John Adams's Dr. Atomic @ Lyric Opera

I don't think I've ever posted about a live opera on this blog, so here's a first go at it. Last night I trooped down to the Lyric Opera of Chicago to see contemporary American composer John Adams's most recent opera, Doctor Atomic. The opera, whose "found text" libretto, staging and direction are the handiwork of impresario Peter Sellars, was first mounted in San Francisco in 2005, and it explores the experiences over monthlong span of several of the central figures involved in the first testing of the atomic bomb, the "Trinity" test, in the New Mexico desert. The protagonist is physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, but the opera's other important figures include fellow physicist Edward Teller; General Leslie Groves; Oppenheimer's anxious wife Kitty; the weatherman, Jack Hubbard; and the bombastic General Leslie Groves; and Pasqualita, the Oppenheimer's Tewa (Native American) nursemaid.

I should begin by noting my affinity for post-Romantic operas, and in particular for operas (and musicals of operatic cast) from the era of early Modernism on. The sorts of operas that drive purists crazy, such as Debussy's aria-less Pelleas et Mélisande; Bartók's brief and spellbinding Duke Bluebeard's Castle; Schoenberg's unfinished, conceptual masterpiece about the unrepresentability of God, Moses und Aron; Berg's formally intricate case study in pre-World War II decadence, Lulu; Joplin's unique African-American essay in the form, Treemonisha; and Britten's homoerotic homage, Billy Budd, are among the works I cherish, but I also like very current operatic fare, especially works that push opera's aesthetic conventions, such as Philip Glass's Einstein on the Beach and Akhnaten, Steve Reich's Three Tales, and Anthony Davis's Amistad. One of my works, which perhaps drew me to the genre, is Adams's 1987 opera, Nixon in China. It is one of the few very recent operas to have entered the repertoire. In this work, Adams extends his post-minimalist musical language to match Alice Goodman's exceptional libretto, and together they create a powerful portrayal of the soon-to-be disgraced former president's groundbreaking trip to China. Some of the arias, such as Nixon's "News, news," or the reception's choral exchange "Cheers!" have been derided by critics, but the opera also drew immediate praise and has continued to be one of the most popular works of the last 40 years. Its accessibility, blend of humor and drama, biting set pieces, inventive tunefulness, and moments of masterful orchestration and dramatization, such as when Pat Nixon longs for the music of home (California), or Mrs. Mao's aria demonstrating her personal power, probably account for its enduring popularity.

In Dr. Atomic, Adams shows that his grasp of composition, and in particular scene-painting and orchestration, has only grown in the intervening years. With the exception of the musique concrète tracks that open and close the opera's two halves, the music exemplifies Adams's mastery, both of 20th century music in general and of how to write operatic music in a contemporary vein. Whether it aims for mimesis, as when he portrays the thunder and electrical storms that are threatening the bomb test, or the spectacular choral set pieces, such as the second half's (Act 2, Scene iii) "O, Master" chorus, excerpted from the Bhagavad Gita, which to me was one of the most breathtaking in the entire work, or the arias, by Oppenheimer, his wife, Pasqualita, or Hubbard, who manages to lyricize a weather report (!), Adams never falters--and, I must add, never did the singers, who were on the whole extraordinary. The essentially tonal composition bears Adams's usual fingerprints, eschewing neo-Romanticism in favor of a more complex, pungent assemblage of styles, with moments of hypnotic repetition, contrapuntality and crossrhythms, passages of jazz-like stylings, and controlled dissonance. In fact, it was often the music, along with the sets and staging, that provided what little drama the opera had to offer, and elevated the libretto's inherent poetry, or rather reminded me that I was listening to the words of Baudelaire, Muriel Rukeyser, Donne, among other texts, set to music. There were moments where I simply closed my eyes and listened to the music to relieve the tedium of the libretto, which seemed to stretch on and on unnecessarily.

Although the story itself is inherently dramatic--the government and military are racing to test an atomic bomb to drop on Japan, to end the Second World War, and many of the key scientists involved with it are torn, ethically, morally, emotionally, about their contributions and the possible aftermath of a successful weapon--the libretto, which derives not only from poetry but from declassified government documents, blunts this by telling too much, and thus becoming explanatory, or striving for profundity, which runs aground the shoals of obviousness. In such instances, the narrative's drama sputters, but as in some other operas with little narrative or drama, such as Messiaen's Saint François d'Assise, there are no compensatory character arcs or dramatization, and so Oppenheimer himself remains enigmatic, while Kitty's anxiety, as it never abates, becomes static and tiresome. Then there is the issue of length--too much is, well, too much. Even a marvelous moment, like Oppenheimer's aria based on Donne's "Holy Sonnet No. XIV," "Batter my heart, three-personed God," provoked by his appreciation of the inhuman power the "gadget" he has helped create, just drags on too long. Or perhaps it wouldn't have felt too long if there weren't so many other such moments, where Sellars seems incapable of condensing the text, thus blunting whatever propulsive force the music and narrative manage to generate. The opera runs 3 and 1/2 hours, though it felt like 6; a half-hour of the Robert Wilson-esque quasi-avant-garde processions to literalize the complicated temporality (on figurative and literal levels) and silent moments could easily be cut, and many of the arias could be truncated or at least condensed, saving as much of Adams's music as possible. By the end of the second half, I think the only thing keeping me from bolting was the music and the recognition that I ought not miss the moment of the test, which I'll say disappointed musically and performatively. (By this point a number of the older opera patrons sitting near me had already fled.)

The singers are, as I say above, outstanding, and often wring the most piercing moments out of their arias. Particular notable were Leslie Rivera (what a voice!) as Kitty Oppenheimer, Gerald Finley as J. Robert Oppenheimer, and James Maddalena, the original Richard Nixon in Adams's earlier opera, as Jack Hubbard, the beleaguered weatherman. Eric Owens, playing General Leslie Groves, manages to infuse his ranting-like near-Sprechstimme with real passion, making me wish he'd been given better material to work with. I was less enchanted by Meredith Arwady as Pasqualita; at times she appears to struggle to sustain a continuous rising or descending line, and sounds off key, or perhaps this is how the part was written, though it sticks out beside Rivera's mellifluous declamations. The directing and staging mostly succeed; Sellars is on firmest ground here, and the subtle and unexpected lighting shifts, the always-evocative modular sets, and the lively corps de ballet, match the music and nearly rescue things. One enjoyable side element to the evening was that the grand-daughter of the woman sitting next to me was one of the dancers. She told me she'd come up from Orlando to see her granddaughter dance, and eagerly pointed her out whenever the corps took the stage.

I left the opera house feeling much the way I did when I first went to see John Harbison's The Great Gatsby during its first run at the Met: that I'd heard some great music, but it was expended on a thematically very interesting, above-average, but not great, project. I'm not sure how much tinkering Adams and Sellars will attempt; I missed Sellars's pre-opera talk, but I've read that he acknowledges the libretto's faults, so perhaps they will figure out how to tighten it up if it continues to travel. Cutting the explanatory material, which might mean snipping some of Groves's part, and distilling Kitty Oppenheimer's scenes should be the first order of business. Mirroring the second-half's "O, Master" chorus in the first would also be a good idea, to punch things up a bit. The ending also could use some work; not representing the bomb blast orchestrally is, I admit, brilliant, but I'm not sure the electronic substitute is enough. It almost felt predictable, and kitschy. As it is, I would still recommend anyone interested in contemporary see Doctor Atomic, just to hear Adams's opera, but I'd add that they shouldn't be surprised if they find themselves glancing at their watch, twiddling their thumbs, and wanting to scream get on with it during some of its many, unnecessary longueurs. It's in Chicago until January 19, and moves to the Met in 2008 (they should start with Nixon in China, but then who am I to suggest anything to the Met...).

Close Guantánamo Day + Fascism's Features

The ACLU has designated today Close Guantánamo Day. It's the 6-year anniversary of the arrival of the first "War on Terror" prisoners there.

Although some of the Republican presidential candidates think it should be expanded, or that it's better than the horrible prisons in the US, I don't think it'd be too hard to make a case that it's one of the blights--abominations--on humanity, and one of many such facilities run by the US that ought to be shut down immediately.

IMMEDIATELY.

You can access the ACLU's site here. People are urged to wear orange in solidarity with the prisoners. You can choose to do so any day, though, and most importantly, let the presidential candidates and your Congresspeople know you want the US to get its act together, repeal the Military Commissions Act, restore Habeas Corpus, and shut this place down.

Digby's Hullabaloo pointed me to the talking dog, which has been interviewing lawyers and others defending some of the people imprisoned there. They're worth checking out.

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Also, I want to call attention to: Dorothea Dieckmann's excellent novel, Guantanamo, published in translation (by Tim Mohr) last year by Soft Skull Press. It is receiving considerable acclaim. The New Yorker's positive blurb is here.

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Speaking of Guantánamo and what this country has become, a while ago on this blog I posted Dr. Lawrence Britt's "14 Defining Characteristics of Fascism," which originally appeared in the journal Free Inquiry and was later posted on other sites and blogs. When I'd posted it elsewhere, questions arose less about its validity (what really constitutes "fascism" and whether as a political system it is coherent across different governments and historical periods) than about its author, so I wrote the journal directly, and the editor (at that time) confirmed that Britt (or someone under the pseudonym) had written the article. As a basic checklist for various understandings of what a "fascist" government might look like, I think it works, and today, when people across the web and world are calling attention to national disgrace known as Guantánamo (the prisoner detention facility there, that is), I thought I'd repost the list simply because since it first appeared, our government and society have increasingly approximated Britt's bareboned list (though, let me add, some were present even before the stolen election of 2000 or the 9/11 tragedy).

1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism (cf. government, media and public rhetoric since 2001 in the USA)
2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights (Legalized torture, Guantánamo, Abu Ghraib, extraordinary renditions, Hurricane Katrina aftermath, etc.)
3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause - (Anti-Arab, anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant discourses, racism, anti-liberal and anti-progressive, anti-union rhetoric, etc.)
4. Supremacy of the Military (rising military expenditures, borrowing to pay for illegal wars, "Commander in Chief" as a general title fort he president, St. General Petraeus, etc.)
5. Rampant Sexism (SCOTUS ruling on "partial-birth" abortions, anti-abortion and anti-female bodily autonomy activism, sexism and homophobia in the corporate media and culture, etc.)
6. Controlled Mass Media (self-censoring corporate mass media, hyperpatriotism among media elites and spokespeople, etc.)
7. Obsession with National Security (War on Terror, warrantless wiretapping, datamining of Americans' private information, Department of Homeland Security, etc.)
8. Religion and Government are Intertwined (Faith-based governance and government, destruction of the Church-State wall, proselytization in the military and at military academies, etc.)
9. Corporate Power is Protected (Revolving door for government-business, corporate socialism, telecom amnesty, etc.)
10. Labor Power is Suppressed (Anti-union activism, legislation and litigation, stacking of the National Labor Relations Board, "make work" legislation, etc.)
11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts (less of issue, in part because of self-censorship, widespread privatization of the arts, and the longstanding societal lack of interest in the arts and humanities)
12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment (self-explanatory, though it doesn't apply when it involves the administration and its cronies)
13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption (Abramafia, Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, no-bid contracts to Halliburton, etc.)
14. Fraudulent Elections (2000, 2002, 2004, 2005, bogus voter fraud charges, Diebold and other voting machine companies' shenanigans, etc.)

You could easily identify more elements of "fascism" that are present in the contemporary US, such as the authoritarian "Leader Cultism" of the Right, and so on, that aren't on this list. The present government isn't fascist so much as it incorporates numerous elements of fascist regimes, within the larger, flexible framework of what passes for (remains of) our Constitutional system.

We should ask the presidential candidates directly how they might reverse most of these aspects of our system today. Given #6, it's unlikely anyone in our "conventional" media would ever do so....

Laugh to Keep from Crying

Here's a challenge to all the J's Theater readers that have sound-editing skills. Can you come up with a more plausible soundtrack than this? If you create one that sounds like it really is coming from Iranian speedboats, I'll post it here on the site. (You may have to post it first at YouTube so I can embed.) Let's get so artists-pros in on the act. (The farce below--you have to listen to the very end--would be comical, if its potential consequences weren't so horrific.)

Hillary & the Ghost Gain NH

Ye goode folke of New Hampshire showed that they were not going to led around by the nose, not by enthusiastic young Iowans or their evangelical counterparts, not by the sexist, Clinton-hating media, not by the legions pollsters to whom they sold at least one good New England yarn (Barack Obama up by 9 points). Actually, the working-class and elderly female voters of the Granite State demonstrated via the ballot that they haven't given up on Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (at right, Chicagotribune.com)--was it the debate? the tears? Bill's outburst? the attacks on Obama?--no one else should either. Those Clintons are tenacious folks! The New Hampshirites gave her enough of a margin to eke out a win over Senator Odreamy (who won Cheshire County, home of the city of Keene, naturally), and remind the rest of the country that this primary season isn't over yet. While I doubt I'd have voted for Clinton in this particular contest, I'm glad that she won in part because I do want Obama to recognize it's not going to be a crowd surf to victory, as his comments and the emails from his campaign acolytes suggest, and because her victory upsets the media's all-too-premature prediction of her campaign's end. The gasbags were really feasting on her breakdown, proposed campaign reshuffle, Bill's tirade, all of it. On the other hand, she and Bill had better watch the nasty crap and white ops they were planning on Obama, because not only the GOP, but the media, have shown that she'll be an even more inviting target if she gets the nomination. As it is, the 16-year media assault on her husband, Al Gore, John Kerry, and other major Democrats, has already hit her hard, so just as Obama ought to watch the right-wing frames, she should be careful about rhetoric about his fickleness and effectiveness. She's already being portrayed as a cuff-holding weathervane as it is.

On the GOP side, the media fave, 71-year-old warmonger John McCain (who looks like a ghost to me) finished first ahead of the Man Who Keeps Falling to Earth, Mitt Romney. According to a figure I read on someone else's blog, Romney's spent more than either Clinton or Obama, and has yet to finish above second, but he has money to burn, so he'll probably hang around until it's clear that the Southern preacher and ex-gov, Mike Huckabee, has the lock. (A fast fact: only one GOP president has ever been born in a former Confederate state--they're all from the Northeast, Midwest (mostly Ohio), or West--Dwight Eisenhower, who was born in Texas; with Abraham Lincoln, a Kentucky native, they're the only two Southern-born Republicans presidents. The Decider Guy, like his father, was born in New England.) Rudy Giuliani finished just marginally above Ron Paul, and I know the word is he's waiting around till the delegate-rich super-primary day, but he should do us all a favor and drop out now. BE. GONE. He is not positioning himself as the socially moderate--though viciously racist--Republican he was as New York mayor, but has kept only the crazed neocon part, and there are already enough of those in the Republican field, so why stay on? I know Fox News and many GOP business types love him, but surely they see he's not going to beat out a former POW warmonger; a multimillionaire flipflopper; and a guy who's suggested hosting revivals on the White House lawn. Right? Maybe Huckabee can offer us a preview down in South Carolina, say in Columbia or Greenville or somewhere else. I think people should see what they might be getting. Then he can jam with a rock band and give a speech about how he's not a primate. Or something equally colorful!

Yesterday, a claque of bipartisanophiles met in Norman, Oklahoma to chatter about how they want to hold the 2008 election hostage unless the nominees--meaning the Democratic nominee, meaning Hillary Clinton--pledge to be bipartisan, whatever that's supposed to mean, or else they're going to unleash liberal Democrat-passing-as-Republican-but-now-independent Mike Bloomberg on us. Since he's a multibillionaire and his business is thriving so he could easily spend $500-750 million on a vanity campaign and enthrall the punditocracy, draw lots of moderate Democratic voters (or more than the few moderate Republicans out there), and perhaps throw the race to the GOP, who've demonstrated over the last seven years that their right-wing ideology is a complete and abject failure in every way, except for effecting a net transfer of even more wealth to global conglomerates and the mega-rich. Not that the Democrats in Congress haven't enabled them at every step, because they have, but then isn't that bipartisanship? Isn't that the very bipartisanship that got us into Iraq and permitted the lies about 9/11 and warrantless wiretapping and the outing of a covert CIA agent and legalized torture, without any penalties or a real threat of impeachment, and passed the Patriot Act and the bankruptcy bill and Cheney's energy bill, and abandoned New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, and...well, I guess the Pro-Bipartisans are convinced we must have more of the same. More, more, more. Except that Obama is promising a bipartisan revel that will CHANGE the mess we find ourselves in and pass progressive legislation. Not the proto-fascist stuff we've seen. Hmm. Cognitive-dissonance meter registering strong wave effect.

So let's see if these jerks, led by former Senator David Boren, a dear frien of the Bushes, decide to act out. In the meantime, congratulations to Hillary.

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And then there's this very important case looming at the Supreme Court. You see, W hasn't failed at everything. He has managed to pack the courts, including the Supreme Court, with hardcore right-wingers from now till Kingdom come, as my relatives used to love to say. Another reason not to ever grow complacent.

Neti Pots + The Wire + Errata

Perhaps it's chancing too much to note that today is the first day in over two weeks that I haven't woken up coughing or feeling as though my sinuses were on fire (they're still running, though, and my ears feel strange still); I'm hoping that whatever I caught has run its course, though I have to give some credit to the nasal rinsing effects of the Neti pot, which Ndlela told me about last summer, but which I didn't decide to try until the other day, under the influence of one of major US dailies. I didn't find the Neti pot itself, as it was sold out of all the health food stores and pharmacy chains that I visited in Chicago, so I got something comparable, and while I can't say I swear by it yet it did work, at least more so than I imagined. The sensation reminds me of accidentally inhaling seawater, but without the concomitant feeling of drowning, though that apparent does occur if the water's cold. (I won't be testing this proposition out.) At any rate, I can say I've tried at least one very new thing in the new year.

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Last night one of my favorite TV shows, HBO's The Wire, premiered its fifth and, unfortunately for fans, its final season. A week ago Reggie H and Bernie emailed about it, and we've since exchanged messages and links about what I'd estimate is one of the best dramatic programs in the history of recent television. In terms of vividness and depth of characterization, novelistic richness of plot, excellence of casting and acting, skillful dramatization of themes and scenarios, and fidelity to a realist vision of the world, it has few peers. (Yes, I know, The Sopranos is up there too.) I'll post the article links below for anyone who hasn't seen them, and keep my comments about the first episode succinct.

It was vintage The Wire, with a number of future plotlines braided in careful, deliberate ashion, and the new focus, the role and state of the newspaper industry, represented here by a fictional version of the Baltimore Sun, offering the major dramatic set piece that drew many of the script's threads loosely together. Previous seasons' focuses were also present each with a twist: the drug dealers (Season 1 and every one thereafter) appear to be facing a looming war, led by the most ruthless among them, Marlo Stanfield (Jaime Hector), and his deputies Chris Partlow (Gbenga Akinnagbe) and Snoop (Felicia Pearson); the cops (Season 1 and every one thereafter), now struggling under a severe budget crisis, are again being dispersed, particularly the exceptional special crime unit assembled by Major Cedric Daniels (Lance Reddick); Season 3's focus, the mayor (Aidan Gillen), because of the budgetary problems, is breaking promises and straddling political difficulties; the students--Michael (Tristan Wilds) and Dukie (Jermaine Crawford) remaining from last year's heartbreaking season (4) are integrated into the drug trade; and one of the "Russians," Sergei (Chris Ashworth) who played a role in Season 2's union corruption and foreign gangster plotlines, also was invoked and will likely become important as the season proceeds.

Creator David Simon, his writers, directors, and actors succeeded last night in integrating all these threads with subtlety, though perhaps too subtly, I thought, for anyone who'd turned in for the first time. But each season since the first has required that you catch up to get the full flavor and power of the series. I've never worked at a real newspaper, but Simon's portrayal of the fictional Sun, drawn from his past experience as a journalist, appeared to hit the right notes, and new cast member and police procedural show veteran Clark Johnson (above, from HBO.com), who directed the first The Wire episode in 2002, particularly shone in his role as the city desk editor, Augustus "Gus" Haynes. It'll be interesting to see how the critiques of the newspaper business hold up, because this first episode made the newsroom look exciting enough that it could have been used a recruiting video. The portrayals of the police department, City Hall and the Council, and the Feds on the other hand showed the compelling philosophical pessimism that are The Wire's hallmark. But the brilliance is, ultimately, in the drama, and The Wire is a sourcebook on how to do it. (TV drama writers, please take note for when you return from your strike.)

Some links (courtesy of Reggie and Bernie):
Baltimore Sun: The Wire loses spark in newsroom storyline
Bowden on The Wire in the The Atlantic Monthly
The News Hour with Jim Lehrer's The Wire preview
Baltimore's City Paper's take on the news season
Baltimore's City Paper's take on Snoop (Felicia Pearson)

Hope grapples with despair, right down to 'The Wire' - PRIME-TIME TELEVISION - Los Angeles Times - calendarlive.com

No Happy Ending in Dickensian Baltimore - New York Times

'Wire's' latest target: The media - CNN.com

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On a completely different note, can I just say that I haven't yet tired of clicking through and reading these pages? They read almost like poems (though not, I'm sure, to the author in question, Samuel Delany); am I misremembering, or hasn't some clever written a poem or poems in the form of errata? You couldn't do worse as a writer and editor than study his changes, though, as the genius clearly gleams through.

Poem: D. S. Marriott

Last year I came across this book of poetry and hard time putting it down. On reading the back cover I learned that its author, D. S. Marriott (right, photo from Salt Publishing), is the same person as the David Marriott a 40-something (b. 1963-) Briton of Jamaican parentage, who published the study On Black Men (Columbia) in 2000, and Haunted Life (Rutgers) in 2006. I thought about typing out my favorite poem in the book, "For Invisible Black Vampyres," but it's too long, so here is another one I keep returning to. It closes the volume.

FALLING SNOW

Trying to figure out
what message I should write,
watching the sun sink into the soulful dusk,
and snow falling on the Avenue. The security
of having a mask packed, this one
newly purchased. But the lone protester
keeps on collapsing under the police dogs.
The couple sitting on the park bench (so deep
in thoughts of sadness) nodded yes
as we traipse across the frozen grass
reading poetry aloud with seven kinds of irony,
word by word to avoid boredom and the war
of spirit because the whole sense of speaking
is itself a form of death. "Makes good copy,"
he says, "please write it down." A cab drifts by
and speeds away for maximum nigga-nohow effect.

Copyright © 2006, D. S. Marriott, from Incognegro, Cambridge: Salt Publishing.

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Q: "(You don't mind flying when you're feeling like that? No problems with the ears?)"
A: "(Well, when you have no choice....)"

Obama & Huckabee Win Iowa

Change, change, change. That's the word adorning all the Obama campaign posters, and the charge heading out of the Hawkeye State (though political balance" is the frame). Congratulations to Mr. Change & Balance himself, Senator Barack Obama (at left, from obama.senate.gov), who won the delegate count in the Iowa Democratic caucuses by an 8 point spread, 38% to second-place winner former Senator John Edwards's 30%. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton finished third, at about 29%. Together they and the other Democrats drew over 220,000 participants, almost double the 2004 turnout of 125,00, and more than double the Republicans' total this year. Many of the Democratic caucus-goers were first-timers, and Obama's supporters comprised younger voters (57%), a huge number of independents and even some cross-over Republicans. He also led among female (35%) and male caucus-goers. Both Joe Biden and Chris Dodd barely registered, and both have dropped out of the race. Dodd, though he barely drew much attention, had shown considerable political courage in recent months. As for Clinton, I imagine she's going to soldier, but tonight's poor showing cannot help her, either with potential primary voters or the generally hostile mainstream media, going into New Hampshire. Obama's victory speech tonight (around 11:15 pm) actually managed to do what people like George Lakoff and Drew Westen have been urging of all the Democrats, which was to eschew the usual Democratic laundry list. Instead, he sketched a narrative of hope and change, in soaring rhetoric that thrilled his vast audience. It was typically vague and yet quite energizing, like him.

Overall, a great night for the Democrats, and for populist, (semi-)progressive rhetoric.

The Republicans handily selected the Baptist preacher from Hope, Arkansas, Mike Huckabee (at right, from siu.edu) but then 60% of the Republican caucus-goers were self-described "evangelicals." Huckabee received 34% of the vote, well head of his main competitor, the plasticene former Massachusetts governor and multimillionaire Mitt Romney who finished second at 25%. Ardent racist Pat Buchanan seems pretty happy about Huckabee's win ("consanguinity," you know), though the Republican hierarchy seems ready to explode. (C and I switched over to the Fox News Channel, which was like watching a cross between the Twilight Zone and the Addams Family, without the humor, and Juan Williams was blathering on about how Obama couldn't win the general election. I was waiting for him to start uncontrollaby barking "Muslim," but we switched the channel before he could get going.) Decrepit actor Fred Thompson edged media favorite John McCain, whom the talking heads are still telling us is
"in great shape"--the Washington Post's Eugene Robinson just blurted this out, almost as if he didn't know what he was saying--because he's already won New Hampshire (?), or is ahead there, or doing well, there, or something. (?) (I was sort of amazed that Thompson did this well; I know he appears on TV and so on, but still, he telescopes his lack of interest in the campaign.) Libertarian Ron Paul finished fifth, well ahead of Rudy Giuliani, whom I hope is out of the race by the end of the month. Huckabee is the Republican id in material form, so it's fitting that the Iowa caucus-goers ended the longstanding charade, and selected one of their own.

(Can someone PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE get the old tired rich conventional Washington-wisdom spewing gasbag punditocracy--the Chris Matthewses ("he [Obama] was delivered to us, from Indonesia..." and "he's almost Third World"--???), the Wolf Blitzers (Huckabee's win "helps McCain"), the Andrea Mitchellses (Clinton's gathering was "dirgelike"-?), all of them--off the air and bring in some new commentators? (Okay, Rachel Maddow was decent and actually challenged Matthews.) And it would especially great if the new commentators were unafraid of shouting down the gasbags--with compelling arguments, that is.)

Cosas Generales

I was going to type that I almost couldn't believe that the new year was underway, but then I realized I'd been waiting for it for a while. Still, there are times when I can't believe that 7 years have passed since 2001 and the turn of the millennium, which was, you'll remember, preceded by a year of frenzy when 2000 rolled around. Often I can recall the 90s, especially the years from 1995 through 2000, vividly, whereas much of the 2000s are a blur. Nevertheless, here's to what I hope is a lively and enjoyable year, personally and for all, even though some of the major economic signs, at least, appear exciting but not in a good way.

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Tomorrow promises ones of the biggest public excitements of the new year, the first (quasi-)primary in the 2008 presidential election calendar, the Iowa caucuses. (I'm glad someone on the Newshour with Jim Lehrer walked me and other viewers through these klatsches-over-kaffee-with-votes-thrown-in yesterday.) Truth be told, what a ridiculous means for selecting anything beyond wall colors for a community center. Not only is Iowa unrepresentative on so many counts in terms of the overall makeup of the US, but this system itself is both hyperdemocratic and at the same time, because so many Iowa voters might not be able to participate in it, undemocratic. It, and the whole Iowa-and-New Hampshire first mindset, should be scrapped.

I think the parties should designate 5 regions of the country, say: Northeast, Southeast, Southwest, Pacific Coast and Rocky Mountain, and Midwest, and have a monthly randomly-selected round robin set of primaries, on the same day, in at least one state from each region, with two others selected at random from different regions, for about 7-8 total. 8 would bring the primaries to June, 7 to July. The four largest states, California, Texas, the ever-shrinking New York, and Florida, would be included in the mix. Thus, January's primaries might include: Rhode Island, Georgia, Nevada, Washington, and Missouri, plus Wyoming and Maryland; or Maine, Alabama, Arizona, California, and Wisconsin, plus New Mexico and Michigan. Or something along those lines. These primaries would be one-person one-vote, open, and tallied by paper ballot (in person or via mail). Every state would eventually have an opportunity to gather the early attention, money and swag, the candidates would have to tailor a national platform more quickly, and the execrable national media might have to really do some work for a change. Will it happen? I doubt it, but one can only hope.

I'm not going to make any predictions and the whole "horse race" and money-raising focuses drive me up the wall, but I can say that I have received more emails and calls (thank the Lord they haven't turned to text messaging yet) from the Obama campaign, despite the fact that I've responded harshly both online and in yet another letter, which I sent out today. One of the most annoying email came several months from Michelle Obama, one of which carried the casual and aggressive subject line "Hey." That was it. "Hey" is supposed to make me want to support her husband, whom she recently said has "deign[ed]" to enter the race? Why, thank you. Most of the Obama missives center on campaign strategy, the evils of the other Democratic candidates, and fundraising, which are the last three things I want to hear about. In fact, I would much rather that Obama offer a concrete progressive platform for his proposed administration and address current and long-term political issues, even in a more philosophical, less specific way, while also explaining his frequent invocation of empty post-bipartisanship discourse and use of rightwing frames and rhetoric, which are going to be thrown right back at him or any of the Democrats (along with the anti-Muslim smears that are being steadily churned up). But I gather his campaign advisors don't care about this, since they are already wooing independents and some liberal Republicans, and they just may win Iowa, and New Hampshire. Or not. Oh well, either way, I'm curious to see the outcome tomorrow night. Ultimate, he, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, Bill Richardson, and the other Democrats, save Dennis Kucinich and Mike Gravel are fairly close in terms of politics and policies, and will have to be ready for the fights of their lives against the Republicans, the mainstream media, and general public ignorance, in the general campaign.

+++

I haven't commented on the ongoing electoral crisis in Kenya, but I had a strong feeling in the days leading up to the presidential election there that incumbent Mwai Kibaki was somehow going to be declared the victor despite articles and polls I'd read suggesting that opposition candidate Raila Odinga had the edge. There have been a number of rather sketchy presidential and governmental elections across the globe over the last few years, from Mexico to Nigeria to Russia to Pakistan to, yes, the USA, all of which underline the fact that in many countries rulers and ruling elites that are intent on holding on to power will readily do so under the pretext of "democracy," or some flimsy version thereof, and dare anyone to challenge them, while also seeking international sanction to legimitize and normalize the chicanery, unless their hands are forced.

I mention the US in particular, because the present administration perhaps feels it cannot simply refrain from commenting on the situation in Kenya, and yet it's really the height of irony for anyone from this gang to be uttering a word about voting irregularities, fraud, or working with the opposition. I guess Florida 2000 and Ohio 2004, along with all the shenanigans leading up to and after both elections should be completely forgotten. (Have most people simply blanked on both?) Maybe the most powerful thing would be for Condoleezza Rice simply to state publicly that the W Gang knows a thing not only about misgoverning and pitting groups against each other, but also about engineering and stealing elections, and Kibaki didn't do such a good job at it, but, like Musharraf, they've (still) got his back. It is, really, a mess. Gukira's inimitable take(s) are here.

+++

Amidst the news and ramblings in today's New York Times was this Sarah Kershaw piece, on how HIV seroconversions are falling overall in NYC, but still rising among young gay men. The rise is comparatively highest for young African-American and Latino men. Sewall Chan links to the piece in today's Times City Room Blog, and notes that Kershaw identified several important co-factors, including "higher rates of drug use among younger men, which can fuel dangerous sex practices, optimism among them that AIDS can be readily treated, and a growing stigma about H.I.V. among gays that keeps some men from revealing that they are infected." Yet another that she glosses and which a younger (in his 30s) friend mentioned to me a few years ago was a certain fatalism and belief that he was sure to seroconvert no matter what he did, that he expected to do so. He was, in a word, fated to become HIV positive. I've posted about this before, so I ask: thoughts? Responses?

RANDOM PHOTO

Crèche scene, on Houston Street, last month

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year
Bonne année
Próspero año nuevo
Próspero Ano Novo
كل عام وانتم بخير
Dewenati
Glückliches neues Jahr

Gelukkige nuwejaar

šťastlivý nový rok
Manigong bagong taon
С Новым Годом
Kung hé fat tsoi
Subho nababarsho
Arahaba tratry ny taona
Feliç Any Nou!
Kali chronia
Felix sit annus novus
Hauoli makahiki hou
สวัสดีปีใหม
Selamat tahun baru
Rogüerohory año nuévo-re
Szczęśliwego Nowego Roku
Seh heh bok mani bat uh seyo
Yeni yiliniz kutlu olsun
Chúc Mừng Nǎm Mới
Boldog Új Évet!
Nav varsh ki subhkamna

Felice anno nuovo
ש� ה טובה
Felicxan novan jaron

(Some international greetings courtesy of Freelang, AppliedLanguage.com, and UniLangWiki!)

This and That

I'm not sure if it's a particularly tenacious virus, a severe cold, exhaustion from this past quarter, or some combo of all of the above, but I'm still battling the tail end of a severe cold/the flu, which has included a sore throat, a cough that felt like someone was grating bricks in my chest, and, over the last few days, an earache (which I haven't had in years), which explains the lack of posts over the last week. I've felt too horrible to do much of anything except taking lots of medicine and drinking lots of tea, paying bills, reading books and essays I hadn't managed to finish during the quarter, venturing out only when necessary, answering necessary emails, and, for those students and friends who may have been wondering, sending off recommendations. I haven't been able to focus enough even to post some unfinished prior posts, memorializing Vèvè Clark and others (Jane Rule, Karlheinz Stockhausen, St. Clair Bourne, Oscar Peterson) who've passed, but I'll try to do so soon.

So here's a belated best wishes for the holidays--Merry Christmas and Happy Kwanzaa (Habari Gani)--to people dropping in here, and I'll try to post a timely New Year's Day message.

***

A belated congratulations to Byron and Richard, whose commitment ceremony took place on Christmas Day in Santo Domingo. Felicidades, and here's to a lifetime of love and joy between them.

***

I don't have anything to add to the spate of online commentary about the horrific assassination of Benazir Bhutto the other day beyond my sadness at this turn of events, though I do want to note one minor point: I've been noting that few online commentators, and certainly none of the mainstream media talking heads, have discussed the stated politics of her Pakistan's People's Party, which is socialist in its vision, if not in name. That is, the current right-wing administration had brokered a deal to install a socialist-leaning party in power as a way of maintaining--if not legitimizing--the authoritarian rule of dictator Pervez Busharraf Musharraf, but then I no longer doubt that the W Gang has any clue as to the ramifications of its actions. As my cousin Lowell Denny pointed out to me in an email the party's stated principles, viewable on its website, include: "Socialism is our economics." You can't be clearer than that. I'm not sure how much Bhutto intended to hold to this transparent notion, but considering Pakistan's current economic problems and widespread poverty, and considering this administration's overt hostility towards avowed socialist governments (socialist-lite, like Brazil or Chile, is much more palatable), I wonder how far Bhutto and the PPP would have gotten with even modest socialist-leaning economic "reforms" before the US began actively trying to destabilize her government. It appears their close ally wasn't going to take any chances.

Random Photo

Taser Humor + Steroids 'R Us + One Laptop Per Child

Watching TV today as a way of diverting my attention from this cough that is drilling straight up through my throat, I had to turn off CNN, after watching correspondent Fredricka Whitfield giggling like a teenager on whippets over a video clip of University of Florida student Andrew Meyer screaming out the phrase "Don't Tase me, Bro!" just before out of control security guards Tasered him this past September 17. His transgression, you may remember, was pressing that hapless boob Senator John Kerry at a university forum. Anchor T. J. Holmes had initially responded to the Meyer cry clip, which he announced had been named the year's most memorable quote by the Yale Book of Quotations, by pitying the rambling, incoherent reply Miss Teen South Carolina, Caitlin Upton, gave at this past year's Miss Teen America competition. But he quickly joined in the giggling as well. Last night, I saw WPIX anchors Lolita Lopez and Jim Watkins chuckling heartily over the same clip. Assuming these people are not all psychopaths, is watching someone being violently assaulted by cops wielding a potentially lethal electrical device that funny? Are these people that jaded and desensitized, is Tasering people that passé? Yes, I know that we're living in a time in which not only police brutality, but state-sanctioned brutality and torture, have become so normalized they barely merit public comment, let alone outrage, but still, the drollery disturbed the hell out of me. Which makes me wonder: am I being too sensitive, serious? Or is it that the detached, zombified, overpaid media bobbleheads emblematic of so much that's wrong with our media and our society?

UPDATE: Digby notes another appalling CNN moment, this time involving anchor Kyra Phillips, who indifferently described and downplayed the fact that police were attacking the people protesting the Department of Housing and Urban Development's plans to demolish several longstanding housing projects in New Orleans. She then slanted her on-air riff to openly defend the police, using tortured and disengaged language to describe the assaults on the protesters. (I should add that my great uncle has worked for HUD for many years, and is none too fond of the clown now running it, the scandal-plagued Alphonso Jackson, the other Black person in W's Cabinet of Horrors.) One of the commenters in the Digby thread points out that the New York Times's architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff recently penned an excellent piece criticizing HUD's terrible plans. Ourousoff argues that HUD is failing not only to recognize the value of the architecture it seeks to destroy and replace with shoddier, less hurricane-worthy housing in a misguided fantasy of suburbanizing the city, but also to acknowledge the symbolic and social violence of the plans as well. He writes:

The agency refuses to make distinctions between the worst of the housing projects and those, like Lafitte, that could be at least partly salvaged. Nor will it acknowledge the trauma it causes by boarding up and then eradicating entire communities in a reeling city.

In an eerie echo of the slum clearance projects of the 1960s, government officials are once again denying that these projects and communities can be salvaged through a human, incremental approach to planning. For them, only demolition will do.

The difference between then and now is what will exist once the land is cleared. If the urban renewal projects of the 1960s replaced decaying historic neighborhoods with vast warehouses for the poor, HUD’s vision would yield saccharine, suburban-style houses. And the situation is likely to get worse. The government has identified some other historically important public buildings for demolition as part of its push for privatization. Charity Hospital, an Art Deco structure built downtown in the late 1930s, was abandoned after Hurricane Katrina, and its fate is uncertain.

I cannot say it enough, but the crimes against the city and people of New Orleans embody everything that is wrong with this administration and this country we're living in.

{{{

I've passed on commenting on Major League Baseball's very flawed Mitchell Report, which despite its flawed methodology has revealed that a far wider array of major league baseball players than previously assumed were using various kinds of performance enhancement drugs, while the owners, the players union and other players, and the MLB hierarchy looked the other way. One immediate effect of this news, and subsequent reports, should be that fanatical sportswriters need to issue a collective, stentorian apology to Barry Bonds, who has been crucified in the media for denying being a roider, and then to Sammy Sosa (at right, from the Monaga Blog) who until the most recent news about pitcher Jason Grimsley's affidavit, had not been tied conclusively to any performance enhancement drug use.

The false shock and piety, which is to say, sanctimony, from people in the baseball world, including former baseball owner and public welfare maven George W., was totally predictable. What I'm still waiting for some of these folks to admit is how much baseball benefitted from the bulked up stats, and the fact that players began earning outsized salaries compared to other professions in the early 1980s if they made the major leagues and could sustain even a modest career, so there was every incentive to juice up. There still is. For hitting a ball around a field or getting it over the plate, baseball players earn more than most CEOs, who are grossly overpaid as it is. The truth is, an entire era, up through now, will have to be viewed with "enhancements" as the norm, rather than the exceptions. This new realization must be taken into account with all of the stats and records set or none of them. Before steroids there were amphetamines, which still exist, and who knows what someone is cooking up in a laboratory even as I type these words. "Clear" was out there for a while before track and field's authorities discovered it, and only they did so as quickly as they did only with the help of whistleblowers. So long as the financial incentives exist to cheat, people will do so. My question is, who really believes that baseball is the only sport where this is a serious problem? What about the NFL, the NBA, the NHL, and every other sport where chemical enhancement gives athletes an edge? Could the Beijing Olympics possibly be clean? I doubt it.

Which leads me to this link, from the Dallas Morning News: "More professionals, students using brain performance enhancing drugs." Business people, musicians, professional gamers, students...it's definitely not just pro athletes, but our society in general that needs to undergo more thorough self-analysis and critique....

}}}

Yesterday brought a pleasant surprise: an XO computer arrived in the mail, though I'd hardly expected to see it anytime soon. The computer is the result of my participation in the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) program, the brainchild of visionary MIT professor and Media Laboratory founder and former head Nicholas Negroponte, who decided to develop affordable, networkable computers to empower children in the developing world. The original prototype, which I blogged about here two years ago, has been modified to some extent, but the model I received is a robust, fully loaded little portable machine containing an easy-to-figure, Graphical User Interface (GUI) atop a Linux platform. The software includes a browser, a writing program, several layers of music-making software (which I sampled right away), a recording studio with a camera (for photos, videos and audio--that's me, at left, on screen, photographing myself photographing myself), lots of games, a basic programming tutorial, and the means for children to network with others very easily, either in class or outside it. In fact, I could see children getting started on these machines swiftly and learning not only to write, but to create group projects, make music and visual art projects, create mathematical and statistical programs, write software programs, and even learn to repair their computers and troubleshoot hardware problems.

The XO has great Wifi capability (in fact, its literature say it's a fulltime wireless router), and after C added its MAC address to the base stations here, I was on the Net...in less than 5 minutes. It also easily links to local networks and fosters their creation. It has ports for a microphone (in), headphones (out), and USB-connective devices, a slot for memory upgrades, no harddrive, and only two internal cables--and it saves all projects unless you delete them. The computer's CPU suspends its CPU operation selective, allowing it amazing power savings, or about 1/10th of what a standard laptop consumes. This aspect of the computer mirrors its battery, which lasts between 6-8 hours with average use and can be recharged using a variable energy powercord, as well as via a crank or a solar or wind-powered source, to facilitate use in the many countries where electricity is a premium. The screen rotates so that it can function as an e-book, and the overall machine is compact enough that it can fit in a backpack and appears to be fairly robust, though real world use will probably assist its manufacturers in making it even more so. The only drawback I can see so far is the tiny keyboard, which is perfect for children but a challenge for anyone with larger fingers--but that's the point, this is a computer for children, though I can foresee someone down the road creating something along these lines, affordable and very robust, for adults as well. I certainly hope someone does, because the XO is a sweet little machine.

All in all I think Negroponte's idea was a remarkable one, and I'm very interested to see how the OLPC program unfolds. So far, from what I can tell, it has worked out pretty well where it's been implemented. The computers have been piloted in Nigeria, Brazil, Thailand, Peru, Uruguay, and India, and I sincerely hope that they can be offered to children in many more countries. Here's a quote from one child in Nigeria:

“I use my computer very carefully so that it will not spoil. I use it to type, I use it to write, I use it to draw, I use it to play games... I'm using my computer at home to type assignments.” — T. (Primary 4), Galadima School, Abuja, Nigeria

If you'd like to learn more, you can click on the link above, and if you think you'd like to contribute to the program, donate a computer or volunteer your time and services, click here. If you know of people who write open source, educationally-oriented software that might children can use, please urge them to contact OPLC as well.×

Fin del semestre + Travels + Picano as Publisher

Nearly a week has elapsed, but this past Monday was E-Day, as in End of Quarter Day! Tonight I'm sitting at my computer, nursing a chest cold that I picked up while on vacation--a geographical but not mental and physical vacation, that is, because I was, naturally, reading student work and addressing administrative issues--but even a persistent runny nose and hacking cough can't diminish my feeling of relief that this quarter is finally, finally over. Finally. Over. The daze lingers but the days, thankfully do not. As is always the case, the classes themselves, and the students, were a pleasure; it was clear to me that by the end of the quarter the introductory students were conversant in the principles of good fiction writing and their final submissions demonstrated this, the advanced sequence students were really hitting their stride with their second stories, and many of the revisions were superb; and the graduate students produced submissions that were among the strongest I've seen at that level. The two graduate fiction students with whom I've been working closely are really advancing, and the doctoral student on whose committee I sit produced a thesis chapter that is much closer to completion than before. In terms of the classes themselves, I believe all three proceeded pretty well, I think, though I often felt mentally exhausted from the sheer amount of reading at what can only be described as an insane pace. A colleague once suggested that students should learn to and be encouraged to read slowly, a suggestion which I strongly agree with, though I see the reality of our society, and particularly the high-powered sectors in which most of them hope to operate, demanding that they--and we--be able to assimilate and process information, in textual and other forms, at a dizzying pace. ("I want to be a machine."--Andy Warhol) If you cannot keep up.... But I did, and though I am still feeling a bit of mental whiplash, I'm glad to have had to the opportunity to work with these three sets of students. I hope to see some of the intro students as majors down the road, and I am looking forward to continuing on with the advanced sequence students into the new year, when I'll hand them off to my colleague who teaches the novella-reading and writing portion of the course. Before then we'll be reading Haruki Murakami and Aimee Bender stories (perhaps with stories by Edward P. Jones, William Faulkner, and Alice Munro in the mix), and I personally will try to resume work on several different projects that I had to shutter when I simply could not muster the brainpower to look at them. The novel, stories, a new book of poetry, translations, and several talks I'm supposed to be giving will need attention pronto. But that's for then; for now, finally....

***

We did get away, leaving the snow and ice of Chicago (at left) and the New York area for a very mild few days of Caribbean December (at right). I was surprised at how breezy it was, because C and I have traveled to the tropics during the winter months and wished we'd brought along a portable air conditioner. But this time, after the luases and loas and orishas and saints and every other intercessor drove Hurricane Olga out in a period of days, our good friend Victor and we were able to spend a little time sightseeing and relaxing and catching up with old and new friends, not least among them Anthony Montgomery, whose birthday, and birthday celebration, marvelously fell just before we left. It was a joy spending time with him, as always, and I will say this again: he is one of the best oral storytellers I have ever come across. Child know he need to have his own TV show!

We also got to spend time with Bernard, who joined us on an ear-popping trip up to Bonao, in the south Cibao valley province of Monseñor Nouel, where our wonderful and absolutely adorable tourguide, Henry Acosta (below, left, at the Balneario--click on the photo to see Henry in his full glory), recommended by Anthony, took us on a scenic tour of the vibrant, maze-like little city and environs, which included a riverside disco, the Disco Balneario "El Camellon" (though during the day, so though we heard and were breathing to the beat of Omega's infectious "Si no me amas" [*Note: Do not listen to this song if you do not want to become spellbound] by the time we got there we didn't fit in a dance) and a youth boxing match. (Anyone who goes to the Dominican Republic--or Brazil or anywhere else--and doesn't venture outside the resorts is really missing out in a huge way.) I even stuck my hand in the water, though I--none of us--was ready to "take a bath" (as Henry described it) in what looked like perfect rapids for whitewater rafting. Henry assured us, however, that he, Anthony, photographer Paul Culver, and a host of other beauties had marched 10 kms up the river and crisscrossed it for the purposes of art, but we were perfectly willing to experience his and Anthony's riverine experiences vicariously.

I did not keep a journal during the trip or even post anything here (I started to see online radesheets in quadruplicate and kept my screen viewing to a minimum), so at the risk of leaving out someone, let me say that it was fun once again see and to hang out with Byron, Richard, Patricio, José, Kenny, Gerard, Ruddy, Amauri, and Ruskin, and meet Edward, Merrick, Vicky, Michael, Mike, Natja, David, Rafael, Rey, Johane (more on her soon), and Terrance, a fellow writer from the US. I even talked up the university's graduate writing program. And it was truly exciting to finally drive a car in another country, which I've never done (is that true?--no, not even Canada or Mexico), though I was glad that C was behind the wheel when the ominous sounds kept issuing from the area of the rear wheels and the axle, because I knew he would be able to keep us moving forward at just the right speed so that the SUV would not disintegrate in the middle of the carretera and we'd get to the airport on time.

Y, por los luases, we did!

***

As I said, I was reading student work intently through Monday, so for lighter reading I picked up Felice Picano's history-cum-memoir, Sex and Art in Greenwich Village: Gay Literary Life After Stonewall (Carroll & Graf, 2007) just before we left, and finished it during the trip. It's a thorough, entertaining review of one of the most important segments of the gay literary scene, and by extension, of the development of LGBT mainstream culture, from the late 1960s through the early years of the AIDS pandemic, which killed off a number of the figures in the book and marked both an end-point and a beginning, as the mainstreaming of LGBT culture was rapidly underway. Picano was a noteworthy and rising young author and a member of the Violet Quill writers group--which included Edmund White, Robert Ferro, Michael Grumley, Christopher Cox, Andrew Holleran, and George Whitmore--when he decided to start SeaHorse Press in 1977. It was, according to Picano, the second "gay press" after Winston Leyland's Gay Sunshine Press--I'm assuming he meant gay-male-owned and operated--and it and its two brother presses, which banded together to become Gay Presses of New York, published not only fiction, but poetry, essays, and works in other genres over the years, including poetry and fiction by Picano, as well the first books of Dennis Cooper and Brad Gooch, the poems of Rudy Kikel and Gavin Dillard, Robert Glück's "new narrative" landmark Jack the Modernist, the only novel of Guy Hocquenghem's to have been translated into English, the then-little known Harvey Fierstein's bestselling Torch Song Trilogy, two groundbreaking lesbian anthologies, and the hilarious anti-clone The Butch Manual.

Picano's narrative is as much a social history as a memoir. With a liberal and generous touch, he describes many of intersecting queer literary and social narratives of that era, though his particular network consisted, at least from what this book suggests and from other things I've read about it, of a primarily middle and upper-middle-class, educated and professional, 20-to-40-something, urban (or "metronormative") white male cohort. Picano does note his own more nuanced class origins and his strong connections with lesbians, yet he often reads his social group as "the gays" of that era, and, more troublingly, voices what sounded to me like a somewhat skewed understanding of the historical trajectory of radical lesbianism and lesbian separatism, but then I'm not an expert on LGBT or gender studies and perhaps I have the chronologies and figures wrong. His rendering of Adrienne Rich's positions and work, however, do seem problematic. Picano does note in a few places the monocultural and monocolor aspects of the world in which he ran, but too often it's taken as a given; gay equals white and male of a certain class. Yet he also situates his story within the more fluid context of that era's particular historical moment, which itself offered spaces of fluidity and exchange, in terms of race, ethnicity, gender, and class, particularly around sex (as others such as Samuel Delany, never once mentioned in this book, have detailed elsewhere), more so than what immediately followed or what passes for the LGBT mainstream today. Still, the absence of almost any significant queer writers of color in the narrative speaks volumes, and led me to appreciate even more some of the women's presses that did publish writers of color, Barbara Smith's, Gloria Anzaldua's and Cherrie Moraga's pioneering efforts, and Sasha Alyson, who, for whatever the reasons and whatever one may say about his press and its aesthetics, was by the mid-to-late 1980s publishing books like the invaluable anthologies Black Men and White Men Together, In the Life, Brother to Brother, as well as individual works by authors from Steven Corbin to James Earl Hardy. I also remembered Robert Ferro's how encouraging Robert Ferro, who makes several appearances in Picano's book, was to me the one time I met him, not concerning my desire to become a writer--I hadn't completed more than a few verse or a short story draft since college at that point--and as a potential publisher, a career I haven't taken up, though I am glad dynamic visionaries like Lisa Moore and Renee Gladman have.

Along the way Picano dishes quite a bit, providing delicious anecdotes about the dottiness of Gore Vidal, whose Myra Breckinridge nearly appeared under a GPNY imprint; how he managed to publish Charles Henri Ford's famous early co-written novel, which allows him divagations on the emotional and financial vicissitudes of gay figures from earlier eras; his pas de deux with James Purdy, which did not pan out; his near-miss with one of my favorite poets, the charming, sadly overlooked Edward Field; and his contretemps with John Preston, who considered Picano and his gilded cohort as gay literature establishment (they were and are), among others. One of the best stories revolves around Harvey Fierstein, who now receives routine voice work but whose bass rasp, in his early onstage (and later onscreen) appearances, most certainly sent a lightning bolt through viewers. Among the many new and fascinating tidbits I picked up was how Richard Schechner, whom I'd worked with closely at NYU during my days at the Faculty Resource Network, actually came to New York; I'd had no idea of The Drama Review's peripatetic history, or the extent of Schechner's bravado, which he demonstrated when he and a handful of colleagues led a revolt against Tulane's conservatism and quit, bound for New York, leaving that southern institution bereft of its best theater and performance scholars, and endowing the City with some of the liveliest young minds in the field, with repercussions for decades to come.

The easy and frequent sex of the title suffuses the story, as Picano details the square-dance of boyfriends and partners that many of the figures he's writing about, including himself, enjoyed, but what he makes clear is that sex was not just a means of pleasure, but an important step in developing social bonds that fostered the blossoming of what is now a historical fact, early post-Stonewall gay life, and especially its artistic triumphs. Art, in fact, was the aim of so many of these (mostly) male lovers, and one of the saddest and most tragic aspects of the story, which I've noted on this blog in the past when speaking about some of the Other Countries writers, or heroes of mine like Melvin Dixon, was how AIDS stilled their eyes and hands and dreams prematurely. A deep river of suffering and sorrow runs beneath this text, though Picano takes pains, it seems to me, not to belabor the grieving or the losses. He also doesn't hold back on discussing the pernicious homophobia and sexism that is now sometimes swept under the rug even by LGBT spokespeople who are too callow, indifferent or ignorant of fairly recent history. One frequent target is the mainstream media, particular the New York Times, which I can recall suffered several fainting spells before it could even print the word "gay" without qualification, yet now publishes same-sex wedding announcements as readily as all the straight bourgeoisie's banns. The Gray Gentleman comes out in an unflattering light. But then that's hardly a surprise these days, especially on the political front.

Overall, I would recommend the book to anyone who's interested in understanding how "gay" literature, or at least a good portion of it, became mainstream, now just another niche for the publishing industry, another shelf for the bookselling conglomerates, but more importantly, for anyone who's interested in a good story about a particularly fascinating moment in New York history and (gay) American culture.

Support the Writers' Strike + James Watson, Nobelist, Octaroon

I rarely am watching TV these days, save for The Amazing Race and Project Runway, but I do support the Writers Guild of America strike. If you support the writers, here's a great way (from Firedoglake) to demonstrate it: you can click on the link and let the producers of your favorite shows (or just all the shows, which would be even better) know that you want them to stop digging in and negotiate better terms with the writers. All the other staff people who're being laid off or fired will also appreciate the gesture. Ah, the Internets!


&&&

One of the first stories I saw this morning made me fall out of my chair. But of course Nobel Laureate and confirmed sexist and racist boor James Watson's genome would reveal that, in fact, his ancestry contained more than 1/6th African heritage (16%), meaning that short of one Black great-grandparent, there was some mixing of various sorts along the line, and that he has 16 times more genetic material than "most people" of European descent (though I wonder if this changes for people from the Mediterranean, for example, or those many British descendents of the urban Blacks of the 16th-19th centuries, who were at least numerous enough that Elizabeth I called twice, I believe, for them to be expelled).

But then anyone who reads more than a little on how these texts works as well as a little US history knows that Watson isn't the only one with more direct African ancestry than he thinks. Adrian M. S. Piper made this point around two decades ago, even incorporating it into a performance piece that caused a stir. Let me be clear that I'm not suggesting that Watson is Black or anything of that sort, "one-drop" rule (which in any case has always been more complicated than it's popularly portrayed) be damned, just that it's about as fitting an irony as one could envision. Also of interest are the genetic risk percentages his genome shows.

Watson's offensive comments from earlier this year meet their match, however, in the ignorance-laden sewer of comments after the Times UK article, and are the kind of discourse that regularly turns up in comment sections, and which underlines that the vast majority of us are lot less intelligent than we might care to admit.

Recent Passings (Vèvè Clark / Jane Rule / Karlheinz Stockhausen)

There've have been some notable passings in the last month. Just the other day came the news that Vèvè A. Clark, an important figure in African-American and African Diasporic literary studies, had passed away at the age of 62. As I commented on the CC listserve, Clark's death marks yet another loss of an important Black female scholar, particularly among the group that entered the academy and began teaching, producting landmark scholarship, and training students and developing and running programs from the late 1970s through the early 1990s. After receiving her doctorate at the University of California, Berkeley Clark had taught at Tufts before returning to teach in the Bay Area, and played a central role in the creation of the first PhD program in African Diasporic studies.

In 1991 she coined the phrase "Diasporic literacy" and developed the ideas behind it to describe a mode of analysis that looked beyond historicism and crosscultural contextualization to the multilayered understandings and valences that exist in Diasporic texts and productions. During my two years in Charlottesville I worked periodically--via email, letter and sometimes telephone--with Clark, and she was always unfailingly helpful, polite and brilliant. Berkeley and the world of letters have lost a major figure.

I also saw that Jane Rule, the pioneering Canadian lesbian writer and activist, passed away at the age of 76 late last month. A native of Plainfield, New Jersey, she was educated at Mills College, and subsequently immigrated to Vancouver, British Columbia, the province in which she lived for the rest of her life. I wish I could say that I've read her work, but I haven't. I do know, though, that she was the author of numerous works of fiction and essays, including Desert of the Heart, which I recall in its movie form, as Desert Hearts in 1985. As a film, it

The other day brought the news that legendarily notorious composer Karlheinz Stockhausen passed away, at the age of 79. Stockhausen was one of the leading figures in the mid-20th century art musical avant-garde, alongside the truly enfant terrible Pierre Boulez, and was also a close associate of a number of other important composers of that era, including John Cage. Stockhausen pioneered works in a series of styles, from total serialism, electronic and aleatory composition to renovations of medieval chant, culminating in a monumental series of operas, Licht, in the 1970s. Stockhausen's influence (like that of other 20th century musical experimentalists such as Claude Debussy, Arnold Schoenberg, Igor Stravinsky, and Bela Bartók), among a wide range of musicians outside the art music sphere, but particularly rock & roll, jazz and ambient musicians, was considerable and continues on today.

Over the years he grew increasingly spacy--as in, he strongly believed that his music was inspired by stars, that he himself had lived previous lives, and so forth, and his notorious detachment, however, perhaps reached its apogee when he proclaimed, in an outrageous but not atypical for him fusion of Nietzschean-Heideggerian mania, the 9/11 World Trade Center and Pentagon mass murder attacks as "the greatest work of art ever." He did later apologize. Paul Griffiths' fairly comprehensive New York Times review, with its somewhat vague description of Stockhausen's domestic situation at the end of his life (his menage à beaucoup), and a subsequent backhanded personal slap, is here. He is probably devising an ingenious piece of music from whichever plane of existence or non-existence he finds himself on now.