“Uh-oh, the second-graders have had enough,” my good friend Marci said one day during our fourth grade history class. I followed Marci’s gaze out the window where a jumble of children were spilling through the side door onto the east lawn. Laughing, clapping, chattering, some wandering aimless smiling holding their arms up to the sunshine, some linking hands and singing songs. Several children hoisted picket signs, too far away to read.

Our entire history class went over to the windows. The teacher ordered us back to our seats and threatened us with tired old penalties to no effect.

Marci and I had been staring mindless at a worksheet on which we were supposed to record the dates of European “explorers” of North and South America for the third time in as many years. The first thing Marci and I did was cross out the word “explorers” and replace it with “invaders.” Then we doodled.

On the bus the past few weeks this fall, we had heard rumors about the blowout. The second-graders were really outraged. It was a small elementary school and usually each grade was split up into two classrooms but because of budget cuts and space limitations, this year all the second-graders had been jammed into a single classroom – all thirty-five of them. Well, no longer. Some put down blankets on the lawn which they sprawled upon. Others gathered in small groups and talked. Still others played and raced around.

Soon the second grade teacher, Mrs. Fowler arrived on the scene. She was mostly easy going but would crack the whip when things got out of hand. Apparently there was no stopping what the second graders had decided to do today. Mrs. Fowler lived on a farm with apple trees and a cider press and she took us there one day when the apples were being pressed. The way I remember it, onto this big wooden press they threw all the apples plus some leaves and little sticks that got caught up, and you had to figure worms and all, and then squash! it all got mashed in the press and out came this really dark juice, and we drank it, delicious, but you had to wonder wasn’t it a little gross? With the worms and all, I mean. It was the best tasting though. I had seconds.

Next on the scene was the Principal. We didn’t much care for him. The way I figured it, things were basically in control until he arrived. Now a mess was to be expected. Well, there is opportunity in confusion and sometimes you don’t even have to create the uproar yourself – you’re simply handed gifts. “Show time, Marse,” I said and tugged on her ponytail because sometimes you have to make Marci mad to get her to do anything, you have to get her blood flowing, the juices and stuff, and when you get her mad she doesn’t really think too clearly, or maybe the opposite, or maybe she thinks with her blood and bones for a change, and you can make her feel guilty about not being a true-good pal and all, and that’s basically what gets Marci in gear. Blame it on her parents, I say. I figured it was my job to give Marci a life, even if it meant being somewhat manipulative. I mean, whatever works when the time is right. Fight fire with fire. I can’t help it if people think I’m a troublemaker.

We went outside. Our teacher didn’t notice since he was at the window along with our fellow fourth-graders gawking at the astounding sight of the second-graders occupying the lawn.

“Wouldn’t it be great if we had a brother or sister in second grade?” I said to Marci.

“But we don’t,” Marci replied with that sensible part of herself that can really get on your nerves.

I looked at her.

“Well, we don’t.”

“We can adopt,” I said. But the more I thought about it, the more I respected Marci’s astute insight. The Overlord, I mean, Principal, and also Mrs. Fowler would know right away that Marci and I (especially yours truly) were not there to defend any particular blood sibling. So I had to think. We walked outside and I swung around the flagpole and waved to our history class and to our teacher behind the windows and we traipsed across the lawn toward the commotion. “What about cousins?” The idea came to me in a flash. “I bet we’ve got cousins in the second grade. Maybe cousins we don’t even know about.”

“I doubt it,” Marci said, and she gave me The Look.

The thing about The Look is that you don’t have to see it if you have a mind not to. I walked right up to the closest child holding a protest sign that read – “Whose school? Our school!” 

“You know it,” I said to the girl. “What’s your name?”

“Evie.” She glanced uncertainly at Marci and me. “Are you with us?” she asked.

“All the way and back, Jack. Put it there, Evie.” I held out my hand. The girl got the idea and we shook – she hung in there while I worked her young paw through five quick grips. “My name is Maxine and you can call me Max. Do you know who that makes me, Evie? I’m your cousin.” I winked at Marci, who attempted to pierce me with her eyes. I was having none of it. Evie blinked, and I moved on.

Marci followed. We milled among the children who were milling among each other. Some were sitting on the grass, picking it and throwing it around. Some were holding flowers. I pointed out these latter types to Marci – “Future artists or future dutiful young parents,” I told her. “You can’t quite tell at this early stage.” This was just one of many life lessons I kindly offered Marci on a regular basis, free of charge. I had no intention whatsoever of becoming a stodgy old teacher but did feel obliged to administer great learnings as often as possible to all ears everywhere. Mostly though I simply contented myself with enlightening The Marse.

I kneeled down amid the young flower children and clenched my hand in a fist holding an imaginary microphone close to the mouth of a respectable – smoothly ironed and tucked in – young boy and I inquired in my most polished reporter’s voice, “Tell me, young sir, what you and all these other fine children are protesting outside Clearview Elementary this grand day?”

The boy leaned forward and bit my hand. Fortunately he didn’t break the skin, or leave slobber. I chalked up his barbaric behavior to an infection he must have gotten from the grim spirit that haunts these grounds and I took care to hold the microphone further away from his face.

“Would you like to comment or not?”

“Too crowded,” the boy said. “Students have rights too.”

I nodded professionally and faced the camera that Marci failed to pretend she was holding. I spoke into the microphone to her anyway, explaining the overall situation, the layout of the school and grounds, including the precise location of the spotty playground, the infamous “roadkill cafeteria,” the second grade classroom, and so on. I also commented on the marital and family status of Mrs. Fowler, along with the as-expected poor handling of the overall educational environment by the too perky and in turn too dreary and most of all too predictable Principal – the Overlord, Mr. Waller.

Marci and I walked over to Mrs. Fowler who was patiently standing there as if waiting for a bus, as if she did not quite know when to expect it, as if she was not inclined to get too agitated trying to anticipate its arrival. I felt a surge of empathy, compassion even, and so let the microphone and reporter’s role drop. “Mrs. Fowler, I never thanked you for taking us to your apple cider press even though I think your husband got some worms in there but it was still good. Quite tasty. I know I’ll always remember, and never forget.  So, do you think the second-graders will take over the school by sundown?”

Mrs. Fowler hinted at a smile – you have to watch them more closely when they do that – and she put her hand on my shoulder. “Maxine…” She shook her head reproachfully, possibly because she knew I would appreciate a bit of well-placed admonishment, “aren’t you missing an important class right now?” Everything was important with Mrs. Fowler. An important point. An important test or quiz even. Important instructions, manners, behaviors. Endlessly telling us how important we all were too, as people. I don’t mean to be unkind.

Sure enough Principal Waller came right over when he saw me standing there and he started using the language I detest: “Young lady – ”

Mrs. Fowler watched me boil up red. She intervened – “Mr. Waller, perhaps you remember Maxine. Maxine Smith. I was just telling Maxine how important it is that she be getting back to class right now.”

“Young lady – ”

Ever notice how seldom adults ever really listen to one another, or, even to their own words? I mean, listen.

“I’m here to defend my cousins,” I interrupted the Principal. “I’m here – and Marse is too – ” I looked around for Marci. She had drifted over to the edge of the whole group where she squatted down trying to pass for a second-grader. I could not believe my eyes and made a mental note to get back to Marci with some quick and pointed tutelage. Meanwhile, the Overlord needed to be dealt with. “And we are here to tell you, Mister Principal Waller, that this school is our school too and we have plenty of rights like anyone else. Just ask my cousins here.” I swept my arm behind me, gesturing to all the second-graders.

Principal Waller shook his finger at me. “Back to class, young miss, or into my office.”

“I choose to remain with my cousins,” I told him. “In solidarity. Do you know what that means? My dad told me one day exactly – ”

“I’m talking about a suspension or worse, young miss. I’m warning you.”

“People are led by spirit alone,” I told the Principal. “By force they are plunged into – ”

“Maxine.” Mrs. Fowler again. “Don’t you think it important that we continue this discussion in a more suitable time and place?”

“Now is the important time and this is the place,” I proclaimed, “and my cousins – ”

The Principal grabbed my arm and hoisted me up so my shoulder was half-pulled out of its socket and he turned to drag me toward the school building. Then Mrs. Fowler grabbed my other arm, to help of course, but I was stretched and twisted between them. I looked for Marci among the mass of second-graders who were now staring wide-eyed and open-mouthed at the example of which I was being made. Meanwhile, my arm. Evie put a hand to her lips, and the picket sign drooped by her side.

“Let go! Mr. Waller! Let go! Mr. Waller! Let go!” Marci. Right beside me now, at last. Screaming, jumping at the Principal, batting at him until finally he released me all at once but not before half-lifting me off the ground as Mrs. Fowler pulled and lost her grip and I fell hard on the grass in front of the school. Splayed.

Marci knelt beside me, placing one hand protectively on my forehead and pointing back up at the Principal with the other. “My parents always taught me to respect people,” she told Mr. Waller angrily. “You need to respect people like my parents do.” Mr. Waller froze in place. It was not lost on anyone at that moment that Marci happened to be the daughter of the Superintendent of the entire school district.

So you see, dear and gentle reader, I choose my friends wisely.

And that’s what friends are for. Maybe they need a bit of educating is all, if not schooling exactly, a little wising up to the warped wicked wrathful ways of the world, but when push comes to shove, they are there for you. I beamed at Marci, Loyal Pal, Good Friend, Superintendent’s Daughter.

Then Marci began to wrinkle, like she was going to cry. I held her hand and got up and put my arms around her and hugged her close. “It’s just school,” I told her. “It’s just this naughty old school all over and over again.” Arm and arm we walked across the lawn toward the flagpole – yes, abandoning my cousins in the breach, I know, and I regretted it – but, at the moment, Marse needed me more.

It would have been nice to sit down in the shade somewhere on the lawn – out of sight of the day’s troubles. Instead I figured we would go inside, get a drink of water and then, I suppose, return to history class where we might blend in unobtrusively with everyone else and just keep to ourselves for awhile. But sight of all sights! Wonder of all wonders! Rousing spectacle of all spectacles! From beyond the flagpole rushing out of school spilled our entire fourth grade history class! Half the class streamed toward Marci and me. The others poured directly toward the Principal.

Now this was History. Something worth studying at long last. Everyone going for the highest grade, full speed, all together.

I stopped there on the spot. Marci did too, blinking at the sight. We smiled and waved to everyone running forth and they waved and kept coming and you could feel everyone’s spirits rise, not just our own class but the whole school, the second graders on the lawn and even those in the rooms who would find out later the whole story and wonder at it all.

The bright sun shone. The blue sky beamed.

“Marci, you and me, we did it!” Victory! Freedom! I could taste it in the air.

“What did we do?”

Okay, so maybe she still had a thing or two to learn.

I kissed her on the cheek. She kissed me back. And we were engulfed by the class.

 

The Street — by Ann Petry

Ann Petry’s 1946 novel, The Street, is a protest novel—muckraking at its best, with race and racial equity at its heart….

The Fountain at the Centre of the World — Robert Newman

This, the third novel by Robert Newman, comedian and activist, is that rarest of things: an explicitly political, indeed openly partisan novel that doesn’t make you cringe.

An adventure and misadventure story set against the background of capitalist globalisation and the struggle against it, The Fountain at the Centre of the World is, above all else, a book, the humanity of whose central characters, rapidly engage the reader. If one of the signs of a good book is that, soon after meeting the characters, you care deeply about what happens to them, then this is a very good book indeed. The challenges faced by Daniel in the search for his father, challenges which he faces on two continents and in three alien cultures, are soon those of the reader. The final chapters assault senses and emotions equally as a reunion, amidst the chaos of the Seattle protests of 1999, appears possible at last.

Newman has refused to reduce his protagonists to cartoon heroes and villains whilst making no pretence at objectivity or detachment. We are not subjected to any attempt to devalue the actions of the characters through exposing their deep psychological flaws, a popular device used by cynical hacks to explain the motivations of revolutionaries. Values are at work here and they are the values of people who believe not just that another world is possible, but that another way achieving it, beyond NGOs, Union bureaucracies and progressive politicians, is possible too. A few negatives though. Sometimes the book appears to have reached the shelves in note form, like the author was pushed for time or was writing a screenplay. And in a book that is so obviously meticulously researched and, therefor convincing, it’s a pity the Mexican Frente Autentico Trabajo is described as “anarcho-syndicalist”. It isn’t. Other than these criticisms (the latter one that only an anarcho-trainspotter could make!), this is a remarkable book….

From the Literary Saloon

Max Barry — social satire

Abuja, Nigeria — literary center

I think the purported effectiveness of much of the literature of the past is overplayed here – though not the potential of liberation literature.

The Ink Is Soiled 

by Nayantara Sahgal

Considering the dangers and challenges we face within our own borders, and the changes we need to bring about in our society, we are fortunate that we have politically conscious novelists and poets among us, for politics, like everything else, is the material of fiction and poetry, as it is the material of all art. We would not have been stirred by some of the tragedies and traumas of the twentieth century but for the plays of Bertolt Brecht, Arthur Miller and Samuel Beckett, and the art of Picasso, not to mention many other works of European, American and Latin American fiction. The artist is a political animal, more so when the line between public events and private life disappears and vast numbers have to face the terrible consequences of public events in their private lives. Art cannot float in a void. It relates to, and is acutely sensitive to its environment.

Emily Carr

by Judy Stoffman

Book by Ishmael Beah 

by Nahal Toosi

The nightmares won’t stop. In one, fighters chase him with a gun. In another, he watches a person get mutilated. In a third, someone is hacking his neck with a machete. Yet, years after he left the life of a child soldier in Sierra Leone, Ishmael Beah has found a reason for hope in his vivid nocturnal visions: He never dies.

“It almost makes me feel like, you know, that this whole thing will never really get me,” Beah says, “that I think I have some sort of inner strength that’s able to outlive everything.”

Beah is a thin, wiry 26-year-old of medium height with a smile as bright as the sun. He loves Shakespeare and hip-hop and lives in a Brooklyn apartment filled with classic novels and African art. It’s hard to believe he was once a drugged-up, rifle-toting boy soldier who sliced men’s throats.

In his new memoir, it’s clear Beah is still coming to grips with that past life. “A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier” tells the tale of the brutal civil war that debilitated Sierra Leone during the 1990s through the eyes of a child not old enough to understand the politics, yet old enough to kill.

Beah’s book, now being promoted by Starbucks, traces what the young Sierra Leonean went through when the civil war first touched his life at age 12, and how he struggled to regain his humanity after years of killing.

When the war finally reached his region, Beah found himself separated from his parents and forced to travel with other young boys, seeking refuge in jungles and villages while trying to outpace rebel fighters who lacked any mercy. On dusty roads, sometimes wearing shoes, sometimes without, the children relied on another to stay alive.

They often could not rely on adults. In the disorient of war, people had lost their trust — even in children.

Eventually, Beah and his friends were cornered into taking up arms and joining in the fighting. Government soldiers handed him an AK-47 and trained him to kill. By that time, Beah had learned that much of his family, including his parents and siblings, had died.

“Visualize the enemy, the rebels who killed your parents, your family and those who are responsible for everything that has happened to you,” the older soldiers would tell their young trainees.

“I could not put this book down — it was just an incredible story,” said Ken Lombard, president of Starbucks Entertainment, which picked Beah’s book as the second in a series to promote. The company’s first book was Mitch Albom’s “For One More Day,” which sold 92,000 copies through the coffee chain, a sum Starbucks hopes Beah’s book can surpass.

Published by Sarah Crichton Books/Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, “A Long Way Gone” is also being sold in bookstores and at online outlets such as Barnesandnoble.com and Amazon.com. Starbucks is selling the book for the cover price of $22, donating $2 a book to a UNICEF fund.

But the book might be a tough sell. Although it includes uplifting moments (such as how American rap songs sometimes saved the children’s lives) much of it is understandably somber.

One of the saddest notes was sounded by Beah’s young friend and traveling companion, Saidu. Saidu didn’t die from a direct war wound. He just didn’t wake up one day.

“Every time people come at us with the intention of killing us, I close my eyes and wait for death,” Saidu had told his friends. “Even though I am still alive I feel like each time I accept death, part of me dies. Very soon, I will completely die and all that will be left is my empty body walking with you. It will be quieter than I am.”

Beah was one of the fortunate ones.

After three years of fighting for government-backed forces, he found himself in a rehabilitation center for child soldiers. It was hard to get the drugs out of his system. It was even harder to rid himself of the anger.

At the center, no matter what havoc the children caused, staff members kept repeating, “It’s not your fault!” At the time, Beah hated hearing the mantra, but he has eventually grown to accept it.

Today, he declines to put a number on how many people he killed, saying it might serve to glorify horrendous actions. He says he feels compassion for the rebels he battled in the jungles.

“I realized they were just like us,” he says. “Most of the people who were in there, especially the young ones, had been brainwashed.”

It’s not just nightmares that have lingered in Beah’s life. It’s the little survival instincts, like checking for possible exits in every room, or trying to judge people’s character in an instant.

Good? Bad? Fight? Flight?

“Whenever I travel, like whenever I leave, I still have this fear that I will not come back, or that as soon as I leave a place, the people that I love or the people that I care about there, I will not see them again,” Beah says.

He still feels guilty, but tries to control his emotions. “I think if I take on the idea, fully, of being guilty and guilty and guilty, that will itself handicap me,” he says. As for the guilt that remains, he says: “I think it’s a small price to pay to stay alive. A lot of people did not.”

After leaving the rehabilitation center, Beah lived for a while with his uncle’s family, and was chosen to visit the United Nations for a conference for about children in war.

Later, when the situation in Sierra Leone deteriorated again, friends helped him get out and back to New York. He was 17 at the time. He went on to graduate from Oberlin College, where he studied political science. During those years, he started writing the memoir.

“When I was writing the book it was very difficult,” Beah says. “I was sad all the time. I felt physically exhausted by the sadness. I got to face all the things that I was capable of doing.”

At the same time, “the whole process was … therapeutic because I got to face all of these things. I got a chance to reconcile with certain things.”

Sierra Leone emerged from the 11-year war in 2002. Beah visited the country last year, and was dispirited to see how little had changed. There’s still a great deal to rebuild and tremendous poverty. Beah says the political corruption worries him most, because it’s often a prelude to more conflict.

Through various organizations, Beah promotes the message that child soldiers need help, and that they can regain their humanity, though it won’t be easy.

“The process of recovering from a war, recovering from having lived through a war … it’s not a one-two-three step,” he says. “It’s a process that you have to do for life.”

He’s somewhat awed by the attention brought on by his harrowing memoir. He can barely keep up with his schedule, and had to leave a job as a tour guide at an art museum to prepare for a book tour through Starbucks. He even appeared on “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart.”

He sees a novel in his future. Maybe a law degree. Perhaps a home in Sierra Leone.

And probably more nightmares.

Tobacco and Hollywood

by Ralph Nader 

According to researchers at the University of California San Francisco
Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education, smoking appears even more in Hollywood movies released with G/PG/PG-13 than in R-rated films. Altogether, 75 percent of all U.S. releases have smoking scenes.
One cartoon film now on DVD, The Ant Bully, includes 41 tobacco scenes.

Researchers have found that viewing smoking in movies makes it far more likely that children will take up the habit — controlling for all other relevant factors (such as whether parents and peers smoke).

Remembering Tomorrow
A Memoir
Michael Albert  

In this lucid political memoir, veteran anti-capitalist activist Michael Albert offers an ardent defense of the project to transform global inequality. Albert, a uniquely visionary figure, recounts a life of uncompromising commitment to creating change one step at a time. Whether chronicling the battles against the Vietnam War, those waged on Boston campuses, or the challenges of creating living, breathing alternative social models, Albert brings a keen and unwavering sense of justice to his work, pointing the way forward for the next generation.

MICHAEL ALBERT is a leading critic on political economy, U.S.foreign policy, and the media. A veteran writer and activist, he currently works with Z Magazine and the website Znet, both of which he cofounded. Schooled in the New Left and anti-Vietnam War movements and an activist ever since, Albert primarily focuses on matters of movement building and creating alternative media. He developed, along with Robin Hahnel, the economic vision called participatory economics. A Ph.D.in economics, Albert is the author of fifteen books. He lives in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, with his wife and partner, Lydia Sargent.

 

“Michael Albert is an important thinker who takes us beyond radical denunciations and pretentious ‘analysis’ to a thoughtful, profound meditation on what a good society can be like.”
—Howard Zinn

“It is to Michael Albert’s everlasting credit that he has worked tirelessly to grapple with the very difficult questions of what a truly democratic economy might look like, and how it might work. Albert’s thoughtful contribution deserves wide attention.”
—Robert W. McChesney

Iraq and Good War vs. Bad War

by Shaun Mullen

A passage in Tim O’Brien’s novel Going After Cacciato examined

by Ashley Sayeau 

On Sunday night at the 49th annual Grammy awards, the Dixie Chicks took home five awards, including best album, record and song of the year.

It was a long road, indeed, for the Chicks, whose enormous fan base and ticket sales famously plummeted in 2003 after lead singer Natalie Maines remarked on the eve of the Iraq war that the group was “ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas.” Within days, radio stations were refusing to play their music, and fans were demanding refunds. Death threats were later issued.

Throughout the ordeal, the group remained admirably unapologetic, insisting that dissent is (or at least should be) a vital liberty in America. They further maintained this position in their album Taking the Long Way (which won the Grammy for best album) and especially in the song “Not Ready To Make Nice,” in which they directly addressed their critics: “It’s too late to make it right/ I probably wouldn’t if I could/ Cause I’m mad as hell/ Can’t bring myself to do what it is/ You think I should.”

Bamako — video review by A. O. Scott

Another Bamako review

Video set to Cat Stevens’ Peace Train — by Lucas Gray

Brief Bio of Richard Wright 

Wright was named in the late 1930s to the literature editorial board of New Masses, and was denounced by the House Special Committee on Un-American Activities investigating the Federal Writers’ Project. In 1940 Wright’s Native Son became an instant best-seller. In some bookstores stock was sold out within hours; the novel sold 215,000 copies in the first three weeks.

…

In 1949 Wright joined George Plimpton and others in founding the Paris Review. He acted in the film based on the novel Native Son – the American release was not successful and the film was banned in several cities. Wright’s existentialist novel THE OUTSIDER (1952), depicting a black intellectual’s search for identity, received mixed reviews. It was praised mostly in Europe. In Paris Wright was not treated like in the American South, but he gradually lost touch with his inspiration, or “the rhythms of his life”.

During his years in France, Wright spent much of his time supporting nationalist movements in Africa. In 1953 he travelled in Africa, gathering material for BLACK POWER (1954), and witnessing the rise of the Pan-African movement. Among his other works in the 1950s were SAVAGE HOLIDAY (1954), about a white man caught in a web of violence, THE COLOR CURTAIN (1956), about Asia, PAGAN SPAIN (1957), a travel book of a Catholic country full of contradictions, and WHITE MAN, LISTEN! (1958), a collection of lectures on racial injustice. Wright’s last short story, ‘Big Black Good Man’, which originally was published in Esquire and was collected in EIGHT MEN (1961), was set in Copenhangen and dealt with prejudices. THE LONG DREAM (1958), a novel set in Mississippi, had a poor reception. Its sequel, Island of Hallucination, set in Paris, was not published. “Everything in the book happened, but I’ve twisted characters so that people won’t recognise them,” said Wright to his agent. AMERICAN HUNGER, a sequel to Black Boy, appeared in 1977.

Wright distanced in the last years of his life from his associates. He suffered from poor health and financial difficulties and grew suspicious about the activities of CIA in Paris – in which he was right. Wright’s plans to move to London were rejected by the British officials. In 1959 he began composing haiku, producing almost four thousand of them. Wright died nearly penniless at the age of fifty-two in Paris, on November 28, 1960. At his request, his body was cremated and his ashes mixed with the ashes of a copy of Black Boy. Wright’s daughter Julia has claimed that his father was murdered. Upon his death, Wright left behind an unfinished book on French West Africa. His travel writings, edited by Virginia Whatley Smith, appeared in 2001.

Blood Diamond, Hollywood and Sierre Leone, by Lansana Gberie

For brief, fleeting moments almost every decade now, the rich world tends to embrace Africa – a continent badly wracked by poverty, wars and related crises – as pet project. Africa as the object of the fantasies of the West is an old pathology, and it is not limited to the entertainment industry – though
Hollywood has represented its most crude and egregious form in recent decades. Stalked by the disaster of Iraq, British Prime Minister Tony Blair (who, to be fair, cannot by any means be accused of prior indifference to Africa) embraced the old continent with renewed vigour, in 2005 producing “Our Common Interest,” a sprawling, well-meaning document which sets out detailed plans for wiping out African poverty and related crises. Less than two years later, the document is all but forgotten.  Africa, however, has not been, at least by
Hollywood. By the end of 2006, Africa became “suddenly hot” to the entertainment industry, to use the appropriately frivolous words of the New York Times. Before the end of the year, the continent somehow managed to attract the interest of big name stars – and therefore big media – beginning with Bono, then Clay Aiken, Jessica Simpson, Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, George Clooney and a few others. Even Madonna, not usually associated with high-mindedness, was “suddenly casting an ice-blue eye toward Africa” (this is from the New York Times), that year famously adopting a child from Malawi. Ed Zwick and Leonardo di Caprio and Jennifer Connelly took the pathology a step higher (or lower), coming from nowhere and seeming to adopt a whole country, Sierra Leone. Their ‘Blood Diamond’, a film that purports to recreate the horrors that befell Sierra Leone mainly in 1990s, came out just before Christmas. The producers of this film, which makes the word narcissism inadequate, claims that the intention is to save Sierra Leone (and countries like it) from the predatory degradation of diamond hunters and their wretched native allies who pressgang children into their militia and commit unspeakable atrocities. 

There was a time, a few years back, when films like ‘Blood Diamond’ would have been most welcome, not least by the long-suffering people of Sierra Leone….

BERNARD SMITH, FORCES IN AMERICAN CRITICISM (1939) —

“There was one critic who apparently possessed all the virtues—fine taste, poetic sensitiveness, intellectuality, an experimental inclination. His literary scholarship was beyond dispute, his writing deft and memorable. He was, moreover, a poet of the first rank, which gave his criticism of the art an extraordinary authority. He was universally respected: by Pound, by the later expatriates, by the impressionists of the Dial, by the Hound and Horn group. This critic was T. S. Eliot. His volume of essays, The Sacred Wood, published in 1920, is still considered to be one of the truly distinguished works of esthetic criticism produced in this century…. The reader will note that he is here described in the past tense. His works are many now, but The Sacred Wood alone is a consideration of esthetic problems. In the rest the emphasis is on the esthetic effects of moral and social beliefs. His development is one of the ‘consequences’ touched upon in the following chapter….  (358-359).

“[T.S. Eliot wrote,] ‘There are two and only two finally tenable hypotheses about life: the Catholic and the materialistic [i.e., Marxist]. It is quite possible, of course, that the future may bring neither a Christian nor a materialistic civilization. It is quite possible that the future may be nothing but chaos or torpor. In that event, I am not interested in the future; I am only interested in the two alternatives which seem to me worthier of interest….’

“Eliot chose not only the Catholic hypothesis, but also its political corollaries. His literary opinions were thus given a firm philosophical base to rest upon, and from that fact he drew the reasonable conclusions…[that] ‘Literary criticism should be completed by criticism from a definite ethical and theological standpoint. In so far as in any age there is common agreement on ethical and theological matters, so far can literary criticism be substantive. In ages like our own, in which there is no such common agreement, it is then more necessary for Christian readers to scrutinize their reading, especially of works of imagination, with explicit ethical and theological standards. The ‘greatness’ of literature cannot be determined solely by literary standards; though we must remember that whether it is literature or not can be determined only by literary standards.’

“To this has esthetic criticism at last come—to a realization that non-esthetic criteria are the ultimate tests of value. Whether they be called philosophical, moral, or social criteria, they are still the ideas that men have about the way human beings live together and the way they ought to live. The quest of beauty had become the quest of reality. It had become, in essence, literary criticism as socially conscious and as polemical as the criticism of the Marxists….

“Eliot spoke of alternatives, not of choices…. He believes that one of the alternatives has greater value, is nobler, is in a sense more real, than the other. The question is therefore not simply one of personal taste. It is a question of evidence and reason. But the alternative he favors admits of no evidence and derogates from reason. His philosophy is, in the last analysis, wholly mystical. It is not capable of being tested and verified and improved. The alternative he rejects is, on the other hand, the one that is favored by those who are determined to be as scientific as one can be in a non-physical field.

“The literary criticism of the neo-classicists is a criticism composed of obiter dicta inspired by intangible emotions. The literary criticism of the materialists stands or falls by the findings of the social scientists, psychologists, and historians. Eliot’s alternative involves a revulsion against democracy; the materialists are partisans of democracy. The literary criticism of his school tends to create a literature that will express the sensibilities and experiences of a few fortunate men. The criticism of the opposing school tends to create a literature that will express the ideals and sympathies of those who look forward to the conquest of poverty, ignorance, and inequality—to the material and intellectual elevation of the mass of mankind….” (384-387).

“To whom does the future belong? In January 1939 Eliot announced that the Criterion, the literary journal he had edited since 1922, would no longer be published. His Europe had crumbled; the culture in which he had put his faith was dying. The Criterion had served its purpose. Eliot had arrived at a mood of detachment. There was nothing he could hopefully fight for now. But those who believe in scientific methods, in realism, in social equality and democracy, are hopeful and are fighting.”

MORE, RELATED, FROM BERNARD SMITH, FORCES IN AMERICAN CRITICISM (1939) —

“Socialist criticism in America may conveniently be dated from the founding of the Comrade—‘An Illustrated Socialist Monthly’—in 1901…. The Comrade appeared at the beginning of the muckrake era. It was superior to the muckrakers in the clarity of its vision as to the basic cause of social evils and the way to cure them….

“The aims of socialist critics were propagandistic, and it was inevitable that they should be paramount in a time when American critical systems were divided between art for art’s sake, art for morality’s sake, and various compromises between those two exhausted theories of esthetic purpose.1 Consider the essays and lectures on the contemporary theatre by the anarchist Emma Goldman. Miss Goldman made no bones about her intentions. Her essay on ‘The Modern Drama’ in Anarchism and Other Essays (1911) was frankly a salute to its subject as an instrument for the dissemination of radical thought.”

(1”’propaganda’ is not used here as an invidious term. It is used to describe works consciously written to have an immediate and direct effect upon their readers’ opinions and actions, as distinguished from works that are not consciously written for that purpose or which are written to have a remote and indirect effect. It is possible that conventional critics have learned by now that to call a literary work ‘propaganda’ is to say nothing about its quality as literature. By now enough critics have pointed out that some of the world’s classics were originally ‘propaganda’ for something”) (289-292).

“The socialist’s affinity with realism was stated forcefully in the leading editorial of the Masses in February 1911—the second issue of a magazine…which was a successor, on a more mature and ‘politicalized’ level, to the Comrade. It said: ‘It is natural that Socialists should favor the novel with a purpose, more especially, the novel that points a Socialist moral. As a reaction against the great bulk of vapid, meaningless, too-clever American fiction, with its artificial plots and characters remote from actual life, such an attitude is a healthy sign …’”(289-290).

“Its militancy is the most obvious characteristic of American criticism since the war. In the whole of nineteenth century there was only one critic, Poe, who was deliberately and consistently disputatious. No one else made polemics the basis of a critical method. Whitman was a maverick, but he was exclamatory rather than argumentative. Now, however, it is customary for critics to be bellicose, and there are few who have let politeness stand in the way of controversy. The reason is not hard to find. Criticism in our time has been largely a war of traditions—a struggle between irreconcilable ideologies…” (302).

“The academy was growing up. It was beginning to share the emotions of serious adults who were trying to adjust themselves to an America become rich and imperialistic. In its own special field, literary history, it was beginning to achieve mature and realistic interpretations. In 1927 it came of age: V. L. Parrington, professor of English at the University of Washington, published the two completed volumes of his Main Currents in American Thought. With that work the academy was at last brought face to face with the ideas, sentiments, and historical methods of today….

“Parrington’s Main Currents arrived to supply the most needed things: an account of our literary history which squared with recent works on the history of our people and a realistic technique for analyzing the relationship of a writer to his time and place—in addition to a militantly progressive spirit. Professorial and literary circles had consciously been waiting for such a work, and if the one that did come forth was far more radical than some people cared for, it simply could not be rejected. The author was a professor too; his scholarship defied scrutiny; and his ideas were couched in terms that were native American, most of them having come over shortly after the Mayflower. One must emphasize Parrington’s radicalism because it is probably the most significant aspect of his work. He sharpened, gave point to the economic interpretation of literary movements because of his desire to reveal the motivating interests and real direction of specific works of literature…” (330-331).

ALSO SEE, UPTON SINCLAIR’S STUDIED VIEWS ON LITERATURE — MAMMONART (1924) — and “Books on Trial by Burial“ for other neglected progressive literary landmarks.

___________________

See also:

by  Tony Christini

 

Arundhati Roy returns to fiction writing after 10 years

“I am very conscious that, from the time of The God of Small Things was published 10 years ago, we are in a different world … which needs to be written about differently, and I really very much want to do that,” she explained.

“Just as resistance movements need to reinvent themselves, to shed their tired, old slogans, we all need to find new ways of doing what we’ve been doing. And that includes me.”

More reports here and here, and some commentary here.

More on TV and torture — political fiction in service of the State.

 [Human Rights] Group: TV torture [by Americans] influencing real life

by David Bauder

The advocacy group Human Rights First says there’s been a startling increase in the number of [American] torture scenes depicted on prime-time television in the post-2001 world.

Even more chilling, there are indications that real-life American interrogators in Iraq are taking cues from what they see on television, said Jill Savitt, the group’s director of public programs….

A former U.S. Army specialist who questioned prisoners in Baghdad’s infamous Abu Ghraib prison and several other facilities around Iraq…said he saw instances of mock executions like that in [the TV drama] “24.” Once, some fellow interrogators asked an Iraqi translator to pretend he was being tortured to strike fear in a prisoner, after they had just watched a similar scene on a DVD….

Prior to 2001, the few torture scenes on prime-time TV usually had the shows’ villains as the instigators, Savitt said. [Now torture on TV is used by the shows’ American “heroes”.]  In both 1996 and 1997, there were no prime-time TV scenes containing torture, according to the Parents Television Council, which keeps a programming database. In 2003, there were 228 such scenes, the PTC said. The count was over 100 in both 2004 and 2005.

They found examples on “Alias,” “The Wire,” “Law & Order,” “The Shield” — even “Star Trek: Voyager.”

There’s been a surge in general in the level of violence tolerated in prime time.

…Herrington said he’s concerned that much of what’s on TV is misleading.

Television interrogation frequently works to a ticking clock: someone needs to find out the location of a bomb from a prisoner within the hour or it will explode. That’s so rare in real life that it’s essentially mythology, he said….

Kim Alphandary

Psychological Operations and Art

 

 

 

 

 

Fatima, the Virgin of Abu Ghraib

 

The Deserter’s Tale: The Story of an Ordinary Soldier Who Walked Away from the War in Iraq 

By Joshua Key

As told to Lawrence Hill

Review by Michael Vernon

from the Globe and Mail

When he signed on as a combat engineer in 2002, Joshua Key claims he was misled by his quota-conscious recruiter, told he would almost certainly never have to serve overseas. One thing he did understand, however, was the U.S. army’s dim view of desertion: “I saw a poster on a wall that read: ‘Desertion in the time of war means death by a firing squad.’ ”

Key’s memoir is an attempt to justify why he deserted midway through his combat tour in Iraq, in a war he says is unjust.

He’s not alone. An estimated 8,000 members of the U.S. military have deserted since the Iraq War began in 2003. According to the War Resisters Support Campaign in Toronto, as many as 250 have come to Canada. To date, no one has been deported, though several refugee claims, including Key’s, have been rejected.

Key describes himself as a member of the so-called “poverty draft”: poor, ignorant Americans, drawn to the military by its promises of money, education and security as an antidote to a life of continued desperation.

Key’s upbringing in an Oklahoma trailer park is a white-trash cliché: absent father, abusive stepfather, plenty of booze and guns. Shortly after high school, Key marries his sweetheart, they quickly produce three children, and struggle to hold their dead-end life together. The military offers them a way out.

Elements of his army training are straight out of Stanley Kubrick’s film Full Metal Jacket. Twice, on orders from a drill sergeant, Key leads his peers in midnight raids to beat another recruit who is falling behind in the training: “My buddies and I threw a blanket over his head and beat his chest and ribs with a sock stuffed with soap. I whacked him hard while he cried out in pain.”

At first, the military gives Key stability and a sense of identity: “I must say that I loved boot camp. . . . I was no longer wondering how I could possibly put enough food on the table for Brandi and the boys. I was now an American soldier, and proud to think of myself as a perfect killing machine. I felt patriotic and invincible.”

Six months in Iraq changed that.

In places such as Ramadi and Fallujah, Key places the explosives that blow in the doors of Iraqis’ homes. He and his fellow soldiers search and intimidate the civilians inside. At first, Key enthusiastically bullies and thieves, confiscating and keeping any money he finds.

Over time, however, he begins to question the utility of these operations. In 200 raids, he says his squad never found anything they could link to terrorism. They only succeeded in inciting hatred: “A sick realization lodged like a cancer in my gut. It grew and festered, and troubled me more with every passing day. We, the Americans, had become the terrorists in Iraq.”

Key recalls several incidents involving the abuse and killing of civilians. He experiences a moral epiphany when he sees American soldiers kick around the decapitated heads of four Iraqis “in a twisted game of soccer.” He’s not sure who else sees this and he never reports it. In most of the cases he relates, he says soldiers acted with impunity. Their officers failed to punish those involved. It’s impossible to confirm the veracity of Key’s accounts here. At the same time, Canadians reading this might be grateful that their own soldiers are not mired in Iraq. Judging from what Canadian soldiers have told me about their experiences overseas, Afghanistan is — for now, at least — far different.

After more than six months in Iraq, Key returns home to his family for two weeks of much-needed leave. When his return flight to Iraq is delayed, he acts on impulse and goes into hiding in Philadelphia, before eventually driving north to Canada with his wife and four children.

The writing style is stark and compelling. There are no stylistic flourishes here as there are in Anthony Swofford’s Gulf War memoir, Jarhead, or Evan Wright’s account of the invasion of Iraq, Generation Kill. Judging by what I’ve read of Lawrence Hill’s new novel, The Book of Negroes, I suspect he restrained himself when it came to assisting Key with his prose, in order to preserve the authentic voice of an ordinary soldier.

What’s most engaging about this book is its essential honesty. Key takes pains to recount incidents from his childhood and his military service that lay out his own shortcomings; as if to say, I’m telling you all this about myself so that you’ll believe what I say about Iraq. It caused me to reassess my notions of duty.

Even though Key was a soldier who voluntarily assumed the obligations of service, one can sympathize with his moral quandary. Soldiers don’t get to choose where they are sent, or how they are employed, but that doesn’t immunize them against a roiling conscience. Choosing to disobey orders takes guts. So does living underground with your family, enduring poverty and paranoia for the sake of your principles.

At the same time, as someone who’s been a professional soldier, I wonder how the men in Key’s squad felt when he failed to return from the United States, leaving them to continue the dirty work of counter-insurgency. And what do they think of the fact that for two months he carried a useless M249 machine gun because he couldn’t be bothered to have it repaired, jeopardizing their lives in a war zone?

The Deserter’s Tale ought to be required reading for soldiers heading overseas, to prepare them for the stresses and dilemmas they are likely to face.