Southern Bookman

Washington Post baseball writer Chelsea Janes captures World Series drama

Washington Post national baseball writer Chelsea Janes has revived the classic game story in covering the World Series.

Janes, who has a B.A. in history and international studies from Yale and a master's in communication from Stanford, uses her analytical skills in writing detailed recounts of the games between the Arizona Diamondbacks and Texas Rangers.

She also has a flair for capturing dramatic moments, such as Rangers slugger Corey Seager's two-run home run Monday night that gave the Rangers a 3-1 win over the Diamondbacks and a 2-1 lead in the series.

In addition to her game stories, Janes also writes colorful features like her recent article on Seager and his obsession with hitting.

Along with Janes, Washington Post columnist Barry Svrluga is also covering the World Series, a throwback to the days when nationally known columnists from major newspapers packed the event's press boxes. Now, a dwindling few newspapers send writers to baseball's crowning showcase.

Three cheers to the Post for giving readers complete World Series coverage.

 

 

 

Farewell, Robert Brustein, contentious critic and American theater innovator

Robert Brustein's theater reviews in the New Republic invigorated American criticism.

Like New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael, Brustein wrote with idiosyncratic passion, commitment to artistic rigor and an openness to non-conventional performances.

Brustein, who founded influential repertory theaters at Yale and Harvard, died Sunday at age 96 at his home in Cambridge, Mass.

The dean of the Yale School of Drama from 1966-1979 and founder of Harvard's Institute for Advanced Theater Training, Brustein developed the careers of acclaimed actors and playwrights Meryl Streep, Christopher Walken, Cherry Jones, Sigourney Weaver, James Naughton, James Lapine, Tony Shalhoub, Linda Lavin, Adam Rapp, William Ivey Long, Steve Zahn, Wendy Wasserstein, David Mamet and Peter Sellars.

As the controversial dean of Yale's Drama School, he founded the Yale Repertory Theater, which drew attention for its experimental performances.

After years of criticism from detractors, Brustein left Yale when new President A. Bartlett Giamatti decided not to renew his contract.

Brustein found a home at Harvard as an English professor, founding the American Repertory Theater and the Institute for Advanced Theater Training, a two-year graduate program.

During his career, Brustein engaged in feuds with The New York Times' Frank Rich and other competing critics. He also battled major playwrights August Wilson and Samuel Beckett.

In 1984, Beckett threatened to sue to stop the American Repertory Theater's production of his "Endgame" because Brustein added a musical overture by Philip Glass and changed the setting specified in Beckett's stage notes. The main issue was Brustein's elimination of two windows from the set.

Beckett allowed the production to proceed, writing a condemnation of the production for the program.

Brustein and Wilson participated in a two-and-a-half hour debate in 1997 at New York City's Town Hall Theater over Wilson's call for an exclusively all-black theater. Brustein opposed Wilson's contention that only black actors could perform in his plays, and that women shouldn't play traditional male roles.

Another controversy rose when Brustein castigated regional theater companies for developing plays that later advanced to Broadway. Brustein believed that regional companies' main purpose was to give performances of theatrical merit, not serve as tryout venues for the New York stage.

His advocacy for regional theater led to a new vitality for local companies, which mounted more daring productions of plays and encouraged unknown playwrights. 

Brustein also wrote the well-regarded plays "Nobody Dies on Friday," "The Face Lift," "Spring Forward, Spring Back" and the Shakespeare trilogy "The English Channel," "Mortal Terror" and "The Last Will."

With his combative spirit and original views, Brustein changed the course of American theater.

 

 

 

 

 

 

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman gives invaluable insights on Israeli-Palestinian conflict

New York Times international columnist Thomas Friedman is giving the best perspectives on the Israeli-Hamas warfare.

Friedman, who won two Pulitzer Prizes for his Mideast reporting in the 1980s, is the most knowledgeable American journalist about the Israel-Palestinian conflict and the broader context of Iran's involvement through proxies such as Hezbollah, now threatening to attack Israel from Lebanon.

In his latest column, "First Came the Six-Day War, Now It's the Six-Front War," presents a broad analysis of the conflict, looking at Israeli and Palestinian politics, the nefarious activities of Iran and the need for Israel to build global support outside of the United States.

Continuing his criticism of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's move to the right and encouragement of increased Israeli settlements in the West Bank, Friedman says "If Israel is asking its best allies to help the Jewish state seek justice in Gaza while asking them to look the other way as Israel builds a settlement kingdom in the West Bank with the express goal of annexation, that is strategically and morally incoherent."

In earlier columns, Friedman opposed an Israeli excursion into Gaza to destroy Hamas, which controls the densely populated sliver of land.

Friedman harshly condemns Hamas for attacking Israel rather than alleviating the poverty of Palestinians living in Gaza. "It is terrifying to see how many resources Hamas diverted to build weapons rather than to aid Gaza's human capital - and how effectively it hid that from Israel and the world," he says in Friday's far-ranging column.

Iran draws Friedman's blame for stirring up hostilities through its control of the Arab states of Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Iraq. Friedman discloses that the Iranian proxies have recently been attacking American forces in the region.

Friedman also castigates American college students for anti-Israeli demonstrations that "essentially blame Israel for the barbaric Hamas invasion, arguing that Hamas is engaged in a legitimate 'anticolonial  struggle.'''

"To reduce this incredibly complex struggle of two peoples for the same land to a colonial war is to commit intellectual fraud," he thunders.

Reiterating his commitment to a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict ,Friedman calls upon Netanyahu to seek international support by halting Israeli settlements in the West Bank and reaching agreement with the more moderate Palestinian Authority, which controls Palestinian West Bank communities.

In columns worthy of a fourth Pulitzer Prize, Friedman is providing essential commentary on the Israeli-Hamas war.

 

Atlanta needs a downtown book festival

If Texas, Louisiana  and Tennessee offer book festivals in their state capitals' downtowns, why can't Georgia?

Louisiana's book festival takes place Saturday on the grounds of Huey Long's towering state Capitol near the Mississippi River. Texas holds its book festival in downtown Austin Nov. 11-12, near its gold-domed Capitol.

Tennessee's Southern Festival of Books took place in downtown Nashville Oct. 15-22 at the Tennessee state Capitol.

With the wildly popular Decatur Book Festival on hiatus, Atlanta lacks an inner-city event celebrating books. The suburban Marcus Community Center's Jewish Book Festival, this weekend through Nov. 19,  is oriented toward celebrity authors rather than lesser-known writers published by small presses.

In contrast, the book festivals in downtown Nashville, Austin and Baton Rouge give attention to regional writers and independent and university presses.

Indicating the Texas Book Festival's promotion of small, literary publishers, Dallas' excellent Deep Vellum books will have eight authors, editors and translators at the event, co-founded by former first lady Laura Bush, who serves as honorary chair.

A book festival near the majestic Georgia gold dome would bring book people together to celebrate the state and South's literary culture and promote downtown.

Atlanta needs an eclectic literary festival like those that bring thousands of book lovers each year into the downtowns of Nashville, Austin and Baton Rouge.

 

 

 

Books, magazines accumulating like autumn leaves

My reading chair is once again overflowing.

I placed Emma Cline's literary sensation "The Guest" on hold at the Atlanta Fulton County Library in the middle of summer.

With autumn leaves thick on the ground, Cline's novel at last arrived this week on the Sandy Springs branch's hold shelf.

"The Guest" was joined by former Washington Post editor Martin Baron's memoir, "Collision of Power: Trump, Bezos and The Washington Post," which I'd placed on hold just a few weeks ago.

With the World Series cutting into my reading time, I'll face a challenge finishing the books before their due date.

Well, perhaps I won't be so drawn by the D-Backs and Rangers. My two favorite teams, the Braves and Astros, saw their seasons prematurely end.

I also have a stack of magazines to go through, including The New York Review's thick 60th anniversary issue.

No wonder my cataract-repaired eyes seem a bit fuzzy lately.

 

 

Sportswriter Seth Emerson re-examines saga of Wally Butts, Bear Bryant and Saturday Evening Post

A 1963 Saturday Evening Post story alleged that University of Georgia Athletics Director Wally Butts gave Alabama coach Bear Bryant inside information that led to a huge Crimson Tide victory in 1962 over the then mediocre Dawgs.

Butts and Bryant sued the popular Post, winning a libel judgment, Bryant's second against the magazine.

One of the most contentious sagas in Southern college football has long been surrounded by misinformation and myths.

Seth Emerson, the University of Georgia's beat writer for the Athletic, examined court records and media articles from the time to give a comprehensive recounting of the controversy, clearing up falsehoods.

Butts, called the grandfather of the West Coast offense by the San Francisco 49ers' legendary coach Bill Walsh, led the Dawgs to a national championship in 1942 and four SEC titles before suffering several losing seasons in the 1950s. Butts was moved to the athletics director position and replaced as coach by 32-year-old Johnny Griffith before the 1962 season.

Emerson's story details how an insurance executive named George Burnett somehow overheard a telephone conversation between Butts and Bryant on Sept. 13, 1962, before the Georgia-Alabama game.

According to Burnett, Butts told Bryant about the Dawgs' plays and offensive strategy. Butts while AD had been critical of Griffith's coaching.

Defending national champion Alabama, led by sophomore quarterback Joe Namath, defeated UGA 35-0, not surprising following the Dawgs' 3-7 finish the year before. Alabama finished 9-1 that season, while Georgia struggled to a 3-4-3 finish.

Burnett took his allegations to UGA and Southeastern Conference officials, leading to investigations and Butts' retirement.

One happy outcome for Georgia fans was that the case led to the firing of Griffith and the arrival of the young Vince Dooley as head coach. Dooley during a long career revived Georgia's football fortunes. Emerson notes that when Dooley took the job, Butts took flowers to his wife, Barbara, and welcomed her to Athens.

The Saturday Evening Post heard of the investigations and seeking to boost circulation with "sophisticated muckraking" assigned the story to veteran sportswriter Frank Graham Jr. Over the objections of Post sports editor Roger Kahn, of "Boys of Summer" fame, the magazine rushed the article into print on March 18, 1963.

Butts and Bryant's suit was tried in a lengthy trial in which a jury awarded Butts $60,000 in general damages and $3 million in punitive damages. After the judgment was extensively reduced by a federal judge, Butts appealed, taking his case all the way to the Supreme Court.

Bryant had previously sued the Saturday Evening Post over a story by Atlanta Journal sports columnist Furman Bisher alleging that Bryant trained his team to play dirty and cause injuries to opponents. The Post settled with Bryant for $320,000 for both cases.

One of the myths that Emerson dispels is that the Bryant-Butts judgments caused the Saturday Evening Post's downfall. Emerson cites the magazine's mismanagement and circulation loss from the public's switch to television.

Emerson's comprehensive article gives a fascinating look back at a long vanished era of Southern football.

 

 

 

Esquire magazine celebrates 90th birthday

Esquire's special 90-year anniversary issue this month barely acknowledges the magazine' s illustrious past.

The magazine arrived in October 1933, the depths of the Depression, with its founder and publisher Arnold Gingrich frankly declaring that the publication was "by, of and for men only."

Writers John Dos Passos, Ernest Hemingway, Ring Lardner Jr., Erkine Caldwell, Dashiell Hammett and even Douglas Fairbanks Jr. appeared in the inaugural issue. Golf great Bobby Jones and heavyweight champion Gene Tunney contributed articles.

This year's special October issue salutes Hemingway, whose association with Esquire in its early years made the magazine a success, and Gay Talese, whose New Journalism classic "Frank Sinatra Has a Cold" first appeared in the magazine.

But the magazine doesn't mention famous Esquire writers Tom Wolfe, F. Scott Fitzgerald,  Michael Herr, John Sack, Tim O'Brien, Norman Mailer and Terry Southern. None of George Lois' famous 1960s covers is reproduced. The great years of editor Harold Hayes, and the later reigns of Clay Felker and David Granger are ignored.

Current editor Michael Sebastian in his introduction to the special October anniversary issue does cite Gingrich, going on to explain that he decided to look to the future instead of rehashing the magazine's glorious history.

A special feature predicts which ideas and events might emerge over the next 90 years. Singer Post Malone, quarterback Patrick Mahomes, emerging actor Barry Koeghan and writer Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, author of the recently acclaimed novel 'Chain-Gang All-Stars," are profiled among 90 leaders expected to influence the next few decades. The magazine's boys club continues.

Longtime Esquire readers and Hemingway lovers will enjoy writer David Coggins' appreciation of the writer, who published "The Old Man and the Sea" and other famous stories in the magazine.

Coggins looks back on how Hemingway was able to purchase his beloved fishing boat the Pilar because of a $3,000 payment from Gingrich, giving the magazine exclusive rights to Hemingway's work.

For the article, Coggins visited Hemingway's home in Havana and the dry-docked Pilar, upon which Hemingway entertained well-known writers and actors on deep-sea fishing trips.

The 91-year-old Talese in a "What I've Learned" essay tied to the recent release of his book "Bartleby and Me: Reflections of An Old Scrivener" revisits his career.

Although it's undoubtedly a generational gap, I find that today's Esquire lacks the spark of the old magazine, which was one of the journalistic pillars of my youth.

But the magazine keeps going at 90 years old. I never thought it would last that long.

Light a candle: Southern Bookman reaches 2,500 posts

This is the 2,500th post I've written for Southern Bookman.

The web site has garnered 128,519 page views since I began composing it in 2007 after receiving a buyout from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

With a few disruptions when I pursued different writing and editing ventures, I've produced a Southern Bookman post each day except for weekends.

A few of my pieces have received strong readership over the years, continuously rediscovered by Google searchers. Others have disappeared without a trace.

Along with book reviews and publishing news, I've written about national and international media, movies, art, politics, Southern culture and life in Atlanta as it develops into an ever more complex international city.

In Southern Bookman's earlier years, I also produced a number of interviews with nationally known novelists, historians, journalists, theater producers and poets.

I'm thankful that my love for reading remains strong. I hope traditional books, newspapers and magazines never pass away.

While I despised the Internet when it first began disrupting the newspaper journalism in which I'd spent my career, I've found great satisfaction and commitment in writing my Southern Bookman pieces. I now value the online world.

Many thanks to my readers, subscribers and supporters.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Farewell Louise Gluck, Nobel Prize winning poet

Louise Gluck in her 2020 Nobel Prize acceptance speech cited the influence of Emily Dickinson.

Gluck, who died of cancer Oct. 13 at age 80 in Cambridge, Mass., said that she was drawn to Dickinson and T.S. Eliot's "poems of intimate selection or collusion, poems to which the listener or reader made an essential contribution."

After Gluck won the Nobel Prize for Literature, I turned to her collected poems, finding that they possessed Dickinson's quiet intimacy, a precision in expressing a range of emotional registers.

Gluck's fascination with nature and the significance of daily experience reminded me of Robert Frost.

In her Nobel talk, Gluck recalled Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufock." Gluck, who suffered from anorexia as an adolescent, like Eliot explored the human personality's interior search for meaning.

Gluck's death brought an outpouring of tributes and remembrances from fellow poets and those who'd been her students.

Like Dickinson, Frost and Eliot, Gluck revealed universal feelings with elegance and common but profound language. Her poems will speak to new generations. 

LSU professor Robert Mann resigns after right-wing agitator Jeff Landry elected as Louisiana's governor

LSU journalism professor Robert Mann will resign after the election of right-wing firebrand Jeff Landry as Louisiana's governor.

“My reasons are simple,” Mann said in a Sunday tweet. “The person who will be governor in January has already asked LSU to fire me. And I have no confidence the leadership of this university would protect the Manship School against a governor’s efforts to punish me and other faculty members.”

A professor at LSU's Manship School of Mass Communications for 18 years, Mann is an outspoken critic of the state's support for football and other sports to the detriment of academics.

Mann, who has previously clashed with Louisiana's attorney general, said he made the decision in anticipation that Landry will seek his removal. In response, the school's administration issued a statement asserting its support of freedom of speech and academic independence.

The tenured holder of the Manship Chair in Journalism, Mann said that he took the action because of his deep love for the university and that he wanted to spare the school and faculty members from possible political retribution.

Endorsed by former President Donald Trump, Landry won the governorship Saturday, surprising political observers by receiving 52 percent of the vote in the state's "jungle primary" to avoid a runoff.

As the state's attorney general for two terms, Landry fought Covid vaccine mandates, supported the state's harsh anti-abortion legislation and bans against gender care for trans youth, and joined a lawsuit in support of Trump's false claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. He frequently fought Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards, who is stepping down after eight years because of the state's term limit.

The professor battled Landry in December 2021 when Mann sponsored a resolution before the LSU faculty Senate calling for the university to follow Covid mandates for the testing of students.

An incensed Landry dispatched Assistant Attorney General Lauryn Sudduth to the governing body to read a letter opposing the mandates.

When Mann in a Twitter tweet assailed Landry for sending "a flunky" to the school, Landry demanded that LSU President William F. Tate IV take punitive action against Mann.

Tate relatedly issued a statement supporting Mann and academic freedom, but Mann considered it tentative, faulting Tate for not calling him directly to assure him that the administration "had his back."

Before coming to LSU, Mann served as an aide to Sens. John Breaux and Russell Long and Gov. Kathleen Blanco. A former reporter, Mann is a noted historian and political scientist who has written several well-regarded books.

He understands well the state's history of governors meddling with the university. Last year, LSU Press published Mann's "Kingfish U: Huey Long and LSU," which disclosed how Long sought to control the university and used the football team and band for his political advantage

As publisher of the Baton Rouge State Times and Morning Advocate, the Manship family opposed Long's regime, winning an important First Amendment ruling against the Kingfish in the U.S. Supreme Court. The benefactors of the LSU journalism school also stood out in the South for their support of integration.

Mann, who as a columnist for the then Times Picayune blasted former Gov. Bobby Jindal for severely cutting LSU's funding and who recently assailed the state's Legislature for refusing to fund a sorely needed new library, vows to keep speaking out when he leaves the university.

Louisiana needs his voice as Landry plans to turn the state into an even more repressive right-wing bastion.