***Elegy To A Los Angeles Man- The Trials and Tribulations of A Literary Man-Charles Bukowski

DVD REVIEW

Bukowski: Born Into This, Charles Bukowski and others, directed by John Dullaghan, Magnolia, 2003

Back in the early 1970’s, well- before he became a cult figure of some stature, someone, somewhere directed me to some articles written by the king of “gonzo” journalist, the late Doctor Hunter S. Thompson for the then radical political/musical “Rolling Stone” magazine. Readers of this space are well aware of my affection for the writings of the good doctor. Around that same time the same person who “turned me on to” Thompson, as the expression of the day went, also mentioned that if I liked Thompson then I would definitely go for the then emerging Los Angeles literary cult figure under review here, Charles Bukowski.

I then read some of Bukowski’s stuff, mainly poetry from the various “little” presses like "City Light" but I was not that impressed at the time. Later, in the late 1980’s, when the movie “Barfly”, starting Mickey Rourke as Bukowski, came out I again tried to read his work, this time mainly the novels. Still no sale. Now, however, with this rather well done documentary that details the ups and downs of this literary figure who may have had the same kind of feel for the dispossessed, the “street people” of L.A., that his near contemporary Nelson Algren had for Chicago I think I have to take another look.

This documentary puts together the various aspects of Bukowski’s life (and incidentally demonstrates how tough it is to be an avant guarde artist in America) from his broken childhood to his struggle to find work, but most importantly, his struggle to write with the deck stacked against him. Add in a mercurial personality, some physical facial deformities (due to severe facial acne) and a very heavy drinking problem, including periods of abusive behavior to his girlfriends and others, to help drown his sorrows and one does not get a pretty picture. The film also gives enough snippets of his work (including some readings by Bukowski himself) to intrigue me to go back and check him out again.

But here is the kicker. I am always on the lookout for those who will speak for the dispossessed (like Algren, James T. Farrell, the young Dos Passos, etc.) even if there is no direct political linkage. Maybe I missed something before. Moreover, the “talking heads” that naturally populate a documentary like this included Tom Waits, Sean Penn, Bono, and Harry Dean Stanton. These are the same guys who provided commentary on a couple of Hunter Thompson documentaries that I have reviewed in this space recently. So, maybe I did miss something. Who would have thought.

BEER
from: Love is A Mad Dog From Hell

I don't know how many bottles of beer
I have consumed while waiting for things
to get better
I dont know how much wine and whisky
and beer
mostly beer
I have consumed after
splits with women-
waiting for the phone to ring
waiting for the sound of footsteps,
and the phone to ring
waiting for the sounds of footsteps,
and the phone never rings
until much later
and the footsteps never arrive
until much later
when my stomach is coming up
out of my mouth
they arrive as fresh as spring flowers:
"what the hell have you done to yourself?
it will be 3 days before you can fuck me!"

the female is durable
she lives seven and one half years longer
than the male, and she drinks very little beer
because she knows its bad for the figure.

while we are going mad
they are out
dancing and laughing
with horney cowboys.

well, there's beer
sacks and sacks of empty beer bottles
and when you pick one up
the bottle fall through the wet bottom
of the paper sack
rolling
clanking
spilling gray wet ash
and stale beer,
or the sacks fall over at 4 a.m.
in the morning
making the only sound in your life.

beer
rivers and seas of beer
the radio singing love songs
as the phone remains silent
and the walls stand
straight up and down
and beer is all there is.

AS CRAZY AS I EVER WAS
from: Love is A Dog From Hell

drunk and writing poems
at 3 a.m.

what counts now
is one more
tight pussy

before the light
tilts out

drunk and writing poems
at 3:15 a.m.

some people tell me that I'm
famous.

what am I doing alone
drunk and writing poems at
3:18 a.m.?

I'm as crazy as I ever was
they don't understand
that I haven't stopped hanging out of 4th floor
windows by my heels-
I still do
right now
sitting here

writing this down
I am hanging by my heels
floors up:
68, 72, 101,
the feeling is the
same:
relentless
unheroic and
necessary

sitting here
drunk and writing poems
at 3:24 a.m.

ANOTHER BED
from: Love is a Mad Dog from Hell

another bed
another women

more curtains
another bathroom
another kitchen

other eyes
other hair
other
feet and toes.

everybodys looking.
the eternal search.

you stay in bed
she gets dressed for work
and you wonder what happened
to the last one
and the one after that...
it's all so comfortable-
this love making
this sleeping together
the gentle kindness...

after she leaves you get up and use her
bathroom,

it's all so intimate and strange.
you go back to bed and
sleep another hour.

when you leave its with sadness
but you'll se her again
whether it works or not.
you drive down to the shore and sit
in your car. it's almost noon.

-another bed, other ears, other
ear rings, other mouths, other slippers, other
dresses

colors, doors, phone numbers.

you were once strong enough to live alone.
for a man nearing sixty you should be more
sensible.

you start the car and shift,
thinking, I'll phone Jeanie when I get in,
I haven't seen her since Friday.

SHE SAID
from: War All the Time

what are you doing with all those paper
napkins in your car?
we dont have napkins like
that
how come your car radio is
always turned to some
rock and roll station?do you drive around with
some
young thing?

you're
dripping tangerine
juice on the floor.
whenever you go into
the kitchen
this towel gets
wet and dirty,
why is that?

when you let my
bathwater run
you never
clean the
tub first.

why don't you
put your toothbrush
back
in the rack?

you should always
dry your razor

sometimes
I think
you hate
my cat.

Martha says
you were
downstairs
sitting with her
and you
had your
pants off.

you shouldn't wear
those
$100 shoes in
the garden

and you don't keep
track
of what you
plant out there

that's
dumb

you must always
set the cat's bowl back
in
the same place.

don't
bake fish
in a frying
pan...

I never saw
anybody
harder on the
brakes of their
car
than you.

let's go
to a
movie.

listen what's
wrong with you?
you act
depressed.

THE ALIENS
from The Last Night Of The Earth Poems

you may not believe it
but there are people
who go through life with
very little
friction of distress.
they dress well, sleep well.
they are contented with
their family
life.
they are undisturbed
and often feel
very good.
and when they die
it is an easy death, usually in their
sleep.

you may not believe
it
but such people do
exist.

but i am not one of
them.
oh no, I am not one of them,
I am not even near
to being
one of
them.
but they
are there

and I am
here.

BAD TIMES AT THE 3RD AND VERMONT HOTEL
from: You Get So Alone At Times that It Just Makes Sense

Alabam was a sneak and a theif and he came to my
room when I was drunk and
each time I got up he would shove me back
down.

you prick, I tole him, you know I can take you!

he just shoved me down
again.

I finally caught him a good one, right over the
temple
and he backed off and
left.
it was a couple of days later
I got even: I fucked his
girl.

then I went down and knocked on his
door.

well, Alabam, I fucked your women and now I'm going to
kick you all the way to
hell!

the poor guy started crying, he put his hands over his
face and just cried

I stood there and watched
him.

then i left him there, i went back to
my room.

we were all alkies and none of us had jobs, all we had
was each other.


even then, my so-called women was in some bar or
somewhere, i hadn't seen her in a couple of
days.

I had a bootle of port
left.

i uncorked it and took it down to Alabam's
room.

said, how about a drink,
Rebel?

he looked up, stood up, went for two glasses.

THOSE GIRLS WE FOLLOWED HOME
from: You Get So Alone At Times that It Just MAkes Sense

in junior high the two prettiest girls were
Irene and Louise,
they were sisters;
Irene was a year older, a little taller
but it was difficult to choose between
them;
they were not only pretty but they were
astonishingly beautiful
so beautiful
that the boys stayed away from them;
they were terrified of Irene and
Louise
who weren't aloof at all;
even friendlier than most
but
who seemed to dress a bit
differently than the other girls;
they always wore high heels'
silk stockings,
blouses,
skirts,
new outfits
each day;
and'
one afternoon
my buddy, Baldy, and i followed them
home from school;
you see, we were kind of
the bad guys on the grounds
so it was
more or less
expected,
and
it was soomething:
walking along ten or twelve feet behind them;
we didnt say anything
we just followed
watching
their voultuous swaying,
the balance of the
haunches.

we liked it so much that we
followed them home from school
every
day.

when they'd go into their house
we'd stand outside on the sidewalk
smoking cigarettes and talking.

"someday". I told Baldy.
"they are going to invite us inside their
house and they are going to
fuck us."

"you really think so?"

"sure."

now
50 years later
I can tell you
they never did
-never mind all the stories we
told the guys;
yes, it's a dream that
keepds you going
then and
now.

***Detective Novelist Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe Meets Leon Trotsky- “On The Quest For The New Socialist Persona”

Commentary

In a recent posting I reviewed detective novelist supreme Raymond Chandler’s late work (1958), “Playback”, the last in his series of Philip Marlowe stories. In that review I mentioned (as I have in several previous reviews of other books in Chandler’s Marlowe series) a number of positive attributes about Marlowe that I found appealing. For starters: his sense of personal honor in a modern world (the 1930’s, 40’s and 50’s) that laughed at such old-fashioned notions; his gritty intrepidness in search of ‘rough’ justice in a messy world; his amazing, almost superhuman, ability to take a punch or seven for the good of the cause; and, his minimally class- conscious and sometimes barely hidden contempt for the traditional social hierarchy and its police authority. In response, I received an e-mail from a reader, an ardent socialist-feminist fellow admirer of Leon Trotsky, who took me to task for my characterizations and argued that I had it all wrong both as to Marlowe’s virtues and to his so-called (her description) anti-authoritarian posture.

In passing, the reader deeply discounted those attributes where I put a plus, deplored even the idea of the possibility that a future socialist society would have room for such attributes as mentioned above and that Marlowe’s attitude toward women was ‘primitive’ (her description). While one would be hard pressed, very hard-pressed, to include Marlowe, with his very quaint but macho attitude toward women reflecting the mores of an earlier age, as a champion of women’s emancipation and he became over time a little shopworn in his sense of honor, common sense, ability to take a punch and lay off the booze the reader missed the point of my critique. Or rather she is much too dogmatic in her sense of “political correctness” as it applies to the literary front. Thus this little commentary is intended not so much to clear the air as to posit several ideas for future discussion.

I hate to invoke the name of Leon Trotsky, the intrepid Russian revolutionary, hard-working Soviet official, well-regarded political pamphleteer, and astute literary critic into this discussion but in that last role I think he had some useful things to say. Without a doubt Trotsky could have made his mark solely on the basis of his literary criticism, witness his Marxist masterpieces “Literature and Revolution” and “Literature and Art”. What makes Trotsky’s literary analysis so compelling is not whether he is right or wrong about the merits of any particular writer. In fact, many times, as in the case of the French writer Celine and some of the Russian poets, he was, I think, wrong. But rather, that he approached literary criticism from a materialist basis rooted in what history, and that essentially meant capitalist history, when he analyzed characters, the plausibility of various plots and the lessons to be drawn about “human nature” put forth by any given writer.

This is no mere genuflection on my part to a revolutionary leader whose work I hold in high regard but a recognition that capitalism has given us some much distorted concepts of what human nature is, or can be, all about. That is the core of the genius of Trotsky’s sharp pen and wit. That is why he is still very readable, for the most part, today. Unless it is question of political import, like the struggle inside Russia in the early 1920’s over the preferential establishment of a school of “proletarian culture” supported by the Soviet state that was bandied about by likes of fellow Bolsheviks Bukarin and Zinoviev, Trotsky did not spend much time diagramming any but the most general outline of the contours of what the future socialist society, its habits, manners and morals would look like. He did, and this is central in this discussion, spend a great deal of time on what capitalism had and would bequeath a socialist state. Including both vices and virtues.

Not to belabor a point this is the link between Leon Trotsky and one fictional Philip Marlowe. Trotsky accepted that personal honor had a place as a societal goal and as a matter of social hygiene. The parameters of that sense of honor naturally would be different under a social regime that was based on use value rather than the struggle for profit margins. Certainly Trotsky’s biography, particularly that last period in the 1930’s when he appeared to be tilting at windmills, demonstrates that he had a high moral code that drove him. Certainly the word intrepid is not out of place here, as well. Hardworking, hard-driving, a little bit gruff, but in search of some kind of justice. Those, my friend are the links that are the basic premise of a socialist society as it evolves out of capitalist society. As well as individual initiative, a sense of fairness, and well-placed scorn for established authority and the time-worn clichés about the limits of human nature.

Do I draw the links here too closely? Perhaps. Although Marlowe has his own version of ‘tilling at windmills’ in search of some kind of rough justice and vindication for all those knocks on the head one cannot deny that he does not challenge bourgeois society except in the most oblique way. He will not rail against General Sternwood’s oil derricks. He will not lead a crusade against the old order in his search for the elusive Velma. He is if anything very Victorian in his attitude toward women, good or bad. (Chandler’s Marlowe and Trotsky are both men of another era in their personal attitudes toward women, although Trotsky was light-years ahead on the political front). Nor is Marlowe the prototype for the ‘new socialist man’. But he remains a very appealing fictional character nevertheless. Who is your favorite fictional character, detective or otherwise? Let the discussion continue.

***Writer’s Corner- The Avatar Of American Letter, Mark Twain

DVD Review

Mark Twain, a film documentary directed by Ken Burns, PBS, Florentine Productions, 2000

No, this will not be a paean to the `transformative' nature of reading Samuel Clemens' (hereafter Mark Twain) seminal works, "Huckleberry Finn" and "Tom Sawyer" in childhood. I spend no long nights reading his works under a blanket, flashlight at the ready, until I fell asleep exhausted. (I did do that form of reading but not for Mr. Twain's work.) I, frankly, could not relate to the characters and the dialogue that seemed rather stilted (although I would not have known enough to call it that then). I do admit to having built a raft to try to `escape', along with my brothers, from some unfair sentence imposed my parents for some childhood transgression. But that can hardly be lain at Mr. Twain's door.

Nor will this review be a homage to Twain's treasure chest of humor and witty sayings that are sprinkled through out this documentary, and that have become part of the common language (and were, in the old days, very quotable newspaper filler). This film only reinforced the notion, other than the famous ditty about his response to the premature announcement of his death and his comment about San Francisco in August, that I did not find his humor funny. That said, after viewing this fine almost four hour Ken Burns PBS documentary I will admit to an on-going curiosity about this, arguably, first great modern American writer. Hey, I said Mark Twain didn't "speak" to me. I know that he is a great writer, and I think I sensed that notion even as a kid.

Ken Burns is probably the latter day master of the educational film documentary, most famously, and justly so, from the time of his ten-part PBS "Civil War" epic that I can still take in with my mind's eye. To a lesser degree, but with the same close attention to detail, a fine eye for selecting just the right photograph to make his point and appropriate musical scores in the background (including many variations of Stephan Foster songs that give a feel to the "gilded age" in which Twain lived and to which he added his own imprint).

Here Burns goes through the obligatory life of the author, starting from the rough and tumble days in Missouri and on the Mississippi River, on through to the fits and starts of finding a niche for himself (and a job) in the American literary market to success, fleeting as that was at times, and the fame, fortune, and in the end misfortune that went with that final acknowledgement that he was the premier literary man and storyteller of his times. The heart of this exploration of Twain's life, and what made it intriguing for a skeptical non-literary man like me was the way in which Twain was portrayed as a representative man of his age. That included both in his appetites for success, financial and otherwise, and to be, and be seen, as a successful product of the rough and tumble democratic American social system of the time. No small part of that persona is attributed to his wife and family that seemed, through thick and thin, hard times and good, to be his anchor. Not every successful writer has had that stable foundation but Twain literally thrived on it.

This film spend some time on Twain's literary production, his methods of work, his witticisms and his successful career as a public storyteller. I need not detail that information here. I would only say this-those who argue that Twain was first great American writer certainly have the best of the argument. In retrospect I can see where my own favorite from the 19th century, Nathaniel Hawthorne, really was not writing for the great democratic masses beginning their long search for some cultural expression to which they could relate. Twain, for literary and financial reasons, was trying to reach that audience.

Finally, and here is where Mark Twain gets high marks from this reviewer, as the documentary pointedly highlights on many ocassions. Twain positioned himself as a truth-telling about the inequities of the world, the absurdities of racism and its cultural expressions and about the foolhardiness of the upcoming rise of the American empire that he was, in the end, helpless to stop. That he did so while feting kings and queens, the rich and famous and liking such activities points out the contradictions of his life as a man. A contradiction that more than one American would-be radical had faced unsuccessfully. But here is a home truth. We can always use an extra truth-teller or two, a rather rare commodity in any age. We can sort out Twain's contradictions from there. Twain devotee, or not, this documentary is worth four hours of your time.

***Writer's Corner- F. Scott Fitzgerald's "This Side Of Paradise"

Book Review

This Side Of Paradise, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Simon& Schuster, New York, 1920

There was a time when if I used the name of the 20th century American writer Ernest Hemingway it also almost always meant that name of the author under review, F. Scott Fitzgerald, would follow in the next breathe (and then John Dos Passos). At that time I placed Hemingway’s “The Sun Also Rises” and Fitzgerald “The Great Gatsby” pretty closely together as exemplars of strong, non-nonsense writing styles and sparse but meaningful dialogue, along with a great narrative. “Gatsby” still certainly holds up. I find though , especially after re-reading this Fitzgerald first effort that put his name high up on the post-World War I literary scene, “This Side of Paradise”, that Hemingway has won the literary “battle” for the number one spot as the premier writer of that period. Strangely that period, “The Jazz Age” of the 1920s, is known as such in great part due to this book and is forever associated with Fitzgerald’s name.

As is to be expected from a first novel this book is very great indebted to the bits and pieces of autobiographical sketches that hold it together. And, moreover, is driven by the college exploits of the main and most developed character, Amory Blaine, at Fitzgerald’s alma mater, Princeton. The long and short of the story line is a very self-conscious attempt by Blaine , including plenty of now seemingly obscure literary references, to find out the mysteries of the meaning of life as a writer. That premise does not work so well in the college milieu that dominates the first part of the book. After all, many college students from time immemorial, from elite colleges and public universities alike, has thrashed over those questions, some successfully, some not.

What really made this book important (aside from a glimpse of “Jazz Age” manners, mores, styles and ennui) is the second part, after college and after Blaine had done military service during World War I in France (although the details of this service are only sketchily drawn). World War I acted a great divide for many of the men, and it was mainly men in those days, who suffered through it. The straight line, as the story line here details, from college to one’s proper place in the upper echelons of society got derailed, and not solely in Blaine’s case. This dislocation is mainly drawn out here as a spiritual crisis for Blaine but it also evoked class, sexual relations (almost all turning sour, for one reason or another), and life style. This is the heart of the book and the heart of Blaine’s (and Fitzgerald’s) dilemma: how to resolve the moral crisis within oneself without upsetting the social applecart that allows the wherewithal for such introspection.

What does not work here and what in the end makes this an unsatisfying work is Blaine’s rather vague and sudden attachment to some form of socialism near the end of the book. Although revolution was in the air and the great revolutionary efforts in Europe, including the seminal Bolshevik revolution in Russia, were in full blast for most of the book one would not know that things like the American government-driven Palmer Raids "red scare”, the split in the left-wing socialist movement in reaction to the American entry into the war and support of the Russian revolution, and the establishment of the American Communist Party were taking place. Blaine’s socialism is of a rather diluted sort, one suspects. Still this is a great first effort and if for no other reason that the display of Fitzgerald's' skill with language is worth reading, and re-reading.

***Alright Miss Lonelyhearts- The Life And Times Of Nathanael West And Eileen McKenney- A Guest Book Review

Click below to link to a "Boston Sunday Globe" article, dated April 11, 2010, concerning the American novelist Nathanael West and his wife, Eileen McKenney.
http://www.boston.com/ae/books/articles/2010/04/11/reversal_of_fortune/

Markin comment:

I have always held Nathanael West's "Miss Lonelyhearts", and more so, "Day Of The Locust" in very high regard. That last scene in the movie version, starring Donald Sunderland, still haunts my memory of what the "mob" can do when it gets its head up. More on this important member of the American literary canon later.

***Books To While Away The Class Struggle By- The Short Stories Of Nathaniel Hawthorne

Book Review

Hawthorne’s Short Stories, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Vintage Books, New York, 1946

The old social democratic literary critic and editor of “Dissent”, Irving Howe, once noted that Mark Twain, and his post-Civil War works represented a dramatic break from the Euro-centric ante bellum literary establishment. And on this question I agree with him. As I do on his choice of Nathaniel Hawthorne as an exemplar of that tradition. Certainly his most famous work, “The Scarlet Letter”, reflects that European influence, as do the collected short stories under review here.

As the reader, perhaps, knows Hawthorne made his living writing short stories for the women reader-oriented literary magazines of the day long before he wrote “The Scarlet Letter” and some of these have turned out to be classics of the early American Republic. Moreover, and this is one of his attractions for me, I know virtually every place where the action of the short stories takes place from the Merrymount May Day pole to the granite mountains of New Hampshire and beyond. More importantly, I know the weight, the dead weight of that grinding Puritan foundation that drove much of the early American experience here in New England. Hawthorne, in short, knows where the WASP-ish bodies are buried and is here to tell one and all the tales. Sometimes with pathos, sometimes with gothic effects, but always with a sense of some underlying moral purpose. You see Hawthorne too is smitten and bitten by that same Puritan ethos and that is the secret to the power of his writing.

As is usually the case with compilations, literary or otherwise, not all the work here is top-shelf. The best, and most representative to my mind, are the high Puritan “The Minister’s Black Veil, the chilling “The White Old Maid’, the swamp Yankee classic “Peter Goldthwaite’s Treasure”, the prophetic “The Birthmark”, the Gothic classic “Rappaccini’s Daughter”, and another high Puritan classic “The Maypole of Merrymount.

***Books To While Away The Class Struggle By- Nathaniel Hawthorne 's "The Scarlet Letter"

Book Review

The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Vintage Books, New York, 1952

I started off a review of the more famous of 19th American writer Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short stories by noting that the old social democratic literary critic and editor of “Dissent”, Irving Howe, once noted that Mark Twain, and his post-Civil War works represented a dramatic break from the Euro-centric ante bellum American literary establishment. And on this question I agree with him. As I do on his choice of Nathaniel Hawthorne as an exemplar of that tradition. Certainly his most famous work, “The Scarlet Letter”, reflects that European influence, and is justly place in the pantheon of that handful of important works that emerged in the early days of the American Republic.

One of the of clearest links between the ante bellum American literary establishment and the European tradition, especially from the English tradition was the need to pose and resolve some high moral question. And of course what is simpler to do that go back to the stark and isolated foundations of the white American tradition, the Puritan tradition. I know that if I were a writer and I wanted to dramatically portray the effects that physically isolated (and isolating) religiously-driven communities have on the individual, and on individual choice, those Puritan settlements from Cape Cod to Salem on the coast of Massachusetts in the 1600s would, at least get my serious consideration. (As they did as well for a serious sociologist like Max Weber whose appendices to his The Protestant Ethic And The Rise Of Capitalism contained a tresure of such material.)

So that, in part is what drives the action (if one can use that term usefully here) of a woman (naturally) banished (maybe shunned is better)from the tight-knit community (or so they claimed) by running off and having an affair with Mr. X. Now today that would create in the reader nothing but a big yawn, and maybe some spicy gossip, but hardly banishment, and hardly the necessity to wear a badge of courage sewn on your dress. Except maybe today one would advertise that status and place a video on “YouTube”. And that is my moral point.

Hester Prynne did not deserve the social opprobrium of the religious fundamentalists of her day. But old Hawthorne did a great service by creating a masterpiece to point out that moral ambiguity and dilemma back in the days.

***Books To While Away The Class Struggle By- James Baldwin’s “Going To Meet The Man”- Come Ready, Brother, Come Ready

A "YouTube" film clip of "James Baldwin: The Price Of The Ticket."

Book Review

Going To Meet The Man, James Baldwin, Vintage International, New York, 1995

I have been, as is my wont when I get “hooked” on some writer, on something of a James Baldwin tear of late, reading or re-reading everything I can get my hands on. At the time of this review I have already looked at “Go Tell It On The Mountain”, the play “Blues For Mr. Charlie”, “Tell Me How Long The Train’s Been Gone”, and “The Fire Next Time”. Those works, well written and powerful reminded me of why I was crazy to read everything that Baldwin wrote when I was a kid. I do not recall then having read any short stories by Baldwin, at least none that were memorable like one of the stories, “Sonny’s Blues”, in this “Going To Meet The Man” compilation.

Now great writers, and I hope at this point in our common American literary experiences no one need argue James Baldwin’s place in the canon, sometimes are capable of writing both great novels and short stories. Baldwin seems to be in that category, although off of this selection it may be a bit premature to make that judgment because most of the material appears to have been “first drafts” of later, full novelistic treatments. For example, “The Morning, The Evening, So Soon”, the subject matter of which is the fame of a expatriate black actor-singer who despite that fame is still subject to all the racial taunts and tensions of a stay-at-home performer. (I originally wrote this review just after the passing away of the pioneer black singer/actress/black liberation fighter, Lena Horne.) That subject gets fuller treatment in "Tell Me How Long The Train's Been Gone."

Other subjects that get a preliminary workout here are the deep religious experience of Baldwin’s fundamentalist Protestant youth, “The Outing” that will get a full-blown treatment in “Go Tell It On The Mountain.” Of course, the subject of homosexuality, and bi-sexuality, are obliquely presented in several stories, Baldwin, along with Gore Vidal being something of American literary pioneers, if not honored as such at the time, on the subject. And of course, as with all of Baldwin serious work, we are treated to various manifestations of the ever present “race” question; interracial sex and marriage; degrees of blackness; white racism; black attitudes toward white racism; and the purposeful insularity of the white world in dealing, or nor dealing, with these questions, then and now.

What you want to get this particular compilation for though, as I mentioned above, is for “Sonny’s Blues”. Now it is almost impossible to find any writer, any American writer at least, worth his or he salt who came of literary age in the 1950s who was not influenced, even if only around the edges, by “be-bop” jazz. Baldwin was no exception, although his race is not the only reason for that statement. The rhythm of the cool, abstract, high white note “be-bop jazz” that sent audiences into a frenzy of delight are a simple companion to the sparser, less lyrical literary beat of 1950’s writing. Mailer, Kerouac, and most of the New York intellectual crew feasted, and feasted well, on that inner sound. But, nobody got it righter than James Baldwin in “Sonny’s Blues.”

What seemingly starts out as another one of Baldwin’s epistles on, literally, brotherly love; that of two brothers, one, Sonny, several years younger than the other, who “grew up” in Harlem, grew away from each other by choice or circumstances,, reunited when now famed jazz pianist brother, Sonny, got caught up trying to reach that “high white note” via the “horse” (heroin) drug connection that also has been associated with bop, turns into one of the best expositions of what jazz meant to the listener, and to the artist struggling to find his inner voice, that I have ever read.

The last several pages, in counterpoint to the first several, are truly lyrical as Baldwin puts in words on the printed page what a struggle it was for Sonny, and his fellow band members in New York cafe society, to “make the gods listen." And to make the heavens cry out for the high side of the human experience. You or I could try to write such lines for two hundred years and we could not get it right. Kudos, James.

In Honor Of The 64th Anniversary Year Of The Chinese Revolution of 1949- From The Pen Of Leon Trotsky-Problems Of The Chinese Revolution (1927) –A Retreat in Full Disorder-November 1930- Prinkipo

Click on link below to read on-line all of Leon Trotsky's book, Problems Of The Chinesee Revolution

http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1932/pcr/index.htm

Markin comment (repost from 2012):

On a day when we are honoring the 63rd anniversary of the Chinese revolution of 1949 the article posted in this entry and the comment below take on added meaning. In the old days, in the days when I had broken from many of my previously held left social-democratic political views and had begun to embrace Marxism with a distinct tilt toward Trotskyism, I ran into an old revolutionary in Boston who had been deeply involved (although I did not learn the extend of that involvement until later) in the pre-World War II socialist struggles in Eastern Europe. The details of that involvement will not detain us here now but the import of what he had to impart to me about the defense of revolutionary gains has stuck with me until this day. And, moreover, is germane to the subject of this article from the pen of Leon Trotsky -the defense of the Chinese revolution and the later gains of that third revolution (1949) however currently attenuated.

This old comrade, by the circumstances of his life, had escaped that pre-war scene in fascist-wracked Europe and found himself toward the end of the 1930s in New York working with the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party in the period when that organization was going through intense turmoil over the question of defense of the Soviet Union. In the history of American (and international) Trotskyism this is the famous Max Shachtman-James Burnham led opposition that declared, under one theory or another, that the previously defendable Soviet Union had changed dramatically enough in the course of a few months to be no longer worth defending by revolutionaries.

What struck him from the start about this dispute was the cavalier attitude of the anti-Soviet opposition, especially among the wet-behind-the-ears youth, on the question of that defense and consequently about the role that workers states, healthy, deformed or degenerated, as we use the terms of art in our movement, as part of the greater revolutionary strategy. Needless to say most of those who abandoned defense of the Soviet Union when there was even a smidgeon of a reason to defend it left politics and peddled their wares in academia or business. Or if they remained in politics lovingly embraced the virtues of world imperialism.

That said, the current question of defense of the Chinese Revolution hinges on those same premises that animated that old Socialist Workers Party dispute. And strangely enough (or maybe not so strangely) on the question of whether China is now irrevocably on the capitalist road, or is capitalist already (despite some very un-capitalistic economic developments over the past few years), I find that many of those who oppose that position have that same cavalier attitude the old comrade warned me against back when I was first starting out. There may come a time when we, as we had to with the Soviet Union and other workers states, say that China is no longer a workers state. But today is not that day. In the meantime study the issue, read the posted article, and more importantly, defend the gains of the Chinese Revolution.

**********

Leon Trotsky

Problems of the Chinese Revolution

---

A Retreat in Full Disorder-November 1930- Prinkipo

Manuilsky on the “Democratic Dictatorship”

In the anniversary number of Pravda (November 7), Manuilsky once more shows the value of the present leadership of the Comintern. We will analyse briefly that part of his anniversary reflections devoted to China, and which amounts in essence to a cowardly, deliberately confused, and therefore all the more dangerous, semi-capitulation to the theory of the permanent revolution.

1) “A revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the peasantry and proletariat in China,” writes Manuilsky, “will differ essentially from the democratic dictatorship outlined [!] by the Bolsheviks in the 1905-06 revolution.”

The democratic dictatorship was “outlined” by the Bolsheviks not only in 1905, but also in 1917 and in all the years between the two revolutions. But only outlined. Events served as a test. Manuilsky, like his teacher Stalin, does not reflect upon the points of resemblance and the points of difference of the Chinese revolution with the three Russian revolutions – no, with such comparison they would be unable to preserve the fiction of the democratic dictatorship, and along with it, the fiction of their theoretical reputations. Therefore these gentlemen do not compare the Chinese revolution with the real Russian Revolution, but with the one that was “outlined”. It is much easier in this way to confuse and to throw dust in the eyes.

2) In what respect then does the revolution taking place in China differ from the one “outlined” in Russia? In the fact, we are taught by Manuilsky, that the Chinese revolution is directed against the “whole system of world imperialism”! It is true that this was the basis upon which Manuilsky yesterday depended for the revolutionary role of the Chinese bourgeoisie as against the Bolshevik position “outlined in 1905”. Today, however, Manuilsky’s conclusions are different: “The difficulties of the Chinese revolution are tremendous; and this is precisely why the victorious movement of the Chinese Red Army upon the industrial centres of China had to halt at Changsha.” It would have been much more simple and honest to say that the partisan peasant detachments, in the absence of revolutionary uprisings in the cities, found themselves powerless to take possession of the industrial and political centres of the country. Wasn’t this clear to Marxists beforehand?

But Manuilsky must needs save Stalin’s speech at the Sixteenth Congress. Here is how he fulfils this task:

“The Chinese revolution has at its disposal a Red army, it is in possession of a considerable territory, at this very moment it is creating on this territory a soviet system of workers’ and peasants’ power in whose government the Communists are in the majority. And this condition permits the proletariat to realize not only an ideological but also a state hegemony over the peasantry.” [Our emphasis.]

The fact that the Communists, as the revolutionary and most self-sacrificing elements, appear at the head of the peasant movement and the armed peasant detachments, is quite natural in itself and is also exceptionally important in the symptomatic sense. But this does not change the fact that the Chinese workers find themselves throughout their vast country under the heel of the Chinese bourgeoisie and foreign imperialism. In what way can the proletariat realize “state hegemony” over the peasantry, when the state power is not in its hands? It is absolutely impossible to understand this. The leading role of the isolated Communists and the isolated Communist groups in the peasant war does not decide the question of power. Classes decide and not parties. The peasant war may support the dictatorship of the proletariat, if they coincide in point of time, but under no circumstances can it be substituted for the dictatorship of the proletariat. Is it possible that the “leaders” of the Comintern have not learned even this from the experiences of the three Russian revolutions?

3) Let us listen further to Manuilsky: “All these [?] conditions lead to the fact that a revolutionary-democratic dictatorship in China will be confronted with the necessity of a consistent confiscation of the enterprises belonging to foreign and Chinese capital.” (Our emphasis.)

“All these conditions” is a commonplace whose purpose is to cover up the gap created in the old position. But the centre of gravity in the phrase quoted above is not in “all these conditions” but in one single “condition”: Manuilsky has been instructed to manoeuvre away from the democratic dictatorship and to cover up the traces. This is why Manuilsky so diligently, but not very skilfully, wags his tail.
The democratic dictatorship can be contrasted only to the proletarian socialist dictatorship. The one differs from the other by the character of the class holding power and by the social content of its historical work. If the democratic dictatorship is to occupy itself not with clearing the road for capitalist development, as stated in the Bolshevik schema “outlined in 1905”, but on the contrary, with a “consistent confiscation of the enterprises belonging to foreign and Chinese capital”, as “outlined” by Manuilsky, then we ask: wherein does this democratic dictatorship differ from the socialist? In no way. Then does it mean that Manuilsky, for the second time after a lapse of twelve years, has bitten into the apple of the “permanent” theory? He bit without really taking a bite: this will yet be seen.

4) We read one phrase after another. “The presence of socialist elements will be the specific [!] peculiarity of the revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry in China.” Not a bad “specific” peculiarity!

The democratic dictatorship was always thought of by the Bolsheviks as a bourgeois-democratic dictatorship, and not as a supra-class one, and was contrasted to the socialist dictatorship only in this – the only possible – sense. Now it appears that in China there will be a “democratic dictatorship with socialist elements”. Between the bourgeois and socialist régimes, the class abyss thus disappears, everything is dissolved into pure democracy, and this pure democracy is supplemented gradually and planfully by “socialist elements”.
Who did these people learn from? From Victor Chernov. It is precisely he who, in 1905-06, outlined such a Russian Revolution as would be neither bourgeois nor socialist, but democratic, and would gradually be supplemented by socialist elements. No, Manuilsky did not make much use of the apple of wisdom!
5) Further: the Chinese revolution in its transition from capitalism to socialism will have more intermediate stages than our October revolution: but the periods of its growing over into a socialist revolution will be considerably shorter than the periods outlined (!) by the Bolsheviks for the democratic dictatorship in 1905.
Our astrologer has drawn the balance to everything in advance: to the stages, the periods, and the length of the periods. He only forgot the ABC of Communism. It appears that under democracy, capitalism will grow over into socialism in a series of stages. And the power – will it remain the same in this process or will it change? What class will hold power under the democratic dictatorship and what class under the socialist? If different classes will hold power then they can supplant each other only by a new revolution, and not through the “growing over” of the power of one class into the power of another. On the other hand, if it is assumed that in both periods one and the same class will dominate, that is, the proletariat, then what is the meaning of the democratic dictatorship as against the proletarian? To this there can be no answer. And there will not be. Manuilsky is ordered not to clear up the question but to cover up the traces.
In the October revolution, the democratic tasks grew over into socialist ones – under the unaltered domination of the proletariat. One can therefore draw a distinction (it is understood, only relatively) between the democratic period of the October revolution and the socialist period; but one cannot distinguish between the democratic and the socialist dictatorships because the democratic was – non-existent.
In addition, we have heard from Manuilsky that in China the democratic dictatorship, from the very beginning, will be confronted with a consistent confiscation of the enterprises, which means the expropriation of the bourgeoisie. This means that there will not even be a democratic stage of the proletarian dictatorship. Under these conditions, where will the democratic dictatorship come from?
Manuilsky’s injudicious construction would be entirely impossible were he to compare the Chinese revolution with the Russian as it actually developed, and not with the one that was “outlined”, and at that, to confuse and distort the outline. And all this to what end? In order to retreat without retreating, in order to give up the reactionary formula of the democratic dictatorship, or, as they say in China, to save face. But on the face of Stalin-Manuilsky have already written, first, Chiang Kai-shek and then Wang Jingwei! Enough! The face is already sufficiently descriptive. They cannot save it any more. Manuilsky’s theoretical confusion is directed against the basic interests of the Chinese revolution. The Chinese Bolshevik-Leninists will reveal this.

***Writer's Corner- The Making Of Raymond Chandler's Phillip Marlowe-The Collected Stories

 

Michael James : Kidnapped to the Highlands, 1964

Fishing boat on Monterey Bay. Photos by Michael James from his forthcoming book, Michael Gaylord James' Pictures from the Long Haul.

Pictures from the Long Haul:
Kidnapped to the Highlands:
Gibson Beach and Monterey Bay, 1964

This morning on Monterey Bay is blessedly calm. Joe, smoking a Camel, steers the boat west as the morning sun emerges over the Santa Cruz Mountains.

By Michael James / The Rag Blog / October 17, 2013

[In this series, Michael James is sharing images from his rich past, accompanied by reflections about -- and inspired by -- those images. This photo will be included in his forthcoming book, Michael Gaylord James' Pictures from the Long Haul.]

A few weeks before getting busted -- along with 732 others -- for sitting in at Sproul Hall during the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley, I was smoothly kidnapped. It was November 1964. I was taken away and introduced to life in the Carmel Highlands. Nick Aliotti, a football player pal from Lake Forest College, was back in his hometown of Monterey. He invited me to come down for Thanksgiving.

At Berkeley I am meeting people, many of them grad students like myself. One of them is John Williams; he lives south of Monterey and offers to give me a ride to Nick’s.

We leave Berkeley on Wednesday afternoon, November 25, heading south. We’re in his green VW bug. (VW bugs: an identical one took me from Connecticut to DC for the March on Washington in 1963; in the not too distant future I’ll drive my own black VW bug through Indian Territory in the Dakotas; and in the 1970’s in yet another green VW bug, David Meggyesy and I will ride from Berkeley to Durango.)

Rolling down Highway 101 south of San Jose, I take in the foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountains to the east. This is the same highway I’d wrecked on en route to a cannery job in the summer of 1960; my very lucky self was pulled unconscious from my burning 1940 Ford hot rod by a passing truck driver.

But this is a fun ride. Windows open and California soaking in: the land, the California smells of garlic and eucalyptus, new views, and new towns. At Gilroy, the nation’s garlic capital, we cut over toward the coast on Highway 156, through Watsonville, and then hit Castroville, the nation’s artichoke capital. At sunset, continuing south on California Highway 1, we pass the sand dunes and coastal rifle range of Fort Ord.

It’s dark when I turn to John and say: “Hey, didn’t we just pass Monterey? That’s where Nick lives.” John mumbles, “I’ll take you over there tomorrow.” To which I reply, “Ok, I’m kidnapped.”

John on Gibson Beach.

We drive past exits to Seventeen Mile Drive and Carmel Valley, and then by Point Lobos State Reserve, where years later I’ll take an early morning run among the bountiful deer. Near the little Highland’s gas station, we turn right off the highway and onto a dirt driveway lined with trees.

Even in the darkness I sense this place to be special, somewhat magical. There are small buildings that over time will reveal themselves to be an art studio and library, a guesthouse with a great outdoor shower, a yurt, a workshop, and a chicken coup. Barking dogs run to the VW as we park in an open space surrounded by Eucalyptus trees with their wonderful smell. To the east are trees, Highway 1, and hills. There are more trees to the north and south. And to the west is the open night sky and stars above the vast Pacific Ocean.

The homestead itself looks south and west, and is made of stone, wood, and glass, a single story with a patio. We enter a room that is living room, dining area, and kitchen. Warmth exudes from the fire, the room and the people -- John’s sister Honey, Gregson Davis, and the family matriarch Cynthia. Cynthia, who over decades will gently influence me with her many stories and thoughts, is the daughter of a painter; her grandfather owned the Lexington Hotel in Chicago.

Pillows cover the elevated hearth and a bench that surrounds a round table covered with magazines, newspapers, and books. Both the hearth and kitchen have beautiful painted tiles, the work of one Ephraim Doner. “Doner” lives across Route 1 and up the hill.

Gibson Beach, looking north.

On this visit I meet him and his wife Rosa, founder of the Highland’s Little Red School House cooperative nursery school. And I meet their daughter Natasha, who’s mentioned in the opening pages of Henry Miller’s Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch (1957). She goes to Cal and we become friends. She tells me that a young Bob Dylan spent time at the family’s home pouring over books on the shelves. Natasha will work with the United Farm Workers for many years.

Across the road and up the hill I’ll also meet a former radical merchant seaman named Harold Price, his Eurasian earth-mother-wife Lana, and their children. By the time I meet him he’s a commercial artist and more cynical.

In their home I will attend a smorgasbord with many food offerings, including a raw egg yolk sitting in the center of raw ground beef. That particular meal will be prepared and presented by a Scandinavian girlfriend of Cal grad student Gregson Davis. Davis, the 1960 Harvard valedictorian, is from Antigua and has a great laugh.

And also across the road and up the hill, a few years later at Christmas time, I will meet and talk with another neighbor, the legendary community organizer Saul Alinsky, who wrote Reveille for Radicals, the early bible on organizing skills and tactics.

On this first night of my first visit, I sit by the fire. There is brief introductory sharing of information. We consume wine and food. That hearth becomes a dear spot. John takes me down the hall to an unheated and chilly room with a bed heaped with covers and walls lined with books. I lie under the heavy covers and look out the big glass window. It is very dark save for a slice of starry sky above a silhouette of trees. I like this place.

In the pre-dawn morning I’m in a sleep-awake state. I notice a little girl, maybe ten, looking through books on a shelf. I say “Good morning” and “How are you?” in my best talking-to-little-kids-talk. She responds with an adult “Fine. And you are…?” Her name is Molly. She is the youngest of the Williams kids, and plans to be a veterinarian.

Now up, I venture into this landed, arty bohemian enclave. I join Cynthia, drinking tea, reading, and talking. Then John and I take a walk on a path of botanical wonders. We pass another home -- a cousin’s -- nestled into the land, and then start down a stretch of steep steps.

At the bottom is Gibson Beach, between the mountains and the ocean. For years to come I will descend these steps, often taking a very brief plunge into the huge, cold, turbulent Pacific waves that leave seaweed and long kelp tubes on the coarse sand. Cormorants take off and land on a rock island to the northwest, before and after beak-bomb dives into the surf.

By afternoon I leave the Williams compound and join Nick’s family in Monterey for Thanksgiving dinner. His people are fisherman and movie projectionists. Italians. Dinner includes artichokes, a big salad, rice stuffing with ground beef, rigatoni, cheeses, lots of garlic, prawns, veal, yams with maple syrup, turkey, and more pasta and seafood. Then coffee, and cannoli for dessert. Oh, and plenty of California red wine.

Monterey Bay: Sun rising over the Santa Cruz Mountains to the east.

I spend the night at Nick’s, falling out with my annual overfilled holiday tummy.

We are up early. We head down to the harbor and onto a fishing boat, out into Monterey Bay. Our captain is Nick’s uncle Joe Aliotti, the fisherman. Joe grew up in Italy, became a fisherman, and immigrated to California after serving in the Italian submarine corps during WWII.

I have memory flashes of earlier fishing expeditions with my dad. Me, age 10 in Boca Grande, Florida, watching the men fish for Tarpon, then hanging out in the boat’s galley with the Captain while he cooks beans. My dad and his pals, who called themselves the Society of Mizzable Bastards, were inside drinking at the Pink Elephant, a dockside bar. Another time I am very seasick in the turbulent tide-changing seas off Block Island.

This morning on Monterey Bay is blessedly calm. Joe, smoking a Camel, steers the boat west as the morning sun emerges over the Santa Cruz Mountains. We’re after a large shrimp, the Monterey Bay Spot Prawn. Joe is a pioneer in the commercial fishing of this species. We find Joe’s buoy and the long chain that drops 600 fathoms into an underwater canyon where the prawns hang out. They pull up the chain and the handmade wicker and rope traps called pots that are connected to the chain by rope. Joe cuts chum for the pots, an older fisherman baits them, and both lower them back into the canyon.

Emptying the traps.

After a few hours we have caught many prawns, plus a few junk fish. And we catch the enemy of the prawn fisherman, a small octopus. There are no prawns in the trap with the octopus. Uncle Joe picks up the octopus and bites its head in just the right place, sending it straight to octopus heaven. By late morning we’re dockside and leave containers with the catch at a dockside commercial fish-house. Joe tosses the octopus up on the dock; it’s part of the catch.

Over the years I make many runs, in many vehicles, with many people between Berkeley and the Highlands. I’m the cameraman on a wild pig hunt in the Carmel Valley with John and a guy named Reaford Shay. We find no wild pigs but do return with a young buck that Reaford dresses and we eat.

I talk with Cynthia’s brother Dick Criley, a longtime progressive activist who ran the Chicago Committee to Defend the Bill of Rights. I meet Florence, Dick’s wife, the feisty union organizer with the United Electrical Workers. Honey Williams introduces me to Joan Baez on a Christmas Eve on the streets of Carmel, and I dance with her sister Pauline and others during parties at the Williams house.

For a few years I derive great pleasure driving a red 1947 International pickup truck on rough dirt roads off Hwy 1 to a place called Rocky Creek. We shoot a home movie scene: the International pulls up by a small herd of cattle and stops abruptly, me in the pickup bed leaning on the cab, brandishing a rifle. Later that and other home movies are stolen -- I believe by the notorious “Red Squad” -- from my storefront crib at Armitage and Kedzie in Chicago, where we lay out the first issues of Rising Up Angry in 1969.

Visiting the Highlands in the winter of 1965, I hang out with “Muffy” Rebecca Katia North, the daughter of author Joseph North, a Communist Party activist and journalist. I get a nighttime call from my Oakland roommate Davy Wellman, also a red diaper baby. He is freaked out. History grad student and Free Speech Movement comrade Bob Novick has been busted for pot. Back in those days this was cause for panic: Is this a crackdown on activists or what? Davy is refusing to go into our apartment at 5006 Telegraph until I get rid of my small bag of weed within its walls.

Uncle Joe Aliotti.

In the morning Muffy and I drive north to Oakland. We arrive and approach the house with considerable trepidation, at least on my part. We climb the now spooky-stairs and enter my home, once warm and comforting. Thinking the cops are about to jump me, I quickly grab the bag of weed, dump it into the toilet, and flush. Immediately I feel stupid, take a deep breath and say to myself: “You asshole...”

Being kidnapped and taken to John’s home ended up being a gift. I will always be grateful to Cynthia Williams for the generous spirit with which she welcomed me and so many others into the nurturing, stimulating, life-altering world of the Highlands.

[Michael James is a former SDS national officer, the founder of Rising Up Angry, co-founder of Chicago's Heartland Café (1976 and still going), and co-host of the Saturday morning (9-10 a.m. CDT) Live from the Heartland radio show, here and on YouTube. He is reachable by one and all at michael@heartlandcafe.com. Find more articles by Michael James on The Rag Blog.]

 Attention Peace Activist

Please Join Veterans For Peace and our “Outhouse House Band” The Leftist Marching Band for

Armistice / Veterans

Day for Peace

November 11, 2013

Parade & Faneuil Hall Event

Veterans for Peace will once again proudly walk behind the street sweepers in the Veterans Day Parade in Boston. Please join us as we show our opposition to the on-going war in Afghanistan and our undeclared Drone wars in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia

More information to follow

We will gather at 12:30 on the corner of Charles and Beacon Streets.

1st Parade steps off at 1:00 pm – our parade will follow

Our Armistice / Veterans Day for Peace Parade will follow the first parade which steps off at 1:00 pm on the corner of Boylston and Tremont Street and continue along the Boston Common. Our parade then will weave it’s way to Faneuil Hall for the Armistice / Veterans Day for Peace event.

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