Jin, Ha. The Writer as Migrant. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008.
R. Stuhr
In three essays, Ha Jin explores the fate and blessings of the immigrant writer. In "The Spokesman and the Tribe," Ha Jin recounts his early conviction, that through his poetry, he could speak for the people he left behind in China. Because he has left behind his compatriots he can not truly represent them. Perhaps, through the work that is the result of his talent and creativity, he may find his way back to his country. Ha Jin looks at the experiences and creative work of Solzhenitsyn and Lin Yutang to make his point. Solzhenitsyn and Lin Yutang left their countries as respected and honored writers, and attempted to represent their countries abroad. But, Ha Jin writes, [e]ven the most socially conscious writers like Solzhenitsyn and Lin Yutang could be accepted by their peoples only on the grounds that they had written lasting literary works. Their social function in their lifetimes have been largely forgotten...a writer's first responsibility is to write well" (28). Ha Jin emphasizes that writers should chronicle and shape history, should take a moral stand and speak out against injustice, but only through their art. The "battlefield" is on the page.
In hise second essay, "The Language of Betrayal," Ha Jin looks at the writings of Polish writer in exile, Joseph Conrad, and multilingual, Russian writer Vladimir Nabokov. Although Nabokov first wrote in Russian, much of what he wrote is in English. Conrad wrote only in English. Ha Jin considers the necessity of writing in the language of exile and what the writer gains and loses through this necessity. Conrad was first rejected and then much later embraced by the writers in his native country. He was repeatedly asked to justify his choice of language. Ha Jin finds that though Conrad suffered because of his choice to write in English, he opened the doors for many exiled and immigrant writers to choose to write in the language of their adopted countries. Ha Jin also finds that writers such as Conrad and Nabokov bring something new to the language though their lack of familiarity with idiom and conversational style may also hamper them. Ha Jin admires Conrad's intensely poetic prose and Nabokov's use of humor in his prose. Although some of have said that it is impossible to write humorously in an adopted language, Nabokov, writes Ha Jin, seemed "as if he . . . squinted at the words he inscribed on paper to see what extra pleasure he could extract from them. He seized every opportunity to turn self-consciousness into delightful art" (51). Ha Jin urges writers in exile to find their place in their adopted language even if what they write cannot be translated into their native language. Writers may choose loyalty to their art over loyalty to their native language.
Finally, in his third essay, Ha Jin considers whether the expatriot can ever return home again; whether a writer, once exiled, can in fact ever have a true home. Looking at the works of authors such as Kundera, Cafavy, Naipaul, Rølvaag, and Sebald, Ha Jin again emphasizes the importance of language, the loss of fluency, the changes that make the once familiar unrecognizable. While one must maintain, and possibly cannot avoid maintaining the past as part of one's identity as an individual and as a writer and artist, "homeland" may not be the writer's country of origin, but instead be where the writers makes a home.
Burling Library 1st Floor, Smith Memorial PS 3560.I6 Z46 2008.
Other works by novelist, poet, and short story writer, Ha Jin including Between Silences: A Voice from China, Waiting, and A Free Life.
Thursday, December 31, 2009
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Ring out the new year? or greet it respectfully with the first rays of light
Simon Winchester writes about his regret over the slow spread of Celtic New Year's madness across the globe in his Wall Street Journal article, "The Case Against the New Year."
He blames this spread on clocks, Scots, and poets, namely, Burns and Tennyson. Whether we have Burns and Tennyson to blame for drinking too much and eating the wrong kinds of food on New Year's Eve, these poems are still worth reading today. Being a sentimental person living far away from family, I like to sing "Auld Lang Syne" (and "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" for that matter) and shed some tears as I tak a cup o' kindness.
Tennyson mourns the death of his friends and imagines a new year that can do away with "ancient forms of party strife" and bring in "sweeter manners, and purer laws," "false pride in place and blood," and "narrowing lust of gold," and that may bring "a thousand years of peace." I don't think that there are many of us who wouldn't wish these same things.
I never thought that a Wall Street Journal article would lead me to poetry, so, maybe we can imagine some of these seeming impossibilities.
Burns's "Auld Lang Syne"
And for auld lang syne, my jo,
For auld lang syne,
We'll tak a cup o' kindness yet,
For auld lang syne,
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And days o' auld lang syne.
And surely ye'll be your pint-stowp!
And surely I'll be mine!
And we'll tak a cup o' kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.
We twa hae run about the braes
And pu'd the gowans fine;
But we've wander'd mony a weary foot
Sin auld lang syne.
We twa hae paidl'd i' the burn,
Frae mornin' sun till dine;
But seas between us braid hae roar'd
Sin auld lang syne.
And there's a hand, my trusty fiere!
And gie's a hand o' thine!
And we'll tak a right guid willy waught,
For auld lang syne.
And Tennyson's "Ring Out, Wild Bells" from his In Memoriam
Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light:
The year is dying in the night--
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.
Ring out the old, ring in the new--,
Ring happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.
Ring out the grief that saps the mind,
For those that here we see no more;
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.
Ring out a slowly dying cause,
And ancient forms of party strife;
Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.
Ring out the want, the care, the sin,
The faithless coldness of the times;
Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes,
But ring the fuller minstrel in.
Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.
Ring out old shapes of foul disease,
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.
Ring in the valiant man and free,
The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land--
Ring in the Christ that is to be.
submitted by Rebecca Stuhr
Find Robert Burns and Alfred Lord Tennyson at Burling Library
He blames this spread on clocks, Scots, and poets, namely, Burns and Tennyson. Whether we have Burns and Tennyson to blame for drinking too much and eating the wrong kinds of food on New Year's Eve, these poems are still worth reading today. Being a sentimental person living far away from family, I like to sing "Auld Lang Syne" (and "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" for that matter) and shed some tears as I tak a cup o' kindness.
Tennyson mourns the death of his friends and imagines a new year that can do away with "ancient forms of party strife" and bring in "sweeter manners, and purer laws," "false pride in place and blood," and "narrowing lust of gold," and that may bring "a thousand years of peace." I don't think that there are many of us who wouldn't wish these same things.
I never thought that a Wall Street Journal article would lead me to poetry, so, maybe we can imagine some of these seeming impossibilities.
Burns's "Auld Lang Syne"
And for auld lang syne, my jo,
For auld lang syne,
We'll tak a cup o' kindness yet,
For auld lang syne,
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And days o' auld lang syne.
And surely ye'll be your pint-stowp!
And surely I'll be mine!
And we'll tak a cup o' kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.
We twa hae run about the braes
And pu'd the gowans fine;
But we've wander'd mony a weary foot
Sin auld lang syne.
We twa hae paidl'd i' the burn,
Frae mornin' sun till dine;
But seas between us braid hae roar'd
Sin auld lang syne.
And there's a hand, my trusty fiere!
And gie's a hand o' thine!
And we'll tak a right guid willy waught,
For auld lang syne.
And Tennyson's "Ring Out, Wild Bells" from his In Memoriam
Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light:
The year is dying in the night--
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.
Ring out the old, ring in the new--,
Ring happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.
Ring out the grief that saps the mind,
For those that here we see no more;
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.
Ring out a slowly dying cause,
And ancient forms of party strife;
Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.
Ring out the want, the care, the sin,
The faithless coldness of the times;
Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes,
But ring the fuller minstrel in.
Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.
Ring out old shapes of foul disease,
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.
Ring in the valiant man and free,
The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land--
Ring in the Christ that is to be.
submitted by Rebecca Stuhr
Find Robert Burns and Alfred Lord Tennyson at Burling Library
Friday, December 25, 2009
The e-book, the e-reader, and the future of reading
The Christian Science Monitor presents a few perspectives on reading with e-readers.
The e-book, the e-reader, and the future of reading by Matthew Shaer
Do we really want to curl up with an e-book? by CSM editor, John Yemma
The second link is to an editorial, a circumspect, the first explores some of the pros and cons, but concludes with:
The e-book, the e-reader, and the future of reading by Matthew Shaer
Do we really want to curl up with an e-book? by CSM editor, John Yemma
The second link is to an editorial, a circumspect, the first explores some of the pros and cons, but concludes with:
"Even the most dedicated futurists agree that the adoption of e-reading will follow a slow curve, expanding outward from a cadre of early adopters to the public at large.
“I think we’re in the very early stages of assembling a tool kit that will enable a tremendous amount of experimentation,” says Mike Shatzkin, CEO of The Idea Logical Company, a consulting firm. “It will be many years before we figure out what the new book forms will be and what impact they’ll have on the way people think and behave.”
In the meantime, readers may inhabit a happy middle ground"
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Shoveling Snow With Buddha - A poem by Billy Collins - American Poems
Shoveling Snow With Buddha - A poem by Billy Collins - American Poems
click on the link and enjoy this poem from Billy Collins' book of poetry:
Collins, Billy. Sailing Alone Around the Room: New and Selected Poems. New York: Random House, 2001.
Burling 3rd Floor PS3553.O47478 S25 2001
To enjoy more poetry by Collins: http://cat.lib.grinnell.edu/search/a?SEARCH=collins+billy&sortdropdown=-
click on the link and enjoy this poem from Billy Collins' book of poetry:
Collins, Billy. Sailing Alone Around the Room: New and Selected Poems. New York: Random House, 2001.
Burling 3rd Floor PS3553.O47478 S25 2001
To enjoy more poetry by Collins: http://cat.lib.grinnell.edu/search/a?SEARCH=collins+billy&sortdropdown=-
Sunday, December 20, 2009
The Artemis Fowl Series
Eoin Colfer. The Artemis Fowl Series
Beth Bohstedt, Access Services Manager at Grinnell College Libraries is reading and recommends the Artemis Fowl Series.
The Seventh Dwarf (book 0 in the series, published for World Book Day) 2004
Artemis Fowl 2001
The Arctic Incident 2002
The Eternity Code 2003
Opal Deception 2005
The Lost Colony 2006
The Time Paradox 2008
The Atlantis Complex 2010
For more about Eoin Colfer and his books, go to Fantastic Fiction or Literature Resource Center
Beth Bohstedt, Access Services Manager at Grinnell College Libraries is reading and recommends the Artemis Fowl Series.
The Seventh Dwarf (book 0 in the series, published for World Book Day) 2004
Artemis Fowl 2001
The Arctic Incident 2002
The Eternity Code 2003
Opal Deception 2005
The Lost Colony 2006
The Time Paradox 2008
The Atlantis Complex 2010
For more about Eoin Colfer and his books, go to Fantastic Fiction or Literature Resource Center
The Outlander Series
Gabaldon, Diana. Drums of Autumn. Book 4 in the "Outlander Series." NY: Delacorte Press, 1997.
Amy Roberson, reference and instruction librarian at Grinnell College Libraries is reading the Outlander series and wants more people to know about Diana Gabaldon. Slate.com describes this series as "the smartest historical sci-fi adventure-romance ever written by a science Ph.D. with a background in scripting Scrooge McDuck comic books."
The series includes, so far:
Cross Stitch (Outlander) (1991)
Dragonfly in Amber (1992)
Voyager (1994)
Drums of Autumn (1997)
The Fiery Cross (2001)
Breath of Snow and Ashes (2005)
An Echo in the Bone (2009)
For more about Diana Gabaldon go to Fantastic Fiction or Literature Resource Center/Contemporary Authors
Amy Roberson, reference and instruction librarian at Grinnell College Libraries is reading the Outlander series and wants more people to know about Diana Gabaldon. Slate.com describes this series as "the smartest historical sci-fi adventure-romance ever written by a science Ph.D. with a background in scripting Scrooge McDuck comic books."
The series includes, so far:
Cross Stitch (Outlander) (1991)
Dragonfly in Amber (1992)
Voyager (1994)
Drums of Autumn (1997)
The Fiery Cross (2001)
Breath of Snow and Ashes (2005)
An Echo in the Bone (2009)
For more about Diana Gabaldon go to Fantastic Fiction or Literature Resource Center/Contemporary Authors
Thomas Hardy .... a biography
Tomalin, Claire. Thomas Hardy. New York: Penguin Press, 2007.
Phil Jones, reference and instruction librarian at Grinnell College Libraries, is reading this biography about the 19th century British poet and novelist.
Burling Library, 3rd floor. PR 4753 .T58 2007
Click on Thomas Hardy to find his novels and poetry in Burling Library.
Phil Jones, reference and instruction librarian at Grinnell College Libraries, is reading this biography about the 19th century British poet and novelist.
Burling Library, 3rd floor. PR 4753 .T58 2007
Click on Thomas Hardy to find his novels and poetry in Burling Library.
Sunday, November 29, 2009
The Bat Segundo Show
As I write this I am listening to an hour long interview with Rebecca Solnit. While I'm listening I'm scrolling through the most recent interviews appearing on the Web site for the Bat Segundo Show. Ever since beginning this blog (several years now), I've been receiving periodic emails from the Bat Segundo Show. Since they were unsolicited emails, I didn't pay any attention to it. It wasn't until a few months ago that I thought I would actually visit the site. The emails were interesting enough and infrequent enough that I had never put them in junk mail, but I am wary of following up on unsolicited email as I imagine most of you are as well.
But The Bat Segundo Show turns out to be a treasure trove of interviews with contemporary writers from the world of fiction, film, philosophy, and current cultural comment. People interviewed in the most recent round of pod casts include, besides Solnit, Laurel Snyder, Michael Muhammad Knight, Nicholas Meyer, Majorie Rosen, Lawrence Block, Laurie Sandell, Brian Evenson, and Dick Cavett.
The interviewer asks challenging questions and the person interviewed is given free reign to follow up on the answers. These are not fluffy celebrity interviews, but free ranging glimpses into the thoughts, thought processes, and works of the writer being interviewed. The interviewers are smart and familiar with the work of the writer as well as related writers and subjects.
You can subscribe to the podcasts through Live Bookmark or through ITunes.
http://www.batsegundo.com
But The Bat Segundo Show turns out to be a treasure trove of interviews with contemporary writers from the world of fiction, film, philosophy, and current cultural comment. People interviewed in the most recent round of pod casts include, besides Solnit, Laurel Snyder, Michael Muhammad Knight, Nicholas Meyer, Majorie Rosen, Lawrence Block, Laurie Sandell, Brian Evenson, and Dick Cavett.
The interviewer asks challenging questions and the person interviewed is given free reign to follow up on the answers. These are not fluffy celebrity interviews, but free ranging glimpses into the thoughts, thought processes, and works of the writer being interviewed. The interviewers are smart and familiar with the work of the writer as well as related writers and subjects.
You can subscribe to the podcasts through Live Bookmark or through ITunes.
http://www.batsegundo.com
Saturday, November 28, 2009
Americans in Siberia are recommending:
Kazuo Ishaguro's The Unconsoled. NY: Knopf, 1995
Burling 3rd Floor PR6059.S5 U53 1995
And on this particular American's reading list (purchased at the "Krasnoyarsk Market of Book Culture"). Titles are inprecise because they are in Russian:
1. A collection of Solzhenitsyn short stories
2. A book about Stalin era politics in Siberia and the Urals
3. A book about Soviet and Stalinist film
4. A book called "There is Light Everywhere": a collection of stories and excerpts from novels and memoirs about living in a totalitarian system. It's published by the Marina Tsvetaeva museum in Moscow.
5. "Unforced Labors" by Ariadna Efron and Ada Federolf (in English translation). It is also from the Tsvetaeva museum publishers. Their publishing company is called "Return" and all of their books have to do with the Gulags and political repression.
Taken from No Gray Hairs
Burling 3rd Floor PR6059.S5 U53 1995
And on this particular American's reading list (purchased at the "Krasnoyarsk Market of Book Culture"). Titles are inprecise because they are in Russian:
1. A collection of Solzhenitsyn short stories
2. A book about Stalin era politics in Siberia and the Urals
3. A book about Soviet and Stalinist film
4. A book called "There is Light Everywhere": a collection of stories and excerpts from novels and memoirs about living in a totalitarian system. It's published by the Marina Tsvetaeva museum in Moscow.
5. "Unforced Labors" by Ariadna Efron and Ada Federolf (in English translation). It is also from the Tsvetaeva museum publishers. Their publishing company is called "Return" and all of their books have to do with the Gulags and political repression.
Taken from No Gray Hairs
Juliet Naked
Hornby, Nick. Juliet Naked. NY: Riverhead Books, 2009.
Submitted by R. Stuhr
Nick Hornby follows up his dark novel about suicide (A Long Way Down, 2005) with a more light-hearted novel about the Dickens-reading, retired and reclusive rocker Tucker Crowe, one of his remaining ardent fans, a Croweologist and college instructor Duncan, and Duncan's partner Annie, a museum curator. Duncan and Annie live in the faded seaside town of Gooleness in England. Crowe lives in Pennsylvania with his third wife, and fifth and youngest child Jackson. Crowe's last album, Juliet, is considered the greatest "break-up" album ever recorded. His remaining fans participate in a Crowe chat room parsing out every possible element of the album and attempting to piece together details about Crowe's life. So, when after two decades of silence, the demo version of the songs are released, it is a major event in the world of Crowe devotees. This becomes the pivotal moment in the novel leading inevitably to Duncan and Annie's break-up, to Annie's meeting with Tucker, and to Tucker's acknowledgment of his past mistakes.
A shark's eyeball, pub toilets, northern soul dancing, mistaken identity, Cloud Cuckoo Land, Barnaby Rudge, and medical advice on sex after a heart attack are just a handful of the nuggets awaiting the lucky readers who dip into this latest Nick Hornby novel. I enjoy Nick Hornby very much. My favorite of his novels is still How to Be Good although I thoroughly enjoyed Juliet Naked. There is always something in Hornby's novels that makes me laugh out loud (and that is always a good thing), but at the same time Hornby exposes the ironies, hypocrisies, and quirks of modern middle class society.
Enjoy!
Coming soon to Burling Library
Other books by Nick Hornby at Burling:
About A Boy (1998)
Burling 3rd floor PR6058.O689 A64 1998
High Fidelity (1995)
Burling 3rd Floor PR6058.O689 H54 1995
How to Be Good (2001)
Burling 3rd Floor PR6058.O689 H69 2001
A Long Way Down (2005)
Burling 3rd Floor PR6058.O689 L66 2005
Slam (2oo7)
Smith Memorial PR6058.O689 S52 2007
Submitted by R. Stuhr
Nick Hornby follows up his dark novel about suicide (A Long Way Down, 2005) with a more light-hearted novel about the Dickens-reading, retired and reclusive rocker Tucker Crowe, one of his remaining ardent fans, a Croweologist and college instructor Duncan, and Duncan's partner Annie, a museum curator. Duncan and Annie live in the faded seaside town of Gooleness in England. Crowe lives in Pennsylvania with his third wife, and fifth and youngest child Jackson. Crowe's last album, Juliet, is considered the greatest "break-up" album ever recorded. His remaining fans participate in a Crowe chat room parsing out every possible element of the album and attempting to piece together details about Crowe's life. So, when after two decades of silence, the demo version of the songs are released, it is a major event in the world of Crowe devotees. This becomes the pivotal moment in the novel leading inevitably to Duncan and Annie's break-up, to Annie's meeting with Tucker, and to Tucker's acknowledgment of his past mistakes.
A shark's eyeball, pub toilets, northern soul dancing, mistaken identity, Cloud Cuckoo Land, Barnaby Rudge, and medical advice on sex after a heart attack are just a handful of the nuggets awaiting the lucky readers who dip into this latest Nick Hornby novel. I enjoy Nick Hornby very much. My favorite of his novels is still How to Be Good although I thoroughly enjoyed Juliet Naked. There is always something in Hornby's novels that makes me laugh out loud (and that is always a good thing), but at the same time Hornby exposes the ironies, hypocrisies, and quirks of modern middle class society.
Enjoy!
Coming soon to Burling Library
Other books by Nick Hornby at Burling:
About A Boy (1998)
Burling 3rd floor PR6058.O689 A64 1998
High Fidelity (1995)
Burling 3rd Floor PR6058.O689 H54 1995
How to Be Good (2001)
Burling 3rd Floor PR6058.O689 H69 2001
A Long Way Down (2005)
Burling 3rd Floor PR6058.O689 L66 2005
Slam (2oo7)
Smith Memorial PR6058.O689 S52 2007
Await Your Reply
Chaon, Dan. Await Your Reply. NY: Ballantine Books, 2009.
Submitted by R. Stuhr
If you read the blog entry for Cloud Atlas, then you already have read my comments on novels made up of separate stories that slowly become connected, so I won't repeat them here. Oberlin College professor Chaon uses this method with Await Your Reply. This novel starts out with stories about young or youngish people who have left or are preparing to leave friends and family behind: a young man who repeatedly disrupts his life to search for his twin brother; a young girl whose parents have died gives up her plans for college to leave town with her high school teacher; a young man leaves college after receiving a phone call from his biological father who is calling to tell him that he has been living with adoptive parents. In some respects, this novel is a mystery. The reader collects clues and slowly puts together the disparate pieces into a meaningful whole. Chaon's novel depicts everyday people making good and bad decisions, driven from forces from within themselves and from without. Some are motivated by love, others by greed, and all from loneliness.
Dan Chaon's novels and short stories (all highly recommended!):
Await Your Reply
Burling 3rd Floor PS 3553 .H277 A95 2009
You Remind Me of Me
Burling 3rd Floor PS 3553. H277 Y68 2004
Among the Missing (short stories)
Burling 3rd Floor PS 3553 .H277 A8 2001
Submitted by R. Stuhr
If you read the blog entry for Cloud Atlas, then you already have read my comments on novels made up of separate stories that slowly become connected, so I won't repeat them here. Oberlin College professor Chaon uses this method with Await Your Reply. This novel starts out with stories about young or youngish people who have left or are preparing to leave friends and family behind: a young man who repeatedly disrupts his life to search for his twin brother; a young girl whose parents have died gives up her plans for college to leave town with her high school teacher; a young man leaves college after receiving a phone call from his biological father who is calling to tell him that he has been living with adoptive parents. In some respects, this novel is a mystery. The reader collects clues and slowly puts together the disparate pieces into a meaningful whole. Chaon's novel depicts everyday people making good and bad decisions, driven from forces from within themselves and from without. Some are motivated by love, others by greed, and all from loneliness.
Dan Chaon's novels and short stories (all highly recommended!):
Await Your Reply
Burling 3rd Floor PS 3553 .H277 A95 2009
You Remind Me of Me
Burling 3rd Floor PS 3553. H277 Y68 2004
Among the Missing (short stories)
Burling 3rd Floor PS 3553 .H277 A8 2001
Cloud Atlas
Mitchell, David. Cloud Atlas. Random House, 2004.
Submitted by R. Stuhr
It seems to be more and more common in novels and films to take seemingly disparate stories that gradually link link together through the characters and details of the narratives. Although it may start to seem like a cliché, it does reflect life if you step back outside of your everyday existence. Meetings that are chance or random become significant, actions of people unknown to each other may gradually (or not so gradually) may bring those people together or change the lives people unmet. Movements within history and politics, culture, science, dramatically change the lives of people born decades and centuries later. Mitchell uses this technique in his novel Cloud Atlas, but adds something a little different. His novel presents six stories that move forward in time in great leaps. It begins with a remnant of th journal of kept by a notary, a passenger on a 19th century ship voyaging through the South Seas.The next story jumps to Belgium between the world wars. A destitute, disinherited, morally shallow young man is seeking to study composition with a once prominent composer who has succumbed to ill health brought on by syphilis. These first two stories could be entirely separate short stories. The next story is reminiscent of the Karen Silkwood case of the 1970s. A minor overlap is introduced into this story. The next story takes place in what is perhaps the present day. The main character is a failing publisher who through sibling conspiracy winds up confined against his will in a gothicly horrific rehabilitation home. He has in his possession a manuscript that tells the story of Luisa Rey (the Karen Silkwoodesque character from the previous story). The next story takes the reader far into the future. Consumerism has triumphed; commodification is everything; cloning (taken a step further than the clones in Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go) has done away with the need or possibility of most noncloned people to work. Finally, the story at the peak of this triangle of stories, takes place after most of the world has been laid to waste whether through war, environmental disaster or all of the possibilities of human induced catastrophe combined. Civilization is starting over in some cases with remnants of memories and evidence from earlier civilizations, in other cases, Battle Star Gallactica like, survivors of the disasters travel together on a ship, observing the newly developing civilizations. At this point in the novel, the reader is starting to pull some threads together and a theme is developing. In the second half of Cloud Atlas, Mitchell continues the stories in reverse order... all of the threads and themes coming together.
Now that I've gone on in great detail about the make up of the novel, I should say something about what first struck me about Cloud Atlas. It was Mitchell's incredibly beautiful writing. I was in love with this novel before the end of the first story. Mitchell's writing changes as the stories change. The first two stories have the most formal and evocative style because that is in keeping with the time period. The story that takes place far into the future (in Korea) features txt mssgng influenced vocabulary and spelling. Nothing seems haphazard or rushed off in this work. Mitchell's writing isn't a hobby or a commercial enterprise (merely), but he is truly a master with words and ideas.
Having said that, his novel, as I interpret it, explores how far greed, acquisitiveness, selfishness, and a craving for power can be taken. The penultimate story (moving forward) describes a society that has taken these aspects of the human character about as far as they can go. The novel opens and closes with the 19th century voyage. The notary is a simple and good man. He is troubled by the uninhibited colonial appropriation of land and control and throughout tries to reconcile his national loyalty, his religious instincts, and his belief in the essential goodness of his fellow "man" with what he observes. In the end he almost dies because of his faith in others, but even his narrow escape does not end his sense of hope and optimism. "Belief is both prize and battlefield, within the mind & in the mind's mirror, the world. If we believe humanity is a ladder of tribes, a colosseum of confrontation, exploitation & bestiality, such a humanity is surely brought into being & history's Horroxes, Boerhaaves, and Gooses shall prevail" (508).
Can the opposite be true? You'll need to read this novel for yourself. Cloud Atlas, recommended to me by Claire Moissan, a Grinnellian and Writing Lab instructor, is a consummate novel. It tells a compelling tale as it sheds light on the human condition, provides new ways to view history and the future, taking away all hope and handing back a spoonful of it before the last page is read, all in beautifully crafted prose.
Read this book!
Burling 3rd Floor PR6063.I785 C58 2004
Other Novels by David Mitchell:
The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet (2010)
Black Swan Green (Random House, 2006)
Number9dream (Random House, 2001)
Ghostwritten (Random House, 2000)
Submitted by R. Stuhr
It seems to be more and more common in novels and films to take seemingly disparate stories that gradually link link together through the characters and details of the narratives. Although it may start to seem like a cliché, it does reflect life if you step back outside of your everyday existence. Meetings that are chance or random become significant, actions of people unknown to each other may gradually (or not so gradually) may bring those people together or change the lives people unmet. Movements within history and politics, culture, science, dramatically change the lives of people born decades and centuries later. Mitchell uses this technique in his novel Cloud Atlas, but adds something a little different. His novel presents six stories that move forward in time in great leaps. It begins with a remnant of th journal of kept by a notary, a passenger on a 19th century ship voyaging through the South Seas.The next story jumps to Belgium between the world wars. A destitute, disinherited, morally shallow young man is seeking to study composition with a once prominent composer who has succumbed to ill health brought on by syphilis. These first two stories could be entirely separate short stories. The next story is reminiscent of the Karen Silkwood case of the 1970s. A minor overlap is introduced into this story. The next story takes place in what is perhaps the present day. The main character is a failing publisher who through sibling conspiracy winds up confined against his will in a gothicly horrific rehabilitation home. He has in his possession a manuscript that tells the story of Luisa Rey (the Karen Silkwoodesque character from the previous story). The next story takes the reader far into the future. Consumerism has triumphed; commodification is everything; cloning (taken a step further than the clones in Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go) has done away with the need or possibility of most noncloned people to work. Finally, the story at the peak of this triangle of stories, takes place after most of the world has been laid to waste whether through war, environmental disaster or all of the possibilities of human induced catastrophe combined. Civilization is starting over in some cases with remnants of memories and evidence from earlier civilizations, in other cases, Battle Star Gallactica like, survivors of the disasters travel together on a ship, observing the newly developing civilizations. At this point in the novel, the reader is starting to pull some threads together and a theme is developing. In the second half of Cloud Atlas, Mitchell continues the stories in reverse order... all of the threads and themes coming together.
Now that I've gone on in great detail about the make up of the novel, I should say something about what first struck me about Cloud Atlas. It was Mitchell's incredibly beautiful writing. I was in love with this novel before the end of the first story. Mitchell's writing changes as the stories change. The first two stories have the most formal and evocative style because that is in keeping with the time period. The story that takes place far into the future (in Korea) features txt mssgng influenced vocabulary and spelling. Nothing seems haphazard or rushed off in this work. Mitchell's writing isn't a hobby or a commercial enterprise (merely), but he is truly a master with words and ideas.
Having said that, his novel, as I interpret it, explores how far greed, acquisitiveness, selfishness, and a craving for power can be taken. The penultimate story (moving forward) describes a society that has taken these aspects of the human character about as far as they can go. The novel opens and closes with the 19th century voyage. The notary is a simple and good man. He is troubled by the uninhibited colonial appropriation of land and control and throughout tries to reconcile his national loyalty, his religious instincts, and his belief in the essential goodness of his fellow "man" with what he observes. In the end he almost dies because of his faith in others, but even his narrow escape does not end his sense of hope and optimism. "Belief is both prize and battlefield, within the mind & in the mind's mirror, the world. If we believe humanity is a ladder of tribes, a colosseum of confrontation, exploitation & bestiality, such a humanity is surely brought into being & history's Horroxes, Boerhaaves, and Gooses shall prevail" (508).
Can the opposite be true? You'll need to read this novel for yourself. Cloud Atlas, recommended to me by Claire Moissan, a Grinnellian and Writing Lab instructor, is a consummate novel. It tells a compelling tale as it sheds light on the human condition, provides new ways to view history and the future, taking away all hope and handing back a spoonful of it before the last page is read, all in beautifully crafted prose.
Read this book!
Burling 3rd Floor PR6063.I785 C58 2004
Other Novels by David Mitchell:
The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet (2010)
Black Swan Green (Random House, 2006)
Number9dream (Random House, 2001)
Ghostwritten (Random House, 2000)
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Coming Soon
Reviews for Dan Chaon's Await Your Reply, and David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas. Also, Dismantling the Public Discourse, and Nick Hornby's Juliet Naked.
Hold your breath.
Hold your breath.
Parasol in a Hurricane
Greer, James. A Parasol in a Hurricane. Wild Child Publishing, 2009.
Reading on the run? For less than the cost of coffee at the diner you can download a book for your PC, iPhone or Palm Pilot. Try this police procedural for $1.99 from Wild Child Publishing.
"A Parasol in a Hurricane."
Take two universal ingredients—abusive relationships and a struggle for personal growth—mix them in the cauldron of a small-town police environment, add a dash of corrosive personalities and bureaucracy and you’ve cooked up a tasty crime drama. James Greer brings his expertise in law enforcement to the recipe called A Parasol in a Hurricane, a new e-book release from Wild Child Publishing. (Disclaimer: I have two collections published by Wild Child.)
The reader can tell Greer has done his share of professional homework, quoting Stephen King on marital restraining orders that are no better than the eponymous parasol. He also mentions recommended reading for on-the-make detectives and provides a précis of squad car communications and codes. Both protagonist Detective Karen O’Neill and the object of her inquiry, runaway Marsha Beston, are independent, on-their-toes women conflicted with less-than-understanding men and a struggle for self-realization.
Greer handles a tough job well of getting into the mind of a woman saddled with a loutish husband who has dragged her from San Diego to rural Wisconsin. Through the author’s dialogue, his protagonist also does a solid job of standing up to the department’s internal affairs officer while defending her suspect. And, yes, for a generally non-violent story, there are satisfactory killings to leaven the entrée. Parasol is a quick read filled with tension. Who knew life in rural Wisconsin could be so tasty?
A Parasol in a Hurricane, by James Greer, Wild Child Publishing
(www.wildchildpublishing.com), 2009, PDF file, 29 pages.
Reviewed by Walt Giersbach ’61 (http://allotropiclucubrations.blogspot.com)
Reading on the run? For less than the cost of coffee at the diner you can download a book for your PC, iPhone or Palm Pilot. Try this police procedural for $1.99 from Wild Child Publishing.
"A Parasol in a Hurricane."
Take two universal ingredients—abusive relationships and a struggle for personal growth—mix them in the cauldron of a small-town police environment, add a dash of corrosive personalities and bureaucracy and you’ve cooked up a tasty crime drama. James Greer brings his expertise in law enforcement to the recipe called A Parasol in a Hurricane, a new e-book release from Wild Child Publishing. (Disclaimer: I have two collections published by Wild Child.)
The reader can tell Greer has done his share of professional homework, quoting Stephen King on marital restraining orders that are no better than the eponymous parasol. He also mentions recommended reading for on-the-make detectives and provides a précis of squad car communications and codes. Both protagonist Detective Karen O’Neill and the object of her inquiry, runaway Marsha Beston, are independent, on-their-toes women conflicted with less-than-understanding men and a struggle for self-realization.
Greer handles a tough job well of getting into the mind of a woman saddled with a loutish husband who has dragged her from San Diego to rural Wisconsin. Through the author’s dialogue, his protagonist also does a solid job of standing up to the department’s internal affairs officer while defending her suspect. And, yes, for a generally non-violent story, there are satisfactory killings to leaven the entrée. Parasol is a quick read filled with tension. Who knew life in rural Wisconsin could be so tasty?
A Parasol in a Hurricane, by James Greer, Wild Child Publishing
(www.wildchildpublishing.com), 2009, PDF file, 29 pages.
Reviewed by Walt Giersbach ’61 (http://allotropiclucubrations.blogspot.com)
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
The Calligrapher’s Daughter
Kim, Eugenia Sunhee. The Calligrapher's Daughter. New York: Henry Hold and Company, 2009.
Elena Filios
I just finished a very interesting book which I would like to recommend to you all. The Calligrapher’s Daughter, by Eugenia Sunhee Kim. It is a very richly drawn novel about Korea, a country torn between ancient customs and modern times during the early 20th century. The central character is a young woman who fights against the traditional role of women. Although a novel, it is very “ethnographic,” with many details about a country and a culture I was unfamiliar with.
Elena Filios
Community Information Technology Coordinator
Hartford Public Library
Hartford, CT 06103
www.hartfordinfo.org
www.hplct.org
On order for Burling Library
Elena Filios
I just finished a very interesting book which I would like to recommend to you all. The Calligrapher’s Daughter, by Eugenia Sunhee Kim. It is a very richly drawn novel about Korea, a country torn between ancient customs and modern times during the early 20th century. The central character is a young woman who fights against the traditional role of women. Although a novel, it is very “ethnographic,” with many details about a country and a culture I was unfamiliar with.
Elena Filios
Community Information Technology Coordinator
Hartford Public Library
Hartford, CT 06103
www.hartfordinfo.org
www.hplct.org
On order for Burling Library
Thursday, November 5, 2009
Patriotic Treason
Evan Carton. Patriotic Treason: John Brown and the Soul of America. New York: Free Press, 2006.
Reviewed by Joe Hewitt
(Missouri State University)
Today, Americans know John Brown as the man who ignited the U.S. Civil War with his failed attempt to start a slave revolt with weapons from the Harpers Ferry armory in Virginia. Shortly after his capture, a Virginia court charged him with treason against the commonwealth of Virginia, conspiring with slaves to commit treason, and murder. After a four-day show trial, the jury’s inevitable guilty verdict took only forty-five minutes. Brown discouraged any talk of a rescue attempt by antislavery allies saying “I am worth more to hang than for any other purpose.” During the month’s wait before his execution, he read the Biblical passages affirming the righteousness of human equality, wrote many letters to family and friends, and received a steady stream of visitors from the North.
Evan Carton’s Patriotic Treason examines the life of John Brown, his abolitionist activities, his friends in the antislavery movement, the role of religion in his motivation for freeing slaves, his military exploits and terrorist acts in Kansas, his personal and public life, the role of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in creating Bleeding Kansas, the role of the Fugitive Slave Act in criminalizing abolitionists who refused to return escaping slaves as required, and his final desperate act. An unconventional historian, Carton describes John Brown’s inner conflicts much like a novelist would write about a major character giving the entire narrative an exciting, page-turner quality, but the history is thorough and detailed with its story of a man of action and faith losing faith in the political process to correct a systemic wrong.
In his epilogue, Evan Carton notes that the American historical establishment demonized John Brown as a dangerous fanatic. “Private citizens agitating on single issues were not the preferred engines of history.” Carton argues that the story of the Civil War needed a villain and John Brown offended conventional mores enough to fit that role.
This book helped me understand why Kansas, where John Brown emboldened the Free Staters to drive proslavery hooligans from the state, has done so little to recognize this founding father. Although his image reigns over the Kansas State Capitol’s rotunda in John Steuart Curry’s famous mural, his homestead near my boyhood home in eastern Kansas is not marked. One hundred and fifty years after Harpers Ferry, John Brown’s vision of a democracy for all, regardless of race, is still misunderstood.
On order for Burling Library
Reviewed by Joe Hewitt
(Missouri State University)
Today, Americans know John Brown as the man who ignited the U.S. Civil War with his failed attempt to start a slave revolt with weapons from the Harpers Ferry armory in Virginia. Shortly after his capture, a Virginia court charged him with treason against the commonwealth of Virginia, conspiring with slaves to commit treason, and murder. After a four-day show trial, the jury’s inevitable guilty verdict took only forty-five minutes. Brown discouraged any talk of a rescue attempt by antislavery allies saying “I am worth more to hang than for any other purpose.” During the month’s wait before his execution, he read the Biblical passages affirming the righteousness of human equality, wrote many letters to family and friends, and received a steady stream of visitors from the North.
Evan Carton’s Patriotic Treason examines the life of John Brown, his abolitionist activities, his friends in the antislavery movement, the role of religion in his motivation for freeing slaves, his military exploits and terrorist acts in Kansas, his personal and public life, the role of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in creating Bleeding Kansas, the role of the Fugitive Slave Act in criminalizing abolitionists who refused to return escaping slaves as required, and his final desperate act. An unconventional historian, Carton describes John Brown’s inner conflicts much like a novelist would write about a major character giving the entire narrative an exciting, page-turner quality, but the history is thorough and detailed with its story of a man of action and faith losing faith in the political process to correct a systemic wrong.
In his epilogue, Evan Carton notes that the American historical establishment demonized John Brown as a dangerous fanatic. “Private citizens agitating on single issues were not the preferred engines of history.” Carton argues that the story of the Civil War needed a villain and John Brown offended conventional mores enough to fit that role.
This book helped me understand why Kansas, where John Brown emboldened the Free Staters to drive proslavery hooligans from the state, has done so little to recognize this founding father. Although his image reigns over the Kansas State Capitol’s rotunda in John Steuart Curry’s famous mural, his homestead near my boyhood home in eastern Kansas is not marked. One hundred and fifty years after Harpers Ferry, John Brown’s vision of a democracy for all, regardless of race, is still misunderstood.
On order for Burling Library
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Beyond the Blossoming Fields--the story of Japan's first female doctor
Jun'ichi Watanabe. Beyond The Blossoming Fields. Translated by Deborah Iwabuchi and Anna Isozaki. London: Alma Books Ltd., 2008.
R. Stuhr
Blossoming Fields is the biography of the first female doctor trained to practice western medicine in Japan. This story, a bestseller in Japan and translated into English by my favorite translator, Deborah Iwabuchi and her colleague Anna Isozaki, presents Ginko in all of her bravery, hard as nails determination, and ego. Born into an important landed family, Ginko was married in the traditional manner of the time, but was unlucky enough to contract gonorrhea from her husband. She left her husband's household to return home to be cared for by her own family. Her illness served to magnify her unhappiness with her status as wife and even after she recovered she refused to go back to her husband--subjecting her family to the ignominy of a divorce. Her illness and recovery were the motivation for her medical pursuits. Seeking a cure, she and her mother went to Tokyo to visit a doctor trained in western style medicine. Ginko is mortified by the internal exam and this leads to her desire to become a doctor so that women have the option of being examined by a female rather than a male doctor.
The path is anything but smooth. Ginko is disinherited by her family, lives on almost nothing and studies at all hours so that she will be the top student in all of her classes. Watanabe leaves no doubt about the nearly insurmountable obstacles she had to overcome. It was not illegal for women to attend medical school or to practice medicine, but it was not done nor acceptable in the society. It took years for Ginko to get into medical school and then she experienced both verbal and physical abuse. Somehow, despite poverty, starvation, threats, and isolation, Ginko achieved her dream and opened a clinic in Tokyo where she treated both men and women. Ginko attended to her patients and her staff with fiery moral zeal. She was loved and hated. No one seemed to get past her very private personality until, following her conversion to Christianity, she meets a young man who has aspirations to set up a Christian utopia in the far north of Japan. She finds her self in the midst of another controversy when she decides to marry the younger man and eventually leave her practice to join him in Hokkaido.
Ginko’s life is never easy and in the end, her greatness was in what she achieved to become a doctor and in the door she opened for other Japanese women to do the same.
R. Stuhr
Blossoming Fields is the biography of the first female doctor trained to practice western medicine in Japan. This story, a bestseller in Japan and translated into English by my favorite translator, Deborah Iwabuchi and her colleague Anna Isozaki, presents Ginko in all of her bravery, hard as nails determination, and ego. Born into an important landed family, Ginko was married in the traditional manner of the time, but was unlucky enough to contract gonorrhea from her husband. She left her husband's household to return home to be cared for by her own family. Her illness served to magnify her unhappiness with her status as wife and even after she recovered she refused to go back to her husband--subjecting her family to the ignominy of a divorce. Her illness and recovery were the motivation for her medical pursuits. Seeking a cure, she and her mother went to Tokyo to visit a doctor trained in western style medicine. Ginko is mortified by the internal exam and this leads to her desire to become a doctor so that women have the option of being examined by a female rather than a male doctor.
The path is anything but smooth. Ginko is disinherited by her family, lives on almost nothing and studies at all hours so that she will be the top student in all of her classes. Watanabe leaves no doubt about the nearly insurmountable obstacles she had to overcome. It was not illegal for women to attend medical school or to practice medicine, but it was not done nor acceptable in the society. It took years for Ginko to get into medical school and then she experienced both verbal and physical abuse. Somehow, despite poverty, starvation, threats, and isolation, Ginko achieved her dream and opened a clinic in Tokyo where she treated both men and women. Ginko attended to her patients and her staff with fiery moral zeal. She was loved and hated. No one seemed to get past her very private personality until, following her conversion to Christianity, she meets a young man who has aspirations to set up a Christian utopia in the far north of Japan. She finds her self in the midst of another controversy when she decides to marry the younger man and eventually leave her practice to join him in Hokkaido.
Ginko’s life is never easy and in the end, her greatness was in what she achieved to become a doctor and in the door she opened for other Japanese women to do the same.
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Ralph Nader's "Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us."
Ralph Nader, “Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us!” New York: Seven Stories Press, 2009.
Reviewed by T. Hatch
One might wonder how can the super-rich do anything but enslave us? Ralph Nader in the Author's Note implores us, in a corollary on Coleridge's willful suspension of disbelief, to utilize our sense of “imaginative engagement.” While Nader describes the genre of this work as a “practical utopia” (a charming and provocative oxymoron in its own right) I came to think of this process as more of a consciously informed credulity.
Seventeen aging billionaires at the behest of Warren Buffet take to meeting at a resort hotel in Maui and conspire to lead a series of mass movements that successfully commodifies worker justice and democracy. Naturally along the way a host of reactionaries such as the U.S. Chamber of Congress and the management of Wal Mart push back but the “Meliorists” are too well organized, too well funded, and being the old geezers that they are have nothing left to lose.
Nader clearly wants to stand Aldous Huxley on his head (insomuch as he openly says so). Several of the reviews of “Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us!” have focused on the more fanciful elements of the narrative, e.g. Wal Mart management caving into popular pressure and acquiescing to unionization of its labor force, as evidence of some form of nostalgic dementia on the part of Mr. Nader. Anyone who confuses this book for a blueprint or a guide to action misses the point. The imagination that Nader appeals to reminds me of the Annalist historian Marc Bloch's use of the term. For Bloch, a member of the French resistance tortured and killed by the Nazis at Lyon, that imagintion was a means to an empathetic historical understanding. It does not mean creating a narrative cut from whole cloth, rather it is an injunction to creatively imagine the solving of problems. Nader is clearly not using imagination then in the same way that the utopian socialist Charles Fourier was.
I spoke with the author albeit briefly on a radio call in show today (October 7th) shortly before writing this critique. Unfortunately Mr. Nader did not answer my first question which wasL: is corporate capitalism worth saving through reform. He instead concentrated on my comment that he mentions what was being served for lunch and food in general dozens of times throughout the book. There is much I wish I had said but didn't. For instance, by last March I was sorry that I hadn't voted for you for a fourth time.
On order for Burling Library
Reviewed by T. Hatch
One might wonder how can the super-rich do anything but enslave us? Ralph Nader in the Author's Note implores us, in a corollary on Coleridge's willful suspension of disbelief, to utilize our sense of “imaginative engagement.” While Nader describes the genre of this work as a “practical utopia” (a charming and provocative oxymoron in its own right) I came to think of this process as more of a consciously informed credulity.
Seventeen aging billionaires at the behest of Warren Buffet take to meeting at a resort hotel in Maui and conspire to lead a series of mass movements that successfully commodifies worker justice and democracy. Naturally along the way a host of reactionaries such as the U.S. Chamber of Congress and the management of Wal Mart push back but the “Meliorists” are too well organized, too well funded, and being the old geezers that they are have nothing left to lose.
Nader clearly wants to stand Aldous Huxley on his head (insomuch as he openly says so). Several of the reviews of “Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us!” have focused on the more fanciful elements of the narrative, e.g. Wal Mart management caving into popular pressure and acquiescing to unionization of its labor force, as evidence of some form of nostalgic dementia on the part of Mr. Nader. Anyone who confuses this book for a blueprint or a guide to action misses the point. The imagination that Nader appeals to reminds me of the Annalist historian Marc Bloch's use of the term. For Bloch, a member of the French resistance tortured and killed by the Nazis at Lyon, that imagintion was a means to an empathetic historical understanding. It does not mean creating a narrative cut from whole cloth, rather it is an injunction to creatively imagine the solving of problems. Nader is clearly not using imagination then in the same way that the utopian socialist Charles Fourier was.
I spoke with the author albeit briefly on a radio call in show today (October 7th) shortly before writing this critique. Unfortunately Mr. Nader did not answer my first question which wasL: is corporate capitalism worth saving through reform. He instead concentrated on my comment that he mentions what was being served for lunch and food in general dozens of times throughout the book. There is much I wish I had said but didn't. For instance, by last March I was sorry that I hadn't voted for you for a fourth time.
On order for Burling Library
Friday, October 16, 2009
It Takes a Pillage
Nomi Prins. It Takes a Pillage: Behind the Bailouts, Bonuses, and Backroom Deals from Washington to Wall Street. Hoboken New Jersey: John Wiley and Sons, 2009.
Reviewed by T. Hatch
A trillion here, a trillion there, the next thing you know.... $19.3 trillion dollars is the current price tag for the bailout of the nation's banking system according to author, and former managing director at Goldman Sachs, Nomi Prins. That robust total includes everything chipped in from the Federal Reserve, the Department of the Treasury, The FDIC, and from Congress, to save capitalism as we know it. Prins has labeled this event as “the Second Great Bank Depression.” It is the single largest transfer of wealth in human history; we watched while it happened.
The magnitude of this brazenness is difficult to get one's mind around. Quantified a little differently, one million dollars in cash (i.e. 10,000 one hundred dollar bills) weighs about 144 lbs. Therefore $19.3 trillion weighs 2,779,200 pounds. A fifty-three foot semi trailer holds approximately 46,500 pounds of load; this is enough currency to fill sixty of these trucks. How far this cash would stretch into outer space if placed end-to-end is an open question.
Prins is clearly angry and it shows in her writing. While this contempt is understandable, and shared by almost everyone who is not a CEO with a Wall Street Bank, it does become somewhat tiresome. If the subject were the Holocaust or the Atlantic slave trade no rational or moral person would defend either practice. But to condemn the evil on every page wears the reader out and detracts from the larger argument.
This is a solid book because it is thoroughly researched and Prins has the technical expertise to make sense of the subject matter. Several themes are developed in some depth in this work. Bipartisanship may seem like it has disappeared from Washington but it remains alive and well when it comes to providing the banking industry with all of the taxpayer funds they need to sustain the current casino environment on Wall Street. The Fed is a highly secretive organization that operates with impunity in providing liquidity to the members of the financial elect. The removal of critical and effective regulation (especially the Glass-Steagall Act) was a disaster. And, allowing banks that were too big in the first instance to further consolidate through merger and acquistion is pouring gasoline on the fire. Finally, since almost nothing has changed structurally in our financial system there is bound to be another melt-down even worse than the current crisis, sometime in the not to distant future.
Prins also provides updated information on her website showing where, and how much, money is going to various financial institutions. It is clear from the information on the website and reading It Takes a Pillage that free markets are anything but free.
On order for Burling Library
Reviewed by T. Hatch
A trillion here, a trillion there, the next thing you know.... $19.3 trillion dollars is the current price tag for the bailout of the nation's banking system according to author, and former managing director at Goldman Sachs, Nomi Prins. That robust total includes everything chipped in from the Federal Reserve, the Department of the Treasury, The FDIC, and from Congress, to save capitalism as we know it. Prins has labeled this event as “the Second Great Bank Depression.” It is the single largest transfer of wealth in human history; we watched while it happened.
The magnitude of this brazenness is difficult to get one's mind around. Quantified a little differently, one million dollars in cash (i.e. 10,000 one hundred dollar bills) weighs about 144 lbs. Therefore $19.3 trillion weighs 2,779,200 pounds. A fifty-three foot semi trailer holds approximately 46,500 pounds of load; this is enough currency to fill sixty of these trucks. How far this cash would stretch into outer space if placed end-to-end is an open question.
Prins is clearly angry and it shows in her writing. While this contempt is understandable, and shared by almost everyone who is not a CEO with a Wall Street Bank, it does become somewhat tiresome. If the subject were the Holocaust or the Atlantic slave trade no rational or moral person would defend either practice. But to condemn the evil on every page wears the reader out and detracts from the larger argument.
This is a solid book because it is thoroughly researched and Prins has the technical expertise to make sense of the subject matter. Several themes are developed in some depth in this work. Bipartisanship may seem like it has disappeared from Washington but it remains alive and well when it comes to providing the banking industry with all of the taxpayer funds they need to sustain the current casino environment on Wall Street. The Fed is a highly secretive organization that operates with impunity in providing liquidity to the members of the financial elect. The removal of critical and effective regulation (especially the Glass-Steagall Act) was a disaster. And, allowing banks that were too big in the first instance to further consolidate through merger and acquistion is pouring gasoline on the fire. Finally, since almost nothing has changed structurally in our financial system there is bound to be another melt-down even worse than the current crisis, sometime in the not to distant future.
Prins also provides updated information on her website showing where, and how much, money is going to various financial institutions. It is clear from the information on the website and reading It Takes a Pillage that free markets are anything but free.
On order for Burling Library
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo
Larsson, Stieg. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Knopf, 2008.
Submitted by Catherine Rod
Swedish author Larsson was a journalist who died at the age of 50 and before his three novels were published. The others in the series of three are The Girl Who Played with Fire (Knopf 2009) and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest (Knopf 2010). Dragon Tattoo is about corporate and family corruption, tragedy and human vulnerability. Catherine Rod, an avid reader of mysteries, notes that this is the first of Larsson's three posthumously published novels. "It is absolutely riveting and has an interesting main character. If you like mysteries, try this one!"
All three novels are on order for Burling Library.
Submitted by Catherine Rod
Swedish author Larsson was a journalist who died at the age of 50 and before his three novels were published. The others in the series of three are The Girl Who Played with Fire (Knopf 2009) and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest (Knopf 2010). Dragon Tattoo is about corporate and family corruption, tragedy and human vulnerability. Catherine Rod, an avid reader of mysteries, notes that this is the first of Larsson's three posthumously published novels. "It is absolutely riveting and has an interesting main character. If you like mysteries, try this one!"
All three novels are on order for Burling Library.
Saturday, September 19, 2009
Road Dogs by Elmore Leonard
Leonard, Elmore. Road Dogs. New York: William Morrow, 2009
Walter Giersbach '61
Robert Pinsky, reviewing for The New York Times in May 2009, said Elmore Leonard’s Road Dogs “is about the varying degrees of truth and baloney in human relationships. Sometimes the truth or the baloney is lethal. Droll and exciting, enriched by the self-aware, what-the-hell-why-not insouciance of a master now in his mid-80s, Road Dogs presents interesting questions: Can a grown person change? Specifically, can a man abandon expertise that wins him respect but makes a mess of his life? Can anybody trust anybody? Is love ever true? Is friendship ever real? Or, leaving aside love and friendship, does loyalty exist? We road dogs—trotting along companionably on our way to sniff and woof and boogie-woogie and perhaps knock over an occasional trash barrel together—are we reliable?”
I’ve maintained a list of every book I’ve read since 1973, starting when I realized I was reading an embarrassing amount of pop fiction at the expense of more worthy literary efforts. Not that Robert Ludlum is bad, but it’s genre writing. Finishing my seventh Elmore Leonard opus I realized it was time to get back to Drew Gilpin Faust’s This Republic of Suffering or David Liss’s Conspiracy of Paper. Then I had my epiphany: Elmore Leonard was an extremely good writer.
You know Leonard from the films Get Shorty, Stick, Mr. Majestyk, Jackie Brown and 27 others. You just haven’t read him.
The Christian Science Monitor’s James Kaufman (who teaches at the U. of Iowa) wrote in 1983, “It’s taken awhile for people to catch onto Leonard, though Stick finally brought him the scrutiny of the critical establishment…. But like more overnight successes, Leonard had been writing…since 1953.” Newgate Callendar, writing in The New York Times Book Review in 1973, stated, “When [Leonard’s] 52 Pickup appeared in 1974, it had some critics talking in terms of Raymond Chandler and Ross Macdonald…. But it is really wrong to talk of this writer in terms of Chandler and Macdonald. He has little in common with those two. They are ‘clean’ writers; there is no profanity to speak of in Chandler, and Macdonald has never been an exponent of the verismo school of speech. Leonard is.”
Leonard’s characters are for the most part, good, decent people, but ones who might challenge you to arm wrestle. The writing is spare and lacking in simile or metaphor. His protagonists have interior thoughts and existential questions. What remains when the reader puts down a Leonard work are characters drawn in clean, sharp lines. He is Hemingway, unexpurgated and sitting in a bar or police squad room.
Then you may find Road Dogs and Leonard’s 40 other novels are addictive.
Books (and a couple of films) by Elmore Leonard at the Grinnell College Libraries
PS3562.E55 (3rd floor)
Walter Giersbach '61
Robert Pinsky, reviewing for The New York Times in May 2009, said Elmore Leonard’s Road Dogs “is about the varying degrees of truth and baloney in human relationships. Sometimes the truth or the baloney is lethal. Droll and exciting, enriched by the self-aware, what-the-hell-why-not insouciance of a master now in his mid-80s, Road Dogs presents interesting questions: Can a grown person change? Specifically, can a man abandon expertise that wins him respect but makes a mess of his life? Can anybody trust anybody? Is love ever true? Is friendship ever real? Or, leaving aside love and friendship, does loyalty exist? We road dogs—trotting along companionably on our way to sniff and woof and boogie-woogie and perhaps knock over an occasional trash barrel together—are we reliable?”
I’ve maintained a list of every book I’ve read since 1973, starting when I realized I was reading an embarrassing amount of pop fiction at the expense of more worthy literary efforts. Not that Robert Ludlum is bad, but it’s genre writing. Finishing my seventh Elmore Leonard opus I realized it was time to get back to Drew Gilpin Faust’s This Republic of Suffering or David Liss’s Conspiracy of Paper. Then I had my epiphany: Elmore Leonard was an extremely good writer.
You know Leonard from the films Get Shorty, Stick, Mr. Majestyk, Jackie Brown and 27 others. You just haven’t read him.
The Christian Science Monitor’s James Kaufman (who teaches at the U. of Iowa) wrote in 1983, “It’s taken awhile for people to catch onto Leonard, though Stick finally brought him the scrutiny of the critical establishment…. But like more overnight successes, Leonard had been writing…since 1953.” Newgate Callendar, writing in The New York Times Book Review in 1973, stated, “When [Leonard’s] 52 Pickup appeared in 1974, it had some critics talking in terms of Raymond Chandler and Ross Macdonald…. But it is really wrong to talk of this writer in terms of Chandler and Macdonald. He has little in common with those two. They are ‘clean’ writers; there is no profanity to speak of in Chandler, and Macdonald has never been an exponent of the verismo school of speech. Leonard is.”
Leonard’s characters are for the most part, good, decent people, but ones who might challenge you to arm wrestle. The writing is spare and lacking in simile or metaphor. His protagonists have interior thoughts and existential questions. What remains when the reader puts down a Leonard work are characters drawn in clean, sharp lines. He is Hemingway, unexpurgated and sitting in a bar or police squad room.
Then you may find Road Dogs and Leonard’s 40 other novels are addictive.
Books (and a couple of films) by Elmore Leonard at the Grinnell College Libraries
PS3562.E55 (3rd floor)
Road Dogs. 2009 On Order The Hot Kid: A Novel. 2005.
Mr. Paradise. 2004.
Tishomingo Blues. 2002.
Pagan Babies. 2000.
Be Cool. 1999.
Riding Rap. 1995.
Rum Punch. 1992.
Maximum Bob. 1991.
Get Shorty. 1990.
Killshot. 1989.
Films
3:10 to Yuma. 2008
Rum Punch. 2002
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Hunger
Knut Hamsun. Hunger. New York: Noonday Press, 1967. Originally published in Norwegian in 1890.
R. Stuhr
According to the Isaac Bashevis Singer's introduction to this translation (by none other than Robert Bly), Hamsun is the father of modernism, won the Nobel Prize in 1920, and sadly, was a dupe, and therefore a pariah in his own country, to Hitler. The friend who recommended this book to me told me he was a Nazi, and through the entire novel (I read the introduction last) I kept thinking, that my friend had mispoke on that detail. But Singer lays it out unambiguously. Singer writes, "The Knut Hamsun who had kept aloof of the masses and social reformers allowed himself to be taken in by Nazi demagogues. It was a sad day for many of Hamsun's followers when a picture of him greeting Hitler appeared in the newspapers. In it, Hamsun's face reflects shame, while Hitler looks at him mockingly....Following Hitler's defeat, Hamsun's sons were imprisoned."
Singer considers Hunger to be one of Hamsun's four best novels along with Mysteries (1892), Editor Lynge (1893), and Pan (1894). Hunger takes place completely in the mind of the main character who is an impoverished writer living in Christiania, Norway. From time to time he looks for a job, but he makes what living he does make through writing. Hamsun's character is nearly insane from malnourishment and want, but always conscious of his wild compulsive behavior. Despite his tenuous grasp on life and sanity, he continues to try to write. When he knows he is at his limit, money suddenly materializes in some way, but it never lasts long and it is never enough to restore him to health. The book ends abruptly when the writer convinces a ship captain to take him on board to work.
After all the pain and desperation, wildness and compulsiveness, Hamsun's character is overjoyed at the prospect of the ship and not bitter about his days of poverty in the streets of Christiania. He ends the novel, "So he gave me a job to do ...When we were out on the fjord, I straightened up, wet from fever and exertion, looked in toward the land and said goodbye for now to the city, to Christiania, where the windows of the homes all shone with such brightness."
Burling 3rd Floor PT 8950 .H3 S813x 1967
R. Stuhr
According to the Isaac Bashevis Singer's introduction to this translation (by none other than Robert Bly), Hamsun is the father of modernism, won the Nobel Prize in 1920, and sadly, was a dupe, and therefore a pariah in his own country, to Hitler. The friend who recommended this book to me told me he was a Nazi, and through the entire novel (I read the introduction last) I kept thinking, that my friend had mispoke on that detail. But Singer lays it out unambiguously. Singer writes, "The Knut Hamsun who had kept aloof of the masses and social reformers allowed himself to be taken in by Nazi demagogues. It was a sad day for many of Hamsun's followers when a picture of him greeting Hitler appeared in the newspapers. In it, Hamsun's face reflects shame, while Hitler looks at him mockingly....Following Hitler's defeat, Hamsun's sons were imprisoned."
Singer considers Hunger to be one of Hamsun's four best novels along with Mysteries (1892), Editor Lynge (1893), and Pan (1894). Hunger takes place completely in the mind of the main character who is an impoverished writer living in Christiania, Norway. From time to time he looks for a job, but he makes what living he does make through writing. Hamsun's character is nearly insane from malnourishment and want, but always conscious of his wild compulsive behavior. Despite his tenuous grasp on life and sanity, he continues to try to write. When he knows he is at his limit, money suddenly materializes in some way, but it never lasts long and it is never enough to restore him to health. The book ends abruptly when the writer convinces a ship captain to take him on board to work.
After all the pain and desperation, wildness and compulsiveness, Hamsun's character is overjoyed at the prospect of the ship and not bitter about his days of poverty in the streets of Christiania. He ends the novel, "So he gave me a job to do ...When we were out on the fjord, I straightened up, wet from fever and exertion, looked in toward the land and said goodbye for now to the city, to Christiania, where the windows of the homes all shone with such brightness."
Burling 3rd Floor PT 8950 .H3 S813x 1967
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
A Prairie Reading at the Faulconer Gallery
Faulconer Gallery, Grinnell College Libraries, and Prairie Studies co-hosted a thoroughly enjoyable event last Tuesday night (September 1) at the Faulconer Gallery. The reading celebrated the closing week of the Small Expressions and Beneath the Surface exhibitions that have been going on all summer and that include an array of visual representations of the prairie. We had thirteen participants reading and performing, students, faculty, and staff. I, for one,was inspired by the choices and the enthusiasm behind the choices, so I decided to share the program with the Grinnell Community. If you have a favorite text that represents the prairie or nature in some respect, please let us know at the Book Review (bookreview@grinnell.edu)--just send us the title 0r the title and a sentence or two description.
Dean Porter opened our program with a reading from Jacqueline Edmonson's Prairie Town: Redefining Rural Life in the Age of Globalization (Rowman & Littlefield, 2003). (HN79.M6+E36+2003). This is a contemporary study of conditions in the rural areas of the midwest.
Betty Moffett read an essay that she wrote about her own personal prairie, "My Prairie," and then sang a song, again her own composition, with Sandy Moffett and Mark Schneider, "Golden Iowa." Both her essay and song depict the peaceful beauty one can experience stepping off of the pavement and into the grasslands of Iowa. Betty's essay was published in Midwest Woodlands and Prairies and you can hear the Too Many String Band perform her songs at Sts. Rest Coffee House on the third Wednesday of every month.
Jacob Gjesdahl enthusiastically recommended The Emerald Horizon: the History of Nature in Iowa by Cornelia F. Mutel (University of Iowa Press, 2008). (QH 105.I8 M875 2008) Mutel describes the way the prairie tends to itself (if left to its own devices). Mutel's book seems to be one that can lead the reader to a deep appreciation of the subtle Iowa landscape. If you have friends or family who wonder how it is you live in the middle of the country surrounded by cornfields, this might be a good book to give them.
Mark Schneider read the poem "Soy Beans," by Alan Orr from Hammer in the Fog. Mark also sang (with Sandy and Betty!) the song "Roseville Fair" by singer Bill Staines. "Soy Beans" is a poem about the hardships of farming versus the different kind of risk taken by the speculator.
Katherine Vanney read from a childhood favorite, Laura Ingalls Wilder's By the Shores of Silver Lake.
Tilly Woodward read from the booklet of poems by Paula Smith and available at the gallery. The poems were "Rhizomes," "The Grassland," and "The Tallgrass on Fire."
Richard Fyffe read two of his own poems, “Peterson’s Guide (Only a God Can Save Us Now)” and “Like a Picture, or a Bump on the Head,” and “Prairie Proper” from Merrill Gilfillan's Rivers and Birds (Johnson Books, 2003).
Kayla Koether read from Kent Nerburn's Neither Wolf Nor Dog: On Forgotten Roads with an Indian Elder (New World Press 1994). Kayla's reading illustrated the perspectives and cultural orientation of native people on the prairie.
Rebecca Stuhr read a short poem by Gary Snyder, "It Pleases," and played two etudes for flute by Robert Wyckes, "The White Tailed Kite," and "The Marsh Hawk."
Hart Ford-Hodges read an excerpt from the text she'd used in a biology class, Konza Prairie: A Tall Grass Natural History by O. Reichman. (University of Kansas Press, 1987). QH105.K3 R45 1987.
Catherine Rod read an excerpt from the writings of an early settler in Grinnell. You can find this memoir in the college archives and learn something about the unpredictability of Iowa weather and the boom town of Westfield.
Eliza Mutino read from the poet laureate, Ted Kooser, "So this is Nebraska," and "In the Corners of Fields."
Finally,
Jon Andelson read an excerpt from a novel by Herbert Quick (Bobbs-Merrill, 1922.) Vandemark's Folly PS3533.U53 V3. This excerpt celebrated the hard and sometimes miraculous work of the farmer, while at the same time mourning the loss of the prairie caused by the emergence of farmland.
You can see that the mixture of selections was eclectic. Each reading left me wanting to hear more from the poet or author or song writer ... You might want to investigate some of these readings as well, many of them are available in the libraries.
submitted by Rebecca Stuhr
Dean Porter opened our program with a reading from Jacqueline Edmonson's Prairie Town: Redefining Rural Life in the Age of Globalization (Rowman & Littlefield, 2003). (HN79.M6+E36+2003). This is a contemporary study of conditions in the rural areas of the midwest.
Betty Moffett read an essay that she wrote about her own personal prairie, "My Prairie," and then sang a song, again her own composition, with Sandy Moffett and Mark Schneider, "Golden Iowa." Both her essay and song depict the peaceful beauty one can experience stepping off of the pavement and into the grasslands of Iowa. Betty's essay was published in Midwest Woodlands and Prairies and you can hear the Too Many String Band perform her songs at Sts. Rest Coffee House on the third Wednesday of every month.
Jacob Gjesdahl enthusiastically recommended The Emerald Horizon: the History of Nature in Iowa by Cornelia F. Mutel (University of Iowa Press, 2008). (QH 105.I8 M875 2008) Mutel describes the way the prairie tends to itself (if left to its own devices). Mutel's book seems to be one that can lead the reader to a deep appreciation of the subtle Iowa landscape. If you have friends or family who wonder how it is you live in the middle of the country surrounded by cornfields, this might be a good book to give them.
Mark Schneider read the poem "Soy Beans," by Alan Orr from Hammer in the Fog. Mark also sang (with Sandy and Betty!) the song "Roseville Fair" by singer Bill Staines. "Soy Beans" is a poem about the hardships of farming versus the different kind of risk taken by the speculator.
Katherine Vanney read from a childhood favorite, Laura Ingalls Wilder's By the Shores of Silver Lake.
Tilly Woodward read from the booklet of poems by Paula Smith and available at the gallery. The poems were "Rhizomes," "The Grassland," and "The Tallgrass on Fire."
Richard Fyffe read two of his own poems, “Peterson’s Guide (Only a God Can Save Us Now)” and “Like a Picture, or a Bump on the Head,” and “Prairie Proper” from Merrill Gilfillan's Rivers and Birds (Johnson Books, 2003).
Kayla Koether read from Kent Nerburn's Neither Wolf Nor Dog: On Forgotten Roads with an Indian Elder (New World Press 1994). Kayla's reading illustrated the perspectives and cultural orientation of native people on the prairie.
Rebecca Stuhr read a short poem by Gary Snyder, "It Pleases," and played two etudes for flute by Robert Wyckes, "The White Tailed Kite," and "The Marsh Hawk."
Hart Ford-Hodges read an excerpt from the text she'd used in a biology class, Konza Prairie: A Tall Grass Natural History by O. Reichman. (University of Kansas Press, 1987). QH105.K3 R45 1987.
Catherine Rod read an excerpt from the writings of an early settler in Grinnell. You can find this memoir in the college archives and learn something about the unpredictability of Iowa weather and the boom town of Westfield.
Eliza Mutino read from the poet laureate, Ted Kooser, "So this is Nebraska," and "In the Corners of Fields."
Finally,
Jon Andelson read an excerpt from a novel by Herbert Quick (Bobbs-Merrill, 1922.) Vandemark's Folly PS3533.U53 V3. This excerpt celebrated the hard and sometimes miraculous work of the farmer, while at the same time mourning the loss of the prairie caused by the emergence of farmland.
You can see that the mixture of selections was eclectic. Each reading left me wanting to hear more from the poet or author or song writer ... You might want to investigate some of these readings as well, many of them are available in the libraries.
submitted by Rebecca Stuhr
Sunday, September 6, 2009
My Year in Iraq
Reviewed by T. Hatch
Some one recently asked me what is the funniest book you have read in the last five years? Honorable mention has to go to Pervez Musharraf's In the Line of Fire: A Memoir. But, for real belly laughs the undisputed champion is L. Paul Bremer's My Year in Iraq. The most endearing quality of the book is that despite the absurdity of any situation Bremer finds himself in he never fails to convey a sense of absolutely childish sincerity.
It is hard to know where to even start. Shortly after the U.S. invasion, in a surprise turn, the Iraqi army “self-demobilized.” Despite this setback Proconsul Bremer valiantly stuck to his principal mission, which was providing for the material well-being of the Iraqi people. Bremer was besieged by a range of issues such as “...what to do about subsidies, the state-owned enterprises and the currency, down to the price and availability of rice and beans.... We had inherited a structural crisis” (p.28). In a corollary to Mickey Rooney in virtually any Andy Hardy movie Bremer might have been heard saying: “Hey kids, let's put on a structural adjustment.” After all, just as sure as there were weapons of mass destruction to unearth, the decrepitude of Iraq's industrial base was due to Saddam Hussein's “economic mismanagement, lack of investment, and cockeyed socialist economic theory” (p.62). As everybody with an economics background knows, the way to turn around an economy with eighty percent unemployment is to put into place a flat corporate tax rate of fifteen percent. Privatizing state industries and devaluing the currency are also helpful in this respect.
Bremer, a master of improvisation, need not have concerned himself with any of the technical literature which erroneously maintained that the state sector in Iraq was established with little regard given to the competing models of collectivism or free enterprise. Imagine the naïveté of any one believing for a minute that the thing that mattered in Iraq was the relationship of senior figures in Saddam's regime to various enterprises, be they state industries or private ones. Patrimonial state development? Get outta here!
Despite a media that refused to report on the good news stories and focusing instead on all manner of negativity, Bremer remained steadfast in his hope for the people of Iraq. In a reflective moment he opined: “One day... a free Iraq with its educated, hardworking people will help transform this region” (p.70). Some what like Henry Fonda in Young Abe Lincoln, walking off into the sunset to the strains of the Battle Hymn of the Republic, Bremer remained positive to the end. “Once secure, this country will be a tremendous economic success” (p.388).
Bremer, who I argue missed his calling in life, like all great comedians has “got a million of 'em.”
Burling 1st Floor DS79.769 .B74 2006
Saturday, August 22, 2009
The University In Chains
Henry A. Giroux. The University in Chains: Confronting the Military-Industrial-Academic Complex. Boulder: Paradigm Publishers, 2007.
Reviewed by T. Hatch
This book must be subversive; it is not to be found in any public or college library in the state of Iowa.I only happened upon it through a citation in Chris Hedges' latest light-hearted frolic Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle. Giroux who lost a battle for tenure at Penn State University argues that the “trilogy of forces now shaping education” are patriotic correctness, consumerism, and militarization. The American university has continued to see its position as a public sphere of democracy erode by virtue of its relationship with corporate and military interests. “As a handmaiden of the Pentagon and corporate interests, it has lost its claim to independence and critical learning.”
Reviewed by T. Hatch
This book must be subversive; it is not to be found in any public or college library in the state of Iowa.I only happened upon it through a citation in Chris Hedges' latest light-hearted frolic Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle. Giroux who lost a battle for tenure at Penn State University argues that the “trilogy of forces now shaping education” are patriotic correctness, consumerism, and militarization. The American university has continued to see its position as a public sphere of democracy erode by virtue of its relationship with corporate and military interests. “As a handmaiden of the Pentagon and corporate interests, it has lost its claim to independence and critical learning.”
The book's first and by far longest chapter is in large part a digression of how militarism has afflicted American society in general. Rather than sticking to concrete examples of the military establishment having their way with the American university and calling the shots through the funding of research (of which he does some) Giroux drifts into a semi-poststructural digression. A strained effort to further develop the theoretical construct of a biopolitics through militarization as a means of explaining how American culture at large has been infected with the intersection of war, violence and the spectacle is somewhat tiresome. Perhaps it is small-minded prejudice on my part but the mention of Michele Foucault and the use of words such as “praxis” puts this reader in a foul mood. Then throw in the empirically incorrect assertion that George W. Bush originated the grab and torture program of “extreme rendition” (p.27) and further reading is done with a jaundiced eye. President Bush may have elevated the practice to an art form but there are multiple sources that attribute the start of the policy to the Clinton administration in 1995 and 1998 in both Egypt and the Balkans respectively.
The most interesting chapter dealt with the concerted right-wing attack on higher education. This phenomenon is exemplified by David Horowitz and his organization Students for Academic Freedom (SAF). Horowitz, who has opined that the American Library Association is “a terrorist sanctuary,” advances the notion that what the academy lacks is “balance.” Seeking to do for university education what Fox News has done for broadcast journalism Horowitz maintains that conservative students are being victimized by leftist college professors who are indoctrinating the vulnerable youth. One point that one wishes Giroux had made was, if what Horowitz says is true [sic], where are the fruits of these efforts? Where are all the university-trained radicals that should be apparent as they aid the barbarians and terrorists in the destruction of America?
Perhaps the most horrifying part of this book is the subject of the consumer model of education that has spread like a virus. This is the belief that college students are fundamentally customers. By further imposing corporate hierarchies on the university it only follows that part-time faculty should be utilized as much as possible. A particularly brutal example of this is the plan that the University of Illinois has for developing a completely online entity which is an explicitly for profit operation that employs no tenured faculty. The University of Phoenix and Western Governors University are further examples of the marriage of corporate culture and higher education. For profit institutions,that are publicly traded, are poised to take advantage of the high-speed technologies that allow for huge opportunities in cost reduction. By cutting maintenance expenses and eliminating entire buildings such as libraries and classroom facilities university education in this country can be more fully made into a commodity.
Perhaps someday in the future colleges and universities might run advertisments heralding a coupon good for a reduction in tuition. The education “consumer” of tomorrow might avail themselves of Priceline.com or look for a satisfation guaranteed or your money back arrangement.
Sunday, August 16, 2009
Two Novels that I can't find the will to finish
Franzen and Rakoff: Two Novelists
Rebecca Stuhr
I have recently looked forward to reading two novels and find that I can't finish either of them. Both of them I picked up at least two times more than I really wanted to and then finally said, nah. It just isn't worth it. And I like to finish books. What happens if you don't care how they end? The first is A Fortunate Age by Joanna Smith Rakoff (Scribner, 2009. Burling, Smith Memorial: PS3618.A437 F67 2009 ). It has been said that it is an homage to Mary McCarthy's The Group. McCarthy's group members were all Vassar graduates and Rakoff's are Oberlin graduates who are living in New York. For all Oberlin students and alumni, the references to Oberlin buildings and practices could be fun, but the characaters won't make them nostalgic for their own Oberlin buddies. These Obies are artsy and literary but lacking in soul or a spirit of community beyond the end of their lovely noses. There is no compelling plot, and what there is of it is mostly moved along (as opposed to revealed) by dialogue, which one does not get lost in. I got about 3/4ths of the way through and set it aside for a book by Jonathan Lethem, a favorite author of mine. This is one of his recent novels, You Don't Love me Yet (Doubleday, 2007). This novel features a group of aging and emotionally sagging young adults in Los Angeles. They are part of a band on the verge of making it big. I stopped reading just after their first real concert takes place. The bass player is a young woman who has fallen for "the complainer" who she meets via her part in a phone service for people with complaints, which in reality is part of a performance art project. She meets him, breaking the rules of the service and project, and finds that he is an older, enormous man. She goes on to get sick drunk and spends days and hours making love with him... barely making it to her concert in one piece. The band's performance is also part of a performance art project by the same artist empressario--the project which goes wrong but the band is a success--the words of the bands songs are all words that the bass player collected from the complainer, writing them down on a yellow pad and handing them off to the band's song writer (a wraith of a young man who doesn't remember to eat but is fed at rehearsals by the drummer). The singer is the bass player's former boyfriend. He works at the zoo and has abducted a kangaroo that is ailing and he is keeping it in his bathtub. I know it sounds fascinating and quirky, but Lethem must have been feeling cynical about novel writing. This novel has a hard unattractive feel to it, or maybe he wrote this under a contract deadline-- it lacks any joy or humor or beauty (at least what I recognize as humor, joy, and beauty) and, as of yet, I'm not sure what the message might be. I will give him another try, but this one I won't finish (and it's short!).
What am I reading that I like? Jonathan Franzen's collection of essays called How to Be Alone, John Buschman's dense Dismantling the Public Sphere (more about this one later), Matthew Battle's Library: An Unquiet History (more about this one as well), and finally Gary Snyder's No Nature: New and Selected Poems. I love Gary Snyder.
Rebecca Stuhr
I have recently looked forward to reading two novels and find that I can't finish either of them. Both of them I picked up at least two times more than I really wanted to and then finally said, nah. It just isn't worth it. And I like to finish books. What happens if you don't care how they end? The first is A Fortunate Age by Joanna Smith Rakoff (Scribner, 2009. Burling, Smith Memorial: PS3618.A437 F67 2009 ). It has been said that it is an homage to Mary McCarthy's The Group. McCarthy's group members were all Vassar graduates and Rakoff's are Oberlin graduates who are living in New York. For all Oberlin students and alumni, the references to Oberlin buildings and practices could be fun, but the characaters won't make them nostalgic for their own Oberlin buddies. These Obies are artsy and literary but lacking in soul or a spirit of community beyond the end of their lovely noses. There is no compelling plot, and what there is of it is mostly moved along (as opposed to revealed) by dialogue, which one does not get lost in. I got about 3/4ths of the way through and set it aside for a book by Jonathan Lethem, a favorite author of mine. This is one of his recent novels, You Don't Love me Yet (Doubleday, 2007). This novel features a group of aging and emotionally sagging young adults in Los Angeles. They are part of a band on the verge of making it big. I stopped reading just after their first real concert takes place. The bass player is a young woman who has fallen for "the complainer" who she meets via her part in a phone service for people with complaints, which in reality is part of a performance art project. She meets him, breaking the rules of the service and project, and finds that he is an older, enormous man. She goes on to get sick drunk and spends days and hours making love with him... barely making it to her concert in one piece. The band's performance is also part of a performance art project by the same artist empressario--the project which goes wrong but the band is a success--the words of the bands songs are all words that the bass player collected from the complainer, writing them down on a yellow pad and handing them off to the band's song writer (a wraith of a young man who doesn't remember to eat but is fed at rehearsals by the drummer). The singer is the bass player's former boyfriend. He works at the zoo and has abducted a kangaroo that is ailing and he is keeping it in his bathtub. I know it sounds fascinating and quirky, but Lethem must have been feeling cynical about novel writing. This novel has a hard unattractive feel to it, or maybe he wrote this under a contract deadline-- it lacks any joy or humor or beauty (at least what I recognize as humor, joy, and beauty) and, as of yet, I'm not sure what the message might be. I will give him another try, but this one I won't finish (and it's short!).
What am I reading that I like? Jonathan Franzen's collection of essays called How to Be Alone, John Buschman's dense Dismantling the Public Sphere (more about this one later), Matthew Battle's Library: An Unquiet History (more about this one as well), and finally Gary Snyder's No Nature: New and Selected Poems. I love Gary Snyder.
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
Methland:The Life and Death of an American Small Town
Nick Reding. Methland: The Life and Death of an American Small Town. New York: Bloomsbury Books, 2009
Reviewed by T. Hatch
Nick Reding's Methland is loosely organized, inattentive to detail, and yet still persuasive in its main argument. The subject of the book is how a small town in Iowa (Oelwein) is ravaged by the epidemic of crystal methamphetamine use starting in the late 1980s. The social costs were staggering.
In its modern incantation methamphetamine appeared in Oelwein in the 1980s. But the problems associated with the drug really became manifest in the 1990s. The meat packing industry which formerly employed around eight hundred people at wages of up to $18 per hour in 1990, through a ruthless process of consolidation, cut wages by two-thirds to a little over $6 an hour. In addition to the wage reductions jobs were lost as well until the last owner of the plant,Tyson Foods, finally closed down entirely in 2006 laying off the last hundred or so mainly undocumented immigrants still employed there.
Reding argues that the twin rails of the town's demise were the savagery of agribusiness' consolidation techniques and the concomitant spread of crystal meth which became both more potent and less expensive as the town took an economic nosedive. While the story of Oelwein's woes needs context, Reding wanders all over the state and country, e.g. the chapter on his father's hometown of Algona, which detracts from the focus of the story. In fact the chapters dealing with Lori Kaye Arnold (the actor/comedian's sister) and the city of Ottumwa are in many ways more compelling.
There are a number of details in the book which are empircally wrong. The mayor of Oelwein is fifty-five years old at the time of the book's writing yet Reding has him organizing a grocery store union in Dubuque in 1959 when the future mayor is fourteen years old (pp.123-124). Oelwein is not northeast of Iowa City it is northwest (p.145). Lori Arnold allegedly has no access to workers compensation while employed at Cargill-Excel in Ottumwa. There are a limited number of exemptions to the workers compensation law in Iowa. One has to work in agriculture, be self-insured, or an independent contractor not to be covered (p.151). How exactly is Ecuador a “rogue” state? (p.209). And, there are yet more examples of literary sloth throughout the book with which I shall not continue to bore the reader.
Yet despite these deficiencies the book is worth reading. It would also make a great gift for the drug- using-middle-age- Iowan on your holiday shopping list.
Burling Library 2nd floor HV5831.I8 R43 2009
Reviewed by T. Hatch
Nick Reding's Methland is loosely organized, inattentive to detail, and yet still persuasive in its main argument. The subject of the book is how a small town in Iowa (Oelwein) is ravaged by the epidemic of crystal methamphetamine use starting in the late 1980s. The social costs were staggering.
In its modern incantation methamphetamine appeared in Oelwein in the 1980s. But the problems associated with the drug really became manifest in the 1990s. The meat packing industry which formerly employed around eight hundred people at wages of up to $18 per hour in 1990, through a ruthless process of consolidation, cut wages by two-thirds to a little over $6 an hour. In addition to the wage reductions jobs were lost as well until the last owner of the plant,Tyson Foods, finally closed down entirely in 2006 laying off the last hundred or so mainly undocumented immigrants still employed there.
Reding argues that the twin rails of the town's demise were the savagery of agribusiness' consolidation techniques and the concomitant spread of crystal meth which became both more potent and less expensive as the town took an economic nosedive. While the story of Oelwein's woes needs context, Reding wanders all over the state and country, e.g. the chapter on his father's hometown of Algona, which detracts from the focus of the story. In fact the chapters dealing with Lori Kaye Arnold (the actor/comedian's sister) and the city of Ottumwa are in many ways more compelling.
There are a number of details in the book which are empircally wrong. The mayor of Oelwein is fifty-five years old at the time of the book's writing yet Reding has him organizing a grocery store union in Dubuque in 1959 when the future mayor is fourteen years old (pp.123-124). Oelwein is not northeast of Iowa City it is northwest (p.145). Lori Arnold allegedly has no access to workers compensation while employed at Cargill-Excel in Ottumwa. There are a limited number of exemptions to the workers compensation law in Iowa. One has to work in agriculture, be self-insured, or an independent contractor not to be covered (p.151). How exactly is Ecuador a “rogue” state? (p.209). And, there are yet more examples of literary sloth throughout the book with which I shall not continue to bore the reader.
Yet despite these deficiencies the book is worth reading. It would also make a great gift for the drug- using-middle-age- Iowan on your holiday shopping list.
Burling Library 2nd floor HV5831.I8 R43 2009
Sunday, July 26, 2009
Natural History--Two very different books
I have recently finished reading two very different books with deceptively similar titles: A Natural History of the Senses, Diane Ackerman (1991), and A Natural History of Seeing, Simon Ings (2008).
Ackerman's book takes us on a whirlwind tour of each the five senses, primarily via various anecdotes from the author's personal life. Her prose is flowery, occasionally dangerously close to saccharine or syrupy. Her descriptions of the sensory systems are very oversimplified and sometimes inaccurate, and practically no discussion is given to the history of the senses or the study of the senses. (Indeed, a more appropriate title for the book might be A Personal History of My Senses.) Interesting tidbits of information are interspersed throughout the book, but I found the over-the-top poetry and flights-of-fancy into the experience ("qualia"?) of being sensate too distracting to make up for the dearth of any substantial information.
Ings, on the other hand, has written a fascinating, educational, and readable book. His thoughts about his infant daughter and the development of her visual system provide a bit of narrative, but A Natural History of Seeing succeeds because of the information he presents about the evolutionary history of the eye and the social and cultural history of the researchers who have studied it. Both the science and the history are precisely written in clear, non-technical language.
The contrast between the two is striking, and it made me think about how difficult it would be to write non-fiction about scientific topics that manages to be both interesting and accurate.
Sarah Marcum '08
A Natural History of The Senses
Grinnell College Science Library BF233 .A24 1990
A Natural History of Seeing
On order
Ackerman's book takes us on a whirlwind tour of each the five senses, primarily via various anecdotes from the author's personal life. Her prose is flowery, occasionally dangerously close to saccharine or syrupy. Her descriptions of the sensory systems are very oversimplified and sometimes inaccurate, and practically no discussion is given to the history of the senses or the study of the senses. (Indeed, a more appropriate title for the book might be A Personal History of My Senses.) Interesting tidbits of information are interspersed throughout the book, but I found the over-the-top poetry and flights-of-fancy into the experience ("qualia"?) of being sensate too distracting to make up for the dearth of any substantial information.
Ings, on the other hand, has written a fascinating, educational, and readable book. His thoughts about his infant daughter and the development of her visual system provide a bit of narrative, but A Natural History of Seeing succeeds because of the information he presents about the evolutionary history of the eye and the social and cultural history of the researchers who have studied it. Both the science and the history are precisely written in clear, non-technical language.
The contrast between the two is striking, and it made me think about how difficult it would be to write non-fiction about scientific topics that manages to be both interesting and accurate.
Sarah Marcum '08
A Natural History of The Senses
Grinnell College Science Library BF233 .A24 1990
A Natural History of Seeing
On order
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Stephen L. Carter and Henry Louis Gates
Carter, Stephen L. The Emperor of Ocean Park. New York: Knopf, 2002.
Carter's hefty novel (657 pages) is about politics in Washington, D.C., politics in academia, and politics within families. The "hero" and narrator of the novel, Talcott Garland, son to controversial and once influential judge, Oliver Garland, is in a rocky marriage to an ambitious lawyer who, it has been rumored, is in line for a high federal court position. As she tries to maintain a discreet profile, Talcott, who teaches law at a prestigious institution, has reason to suspect that his father was murdered, and his investigations into this possibility make it difficult for his wife to maintain a low profile. Talcott is also ambitious, but is also insecure, jealous, and a little self-absorbed. While Carter has provided an intriguing and captivating plot line, he also examines life as an African American in the academy. Talcott's every move is watched and commented on, analyzed and criticized. Favors are asked and not returned, motives are questioned, and accomplishments do no receive their full merit.
One scene in the novel is amazingly similar to a news story, reported just yesterday (7/20), of celebrated scholar Henry Louis Gates who was questioned by police in his own home after they received a report that he was breaking in. He was later arrested, it seems, because of his angry response to the questioning. Here is the link to the news article: http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2009/07/harvard.html.
In Carter's novel, Talcott is being followed by representatives from the several people who are also looking for information about his father. The two men beat Talcott up and he climbs a construction scaffolding to escape them. When the police arrive after having been called they arrest the bruised and beaten Talcott as the suspect. Regardless of the fact that he shows his prestigious university ID and keeps telling them that he works there and that he is the one who has been beaten, he is taken away. Later, his colleagues criticize him for creating a scene and for bringing bad publicity to the department by getting himself arrested.
Carter's novel is interesting and worth reading on many levels, for its view of political and academic life, and for its exploration of privilege and race in our society and especially in academia. Get it on a CD (about 20 hours worth) at your public library for a transcontinental summer drive.
Burling Library PS 3603. A78 E4 2002
Other novels by Stephen L. Carter at Grinnell College Libraries
New England White. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2007.
PS3603.A78 N48 2007.
Palace Council. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2008.
PS3603.A78 P35 2008.
Before writing novels (in the 21st century), Carter wrote books on society, politics, and government (in the 20th Century). To see a list of all of Stephen L. Carter's books follow this link.
Carter's hefty novel (657 pages) is about politics in Washington, D.C., politics in academia, and politics within families. The "hero" and narrator of the novel, Talcott Garland, son to controversial and once influential judge, Oliver Garland, is in a rocky marriage to an ambitious lawyer who, it has been rumored, is in line for a high federal court position. As she tries to maintain a discreet profile, Talcott, who teaches law at a prestigious institution, has reason to suspect that his father was murdered, and his investigations into this possibility make it difficult for his wife to maintain a low profile. Talcott is also ambitious, but is also insecure, jealous, and a little self-absorbed. While Carter has provided an intriguing and captivating plot line, he also examines life as an African American in the academy. Talcott's every move is watched and commented on, analyzed and criticized. Favors are asked and not returned, motives are questioned, and accomplishments do no receive their full merit.
One scene in the novel is amazingly similar to a news story, reported just yesterday (7/20), of celebrated scholar Henry Louis Gates who was questioned by police in his own home after they received a report that he was breaking in. He was later arrested, it seems, because of his angry response to the questioning. Here is the link to the news article: http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2009/07/harvard.html.
In Carter's novel, Talcott is being followed by representatives from the several people who are also looking for information about his father. The two men beat Talcott up and he climbs a construction scaffolding to escape them. When the police arrive after having been called they arrest the bruised and beaten Talcott as the suspect. Regardless of the fact that he shows his prestigious university ID and keeps telling them that he works there and that he is the one who has been beaten, he is taken away. Later, his colleagues criticize him for creating a scene and for bringing bad publicity to the department by getting himself arrested.
Carter's novel is interesting and worth reading on many levels, for its view of political and academic life, and for its exploration of privilege and race in our society and especially in academia. Get it on a CD (about 20 hours worth) at your public library for a transcontinental summer drive.
Burling Library PS 3603. A78 E4 2002
Other novels by Stephen L. Carter at Grinnell College Libraries
New England White. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2007.
PS3603.A78 N48 2007.
Palace Council. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2008.
PS3603.A78 P35 2008.
Before writing novels (in the 21st century), Carter wrote books on society, politics, and government (in the 20th Century). To see a list of all of Stephen L. Carter's books follow this link.
Monday, July 20, 2009
Slate Article considers Amazon's ability to delete books from your Kindle
Farhad Manjoo. "Why 2024 Will Be Like Nineteen Eighty-Four: How Amazon's Remote Deletion of E-books from the Kindle Paves the Way for Book-Banning's Digital Future." Slate (www.slate.com) July 20, 2009.
Rebecca Stuhr
Manjoo reports on Amazon's capability to delete books remotely from their customer's Kindles. Recently Amazon deleted Orwell's 1984 and Animal Farm; in June it deleted several Ayn Rand novels; it has been reported that some customers have had Harry Potter books deleted, the reason given that the copies were bootlegged and were breaking copyright. While conceding that Amazon may have had reason to recall illegal digital editions, Manjoo notes that Amazon's terms of use do not give customers ownership of the books that they download. While not new to the electronic world, libraries have been licensing rather than purchasing electronic databases and collections for some time now (and have been working out agreements and creating third party archives as a safeguard), the idea that there is no ownership of books in this new medium suggests a disturbing ability for corporations or governments to censor material in a much more final way than has been possible in the past -- even through book burning. Manjoo calls on Amazon to revise their terms of use and to discontinue the practice of remote deletion. This two page article is worth reading for all book lovers, readers, and present and future owners of Kindles.
This leads me to comment on my recent study of public libraries, and my early realization that e-books are not a format that is conducive to many readers outside of academia. Computers are not universally owned, and access to the Internet is not in every home nor even widely available through libraries. The lack of funding for libraries and the demand for computer time means that in many urban public libraries, individuals are allotted from thirty to sixty minutes a day at the computer--if they can get to the library during its open hours. It is too soon to say good bye to the printed book, and there are many reasons, including the tenuousness and fragile nature of the digital copy.
Monday, June 15, 2009
Stephen King On Writing…and More
Stephen King. On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft. New York: Scribner, 2000.
Walter Giersbach ‘61
Manchester, NJ 08759
The prolific Mr. King approached the subject of writing, and his autobiography, reluctantly. In fact, more than a third of On Writing is devoted to his curriculum vitae before he opines on “what writing is” and the tools required to be successful. He calls the book, a best seller almost a decade ago, “my attempt to show how one writer was formed. Not how one writer was made.” A reader, critic or student has to pay a certain amount of attention to someone like King who has published more than 30 novels, sold more than 350 million copies, and given us films Doris Claiborne, The Shining, and The Green Mile. (King suggests very evenly why John Grisham and James Patterson are so successful at what they do.) “A good deal of literary criticism,” he says, “serves only to reinforce a caste system as old as the intellectual snobbery which nurtured it.” He comments that Raymond Chandler is one of the greats who are often “seated at the end of the table” because he came out of the pulp tradition. On the subject of grammar as required tools of a successful writer, he suggests the parts of speech are like accessories to go with your high school prom dress, and those weren’t too hard to understand. It’s a truism that a writer never stops learning the craft, and I’ve been writing professionally for four decades. Yet at this advanced date, King’s book had me underlining passages, dog-earing pages and scrutinizing my own writing to see where the misstatements and lazy verbiage occurred. When I finished reading On Writing, I took it to the writing group that I lead and told them, “Buy or borrow this book if you’re serious about communicating in print.”
Burling Library, 3rd Floor PS3561.I483 Z475 2000
Walter Giersbach ‘61
Manchester, NJ 08759
The prolific Mr. King approached the subject of writing, and his autobiography, reluctantly. In fact, more than a third of On Writing is devoted to his curriculum vitae before he opines on “what writing is” and the tools required to be successful. He calls the book, a best seller almost a decade ago, “my attempt to show how one writer was formed. Not how one writer was made.” A reader, critic or student has to pay a certain amount of attention to someone like King who has published more than 30 novels, sold more than 350 million copies, and given us films Doris Claiborne, The Shining, and The Green Mile. (King suggests very evenly why John Grisham and James Patterson are so successful at what they do.) “A good deal of literary criticism,” he says, “serves only to reinforce a caste system as old as the intellectual snobbery which nurtured it.” He comments that Raymond Chandler is one of the greats who are often “seated at the end of the table” because he came out of the pulp tradition. On the subject of grammar as required tools of a successful writer, he suggests the parts of speech are like accessories to go with your high school prom dress, and those weren’t too hard to understand. It’s a truism that a writer never stops learning the craft, and I’ve been writing professionally for four decades. Yet at this advanced date, King’s book had me underlining passages, dog-earing pages and scrutinizing my own writing to see where the misstatements and lazy verbiage occurred. When I finished reading On Writing, I took it to the writing group that I lead and told them, “Buy or borrow this book if you’re serious about communicating in print.”
Burling Library, 3rd Floor PS3561.I483 Z475 2000
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Slavery By Another Name
Douglas A. Blackmon. Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans From the Civil War to World War II. New York: Doubleday 2008
Reviewed by T. Hatch
Perhaps you can't tell a book by its cover but a book-signing-talk by the author may provide some illumination. Such was the case recently while watching C Span Book TV one Saturday morning that I encountered Douglas Blockman, the Wall Street Journal's Atlanta bureau chief, presenting his book about neoslavery. With C Span's rather slavish adherence to the false doctrine of fair and balanced I had braced myself for the worst. Shame on me.
This is an important and a powerful book. Its power resides in making an argument that seems almost self evident once you see it. If you have delved into the tragedy/ outrage that the betrayal of Reconstruction was and read works such as Eric Foner's Reconstruction: Unfinished Revolution or John Hope Franklin's Reconstruction After the Civil War or most prominently of all W.E.B. Du Bois' Black Reconstruction in America one develops a sense of what a vicious white insurgency did to subvert the union occupation and destroy any hopes of black citizenship.
Despite the efforts of historians like the aforementioned the prevailing historiographical view was that the recently freed slaves showed a determined proclivity to criminality. The basis of the Jim Crow social compact required the deference of blacks to whites and a black fear of law enforcement. That compact also fostered the creation of a mythology of an honorable southerner with his contented slaves tragically defeated in the quest for secession. The pernicious lie that the civil war was fought over regional patriotism and not slavery was thusly created.
Certainly serious readers of American history are aware of the Jim Crow exceptionalism of apartheid in the United States and the Civil Rights movement that was ultimately its undoing. But almost no one has explicitly made the connection that Douglas Blackmon makes. Slavery did not end in 1865 it merely evolved. It did not entirely cease until the 1940s when considerations of possible propaganda use by the Japanese and Germans compelled the administration of Franklin Roosevelt to finally extinguish this forced labor scheme.
The ground work for the southern apartheid regime was laid by virtually every southern state from the late 1860s to 1877. A series of interlocking laws were enacted that criminalized black life. Charges such as vagrancy, using obscene language, adultery, and obtaining goods under false pretenses were examples of imprisoning blacks. Times being what they were a black man arrested in the south was bound to be found guilty of something. It was this misdemeanor forced labor system that was the sine qua non of southern whites reestablishing political control. The slave owners no longer were plantation owners but country sheriffs and their deputies were incentivized to round up all the available black labor they could. The victims of this system were leased to mines, lumber mills, and steel factories which served as the basis for southern industrialization and the emergence of what Atlanta Constitution editor Henry Grady labeled as the “New South” in 1886.
Blackmon estimates that between 100,000 and 200,000 blacks were enslaved by this forced labor system. An initially small fine could keep a black man in the Jim Crow south imprisoned for years working at forced labor. The prisoner-laborers in this system were subjected to physical violence and even torture if they failed to comply. The also faced multiple dangers in the work place and death was anything but a rare occurrence. Additionally the Southern captains of industry received another benefit from their preferred system of labor relations. Slave labor has a way of undermining unionization efforts by non incarcerated workers. Forced labor served as “a bulwark against labor unrest.”
Blackmon concludes the book by backing away from the seemingly logical conclusion of the work. He explicitly states that “This book is not a call for financial reparations.” Based on the evidence presented in Slavery by Another Name it certainly could be. One of the standard arguments against reparations has always been slavery ended with the Civil War. If this is demonstrably not the case then perhaps it is time to reconsider the question.
Available at Grinnell College Libraries. Please ask at circulation desk if you would like to check this out.
Reviewed by T. Hatch
Perhaps you can't tell a book by its cover but a book-signing-talk by the author may provide some illumination. Such was the case recently while watching C Span Book TV one Saturday morning that I encountered Douglas Blockman, the Wall Street Journal's Atlanta bureau chief, presenting his book about neoslavery. With C Span's rather slavish adherence to the false doctrine of fair and balanced I had braced myself for the worst. Shame on me.
This is an important and a powerful book. Its power resides in making an argument that seems almost self evident once you see it. If you have delved into the tragedy/ outrage that the betrayal of Reconstruction was and read works such as Eric Foner's Reconstruction: Unfinished Revolution or John Hope Franklin's Reconstruction After the Civil War or most prominently of all W.E.B. Du Bois' Black Reconstruction in America one develops a sense of what a vicious white insurgency did to subvert the union occupation and destroy any hopes of black citizenship.
Despite the efforts of historians like the aforementioned the prevailing historiographical view was that the recently freed slaves showed a determined proclivity to criminality. The basis of the Jim Crow social compact required the deference of blacks to whites and a black fear of law enforcement. That compact also fostered the creation of a mythology of an honorable southerner with his contented slaves tragically defeated in the quest for secession. The pernicious lie that the civil war was fought over regional patriotism and not slavery was thusly created.
Certainly serious readers of American history are aware of the Jim Crow exceptionalism of apartheid in the United States and the Civil Rights movement that was ultimately its undoing. But almost no one has explicitly made the connection that Douglas Blackmon makes. Slavery did not end in 1865 it merely evolved. It did not entirely cease until the 1940s when considerations of possible propaganda use by the Japanese and Germans compelled the administration of Franklin Roosevelt to finally extinguish this forced labor scheme.
The ground work for the southern apartheid regime was laid by virtually every southern state from the late 1860s to 1877. A series of interlocking laws were enacted that criminalized black life. Charges such as vagrancy, using obscene language, adultery, and obtaining goods under false pretenses were examples of imprisoning blacks. Times being what they were a black man arrested in the south was bound to be found guilty of something. It was this misdemeanor forced labor system that was the sine qua non of southern whites reestablishing political control. The slave owners no longer were plantation owners but country sheriffs and their deputies were incentivized to round up all the available black labor they could. The victims of this system were leased to mines, lumber mills, and steel factories which served as the basis for southern industrialization and the emergence of what Atlanta Constitution editor Henry Grady labeled as the “New South” in 1886.
Blackmon estimates that between 100,000 and 200,000 blacks were enslaved by this forced labor system. An initially small fine could keep a black man in the Jim Crow south imprisoned for years working at forced labor. The prisoner-laborers in this system were subjected to physical violence and even torture if they failed to comply. The also faced multiple dangers in the work place and death was anything but a rare occurrence. Additionally the Southern captains of industry received another benefit from their preferred system of labor relations. Slave labor has a way of undermining unionization efforts by non incarcerated workers. Forced labor served as “a bulwark against labor unrest.”
Blackmon concludes the book by backing away from the seemingly logical conclusion of the work. He explicitly states that “This book is not a call for financial reparations.” Based on the evidence presented in Slavery by Another Name it certainly could be. One of the standard arguments against reparations has always been slavery ended with the Civil War. If this is demonstrably not the case then perhaps it is time to reconsider the question.
Available at Grinnell College Libraries. Please ask at circulation desk if you would like to check this out.
Brothers
Yu Hua. Brothers: A Novel. New York: Pantheon Books, 2009. Translated by Eileen Cheng-yin and Chow and Carlos Rojas.
R. Stuhr
This epic novel follows two brothers, Baldy Li and Song Gang, through the cultural revolution and into China's embrace of capitalism. Published as two books in China, it was a best seller. I admit to not having finished this 600+ page book, I'll though I have finished book 1 and well into book 2 with just about one hundred pages to read. I suddenly needed to take a break from this tragicomic novel. Always a little wary of entering into such a long novel, I found that after the first chapter or so, I was completely captivated.
At first the characters seemed a bit cartoonish. Young Baldy Li marched through the town after having been caught trying to get a look at the women's behinds in the town latrine. His father, also a latrine peeper, died when he fell in while trying to get a view of the women's side of the latrine. Song Gang on the other hand is a steady, generous, and studious child. But, as the novel progresses, and the characters struggle against the brutality of poverty, political expediency, selfishness, and fear, they become three dimensional and compelling.
Both Song Gang and Baldy Li are smart in their own ways and it is good because at an early age they must fend for themselves. Brought together by their parents' marriage, they are separated when Song Gang's father dies, a victim to the political extremism of the cultural revolutionaries. When Baldy Li's mother dies, they are rejoined. Baldy Li is all bravado, having earlier fed himself on his story of having glimpsed the town beauty's behind (told for a bowl of house special soup), and Song Gang's steady and thoughtful nature, causing him to be careful with money, and a nurturer like his father, cooking and maintaining the household. Both Baldy Li and Song Gang find work. Baldy Li is given a job in the local charity factory that employs "idiots" and disabled members of society. He quickly takes over making the factory a raging success. Song Gang works in a factory as well. He wins the heart of the town beauty, something that Baldy Li wanted for himself. The brothers are separated by this love triangle. As the cultural revolution fades away and capitalism becomes the new way of doing things, Song Gang and his true love are beset by bad health and unemployment while Baldy Li masterminds another financial success.
Despite their falling out Baldy Li, a strange mix of thoughtlessness and generosity, continues to care about Song Gang, his pride never overtakes him. He attempts to help Song Gang, but either Song Gang's wife is unwilling, or Song Gang himself refuses the help. Baldy Li's enterprises remake the small village that he and Song Gang grew up in. His loss of his true love to Song Gang keeps him on an insatiable search for female affection. Finally, he holds a virgin beauty contest, which creates a market for the means for returning women to a physical state of virginity. I'll have to revisit this blog posting when I finally finish the book.
Brothers is filled with vulgarity and brutality and the characters are painted in broad strokes--subtlety is not a term that can be used to describe this novel. Yu Hua tells the story of
recent Chinese history as experienced within one small village. I was fortunate to hear Yu Hua talk shortly after the novel was released in the United States. He said that you could compare the change that happened in 500 years of European history to the change that took place in China over a period of 40 years--and this change has manifested itself in all ways, from modernization, to social morés, to political and economic philosophy.
This is indeed a hefty novel, but it is also a fascinating and rewarding read.
Burling 3rd Floor: PL2928.H78 X5613 2009
R. Stuhr
This epic novel follows two brothers, Baldy Li and Song Gang, through the cultural revolution and into China's embrace of capitalism. Published as two books in China, it was a best seller. I admit to not having finished this 600+ page book, I'll though I have finished book 1 and well into book 2 with just about one hundred pages to read. I suddenly needed to take a break from this tragicomic novel. Always a little wary of entering into such a long novel, I found that after the first chapter or so, I was completely captivated.
At first the characters seemed a bit cartoonish. Young Baldy Li marched through the town after having been caught trying to get a look at the women's behinds in the town latrine. His father, also a latrine peeper, died when he fell in while trying to get a view of the women's side of the latrine. Song Gang on the other hand is a steady, generous, and studious child. But, as the novel progresses, and the characters struggle against the brutality of poverty, political expediency, selfishness, and fear, they become three dimensional and compelling.
Both Song Gang and Baldy Li are smart in their own ways and it is good because at an early age they must fend for themselves. Brought together by their parents' marriage, they are separated when Song Gang's father dies, a victim to the political extremism of the cultural revolutionaries. When Baldy Li's mother dies, they are rejoined. Baldy Li is all bravado, having earlier fed himself on his story of having glimpsed the town beauty's behind (told for a bowl of house special soup), and Song Gang's steady and thoughtful nature, causing him to be careful with money, and a nurturer like his father, cooking and maintaining the household. Both Baldy Li and Song Gang find work. Baldy Li is given a job in the local charity factory that employs "idiots" and disabled members of society. He quickly takes over making the factory a raging success. Song Gang works in a factory as well. He wins the heart of the town beauty, something that Baldy Li wanted for himself. The brothers are separated by this love triangle. As the cultural revolution fades away and capitalism becomes the new way of doing things, Song Gang and his true love are beset by bad health and unemployment while Baldy Li masterminds another financial success.
Despite their falling out Baldy Li, a strange mix of thoughtlessness and generosity, continues to care about Song Gang, his pride never overtakes him. He attempts to help Song Gang, but either Song Gang's wife is unwilling, or Song Gang himself refuses the help. Baldy Li's enterprises remake the small village that he and Song Gang grew up in. His loss of his true love to Song Gang keeps him on an insatiable search for female affection. Finally, he holds a virgin beauty contest, which creates a market for the means for returning women to a physical state of virginity. I'll have to revisit this blog posting when I finally finish the book.
Brothers is filled with vulgarity and brutality and the characters are painted in broad strokes--subtlety is not a term that can be used to describe this novel. Yu Hua tells the story of
recent Chinese history as experienced within one small village. I was fortunate to hear Yu Hua talk shortly after the novel was released in the United States. He said that you could compare the change that happened in 500 years of European history to the change that took place in China over a period of 40 years--and this change has manifested itself in all ways, from modernization, to social morés, to political and economic philosophy.
This is indeed a hefty novel, but it is also a fascinating and rewarding read.
Burling 3rd Floor: PL2928.H78 X5613 2009
Librarianship and Legitimacy
Raber, Douglas. Librarianship and Legitimacy: The Ideology of the Public Library Inquiry. Westport, CT: Greenwod Press, 1997.
R. Stuhr
Raber analyzes the 1949 Public Library Inquiry which had as its conclusion that public libraries could not possibly serve all people and their needs and so they should focus on readers and intellectually motivated inquirers. This set off a firestorm in the public library community because of its elitist overtones.
Public libraries have long served those least served by society. Although there has always been a corner of public libraries as represented by the large imposing structures that have often been the anchors of urban library systems that were meant as "temples of learning" for those occupying the upper rungs of society, there has also been a larger segment of the public library world serving the working class, the children, the immigrants.
Raber looks at the whole history of public libraries in the United States, and follows the attempt of library practitioners to determine a philosophy of service and to define their mission. The philosophy and mission has changed as society has changed but also as librarians have sought to find their place in the professional world.
The Public Library Inquiry was intended to both solidify the place of the professional librarian and to define a mission. Raber concludes that the Public Library Inquiry failed to provide a "lasting identity." He writes, that the public library must "become a dynamic institution capable of adapting to change while remaining true to its democratic purpose." However the library does evolve and as librarians face dilemmas of "purpose, direction, and identity," they should keep in mind the the role public library and librarians have served in sustaining American democratic society.
R. Stuhr
Raber analyzes the 1949 Public Library Inquiry which had as its conclusion that public libraries could not possibly serve all people and their needs and so they should focus on readers and intellectually motivated inquirers. This set off a firestorm in the public library community because of its elitist overtones.
Public libraries have long served those least served by society. Although there has always been a corner of public libraries as represented by the large imposing structures that have often been the anchors of urban library systems that were meant as "temples of learning" for those occupying the upper rungs of society, there has also been a larger segment of the public library world serving the working class, the children, the immigrants.
Raber looks at the whole history of public libraries in the United States, and follows the attempt of library practitioners to determine a philosophy of service and to define their mission. The philosophy and mission has changed as society has changed but also as librarians have sought to find their place in the professional world.
The Public Library Inquiry was intended to both solidify the place of the professional librarian and to define a mission. Raber concludes that the Public Library Inquiry failed to provide a "lasting identity." He writes, that the public library must "become a dynamic institution capable of adapting to change while remaining true to its democratic purpose." However the library does evolve and as librarians face dilemmas of "purpose, direction, and identity," they should keep in mind the the role public library and librarians have served in sustaining American democratic society.
The Devil's Whisper
Miyuki Miyabe. The Devil's Whisper. Translated by Deborah Stuhr Iwabuchi. NY: Kodansha International, 2007 (first published in Japan in 1989).
R. Stuhr
Revenge is at the heart of this mystery by popular and prolific Japanese author Miyuke Miyabe. Mamoru is a young man who lives with his aunt and uncle after his mother dies. His father disappeared years before after being accused of embezzling his employer. Mamoru lives under the cloud of his father's wrong doing. In the meantime, several young women have inexplicably committed suicide. All of them knew each other and one from their group still survives but fears for her life. Mamoru's uncle, a taxi cab driver, is the unwitting accomplice in the third young woman's death when she runs out in front of his cab. Mamoru, wanting to clear his uncle's name, sets out to investigate her death. He finds out that the three women were involved, along with a fourth, in a scam to woo lonely men with the aim of taking their money. Through his diligent investigation, now as interested in saving the fourth woman as well as restoring his uncle's reputation, Mamoru stumbles onto the mastermind or sorcer, Harasawa, behind the deaths of the three women. The murder's motivation is revenge.
At the same time as Mamoru is coming closer to solve the crime, a prominent businessman, Yoshitake, claims to have witnessed the accident. His testimony absolves Mamoru's uncle of any guilt. Mamoru discovers that the businessman has his reasons for coming to the aid of Mamoru's family, reasons that do not sit comfortably with Mamoru. Mamoru becomes better acquainted with the Harasawa and learns how he has compelled the three women to their deaths. Harasawa offers Mamoru the means to exact his own revenge. Mamoru must now decide whether he is a person capable of murder or can he be a person who can forgive wrongdoings. Harasawa finds ways to try to persuade Mamoru to his way of thinking even after his death.
The intricate plot of this novel pits two tormented souls seeking revenge against tormented souls begging to be absolved for their crimes. Mamoru, however, knows their is another way, and he is surrounded by friends and family who care about him, and who may possibly bring out his better side. Gramps, who teaches Mamoru to pick locks, is also the strongest influence on Mamoru not to use these skills in a criminal way. He is telling Mamoru that he trust him to do the right thing even when he has the means to do the wrong thing. It is this trust that Mamoru strives to live up to and that may save his soul.
Other books by Miyako Miyabe
Crossfire PL856.I856 K8713 2005
Shadow Family PL856.I856 R213 2004
All She Was Worth PL856.E856 K3713 1999
R. Stuhr
Revenge is at the heart of this mystery by popular and prolific Japanese author Miyuke Miyabe. Mamoru is a young man who lives with his aunt and uncle after his mother dies. His father disappeared years before after being accused of embezzling his employer. Mamoru lives under the cloud of his father's wrong doing. In the meantime, several young women have inexplicably committed suicide. All of them knew each other and one from their group still survives but fears for her life. Mamoru's uncle, a taxi cab driver, is the unwitting accomplice in the third young woman's death when she runs out in front of his cab. Mamoru, wanting to clear his uncle's name, sets out to investigate her death. He finds out that the three women were involved, along with a fourth, in a scam to woo lonely men with the aim of taking their money. Through his diligent investigation, now as interested in saving the fourth woman as well as restoring his uncle's reputation, Mamoru stumbles onto the mastermind or sorcer, Harasawa, behind the deaths of the three women. The murder's motivation is revenge.
At the same time as Mamoru is coming closer to solve the crime, a prominent businessman, Yoshitake, claims to have witnessed the accident. His testimony absolves Mamoru's uncle of any guilt. Mamoru discovers that the businessman has his reasons for coming to the aid of Mamoru's family, reasons that do not sit comfortably with Mamoru. Mamoru becomes better acquainted with the Harasawa and learns how he has compelled the three women to their deaths. Harasawa offers Mamoru the means to exact his own revenge. Mamoru must now decide whether he is a person capable of murder or can he be a person who can forgive wrongdoings. Harasawa finds ways to try to persuade Mamoru to his way of thinking even after his death.
The intricate plot of this novel pits two tormented souls seeking revenge against tormented souls begging to be absolved for their crimes. Mamoru, however, knows their is another way, and he is surrounded by friends and family who care about him, and who may possibly bring out his better side. Gramps, who teaches Mamoru to pick locks, is also the strongest influence on Mamoru not to use these skills in a criminal way. He is telling Mamoru that he trust him to do the right thing even when he has the means to do the wrong thing. It is this trust that Mamoru strives to live up to and that may save his soul.
Other books by Miyako Miyabe
Crossfire PL856.I856 K8713 2005
Shadow Family PL856.I856 R213 2004
All She Was Worth PL856.E856 K3713 1999
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