Southern Bookman

Star power burns bright in Rolling Stone founder Jann S. Wenner's memoir "Like a Rolling Stone"

Rolling Stone magazine founder and influential editor Jann S. Wenner's memoir exudes Baby Boomer aspirations, arrogance and delusions.

"Like a Rolling Stone" gives a blow-by-blow account of Wenner's career in the rock and roll fast lane, from the founding of Rolling Stone on a shoestring in 1967 to his giving up control of his Internet-challenged media empire after Donald Trump's election shocked Wenner's cohort of celebrity progressives.

Like images flashing past in a video game, Wenner beams out a dizzying array of famous names, dinner parties, cruises, ski trips. concerts, power lunches and drug-drenched bacchanalias.

While Wenner gives an impressive roll call of of Rolling Stone's scoops and journalistic innovations, his hedonism, egoism and thirsting for celebrity validation exhibit the worst excesses of his generation.

He breathlessly chronicles what he characterizes as close friendships with superstars John Lennon, Bob Dylan, Mick Jagger, Bono, Bruce Springsteen and Pete Townshend, closely linking his magazine to promoting their careers. He also boasts of friendships with recording industry executives, a bit close for a music journalist.

Never resting from the social swirl, he also recalls close relationships with Jackie Onassis, John F. Kennedy Jr., Al Gore, Bill Clinton, Tom Wolfe, Bette Midler and Michael Douglas.

The rapid-fire collision of names, gossip and events makes for an exciting narrative, much more captivating than Joe Hagan's lackluster biography "Sticky Fingers."

As the magazine rises in power and influence, and he launches new magazines like "Us Weekly," Wenner veers further and further away from the modest communal values of co-founder Ralph J. Gleason.

Rolling Stone star writer Hunter S. Thompson's rise and sad decline is the book's tragic centerpiece. Fans of Rolling Stone's classic days will again thrill to Thompson's emergence in the magazine with "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" and his coverage of presidential campaigns. Wenner poignantly expresses the despair and heartbreak of Thompson's mental and physical downfall, culminating in his suicide.

Wenner nearly met a similar fate. He recounts his recovery from a terrifying health crisis that almost caused his death. But he came back to write his memoirs.

On his last issue of Rolling Stone, he placed young environmental activist Greta Thunberg on the cover.

At 75, he's forever young.

 

Farewell, Michael Curtis, legendary fiction editor at the Atlantic

C. Michael Curtis was one of the legendary editors who flourished in a brilliant era of literary journalism.

Curtis, known for discovering a starry spectrum of new writers in a 57-year-career at the Atlantic, died last week at age 88, according to a warm eulogy by the magazine's Cullen Murphy and Scott Stossel.

The Atlantic under Curtis' influence helped foster the American short story revival at the end of the 20th century, along with Esquire's Rust Hills and Gordon Lish, the New Yorker's William Maxwell and Harper's Willie Morris.

Murphy and Stossel give Curtis deserved recognition, yet err in not crediting the other magazines. They also fail to point out that the Atlantic ceased publishing short stories for a few years, abandoning a tradition dating back to the magazine's founding in the 19th century. The Atlantic has returned to its American fiction legacy.

Curtis patiently guided writers at the start of their careers. He prodigiously read the magazine's heavy load of submissions, taking time to reply to promising talents.

Noted contemporary author Lauren Groff in Murphy and Stossel's eulogy said that Curtis gave her her first major publication, discovering one of her stories on the magazine's "slush pile," which he religiously perused.

Curtis was a benevolent spirit, the genial model of the civilized man of letters, except on the basketball court, where he was a fierce competitor, as Murphy and Stossel note.

The short story remains a vital form, with writers finding publication in The New Yorker, Harper's and the Atlantic and a thriving community of literary journals.

Even with increasing consolidation of the publishing industry and preference to celebrity authors, short story collections have undergone a mini-renaissance.

Editors like Curtis kept the American short story alive when the genre appeared an endangered species.

 

 

 

 

 

Farewell, Charles Simic and Naomi Replansky, imimitable American poets

Charles Simic and Naomi Replansky wrote poems in which every day objects opened connections to monumental historic tragedies.

Simic, the Serbian-born poet who learned English in a Chicago-area high school as a 15-year-old, translated European surrealism into the American idiom.

The former U.S. poet laureate and Pulitzer Prize winner died Monday at age 84 at an assisted care facility in Dover, N.H., from complications of dementia.

Like Simic, Replansky captured the startling images of foreign poetry in American language. Replansky, who died at age 104 Saturday at her home in Manhattan, echoed the surrealism of Latin American writing, a difficult feat, as admirer Philip Levine noted.

Replansky also went against the grain of American poetry by her use of rhyme and meter. In an excellent obituary examining Replansky's undervalued career, New York Times writer Margalit Fox effectively illustrated Replansky's technique by giving examples of her poetry.

In one poem cited by Fox, Replansky recalls eating with a spoon when she heard about the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. The poem contrasts her personal anguish with the immense suffering of the Japanese city at the end of World War II.

Unlike the prolific Simic, Replansky published only three collections of her work. She also held a variety of jobs, including a stint as a "stewardess" on a ship making an ocean voyage.

Fox says the Bronx native, who lived for a number of years in California before returning to New York City, was discouraged by a negative review from Lawrence Ferlinghetti. The beat icon objected to her use of  rhyme. Fox's examples of Replansky's work show that he was woefully misguided and that she revitalized traditional techniques.

In his outstanding New York Times obituary of Simic, the newspaper's literary critic Dwight Garner traced the poet and critic's rise from World War II-ravaged Yugoslavia to a place at the center of American literary culture. The U.S. poet laureate from 2007 to 2008, Simic won the Pulitizer Prize in 1990 for his prose-poem collection, "The World Doesn't End."

As Garner noted, Simic remained haunted by his childhood in war-torn Serbia, where he witnessed first-hand Nazi atrocities. In poems beginning with every-day experiences, he shifted to recollections of his harrowing past, mixing horror with black humor. In later life, Simic more frequently wrote about the pleasures of food, love and daily experiences.

Like William Carlos Williams, Simic wrote deceptively simple poems that seemed easy to imitate. Yet he was unique in his droll use of imagery in which common objects gained magical qualities.

Simic's death immediately followed that of another major American writer, poet and novelist Russell Banks. Noted editor and poet Daniel Halpern confirmed both men's deaths.

The passing of writers like Simic, Replansky and Banks brings sorrow mixed with gratitude that their work endures.

 

 

 

Farewell Russell Banks, novelist who explored working class masculinity

Russell Banks was one of the last of the white male novelists who once dominated American literature.

Banks, the 82-year-old author of acclaimed novels "Continental Drift," "Cloudsplitter," "The Rule of the Bone" and "The Sweet Hereafter," died from cancer Saturday at his home in upstate New York.

The author of 14 novels, several nonfiction books and a number of poetry and short story collections, Banks wrote about conflicted working class men seeking to escape their harsh, economically constricted lives.

A native of rural Massachusetts whose physically abusive father was a plumber, Banks before his literary breakthrough drifted around the country, working a series of blue collar jobs.

While he eventually studied writing at the University of North Carolina, Banks was one of the last American writers who underwent an apprenticeship in the working world outside of academia.

In the tradition of Mark Twain and Jack Kerouac, Banks often wrote about young characters heading to the American road to test their moral code and masculine courage. Along with contemporaries Raymond Carver, Robert Stone and Jim Harrison, he updated Ernest Hemingway's macho literary ethos for the Vietnam-era generation.

Thomas McGuane, Thomas Pynchon and Don DeLilllo are the last survivors of that male-dominated world of American fiction. Now, women, American black, Asian, African, gay and Latino writers have risen to prominence.

A professor at Princeton University, Banks like Carver was also part of a generation of macho American poets. He began his career writing poetry and launched a literary journal at the University of North Carolina. Banks was also a close friend of the poet William Matthews, notorious for sexually harassing women students.

Yet Banks' books displayed depths of moral consciousness, ethical conflicts and historical awareness beyond the cliches of masculine fiction. "Cloudsplitter," a Pulitzer Prize finalist, examined the motivations of 19th century abolitionist John Brown, leading to his attack on Harpers' Ferry. Banks also displayed a rare sensitivity to the confusions of adolescence.

An appreciative assessment of Banks' career by Washington Post critic Ron Charles presented Banks as a major American novelist at risk of upsetting the moral sensitivities of today's censorious culture. Charles makes a compelling case that Banks' books deserve continued readership.

LSU's "Booger" McFarland, Ryan Clark and Marcus Spears stand tall during Damar Hamlin emergency

LSU, once acclaimed as the Old War Skule and Huey Long's shining university, is best known these days as a football factory.

The school where Robert Penn Warren and Cleanth Brooks launched the prestigious Southern Review, world-renowned professors produced ground-breaking research and historian T. Harry Williams wrote nationally lauded books has suffered from the GOP 's stringent budget cuts.

While LSU has won several national football championships, the university's academic standing has fallen. Yet LSU programs like journalism have national reputations, and LSU students receive quality educations. The LSU Press and Southern Review remain at the forefront of academic publishing.

College football programs like LSU's are frequently criticized for not giving their players good educations. They are perceived as training grounds for the NFL.

Three former LSU and NFL players - "Booger" McFarland, Ryan Clark and Marcus Spears - have shown the benefits of their college experience this week following Buffalo Bills defensive back Damar Hamlin's horrifying medical emergency Monday night during the Bills game against the Cincinnati Bengals.

After Hamlin suffered cardiac arrest and received CPR following a seemingly routine tackle of Bengals receiver Tee Higgins and was rushed by ambulance to a Cincinnati hospital, where he remains in critical condition, McFarland, Clark and Spears have given passionate commentary on ESPN about why players risk serious injury, even death, to play pro football.

McFarland appeared with ESPN host Suzy Kolber and reporter Adam Schefter immediately after Hamlin's injury, pressed into extraordinary service when the game was halted. Summoned from the 'green room, where they were awaiting their usual half-time appearances, Kolber, Schefter and McFarland were asked to give impromptu responses to Hamlin's injury.

Fighting through his own shock and grief, McFarland spoke about how the event's rare life-threatening nature horrified the players. After a disputed report that play was to resume after five minutes, he gave the first call for the game's postponement. Kolber and Schefter effectively expressed their stunned reactions, but McFarland gave special insight based on his NFL career, during which he received several serious injuries.

In an appearance Wednesday on ESPN's "Pardon the Interruption" with Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon, the nine-year NFL star gave a passionate explanation of why players risk injury or even death to play in the NFL. Like many black NFL players, McFarland grew up in poverty. He told Kornheiser and Wilbon that football offered him the opportunity to leave destitute Winnsboro, a small town in north Louisiana, and provide a better life for his mother.

Clark, appearing on Scott Van Pelt's Sports Center Monday night after Hamlin was rushed to the hospital and the game postponed, spoke of how  the athletes' thrill at competition is balanced by the risk of injury. While the players fiercely battle each other, with terrifying hits that are a big part of the NFL's appeal, they share a brotherhood of overcoming pain and fear to achieve amazing athletic feats, he said.

Former Dallas Cowboys star and LSU All-American Marcus Spears in his regular role on ESPN's "NFL Game Day" Wednesday noted the millions of dollars that Americans have donated to Hamlin's toy fund following his injury. Spears passionately asserted that the outpouring of love and concern for Hamlin reflected the basic goodness of Americans, no matter their political philosophy.

McFarland, Clark and Spears have shown football's best qualities with their thoughtful,  poignant reflections. As an LSU alum, I've never been prouder of Tigers.

 

 

William Rawlings' "The Columbus Stocking Strangler" a definitive history of complex murder case

When I arrived in Columbus, Ga., the fear over the "stocking stranglings" had subsided.

From September 1977 through April 1978, seven elderly women were raped and murdered in their homes in Columbus' middle-class Wynnton neighborhood. Two other women survived the attacks. During the same period, the predominantly white area experienced several burglaries. 

Fear and anxiety gripped the city as the murders continued. Columbus' police launched a task force, raised reward money, appealed for help from state and federal law enforcement agencies and began extensive 24-hour patrols. Yet, several more women were found slain in their beds, even after taking safety precautions. At last, the serial killings mysteriously stopped, and the city's terror receded.

Investigators found hairs at the crime scene linked to a black assailant, raising racial tensions in the city known as the home of Fort Benning and the insurance giant Aflec. The murders uncovered intense class divisions in a city changing from its textile mill economy.

Despite the frenzied police investigation, and mounting criticism from the Columbus Enquirer and Ledger, the then vibrant morning and afternoon newspapers, an arrest in the case was not made until 1984. After lengthy legal maneuvers and a grueling trial, the suspect, a black career criminal named Carlton Gary was convicted in 1986 of three of the murders and sentenced to death.

But repeated court appeals, including to the U.S. Supreme Court, resulted in Gary not being executed for the crimes until 2018.

Veteran author William Rawlings' "The Columbus Stocking Strangler," published by Mercer University Press, gives a comprehensive account of the stocking strangler murders, in which several of the women were strangled with their own stockings. The victims were also raped and brutally beaten.

Some readers might find Rawlings' detailed descriptions of the crime scenes too graphic, but they document for the historical record the brutality of the attacks. Although fingerprints and palm prints were found at some crime scenes, police were unable to make an arrest. Rawlings establishes that the suspect lived close to his victims' homes at the time of the slayings, eluding the police patrols.

Rawlings details how Gary was finally arrested through a chance link to a pistol stolen in one of the Wynnton burglaries independent of the murders. He closes the book with a thorough recounting of the 32-year legal battles that kept delaying Gary's execution.

With an in-depth account of the 1986 trial and Gary's subsequent appeals, Rawlings clearly explains complex legal issues. Despite a few awkward sentences and typographical errors, he delivers a compelling narrative.

Rawlings delves into findings by Vanity Fair investigative journalist David Rose that DNA and other evidence showed that Gary was not the killer. Rose made his case for Gary's innocence in the book called "The Big Eddy Club," named for an exclusive, all-white social club in Columbus.

While I plan to read Rose's book, Rawlings convincingly dispels Rose's claims and establishes that Gary was guilty of the murders.

When I came to Columbus for a job at the Columbus Enquirer, I lived in Wynnton, a neighborhood of charming architecture, family restaurants and small businesses similar to Atlanta's Virginia-Highland and Morningside.

Reading Rawlings book, I realized that I'd lived only blocks away from the Stocking Strangler's victims. The book made me regret that I never knew much about the case when I lived in Columbus, and deepened my understanding of the city where I spent several brief but formative years.

"The Columbus Stocking Strangler" gives a definitive history of the middle-sized Southern city's reckoning with one of America's most challenging murder cases.

 

 

 

 

Thomas Pynchon fans rejoice at his archive donation to Huntington Library

Reclusive novelist Thomas Pynchon has donated his literary archive to the Huntington Library in San Marino, Calif., exciting passionate fans who've long thrilled at periodic revelations about the mysterious writer.

The 85-year-old  author, who has largely shunned reporters and photographers and released few personal artifacts over the years, donated 48 boxes and 70 linear feet of material to the Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens, according to media reports. 

Beginning in late 2023, scholars and Pynchon aficionados can visit the Los Angeles-area library to study typescripts and drafts of each novel, handwritten notes, correspondence and research material. After years of hiding from public view, Pynchon has decided to reveal his creative process.

Pynchon's early novels "V," "The Crying of Lot 49" and "Gravity's Rainbow" drew an intense following in the 1960s and early '70s among predominantly male readers, mesmerized by the author's historical references, encyclopedic scientific knowledge, conspiratorial plots and iconic characters. Like fellow counterculture novelists Joseph Heller, Kurt Vonnegut, J.P. Donleavy, and Philip K. Dick, Pynchon was venerated as much as rock stars.

Later novels like "Mason and Dixon" and "Vineland" received less acclaim, although hard-core followers heralded the books. Pynchon's 2009 comic detective novel "Inherent Vice" was entertaining, reaching a more popular audience.

Pynchon's son, Jackson Pynchon, said the author chose the Huntington because of its impressive math, science, aerospace and map collections. The library's literary holdings include Shakespeare, Chaucer and Joyce manuscripts, a Gutenberg Bible, and archives from modern writers.

The writer also has a California connection: He wrote much of "Gravity's Rainbow" while living in Manhattan Beach, the setting of "Inherent Vice."

Will Pynchon reveal himself further? While his archive will bring years of scholarly and biographical discoveries, Pynchon apparently will remain secluded in his private world.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Farewell, Book Forum, the latest victim of corporate greed

Book Forum's arrival in my mailbox always excited me, as was the case when the latest issue appeared last week.

My joy was crushed when I heard that the issue would be Book Forum's last.

Jay Penske's Penske Media Group, which recently purchased Book Forum's sister publication Art Forum, on Monday announced Book Forum's closure. Penske also owns Rolling Stone, which he is credited with reviving.

Book Forum's demise is a major blow to American literary culture. Founded in 1994, the quarterly like the New York Review of Books and the London Review of Books allowed its reviewers to expand their pieces into wide-ranging critical essays, bringing intense personal engagement to the books.

The publication's reviewers were younger, and somewhat hipper, than those at the august NYRB. They were more attuned to the art world, and had the younger generation's Brooklyn and downtown Manhattan sensibility. Yet, the reviews possessed an academic rigor as exacting as those in the Times Literary Supplement.

After supporting Rolling Stone, Penske reverted to a  distressing corporate callousness in shutting down Book Forum. Penske surely possesses the financial resources to keep publishing the prestigious quarterly. Instead, he silenced a vital literary journal.

Reading Book Forum's last issue, I was sad and angry to know that the publication would no longer arrive in my mailbox.

 

 

 

Douglas Brinkley, author of "Silent Spring Revolution," inspires Atlanta History Center audience to keep environmental flame burning

Historian Douglas Brinkley appeared at the Atlanta History Center Monday night to promote his new book on America's environmental accomplishments, speaking before an audience mainly composed of those who remembered the first Earth Day in 1970.

Sadly, that national event was the high point of the environmental progress detailed in Brinkley's comprehensive "Silent Spring Revolution: John F. Kennedy, Rachel Carson, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon and the Great Environmental Awakening."

A furious counterattack by American business, which saw environmental regulation as a socialistic threat to the free enterprise system, crushed the green movement.

Brinkley in his talk cited former Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell's memo to the American Chamber of Commerce calling for right-wing capitalists to take action against a perceived liberal takeover of the media, academia, the judiciary and Congress.

That led to the rise of conservative think tanks like the Heritage Society and the Cato Institute and soaring campaign funding by the Koch Brothers and other wealthy business leaders.

Brinkley cited Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin Delano Roosevelt for leading the first environmental wave, establishing national parks and preserving wilderness areas.

The movement gained momentum under the leadership of liberal Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, the major environmental mentor to the Kennedy family. Douglas influenced John F. Kennedy to author national seashore legislation when Kennedy was a U.S. senator.

Kennedy as president continued his environmental activism. After Kennedy's assassination, Lyndon Johnson stepped up the preservation of wilderness areas. Brinkley credited first lady Lady Bird Johnson for her environmental leadership during Johnson's administration, tragically ruined by his support of the Vietnam War.

President Richard Nixon, a reluctant environmentalist, compiled an impressive environmental record. After the devastating Santa Barbara oil spill pf 1969 in the early days of his presidency, Nixon signed the National Environmental Policy Act, which required environmental impact statements for construction projects, and established the Environmental Protection Agency, which banned the use of DDT.

Rachel Carson, whose monumental book "Silent Spring" in 1962 drew attention to the threat of DDT and other pesticides to animals and humans, was the main hero of Brinkley's talk.

Suffering from from the breast cancer that killed her in 1964, Carson was severely attacked by chemical companies until government scientists under President Kennedy confirmed the truth of her findings.

Before "Silent Spring," Carson wrote a pioneering trilogy of books on sea life. The books, recently republished in one volume by the Library of America,  predicted the current threats to the ocean from plastic pollution and rising acidification.

Most of those in the audience appeared in their 60s and 70s, members of a generation that witnessed the excitement of the environmental movement in the 1960s and 1970s, and its distressing demise after the massive corporate attacks, which are accelerating in today's Republican Party.

Brinkley, a professor at Rice University, expressed hope that a rising younger generation will launch a new environmental wave. He mentioned that his Generation Z students display an intense interest in combating climate change.

"Silent Spring Revolution" will  inform them about our generation accomplished, and let slip away. Its historical scope and optimism for the future will inspire them to not let it happen again.

 

Anticipating Noah Baumbach's "White Noise"

At last a movie I'm looking forward to seeing: Noah Baumbach's "White Noise."

Although I consider the comic novel one of Don DeLillo's lesser works, I expect it to translate well to film, especially in Baumbach's hands.

Beginning with "The Squid and the Whale" and continuing through "Marriage Story," Baumbach has fused visual imagery and character-defining dialogue for a distinctive narrative style. An ethereal light illuminates the darkest emotional moments.

The movie stars actors whose work I've admired in a number of films: Adam Driver, Greta Gerwig and Don Cheadle. I''ve especially come to enjoy the performances of Gerwig since her days in independent films. Driver has become for me the modern version of William Holden, perhaps my favorite Old Hollywood star.

DeLillo's book about a middle-aged professor who started the Department of Hitler Studies at a small college and whose blended family is threatened by a "toxic event" was for years considered un-filmable, largely because of DeLillo's cryptic, satiric dialogue.

Many of the pop cultural references are already dated. But Baumbauch has apparently employed much of DeLillo's speech in the film's script.

"White Noise" with its dread over environmental disaster has gained greater relevance as climate change worsens. I'm hoping Baumbach has turned the book into a cinematic classic.