Southern Bookman

Thomas Friedman pushes another dubious corporate utopia

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman took a break from presidential politics Wednesday to fashion one of his fantasies about the brave new economic world.

Friedman once again served as the mouthpiece for one of his favorite corporate pals, Infosys President Ravi Kumar, who gave Friedman his "world is flat" theme.

Infosys, founded in India but now based in covid-19-staggered New York City, is one of those new age consulting companies that help other corporations squeeze out profits more efficiently by ramping up "worker productivity."

Kumar filled Friedman's mind with visions of the post-pandemic world, in which workers will need constant refurbishing of unnamed skills so that they can toil at home carrying out some kind of corporate "modular" projects. The column didn't say what kind of tasks would be done by these happy domestic workers.

Sounded like corporate feudalism. In other words, an expansion of the contract worker model, without corporate benefits. Presumably, government health care would replace private insurance plans.

Friedman quoted Kumar as saying that unidentified technical skills are now more valued than university degrees, and that Infosys and other companies are investing in their own education programs, bypassing colleges.

Sure, Infosys still hires plenty of university-trained engineers, but the company also likes some kind of self-taught savants. All you need is to push a button on the robot assembly line, I suppose. Those rosy scenarios were sweetened by vintage Friedman chestnuts like "adaptive coalitions."

After this endorsement of technical education, Friedman made the contradictory assertion that corporations still will need workers who possess the kind of creative thinking traditionally developed by college liberal arts educations.

Perhaps old-fashioned degrees will have a place after all. Left unsaid was what kind of role public education will play.

Nor did the column say anything about the future of artificial intelligence, one of Infosys' main consulting areas. With robots doing more and more jobs, what will humans do in their cozy home workplaces?

Also missing was any mention of climate change, a curious omission since that's become a major Friedman theme.

Friedman's acclamation of Kumar's corporate utopia left huge gaps. The vision of workers constantly learning new skills to carry out the corporate agenda sounded more oppressive than liberating.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Penguin Random House challenges Amazon in direct sales

I was surprised to order James Lee Burke's latest Dave Robicheaux novel, "A Private Cathedral," directly from the publisher, Penguin Random House.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, the nation's largest publisher by far has increased direct book sales from upgraded warehouses, bypassing Amazon and Barnes & Noble, according to a profile of Penguin Random House CEO Madeline McIntosh in Sunday's New York Times.

Owned by German media conglomerate Bertelsmann, Penguin Random House increasingly depends on blockbuster best-sellers like former President Barack Obama's memoir, the article reported. Obama's book will be published after the election.

With the emphasis on established authors and well-known personalities, the company publishes fewer emerging writers, the profile said.

Yet, the company encompasses "300 editorially and creatively independent imprints and brands," according to its web site, giving a variety of venues for unknown authors.

Giving most of its resources to established best-sellers like Richard Russo, Zadie Smith, John Grisham, Jon Meacham and Michelle and Barack Obama, the company also promotes younger authors like Yaa Gyasi and her award-winning debut novel "Homecoming," published in 2016 when she was 26.

Her recently released novel, "Transcendent Kingdom," is a critically praised best-seller.

The company also introduced the acclaimed young Irish novelist Sally Rooney, who has published two immensely popular novels before age 30.

Writers like Gyasi and Rooney skyrocket to fame, bypassing the old model of slowly building a readership with several books.

Traditional printed books have gained new popularity during the pandemic, but the company publishes 70,000 digital titles a year to only 15,000 printed titles. Audio books are also booming.

Penguin Random House's increase in direct sales opens a new field of competition with bitter rival Amazon.

With its range of imprints and products, the publisher could challenge Amazon's marketplace dominance, especially if the retailing giant is broken up. But the publisher's move into direct sales undercuts bookstores, its traditional marketing vehicle.

Even more consolidation of the publishing industry is expected, further narrowing readers' choices beyond mainstream best-sellers.

 

 

 

 

Informal study paid off for Elena Ferrante translator Ann Goldstein

Ann Goldstein's renown as the English translator of Elena Ferrante's novels began with impromptu Italian lessons.

A longtime copy editor at The New Yorker, Goldstein and some of her colleagues formed an evening group in the 1980s to learn Italian, according to New York Times writer Joumana Khatib's profile of Goldstein published in Monday's Arts section of the newspaper.

The group's purpose was to read Dante's "Divine Comedy" in the poet's original language.

From those informal lessons, rather than grad school studies, Goldstein gained the proficiency to be named Ferrante's translator by Europa Editions, Ferrante's publisher.

Building upon her fame as the translator of Ferrante's Neapolitan quartet, Goldstein translated Ferrante's new novel, "The Lying Life of Adults," which comes out Sept. 1.

A departure from Ferrante's "My Brilliant Friend" saga, the book tells a different story about a young girl growing up in Naples's poor neighborhoods.

Goldstein's translations are credited with boosting the popularity of Ferrante's "Brilliant Friend" quartet, the story of two women's lifelong friendship beginning with their childhoods in Naples.

Known as a "literal translator," Goldstein captures the essence of Ferrante's language.

The New Yorker's copy desk chief when she retired from the magazine in 2017, the 71-year-old Goldstein has translated a number of other Italian books. She supervised the translation of Primo Levi's three-volume complete works.

While most readers today limit themselves to Dante's "Inferno," Goldstein's group also finished "Purgatorio" and "Paradiso." Goldstein in The Times article recommends completing the entire "Divine Comedy, " which established Dante's Florentine dialect as  the standard Italian language.

Her immersion in Dante gave Goldstein a grounding in the language's complexities. As revealed in the wonderful HBO adaptation of Ferrante's novels, Italians speak colloquial and more formal versions of the language. Goldstein's translations show facility in both.

Goldstein learned Italian at a relatively mature age, and without undergoing a formal higher-education curriculum. Her story shows the benefits of lifelong education and intellectual curiosity.

 

 

 

William Styron's "The Confessions of Nat Turner" presaged today's cultural wars

Friday marks the 189th anniversary of the start of Nat Turner's rebellion, a four-day slave insurrection in 1831 that killed 60 white people in rural Southampton County, Va.

White novelist and Virginia native William Styron in 1967 published "The Confessions of Nat Turner," narrated by Turner, the revolt's leader.

Styron imagined much of Turner's character and the bloody events of the uprising, having little historical documentation beyond Turner's own confession in 1831 to prosecuting attorney Thomas Ruffin Gray, published a few years later as "The Confessions of Nat Turner: The Leader of the Late Insurrection in Southampton, Va."

While Styron's book won the Pulitzer Prize and initially received acclaim from predominantly white critics, black intellectuals protested his depiction of Turner, the blacks who joined the rebellion and white slave owners. They claimed that Turner was a heroic black figure and that Styron reduced him to a cultural stereotype. Styron indignantly responded that Turner was virtually unknown, even among the black community, and that as a novelist he had the right to re-imagine historical events.

The black anger culminated in the 1968 book "William Styron's Nat Turner: Ten Black Writers Respond." In Styron's "This Quiet Dust," a 1982   collection of his non-fiction writing, the author said that his book "was the first novel in the long annals of American publishing to evoke such an immediate, entirely hostile attack."

Such attacks have become more frequent in recent years, with authors accused of cultural expropriation if they imagine characters of a different race, gender or sexual orientation. Styron's daughter, Alexandra, in a recent Atlantic essay compared the outrage over her father's book with that engendered recently by the publication of Jeanine Cummins' "American Dirt." 

In the essay, Alexandra Styron wondered if her father's book would even be published in today's cultural climate. She concluded that it would be, if written by a major author such as her father. But a little-known writer likely would be censored.

She points out that William Styron's close friend James Baldwin encouraged him to write the book and assume the voice of Nat Turner. Ralph Ellison also praised the book, as did black historian John Hope Franklin in a review in the Chicago Tribune, the only one written by a black writer in the thousands of newspapers that then existed.

Historian Eugene D. Genovese's defense of "The Confessions of Nat Turner" in The New York Review of Books ended the attacks on "The Confessions of Nat Turner."  The Marxist historian was known for his examination of slave life, "Roll Jordan Roll, The World the Slaves Made."

It must be admitted that the defense of Styron in a review revered among his intellectual circle looks like a closing of the ranks. While leftist, The New York Review was an organ of mostly white New York intellectuals who despite their liberal views on race closed their doors to many black writers.

Alexandra Styron admits her father' lack of humility in battling his critics. He felt the need to justify "The Confessions of Nat Turner" 15 years later in "This Quiet Dust." The title article, first published in Harper's magazine in 1965, tells about his visiting Southampton County in an effort to retrace Nat Turner's path. He republished the essay to counter black claims that he did insufficient historical research for the book.

The essay, which captures Southern whites' condescension toward blacks, shows Styron at his best.

After fruitless attempts to find surviving signs of the insurrection, Styron comes upon the ruins of the house he believes to be that of Margaret Whitehead, the only white directly killed by Turner. One of the black intellectuals' most heated criticisms of Styron was his imagined flirtation between Whitehead and Turner. 

In the novel, Turner reluctantly murders her at the instigation of another slave seeking to take over leadership of the revolt. Another violent black stereotype, the critics said.

Styron went on to write "Sophie's Choice." Although Harold Bloom accused Styron of antisemitism, the book escaped the controversy stirred by Nat Turner and gained widespread popularity, one of the last "literary" American novels that united the country's readership.

Supported by Henry Louis Gates and Spike Lee, and buoyed by Styron's enduring posthumous reputation, "The Confessions of Nat Turner" retains a strong readership, although it's generally avoided on high school and college curricula.

No doubt overly sensitive college students would object to its inclusion on class reading lists. Soon, no books will be acceptable, and English classes will be extinct.

"The Confessions of Nat Turner" drew the first shots in a cultural war that fully rages today.

 

Book discoveries at home during Covid-19

I'll even try to read "Howard's End."

The other day, I glimpsed a paperback of E.M. Foster's novel peeking out from my bedroom bookshelf. The book's been resting there for years unread.

Never mind that Foster's mantra "only connect" looks out-of-place in this era of social distancing. I've read through most of the other books that have been nestling dormant in my home library, so I've come to my end, as well as Howard's.

During the coronavirus pandemic, I've acquired just one new book, Nelson Algren's appreciation of Chicago, "City on the Make." Fearful of catching Covid-19 from some unmasked sneezing bibliophile, I've given up my longtime habit of going to bookstores.

My well-worn Nook e-reader stopped downloading new books and magazines, and I couldn't figure out how to change the software.

Yes, I could buy books online, but I'm boycotting Amazon, now running those absurd TV commercials about what an enlightened company it is. Besides, no recently published books interest me.

Even the libraries have been closed. The Sandy Springs Library that reopened only a couple of months before the pandemic is now doing curbside checkouts of books placed on hold, but the procedure seems as cumbersome as a Hartsfield-Jackson's TSA line.

So, I've been rediscovering books on my bookshelves, many of them I had never read or in which I lasted for only a chapter or two. I've tried to reread books I loved years before, but for some reason, I'm usually unable to return to once beloved narratives. Although I enjoyed Vivian Gornick's recent "Unfinished Business: Notes of a Chronic Re-Reader," I can't rekindle the literary flame.

Even before the pandemic, my bookstore habit had been reduced to the Peach Shopping Center's Barnes & Noble, the only bookstore left in Buckhead after the collapse of Atlanta's Oxford stores and the Borders chain. Atlanta's few remaining independent bookstores are too far away for frequent visits. Although Buckhead enjoys a profusion of supermarkets and pharmacy chains, it's a book desert.

The old Buckhead Borders, where I covered a book signing of George W. and Laura Bush and whiled away many hours, is now a Container Store. During Borders' expansive years, I also frequented a couple other of its stores. 

Oxford's flagship store in Peachtree Battle Shopping Center was one of my favorite all-time bookstores, along with the also vanished Maple Street Bookstore in New Orleans and Scribner's in New York City. I also searched for books in two other Oxford locations in Buckhead. Alas, the Oxford empire like Borders overextended, and fell when the book bubble burst. The country must have gotten dumber before electing the great unread Orange man.

As with canceled sports, I haven't missed going to the B&N, where I interviewed Rolling Stones pianist and Georgia preservationist Chuck Leavell and glimpsed Elton John flipping through the vinyl records. The Peach B&N had reduced its selection over the years, emphasizing puzzles, games and accessories. It did appear on an upswing before the pandemic arrived, but the nearness of a coughing patron in February sent my paranoia soaring.

I miss perusing literary journals and film and jazz magazines, but I receive several literary magazines and three daily newspapers at my home. I've been surprised to find Harper's and the Atlantic at my local Publix, although the latest Harper's hasn't shown up yet.

Even before the rise of Covid-19, I discovered on my shelves an engaging volume of Alice Adams short stories. Lately, I've enjoyed the late English professor and literary critic Robert Heilman's memoirs about his days at LSU during the Huey Long era and the heyday of the Southern Review under Robert Penn Warren and Cleanth Brooks.

I've recently enjoyed pleasant afternoons browsing through Mike Davis's analysis of Los Angeles, "City of Quartz," and a collection of W.H. Auden's forewords and afterwords.

While I haven't yet returned to Auden's poems, I haven't slighted poetry, delving into a collection of Paul Muldoon's collected poems my daughter won as a literary prize at Princeton and favorite poems by Richard Wilbur and others.

In a pinch, Seymour Krim and Dan Wakefield gave good doses of 1950s and 1960s New York nostalgia.

Now, "Howard's End."

 

 

AJC sportswriter Todd Holcomb looks back at Pepper Rodgers' championship season at Brown High School

AJC sportswriter Todd Holcomb gives a fascinating glimpse into Atlanta history with his article Tuesday on Brown High School's 1949 state football championship.

Legendary Georgia Tech quarterback and coach Pepper Rodgers, who died May 14 at age 88, led the Brown Rebels to the Georgia title with a 41-13 upset over Glynn Academy at Grady Stadium, which had recently opened. Rodgers also starred in basketball and baseball for the school, which opened in 1947 in Atlanta's West End.

Holcomb gives an in-depth account of Brown's season and how Rodgers and six other members of the team went on to play for Georgia Tech coach Bobby Dodd's 1952 national championship team.

A longtime chronicler and historian of Georgia high school sports, Holcomb begins his article with the 1949 death of "Gone With the Wind" author Margaret Mitchell, who was struck by a taxi while crossing Peachtree Street. Holcomb notes that much of the Atlanta of that era seems as far away as the Old South of Mitchell's novel.

Segregation remained in force - Holcomb points out that Brown couldn't play black high school Booker T. Washington's powerhouse team - and Atlanta's future as a big-league sports city lay far in the distance. The Braves still played in Boston, and Atlanta residents took the streetcar to Ponce De Leon Park, where they cheered on the minor league Atlanta Crackers. Atlanta's interstates had not been built, and the city was much smaller. The annexation of Buckhead and other areas would come in 1952.

But the city made a significant change with the opening of Brown and several other neighborhood high schools in 1947. That followed the closure of Boys and Girls High, Tech High and Commercial High, which had been in existence since the early 20th century.

Grady High, the site of the stadium where Brown won the title, is the only 1947 school still going as a high school. The other buildings have been converted to other purposes. The Brown site is now a middle school.

The 1947 schools completed in the City League, and also played Catholic power Marist, then located in downtown Atlanta. Holcomb mistakenly says that Marist was located where the Basilica of the Sacred Heart now stands. The school's site was next to the church, which opened in 1880.

In chronicling Brown's accomplishment, Holcomb quotes then Constitution sportswriter Jesse Outlar, who went on to a long career as the newspaper's main sports columnist, although The Atlanta Journal's Furman Bisher received more recognition. Holcomb also treats fans of old-style florid sportswriting with a few vintage quotes from longtime Constitution high school sportswriter Charlie Roberts.

Holcomb ends the piece with a poignant Boys of Summer look at the Brown players' lives after high school. Or. in their case, Boys of Autumn. Only two  remain. Holcomb wonderfully evokes their championship season.

 

 

 

 

College football's return unsettled

The return of college football next fall looks more and more doubtful.

NCAA President Mark Emmert recently said that football won't be played if students don't return to campus. Football "student athletes" wouldn't have even rudimentary classes to attend.

But he seemed to leave loopholes for big-time powers coming back. Would players be able to return to practice by taking online classes?

The Cal State University system announced this week that its campuses will remain closed, and classes will be given online only, with a few exceptions such as biology labs. The system said that sports will be halted without students on campus.

Three Cal State schools: Fresno State, San Jose State and San Diego State, play Division I football in the Mountain West Conference, which has said that resuming play depends upon students returning to school. Fresno State said agricultural classes in the field might be sufficient for football to kick off.

The big question is whether the SEC, ACC, Big 10, Pac-12 and Big 12 find some way to play games, even without students in classrooms. If so, football powerhouses would have even less justification for claiming their main purpose is education, rather than big-time sports. The University of California System, with Pac-12 heavyweights Cal-Berkeley and UCLA, will announce reopening plans this week..

Even if the big schools play, they are unlikely to do so before fans packing stadiums. Bands and cheerleaders probably won't be there either.

The college season might be halted abruptly if even one player tests positive for Covid-19. With cramped locker-rooms, the virus could spread through an entire team.

Football writers reported that the season might be delayed until spring 2021. So much for track, softball and baseball. Would football begin after March Madness and the Final Four, if they come back? Imagine the Rose Bowl on Independence Day.

Some pointed out that moving football to spring would disrupt players' NFL prospects. My god, the NFL draft might even be endangered.

Even before the coronavirus, football powers were fighting declining interest among students, especially when playing weaker opponents. Kids prefer drinking in the Frat House and watching on TV as Big State U hangs 60 on some hapless school no one had ever heard of before.

As the college football season appears increasingly doubtful, the NFL seems hellbent on playing, even before empty seats. The NBA is moving toward resuming play, with Florida and Arizona announcing they would host games.

If Major League baseball, the NBA, college football and the NHL remain sidelined, the already dominant NFL could be the nation's only game. But will players agree to return and risk infection?

Meanwhile, the PGA is rushing to return to action, without fans. Now players who miss the fairway won't have to worry about hitting spectators or moving back the crowd to hit a shot around a tree.

As South Korean baseball grows popular among deprived fans, MLB keeps pushing nutty schemes to resume play. But players fear MLB is using its reopening plans to impose a salary cap like other leagues have. For now, shouts of "play ball" remain dubious.

If sports are lost this fall, gamblers will resort to placing bets on when the leaves turn color.

 

 

"Where the Crawdads Sing" blends literary style, popular appeal

I'm often let down by popular novels, but I'm captivated by Delia Owens' "Where the Crawdads Sing."

Owens' book, a top bestseller for months, combines the stylistic language of "literary fiction" with mainstream popular appeal.The book's engaging cast of characters live and interact with each other in a small, special world both ordinary and magical. Part crime thriller, part coming-of-age saga and part nature study, the book offers delight for a variety of readers.

While Owens at times misfires in her personification of nature, her language gives a vivid picture of the book's North Carolina marshland and small town. The fully developed characters are true to life, as if we'd known them forever.

"Where the Crawdads Sing" appeals to young readers as well as adults. It's one of those novels that foster the love of reading, and should find a place on middle school and high school book lists.

 

 

 

 

Cecelia Watson's ode to the semicolon

Cecelia Watson's "Semicolon: The Past, Present and Future of a Misunderstood Mark" moves from a brief history of the pesky punctuation mark to a call for liberty from restrictive grammar rules.

White and Strunk's "The Elements of Style" probably has crippled more writers than encouraged them. Subverting the tyranny of usage guardians, Watson calls for writing creativity, especially in the application of semicolons.

A professor at Bard College, Watson doesn't support complete anarchy. She believes in an understanding of grammar, without allowing a slavish adherence to stifle writing.

Watson gives examples of excellent writers who have imaginatively used the semicolon beyond its common role of separating two interdependent complete statements. Passages from Shakespeare, Irvine Welsh, Rebecca Solnit and Raymond Chandler illustrate how semicolon flexibility enhances writing.

The punctuation mark, invented by the Italian scholar and printer Aldus Manutius the Elder in 1494, is shown as an essential writing tool.

She doesn't mention Saul Bellow, but I thought of his liberation from language strictures in "The Adventures of Augie March." A look at the novel's celebrated first paragraph reveals how Bellow's semicolons boost his writing.

Watson's small book, with lovely woodcut illustrations, raises enthralling questions about the philosophy of writing. Grammar purists will warn that she's opening the gates to increased language promiscuity, but her own work shows the effectiveness of elegant English.

Her treatise ends by skewering David Foster Wallace's admonition to students to conform to the standard English dialect.

I'm not sure how far she would go in allowing freedom from spelling and grammar rules. I suspect she would oppose complete abandonment of grammatical norms. However, she speaks for the value of speech outside of narrow syntactical channels. Her thorough historical analysis of how those rules developed points to their arbitrariness.

In Watson's viewpoint, semicolon mastery is a hallmark of vivid writing. Those who might think of her book as a dull pedantic exercise will discover a witty, expansive work touching upon history, philosophy, literary criticism and personal reflections. Her footnotes are like jewels in a stream.

All hail the semicolon; Watson seeks to free the funny-looking mark, and writers' thoughts. Already, I'm throwing semicolons around like doubloons from a Mardi Gras float. I don't fear the language police.

 

Alan Bennett in annual diary remembers Jonathan Miller

Noted British playwright Alan Bennett in his latest diary in the London Review of Books pays homage to fellow "Beyond the Fringe" member Jonathan Miller.

For years, Bennett has brightened the new year with his annual chronicle of the previous 12 months, published in the LRB. Bennett's record of his life in 2019 runs in the LRB's Jan. 2 issue.

The polymath Miller, who died Nov. 27, excelled in medicine, the theater and television. He was especially known for his opera productions, and hosting the TV documentary "The Body in Question."

Rising from their college days at Oxford and Cambridge, Miller and Bennett joined Dudley Moore and Peter Cook in the satirical revue "Beyond the Fringe," which eventually played on Broadway.

Along with serene depictions of the London literary world and unhurried life in suburban Yorkshire, Bennett can be cutting in his views. An entry in his 2019 diary gives a chilly assessment of Miller.

"Ours was a not unrivalrous relationship, with neither particularly generous about the other's work," Bennett says. He confesses to never seeing one of Miller's operas, and suspects Miller never watched one of his plays.

Bennett ends on a warmer, regretful note. "Now that he's gone I feel remorse as well as sorrow. But, jokes apart, it was a question of survival. I needed to write. Jonathan needed one to listen."

The diaries increasingly chronicle Bennett's aging. This year's entries often reference Bennett lying on his couch or in bed, suffering from severe arthritis. He also gives an alarming account of a fall on his bicycle, from which he suffered bruises but no broken bones or head injuries.

A disturbing sign of Bennett's looming mortality is that the diary is much shorter this year; he missed several months during the spring and summer because of open-heart surgery.

With all of his suffering, the diary is again a treat of refined thinking, with references to obscure films, actors and British writers. The diaries reflect his cultured life in suburban Yorkshire, where he enjoys gardening, old houses and reading. Bennett's at times fussy writing reveals a disgust with conservative politics, an enjoyment of small town life and an appreciation for small pleasures.

His diaries mirror my own aging, giving me encouragement and comfort. I hope to read Bennett's annual missives for years to come.