Southern Bookman

Happy Thanksgiving

It's time to give thanks for our blessings.

This year has dealt me highs and lows. Here are a few snapshots from my 2019 album.

Eight days in the hospital. I'm thankful for the doctors and nurses who helped me feel better again.

A trip to New York City to see Jeff Daniels' masterful performance as Atticus Finch in Aaron Sorkin's theater adaptation of Harper Lee's "To Kill a Mockingbird."

The Miro show at the MOMA, before the museum closed to receive a new look. Miro's stance against Fascism in the 1930s gives us courage to resist Trump and the GOP's assaults on truth and human dignity. I was overwhelmed by Picasso's "Guernica" when I first visited MOMA nearly 50 years ago. I'm looking forward to visiting yet another new MOMA.

Trips to Portugal and Amelia Island, Fla., two places where rivers join the Atlantic Ocean. Both are threatened by rising sea levels and the crush of tourism. Like distant cousins, they are battling to preserve their proud cultures.

The Braves' rush to the pennant. Joe Burrow and the Tigers. Anne-Marie and I getting together with our children Sara, Luke and Ruthie in Nashville, Tenn. Learning to play Joni Mitchell's "Both Sides Now" on the piano.

We'll soon turn the calendar to another year, which looms as one of history's crossroads. The personal decisions of millions will determine whether the nation follows the course of freedom or an American totalitarianism.

No matter what happens, truth and beauty eventually will prevail.

 

Farewell, John Simon

For a little while in my younger days, I fell under John Simon's curmudgeonly spell.

The brutal critic's claims to the precise use of English appealed to my language-purist side. For a while, I reveled in his acerbic theater, movie and book reviews in New York magazine and other publications.

Simon, who took a sick pleasure in blasting intellectually fashionable plays, films and books, died at age 94 Monday after suffering a stroke.

After a while, I found that Simon's attacks came more from personal spite than critical acumen. He unfairly disparaged gay, black and women artists. While he claimed total honesty, he violated the critic's duty to respect the theater.

Simon contributed to my intellectual and artistic education. But like the late Hilton Kramer, he was an intellectually dishonest bully who unfairly damaged theatrical, film and literary careers.

 

Memories of Lisboa and Porto

Young male clerk wearing John Lennon glasses
at Livaria Bertrand, world's oldest bookstore,
stamps my books: Virginie Despentes and Pessoa.

"How did you get here so fast," I ask him
when he's already at the door,
without glasses, as I leave.
"I'm like that," he answers,
his smile like the sun on the Tagus.

Guitarist and trumpet player on the sidewalk.
playing Amy Winehouse songs.
Joyful music by young men in suits;
an old schizo joins their dance.

Smiles of women with dark hair,
the embrace of the female doctor
in her lab coat,
who takes my pulse
and assures me
my heartbeat is OK.

Small children in their school uniforms
at Sanhora do Rosario.
Community center for kids who grow up
wild on Porto's streets.
The director with his stutter
speaks of holiday barbecues,
afternoons playing football
with the young men.

At the nursing home, an old woman
wails in the corner as the elderly priest
awakens in a dusty glow
floating through the windows.
Doors flung open reveal
Christ on his cross, his downcast eyes.

How beautiful their Portuguese voices
searching for English words.
The man with legs bent backwards
begging on the Avenida de Liberdade,
men selling chestnuts on the street,
smoke rising in the light
reflected from the slippery sidewalks
made of yellow tile.

The happiness of old and middle aged men
gathered for lunch, hugs and kisses
cheek to cheek. The rain, changing to sun,
changing to rain, changing to sun,
the rivers, rushing to the Atlantic.

The suave guide John,
handsome as a rock star,
leads us to the castle,
tells how Ulysses founded Lisboa,
Tall pine trees, shaped like arrows,
cork held between our fingers.

Stylish young woman
guides us through
the immigration center.
Solemn faces of refugees
as they wait
in the enormous room.

Walking in the darkness
from the hotel to the airport,
5 a.m. departure.
Old oak trees, broken sidewalk.

As we sit on the bus,
to take us to the plane,
a song fills the space:
"I see fire burning the trees."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Millennials' jibe "OK Boomer" shows nothing new under the sun

Bob Dylan told baby boomers not to trust anyone over 30.

Now, the millennials, who comprise several generations, snarl "OK, Boomer" to us aging postwar babies.

The generational putdown, an Internet sensation, has received rebuttals from New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd and Chicago Tribune columnist Clarence Page.

Generations X, Y and Z - what will new generations be called now that the letters have run out? - blame us boomers for climate change, declining economic prospects, Donald Trump and the Eagles. They probably think Dylan can't sing.

Dylan and other Baby Boom heroes were not even Baby Boomers. Dylan, born in 1941, and John Lennon, in 1940, were of the "Silent Generation," which came after the "Greatest Generation," and before the post-war baby explosion. With all of their music and social protest, those rockers weren't very silent.

Once we sang "The Times They Are a Changin'." Now, the younger generation wants us gone. As college football old-timer Lee Corso would say, "hey, not so fast."

In the pre-industrial age, people lived pretty much the same year after year. The generations' experience stayed the same, and people died young. Retroactively, historians branded ages like the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, but Shakespeare, Michelangelo and Voltaire didn't think of themselves as members of defined generations.

Generational conflict goes back to ancient times. Ecclesiastes, in the passage from which Ernest Hemingway found the name for his novel "The Sun Also Rises," warned that "one generation passeth away, and another generation cometh; but the earth abideth forever."

Britain in the 19th century began identifying historical periods with the reigns of monarchs: the Victorian Age, the Georgian Age. Literary critics retroactively called Keats, Shelley, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Lord Byron and Charles Lamb the Romantics. Romanticism was also a European movement, including Beethoven and Goethe.

During the 20th century, enormous changes from decade to decade led to the rise of  distinct generations. Those of the Depression Era had different outlooks from those born in the 1950s. Music, fashion, art, culture, and social mores shifted.

The designation of generations emerged after World War I, when Gertrude Stein told Hemingway that he and  his contemporaries were members of a "Lost Generation." Then came the postwar flowering of writers like John Updike, Truman Capote, Robert Lowell and Gore Vidal. New waves of writers, musicians and film stars followed. From Chuck Berry to Katy Perry, the world kept turning.

The Baby Boomers reached a new level of self-consciousness, or bloated self-importance. Talking about my generation, we did bang the drum and blow the horn quite loudly.

Now, the millennials look at us as old duffers.

But remember, kids, a new crop of babies is being born, who will look at you as hopeless.

 

 

 

 

New York Review of Books Daily boosts literature on Internet

The New York Review of Books, outside of its semi-monthly print and online magazine, offers an excellent article each day on its Web site.

Ranging from politics and social commentary to views on literature, art and culture, the NYR Daily articles give a more personal perspective than the magazine's book reviews. From autobiographical essays to trenchant reflections on current issues, the pieces in tandem are like a separate digital journal, a small but welcome effort to raise the Internet's literary standards.

Recently, the NYR Daily has published former New York Times columnist Verlyn Klinkenborg's thoughts on the Victorian critic and artist John Ruskin, Garry Wills' account of his growing dismay during his academic career at how qualified women were denied professorships, and Daphne Merkin's recollections of New York's literary life.

Klinkenborg looks back on his  deep involvement with Ruskin's life and work, prompted by the current exhibit, "Onto This Last: 200 Years of John Ruskin," at the Yale Center for British Art.

As a young staff member at New York City's Morgan Library, Klinkenborg fell under the spell of Ruskin's landmark books "Modern Painters," "The Stones of Venice" and "The Seven Lamps of Architecture." An early environmentalist and a pioneer of aesthetics, Ruskin was also a reactionary who opposed Darwin and a misogynist disgusted by women's bodies. Klinkenborg ponders how Ruskin's dualities echo in our times.

Wills in his autobiographical piece "How I Learned to Fight the Patriarchy"  recalls with anger and regret how American universities discriminated against women with outstanding scholarly credentials. He recalls resigning from a leadership position because male members of his department refused to even interview a distinguished female scholar. Male professors opposed to women were often the most mediocre in their fields, Wills recalls. His personal growth into a champion of women's equality is a story worth emulating.

Merkin in eulogizing her late friends James Atlas and Barbara Probst Solomon looks back on the vanished world of New York intellectuals. The article's centerpiece is her memories of a party given by Diana Trilling, at which she encountered Philip Roth, George Plimpton and other literary figures, many now forgotten.

She praises Atlas, the first biographer of Saul Bellow, for breaking the bonds of literary politics. Championing Solomon's forgotten novels, she calls for a revival of her work.

 

 

 

 

 

Emmylou Harris shares love, music with Atlanta fans

Emmylou Harris gave adoring fans a generous helping of beloved songs Sunday night in a performance at Atlanta's Symphony Hall.

Now white-haired like many of those in the audience, the 72-year-old Harris kept the love flowing. Her energy remains high, her voice glorious.

Harris upheld the protest-song tradition with a searing anthem about Emmitt Till's murder in Mississippi, and a number honoring a Nashville program that matches foster children with pet animals.

With her band tautly ranging from rockabilly to bluegrass to old-time mountain laments, Harris thrilled the crowd with favorites like "Together Again," "Green Pastures" and "Pancho and Lefty."

She honored her early muse and partner Gram Parsons with "Las Vegas" and "Wheels," leaving Parsons fans longing for a few more songs from "Grevious Angel," "GP" or "The Gilded Palace of Sin."

Along with a heart-tugging encore of her own "Boulder to Birmingham," Harris presented an anthology of American songwriters, from James Taylor to Don Williams. Her signature performance of Billy Joe Shaver's "Old Five and Dimers" mirrored the life experience of the many aging hipsters present.

She closed the show with a rousing cover of Neil Young's "Long May You Run," raising our hopes of carrying on.

Feeling paranoid on Peachtree Street? It might be those cameras watching you

Welcome South, (Big) Brother.

Atlanta is a global city after all, at least when it comes to spying on its citizens and visitors. Henry Grady's "brave and beautiful city" ranks 10th in the world in public street surveillance, with nearly 11,000 security cameras watching the sidewalks, according to a recent AJC article.

With 15.6 cameras per 1,000 residents, Atlanta ia the only American city to make the top 10 list, according to the Comparitech report. Eight of the top surveillance cities are in China, which holds the top five spots. London, with 58 cameras per 1,000 residents, ranks sixth. Chongqing, in central China, is the world's top snoop, with 158 cameras per 1,000 people.

Years ago, Atlanta aspired to be an international city. Little did we know it would be for video surveillance.

Go to a strip club, the giant eye will see you. Tipsy after too many drinks at lunch? Surprise, you're on candid camera. Starting a new relationship? The camera knows. Those 11,000 unblinking eyes will see what books or magazines you've purchased.

Notoriously repressive Singapore and Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates rank below Atlanta. Perhaps Atlanta can hold on to the camera-security lead as the UAB's Dubai's airport closes in on Hartsfield-Jackson as the world's busiest.

City police keeping watch on the city's streets from monitors in the Loudermilk Visual Intregration Center downtown say the prying on Peachtree reduces crime. But the ACLU says the watching handcuffs personal freedom.

If you're going to see the Falcons or Atlanta United at Mercedes-Benz Stadium, enjoy the game. The city will be watching you.

 

 

 

 

 

Farewell, Ray Jenkins

Ray Jenkins' reporting for small-town Southern newspapers brought major changes.

Jenkins, who wrote the local story that led to a landmark Supreme Court decision that broadened newspapers' First Amendment protections, died at age 89 Oct. 24 at his home in Baltimore from heart failure complications, according to obituaries in The New York Times and Washington Post.

Early in his career, Jenkins wrote stories for the Columbus, Ga., Ledger's Pulitzer Prize-winning investigation of criminal activities in Phenix City, Ala.

As a 24-year-old reporter for the Ledger fresh out of the University of Georgia, Jenkins was given the uncoveted Phenix City beat. Across the Chattahoochee River from Columbus, Phenix City lured Fort Benning soldiers and poor farmers to its gambling dens, nightclubs and prostitution houses. Gen. George Patton ordered his tanks to the 12th Street Bridge connecting the two cities, and threatened to blow Phenix City away.

Public outrage and demand for a crackdown reached the breaking point in 1953 when Democratic Attorney General nominee Albert Patterson was assassinated outside of his law office in Phenix City after making a campaign pledge to clean up the town. Stories by Jenkins and other reporters and Ledger editorials led to the prosecution of 144 people involved in Phenix City's criminal activities.

As city editor of Montgomery's now vanished Alabama Journal, Jenkins made a bigger impact with a small story about a New York Times ad seeking contributions for a Martin Luther King defense fund. The ad made several minor mistakes in calling out Alabama officials' attempts to derail the civil rights movement.

Although unnamed in the ad, several Alabama officials sued the Times, claiming libel. In the landmark New York Times Co. v. Sullivan decision, the Supreme Court ruled that public officials have to prove "actual malice" to win libel damages from a newspaper.

Jenkins later served in President Carter's press office and as the Baltimore Evening Sun's editorial page director. Like its fellow afternoon newspaper the Alabama Journal, the Baltimore Evening Sun is no longer in operation.

With more and more newspapers on the endangered list, vital reporting such as Jenkins produced is threatened. And with courts turning more conservative during the Trump administration, the First Amendment protections established by Times v. Sullivan are also under fire.

 

 

 

Farewell, Ernest Gaines

Many writers look back from exile at their origins. Ernest Gaines was different. To tell the stories of the illiterate, impoverished black people he knew growing up in rural Pointe Coupee Parish, he had to return to his native Louisiana.

Gaines, who gained international recognition for his books about his small plot of earth, died in his sleep Tuesday at his childhood home. The revered Louisiana author was 86.

As a child,  he worked in the fields among people a few generations removed from slavery. From his meager schooling, he'd learned to read and write, and composed letters for his co-workers and family members.

Along with many other blacks fleeing the South's racial violence, he moved to California as a young man. For the first time, he found himself free to read in a public library, and discovered Turgenev and other 19th century Russian novelists.

Loving the bohemian life of San Francisco, he graduated from San Francisco State, then received a prestigious Stegner fellowship to study writing at Stanford. The voices he knew in childhood remained with him.

Struggling in California to finish a book based on the strict, wheelchair-confined aunt who raised him, Gaines returned to Louisiana at the height of the civil rights movement. Back in Louisiana, he gained a clear vision of the plantation life he knew growing up and quickly finished "The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman," his breakthrough novel.

Tracing how history echoed in a life of quiet dignity, the book gave the world one of its most enduring characters, a woman raised in slavery who lived to 101 and saw the changes of the 1960s. Cecily Tyson gave a memorable performance as Miss Jane Pittman in a TV movie that won nine Emmy Awards.

Gaines further drew upon his memories of the black community in "A Gathering of Old Men," "A Lesson Before Dying" and other lauded books. He received a MacArthur "genius grant," and traveled the world. He always returned to his childhood home close to a body of water known as False River that had once been part of the Mississippi.

A genial, warm-hearted man who spoke with Louisiana's French-inflected cadences, Gaines revealed how the love of family and community overcame bitterness.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Martin Scorsese takes on Marvel movies

Film god Martin Scorsese says Marvel superhero movies "are not cinema."

In a New York Times op-ed piece Tuesday, Scorsese expounded on comments first made to the British magazine "Empire" in which he blasted superhero movies as "theme parks" lacking the artistic depth of films like his own "Taxi Driver" and Alfred Hitchcock's "Rear Window."

Softening his "hey, get off my cinematic lawn" stance, Scorsese conceded that those making the comic book flicks have talent and creativity. He  just doesn't find them interesting.

Scorsese complained that his recently completed "Irishman" starring Al Pacino, Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci will have a limited theater release, before heading to TV streaming service Netflix. The film is now playing at Broadway's opulent Belasco Theater, which was outfitted with a movie screen for the one-month showing. He praised Netflix for financing his film about the murder of Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa, probably unknown to most millennials.

The director said that Hollywood's support of predictable superhero films has crowded out artistically challenging films like his. Movie theaters are now dominated by films loaded with special effects to appeal to younger audiences hooked on video games.

As a longtime movie goer who finds fewer films I want to see in theaters, I agree with Scorsese's comments. Yet I'm skeptical at Scorsese's claiming the power to define what's cinema. While I love fully developed characters and plots and intricate dialogue, I see cinema as a visual medium.

Marvel films are not just about visual gratification. The Marvel film "Black Panther" offered strong characters and was lauded as an artistic triumph for black filmmakers. The "Spiderman" series has examined Peter Parker's adolescent angst.

Reviewers like the Wall Street Journal's Joe Morgenstern praised "Wonder Woman.," based on a D.C. Comics character. "The Joker," based on the villain from D.C.'s "Batman" series, sounds like a challenging film.

Scorsese's complaint about being closed off from theaters also sounds off-base. While only one theater in Atlanta  is now showing "The Irishman," Korean filmmaker Bong Joon-Ho's arty "The Parasite" is playing at three Northside theaters near my home. Alas, a movie I want to see, Noah Bombach's "Marriage Story" starring Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson will also have a short theater life before heading to Netflix.

While the adult movie selection is more and more limited, I find it strange that Scorsese is praising Netflix. Only last year when Alfonso Curaron won the best director Academy Award for his Netflix-backed  film "Roma," the streaming service was accused of killing movie theaters.

Scorsese's "New Hollywood" generation was blasted by old-time critics for movies like "Bonnie and Clyde," "Mean Streets," "Taxi Driver," "The Deer Hunter" and "Easy Rider."

Yet, Scorsese's right in fearing that artistically challenging movies are endangered. Younger audiences no longer go to theaters to watch those kind of films. When I saw Quentin Tarentino's "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood," the audience was filled with gray-haired and physically challenged boomers like myself.

As Scorsese notes, watching films like Hitchcock's "Psycho" on the big screen was once a monumental experience. No matter how excellent the movie or TV series, the small screen doesn't deliver the same aesthetic punch.