly, a sexual swordsman who put his marriage to Ellen at risk. Rowley’s book is also interesting for addressing the rumors surrounding Wright’s death (CIA? Femme fatale?). Rowley investigates Wright’s medical treatment, which included the taking of bismuth for intestinal disorders, a prescription given by a doctor who made Wright’s friends uneasy. Oral bismuth was then popular in France, but would later be known to cause heavy-metal poisoning leading to kidney and liver failure.

Richard Wright’s legacy is a complex one—it is aesthetic, intellectual, and political. Intelligent interpretation is what Wright tried to provide in his own work, but not always what he received for his own efforts. Wright’s work was censored before publication—for instance the sexuality of Bigger Thomas was excised from Native Son, and after publication his work was sometimes misunderstood or misrepresented. A 1957 New York Times review of Wright’s White Man, Listen! called the book “argumentative, belligerent and often wrong-headed” and then went on to summarize how correct Wright was in many of his positions but reprimanded him for not understanding well-enough the threat of Communism (Wright, who joined then abandoned the Communist party). African-American novelist David Bradley in 1977’s Quest magazine said Wright seemed a “cold-blooded intellectual.” Feminists more recently have questioned his work’s treatment of women and his dismissal of Zora Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God. However, Wright was for himself and for others a one-man university system. Gwendolyn Brooks, Margaret Walker, and other women writers acknowledged his active support of their early careers; and Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, and Gordon Parks admitted his influence, although Wright’s tying literature so closely to politics may have become a burden to subsequent writers.

“All of my life had shaped me to live by my own feelings and thoughts,” Wright wrote in Black Boy (p.298, HarperPerennial, 1993). Hazel Rowley’s necessary biography of Wright is preceded by other books on the life and work of Richard Wright, resources that can help to place the efforts of this controversial writer in the most comprehensive of contexts, such as The World of Richard Wright and Richard Wright: Books & Writers, both by Michel Fabre, and Richard Wright: Critical Perspectives Past and Present edited by Henry Louis Gates Jr. and K.A. Appiah, Voices of A Native Son: The Poetics of Richard Wright by Eugene E. Miller, Richard Wright by Robert Felgar, and Richard Wright: A Collection of Critical Essays edited by Arnold Rampersad. Wright brought not merely heat but light; he was, as in the words of one of his own haikus (#647), a fire: “Burning out its time,/And timing its own burning,/One lonely candle.”

Excerpt from "Iconography: Ideas, Images, and Individuals"

“Every time he thought he was going mad, he met somebody else who had already gone mad, but in a nice, sweet sort of way,” wrote Richard Wright about Cross Damon, faced with a woman allowing herself to become involved in a real estate scheme, in the novel The Outsider (HarperPerennial, 1993; 184). Wright was himself a man of intelligence and taste and, considering what he knew in the era in which he lived, his own sanity is nearly a miracle—except that we know his sanity was cultivated. Michel Fabre paid essayist, novelist, and poet Richard Wright significant respect by producing Richard Wright: Books and Writers (University Press of Mississippi, 1990), which provides an annotated bibliography of Wright’s library and also includes some of his sharp, quick-moving book reviews and other commentaries on literature. Richard Wright read the published (and sometimes unpublished) books of Peter Abrahams, James Agee, Sherwood Anderson, Hannah Arendt, Austen, Balzac, Djuana Barnes, Joseph Conrad, Rene Descartes, John Dewey, John Dos Passos, Dostoevsky, Dreiser, DuBois, T.S. Eliot, Emerson, Engels, Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Flaubert, Forster, Freud, Gibbon, Gide, Goethe, Geoffrey Gorer, Gorky, Graham Greene, Knut Hamsun, Hardy, Hawthorne, Hegel, Heidegger, Hemingway, Chester Himes, Langston Hughes, Husserl, Ibsen, Joyce, Kafka, Kierkegaard, Kinsey, George Lamming, D.H. Lawrence, Camara Laye, Alain Locke, George Moore, John O’Hara, George Padmore, Edgar Allan Poe, Proust, Pushkin, Rabelais and many, many more, famous and obscure. The important events in a writer’s life—his perceptions, ideas, and discoveries of the uses of various forms—are identified not by considering the people he slept with, fights he had, contracts he broke, or alcohol he drank, but by identifying the books he read and wrote. It was famously said that Richard Wright could imagine a Bigger Thomas (Native Son), but Bigger Thomas could not imagine a Richard Wright. (Wright himself starred in a mid-century film of Native Son as Bigger Thomas, directed by Pierre Chenal; and a subsequent film version of the novel, directed by Jerrold Freedman and starring Victor Love as Bigger, was released in 1986.) Richard Wright could claim the broadest human inheritance for himself because he was aware of its full dimensions; and he was surprised to learn how rare this knowledge was, and where, other than in art, it might be found. In White Man, Listen! he wrote, “It has been almost only among Asians and Africans of an artistic stamp and whose background has consisted of wars, revolutions, and harsh colonial experience that I’ve found a sense of the earth belonging to, and being the natural home of, all the men inhabiting it, an attitude that went well beyond skin color, races, parties, classes, and nations” (HarperPerennial, 1995; 25-26).

All texts (c) DG, 2001 and 2006

Silence, Exile, and Cunning; or, Appreciations and Repudiations, Part Two

2009-02-20T14:50:00.012-06:00

“The NEA will receive $50 million to distribute to non-profit arts organizations while the Smithsonian gets $25 million to repair its facilities,” reported The Art Newspaper, following President Obama’s signing of the stimulus package legislation, the recovery and reinvestment act (Helen Stoilas, February 19, 2009). There were worries, apparently, that the National Endowment for the Arts and Smithsonian might be cut from the legislation. There have been arguments, too, and elsewhere, for a cabinet post representing the arts, a secretary of the arts, the equivalent of a culture minister, an idea I’m sympathetic to, as culture connects with all aspects of American life, public and private; and having a culture secretary or minister could illuminate and support that: a culture representative and department could connect what is occurring across the country, in different states, and demonstrate how to incorporate culture in terms of education, the economy, and social projects.

“As President Obama begins to put his personal stamp on public debate, I think we can be hopeful that respect for the qualities that liberal education aims to foster — moral and aesthetic sensitivity — will rise. We can also be hopeful that academe, especially as an engine of opportunity and a site of scientific research, will find a friendlier partner in government. The provisional 'stimulus package' includes modest increases in federal support for low-income students and a good deal of money for 'shovel ready' construction projects on our campuses,” writes Andrew Delbanco in “A New Day for Intellectuals” in The Chronicle Review (February 13, 2009). Delbanco, after examining charges of anti-intellectualism in American culture and asserting that Americans are pragmatic regarding education and expertise, affirms the importance of self-criticism and social justice, as well.

The troubled economy continues to affect the world of culture and media: Borders Books is cutting twelve percent of its corporate workforce, according to Judith Rosen of Publishers Weekly, February 19. The New York Times Company will not be paying dividends scheduled for this month, because of lower received newspaper revenues, the paper reports (Richard Perez-Pena, Feb. 19), the first suspension in four decades. Meanwhile Wall Street investors worry that American banks could be nationalized.

The singer and songwriter Santi White (Santogold) has generated interest and high regard among some music listeners, and she is scheduled to perform tonight at 7 p.m., for free, at the Apple Store in Manhattan, 103 Prince Street in Soho. I was disappointed last month to read an article titled “Janelle, Erykah, and Santogold Are the Afro-Techno Revolution, While Beyonce just struggles to keep up,” by Kandia Crazy Horse in New York’s Village Voice, available online (January 20, 2009), a piece in which the writer saw new music in relation to political context and found Beyonce’s work limited in emotional affect (“ice cold”) and complexity (“insufficient innervisions to triumph”). I have my own criticisms of aspects of Beyonce’s work, though I appreciate her beauty, talent, and success; and what worries me is that I suspect—following Village Voice writer Greg Tate’s comparison of Beyonce with Alicia Keys; and his contrasting supposed Eurocentric with Afrocentric artists—is that people are beginning to use Beyonce as a symbol, which may not be fair to her. (I recall how Aretha Franklin and Diana Ross used to be posed in certain arguments; and remember too that when Vanity Fair profiled Aretha Franklin in the 1990s, Ross gave her praise, and that when Ross was celebrated at the Kennedy Center recently, Franklin was there to praise her. Often, rivalries are in the minds of critics and lesser talents, rather than in the lives of major popular artists.) It is also true that the Village Voice has used ideas about "cool" and naked aggression as critical tools for years, under music editor Robert Christgau, and it’s unfortunate to see that tradition continued under editor Rob Harvilla. (Appreciating the serious exploration of culture, especially of literature and film, I have been a longtime reader of the Voice, even though its quality has diminished over the years, but I never liked Christgau's writing work, finding it abrasive, shallow, and desperately, all too desperately, self-promoting, the kind of relentless self-promotion rare for an established writer, suggesting a profound and possibly appropriate insecurity.) In discussing and evaluating artists, sometimes comparisons are useful; and sometimes harsh critiques are earned; however, it would make more sense for a critic to identify the qualities she or he finds of value in an artist, rather than to indulge in the construction of artistic demons to be vanquished. The other thing is that these comparisions sometimes rest, for their own effect, on the resentments that too many people have regarding successful people (so that success itself is seen as a form of wickedness: that is a petty and stupid kind of puritanism).

Sometimes late at night on south Louisiana television, sharing airtime with commercials offering health regimens, household equipment, and dating ads, is something called Jack Van Impe Presents, featuring Jack and his wife, featuring sheer lunacy: they discuss subjects such as whether Christ wanted to be a church leader or a king, whether the world will end in year 2012, when there is so much practical and social stuff that are problems for ordinary people that could be discussed. How does spiritual belief contribute to peace of mind and social well-being? The worst thing is that these concerns—the long-ago ambitions of Christ, and prospects for the end of the world—are only a little more weird than the deliberations that often go on in various religions. On Tuesday in Mardi Gras and soon after is the beginning of Lent; and neither event, one secular, one religious, is of positive interest to me. I am in a world in which so much of the dominant values are alien impositions. I recall now having a conversation with a friend last year in New York in which I said that I thought many of the interests of Americans involved business, family, religion, and sports and that those were not my principal concerns, which were more likely to involve culture, philosophy, or politics.

I have not seen as many of the past year’s films as I would like, but I do have some interest in the awards given by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, the Oscars: I’m hoping that Sean Penn will win best actor, Kate Winslet best actress, Heath Ledger best supporting actor, and Penelope Cruz for best supporting actress (though I would be pleased as well if Viola Davis or Taraji Henson won for best supporting actress). Greencine Daily will host a live blog of the 81st Academy Awards presentation on Sunday, Feb. 22.

Music and Writing

2009-02-20T12:39:00.004-06:00

Excerpt from "Revelations: Notes on Music, Criticism, and Society..."

The people who write about music sometimes champion the work of those whose ideas and images closely mirror their own, in terms of class, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality, but some writers are more imaginative, more intelligent, seeking out the widest possible range of music and musicians. Some of the commentators on music whose insights have enlightened and/or entertained me are James Baldwin, Playthell Benjamin, Delphine Blue, Nate Chinen, Kandia Crazy Horse, Stanley Crouch, Angela Davis, Jim DeRogatis, W.E.B. DuBois, Ralph Ellison, Christopher John Farley, Nelson George, Farah Jasmine Griffin, Claudrena Harold, Pauline Kael, Greg Kot, Will Layman, Wynton Marsalis, Michelangelo Matos, Paul Nelson, Sarah Rodman, Kelefa Sanneh, Gene Seymour, Armond White, and Carl Wilson. I always recall Baldwin’s comments on Bessie Smith and Billie Holiday, and Pauline Kael on Streisand and the Rolling Stones. One of the more interesting music writers now is Christian John Wikane. I encountered his work on the pages of the web magazine Pop Matters, which publishes great commentary on books, film, music, and other disciplines and issues. (My own commentary on Annie Lennox and the band The Smyrk appeared there.) In his writing, Christian John Wikane has featured the work and personalities of Ashford and Simpson, Gnarls Barkley, the Bee Gees, Tim Buckley, Don Byron, Paula Cole, Donnie, Feist, Aretha Franklin, Kevin (Ké) Grivois, Deborah Harry, Jamiroquai, Chaka Khan, K.D. Lang, Bettye LaVette, Amos Lee, Annie Lennox, Paul McCartney, Mika, Madonna, Stevie Nicks, Rahsaan Patterson, the Pointer Sisters, Corinne Bailey Rae, Nile Rodgers, Linda Ronstadt, and Diana Ross. Wikane called Gnarls Barkley’s The Odd Couple “an emotionally and musically provocative album,” a recording that is an “alternately disturbing, comforting, and challenging exploration of the human mind” (PopMatters.com, March 25, 2008); and Wikane remarked of K.D. Lang’s first album of new songs in years, Watershed, that Lang demonstrates “a keen sense of how to record herself and lead her excellent unit of musicians” (PopMatters.com, Feb. 5, 2008), and he enthusiastically declared of the anthology Bee Gees Greatest that the word “‘greatest’ seems far too modest an adjective to describe this music” (PopMatters.com, October 8, 2007). Christian John Wikane’s love and respect for music and its makers are refreshing; and his commentaries—reviews of recordings and interviews with artists—are among the most complete responses to music available. His work is quite intelligent, but in light of his attention to emotion and sensuality in music, and the empathy and enjoyment he brings to encounters with musicians, I have thought that his work contains the beginnings of an erotics of art.

(c) DG, 2008

John Cheever's novel Falconer

2009-02-19T13:34:00.006-06:00

I have begun reading Iris Murdoch's novel Under the Net, having just completed John Cheever's Falconer, published in the mid-1970s. I do not think that I've read Murdoch before, though I have thought of it and her many times. I have read Cheever's short stories, appreciating the variety of situations and characters he presents and the honesty and sensitivity he brings to their portrayal, the sympathy.

One wouldn't expect a man like John Cheever to know all the hard things in Falconer. The principal chracter in the novel is a privileged and lusty man who killed his own brother out of disgust as much as anger. Set in a prison, the writer keeps bringing into the story memories of the past and the larger world. The book has a truthful and irreducible vitality; and gives knowledge born of private experience and contemplation, not just social studies.

What is fascinating about a good novel, such as Falconer, is how a writer creates, enriches, disrupts, transgresses and reconciles his own story: a novel is a digression with digressions.

The musician Seal

2009-02-19T13:26:00.006-06:00

I have liked the musician Seal for a very long time, since the early 1990s when he released the song “Crazy” and I have been impressed by the unique quality of his voice, music, and image. Seal, whose full name is Seal Henry Olusegun Kwassi Olumide Adelo Samuel, was born in Britain to Nigerian parents in the early 1960s, and he has performed different kinds of music, but is identified with “techno,” an electronic dance music. I especially liked “Newborn Friend” from his 1994 album, which was called Seal, as was his first. He did a greatest hits album, featuring work from 1991 through 2004, in 2004; and in 2007 put out the danceable album called System, and last year released Soul, a collection of well-known rhythm-and-blues and soul songs, produced by David Foster.

For PBS’s program “Soundstage,” produced and directed by Joe Thomas, the musician Seal performed, in a Chicago concert, songs from Soul, including: “A Change Is Gonna Come,” “I Can’t Stand the Rain,” “It’s A Man’s World,” “Knock on Wood,” “If You Don’t Know Me By Now,” “Here I Am (Come and Take Me),” “People Get Ready,” “Stand by Me,” as well as his earlier songs “A Kiss From a Rose” and “Crazy.” (The concert was broadcast last Saturday morning on LPB at 2 a.m., and is being rebroadcast tonight.) Seal opened the concert wearing a black suit with a white shirt and dark tie, possibly brown if not black. With a distinctive voice and passion, the mature performer sounded very good and his audience enjoyed him as I did. He had a large band with him, including violins, horns, guitar, drums, and piano, the resources of Euro-classical, jazz, and rock music. Seal took off his jacket for the James Brown song “It’s a Man’s World” and danced with one of his background singers on “Here I Am,” though he didn’t quite take the song from Al Green. Seal spoke of being inspired by the spirit of the 1960s and of how he relished the opportunity to sing great songs. He said, however, that he resisted David Foster’s suggestion that he sing “People Get Ready” but that it became one of his favorite songs on the album. I don’t think the music had as much “blues” as the original versions of these songs: there’s a sensuality and sorrow to the original productions, and I suspect that fact, regarding the lack of blues, rests with producer David Foster, whom Seal thanked, before beginning his short techno set, returning to his own earlier work with “A Kiss from A Rose” and “Crazy,” songs that released even more energy in the performer. Seal changed clothes for the second set, wearing white, a white short sleeve T-shirt and white pants; and he performed with a much smaller band, featuring nice piano detail, with Seal's voice having a near-operatic sweep.

Scholar Aram Goudsouzian on Sidney Poitier

2009-02-12T14:38:00.005-06:00

Professor Aram Goudsouzian teaches in the department of history at the University of Memphis, and he wrote a comprehensive book, Sidney Poitier: Man, Actor, Icon (University of North Carolina Press, 2004), which manages to be both inspiring and sad at the same time. He was recently kind enough, earlier today, to answer a question about Sidney Poitier and the actor's relationship to his own scholarship.

Daniel: What led you to write about Sidney Poitier and how do the issues raised by his life and work relate to yours?

Aram Goudsouzian: I am interested in how popular culture shapes our attitudes about race, and in how race shapes our perceptions of popular culture. African Americans have historically found voices in entertainment and sports that were suppressed in more formal political arenas, and Hollywood has such profound, if often unacknowledged, effects upon the broader culture. The arc of Sidney Poitier’s saga particularly appealed to me because it carries through this entire period of racial upheaval. His persona transcended black stereotypes as comic buffoons or faithful sidekicks, and his dignity resonated with an emerging generation of African Americans and liberal whites who challenged racial convention in the 1950s. By the early 1960s, he seemed to embody the principle of racial equality, winning worldwide fame while lending Hollywood its sole black icon. Yet Poitier’s onscreen characters had to be ultra-virtuous heroes who exhibited unique restraints, fettering suggestions of black anger or sexuality. So by the late 1960s, one decade after getting considered a cutting-edge progressive figure, Black Power radicals and college students had tabbed him an “Uncle Tom.” I think his life and work still shape our popular understanding of black public figures today, none more so than President Obama. He seems to fulfill the same white liberal fantasies as Poitier, only on the most visible stage in the world.

More Brief Notes

2009-02-12T14:30:00.006-06:00

The Senate and House bills regarding the economic stimulus package supported by the new president have been reconciled by Senate and House members: the U.S. economic stimulus package now is budgeted at $789 billion, according to CBS News, the New York Times and other news sources (February 12, 2009). I suspect this legislation will form the foundation of Barack Obama's legacy. [Postscript: The Congressional Budget Office would revise the package's cost to $787 billion; and the president would sign the legislation into law on Monday, February 17, 2009.]

Politico.com (Feb. 12, 2009) has reported that Kansas governor Kathleen Sebelius is being discussed to lead Health and Human Services for the president. She seems an interesting person and a strong candidate, smart and accessible, collaborative and independent, practical and progressive.

Finland is known as one of the best places to live on earth, but the Helsinki Times (Feb. 11) has disclosed that Finnish hate groups have made their presence known on Facebook, focusing on anti-Somali feeling, with the groups even suggesting that monies be raised to send immigrants back to their native Somali.

In his (Feb. 3) Butterflies and Wheels article “On Rights and Sexuality,” Alexander Park states, “The obsession with some on the left with the biological roots of homosexuality is, I think, a direct result of the Privacy Fallacy. Seeking to avoid a conflict over values, which are ‘private’ and ‘relative’ and therefore ‘uncontestable,’ the left has chosen to try to avoid the entire argument that must inevitably occur by hiding behind the possibility of removing homosexuality from a moral calculus via biological fate. But this move is merely delaying the inevitable, and avoiding important facts at hand.” I have found, often, that using nature to justify human behavior is questionable: it can be a justification for the lack of choice and freedom, and a support for prejudice, as much as an argument for individual rights and personal wholeness. What is unique about being human is the possibility of knowledge and choice.

The Notre Damn Philosophical Reviews site has new book reviews focused on texts exploring Kant, Spinoza, and Wittgenstein, as well as freedom, bioethics, and critical theory. San Francisco State University’s Tom Leddy discusses Yuriko Saito’s book Everyday Aesthetics, a 2007 Oxford University Press title: “One unique aspect of Saito's analysis is the stress she places on the moral dimension of everyday aesthetics. First, she stresses the social importance of everyday aesthetic choices. If people value the greenness of a lawn, there are environmental consequences. Second, she tells us about how aestheticization of certain phenomena can cause social harm: for example, the Japanese in the last century associated their native landscape with militarist nationalism. Third, she stresses the ways that people are judged both in moral and aesthetic terms. Only the last of these seems problematic to me. There are admirable people who are not committed to conventional middle-class values of neatness and order. Should they be judged aesthetically/morally in terms of those values? In this respect, it is surprising to find an avowed feminist sympathetic, as Saito seems to be, to Dickens' implicit criticism of Mrs. Jellyby in Bleak House as having allowed her house to become untidy because of her interest in social problems.”

Alexander Provan has an article on Kafka in The Nation, available online (Feb. 11).

In “Laughing Through the Tears: The Enduring Journey of Etta James,” PopMatters.com (Feb. 12) excerpts Iain Ellis’s book Rebels with Attitude. (The piece might give some insight into James, whose responses, such as to Beyonce, can be contradictory, volatile.)

Economic Stimulus Package Passes Senate

2009-02-10T12:31:00.003-06:00

Yesterday, following a public event in which he spoke directly to ordinary Americans, Barack Obama gave his first press conference as president, answering the questions of a wide range of reporters, including those at National Public Radio and the Huffington Post. He spoke clearly, always intelligently, with intensity, and sometimes with wry humor. The principal subject was the economy, and he urged the Senate to pass a multi-billion dollar stimulus package, arguing that it is intended to create and maintain up to four million jobs and advance projects that are efficient and cost-saving over time. And, today, the Senate approved that $838-billion package with a 61 to 37 vote, mostly with Democrats approving and Republicans disapproving; and now the Senate and the House bills will go to conference for reconciliation of differences.

Grammy Awards, Reviewed

2009-02-09T12:56:00.006-06:00

At last night's Grammy Awards, a small portion of the awards were broadcast on television (the remainder can be seen at the Grammy's official site at Grammy.com); and some of the awards were "Please Read the Letter," by Robert Plant and Alison Krauss, for Record of the Year; Raising Sand by Plant/Krauss, for Album of the Year; "Viva la Vida" for Song of the Year; Adele as Best New Artist; Adele, "Chasing Pavements" for Best Female Pop Vocal; John Mayer, "Say" for Best Male Pop Vocal; Coldplay, "Viva La Vida" for Best Pop Performance by Duo or Group; and "Rich Woman" by Plant/Krauss for Best Pop Colloboration...Some of the awards we did not see on television included Duffy's Rockferry getting Best Pop Vocal Album, Alicia Keys getting Best Female R & B Vocal Performance for her song "Superwoman," and Al Green and John Legend getting a Grammy for the song "Stay with Me" (Best R & B Performance by a Duo/Group), and Al Green and Anthony Hamilton getting a Grammy for Best Traditional R & B Performance by a Duo/Group)....

The Grammy Awards television broadcast seems quite good when one considers it an industry award program: how many industry award shows could sustain interest and provide entertainment? The quality of the performances were probably better than could be predicted for a live program before millions; and I liked hearing U2, Kid Rock, Kenny Chesney, and the blues tribute featuring Keith Urban, B.B. King, and John Mayer. The u2 song captured different periods of rock history and was smartly presented with the lyrics as a backdrop. Whitney Houston received a warm welcome, a standing ovation, before she presented an award to Jennifer Hudson, for Best R & B album. (The audience may have been in a generous mood: others would get ovations--not only U2 and Houston but also Coldplay, Jennifer Hudson, Radiohead.) Justin Timberlake's performance with Al Green struck me as energetic but less good than Timberlake's later performance with T.I. (Green's voice seemed a little rough to me, though it smoothed a bit as he went on). I found the rock/rap colloboration between Coldplay and Jay-Z to be incongruous, though the song's third-part uptempo movement was an improvement. Carrie Underwood, performing in a short dress that showed her great legs, did some kind of noisy, soulful country thing that seemed both bad taste and very effective. Kid Rock, in dark glasses and a black suit, generated energy and interest with a song mixing rock, gospel, and rap and various contemporary references, before sequeing into two other songs; and it was a fun (and swaggering) performance, which ended with his taking his jacket off and walking off the stage. I thought the duet performance of Taylor Swift and Miley Cyrus was just bearable, though I sympathize with the subject of the song (a young woman's vulnerable years). Jennifer Hudson's appearance was dramatic in many ways; it was among her first performances following the death of several family members, and she began singing offstage; and she sang something that seemed a love song that could be interpreted as a spiritual, and she was helped by a choir. It was odd to hear Stevie Wonder perform with the Jonas Brothers and to hear them repeatedly call him Stevie (was Diana Ross in the house? She could have instructed: that's Mr. Stevie to you). Metrosexual late night talk show host Craig Ferguson introduced Katy Perry, who performed "I Kissed A Girl" with costumes, dancers, and props, the kind of performance that goes back through Madonna and Cher...all the way to Marlene Dietrich in Blonde Venus. Estelle has a good voice though her duet with Kanye West was lost on me (also, her dress was little more than a glittery bag), just as the Paul McCartney/Dave Grohl performance didn't mean much to me. The female rapper M.I.A, performing with famous rappers, was a sight for sore eyes--and might have caused the sore eyes (I don't think I want to see a nine months pregnant woman perform again in such a transparent and clinging outfit, though I recognize this might have been some kind of transgressive breakthrough: score one for women; score ten for bad taste). I'm not a fan of Radiohead but I liked their performance. I like Smokey Robinson and wished he had been a bigger part of the Four Tops tribute that he, Jamie Foxx, Ne-Yo, and Duke Fakir participated in. Neil Diamond's performance was oddly paced, and brought to mind the Jewish Elvis moniker I used to hear (Diamond seemed pleased by the audience's attention and they seemed glad to give it but there wasn't a lot of energy: there was mostly nostalgia). One of the oddest combinations wasn't bad at all: featuring Lil Wayne, Robin Thicke, Allen Toussaint, the Dirty Dozen Brass Band, and Terrence Blanchard. These award shows, such as the Grammys or Oscars, are interesting often for reasons that have nothing to do with art, but to do with business and popularity and social values; but last night there were some good musical performances and the presentation of some attractive performers repaid some of one's attention--but, at three and a half-hours, it is still hard not to argue that time could have been better spent.

Susan Sontag, Reborn

2009-02-09T12:37:00.006-06:00

I have been reading John Cheever's novel Falconer and Susan Sontag's Reborn, a collection of journals, and it took me about three days to read Reborn, which I finished this past Saturday.

Susan Sontag's Reborn: Journal and Notebooks, 1947-1963

Reborn (Farrar, Straus, 2008) is an edited presentation of Sontag's journals, documenting her early consciousness, work, and life: art, books, and education; family; love and sexuality. Edited by her son David Rieff, the journals contain genuine philosophical speculations as well as great personal candor, illuminating Sontag's precocious gifts and intellectual ambition, achieving a passionate intensity when she expresses love for broken relationships. Sontag was a private person, and though this book is a raw revelation of some of her intimacies, (on first reading) I don't think it destroys her dignity or value or authority. It may expand her accessibility and range--and, certainly, her discipline and accomplishment are more clear.

Excerpt from "Human Conflict, or the legacies of superfluous men: Hotel Rwanda, The Merchant of Venice, Bad Education, The Woodsman, and Notre Musique"

Susan Sontag, who liked Emerson and Poe, claimed as models Nietzsche, Kafka, and Van Gogh, and also Walter Benjamin and Roland Barthes. Sontag admired, as well, the two Simones, Weil and de Beauvoir. A cosmopolitan thinker, Susan Sontag grew up not in New York or Paris but in Arizona and California; and, an energetic child and an avid reader, she was excited by a biography of Madame Curie by Curie’s daughter and Les Miserables, before turning to Thomas Mann, James Joyce, Eliot, Kafka, and Gide. She graduated high school at fifteen. She attended the University of Chicago, where she studied with Kenneth Burke and Joseph Schwab. Sontag, who did graduate work in philosophy, literature, and theology at Harvard and Oxford, dreamed of writing essays that would be appreciated by informed readers; and that is what she spent her life doing. The philosopher Sartre said that freedom has no essence; and that there are descriptions that aim not at essence but at existence; and, with this in mind, I would say that Susan Sontag sought, found, and lived an exemplary freedom.

(c) DG

Poem

2009-02-05T14:09:00.006-06:00

Writer's Note: This, "Friends," is an old poem, written in New York in the 1980s, about friends taking a trip to Washington for a public event; and I thought of it again during President Obama's inauguration. I write with diverse inspirations, for various reasons; and this poem was written, partly, for a friend: it was a way of giving to her an ordered, sensible vision of the world, a vision that could be useful. When she first got the poem, she wasn't sure it was for her (she, like many people, may have preferred something even more crudely sentimental), but as time went on she liked the poem...

Friends
(Celebrating Martin Luther King Jr's Birthday)

Soft white winter light licking long black trees

Sky a pale storm blue, air dried of heat and summer promise

You drive, jolted by bumps, turns in the road,
shifts in conversation. I watch your back,
the throbbing neck muscle covered by dark cream skin.
I look at your short curly hair, your green canvas jacket,
but I see a distant yesterday when your hand reached
out to know my hand. Today, I silently thank you. Again.

Next to you, your lover's voice humming the same blues
as when we left our warm southern house,
Desiree, Eugene and I in the back seat,
slim brow hands counting my numbers
thinking I have bowed to mysticism
when I have bowed to his magic--friendship.
Short, small Desiree sleeping crushed
against a door, having fed us with wheat cakes
sweetened with raisins, goat milk, and vitamins.

We are traveling from lush lawns and magnolias,
Louisiana, to the red dirt hills of Georgia,
stepping lightly in thickly dark forests,
to the shining marble of Washington.
We are traveling from a single wish to friends' hope
to communal vision. From Saturday to Sunday to January 15th.
From hope to joy to wonder.

The capital, fresh snow cold, whiteness strangling
the thinnest neck of grass, under an axblade-blue sky.
On stone steps and iced lawn, there is a great rough quilt
of people--silk and leather blacks, sackcloth and satin browns,
velvet reds, lack and cotton whites, stitched together
with smiles, arguments, tears, touching. Anthems are sung.
The wind is blowing, frizzbees are flying.

Our conversations are slashed
by hawkers of buttons, t-shirts, and stickers,
their voices stabbing air:
Breathe revolution cook revolution dance revolution
fight revolution fuck revolution wear revolution
as we wonder which revolution? Our nerves tense
with premonition:
Bombs dropping, caressing flesh with pain,
sharp steel slicing arms and legs with kisses,
climaxing in bullets ejaculated by hung thick machine guns.

Doesn't it all begin and end with pain?

The organizer, a dark man cut of holy cloth,
calls this "a movement to clothe, feed, house and teach all."
The elders delicately unwrap memories
that the young have meshed from black-and-white films
of olden days, of protest streets, dogs, gushing hoses,
bloody clubs, of white and black people, black and white reasons,
white and black fears. We think, One never starts over.
There is no new purity. We stand carved by life,
aware and struggling, hopeful in fits.

My hand reaches out to re-member yours.

Afterwards, to car, we ride train in tunneled earth,
knowing this is the work and the traveling
we are meant to do:
Underground, under skin, under language,
becoming comfortable with rushing rivers,
dank sewers, slender blood veins,
the inner flowing of pain and pleasure.

(c) DG

Comments: Appreciations and Repudiations

2009-02-02T14:46:00.019-06:00

With his economic stimulus package, rejection of torture and plans to close Guantanamo, setting of government ethics standards, signing of anti-discrimination employment legislation and increased insurance coverage for children, President Obama and his government have made a good start. Yet, Benjamin R. Barber asserts in The Nation (“A Revolution in Spirit,” January 22, 2009) that larger questions and possibilities remain, and specifies some of them: “The crisis in global capitalism demands a revolution in spirit--fundamental change in attitudes and behavior. Reform cannot merely rush parents and kids back into the mall; it must encourage them to shop less, to save rather than spend. If there's to be a federal lottery, the Obama administration should use it as an incentive for saving, a free ticket, say, for every ten bucks banked. Penalize carbon use by taxing gas so that it's $4 a gallon regardless of market price, curbing gas guzzlers and promoting efficient public transportation. And how about policies that give producers incentives to target real needs, even where the needy are short of cash, rather than to manufacture faux needs for the wealthy just because they've got the cash?”

One of the most vicious critics of Barack Obama during the recent presidential election campaign was not a known conservative, but rather someone who styles himself a progressive, even a radical: Glen Ford of Black Agenda Report, a sometimes interesting online publication. Ford’s comments were often hateful, insane—and seemed to reflect a holier-than-thou or blacker-than-thou attitude, establishing the kind of standards that no real, complex person could meet, not to mention a man running for the highest office in the land and needing the public support of diverse constitutencies. (More recently, certain Republican party officials and members seem to have a difficult time wishing President Obama well, even if it means that if he fails many ordinary Americans will suffer; and the lack of empathy is telling.)

There is a book by Ellis Cose on the rage of bourgeois blacks: The Rage of a Privileged Class, which focuses on the opportunities and the prejudices and limits that educated, seemingly successful blacks still face and how they manage their feelings and professional responses (often they attain presence in an organization but not power). I think it's an important subject, one that refutes pretending that all blacks share the exact same experience.

It is impossible not to notice there seem to be a few more African-American journalists on television since President Obama's campaign, election, and inauguration. It will be great if they are able to affect the content of television programming.

The graphic destruction of the human body that television constantly displays is unsettling: and most recently, my stomach has been turned by an anti-smoking commercial that shows fat deposits in dissected human tissue. Disgusting. What can one say about television? More often than not it offers false associations, false memories, and a narcotic ecstasy. It consumes, fills, and trivializes time. It can offer us basic orientation in and to a new or different place, but the string of superficialities it is more likely to offer can convince us that the world is a lot more organized and a lot simpler than it is. Its appeal is too often primitive—a series of shocks.

I used to listen to radio a lot in New York, but there is less good radio in Louisiana, though even here there is a college station that has become a favorite. In the United Kingdom, Libby Purves, for the January 31, 2009 Telegraph (“Why We’re Still Ga-Ga for Radio”), writes: “Using only sound, radio stretches the imagination and makes the listener its partner. A humble plastic box can introduce you to writers, ideas, arguments, facts, music and atmospheres you might not encounter in two lifetimes. Speech radio, in particular, is a curious medium: more vivid than print, bringing ambient noise and atmosphere, conveying tones and breaths and hesitations and tension in the voice. It is indifferent to the artifices of appearance.”

I was introduced to musician Brett Dennen by the south Louisiana college radio station I like. Regarding singer-songwriter Brett Dennen’s album Hope for the Hopeless (Dualtone/Downtown), which Aarik Danielsen reviews for PopMatters.com (Feb. 2, 2009), the reviewer Danielsen declares that “Dennen’s music serves a bridge between the hippy-lite jams that pass for folk rock today and old-school folkies of the ‘60s and ‘70s who brought the goods as far as songwriting and social consciousness. It might not be an overstatement to say that Dennen could prove an important figure, hopefully turning younger listeners onto the goodness that can accompany thoughtful words and simple melodies sincerely sung.” Yet, the writer also states, “Let’s put Dennen’s socially-conscious lyrics in perspective here; he’s no Dylan or Lennon. But he does capture the spirit of a generation attracted to the hopeful promise they witnessed in the Obama candidacy. Dennen is a perceptive songwriter who sees injustice in real-world, black-and-white terms, yet also sees opportunities to right those wrongs.” When so much of music criticism fails the highest standards, PopMatters.com is to be respected, rising above gossip and hype to produce intelligent examinations of a wide range of music, as with the consideration given to Brett Dennen.

The hype that has welcomed new recordings by musicians such as Animal Collective and Bruce Springsteen reminds me of the investment that music journalists and publications have in the success of musicians—they promote aesthetic pleasure, meaning, and popularity, championing notions of “cool” and “relevance.” The glamour of the success of the moment is always being sold, whether the artist is new or old. We see this with U2 and Radiohead as well as with the Decemberists and Arcade Fire. (Whether one considers the dull respectability--and respectable dullness?--of Jon Pareles in the New York Times at one spectrum's end, or the indulgent trashiness of the web's Idolator at the other end, with the status-and-trend-chasing failures of Rolling Stone, the Village Voice and other publications in between, this time is far from an ideal moment for music commentary: many of these publications a critic or reporter might want to write for because of money and visibility rather than the creative company one would be forced to keep. When I saw the newest article on Springsteen in Rolling Stone, I laughed out loud and thought that if he died, the magazine would exhume and photograph his rotted corpose to commemorate a memorial anthology.) Too many journalists ignore chances to broaden the cultural conversation, the chance to go beyond current market offerings, and beyond merely fleeting topical concerns, to discuss serious ideas and prospects that are both timeless and urgent.

Sound and image can be mere distractions, or much more. There is nothing like standing in a museum contemplating a perspective in which care, color, craft, and thought have been invested. I have found peace doing that....The Art Institute of Chicago has free admission for all of February, 2009.

I have been reading Hamilton College history professor Aram Goudsouzian’s book about Sidney Poitier called Sidney Poitier: Man, Actor, Icon, published a few years ago by the University of North Carolina Press. It’s very good in pointing out how social matters can increase and decrease the appreciation for an artist; and explores the complex man Poitier is and dynamic times in which Poitier lived and lives.

Film Journal International (Sarah Sluis, January 29, 2009) reports that Mira Nair’s nonprofit film training project in Uganda, Maisha Film Labs, provides an intensive boot camp with experienced filmmaking instructors covering different roles in film production. Obviously it is a chance to nurture new talent and new stories.

There is a new Gerald Peary documentary, For the Love of Movies: The Story of American Film Criticism, and it is hard to know whether to be excited or whether to cringe: it is sickening that so often when the subject of film criticism is discussed Andrew Sarris and his acolytes make negative comments about Pauline Kael. Whatever Sarris’s value as a film critic (I read him first in The Village Voice and later in the New York Observer), it seems he may be a very pathetic man: he maintained a lifelong grudge against Pauline Kael and has extended that into a beyond-her-death grudge. While he and his minions continue to make questionable comments about Kael, the only ones diminished are they themselves. Admirers of Kael recall her work—books such as I Lost It at The Movies and Reeling and For Keeps…and think…and laugh with appreciation and pleasure.

Brief Notes

2009-01-30T15:00:00.010-06:00

The New York Times is reporting, January 30, that Barack Obama is reversing the previous president’s policies on labor, and he is supporting labor organizing and fair contracts; and, also, President Obama has signed an anti-discrimination employment bill into law (for fair pay despite gender and more opportunity to pursue legal means of handling being the victim of discrimination).

Arianna Huffington comments from Davos: “The widespread contrition permeating Davos is matched by an unnerving feeling of paralysis. The people here -- and we are talking about some of the most influential people on the planet -- seem confused, at a loss about how to attack the financial crisis.” (Huffington Post, January 29, 2009)

Greencine Daily (January 29) announces that a new film, Barry Jenkins’s Medicine for Melancholy, is opening in New York and soon elsewhere—(Detroit (Feb. 13), Seattle (Feb. 20), San Francisco (Feb. 27) and Los Angeles (Feb. 27)— and the film, a love story, is set in San Francisco and features African-Americans and cycling.

I have just received notice that “The Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Oxford will host the 2009 International Conference of the Friedrich Nietzsche Society of Great Britain and Ireland, 11-13 September 2009, at St. Peter’s College, Oxford.” The conference will discuss “Nietzsche philosophy of mind in relation to his philosophical naturalism”; and scheduled speakers include: Günter Abel, Brian Leiter, Graham Parkes, Peter Poellner, Bernard Reginster, John Richardson, Galen Strawson. The deadline is March 15, 2009 for those who want to submit (abstracts for) papers. Contact: Dr. Peter Kail & Dr. Manuel Dries, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Oxford.