THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
12/19/08 -- Vol. 27, No. 25, Whole Number 1524
El Honcho Grande: Mark Leeper, mleeper@optonline.net
La Honcha Bonita: Evelyn Leeper, eleeper@optonline.net
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Topics:
In New York City (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
One More Time (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
The Golden Decade of the Western (part 1) (comments by
Mark R. Leeper)
The Twilight of Good Literature (comments by Jayne Bielak)
HORROR IN THE WIND (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
ADAM RESURRECTED (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE and SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK (letter of
comment by Dan Kimmel)
Forrest J Ackerman and Weather (letter of comment by John Purcell)
Degree Mills and Spanish-Language Books (letter of comment
by Fred Lerner)
This Week's Reading (QUEST OF THE SNOW LEOPARD, MIDDLE
PASSAGES, and COUNTERKNOWLEDGE)(book comments
by Evelyn C. Leeper)
==================================================================
TOPIC: In New York City (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
A friend lives in a New York City apartment. He picks up his car
from the parking garage and finds a note on it that says "Merry
Christmas... from the boys in the garage." He smiles warmly and
puts the greeting in his coat pocket. A few days later he picked
up his car and there was a new note. "Merry Christmas... from
the boys in the garage... SECOND NOTICE." [-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: One More Time (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
From Reuters: "BERNARD MADOFF ARRESTED OVER ALLEGED $50 BILLION
FRAUD: Bernard Madoff, a quiet force on Wall Street for decades,
was arrested and charged on Thursday with allegedly running a $50
billion 'Ponzi scheme' in what may rank among the biggest fraud cases ever."
See http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20081212/bs_nm/us_madoff_arrest
I am waiting to hear that sure it is illegal and technically it is
fraud, but it is such a huge Ponzi scheme that the government
cannot afford to allow it to fail. [-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: The Golden Decade of the Western (part 1) (comments by Mark
R. Leeper)
A while back I listed the five Western films I liked the best.
They were:
THE BIG COUNTRY
HIGH NOON
THE JAYHAWKERS
THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN
THE OUTLAW JOSEY WALES
The dapper John Hertz (convention-goers will know why I call him
"dapper") asks "Is it true 4 of M[ark]'s Best 5 Westerns are from
the 1950s, 1 from the 1970s, none earlier? If so, is this
significant? What of the first 50 years? Tom Mix and like that."
So I did a little self-examination of just why I felt that way.
This is all going to be very subjective. Different people have
different values.
Let me quickly answer the specific question and go on to
generalities. The very early Western films like the ones that
featured Tom Mix, Hoot Gibson, William S. Hart, etc. had simple and
simplistic plots with bad guys (generally in black hats) menacing
innocent ranchers (generally with attractive daughters) and being
rescued by sharpshooting heroes (generally in white hats). Cinema
was finding its feet and had enough trouble just getting a story
across. The better Westerns were like THE IRON HORSE, directed by
John Ford whose best work was to come. The Tom Mix sort of Western
was good for its time, but as time past the Western became more
complex and some became mature.
But let me extend John's question. Why is there such a strong
showing among the 1950s films? I suppose in some ways the 1950s
were the flowering of the Western film. To explain why let me put
thing into a historical context: television. But more importantly
TELEVISION!!! The film industry, one of the strongest in the
country, has since the 1950s had the arch nemesis of home video in
its various forms. The question that the film industry asked
itself in the 1950s (and is asking itself today) is what can they
offer the public in a movie theater that they cannot get at home.
(Notice that now as in the 1950s one answer seems to be 3D.)
In the 1950s the Western was a popular genre and television started
by offering old Roy Rogers theatrical films and then TV shows like
"Wild Bill Hickok," "The Roy Rogers Show," and "Bat Masterson." By
the end of the decade they also had higher quality Western shows
like "Have Gun, Will Travel" and "Gunsmoke". The movie industry
competed with this free entertainment by offering widescreen
Cinemascope and Technicolor. Also, the musical score became a
major feature since there was usually just not much time on
television to shoehorn a good musical score into the a half-hour
program. (A few television programs did pay attention to musical scores,
notably "Twilight Zone", but that was a rarity.)
John Ford was probably the filmmaker who first realized how to make
the setting a major feature of the Western film. His STAGECOACH is
highly respected, but its greatest contribution was its use of the
spectacular scenery of Monument Valley as a backdrop. Ford so fell
in love with Monument Valley that he would use it as a backdrop
even for films like the 1946 MY DARLING CLEMENTINE, his highly
revised and fictionalized version of the notorious gunfight at the
OK Corral. The setting is Tombstone, Arizona, whose topography
resembles Monument Valley much in the way a flea resembles the
planet Saturn. Ford recognized the value of the setting but
preferred to work in black and white for its virtues, so never got
the full effect of the spectacular setting.
By 1958, when William Wyler made THE BIG COUNTRY--what I consider
the best example of the 1950s Western--Wyler could blow out the
sides of the frame with Cinemascope and use brilliant color to
really show that what he was filming really was, well, big country.
And if you did not get that point from what was on the screen,
Jerome Moross gloried in the bigness of the country with his big
brash musical score. On top of this there was a fairly complex and
timeless story of the conflict of appearances versus substance.
Gregory Peck played a sea captain who has come west to marry the
daughter of a cattle baron. He chooses to ignore the fact that his
eastern ways brand him as effeminate and a coward from the first
day. This story shows up as being empty the very virtues that the
Western film had emphasized to that point. Today THE BIG COUNTRY
is remembered merely as one of the "good" Westerns, which I think
underrates it.
Next week I will continue and discuss some of the reasons that in
my opinion the Western went into a decline after the 1950s and
1960s. [-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: The Twilight of Good Literature (comments by Jayne Bielak)
This is the perfect time to explain why I read TWILIGHT, first book
in the (hackneyed description alert) wildly popular series of the
same name. God forbid you should think that I was bored one day,
perused my bookshelf and said, 'Yup. Go with the four hundred and
ninety eight page teen vampire romance.' Not. I had a
PROFESSIONAL reason for reading it. I even had a very official
looking piece of blank paper in hand while I groaned through the
first few chapters, so I could make notes about a certain aspect of
the book. More about that unnecessary paper in a moment.
You see, I recently made the ill-considered decision to try writing
young adult fiction. Years of teaching English to middle-school
kids has given me considerable insight into the frightfully mushy
adolescent mind; I figure I may as well put it to use. What they
want when they crack open a book poses no great challenge. Action.
Angst, but no philosophy. A main character who is their age, but
smarter than the grown-ups in the story. Romance of the sort that
doesn't require the purchase or use of contraceptive protection.
At least one character who turns up dead, preferably by means of
violence. And no big words, because the effort it would take to
look up, let's say, "ameliorate", would be just too, too much.
Did I say "no challenges"? I lied. The requirement that one keep
the vocabulary simple is maddening. If most people knew how truly
deposit-free the word-banks of our teenagers are, they would fear
for the future of the republic. So when I learned that Stephanie
Meyers had written a series that was being, not just read, but
OBSESSED over by our young females, I had but one self-interested
thought. What sort of vocabulary did SHE get away with using? I
knew that if she'd riddled her book with polysyllabic hurdles, the
kids would have snapped that sucker shut by page two. I sat down
with a the aforementioned sheet, determined to list all the big, hard, or
sophisticated verbiage I came across in TWILIGHT. After
carefully searching six chapters, reality and incredulity met and
mated. My paper remained pristine. There was nothing, NOTHING to
put on it.
That's right. The books that have obsessed our youths, right up
through those of college age, are written at approximately the
fourth-grade level. Worse, the first two-thirds of the initial
book is almost devoid of action, consisting of little more than a
slog through the typical day of a high-school girl and her undead
boyfriend. By page two hundred I was hoping I could survive it to
the end. By two-sixty-five, I was wishing for death.
When Meyers finally awoke from her coma and realized that something
of interest would have to happen before the book's end, she opened
the taps full force, gushing forth a reverse spin on THE STEPFORD
WIVES. Bella, you see, gets tricked into near-mortal danger by a
recorded version of mamma's voice. As I mentioned irritably to my
own daughter, THAT girl travels hundreds of miles and exposes
herself to a snack-happy vampire to save her mom's life; I can't
get YOU to make me a cup of tea.
Speaking of my kid and her friends; could somebody please explain
to me how it is that girls who read Capote, Hemingway, Shakespeare,
etc. can turn right around and spend a week wallowing in 'Eddie and
Bella's Really Scary Adventure'? I've heard the explanations, and
none of them is persuasive enough to get me over that highest hill-
-the tediousness of the writing. Like beer, if you want humor at
the TWILIGHT party, you'll have to bring your own. Of course, that
isn't hard, since Stephanie Meyers's brain is a dedicated irony-
free zone, and she sets up some delicious opportunities. Best line
in the book? Bella, speaking of the vampire Edward, "I looked into
his eyes, which were curiously dead." The screenplay writer
provided some gems as well. When Bella is lured back to Arizonza,
she is tormented by James with an old tape of her childhood ballet
days. "I suck" she petulantly complains on it to her mom, and my
synapses overloaded with bad jokes nearly to the point of blackout.
But then, I'm not sixteen. Ask any adolescent what the story's big
draw is, and she'll tell you with no hesitation. The girls all
fall in love with Edward. And why is that? Because he bites
people? No. Because he CAN, but he doesn't.
I didn't understand this when I had merely read the book--the pain
of Stephanie Meyer's literary style having dulled my comprehension
like repeated hammer-blows to the skull. It took seeing the movie
version of TWILIGHT to make me realize just WHOM we were dealing
with there in that Forks, Washington high school. I speak here of
Edward only. Controlling ways, excessive protectiveness, delicacy
of feeling, and, oh yes, fastidious sexual propriety? Material
wealth, outrageous good looks, cultivated intelligence, almost
effeminate good breeding? Self-deprecation? Tortured conscience?
Did someone out there shout 'Mr. Darcy'? For if this guy isn't a
plasma-loving riff on Elizabeth Bennet--s knight in brooding armor,
I'll take my M.A. in Brit-lit and shove it in the coupon drawer.
Case in point. There he was, our lad, having just rescued Bella
from a fate worse than death at the hands of a gang of street
thugs, and what does he do? Sigh with relief? Give her a kiss?
Grab his crotch and do an end zone dance? Of course not. Instead,
he turns aside and whispers his pained revulsion for the VILE,
FILTHY THINGS he had just heard going on inside the heads of the
would-be offenders. Cads! Curs! Thinking about sex! SEX! This
scene in the movie actually caused a part of A&E's "Pride and
Prejudice" to scroll unbidden past my inner eye. I have not seen
so profound a depiction of outraged prudery since Darcy stood
behind Wickham in totem-pole rigidity and forced the latter's
marriage with Lydia.
But this is exactly what makes the little girls love him. Forget
his special-needs diet for a moment; it is essentially irrelevant
to the love story. Edward's attraction is his nobility. He is the
superior being who can have any girl he wants, in any way he wants,
and chooses honor instead. He is the boyfriend who keeps it in his
pants and doesn't bitch about it, the date who placates Dad with
his respect and soft-spoken charm. In short, he is the guy these
girls will never meet. That he's a vampire in no way impacts the
fineness of his sensibilities; he could just as easily have been a
Martian or a ghost. What he is NOT is someone your average female
will actually encounter, unless she dates gay men.
As for the other characters in the book and movie, they're mere
props for the Wonder that is Edward. Bella is a twitchy emo-kid,
ready to martyr herself to mom's happiness at the drop of a fly-
ball. In the movie she's vapid and curiously lacking a discernable
lower lip. In fact, all the humans in the film version make
mortals look bad, including one girl whose pontoon breasts
blessedly distract from her face, and an Asian kid who needs to eat
something.
On the other hand, the vampires are totally hot. I sat in that
theater feeling like Mrs. Robinson, having these sudden insights
into why high-school teachers sometimes risk it all to sleep with
their students. Okay. Edward's eyebrows don't match his hair, and
his lips give the impression that he's been sucking cherry ice-
pops. But still. The whole Cullen clan looks like it might just
have stepped off a Paris catwalk, except maybe the dad, who could
use some bronzer. And they aren't even the sexiest of the undead--
that prize goes to the villains. When those three rogue vampires
marched out of the woods in lockstep, the white guy, white girl and
the black dude, I knew that The Mod Squad had been permanently
punked. If teenaged boys had looked that good at MY school, I'd
have stayed there until I was taking Algebra XXIII.
Which leads me to this curious endpoint. About midway through the
movie I found my mind playing host to some disturbing thoughts.
Given everything, immortality, intelligence, wealth, superior
strength, the ability to know the cell phases of an onion at a
glance (I swear) what then IS so bad about being a vampire? The
Cullens had trained themselves to live on animal blood alone. So
they suck the neck of a live chicken, and the rest of us eat it as
nuggets. Big deal. Either way, the bird dies. The Undead Ones,
you argue, get dangerously excited when they smell certain humans,
so they can't go to school. Nonsense. They merely need special
accommodations--like those kids that sit at a separate lunch table
because peanut-butter makes them die. See? This is do-able.
Well, I warned you that they were disturbing thoughts. In the
meantime, Stephanie, please bring back James. A girl can only
stand just so much nobility. [-jb]
==================================================================
TOPIC: HORROR IN THE WIND (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: This could have been a much more intelligent film. A
chemical intended to be sprayed all over the United States to
suppress sexual urges instead reverses everyone's sexual
orientation. Somebody could have used this idea to make an
interesting film, but instead we get a claustrophobic and unfunny
piece of fluff. Rating: +0 (-4 to +4) or 4/10
The year is 2017 and the reactionary government of the United
States--headed by President Robertson and Vice-President Dobson--
wants to suppress all sex. Two biologists, Rick Holbrook and Ed
Picante (played by newcomers Perren Hedderson and Morse Bicknell),
have found a way to inhibit fruit-fly procreation and so save crops. The
President wants a modified version that will be an
abstinence drug for humans. When it is sprayed over the nation it
works, but not the way it was planned. The chemical does not
inhibit sex at all but simply reverses everybody's sexual
orientation. Gays turn straight, and straights turn gay. Only
white Christians will be given the antidote.
In addition, as a wholly different premise in the script, new
scriptures are found in the Middle East that are somehow provably
the authentic Bible. And in the new Bible homosexuality is
approved of and heterosexuality is considered bad. Either one of
these premises could be the basis for an entire and fascinating
film. But Max Mitchell just seems to think that the joke of gay
couples talking like they are straight and vice versa is funny
enough to be repeated over and over. Holbrook and Picante fall in
love and their partners fall in love and go in for naked yoga.
In addition, there are other running jokes inserted that never
connect up with the characters of the main story line. A news
announcer on the right-wing Fax Network and a really off-the-wall
Evangelistic minister comment on the proceedings or just show how
ridiculous they are. Actually, everybody whose point of view was
different from that of the film was presented as an over-the-edge
wacko. Mitchell does not realize that making the opposition all
wackos makes them less believable and undercuts his own arguments.
Notice how much more effective a film like TWELVE ANGRY MEN is
because some of the opposition (opposing for most of the film) seem
to be reasonable and well-intentioned, if wrong-headed. The film
is pulling in two directions. If Mitchell wants the film to be a
serious statement about how society treats gays, he needed to
present it differently. If he wanted the film to be a wild farce,
he needed a more imaginative sense of humor.
It would be too optimistic to expect that an inexperienced
filmmaker like Max Mitchell could turn out a very good film on a
minimal budget, though there are many examples of inexpensive
first-films that were good. Mitchell seems to be endlessly amused
by two males talking about their sex. They may talk about one
putting his tongue in the other's ear. Or he may show the
President of the United States has toenails painted black. This
sort of thing might be amusing the first time it appears. But by
the second time it is much less so. To repeat such jokes half a
dozen times more is just wasting the viewers' time. The film
becomes simply an unfunny ribald skit. Mitchell could easily go on
to do much better things, but this film is not the most auspicious
calling card. If I were to give him advice it would be to think
about reusing this premise in a serious film. What would happen if
everybody's orientation were switched? What benefits would there
be? What problems would it cause? Once he has thought that out,
he still could make it a comedy if he wanted, but it would be a
much more intelligent comedy. A thoughtful or really witty
treatment of the idea of mass reversals of sexual orientation would
have been a good film and one worth considering. This film is just
a piece of fluff and a burlesque that sidesteps having any
substance. HORROR IN THE WIND is a film with a good idea for a
thought experiment but never given its chance to develop. I rate
it a 0 on the -4 to +4 scale or 4/10.
The publicity coming with the film proudly states that this film
was "Banned in New Mexico." That sounds like it was some
governmental organization saying the film could not be shown in New
Mexico. In fact, it appears that a theater chain decided the
content was too political and chose not to book the film. This is
hardly the same thing as banning a film. But the film sounds more
alluring if it actually has been banned.
Film Credits: http://us.imdb.com/title/tt1124041/
[-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: ADAM RESURRECTED (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: This is a bizarre surreal fantasy involving a man with
psychic powers, a German Holocaust death camp, and people who are
degraded to live and act like dogs. How does all that fit
together? I vote for "not very well." Jeff Goldblum's performance
is magnetic, but he has problems with the accent. Paul Schrader
directs Noah Stollman's adaptation of Yoram Kaniuk's novel.
Rating: low +1 (-4 to +4) or 4/10
ADAM RESURRECTED is a macabre fantasy that verges into surrealism
and uses the Holocaust without being enlightening about what the
experience was really like. It seems almost redundant to claim how
unpleasant a particular film about the Holocaust is. But ADAM
RESURRECTED seems to be unpleasant for no good purpose. The film
is not enlightening about history, nor does it give us much insight
into the unlikely title character. Here the Holocaust is just a
literary device to explain how Adam had been degraded at one time
in his life and to show the man that the experience made of him.
And since he seems to have at times magical powers like telepathy
or to bleed from chosen parts of his body voluntarily he is just to
alien to give much of a feeling of realism. In a sense the film
just takes the Holocaust in vain.
We see the story in a series of flashbacks. The dapper Adam Stein
(Jeff Goldblum) is taken in handcuffs to a sort of Israeli mental
asylum for Holocaust survivors. He seems out of place as being
perfectly normal. But as soon as he arrives he goes right to a
bottle of liquor that the attendants had hidden. There is no
explanation as to how he knew it was there. We find out he has had
a history of faking ailments here in ways that fooled even x-ray
machines. In flashbacks we see that in the late 1920s and early
1930s Adam Stein was the toast of Berlin. As a circus and stage
entertainer he could perform mystical feats that really defy
explanation. In one incident becomes a test of wills with an
audience member named Klein (Willem Dafoe). Goldblum wins that
test, but loses in the long run. When the Nazis round up Jews,
Stein ends up in a death camp ruled by now-Commandant Klein. Klein
recognizes Stein and rather than killing him straight out, he makes
Stein a house pet. Stein will live as long as he walks on all
fours and imitates a dog. These memories come back to Stein--if
they ever left--because at the asylum in Stein's present day the
staff keep a boy who was raised as a dog.
Jeff Goldblum's performance is mesmerizing in almost all regards.
In only one aspect is it bad and that is his inability to maintain
a German accent. One sentence will have a thick accent and the
next will sound downright American. He does appear to be doing
Stein's stage magic for real and without camera tricks. Derek
Jacobi plays the doctor who is given Stein's case at the asylum.
But he is as ineffectual in the role as his character is in the
story. Willem Dafoe plays the Commandant with a dash too little
command. It may be just that Goldblum steals the attention playing
another character with an excess of personality.
The film is based on Yoram Kaniuk's novel. In a novel the author
has time to lull the reader into a mood to accept what is going on.
In a film it may not work as well. Director Paul Schrader has made
his share of hypnotic films, notably CAT PEOPLE, but the task of
getting the audience to accept all this may have been beyond his
powers.
This is a really off-the-wall nihilistic fantasy that may please a
small segment of the audience and perhaps even become a cult film.
But I suspect it will not even be marketed to the general run of
filmgoer. I rate ADAM RESURRECTED a low +1 on the -4 to +4 scale
or 4/10.
Film Credits: http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0479341/
[-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE and SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK (letter of
comment by Dan Kimmel)
In response to Mark's film reviews in the 12/12/08 issue of the MT
VOID, Dan Kimmel writes:
Mark and I are on the same wavelength, more or less, this week. I
also don't get the fuss over SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE and have problems
with the same plot contrivances as Mark. As for SYNECDOCHE, NEW
YORK I'm beginning to wonder if BEING JOHN MALKOVICH was a fluke,
as it is the only Charlie Kaufman film I've ever really liked. One
thing I learned, but couldn't fit into the review, is the pun of
the title. "Synecdoche"--as you two erudite people may already
know--is pronounced "sin-NEC-do-key" which makes it a near-homonym
of Schenectady, where the story begins. It's that kind of arcane
and not especially illuminating cleverness, along with the utter
nihilism of the film, that makes it so frustrating and
unsatisfying.
Overall it's a disappointing movie season although I like DOUBT and
FROST/NIXON, and tolerated the DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL remake
despite its numerous flaws.
One must see that may slip under your radar is the Swedish vampire
film LET THE RIGHT ONE IN. Catch it if you can. [-dk]
Mark replies:
[Regarding SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE:] Someone who writes to me says
that in India the police are pretty bad and arrest and torture on
flimsy evidence was not absurd. I am glad I didn't know that when
I was in India.
[Regarding SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK:] I did like ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF
THE SPOTLESS MIND, ADAPTATION not so much. I immediately picked up
on the similarity to Schenectady when I first heard this title.
Watching the film I assumed it was the kid's mispronunciation. And
I made a mental note to see if synecdoche was a real word.
Similarly I always wondered if the title PET SEMATARY, never
explained in book or film as far as I know, was a pun of sematic.
Sematic features are warnings right on the animal. Snakes that
have bright colors tend to be poisonous. Snakes that rattle also
are dangerous.
I assume you know about the Yiddish origins of the word "gunsel"
which has come to mean an armed henchman. Hammitt was not saying
the kid was a hired thug, but these days that is what it means.
I don't think I got much of the point of the film.
[Regarding DOUBT:] I thought it looked good. [-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: Forrest J Ackerman and Weather (letter of comment by John
Purcell)
In response to Mark's comments on Forrest J Ackerman in the
12/12/08 issue of the MT VOID, John Purcell writes:
Very nice tribute to Forry Ackerman, Mark. Like you, I fell in love
with monster movies--and sci-fi/horror flicks, too--when my age was
still in the single digits. It is really amazing just how much of
an influece Forry had on the field, and Hollywood, too, for that
matter. His reach was extended, and he will be sorely missed.
As for the rest of this issue, I have no real comment to make
except that it's actually getting cold here in SouthCentralEastern
Texas to the point where it's actually SNOWED two days ago! I have
lived here in College Station for seven and a half years, and only
seen it snow once before here. By Wednesday night we had about an
inch and a half on the ground in town. Of course, it's now all
melted away, but still... The kids loved it, and I have never seen
so many people--children and adults--outside not only watching it
snow, but TAKING PICTURES of it, too! How surreal. And to think
that I grew up with this stuff, and lots of sub-zero weather. It
certainly puts things in perspective.
Mark replies:
I really think I owe a lot to Forry. He taught me that one big
kid can make a difference. And I think that he proved that there
was a market for horror and brought the genre back to life after
it was floundering.
I envy anyone who lives someplace where they don't have to shovel
the weather. [-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: Degree Mills and Spanish-Language Books (letter of comment
by Fred Lerner)
In response to Mark's comments on spam from degree mills in the
12/12/08 issue of the MT VOID, Fred Lerner writes, "I particularly
liked the enterprising owners of one degree mill whose website
offered both earned and (at a slightly higher price) honorary
degrees. They also offered a complete package that included purple
academic robes."
And in response to Evelyn's comments on reading Spanish-language
books in the same issue, he writes, "Well, there's always 'Historia
de las bibliotecas del mundo: desde la invencion de la escritura
hasta la era de la computacion' (Buenos Aires: Editorial Troquel,
1999). And if that's too mundane, there's also a Turkish edition!"
[-fl]
[Both books cited are translations of Lerner's book THE STORY OF
LIBRARIES. -ecl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
At first glance, QUEST OF THE SNOW LEOPARD by Roy Chapman Andrews
(no ISBN) seems to be a travelogue, recounting one of Andrews's
expeditions to Asia for the American Museum of Natural History.
But what it turns out to be is a novel. If it were written today,
it would be marketed as a "young adult" novel because the main
character is a seventeen-year-old boy on this expedition. (Indeed,
the book is dedicated to the Boy Scouts!) Andrews claims that
everything in the book really happened at one time or other, though
not always to the same small set of people, and excluding the
actual capture of the snow leopard(!). The capture he says *could*
have happened that way, and he wanted to include it.
Actually, if it were written today, there would probably be much
outrage over it, as Andrews gives instructions to his hunters that
when they shoot a particular species, he wants them to get a male,
a female, and a few young so they can make a nice exhibit of their
stuffed skins back at the Museum. It is clear that the attitudes
of 1916-1917 (when the expedition supposedly took place) or even
1955 (when the book was written) are not those of today.
MIDDLE PASSAGES: AFRICAN AMERICAN JOURNEYS TO AFRICA, 1787-2005 by
James T. Campbell (ISBN-13 978-0-143-11198-6, ISBN-10 0-143-11198-
1) is about African-Americans' trips to Africa--some returning
after having been kidnapped and sold as slaves, others visiting for
the first generations after their ancestors were brought to
America. Campbell does not present any sort of idealized picture.
For example, several one-time slaves who were freed and then
returned to Africa bought slaves of their own there, or even became
slave traders. He writes how Liberia was funded before the Civil
War by whites who hoped to get rid of "Free Blacks" so that the
slaves would not have any role models to encourage them to aspire
to freedom, and there would be no evidence for any argument that
blacks were equal to whites intellectually et al. And the
resulting society in Liberia was no "light unto the nations"
either--the descendents of the emigrants from the United States set
themselves up as a ruling class and the native Africans as
basically, well, slaves.
The climax of all this is the reaction of Keith Richburg in the
present who, after watching bodies from the Rwandan massacre
floating downstream, said that while he realized the horrors of
slavery, a part of him would be forever grateful to whoever brought
his ancestors "out of Africa" to America and saved him from what
Africa is like now.
Clearly, there is much to debate in Campbell's book, but his range,
from the 17th to the 21st century, covering some of the best-known
people in African-American history, is impressive and the book is
certainly worth reading.
COUNTERKNOWLEDGE: HOW WE SURRENDERED TO CONSPIRACY THEORIES, QUACK
MEDICINE, BOGUS SCIENCE AND FAKE HISTORY by Damian Thompson
(ISBN-13 978-0-670-06865-4, ISBN-10 0-670-06865-9) is all about
"fake knowledge", by which Thompson means creationism,
pseudo-history, alternative medicine, and so on. The most
interesting part (for me) was Thompson's description of how some of
the pseudo-history came about. In 1982 Michael Baigent, Richard
Leigh, and Henry Lincoln wrote HOLY BLOOD, HOLY GRAIL, upon which
Dan Brown based THE DA VINCI CODE. In the 1990s the Priory of Sion
upon which the premise of HOLY BLOOD, HOLY GRAIL was based was
revealed to be a hoax concocted in the 1940s, which even Baigent and
Leigh acknowledged. Yet even this did not seem to change the
general public's mind--when THE DA VINCI CODE came out *after* the
hoax was exposed, HOLY BLOOD, HOLY GRAIL was reprinted with nary a
word about the hoax. And Thompson also describes how 1421: THE YEAR
THE CHINESE DISCOVERED AMERICA was created and marketed.
However, I am not convinced that Thompson doesn't get some things
wrong either. In his section on creationism, he writes, "Muslims
are not young-earthers, since the idea that the world is 6,000
years old is extracted from genealogies in the Old Testament and is
therefore explicitly Judaeo-Christian." (page 39) But Muslims
also accept and revere the Old Testament, so I have no idea why I
should believe what Thompson says. [-ecl]
==================================================================
Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
Half the vices which the world condemns most loudly
have seeds of good in them and require moderate use
rather than total abstinence.
-- Samuel Butler