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.”

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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. 

http://www.slate.com/id/2223214/

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

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.

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

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.