Southern Bookman

John Sebastian and Lovin' Spoonful songs stand as rock classics

John Sebastian and Lovin' Spoonful produced a number of hits, yet the band has always been underrated.

Sebastian wrote sunny pop tunes expressing the joys and sorrows of teenage love, and the joys of life.

While Sebastian and Lovin' Spoonful songs are criticized as insubstantial compared with those of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Simon and Garfunkel, Bob Dylan and so on, they stand the test of time.

Sebastian's songs display a subtle lyrical and melodic sophistication, and the Spoonful's Zal Yanovsky, Joe Butler, and Steve Boone added inventive jazz stylings to rock rhythms.

Spoonful songs "The Younger Girl," "Do You Believe in Magic," "You Didn't Have to Be So Nice," "Summer in the City," "Nashville Cats," "Did You Ever Have to Make Up Your Mind," and "What a Day for a Daydream" hold a special place in the rock canon.

Legendary Texas Observers battles to survive

The venerated Texas Observer is desperately trying to stay alive.

After the small, feisty magazine's board decided Sunday to close the publication this week, 17 staffers targeted for layoffs began a fund-raising campaign led by editor Gabriel Arana. Nearly $200,000 had been raised as of Tuesday afternoon,  impressive but not enough to keep the Observer alive.

Began by Ronnie Dugger in 1954, the Observer gained a reputation for independent investigative reporting and brilliant writing. Legendary journalists Willie Morris and Molly Ivins edited the Observer before moving on to national fame. Novelist Larry McMurtry was one of the Texas writers who examined the Lone Star State's peculiar culture for the Observer.

Longtime editor Dugger is the father of noted New York Times journalist Celia Dugger, named for Morris' first wife. She worked as a young reporter for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

The Observer is a vestige of Texas' once vibrant progressive Democratic politics, exemplified by late Gov. Ann Richards and former Agricultural Commissioner Jim Hightower. Former Congressman Beto O'Rourke and other Democratic leaders have failed to restore the state's progressive tradition.

With a circulation of 4,000, the Observer has fallen upon rough times in the digital age. Kept afloat by haphazard donations and paid subscriptions to the print edition, the Observer gives free email newsletters and hasn't set up a pay wall for its digital edition. Nor does it accept advertising.

The magazine that annoyed Lyndon Johnson, John Connally. George Bush and a motley group of rapacious Texas legislators also faced competition from the well-funded online news operation Texas Tribune, which broke the news of the Observer's closing. Texas Monthly magazine. edited by several Observer alums, covers much of the same territory.

Dugger's Observer was a model for alternative newspapers around the nation, such as the Village Voice and the Los Angeles Free Press.

When I was a young would-be Gonzo journalist, I saw the Observer as a bright shining light. I associated the publication with the progressive spirit then flowering in Texas, personified by hippie country artists Willie Nelson, Jerry Jeff Walker, Ray Wyle Hubbard, Gary P. Nunn and Townes Van Zandt.

If the Observer dies, part of Texas' soul will go with it.

 

Microchip wars will decide world's fate, writers Chis Miller and John Lanchester reveal

Microchips will decide the West's coming war with China and humanity's future.

London Review writer John Lanchester in an expansive review in the publication's March issue examines the central importance of those little silicon wafers.

Lanchester for years has been one of my favorite writers, especially in uncovering the inner workings of the world's economy. He's also a noted novelist and critic of English culture and history.

In an appreciative review of Chris Miller's "Chip War: The Fight for the World's Most Critical Technology," Lanchester gives a detailed and fascinating synopsis of the development of semiconductor technology.

From William Shockley's invention of the transistor and founding of Silicon Valley, through successive microchip innovations by Jack Kilby, Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore and the continued miniaturization and prevalence of microchips in military weapons and consumer products, Lanchester shows the successes and downfalls of companies like Shockley Semiconductor,  Fairchild Semiconductor, Intel and Texas Instruments.

While American innovations led the semiconductor revolution, U.S. companies lost their competitive dominance to the Taiwanese firm Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.

Texas Instruments and other American firms still compete in the semiconductor industry, but TSMC is now by far the leading semiconductor manufacturer.

The Taiwanese capitalist giant is itself dependent on European companies for the complex equipment needed to program the chips through an intricate process known as extreme ultraviolet lithography.

As Lanchester details, the American firm Cymer developed the laser technology for EUV products. But the Dutch firm ASML has risen to the top in making the huge machines needed to create the ultra-tiny microchips.

While Taiwan makes most of the chips that power products from cars to Iphones, China is desperate to acquire chips for weapons and products it manufactures. China's economy now rivals the United States, yet the communist system lags in technological innovation.

Lanchester points out that the Biden administration's ban on microchip exports to China in October 2022 is "a declaration of economic war."

China Chairman's Xi's increasing aggression toward the United States and seeking closer ties with Russia's Vladimir Putin accelerate the new cold war, which might heat up with a Chinese attack against Taiwan like that of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. 

With no microchip manufacturing industry, communist China has increasing incentive to take over Taiwan militarily. The United States' economic future depends on Taiwan's independence.

Oil, water, alternative energy sources, climate change, food and population increases will determine humanity's future. But those tiny chips will rule the world, as Lanchester's essential review of Miller's important book shows.

 

 

 

John Feinstein's return to Washington Post a gain for NCAA basketball fans

It's been an entertaining NCAA tournament, marked by upsets, dramatic three-point shots and play-making excellence. 

And John Feinstein is back writing about March Madness for The Washington Post.

Feinstein in his tournament columns shows why he's one of our most entertaining story-tellers. He's written about Tennessee coach Rick Barnes saving a lost dog, a pioneering black referee's retirement, Howard University's appearance in the tournament and the tarnished career of Iona and now St. John's coach Rick Pitino.

After the death this week of NBA great Willis Reed, Feinstein recalled going to Madison Square Garden as a student to watch Reed and the New York Knicks play in the years they won two championships. Feinstein said that he never lost his hero worship of Reed, even as a sportswriter covering Reed when he was a Knicks executive.

Feinstein was one of the legendary Post sportswriters who left the newspaper for TV and radio. Unlike fellow alums Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon, Feinstein didn't find permanent success with broadcast media and was even fired by CBS Radio. Along with appearances on ESPN's sadly gone "The Sports Reporters," Feinstein gave commentary for the Golf Channel.

While continuing to publish best-selling sports books and popular novels for young readers, Feinstein recently returned to the Post, restoring some of the luster lost when Thomas Boswell retired. Feinstein and Sally Jenkins give the newspaper a dynamic one-two sportswriting punch.

Like legendary columnists Red Smith and W.C. Heinz, Feinstein knows that stories are the heartbeat of sports.

 

 

Bill Gates, Thomas Friedman acclaim Artificial Intelligence's Brave New World

I am not a robot.

ChatGPT is not writing this piece.

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman and billionaire Bill Gates are in a frenzy over Artificial Intelligence, claiming it's as revolutionary as the printing press, the Internet and the steam engine.

The new Microsoft GPT-4 bot developed by OpenAI can whip out sonnets and abecedarian verse within seconds, according to Friedman's column this week.

Along with composing poems in which each line begins with a different letter of the alphabet, GPT-4 can almost instantaneously do translations in different languages, Friedman marveled.

I'm sure GPT-4 will soon be turning out Tom Friedman columns indistinguishable from the real thing.

Gates in his blog says AI will free humans from mundane tasks and allow us "to do things that software never will - teaching, caring for patients and supporting the elderly," according to the Wall Street Journal.

Why Artificial Intelligence can't teach and care for patients was not explained.

Against corporate opposition, office workers are using OpenAI's ChatGPT to write emails, memos and messages, according to a Wall Street Journal article. The workers say it improves productivity.

Or Artificial Intelligence could be nothing more than Quiet Quitting, last year's trend.

Perhaps Friedman and Gates are right, and AI will bring bring a new golden era of human development.

I remain skeptical, and plan to ignore Artificial Intelligence as much as possible, hoping it'll be destroyed all together.

Best wishes to Generation Z as they welcome the new age, but I'm too old for a little AI buddy.

For me, Shakespeare's sonnets will never by supplanted by something called GPT-4.

 

 

 

Farewell, Willis Reed, New York Knicks' championship captain

Willis Reed like other stellar black athletes rose to fame from poverty and racial oppression in rural northern Louisiana.

Reed, beloved captain of two New York Knicks championship teams in the 1970s, died at age 80 Tuesday from a congestive heart condition.

A native of Hico, La., who grew up in nearby Bernice in Lincoln Parish near the Arkansas border, the 6-9 Reed led what's now Grambling State University to the 1961 NAIA championship when blacks were not allowed to play at Louisiana State and other all-white SEC and ACC schools.

Grambling under legendary coach Eddie Robinson won 15 national black college football championships before Alabama and other SEC schools began recruiting black stars.

Historically black universities like Grambling provided excellent academic and athletic offerings, but opportunities at prominent state schools were closed to blacks as Southern governors vehemently resisted integration.

Unlike heralded black players like University of Michigan All-American and 1970 Knicks star Cazzie Russell, Reed received little recognition coming out of college. He was drafted in the second round by the Knicks and offered a small signing bonus.

Reed quickly emerged as an NBA star, although he had to battle to play his natural center position until the trade of Walt Bellamy and the hiring of coach Red Holzman solidified the Knicks' championship makeup. Reed was the captain and unquestioned leader of the Knicks' 1970 and 1973 championship teams.

Under Holzman, the Knicks were known for their unselfish play, crisp passing and pinpoint shooting by stars such as Walt Frazier, Dave DeBusschere, Phil Jackson and Bill Bradley.

Bradley, All-American of Princeton's 1965 Final Four Team and former Rhodes scholar and U.S. senator, recalled Reed's leadership and toughness. "He was the captain, that says it all," Bradley told the New York Post. "He was the backbone of the team. He was the guy who took us to the first championship by his courage, and by his unselfishness."

Reed created one of the most famous moments in New York sports history before the seventh game of the NBA finals against the Los Angeles Lakers on May 8, 1970.

Although he'd suffered a torn thigh muscle and wasn't expected to play, Reed emerged from the locker-room tunnel while his teammates were warming up, thrilling the sellout Madison Square Garden crowd. In a brief appearance in the starting lineup, Reed scored the first two goals of the game, inspiring the Knicks' victory although he didn't register any more points.

Frazier, who starred in the championship final, also battled the South's white supremacy before achieving fame with the Knicks. A star at Atlanta's all-black David T. Howard High School, Frazier wasn't recruited by Georgia or Georgia Tech because of the state's harsh segregation laws.

In contrast to Reed, Frazier gained widespread national renown as a college star, receiving All-America honors and leading the Salukis to the 1967 NIT championship and being selected as the tournament's Most Valuable Player. He was drafted in the first round by the Knicks.

Today's star black players are idolized at sports powerhouses like LSU, Georgia and Alabama. But all-time NBA greats Reed and Frazier couldn't perform at then all-white universities in their native states. That should be remembered as GOP governors seek to erase black history.

 

 

 

New York Times' A.O. Scott switches from movies to books

Longtime New York Times film critic A.O. Scott is returning to his first love, books.

Scott, who has reviewed more than 2,200 films for the Times since 2000, will move to the newspaper's Sunday Book Review, wrtiting essays, notebooks and reviews "that grapple with literature, ideas and intellectual life," according to the announcement written in vintage Times-ese.

In last Sunday's farewell to the movie beat, Scott lamented the decline in serious Hollywood films. He denounced the rise of social media "fandom" and its violent attacks on critics of superhero and action movies.

Manhola Dargis remains as The Times' chief film critic, and the newspaper will name a replacement for Scott's coveted position.

While Scott's film reviews were often dry and passionless, he generated soaring fervor for movies he really liked. In his farewell, he disclosed that his all-time favorite movie is Frederico Fellini's "La Dolce Vita."

Perhaps Scott will show more spirit writing about books, his primary interest as a Harvard graduate and young newspaper critic. The bland and creatively stagnant Sunday Book Review could use a jolt of originality, which Scott might step up to deliver.

 

 

Downtown Atlanta can be a 24-hour, and 15-minute, city

Another mission is under way to attract people to live in downtown Atlanta.

With office vacancy still high following the Covid pandemic, Central Atlanta Progress and the Atlanta Downtown Improvement District want to convert more office buildings into residences, according to an article by the AJC's Zachery Hansen.

That continues a years-long campaign to make downtown a "24-hour" place. The Healey Building, a 1914 architectural jewel in the Fairlie-Poplar Historic District, and other downtown sites are now condos. Peachtree Center's office tower and the historic W.D. Grant Building are also slated for residential conversions.

Hansen's article didn't say which office buildings are targeted for condos and apartments in the new effort. With early 20th century buildings already converted into living areas, 1960s towers might be desirable.

The office slump deepened by the pandemic's shift to remote work might end up helping the quest to make downtown a vibrant neighborhood. Already, nearly 3,000 call downtown home

As more people live in downtown, services and entertainment will follow.

The concept of the "15-minute city" has recently gained currency. The New York Times' Paul Krugman in a recent column praised his Upper West Side neighborhood as such an urban paradise, where he can find services and entertainment within walking distance of his home.

Downtown Atlanta, with all of its setbacks and slow advances, still aspires to such a city life.

 

 

 

David Milch's "Life's Work" tells redemptive story of self-destruction, Hollywood fame

Only David Milch could have transformed St. Paul and the cross into Deadwood and the South Dakota gold rush.

Milch, famed TV producer and writer, details that shift in his entertaining, self-absorbed memoir "Life's Work."

Although Milch finished the book with the aid of his daughters while battling the early stages of Alzheimer's Disease, "Life's Work" gives a full account of his troubled childhood, heroin and gambling addiction, Yale education and  unlikely TV success.

The change from Christianity and the Roman Empire to gold and the American West is not that surprising coming from a writer who taught a course at Yale titled "Strategies of Indirection in Fiction."

Noted poet and critic William Logan in an article in the current New Criterion recalls taking the course, presenting a vivid portrait of Milch, an inveterate gambler on football games and horse racing and a superb writing teacher.

Milch in his memoir looks back on his career as a rebellious Yale undergraduate. Although seriously addicted to heroin and alcohol, and frequently in trouble with local law enforcement, Milch enjoyed a warm relationship with Yale professor, novelist and poet Robert Penn Warren.

Warren, as Milch fondly remembers, gave special attention to Milch's work, praising his novel in progress as containing the best dialogue that one of his students had ever written. Warren treated Milch as a wayward son, inviting him to visit his home and giving him career advice.

Milch also built a close relationship with the famed Yale critic R.W. B. Lewis, assisting him with his research on Lewis' Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of Edith Wharton. All the while, Milch was searching for drugs and betting on horses and sports, while struggling to finish the novel praised by Warren.

The book looks back on Milch's abusive, reckless father, a surgeon also addicted to gambling who treated gangsters to pay off debts. Milch also was sexually abused as a young boy by a camp counselor. He used his chilhood traumas as material for his TV shows.

After Yale, Milch received a chance opportunity to write for Steven Bochco's ground-breaking NBC police drama "Hill Street Blues." Milch and Bochco then collaborated on the controversial crime saga "NYPD Blue," a smash for the network while drawing fire from conservatives because of its violence and explicit sexuality. A few flashes of nudity shook the foundations of network TV.

TV's gain was literature's loss; Milch never finished his novel. Yet characters like Dennis Franz's alcoholic detective Andy Sipowich in "NYPD Blue"  laid the foundation for HBO "quality TV" productions  like "The Wire" and "The Sopranos."

With a wife and family, Milch entered rehab, leading to his fascination with St. Paul's conversion to Christianity, his evangelistic career and New Testament writings, and his martyrdom in Rome.

Milch pitched HBO a show based on Paul's establishing the church throughout the Roman empire, but the cable network already had a show on ancient Rome in the works.

Seeing gold as analogous to St. Paul's world-changing symbol of Jesus' cross, Milch instead sold HBO on  the series"Deadwood," which explored  the rough life in the South Dakota boom town where the precious metal was discovered in the 1870s. It was famous as the place where "Wild Bill" Hickock was murdered, the subject of a powerful "Deadwood" episode.

"Deadwood," known for its vulgar dialogue, shocking violence and striking characters, was one of HBO's most memorable shows although it only lasted three years. Despite battling Alzheimer's, Milch completed the show with a movie-length conclusion.

"Life's Work" while often disjointed and egocentric tells a compelling story of redemption. After all of his destructive behavior, Milch achieves grace.

 

Farewell David Bottoms, longtime Georgia poet laureate

David Bottoms' poems captured Georgia's soul.

Georgia's poet laureate from 2000-2012, Bottoms found beauty in the state's verdant natural landscape as well as the discarded detrius of its working class.

Like Georgia poet James Dickey, Bottoms loved old-time music, abandoned cars, rural landscapes and the rhythms of working language.

Bottoms, a longtime professor at Georgia State University and founding editor of the Five Points literary journal, died Friday at age 73 of progressive supranuclear palsy, a rare neurogenerative disease similar to ALS, according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He had been battling the progressive disease since 2018, longtime Atlanta arts writer Phil Kloer said in his obituary about Bottoms written for the newspaper.

Noted Southern novelist and poet Robert Penn Warren in 1979 selected Bottoms' first collection "Shooting Rats at the Bibb County Dump" for the prestigious Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets.

Warren, author of the famed novel "All the King's Men" and a major poet and critic, called Bottoms "a strong poet, and much of his strength emerges from the fact that he is temperamentally a realist. In his vision, the actual world is not transformed but illuminated."

Kloer in his warm and authoritative obituary noted Warren's praise of Bottoms, along with an appreciation by Josh Russell, the director of creative writing at Georgia State.

In announcing Bottoms' death, Russell said "David was at turns funny, cranky and philosophical. That range is in his poetry, as is his amusement and bemusement and wonder with the world."

Bottoms was born in Canton. Ga., in 1949, and graduated from Mercer University. He received a doctorate from Florida State University in 1979. He published 11 poetry collections, including "In a U-Haul North of Damascus" and "Vagrant Grace," along with the novels "Eastern Weekend" and"Any Cold Jordan."

I remember Bottoms fondly for the generous and learned interview he gave me for an AJC feature story I wrote on the 19th century Southern poet Sidney Lanier, a Macon native remembered for poems like "The Song of the Chattahoochee" and "The Marshes of Glynn."

Bottoms cordially analyzed Lanier's work, and how Lanier's poetic reputation had declined with the advent of modernism in the early 20th century. High schools across the South were named for Lanier, but his work is little read today, although his musical language deserves renewed attention.

I also remember a stimulating lecture on poetic craft that Bottoms delivered at an Atlanta writers' conference. Unlike many well-known poets, Bottoms displayed warmth and generosity in encouraging his audience of aspiring writers. Bottoms pointed out that poetry unlike philosophy lives on concrete images from the natural world.

My favorite memory of Bottoms came from a reading by the esteemed poet James Merrill at the Callanwolde Arts Center in DeKalb County. Major American poets once appeared at Callanwolde's annual poetry weekend, a wonderful event sadly canceled before the 1996 Olympics.

After Merrill delivered his magical reading, he warmly greeted David. I saw them standing together in a soft light, two giants of American poetry.