I had the distinct bittersweet pleasure of listening to much of the Congressional hearing last week featuring the grilling of, and occasional apology to, BP CEO Tony Hayward. Depending on the end result of this series of investigations, and (hopefully) eventual prosecutions and convictions, I think it may possibly be something we, the citizens, will be able to look on with, oh, I don't know, maybe... pride. Congressman Barton notwithstanding, there were passionate denouncements of the company's actions (and lack thereof) by the likes of Henry Waxman, Bart Stupak, and even my very own representative, Republican Steve Scalise. Hayward, meanwhile, seemed like he was preparing for an eventual criminal trial and oh-so carefully trying not to incriminate himself. Of course, he may just have been distracted by the yacht races he attended over the weekend. Oh, excuse me one moment while I check my guillotine auction on Ebay.
Another issue that I believe bears examination is the assertion by London mayor Boris Johnson, among others, that criticism of the largest company in Great Britain is "a matter of national concern," given the importance of BP's contributions to British pension funds at a time when the UK's economy is seen as one of the most fragile in Europe. As you almost certainly know, BP has suspended the payment of dividends as part of the agreement with/shakedown by the Obama Administration. Thus, some observers legitimately fear a meltdown on the order of those suffered by the economies of Greece and Iceland in recent years. Therefore, following the logic of corporate capitalism, criticism of BP's responsibility for and handling of the most serious enivironmental catastrophe in United States history should be muted, for the good of the global economic order as a whole.
That, in a nutshell, my friends, is the logical and moral framework of corporate capitalism. Surely you would agree that the normal, natural human emotion regarding those most affected by the disaster to this point (the families of the 11 killed in the original explosion, those whose livelihoods are directly affected by the closing of fisheries and beaches) is one of compassion and empathy, joined by outrage at those responsible. But what if your pension fund or 401(K) is dependent upon the financial well-being of BP? Are those natural, normal feelings now distorted and twisted by what seem like completely valid feelings of self-interest? This is what the perverted logic of corporate capitalism leads to, the unhealthy denial of the best, most compassionate, most just instincts in each of us.
And let me make it crystal clear that the phenomenon I am describing is meaningless without both the adjective and the noun. Corporate. capitalism. I am not opposed to capitalism as such. As a fiercely indpendent guerrilla bookseller, I participate in two fairly free-wheeling markets, on the street level in New Orleans and online through the corporate entity Amazon.com. At the street markets, I pay a set fee in order to display and sell my wares, often through negotiation of the stated prices, building relationships, responding to trends, tailoring my stock to the customer base. On Amazon.com, I pay a fee in order to take advantage of the website's international presence, allowing me to sell my stock to customers in New York City, Ithaca, Fresno, Eugene, or Rio de Janeiro, to take the last week as an example. Customer feedback is available to browsers, prices can be compared and changed according to supply and demand for a particular book. In short, there is a rather impressive kind of self-regulating free market purity which the free market fundamentalists would like to project onto the system as a whole, if, as they would argue, the government would just stay out of the way. However, my very occasional mistakes lead only to an unhappy customer who is out of the book he or she ordered. There is no constant stream of printer's ink pouring out of my garage/book room, fouling my neighborhood and putting my neighbors out of work.
I would therefore argue that, in my experience, commerce can take place, on a local, regional, national, and even international level, without exploitation (although one could validly argue that the customer is choosing not to support the independent bookseller right there in Ithaca or Eugene), if the scale of the relationship is appropriate. Although Amazon is operating on a gigantic scale compared to the Broad Flea market on the second Saturday of the month in New Orleans, the service they are providing me is the facilitation of a one-on-one relationship with that customer in Ithaca. Is that a genuinely responsible use of the available communications technology to facilitate sustainable commerce (I am, after all, recycling the books I sell), or I am engaged in self-serving rationalization in order to justify my own relationship with a multinational corporation that is not committing the most egregious crimes, compared to BP, but may be perpetuating the overall corporate culture that makes those crimes possible, or even inevitable? I think I'll have to chew that cud a while longer.
Of course, BP would like nothing better than for conscientious citizens to lose themselves in self-paralyzing navel-gazing, unable to act until we've purged ourselves of all petroleum-based products in our homes and garages. Despite what the Bible advocates, , I refuse to remove the Scion from my eye before I criticize the yacht I'd like to shove up Tony Heyward's a.......
More to come, and maybe even some book talk again one of these days.
Sunday, June 20, 2010
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
Connecting the Dots From B to P
In his article from the June 11-13 edition of counterpunch.org, the brilliant, iconoclastic journalist Alexander Cockburn points out a fascinating tidbit from the history of the oil company previously known as British Petroleum. It turns out that, like your typical common criminal, BP has had a few aliases over the years, including that of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, an institution that figures prominently in one of the more immoral episodes in modern American history.
In 1953, the CIA organized a coup d'etat against Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh as retaliation for his nationalization of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, after fruitless negotiations attempting to alter the one-sided and decidedly colonialist relationship between the company and a nation asserting its sovereign rights as a fledgling democracy in the wake of World War II. This assertion did not sit well with either the British or American governments, and the administration of Dwight Eisenhower, one of the military heroes of the struggle against fascism and (presumably) for democracy, decided to make an example of the brash upstart.
Let's connect the dots, shall we? Democratically-elected Mossadegh out, the autocratic Shah of Iran back in power, a slavish ally of Western interests in the Middle East throughout the Cold War, ably assisted by his notorious secret police, the SAVAK. He is finally overthrown in 1979 by a coalition of secular and Islamic revolutionaries. Unfortunately, the Islamists prevail, and President Jimmy Carter, as committed to the short-sighted Machiavellianism of cynical realpolitick as his predecessors, supports the Shah up to and beyond the bitter end, facilitating his cushy exile. The American Embassy was stormed, and the Carter presidency was doomed.
Along with the founding of the state of Israel in 1948, the removal of Mossadegh did much to squander any moral authority the United States had in the Middle East after the Allied victory. And, as with United Fruit in Guatemala and ITT in Chile, among others, the CIA asserted its role as a corporate-friendly mercenary army. Anglo-Iranian/British Petroleum and other oil companies in the region found common cause with various strongmen in the region, and the bonds between Islamic fundamentalism and apocalyptic terrorism grew stronger.
I'm not asserting any direct link between the historical actions of BP and 9/11, of course, but there is a definite sequence of events and consequences once the dots are connected. The 1953 coup has done monumental harm to the prospects for democracy in Iran and throughout the Middle East, and was planned and executed with the tacit approval of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. The corporate institution which currently goes by the name BP thus has a history of criminal behavior far predating April 20, and I believe the appropriate actions to be taken by the attorney general and state legislature of Louisiana are (a) aggressive criminal and civil investigations, followed by appropriate prosecutions, and (b) the revocation of BP's corporate charter in Louisiana. In other words, the corporate death penalty for this homicidal, career corporate criminal.
In 1953, the CIA organized a coup d'etat against Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh as retaliation for his nationalization of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, after fruitless negotiations attempting to alter the one-sided and decidedly colonialist relationship between the company and a nation asserting its sovereign rights as a fledgling democracy in the wake of World War II. This assertion did not sit well with either the British or American governments, and the administration of Dwight Eisenhower, one of the military heroes of the struggle against fascism and (presumably) for democracy, decided to make an example of the brash upstart.
Let's connect the dots, shall we? Democratically-elected Mossadegh out, the autocratic Shah of Iran back in power, a slavish ally of Western interests in the Middle East throughout the Cold War, ably assisted by his notorious secret police, the SAVAK. He is finally overthrown in 1979 by a coalition of secular and Islamic revolutionaries. Unfortunately, the Islamists prevail, and President Jimmy Carter, as committed to the short-sighted Machiavellianism of cynical realpolitick as his predecessors, supports the Shah up to and beyond the bitter end, facilitating his cushy exile. The American Embassy was stormed, and the Carter presidency was doomed.
Along with the founding of the state of Israel in 1948, the removal of Mossadegh did much to squander any moral authority the United States had in the Middle East after the Allied victory. And, as with United Fruit in Guatemala and ITT in Chile, among others, the CIA asserted its role as a corporate-friendly mercenary army. Anglo-Iranian/British Petroleum and other oil companies in the region found common cause with various strongmen in the region, and the bonds between Islamic fundamentalism and apocalyptic terrorism grew stronger.
I'm not asserting any direct link between the historical actions of BP and 9/11, of course, but there is a definite sequence of events and consequences once the dots are connected. The 1953 coup has done monumental harm to the prospects for democracy in Iran and throughout the Middle East, and was planned and executed with the tacit approval of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. The corporate institution which currently goes by the name BP thus has a history of criminal behavior far predating April 20, and I believe the appropriate actions to be taken by the attorney general and state legislature of Louisiana are (a) aggressive criminal and civil investigations, followed by appropriate prosecutions, and (b) the revocation of BP's corporate charter in Louisiana. In other words, the corporate death penalty for this homicidal, career corporate criminal.
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
The Dignity of Pelicans, Corporate Personhood and Citizenship
When I glanced just now at the last time I posted something on this blog, I read the date April 20, the date of the explosion which claimed the lives of 11 oil rig workers and began the ordeal which continues to poison the Gulf of Mexico. I have tried more than once to collect my thoughts about it, but nothing has rung true to this point. The anger and outrage are there, and I feel I can express them with a certain degree of eloquence and empathy. I've jotted down notes describing my intense feelings for the pelican, for instance, whose maternal image graces the Louisiana state flag, nurturing young union, justice and confidence until the day when they will eventually take flight.
And what flight! A pelican in flight is the embodiment of dignity overcoming adversity, as the elements which appear so awkward on land - tiny head and legs, oversized wings and beak, bottom-heavy body - combine in a seeminglyl effortless ballet, wings barely moving, eyes purposefully set straight ahead, until the moment of the plunge, followed by the return to the air, the twitch of the fresh catch discernible within the beak. The stubbornness of such a creature, daring to defy the gravity which holds back its fellow oddballs the penguin and the ostrich, is to me a true inspiration, and an apt metaphor for our oddball corner of the world. So when I see the images of Mama pelican assaulted by these catastrophic events, I see that corner of the world, with all of its cultural and ecological and economic riches, under assault, and I get fired up to do....what, exactly?
And there it is. The h word. Helpless. What to do? I'm not an engineer, a marine biologist, a member of Congress, a fisherman, an oceanographer, a member of the Coast Guard or the National Guard, someone with a level of expertise which could be brought to bear to deal with the most immediate challenges. I'm not a professional journalist, with the resources and time to devote to covering the story as it unfolds day-to-day, challenging the official spin and unpeeling the onion of corporate deception. What I am is a full-time homeschooling father and husband and part-time independent guerrilla bookseller, and very part-time blogger.
But now that I think about it, I left out one aspect of my personhood in that description. I am a citizen, a citizen of many communities unfolding like concentric circles around me (Old Jefferson, greater New Orleans, southwest Louisiana), in which I engage to the degree that I can. One of the larger of those circles is the United States of America, an often unwieldy, often immature, sometimes visionary community of lofty ideals, many of which are formalized in the United States Constitution, that confoundingly simple yet enigmatically complex document, and the constitutions of the separate states. And as dire as this situation appears, and as ineffectual as the political institutions around us appear in the face of this crisis, there are radical, fundamental steps that can be taken by citizens to hold the guilty parties accountable.
There are three corporations implicated in the Deepwater Horizon explosion and spill: BP, Halliburton and Transocean. BP has received the lion's share of attention, while still attempting to deflect blame for the original explosion. Hopefully, a comprehensive criminal investigation and trial will sort out the blame for the deaths of the 11 workers, and civil litigation will quickly follow. But there is another step that I would argue needs to be taken by citizens and their elected representatives, a step that I think is justified by the heinousness of the crimes: revocation of the charters of the corporations who are found responsible.
In order to operate in a particular state, that state's legislature issues a charter which allows it to perform certain functions for a particular amount of time. If those conditions are violated, the state legislature and attorney general can revoke the charter, and that company can no longer operate in that state. Such rights were asserted often by states in the pre-Civil War period (Andrew Jackson's struggles with the Second Bank of the United States revolved around such issues), after which corporations began to gain the legal upper hand.
A key Rubicon was crossed in 1886, when the Southern Pacific Railroad argued before the Supreme Court that the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which freed the slaves after the Civil War, should also be applied to corporations, therefore granting corporations the same rights to engage in politics as individuals. The Court ruled against the railroad, and Chief Justice Morrison Waite handwrote a note saying that there was no decision on the constitutional question. However, the Court Reporter, a former railroad president, rewrote the note to state just the opposite, and the Chief Justice died before the altered notes were published. Thus, a precedent was born, out of dishonesty and lies (the story is well-told by Thom Hartmann in We the People: A Call to Take Back America, 2004, Coreway Media, Inc.). Such corporate power grabs have been further institutionalized, most recently with the ruling in Citizens United vs. the Federal Election Commission, in which the Roberts Court ruled that corporate political funding cannot be restricted under the First Amendment.
If corporate personhood is currently entrenched in American law, then we the citizens should frame the crimes of corporations in personal terms. I am opposed to the death penalty for individuals for a number of reasons, but I see no reason to oppose the death penalty for one or more corporations found responsible for causing the deaths of 11 people and cultural and economic calamity for thousands of others, and I have a feeling a critical mass of my fellow citizens could be persuaded to share that view. Unfortunately, legislators in this state tend to have close connections to the industries involved in the explosion and spill, and I would not expect Jindal, Landrieu or Vitter to provide leadership on this issue. Perhaps Congressman Charlie Melancon, who is obviously deeply emotionally affected and whose anemic Senate campaign could use a rousing shot in the arm, or Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nunngesser, who seems to be emerging as the public face of the tragedy.
If there is any possible silver lining to this catastrophe, it could be a renewed willingness of citizens to confront the multi-national corporations whose greed and negligence have brought us to this state. We must unite. We must demand justice. And we must be confident in our citizenship. We are all Louisiana. More to come.
And what flight! A pelican in flight is the embodiment of dignity overcoming adversity, as the elements which appear so awkward on land - tiny head and legs, oversized wings and beak, bottom-heavy body - combine in a seeminglyl effortless ballet, wings barely moving, eyes purposefully set straight ahead, until the moment of the plunge, followed by the return to the air, the twitch of the fresh catch discernible within the beak. The stubbornness of such a creature, daring to defy the gravity which holds back its fellow oddballs the penguin and the ostrich, is to me a true inspiration, and an apt metaphor for our oddball corner of the world. So when I see the images of Mama pelican assaulted by these catastrophic events, I see that corner of the world, with all of its cultural and ecological and economic riches, under assault, and I get fired up to do....what, exactly?
And there it is. The h word. Helpless. What to do? I'm not an engineer, a marine biologist, a member of Congress, a fisherman, an oceanographer, a member of the Coast Guard or the National Guard, someone with a level of expertise which could be brought to bear to deal with the most immediate challenges. I'm not a professional journalist, with the resources and time to devote to covering the story as it unfolds day-to-day, challenging the official spin and unpeeling the onion of corporate deception. What I am is a full-time homeschooling father and husband and part-time independent guerrilla bookseller, and very part-time blogger.
But now that I think about it, I left out one aspect of my personhood in that description. I am a citizen, a citizen of many communities unfolding like concentric circles around me (Old Jefferson, greater New Orleans, southwest Louisiana), in which I engage to the degree that I can. One of the larger of those circles is the United States of America, an often unwieldy, often immature, sometimes visionary community of lofty ideals, many of which are formalized in the United States Constitution, that confoundingly simple yet enigmatically complex document, and the constitutions of the separate states. And as dire as this situation appears, and as ineffectual as the political institutions around us appear in the face of this crisis, there are radical, fundamental steps that can be taken by citizens to hold the guilty parties accountable.
There are three corporations implicated in the Deepwater Horizon explosion and spill: BP, Halliburton and Transocean. BP has received the lion's share of attention, while still attempting to deflect blame for the original explosion. Hopefully, a comprehensive criminal investigation and trial will sort out the blame for the deaths of the 11 workers, and civil litigation will quickly follow. But there is another step that I would argue needs to be taken by citizens and their elected representatives, a step that I think is justified by the heinousness of the crimes: revocation of the charters of the corporations who are found responsible.
In order to operate in a particular state, that state's legislature issues a charter which allows it to perform certain functions for a particular amount of time. If those conditions are violated, the state legislature and attorney general can revoke the charter, and that company can no longer operate in that state. Such rights were asserted often by states in the pre-Civil War period (Andrew Jackson's struggles with the Second Bank of the United States revolved around such issues), after which corporations began to gain the legal upper hand.
A key Rubicon was crossed in 1886, when the Southern Pacific Railroad argued before the Supreme Court that the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which freed the slaves after the Civil War, should also be applied to corporations, therefore granting corporations the same rights to engage in politics as individuals. The Court ruled against the railroad, and Chief Justice Morrison Waite handwrote a note saying that there was no decision on the constitutional question. However, the Court Reporter, a former railroad president, rewrote the note to state just the opposite, and the Chief Justice died before the altered notes were published. Thus, a precedent was born, out of dishonesty and lies (the story is well-told by Thom Hartmann in We the People: A Call to Take Back America, 2004, Coreway Media, Inc.). Such corporate power grabs have been further institutionalized, most recently with the ruling in Citizens United vs. the Federal Election Commission, in which the Roberts Court ruled that corporate political funding cannot be restricted under the First Amendment.
If corporate personhood is currently entrenched in American law, then we the citizens should frame the crimes of corporations in personal terms. I am opposed to the death penalty for individuals for a number of reasons, but I see no reason to oppose the death penalty for one or more corporations found responsible for causing the deaths of 11 people and cultural and economic calamity for thousands of others, and I have a feeling a critical mass of my fellow citizens could be persuaded to share that view. Unfortunately, legislators in this state tend to have close connections to the industries involved in the explosion and spill, and I would not expect Jindal, Landrieu or Vitter to provide leadership on this issue. Perhaps Congressman Charlie Melancon, who is obviously deeply emotionally affected and whose anemic Senate campaign could use a rousing shot in the arm, or Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nunngesser, who seems to be emerging as the public face of the tragedy.
If there is any possible silver lining to this catastrophe, it could be a renewed willingness of citizens to confront the multi-national corporations whose greed and negligence have brought us to this state. We must unite. We must demand justice. And we must be confident in our citizenship. We are all Louisiana. More to come.
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Alternative Media Expo Wrap-up
This past Saturday, April 17, saw the (if I'm not mistaken) third incarnation of the Alternative Media Expo, sponsored by Leo McGovern and the good folks at Antigravity Magazine. Esconced in the urban vibe of the warehouse section of the Contemporary Arts Center in New Orleans' gallery district, the annual shindig highlights such homegrown, grassroots entrepreuneurial ventures as the New Orleans Craft Mafia, Defend New Orleans, Dirty Coast t-shirts and Crescent City Comics. Deep South Samizdat Books was, of course, honored to be in such esteemed company, and the day proved to be fun, inspiring and lucrative.
The organizers charge five dollars admission, which I admit I questioned the wisdom of originally. However, I have completely come around to the concept, as it seems to prime the pump for the festival of independent, noncorporate commerce that takes place, the collective thumbing of the nose to the Targets and Gaps and Old Navys that eternally threaten to turn us into just another Cincinnati or Dallas or Topeka. The interaction that subsequently takes place is not one of frenzied consumption, but one of appreciative engagement with artists, craftspeople, journalists, or in my case, a creative recycler of densely packed, interactive nuggets of intellectual, philosophical and spiritual wisdom known as books.
And the books you people were buying! Multiple copies of volumes by the erotic apostle D.H. Lawrence; quantum psychologist and cult novelist Robert Anton Wilson; modern mythmaker Neil Gaiman; transgressive science-fiction outlaw Samuel R. Delaney; Cold War-era Eastern European science fiction Solzhenitsyn Stanislaw Lem; Gothic Suburban Surrealist Shirley Jackson; militaristic crypto-libertarian Robert Heinlein; Noir Underbelly-of-the-American-
Century chronicler James Ellroy; the Mississippi Moonshine Modernist, William Faulkner; the creator of Conan, the spinner of sword and sorcery from central Texas, Robert E. Howard; the Florida sunshine and southern spice of the Harlem Renaissance, Zora Neale Hurston; and the cyberpunk standard-bearer Bruce Sterling.
Now, I had the presence of mind to bring multiple copies of the aforementioned, but I would have been hardpressed to proclaim that they would outsell such counterculture mainstays as Vonnegut, Huxley, Rand, Camus, Hesse, etc. Heavy on the speculative fiction, with a smattering of classic modern lit, all embodying the ambiguous yet highly evocative gumbo of alternative media. Well done, my friends.
The organizers charge five dollars admission, which I admit I questioned the wisdom of originally. However, I have completely come around to the concept, as it seems to prime the pump for the festival of independent, noncorporate commerce that takes place, the collective thumbing of the nose to the Targets and Gaps and Old Navys that eternally threaten to turn us into just another Cincinnati or Dallas or Topeka. The interaction that subsequently takes place is not one of frenzied consumption, but one of appreciative engagement with artists, craftspeople, journalists, or in my case, a creative recycler of densely packed, interactive nuggets of intellectual, philosophical and spiritual wisdom known as books.
And the books you people were buying! Multiple copies of volumes by the erotic apostle D.H. Lawrence; quantum psychologist and cult novelist Robert Anton Wilson; modern mythmaker Neil Gaiman; transgressive science-fiction outlaw Samuel R. Delaney; Cold War-era Eastern European science fiction Solzhenitsyn Stanislaw Lem; Gothic Suburban Surrealist Shirley Jackson; militaristic crypto-libertarian Robert Heinlein; Noir Underbelly-of-the-American-
Century chronicler James Ellroy; the Mississippi Moonshine Modernist, William Faulkner; the creator of Conan, the spinner of sword and sorcery from central Texas, Robert E. Howard; the Florida sunshine and southern spice of the Harlem Renaissance, Zora Neale Hurston; and the cyberpunk standard-bearer Bruce Sterling.
Now, I had the presence of mind to bring multiple copies of the aforementioned, but I would have been hardpressed to proclaim that they would outsell such counterculture mainstays as Vonnegut, Huxley, Rand, Camus, Hesse, etc. Heavy on the speculative fiction, with a smattering of classic modern lit, all embodying the ambiguous yet highly evocative gumbo of alternative media. Well done, my friends.
Monday, April 5, 2010
Urban Cowboy Mouth
Book reviewed:
Just Kids
by Patti Smith
Harper Collins Publishers, 2010
278 pages
Patti Smith's Just Kids is a passionate tribute to her dear friend (and one-time lover) the late Robert Mapplethorpe, and to the New York in which they came of age in the late 1960's and 1970's. Smith was just making a name for herself as a poet and rock journalist when she emerged from the CBGB's punk scene that spawned the Ramones and Talking Heads, among others, while Mapplethorpe developed an intense photographic style, much of it infused with gay and s/m themes, before dying of AIDS in 1989. The young, still-aspiring artists matured among the moveable feast of Beats and Punks, young turks and elders who were recreating the city and the world in their image.
Smith has made an idiosyncratic but iconic career as musician, writer and visual artist out of a romantic commitment to a pure distillation of art, idolizing and idealizing those she considers to have shared that utter commitment (Baudelaire, Genet, Bob Dylan, Keith Richards) or even been consumed by it as martyrs to artistic purity (Rimbaud, Jackson Pollock, Jim Morrison) Similar larger-than-life figures move in and out of the narrative, changing and evolving the culture around them as surely as Hemingway, Joyce, Picasson, Pound and Stein in 1920's Paris. Throughout, Smith maintains a certain Candide meets Forrest Gump innocence, resisting the drug use around her, professing surprise when Mapplethorpe's embrace of homosexuality becomes personal, rather than simply artistic and voyeuristic.
So many vivid portraits emerge, highly personal and unique, yet simultaneously timeless: Mapplethorpe embraces the transgressive New York world of Warhol, drag queens and bohemian socialites, but lies to his Catholic parents about him and Smith being married; Kris Kristofferson sings "Me and Bobby McGee" to Janis Joplin while Smith sits on the floor; Salvador Dali sees her with a stuffed crow and tells Smith she looks like a "gothic crow": she begins an intense affair with a drummer who introduces himself as Slim Shady, only to find out several days later that he is Off-Broadway playwriting sensation (and husband and father) Sam Shepard, who she collaborates with on the play Cowboy Mouth.
Harry Smith, Gregory Corso and Jim Carroll, (who appears in a similar, decadent saintly role in Kathleen Norris' 1970's in New York memoir The Virgin of Bennington), all dead now (if any of those names are unfamiliar to you, go to Google immediately, then come back. It's okay, we'll wait for you.... Take your time.... Okay, come on back now, you can return to that later.... come on, I'll loan you some books) are among the others who inspire Smith along the way, and are portrayed with much affection and respect. Each of the three were sporadically brilliant artists with emotionally trying personalities, as symbolic of their city at the time as anyone. As in Carroll's classic song, "People Who Died," Smith endows her time, her circle of friends and lovers, and her city, with a luminescent dignity which will make you search your bookshelves, cd racks and Netflix queue for the artifacts they left behind.
Just Kids
by Patti Smith
Harper Collins Publishers, 2010
278 pages
Patti Smith's Just Kids is a passionate tribute to her dear friend (and one-time lover) the late Robert Mapplethorpe, and to the New York in which they came of age in the late 1960's and 1970's. Smith was just making a name for herself as a poet and rock journalist when she emerged from the CBGB's punk scene that spawned the Ramones and Talking Heads, among others, while Mapplethorpe developed an intense photographic style, much of it infused with gay and s/m themes, before dying of AIDS in 1989. The young, still-aspiring artists matured among the moveable feast of Beats and Punks, young turks and elders who were recreating the city and the world in their image.
Smith has made an idiosyncratic but iconic career as musician, writer and visual artist out of a romantic commitment to a pure distillation of art, idolizing and idealizing those she considers to have shared that utter commitment (Baudelaire, Genet, Bob Dylan, Keith Richards) or even been consumed by it as martyrs to artistic purity (Rimbaud, Jackson Pollock, Jim Morrison) Similar larger-than-life figures move in and out of the narrative, changing and evolving the culture around them as surely as Hemingway, Joyce, Picasson, Pound and Stein in 1920's Paris. Throughout, Smith maintains a certain Candide meets Forrest Gump innocence, resisting the drug use around her, professing surprise when Mapplethorpe's embrace of homosexuality becomes personal, rather than simply artistic and voyeuristic.
So many vivid portraits emerge, highly personal and unique, yet simultaneously timeless: Mapplethorpe embraces the transgressive New York world of Warhol, drag queens and bohemian socialites, but lies to his Catholic parents about him and Smith being married; Kris Kristofferson sings "Me and Bobby McGee" to Janis Joplin while Smith sits on the floor; Salvador Dali sees her with a stuffed crow and tells Smith she looks like a "gothic crow": she begins an intense affair with a drummer who introduces himself as Slim Shady, only to find out several days later that he is Off-Broadway playwriting sensation (and husband and father) Sam Shepard, who she collaborates with on the play Cowboy Mouth.
Harry Smith, Gregory Corso and Jim Carroll, (who appears in a similar, decadent saintly role in Kathleen Norris' 1970's in New York memoir The Virgin of Bennington), all dead now (if any of those names are unfamiliar to you, go to Google immediately, then come back. It's okay, we'll wait for you.... Take your time.... Okay, come on back now, you can return to that later.... come on, I'll loan you some books) are among the others who inspire Smith along the way, and are portrayed with much affection and respect. Each of the three were sporadically brilliant artists with emotionally trying personalities, as symbolic of their city at the time as anyone. As in Carroll's classic song, "People Who Died," Smith endows her time, her circle of friends and lovers, and her city, with a luminescent dignity which will make you search your bookshelves, cd racks and Netflix queue for the artifacts they left behind.
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
Final Words of the Class Clown
Book reviewed:
Last Words, by George Carlin. Free Press, 2009. 294 pp.
It's been close to two years since we lost George Carlin, who, along with Richard Pryor, took the baton from the original generation of maverick stand-up comics (Lenny Bruce, Dick Gregory, Nichols and May, Mort Sahl) and proceeded to pass it to the tamer Letterman/Seinfeld generation (with force-of-nature exceptions like Bill Hicks and Dave Chapelle). Although he briefly had a sitcom on Fox and hosted Saturday Night Live and shined in occasional memorable cameos in movies (Dogma, for instance), Carlin's primary artistic canvas was the stage (and the comedy album), his brush the single microphone, and the pallette his intelligence, his skepticism, his disrespect for authority and groupthink, and his ever-present, acerbic wit.
Within days of the announcement of Carlin's death, one of the comedy channels on XM satellite radio, of which I have been a subscriber for many years now, played nothing but Carlin's routines for 48 hours straight. As my daughter will bitterly attest, with eyes rolling, I play the satellite radio constantly (although, curiously, I don't have it on right now; rather, I'm listening to a Sonny Landreth cd [enough with the navel-gazing already, Parker!]), so I was able to immerse myself in the all-you-can-think buffet of Carlin's genius, often listening to the same insights two, three, four times: stuff, the seven words, baseball and football, shell shock to post-traumatic stress disorder. From the sublime to the banal, and back again.
Last Words is a self-described "sortabiography," co-written with Tony Hendra, that fills in a lot of biographical details, and provides an intimate look at the inner workings of a comedic artist. Neither aspect disappoints. Carlin identifies himself as the product of a union between his alcoholic "shanty Irish" father and his "lace-curtain Irish" mother, with the obvious class differences implied by the terminology. New York in the 1940's and early 1950's is described with vivid affection, a vast playground accessible by subway (which Carlin started rising by himself at the age of seven), abounding with opportunities for adventure, pranks and petty theft.
Rather improbably, Carlin joined the Air Force, ending up stationed at Barksdale Air Force Base in Bossier City, Louisiana, "across the Red River from Shreveport, Louisiana, which, according to my friend Jose', was 'the fucking armpit of the fucking nation'" (p. 60). It also happens to be this blogger's hometown, and his portrait of mid-1950's life in that area, in the Air Force, is fascinating. He spent most of his time with black airmen (in the very segregated Deep South)(did I mention this was the 1950's?), relating one story of being arrested with a black friend and a white friend for no reason and ending up in the Bossier City jail, in segreagated but adjacent cells for the different races: "I had three joints in my sock and they hadn't searched us. So we smoked pot all night, in 1955, blacks and whites together, in the Bossier City jail. Blew the fucking smoke out the fucking window. That felt good!" (pp. 61-62). Okay, now let that sink in, because I believe we have the revolutionary importance of George Carlin in a nutshell in this one anecdote. Sure, he wasn't being attacked by police dogs or taking his life in his hands registering black voters in Mississippi. But the man was in jail, sharing a consciousness-altering and very illegal sacrament with men considered inferior by the local mores and institutions, and sharing it inside the underbelly of that white supremacist power structure. All this while serving in a branch of the United States military, in the thick of the Cold War and just two years removed from the Hot War (excuse me, police action) in Korea. And the man came out the other side, having served a crucial apprenticeship in radio and having survived two court-martials and various other disciplinary actions. By the way, he also was asked to leave 11 months early, with no repercussions.
What follows is a fairly conventional early comedy career for the time, with stand-up appearances at nightclubs leading to t.v. variety and talk shows, imbibing the innovations of Bruce and Sahl without fully embracing them, honing an act designed to please the Ed Sullivans and Merv Griffins and their legions of gray flannel-suited admirers. Eventually, after much soul-searching, he rejected those trappings and blazed his own trail, with classic comedy albums and HBO specials, hosting the very first episode of Saturday Night Live, and finally settling in as a best-selling author, despite multiple heart attacks, drug addiction and some financial miscues along the way.
There are occasional observations about other comedians and performers, but much more attention is given to the evolution of Carlin's art (a brief, rather mild dismissal of Billy Crystal is notable for its uniqueness in the narrative), with frank self-criticism where appropriate. All in all, a fascinating account of an individual who truly changed the culture around him, even when he was stuck in a jail cell in Bossier City, Louisiana in the mid-1950's.
Last Words, by George Carlin. Free Press, 2009. 294 pp.
It's been close to two years since we lost George Carlin, who, along with Richard Pryor, took the baton from the original generation of maverick stand-up comics (Lenny Bruce, Dick Gregory, Nichols and May, Mort Sahl) and proceeded to pass it to the tamer Letterman/Seinfeld generation (with force-of-nature exceptions like Bill Hicks and Dave Chapelle). Although he briefly had a sitcom on Fox and hosted Saturday Night Live and shined in occasional memorable cameos in movies (Dogma, for instance), Carlin's primary artistic canvas was the stage (and the comedy album), his brush the single microphone, and the pallette his intelligence, his skepticism, his disrespect for authority and groupthink, and his ever-present, acerbic wit.
Within days of the announcement of Carlin's death, one of the comedy channels on XM satellite radio, of which I have been a subscriber for many years now, played nothing but Carlin's routines for 48 hours straight. As my daughter will bitterly attest, with eyes rolling, I play the satellite radio constantly (although, curiously, I don't have it on right now; rather, I'm listening to a Sonny Landreth cd [enough with the navel-gazing already, Parker!]), so I was able to immerse myself in the all-you-can-think buffet of Carlin's genius, often listening to the same insights two, three, four times: stuff, the seven words, baseball and football, shell shock to post-traumatic stress disorder. From the sublime to the banal, and back again.
Last Words is a self-described "sortabiography," co-written with Tony Hendra, that fills in a lot of biographical details, and provides an intimate look at the inner workings of a comedic artist. Neither aspect disappoints. Carlin identifies himself as the product of a union between his alcoholic "shanty Irish" father and his "lace-curtain Irish" mother, with the obvious class differences implied by the terminology. New York in the 1940's and early 1950's is described with vivid affection, a vast playground accessible by subway (which Carlin started rising by himself at the age of seven), abounding with opportunities for adventure, pranks and petty theft.
Rather improbably, Carlin joined the Air Force, ending up stationed at Barksdale Air Force Base in Bossier City, Louisiana, "across the Red River from Shreveport, Louisiana, which, according to my friend Jose', was 'the fucking armpit of the fucking nation'" (p. 60). It also happens to be this blogger's hometown, and his portrait of mid-1950's life in that area, in the Air Force, is fascinating. He spent most of his time with black airmen (in the very segregated Deep South)(did I mention this was the 1950's?), relating one story of being arrested with a black friend and a white friend for no reason and ending up in the Bossier City jail, in segreagated but adjacent cells for the different races: "I had three joints in my sock and they hadn't searched us. So we smoked pot all night, in 1955, blacks and whites together, in the Bossier City jail. Blew the fucking smoke out the fucking window. That felt good!" (pp. 61-62). Okay, now let that sink in, because I believe we have the revolutionary importance of George Carlin in a nutshell in this one anecdote. Sure, he wasn't being attacked by police dogs or taking his life in his hands registering black voters in Mississippi. But the man was in jail, sharing a consciousness-altering and very illegal sacrament with men considered inferior by the local mores and institutions, and sharing it inside the underbelly of that white supremacist power structure. All this while serving in a branch of the United States military, in the thick of the Cold War and just two years removed from the Hot War (excuse me, police action) in Korea. And the man came out the other side, having served a crucial apprenticeship in radio and having survived two court-martials and various other disciplinary actions. By the way, he also was asked to leave 11 months early, with no repercussions.
What follows is a fairly conventional early comedy career for the time, with stand-up appearances at nightclubs leading to t.v. variety and talk shows, imbibing the innovations of Bruce and Sahl without fully embracing them, honing an act designed to please the Ed Sullivans and Merv Griffins and their legions of gray flannel-suited admirers. Eventually, after much soul-searching, he rejected those trappings and blazed his own trail, with classic comedy albums and HBO specials, hosting the very first episode of Saturday Night Live, and finally settling in as a best-selling author, despite multiple heart attacks, drug addiction and some financial miscues along the way.
There are occasional observations about other comedians and performers, but much more attention is given to the evolution of Carlin's art (a brief, rather mild dismissal of Billy Crystal is notable for its uniqueness in the narrative), with frank self-criticism where appropriate. All in all, a fascinating account of an individual who truly changed the culture around him, even when he was stuck in a jail cell in Bossier City, Louisiana in the mid-1950's.
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Heartbreaking Works of Nightmare and Utopia
Books reviewed:
Eggers, Dave. Zeitoun. McSweeney's Books, 2009. 351 pp.
Solnit, Rebecca. A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster. Viking, 2009. 353 pp.
I don't know about you, but the majority of my focused reading (not including the daily paper, homeschooling my daughter, in line at the post office, waiting at a red light ["Alright, already, I heard the horn the first time]) takes place late at night, after the rest of the family is asleep, between about nine and one 0'clock, depending on my level of fatigue from the day. If the book just doesn't hold my attention (like Dickens' Little Dorritt, which I dutifully, but unsuccessfully, tried to read for one of my book groups), I'm out, the book swaying back and forth in my hands until it drops onto my chest and wakes me up. But give me a riveting story of outrageous injustice perpretrated against an honorable, innocent individual or community by representatives of banal, sadistic, Kafkaesque institutions, and it's like crystal meth for the soul (there's my franchise right there: Crystal Meth for the Cat-Lover's Soul, Crystal Meth for the NASCAR Soul, Crystal Meth for the Auto-Erotic Asphyxiation Lover's Soul, you get the idea).
The two books reviewed here provide exactly that, coming from very different but occasionally overlapping perspectives. Zeitoun is Dave Egger's account of one man's nightmarish experience in New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Abdulrahman Zeitoun is a Syrian immigrant, successful painting and building contractor, devout Muslim and loving husband and father who refused to leave New Orleans as Katrina bore down on the city. After several days spent rescuing neighbors and strangers, staying in touch with his wife Kathy, feeding abandoned dogs and exploring the submerged city by canoe, he and some acquaintances are imprisoned (not formally arrested or charged, mind you) by local police and National Guard and accused of Taliban/Al Quaida membership because of unusual but completely innocent circumstances. He then disappears for several days into a legal system that is utterly dysfunctional on its best days, while his wife and family members frantically try to find out what happened to him. It's an unbelievably infuriating story, told skillfully by a master storyteller who seems determined lately to use his considerable talents and resources (as publisher and editor as well as writer) to draw attention to monumental injustices through the prism of highly personal narratives.
Rebecca Solnit, on the other hand, examines the historical dynamics embodied by both Zeitoun and his persecutors. Analyzing such historical phenomena as the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, a 1917 ammunition explosion in Halifax, Nova Scotia, earthquakes in Managua (1972) and Mexico City (1985), and 9-11, Solnit makes the case that, mass media myths to the contrary, disaster tends to bring out not just the best, but downright utopian tendencies in most people, often resulting in far-reaching, long-term social change for the affected society (Nicaragua's Bautista regime and Mexico's PRI party being two of those whose fall Solnit connects directly to the aforementioned earthquakes). As institutions break down, individuals and communities are forced to pool resources and wisdom, and often discover that, despite the tragic hardships which result from the disaster, there is a meaning to their lives that wasn't present previously.
Eggers, Dave. Zeitoun. McSweeney's Books, 2009. 351 pp.
Solnit, Rebecca. A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster. Viking, 2009. 353 pp.
I don't know about you, but the majority of my focused reading (not including the daily paper, homeschooling my daughter, in line at the post office, waiting at a red light ["Alright, already, I heard the horn the first time]) takes place late at night, after the rest of the family is asleep, between about nine and one 0'clock, depending on my level of fatigue from the day. If the book just doesn't hold my attention (like Dickens' Little Dorritt, which I dutifully, but unsuccessfully, tried to read for one of my book groups), I'm out, the book swaying back and forth in my hands until it drops onto my chest and wakes me up. But give me a riveting story of outrageous injustice perpretrated against an honorable, innocent individual or community by representatives of banal, sadistic, Kafkaesque institutions, and it's like crystal meth for the soul (there's my franchise right there: Crystal Meth for the Cat-Lover's Soul, Crystal Meth for the NASCAR Soul, Crystal Meth for the Auto-Erotic Asphyxiation Lover's Soul, you get the idea).
The two books reviewed here provide exactly that, coming from very different but occasionally overlapping perspectives. Zeitoun is Dave Egger's account of one man's nightmarish experience in New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Abdulrahman Zeitoun is a Syrian immigrant, successful painting and building contractor, devout Muslim and loving husband and father who refused to leave New Orleans as Katrina bore down on the city. After several days spent rescuing neighbors and strangers, staying in touch with his wife Kathy, feeding abandoned dogs and exploring the submerged city by canoe, he and some acquaintances are imprisoned (not formally arrested or charged, mind you) by local police and National Guard and accused of Taliban/Al Quaida membership because of unusual but completely innocent circumstances. He then disappears for several days into a legal system that is utterly dysfunctional on its best days, while his wife and family members frantically try to find out what happened to him. It's an unbelievably infuriating story, told skillfully by a master storyteller who seems determined lately to use his considerable talents and resources (as publisher and editor as well as writer) to draw attention to monumental injustices through the prism of highly personal narratives.
Rebecca Solnit, on the other hand, examines the historical dynamics embodied by both Zeitoun and his persecutors. Analyzing such historical phenomena as the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, a 1917 ammunition explosion in Halifax, Nova Scotia, earthquakes in Managua (1972) and Mexico City (1985), and 9-11, Solnit makes the case that, mass media myths to the contrary, disaster tends to bring out not just the best, but downright utopian tendencies in most people, often resulting in far-reaching, long-term social change for the affected society (Nicaragua's Bautista regime and Mexico's PRI party being two of those whose fall Solnit connects directly to the aforementioned earthquakes). As institutions break down, individuals and communities are forced to pool resources and wisdom, and often discover that, despite the tragic hardships which result from the disaster, there is a meaning to their lives that wasn't present previously.
There are always countervaling forces, however, as New Orleanians are bitterly aware. The economic and political elites (at all levels, within and outside of the city), white-flight suburbanites, and police and military personnel are among those Solnit identifies as subsceptible to "elite panic," a condition which can render one incapable of the kind of critical thought necessary to discount rumors like those of babies being raped in the Superdome in the days following Hurricane Katrina: "Disaster sociologist Kathleen Tierney,... itemized its ingredients as 'fear of social disorder; fear of poor, minorities and immigrants; obsession with looting and property crime; willingness to resort to deadly force; and actions taken on the basis of rumor.' In other words, it is the few who behave badly and the many who rise to the occasion. And those few behave badly not because of facts but because of beliefs: they believe the rest of us are about to panic or become a mob or upend property relations, and in their fear they act out to prevent something that may only have existed in their imaginations. Thus the myth of malevolent disaster behavior becomes something of a self-fulfilling prophecy," (p.127).
One factor Solnit doesn't discuss is what seems to me the most obvious difference between Katrina and the other disasters cited. While an earthquake or tsunami or terrorist attack takes its victims by surprise, a potentially disastrous hurricane can be anticipated, in at least a meteorological manner, days before landfall. So while the populations of San Francisco and Managua and Mexico City (and now Port-au-Prince) were struck in their entirety (allowing for construction and location variations), those in New Orleans who bore the brunt of Katrina were mostly the poor, stuck in the city even if they would like to leave, or those, like Zeitoun, who chose to stay for various personal reasons. Does the shared direct experience of the former cities contribute to greater solidarity post-disaster? Are the class differences between those who stayed and those who left in New Orleans too entrenched to allow for the reform and revolution seen in other places? Will the historic connections between New Orleans and Haiti come into play in coming years?
Finally, as one who thinks the importance of popular culture is too easily discounted by most historians and political theorists, will the confluence of New Orleans' globally iconic musical culture and the Saints' victory in what is unarguably one of the most popular sports spectacles in the world have repercussions in the navigation of the post-Katrina political landscape? Time will tell if Who Dat Nation will truly become Utopia.
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