03.01.08
Posted in Music, What I'm Reading, Books, Reality is Weird at 6:10 pm by Spencer
Of all the wonders and horrors of the Al Capone legend, I’ll bet you didn’t know that he once played banjo in a band with Machine Gun Kelly.
In late 1934, convict Capone was transferred from the federal prison in Atlanta to Alcatraz, the toughest prison in the country. As recounted by Gus Russo in his fine book, The Outfit (Bloomsbury, 2001):
After a year of begging, Capone persuaded the warden to allow him twenty minutes a day to form a band with other prisoners. Al had his family send him top of the line banjos, mandolins, and music charts and he succeeded in teaching himself some rudimentary songs. On drums was “Machine Gun” Kelly, while sax chores were handled by kidnapper Harmon Whaley. The ensemble was disbanded after a violent row erupted during a rehearsal.
According to legend, the sound of a ghostly banjo can still sometimes be heard wafting from Capone’s old cell. If you want, you can visit Alcatraz today and perhaps shake a shank to some spectral hot jazz.
Permalink
01.15.08
Posted in News of the World, Politics, Books at 11:47 pm by Spencer
It was only recently announced that underground press pioneer and author Walter Bowart died from colon cancer on December 18, 2006 in Inchelium, Washington. He was 68.
Bowart is best remembered for co-founding, in 1965, The East Village Other — a seminal underground newspaper which he also edited for four years — and for his remarkable 1978 book, Operation Mind Control: Our Secret Government’s War Against Its Own People. He also co-founded the Underground Press Syndicate, an incredibly important if now little-known alternative “wire service” (actually, they mailed mimeographed copies of articles) that was a crucial nexus for underground publications of every size and description across the country during the pre-Internet ferment of the Vietnam War era.
If you’ve never heard of any one of these, then you really are not paying attention.
Mr. Bowart’s work has been a great inspiration to me for many, many years. My heartfelt condolences go out to his tribe, family, friends, and loved ones.
To borrow from the Columbia Journalism Review, a Dart goes to the New York Times, which chose to simultaneously impugn Bowart’s integrity and dismiss irrefutably established history when it published in their Jan. 14, 2008 obituary that in Operation Mind Control Bowart “argued that the United States government conducted covert psychological experiments on unwitting people.” [Emphasis added.] Screw you, NY Times and obit author Margalit Fox (or maybe just your dipshit editor). Walter didn’t “argue” the point, he quoted directly from the CIA’s own documents, which had been revealed thanks to a Congressional investigation…one assisted, it must be pointed out, by Mr. Bowart himself…and revelations only borne out in greater, more horrifying detail via lawsuits and subsequent publicly published interviews with agents directly involved in the crimes.
Related links:
Permalink
01.07.08
Posted in 3D, Cinema History, Books at 10:27 pm by Spencer
As I “warned” back in April, Ray Zone’s new book Stereoscopic Cinema and the Origins of 3-D Film, 1838-1952 has just been released in illustrated hard cover by the University of Kentucky Press. (It’s also available from various other online book sellers.)
As I said before, this is a significant new work documenting a facet of film history — let alone 3D film history — that to date has been almost completely ignored except for an exceptionally tiny number of academic works and few fragmentary (and often erroneous) passing references.
The publisher’s blurb puts it nicely:
Though it may come as a surprise to both cinema lovers and industry professionals who believe that 3-D film was born in the early 1950s, stereoscopic cinema actually began in 1838, more than 100 years before the 3-D boom in Hollywood….
Stereoscopic Cinema and the Origins of 3-D Film, 1838-1952, is a comprehensive prehistory of the stereoscopic motion picture. …Writing a new chapter in the history of early cinema, Ray Zone not only discusses technological innovation and its cultural context but also examines the aesthetic aspects of stereoscopic cinema in its first century of production.
Run, don’t walk.
Permalink
12.03.07
Posted in What I'm Reading, Books at 11:53 pm by Spencer
[Please scroll down for an update to this post.]
What with Pakistan very much in the news of late, and given its simultaneously pivotal and unnerving centrality as a front and staging ground for the vaunted War on Terror™, and considering that its own intelligence service (the ISI) played a thoroughly formative role in the creation of the Taliban state in Afghanistan, and in view of the increasingly restive and violent activities of the very same elements within Pakistan proper, let alone the fascinating but utterly hair-raising shifts in power there — all of which (and more) being a source of enormous concern — I’ve been trying to patch the gaping, neglectful hole in my book-learnin’ about Pakistan.
My current point of entry is Pakistan: In the Shadow of Jihad and Afghanistan (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2002) by Mary Anne Weaver, who has served as foreign correspondent for The New Yorker. So far, it’s serving me well as my entrepôt — Weaver has history in the region, covering it during the anti-Soviet jihad in the ’80s, when she managed to gain access to areas and personages that normally segregate themselves from the outside world (let alone an American woman). And her writing style is very New Yorker: intelligent yet digestible and with enough heft to nourish. Just the thing (for me at least) to get a sense of the ley of the land and the names and events to burrow deeper into.
And so, reading Weaver’s book on a particuarly soggy Seattle bus ride home this evening, I got a hair up it to find more about Pakistan, and about the ISI in particular. So upon disembarking from my semi-amphibious public conveyance, I bee-lined for the nearby and normally trusty University Bookstore.
After a thorough census of the Middle East, Asia, General History, Terrorism, and even US History shelves, I was shocked to find that the U Bookstore had only three, maybe four-and-a-half books about Pakistan. Period.
One volume was a used 2001 edition of Soldiers of God by Robert D. Kaplan, a book originally published in 1990 and who’s focus is squarely on the anti-Soviet war in Afghanistan — so I’m counting that as the “half”. The rest of the books I found were stashed, of all places, amongst the fairly voluminous India sub-section in the Asia shelves — two dealt with Kashmir, and one of those was purportedly a “reworked” diary of an Indian found in a destroyed home and edited by an Indian. The second, from what I gleaned (perhaps erroneously) from the cover blurbage, was written by an author with political leanings toward India. Fair enough — but where was the rejoinder?
There was also a general history of Pakistan (about 300 pages, academic) and a very thin volume of perhaps 175 pages focused on Islamic fundamentalism in Pakistan. I guess I should mention there were also two books about the muslim Mughal Empire period in India, but that is (to westerners, at least) fairly ancient history spanning roughly 1526 to 1712…and more’s to the point that is not Pakistan per se.
Oh wait, I am remiss: in the Afghanistan sub-section of the Asia shelves there were also several copies of George Crile’s lauded Charlie Wilson’s War, a worthwhile but thoroughly Amero-centric history of the US-sponsored “covert” war against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. So okay, arguably five- or six-and-a-half books about Pakistan.
And that was it. Pakistan did not even rate its own sub-section in any of the traditional “continental divides”. Then again, and truly in all fairness, there are many significant nations that do not have their own sub-sections — including Iran, books about which are scattered amidst the Middle East section according to author’s last name (and right fair enough). But call me overly delicate, I was stunned that what little there was about Pakistan was mainly (and haphazardly) commingled with the books about India. I’m a honky from frikkin’ Indiana, fer cryin’ out loud, but even I found that fairly insulting. Think about it: they’ve been separate countries for 60 years now. That’s longer than the existence of the modern border between North and South Korea, and except for Kashmir (granted: non-trivial) the borders of Pakistan and India are long settled.
I am dismayed, baffled, and actually kinda ticked off. This short shrift is despite the fact that US history has been complexly entangled with Pakistan practically since its creation in 1947 during the collapse of the British Empire following World War II, and not least its pivotal role throughout the entire Cold War, when the US had tense relations with what was seen as an India that was far too friendly with the heretical Non-Aligned Nations and even the great “main enemy”, the Soviet Union. This is also despite Pakistan’s aforementioned central role in the anti-Soviet jihad, let alone all of the events since September 11, 2001, and not to mention everything I, er, mentioned in my opening paragraph.
Yeah okay, you’ve got a point, dear reader. I’m worked up over frikkin’ bookshelf space, of all things. But my ire is not motivated by namby-pamby, PC, pink diaper hand-wringing. It is purely academic, in the best sense of the term. Given the widespread ignorance — my own definitely included — about a country with a nuclear arsenal serving as a (let’s face it) duplicitous, contentious, and increasingly tenuous bulwark against the Modern Caliphate and with such a complicated history…the bookstore of a major institution of learning with a strong tradition of international scholarship offers four or maybe six semi-irrelevant books, primarily from the viewpoint of its staunchest rival or only tangentially-related, scattered slip-shod hither and yon? Seriously?? I guess I might not be quite so disappointed if the same bookstore didn’t normally do a much better job of it. But all the same, I find it rather shocking.
Now imagine what it must be like in Kansas.
Update: Reply from the UW Book Store
On a dark day for Pakistan, during which Benazir Bhutto was brutally assassinated, I’m at least pleased to report that in recent days I received a lengthy and thoughtful reply from Mark Mouser, the manager of University Books, to an email I sent summarizing (politely) my concerns above. I take the liberty of reproducing below his email to me, since it is a de facto reply to this post.
I’d also like to point out that I recently purchased, at the University Book Store, Hussain Haqqani’s Pakistan: Between Mosque and Military (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2005). In it Haqqani, a native Pakistani who has served as advisor to three prime ministers (including the tragically now-late Ms. Bhutto), examines the nation’s history with a particular emphasis on the intersecting relationships between Pakistan’s military and Islamist groups. I’ve only just started it, but so far I’d recommend it.
Following is Mr. Mouser’s reply:
Hello Spencer,
First, thanks very much for taking the time to write. It’s clear from your email that you care about the store and we appreciate that very much. I apologize that it has taken me awhile to get back to you regarding your email. The holiday season is full upon us and I wanted to look at a few things before I responded.
You raise some very good points. Regarding the filing, the subsection of Asian History & Politics where Pakistan titles are found was created for the region of South Asia (we’ve never called it the India section). It was a geographic call many years ago to shelve both Pakistan and India in South Asia. In publishing there has always been much topical combining of the two countries, be it an examination of their historical past, current security issues, or even cooking, textiles, or wildlife- for that reason alone it made sense to put them together. Of the handful of new trade Pakistan titles published this year, two contained “India and Pakistan” in their titles. However, when I look at the section now, I agree with you that in reality it is definitely an “India” section with a few Pakistan books scattered through. We will take a look at that after the holidays to see what we can do.
You are correct that we have very few titles on Pakistan. I was surprised also because we are very aggressive in buying new trade academic titles in the social sciences (look at the number of titles on India). I’ve found that there simply aren’t very many being published, especially with a price point remotely approaching affordability and with a discount for bookstores that would allow us to carry them. Oxford probably publishes more than anyone else on Pakistan, but they do most of them as short discount titles. As far as I can tell, our buyers ordered those that we were able to. One of the most recent books on Pakistan, Adrian Levy’s “The Deception”, was a hosted author event at our store in October.
When I researched our inventory database I found a number of Pakistan titles with a store record but zero in stock. These titles had been switched to “clearance” status by our buyer because they had not sold and in fact had been kept on the shelf too long for them to be returned to the publisher. That means we kept the titles on the shelf for at least 12 to 24 months without a sale. When they were marked down they made their way to tables in the lobby and were eventually sold there at 50% to 90% off list. At that price they sold.
Reinforcing the price issue is the fact that when we are able to get our hands on used books dealing with Pakistan, they sell. I promise that we will keep our eyes out for new and used books dealing with Pakistan (if you know anyone with books to sell please send them our way). We will also double check to see if there are recent titles that we missed. And seriously: if you have any title suggestions please send them my way — they are always welcome. We’re not perfect and even important backlist titles inadvertently get dropped.
And thank you for being a customer all these years. I’ve been at the store many years so we probably would recognize each other’s faces.
Thanks again and best wishes,
Mark
Permalink
10.07.07
Posted in Cinema, MP3s, Experimental Film, Books at 1:13 pm by Spencer
The ever-lovin’ folks at the utterly phenomenal UBUWEB have posted MP3s of Test of Time, a 20-part series of radio broadcasts by seminal experimental filmmaker Stan Brakhage, recorded at KAIR, Univeristy of Colorado in 1982.
The series includes “long passages of Brakhage musing on subjects such as film, poetry, theater, and other arts. Includes music, lectures, readings, and sound pieces by Edgar Varèse, Peter Kubelka, Kenneth Patchen, Charles Ives, Kurt Schwitters, Robert Duncan, Ed Dorn, Glenn Gould, James Joyce, Virgil Thomson, Gertrude Stein, Olivier Messiaen, Louis Zukofsky, William Faulkner, Charles Olson, Henry Cowell and many others.” Transcripts of the broadcasts are also provided in both HTML and PDF formats.
UBUWEB also offers a free PDF e-book edition of The Brakhage Lectures (1972: The GoodLion, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago), in which he discusses the works of George Méliès, D.W. Griffith, Carl Theodore Dreyer, and Sergei Eisenstein.
Permalink
09.18.07
Posted in What I'm Reading, Books at 9:56 pm by Spencer
In case you missed it, The New Yorker recently ran a litcrit piece about Philip K. Dick, one of the acknowledged giants of science fiction. While fairly lengthy, Adam Gopnik’s piece was less than effusive and at times arguably borderline insulting — resorting to olde anti-sci-fi canards about “adolescent” readers and suggesting that the French’s allegedly pivotal adoration of PKD had more to do with the books reading more beautifully in the translation (and, I daresay, more than hinting that PKD is the Jerry Lewis of science fiction literature).
Some PKD devotees have taken to eviscerating Mr. Gopnik, which I feel to be predictable, perhaps even understandable, but ultimately unfair. If nothing else, he’s allowed to his opinion. He does (rightly) call Ubik a “beautiful and hallucinatory” novel, and gives props several other landmark works (including The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldrich, which he — I think rightly — calls a turning point in Dick’s writing). And he rightly acknowledges Dick’s considerable impact on the genre, both in literature and in film.
That said, I also feel Gopnik seemed to lack a broader understanding of PKD’s work and its broader context. For example, he takes PKD to task for recycling ideas and stories. “He once wrote eleven novels in a twenty-four-month stretch. But one thing you have to have done in order to write eleven novels in two years is not to have written any of them twice.”
This is a fundamental misapprehension of PKD’s milieu, especially during the middle period of his career. In those days, like all other sci-fi writers except perhaps Asimov and Bradbury, he was being paid by the word and working under extraordinarily tight deadlines. Put simply, he did not have the luxury of numerous drafts. The uncharitable might say he was merely “recycling,” but to my eye a closer reading is much more nuanced. Often, I think, he was trying to find the correct form for the stories he wanted to tell, but the deadline pressures dictated that he simply deliver product. Reading his middle period novels, you will indeed find the same plot surfacing here and there. But the key is to read them in order of publication. In the earlier incarnations, you can almost identify the paragraph where he thought to himself, “Ah shit. I took the wrong fork two chapters back. But I gotta deliver this fucking thing, so I’ll just wrap it up and try it again next time.” And so he does, gradually honing until he hits the mark he was aiming for, at which point he moved on. Or evolved the meme to the next step.
As a result of pulp novel economics, we as readers have been given something of a treasure — the ability to watch a novelist craft a tale over time, in published works, without having to haunt musty archive bookshelves hunting for this or that draft. It’s a little like watching a jazz musician week after week at a standing gig at a local club growing from a mere talent to a true artist. This is, I think, borne out by his later works, which became increasingly focused and less “recycled.”
Was Philip K. Dick a Shakespeare? No. Gopnik is right (if unduly harsh); Phil was not a poet. But I defy anyone to read VALIS and Radio Free Albemuth (the latter published posthumously) back to back and not walk away marveling at the depth and complexity of the ideas he made manifest for us.
Aaanyway, there is much else I could say. But the whole point of this post is simply to point out that Mr. Dick’s third wife, Anne, who was married to him during the late ’50s and early ’60s, wrote a letter to the editors of The New Yorker rebutting Mr. Gopnik’s piece. The editors declined to run the letter in its entirety, but it was posted in full at David Gill’s blog.
I strongly recommend you read both pieces in their entirety.
(Thanks to Hell’s Donut House for the tip.)
Permalink
06.07.07
Posted in Music, Nifty Links, What I'm Reading, Punk and Hardcore, Books at 10:55 pm by Spencer
Courtesy of the excellent bastards at Operation Phoenix Records, the Punk Zine Archive includes sanctioned PDF scans of bedrock punk zines, including Maximum Rock ‘n’ Roll nos. 2 - 45 and misc. thereafter, Flipside no. 1 and misc. nos. 24 - 79, and numerous issues of HeartattaCK and Suburban Voice.
Run, don’t walk. And maybe consider contributing to the effort, eh wot?
Permalink
05.10.07
Posted in Cinema, Nifty Links, What I'm Reading, 3D, Cinema History, Science, Books at 7:30 pm by Spencer
While trolling about for things 3D, I came upon Stereoscopic.org, the official web site of the Stereoscopic Displays and Applications Conference (SD&A), which is tied to The Society for Imaging Science and Technology (IS&T) and The International Society for Optical Engineering (still known by its olde acronym, SPIE).
While not much in the beauty department, the SD&A site includes archived conference proceedings dating all the way back to 1996. Among the site’s other offerings is a small but wonderful virtual library that offers free downloads of licensed PDF scans of three rare and notable books about 3D film and stereoscopic photography.
Following are relevant details (quoted from the library link above), with links to the download pages. The two books still in copyright are licensed for one-time download solely for personal use. This is why you have to register for each download, but I can attest that they don’t spam you for it.
Foundations of the Stereoscopic Cinema
by Lenny Lipton (1982)
Provides a wide ranging [technical] analysis of many stereoscopic topics. The book’s primary focus is the stereoscopic cinema, however the book’s many background sections are equally relevant to the many different types of stereoscopic display devices available today. This book provides a wealth of information for both the novice and also those already active in the field of stereoscopic imaging. Also included with the download is a 5 page errata list.
The World of 3-D Movies
by Eddie Sammons (1992)
Primarily a filmography of 3-D movies however it also provides an extensive history of 3-D Movies. Titles of chapters in the book include: 3-D in the Beginning and Now, 3-D or Not 3-D, The Formats, The Movies - A Chronology, The Movies - The Filmography, Who Directed What, At Home With 3-D. An errata list is provided at the end of the book.
Three-Dimensional Photography: Principles of Stereoscopy
by Herbert C. McKay (1953 ed., orig. 1948)
The main topic is stereoscopic photographic technique. Titles of chapters include: Elementary Stereography, Stereoscopic Cameras, Stereographic Technique, Flash in Stereo, Color in Stereo, Pictorial Stereography, Applied Stereoscopy, Polarized Light Applied to Stereoscopy, Close-up Stereography, Trick Work and Hyperstereo. The book also provides a review of a wide range of stereoscopic film cameras, viewers and projectors available at the time [ca. 1953]. The book touches on a few areas of stereoscopic theory but intentionally does not go into too much detail in these areas. The book contains a glossary of stereoscopic terms and is amply illustrated.
Permalink
04.12.07
Posted in News of the World, Indiana, Books at 8:40 pm by Spencer
“All the other species are dying and so will we. I’m whistling as I walk past the graveyard… whistling as beautifully as I can.”
– from Happy Birthday, Wanda June by Kurt Vonnegut, 1922-2007
“He’s the closest thing we’ve had to Voltaire.”
– Tom Wolfe
About The Year of Vonnegut in Indianapolis, IN.
Permalink
04.09.07
Posted in Cinema, 3D, Cinema History, Books at 9:39 am by Spencer
This December, the University of Kentucky Press will publish Stereoscopic Cinema and the Origins of 3-D Film, 1838-1952, a new book by Ray Zone. The 224 page clothbound book will retail for $42, and include 50 photographs.
As described on the publisher’s web page:
Though it may come as a surprise to both cinema lovers and industry professionals who believe that 3-D film was born in the early 1950s, stereoscopic cinema actually began in 1838, more than 100 years before the 3-D boom in Hollywood was created by the release of Arch Oboler’s African adventure film, Bwana Devil, filmed in “Natural Vision” 3-D.
Stereoscopic Cinema and the Origins of 3-D Film, 1838-1952, is a comprehensive prehistory of the stereoscopic motion picture. In the late nineteenth century, stereoview cards were popular worldwide, and soon filmmakers wanted to capture these “living pictures” with motion, sound, and color. Writing a new chapter in the history of early cinema, Ray Zone not only discusses technological innovation and its cultural context but also examines the aesthetic aspects of stereoscopic cinema in its first century of production.
The book will also include an introduction (which you can read here) by Lenny Lipton, who holds some 30 stereographic display patents, is currently CTO of RealD, and author of the excellent technical book, Foundations of the Stereoscopic Cinema: A Study in Depth (NY: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1982). (You can download a PDF version of Foundations of the Stereoscopic Cinema — with the addition of 5 pages of errata not otherwise available — via Stereoscopic.org.)
It would appear that Zone’s new book will leave off at the ’50s 3D film explosion, which is certainly a very rich vein of largely unwritten history that deserves its own full treatment — one that he will hopefully explore in a later volume. (R.M. Hayes’ 1989 book, 3-D Movies: A History and Filmography of Stereoscopic Cinema, deals with the period but is so cursory and, frankly, so riddled with errors as to be not much use…although the encyclopedic filmography has some value for the serious nerd.)
Stereoscopic Cinema and the Origins of 3-D Film will be a valuable addition to fascinating but neglected history. The only other book I’m aware of to deal at all with this period is actually a long-out-of-print Master’s thesis written in 1975 by H. Mark Gosser, Selected Attempts at Stereoscopic Moving Pictures and Their Relationship to the Development of Motion Picture Technology, 1852-1903 (NY: Arno Press, 1977). Perhaps there are others I don’t know of.
Ray Zone knows his 3D stuff. In addition to having written numerous articles about 3D film and comics appearing in pubs like the LA Times, American Cinematographer, and The Hollywood Reporter, he is also the author of 3-D Filmmakers: Conversations with Creators of Stereoscopic Motion Pictures (MD: Scarecrow Press, 2005), an excellent (if pricey) collection of interviews with producers, screenwriters, directors, and cinematographers working in 3D film mainly in the ’70s and ’80s, but also including pioneer Arch (Bwana Devil) Oboler.
Zone has also had a hand in some 130 3D comics, plus a huge array of other 3D/stereoscopic products — even including, according to his web site, 3D underwear.
Permalink
« Previous entries ·
