Nancy Cunard: Heiress, Muse, Political Idealist

Book Description

Lois Gordon's absorbing biography tells the story of a writer, activist, and cultural icon who embodied the dazzling energy and tumultuous spirit of her age, and whom William Carlos Williams once called "one of the major phenomena of history."

Nancy Cunard (1896-1965) led a life that surpasses Hollywood fantasy. The only child of an English baronet (and heir to the Cunard shipping fortune) and an American beauty, Cunard abandoned the world of a celebrated socialite and Jazz Age icon to pursue a lifelong battle against social injustice as a wartime journalist, humanitarian aid worker, and civil rights champion.

Cunard fought fascism on the battlefields of Spain and reported firsthand on the atrocities of the French concentration camps. Intelligent and beautiful, she romanced the great writers of her era, including three Nobel Prize winners, and was the inspiration for characters in the works of Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, Aldous Huxley, Pablo Neruda, Samuel Beckett, and Ernest Hemingway, among others.

Cunard was also a prolific poet, publisher, and translator and, after falling in love with a black American jazz pianist, became deeply committed to fighting for black rights. She edited the controversial anthology Negro, the first comprehensive study of the achievement and plight of blacks around the world. Her contributors included Langston Hughes, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Zora Neale Hurston, among scores of others.

Cunard's personal life was as complex as her public persona. Her involvement with the civil rights movement led her to be ridiculed and rejected by both family and friends. Throughout her life, she was plagued by insecurities and suffered a series of breakdowns, struggling with a sense of guilt over her promiscuous behavior and her ability to survive so much war and tragedy. Yet Cunard's writings also reveal an immense kindness and wit, as well as her renowned, often flamboyant defiance of prejudiced social conventions.

Drawing on diaries, correspondence, historical accounts, and the remembrances of others, Lois Gordon revisits the major movements of the first half of the twentieth century through the life of a truly gifted and extraordinary woman. She also returns Nancy Cunard to her rightful place as a major figure in the historical, social, and artistic events of a critical era.

Customer Reviews:

A Remembered Life.......2007-07-03

If Lois Gordon was writing about a fictional character she could not have told a story of a more exciting person than Nancy Cunard. However, Nancy Cunard was indeed an individual who lived in the early part of last century whose exploits, altruism, and literary talent were extraordinary by any standards. She was a legendary beauty, with a great mind, who was extremely devoted to the disadvantaged people of the world and their struggles. This is an unusual and remarkable combination of qualities that is brilliantly depicted throughout this wonderful book. Simply, I could not put the book down once I had started reading. I can highly recommend it.

Facinating.......2007-05-16

A facinating look at a most interesting woman. Well ahead of her time. Also many insights to a span of recent history often neglected.

Brilliant job, takes your breath away.......2007-05-12

This is a brilliant, sensitive, thoroughly researched biography which is a model example of how such things should be done. The author writes of the First World War experiences in London as if she had personally lived through them. Her understanding of the complex and bizarre Nancy Cunard, of her weird mother, of her strange friends, of her insane promiscuity, of her serial preying upon the creative elite by means of 'genital consumption', of her impossible psychlogy, of the whole phantasmagoria which Nancy Cunard represented, are really a triumph of empathy and insight, as well as of organisation of material. Lois Gordon's ability to master large volumes of action and hysteria without flinching qualify her for a top military command.

A lively, fascinating read from the first chapter..........2007-05-10

I just finished Lois Gordon's deeply moving tale of an unbelievably heroic, remarkable woman about whom I knew very little. I now feel I know the soul of Nancy Cunard, thanks to the author's wonderfully engaging, well-documented presentation. The book's fluent style and breadth of information are impressive. I agree with the majority here who have praised this fascinating biography. Buy this book, settle into your favorite chair, and prepare to meet the caring, complex, flawed, passionate woman that was Nancy Cunard.

Henry Crowder and Nancy Cunard.......2007-05-06

Regrettably, this biography is seriously flawed, frankly a disgrace, in respect of Henry Crowder and throughout. There is hardly a page in the book without demonstrable error of fact, misrepresentation, unfounded speculation or garbled citation. Columbia University Press were twice alerted that there were problems when an advance proof fell into the present writer's hands two or three months before publication. The Press did not respond. Caroline Weber's New York Times review is foolish in the extreme. Anne Chisholm's 1979 biography remains indispensable. While Gordon has uncovered new material (not about Henry Crowder in which she is particularly deficient) she has not been able to make sense of it. The true story of Crowder is told in the book+CD Listening for Henry Crowder scheduled fall 2007.

Although readers must judge for themselves, it is incumbent upon someone or other who has studied some of the particulars to point out the book's shortcomings, which are drastic. The book's flamboyant style may appear to be "a good read". All the more reason to alert the general reader. That Cunard's life was replete with extraordinary events and relationships does not confer upon the biographer the right to play fast and loose. Such treatment may befit an exploitative Hollywood movie but not a literary documentation with academic credentials. It may be that few care. Neverthless . . . In respect of, for example, Crowder, by Cunard's admission the single most important man in her life, a good deal of the information the author needed had been available to her for some years in an exploratory article in a journal, which was also posted online. Either she chose to ignore it or she did not find it, though it was easy to find. Unfortunately, she does not even get the facts right from the sources she does use and her misdemeanors extend far beyond that particular subject. (Crowder does not even figure in a list of Cunard's friends in an interview with the author on the publisher's website, while another, with whom she had no relationship whatsoever, is proposed as a lover.)

In response to a comment on my original brief posting: I have mentioned my forthcoming book on Crowder's life (which will not receive wide distribution or review) and Anne Chisholm's earlier, easily available, elegant, sober, generous, decent biography of Cunard, which is grudgingly noted and casually mistreated by Gordon, in order to give general readers the opportunity to find other takes on Cunard, which they might otherwise miss, and so allow them to judge from a well-informed position.

Sunshine Muse: Art on the West Coast, 1945-1970

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Sunshine Muse: Art on the West Coast, 1945-1970
Peter Plagens
Manufacturer: University of California Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0520223926

Book Description

With a new Introduction by the Author
This book, full of rare illustrations, surveys and documents the work of West Coast artists from 1945 to the 1970s, with glances back to the art schools and movements of the first half of the century. Twenty-five years after its first publication it is still our most trenchant record of that period in American art history. Writing as an artist and critic who observed firsthand the vital and innovative postwar art scene in California, Plagens has provided an invaluable record of the artists and work created in Los Angeles and San Francisco and, more briefly, in Seattle and the northwest.

The Twisted Muse: Musicians and Their Music in the Third Reich

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Disappointing; regrettably unreliable
Predictable and bland, but well researched
Indispensable!

The Twisted Muse: Musicians and Their Music in the Third Reich
Michael H. Kater
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0195132424

Amazon.com

In literature, music is the food of love and soothes the savage beast; in politics, it can be perverted by the worst of causes. So claims Michael Kater in his compelling study of music and musicians in the Third Reich, The Twisted Muse. What did it mean to compose music for Hitler and his Nazi regime? Kater asks; can artists working in a climate of oppression and fascist demagoguery dismiss their roles by claiming they created or performed for the sake of art alone? To answer these questions, Kater approaches his subject from two different angles: first, he examines the lives of musicians living under the Nazi regime--from little known musicians struggling in the orchestra pit to the great and famous, including Richard Strauss and Elisabeth Schwarzkopf. Next, he examines the role music played in the Third Reich and the ways in which the Nazis manipulated it as propaganda.

The Twisted Muse is part biography, part history, but it is wholly fascinating. Michael Kater's unique approach to the subject of music and musicians as tools of the state ensures a wide audience, not only among music lovers, but among all those interested in politics, culture, or psychology.

Book Description

Is music removed from politics? To what ends, beneficent or malevolent, can music and musicians be put? In short, when human rights are grossly abused and politics turned to fascist demagoguery, can art and artists be innocent? These questions and their implications are explored in Michael Kater's broad survey of musicians and the music they composed and performed during the Third Reich. Great and small--from Valentin Grimm, a struggling clarinetist, to Richard Strauss, renowned composer--are examined by Kater, sometimes in intimate detail, and the lives and decisions of Nazi Germany's professional musicians are laid out before the reader. Kater tackles the issue of whether the Nazi regime, because it held music in crassly utilitarian regard, acted on musicians in such a way as to consolidate or atomize the profession. Kater's examination of the value of music for the regime and the degree to which the regime attained a positive propaganda and palliative effect through the manner in which it manipulated its musicians, and by extension, German music, is of importance for understanding culture in totalitarian systems. This work, with its emphasis on the social and political nature of music and the political attitude of musicians during the Nazi regime, will be the first of its kind. It will be of interest to scholars and general readers eager to understand Nazi Germany, to music lovers, and to anyone interested in the interchange of music and politics, culture and ideology.

Customer Reviews:

Disappointing; regrettably unreliable.......2004-08-10

I went to this book for some background information on the Nazi reception of modernism in music. Unfortunately, though I found it well written, and I share Kater's mordant view of the composers and musicians who were prepared to futher their careers by going along with Nazi policies, I found that I would hesitate before I cited or applied factual claims from the book without first getting independent confirmation.

The problem is that I do know one related area reasonably well, the Nazi reception and perception of Wagner. And what Kater says there is not just wrong, but wrong in ways that I find worrying. It's not that I think that Wagner is the most important issue in relation to Third Reich cultural policies - far from it. It's just that when you find that you can't trust what a book says about a field you do know, it leaves you worried about its claims in the areas you don't know.

Three examples. First, Kater wrote, "The evidence shows that although public stagings of Wagner operas nationally had been decreasing long before the onset of the Third Reich, and even more so after 1933, in absolute figures these performances still topped the list until 1942/43, with works by such composers as Verdi, Puccini, and Strauss well behind." [page 39]

In reality "public stagings of Wagner operas nationally" increased each year before "the onset of the Third Reich", right up to the 1932/33 season, but decreased immediately and dramatically after the Nazis took power, for the 1933/34 season, and that decrease continued and accelerated during the Nazi era.

And although Wagner had invariably "topped the list" under the Weimar democracy, with hundreds more Wagner performances each year than performances of any of his nearest rivals, in reality he quickly lost that position once the Nazis seized the cultural reins. Wagner had lost first place to Verdi by the 1937/38 season, regained it (by just 18 performances) in 1938/39, and then lost by hundreds of performances in 1939/40, slipping further down the ranks in subsequent years. Some people may find that surprising, but there it is.

Second, Kater wrote of Hitler's "autobiography, which he started writing while imprisoned as Landsberg in 1924-25, naming it _Mein Kampf_, not accidentally after Richard Wagner's own _Mein Leben_."

But there are two problems with Kater's claim that the title "My Struggle" is a sort of homage to Wagner's title, "My Life". One is that all that the two titles have in common is the word "My", like "My Apprenticeship" by Maxim Gorki, "My Life", by Bill Clinton, and so on. More importantly, Hitler actually called his book _Four and a Half Years of Struggle Against Corruption, Stupidity and Lies_. The snappier title, _Mein Kampf_, was chosen by Hitler's publishers.

Still, maybe Kater misread the tables of performance numbers. Maybe he didn't know Hitler's own title for his autobiography. Still, _The Twisted Muse_ is Kater's sixth book about the Third Reich and its cultural policies. Shouldn't a specialist, whose publishing history suggests he'd been working this territory for over 20 years when this book came out, know this stuff?

Which leads to my third example, the problem of Kater's Rosenberg quote. Kater derided the evidence, cited in Frederick Spotts' _Bayreuth_ history, that the Nazi ideologue Alfred Rosenberg was hostile to Wagner. Kater's supposed clincher, proving that Rosenberg was a fervent Wagnerian, was this quotation from Rosenberg's _Myth of the Twentieth Century_: "The cultural accomplishment of Bayreuth is perennially beyond discussion."

But in Rosenberg's book this sentence is not in fact part of a eulogy to Wagner, as Kater would have you believe, but the beginning of a criticism of Wagner that dismisses his theories and much of his work, especially the _Ring_ and _Parsifal_. The actual passage, from Book II, chapter 4, goes:

"The cultural achievement of Bayreuth will remain forever beyond question. But nevertheless, today a turning away from the basic teachings of Wagner has begun, away from the assertion that dance, music and the poetic art are forever linked in the manner proclaimed by him; and away from the assertion that Bayreuth was, in fact, the unchangeable consummation of the Aryan mystery."

Could Kater have read the one sentence he cited, then instantly closed his eyes and shut the book so that he never saw the next sentence, which happened to change Rosenberg's meaning completely? It doesn't seem possible. It's difficult to see how this quotation could be anything other than deliberately deceptive.

Kater, obviously, was running a very strong agenda, in relation to Wagner. Now, it's possible that someone can get carried away because of a controversy, and be unreliable only in that area while remaining scrupulously accurate in all other areas. But my problem is, I don't know. I read an statement by Kater about the Nazi reception of modernism, and I wonder, "But is that really true? Or if it is true, is it misleadingly selected?" And I can't tell. I can't rely on it.

Fortunately, there's another book covering the same territory, that passes the test of being accurate in areas I know, and that seems academically scrupulous in the areas I don't know. That's Erik Levi's _Music in the Third Reich_, published in 1994, also available from Amazon. Levi is no more impressed by Wagner's antisemitism than Kater is, or I am, but that doesn't drive him to start making stuff up, and that's important.

Therefore Levi's _Music in the Third Reich_ is the book in this field that I cite with confidence, and that's the book that I've kept. I recommend Levi's book. Unfortunately, I can't recommend this one.

Cheers!

Laon

Predictable and bland, but well researched.......2001-03-23

What music historians and historians of the Third Reich seem to forget is that the National Socialist regime was very, very friendly towards those art forms it deemed pure and classical in nature. Germany's urban centers in the 1920's /early 1930's were full of jazz clubs, underground performance art theaters, cabaret houses and fly-by-night citizen art galleries. While modernists and the European radical chic may have appreciated Germany being on the "cutting edge" - the German National Socialist regime did not. The hierarchy of the Third Reich (most importantly Hitler's Minster of Culture Alfred Rosenberg) made concerted efforts to shun modern music and modern art forms (which were viewed as degenerate and Jewish in nature). In turn, the Nazis wholly embraced classical music and classical art. Indeed, Germany experienced a classical, cultural resurgence of sorts, with millions of deutschmarks being allocated by the government for public art and music programs during the 1930's/1940's. For many artists living and performing in Germany at that time, the government's attitude towards traditional art forms must have seemed overwhelming and exhilarating. It is here that Michael Kater's "The Twisted Muse" first falters - it neglects to take this delicate cultural shift into full consideration -- and then fails to place this shift within the context of German socio-politics and modern German history.

In "The Twisted Muse", readers are subjected to a thorough but overwhelmingly un-objective series of chapters each aimed at painting German musicians and conductors from the war era as demonic, crazed, maniacal fascists. If there is one thing that the book inadvertently reveals, it is that many artists of the era were simply caught up in the same frenzied whirlwind as the rest of Europe. War does strange things to people. The whole affair is infinitely more complex than "us good - them bad". Kater's sense of history is tainted in this sense, and we never get a true insiders look at the machinations of National Socialism and the intricate cultural forces at play in Nazi Germany. Perhaps some of the figures of the era were eccentric, but CERTAINLY they were no more competitive, egotistical or career-driven than today's millionaire, musical icons. Kater is no world historian, and his naivete of the events leading up to the cultural oppression (or reawakening as the German's called it) in the German art and music world is painfully apparent. The one redeeming quality of Kater's work is that it is reasonably well researched. Certainly embellished (the research into Strauss' relationship with the Nazis is often absurd and borderline fiction in spots) and blatantly, painfully exaggerated at points (perhaps Kater felt Germany's black past afforded him that luxury), but still reasonably well researched.

After much consideration I decided this book was worth at least two stars. If one can get past the sporadic character assassination and Kater's unimaginative historical weltanschauung, the book is a treasure trove of important dates and facts. An interesting book that could have been much better.

Indispensable!.......2000-03-30

Michael H. Kater's book "The Twisted Muse" is indispensable reading for any musicologist or serious music lover. The book discusses in rich detail the music and musicians of the Third Reich, a twelve year nightmare in Germany and Austria, that destroyed the creative spirit of every musician and composer living there. Mr. Kater explains the difficulty of being a musician in the Third Reich, and dramatically documents the disabling Nazi disease that infected every composer and conductor. There were no heroes, with the possible exception of Erich Kleiber who emigrated to Buenos Aires to begin a new artistic life, and Karl Amadeus Hartmann, a composer who silenced himself in Hitler's Germany and offered as much resistance to Nazism as he could. The rest were victims. or worse, perpetrators of Nazi horror. Some musicans joined the Nazi Party in order to survive and feed their families; other joined the Party to further their own careers. Knappersbusch, Furtwangler, Tietjen, von Karajan, and Boehm showed amazing duplicity toward one another, frequently acting like beasts. Cultured and well-educated Germans were sometimes reduced to the bestial level of a Goering or a Goebbles. In fact, Nazi Germany, as Mr. Kater points out, was an a veritable scorpions' nest of egomaniacal conductors and composers advancing their careers at the expense of colleagues. For example, the composer Hans Pfitzner -- one of the few serious composers the Nazis could showcase -- is particularly portrayed as an embittered, pathetic man, filled with anger and duplicity. Mr. Kater brings a new and fascinating perspective to such famous Third Reich composers as Carl Orff, Werner Egk, and Rudolf Wagner-Regeny, not evil men, but far from virtuous, who used Nazism for personal advancement. The author introduces the reader to little known German composers like Paul Graener, who suffered a particularly cruel and ignominious end; Max Trapp, a mediocre composer who wrote reams of kitsch for the Party; and George Vollerthun, a composer the Nazis needed so much that he survived a homosexual scandal in the 1930's. Mr. Kater traces the careers of these composers as well as those who left Germany --Hindemith, Schoenberg, Weill, Korngold -- with brilliant perspective. Of particular interest are the many pages devoted to the controversial Richard Strauss. Mr. Kater's thesis is that the Nazis made Strauss pay for his sins against the dictatorship by permitting Strauss's grandsons to be physically molested, by harassing Strauss's family in Garmisch, and by murdering twenty-six members of his Jewish daughter-in-law's family. Ironically, her husband, Strauss's only son, was a fervent Nazi of relatively high rank. In the final two chapters, Mr. Kater discusses the institutionalized "hausmusik" written for Nazi youth, the music for brass ensembles, and the battle music for the pagan youth festivals and SS concert bands. He also devotes intriguing sections to the Nazi's quest for a musical philosophy and a serious composer that imbued the Fascist philosophy. Mr. Kater's discussion of Hindemith as being the ideal man (modern, an "Aryan," not a twelve-tone composer) is interesting. But the Nazis never found their composer and never defined what serious Nazi music was to be. Mr. Kater documents his phenomenal study with over 1090 footnotes; sometimes a footnote will cite four or five independent sources, including letters, memories, documents, and diaries. In short, this is a magnificent study, probably the most intriguing, best written, and most comprehensive history of music in the Third Reich yet written.

American Venus: The Extraordinary Life of Audrey Munson, Model and Muse

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Dignity Restored

American Venus: The Extraordinary Life of Audrey Munson, Model and Muse
Diana Rozas , and Anita Gottehrer Bourne
Manufacturer: Princeton Architectural Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 1890449040

Book Description

Audrey Munson was once called the "The most perfect, most versatile, most famous of American models, whose face and figure have inspired thousands of modern masterpieces of sculpture and painting." It was not an exaggeration. Audrey's career is the classic tale of meteoric rise and tragic downfall—from "Queen of the Artists' Studios" to fragile psychiatric patient.
Her best known clients included Daniel Chester French and Karl Bitter for whom she provided inspiration beyond her physical grace. The consummate professional, she modeled for dozens of civic monuments and was called "America's Venus." At one time, thirty pieces of art based on her poses were housed at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art. In addition to many public edifices throughout the U.S., she has adorned the estates of John D. Rockefeller and George Vanderbilt, J. P. Morgan's yacht, and U.S. Mint coins.
At the peak of her career she was selected as the primary model for the 1915 Panama Pacific International Exposition (P.P.I.E.) in San Francisco, eventually appearing in 24,000 feet of mural decorations, scores of groups of statuary, and the Exposition's exquisite symbolic figurine which graced the cover of Sunset magazine. Audrey Munson's life as a fine art model was the subject of four controversial silent films in which she starred—mostly nude. After a media spectacle linking her with a murder case her career faltered and ultimately doomed her to a life of reclusion in a psychiatric facility at the age of 39. She lived there largely unacknowledged by her family until the astonishing age of 105. This then is her story.

Customer Reviews:

Dignity Restored.......2000-01-03

This is an illustrated account of the tragic life of Audrey Munson (1891-1996) who modeled for leading American sculptors (e.g., Daniel Chester French, A. Sterling Calder, and Sherry Fry) in the so-called "guilded age" of art. She posed for both the head and tail of the 1916 U.S. dime (the Mercury dime); as well as for statues that stand at the front of the New York Public Library and the Brooklyn Museum of Art, on the fountain outside of the Plaza Hotel, in the pediments at the entrance to the Frick Collection, and (as the figure of Evangeline) at the Longfellow Memorial in Massachusetts. When the Beaux Arts tradition in sculpture was quashed by the rise of Modernism, she tried to survive by performing in films about artists' models, resulting in a great scandal because she appeared on the screen totally nude. In 1919, when rumored to have been involved in the murder of her landlord's wife (she wasn't), she collapsed emotionally (described back then as "mental blight"), was ostracized as "Crazy Audrey," and, after a quest for a husband that failed, attempted suicide. At age 39, she was committed to an asylum, where she remained in obscurity until her recent death at age 105. This book is a belated but sincere attempt to restore her dignity. (Copyright © by Roy R. Behrens, from Ballast Quarterly Review, Vol 15 No 2, Winter 1999-2000.)

The Burden of Memory, the Muse of Forgiveness (W.E.B. Du Bois Institute (Series).)

Average customer rating:

...of social existence...
In defense of a great author
Soyinka is more than "The Burden of Memory..."
Mildly interesting at best
Excellent

The Burden of Memory, the Muse of Forgiveness (W.E.B. Du Bois Institute (Series).)
Wole Soyinka
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0195122054

Amazon.com

When a book begins with a statement such as "In the 1992 presidential elections, it would appear that the United States stood a reasonable chance of acquiring a new president in the person of a certain Mr. David Duke," a reader must wonder if the author is being deliberately alarmist or has simply lost contact with reality. (After all, Duke had little national credibility, and even his campaigns in his home state of Louisiana could best be described as highly problematic.) On matters concerning his native Nigeria, and on the rest of the African nations, Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka is perhaps more reliable, albeit still somewhat longwinded. The Burden of Memory is based on a set of lectures Soyinka gave at the W.E.B. Dubois Institute and faithfully preserves their highly academic orality, whether he is advocating massive reparations for the people of Africa for the historical injustices to which they have been subject, or using literary criticism to explore the ways in which Africans have been willing to "forgive" Westerners in the hopes of assimilating into the culture that formerly treated them as vassals.

Book Description

When Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka's The Open Sore of a Continent appeared in 1996, it received rave reviews in the national media. Now comes Soyinka's powerful sequel to that fearless and passionate book, The Burden of Memory. Where Open Sore offered a critique of African nationhood and a searing indictment of the Nigerian military and its repression of human and civil rights, The Burden of Memory considers all of Africa--indeed, all the world--as it poses the next logical question: Once repression stops, is reconciliation between oppressor and victim possible? In the face of centuries long devastations wrought on the African continent and her Diaspora by slavery, colonialism, Apartheid and the manifold faces of racism what form of recompense could possibly be adequate? In a voice as eloquent and humane as it is forceful, Soyinka examines this fundamental question as he illuminates the principle duty and "near intolerable burden" of memory to bear the record of injustice. In so doing, he challenges notions of simple forgiveness, of confession and absolution, as strategies for social healing. Ultimately, he turns to art--poetry, music, painting--as one source that may nourish the seed of reconciliation, art as the generous vessel that can hold together the burden of memory and the hope of forgiveness. Based on Soyinka's Stewart-McMillan lectures delivered at the Du Bois Institute at Harvard, The Burden of Memory speaks not only to those concerned specifically with African politics, but also to anyone seeking the path to social justice through some of history's most inhospitable terrain.

Customer Reviews:

...of social existence..........2005-10-15

This is a highly analytical, scholarly book, three lectures Soyinka gave at Harvard through it's W.E.B. Dubois Institute's Macmillan series in 1997.
This is also a densely packed linguistic explosion, a cultural retrospective of the ancients' behaviors, the modern ones, and the poet's struggle to express the depth of existence.
I also got through it only because I percieved and imagined the flow of the statements through clear imagery. There was much that I lost and as much time marveling at the control and brilliance of his mind to evoke the depths of Negritude, it's descendant issues and conflicts, and the artist's all important concern for the state of life.
But if I had attended these lectures I would have been gone. Off to the idea expressed ten minutes ago. But the thoughts of man's brutality of itself and incredible passages like this thrilled and bore into me:

"the fact remains that the other has impinged on it in a way that permanently precludes the solace of remaining within the secure isolation of its own precedent world order, or whatever vestiges of it are left. In short, the effects of that 'disdain' appear permanent, inescapable; they are to be read in a thousand and one actualities that plague the continent, and can be measured in the retardation of social existence against the visible prosperity of the other on a shared planet." (pg.185)

This is a book about the "...the retardation of social existence..."

In defense of a great author.......2003-09-04

Let me start by acknowledging that I haven't read this particular work. I'm merely expressing my ire at an ignoramus of a reviewer from Philadelphia, who suggested that Soyinka's nobel prize was not well deserved. While I'd be the first to acknowledge that Soyinka's writing can be difficult, I would suggest that this cretin start off with Soyinka's autobiographical corpus of "Ake: the years of childhood", "Isara" and "Ibadan: the pemkelemes years" then, maybe such powerful (if acerbic and polemical) works as "The Man Died," before attempting the more difficult critical works like "Myth, Literature and the African World" and by all accounts, the work under review.

I do not believe that such a powerful mind as Soyinka's, could write a lightweight tome and so while I haven't read "The Burden of Memory," I'm willing to stick my neck out and give it three stars if only because while Soyinka's mastery of language is beyond doubt, his quest for precision, sometimes, rather ironically, renders his writing a tad dense; which can be the only explanation for the bulk of complaints, levelled at this work, on this occassion.

Soyinka is more than "The Burden of Memory...".......2003-01-24

Wole Soyinka's mastery of the English language, as I have had occasion to say on another forum, borders on the supernatural. And perhaps therein lies the man's flaw--but that is a matter I will get to in a minute.

"The Burden of Memory, the Muse of Forgiveness," you must understand, is "in the obligatory [Soyinka] fashion," a compilation of oral lectures the learned professor gave at Harvard. You must understand too, that the writing is basically academic, and suited more to an oral lecture. And because we speak of Soyinka, the writing is characteristically difficult.

So then, his lectures-turn-books (including, of course, "The Burden of Memory, the Muse of Forgiveness") are not the best of works with which to appraise Soyinka's genius. For a true appreciation of Soyinka's literary prowess, you must read his plays and novels.

The flaw, of which I spoke earlier, is captured in the question a friend once posed to me (not Soyinka): "Is not the purpose of language to communicate?" Without a full-fledged dictionary, and the will to re-read whole paragraphs, one would struggle to keep up with Soyinka's writing.

In all, whether one likes it or not, the man is a literary giant, period!

Mildly interesting at best.......2002-02-06

There is no doubt that Wole Soyinka is a good writer - his Nobel prize was justly deserved and not a case of affirmative action as another reviewer insultingly suggested. However, someone encountering Soyinka for the first time in this book would not be tempted to try reading his more famous writings: this book is, to be frank, not well written. Based on three lectures Soyinka gave at Harvard University in 1997, Soyinka touches upon the very topical reparations controversy in the first essay, praises the Senegalese writer Leopold Senghor in the second and spends the last examining African poets' attempts to deal with the legacies of colonialism and racism.

Through all three lectures Soyinka employs a very dense style, one that might have worked well when speaking for an academic audience at Harvard but one that does not translate well onto the written page. Phrases like 'slaves into the twentieth-first century, mouthing the mangy mandates of mendacity, ineptitude, corruption and sadism' sound impressive but are merely a means for Soyinka to play around with words when he could be spending his time seriously addressing very important issues like reparations. When he does get down to business, he writes that 'reparations would involve the acceptance by Western nations of a moral obligation to repatriate the post-colonial loot salted away in their vaults, in real estate and business holdings' but never goes into detail exactly what this would involve. What is more disturbing is his frequent references to the U.S., which reveal his real ignorance about American life: examples include his belief that David Duke could have been elected President in 1992 and that the Ku Klux Klan held or holds a 'tentacular hold over power structures across the United States.' If he knows so little about the country where he is giving his lectures (and also holds a job as a Professor at Emory University), should we trust him to do a good job at addressing the international debate on reparations?

I didn't give this book one star for the fact that Soyinka's second and third lectures are reasonably coherent and do a good job of tracing the literary history behind Negritude. (For instance, he discusses the reasons why American black writers were in closer contact with Francophone blacks rather than their Anglophone brothers.) Yet even here he does not attempt to present any kind of thesis, but is merely contented with quoting various poems and doing some quick literary analysis.

Readers with an interest in discovering why Soyinka won the Nobel Prize should thus turn elsewhere.

Excellent.......2001-04-04

I was extremely impressed with Professor Soyinka's argument for reparations not only for Africa, but for all victims of enslavement, colonialism, and oppression. His style may be difficult, but for the able reader it is an excellent introduction to the conditions, both past and present, contributing to the current state of affairs throughout the African continent. It provides much food for thought on the question of just what is justice. Bob Marley's song "War" was constantly in my mind. It would be an honor to shake Professor Soyinka's hand.

Women of the Beat Generation: The Writers, Artists and Muses at the Heart of a Revolution

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Should not be missed
Women Writers Rule!
Beautiful!
Never enough Beat
Excellent insight into the beat generation

Women of the Beat Generation: The Writers, Artists and Muses at the Heart of a Revolution

Manufacturer: Conari Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1573241385

Amazon.com

Female Beats wrote poetry, took drugs, went on the road, listened to jazz, and lived on the fringe just as the men did, but their accomplishments are not as widely recognized. This volume attempts to correct this oversight by profiling 40 women of the Beat generation and publishing samples of their work. Well-known poets Diane di Prima and Denise Levertov appear in the volume, along with the muses of male writers and other women who never became famous at all. As Brenda Knight notes in her introduction, counterculture women in the 1950s and 1960s faced difficult obstacles: "To be unmarried, a poet, an artist, to bear biracial children, to go on the road was doubly shocking for a woman, and social condemnation was high." The first portion of the anthology is devoted to women who were not Beats but who set the stage for the movement. Josephine Miles wrote poetry and mentored the younger Beat poets at Berkeley, while Madeline Gleason founded the San Francisco Poetry Festival. In the "Muses" section are short biographies of wives and girlfriends of famous male writers such as Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassady. It's widely known that William S. Burroughs shot his wife Joan Vollmer Adams Burroughs; this book fills in other details of her wild and short life. Profiles of writers such as Joyce Johnson, Hettie Jones, Janna McClure, and Janine Pommy Vega account for the rest of the anthology. The lives these women led are as interesting as their writing, and Women of the Beat Generation honors their determination to live outside the mainstream. --Jill Marquis

Customer Reviews:

Should not be missed.......2006-09-24

Any interested in the history of the beat era must have WOMEN OF THE BEAT GENERATION: THE WRITERS, ARTISTS AND MUSES AT THE HEART OF A REVOLUTION. Much has been written on famous beat men but comparatively little on the women who also made their mark during the time: long overdue but better late than never is an exploration of the histories of these women, from Barbara Guest and Diane DiPrima to Jan Kerouac and Anne Waldman. A literary and social history which should not be missed.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

Women Writers Rule!.......2004-04-26

Yes, there were women writing as well, and doing all the other cool stuff at the time. Many of them are still writing or continued to write long after their affair with the "beat" generation. This book is a great introduction to these writers. It's very informative, has just enough of the good gossip and lots of really great writing.

Beautiful!.......2002-09-24

For a group that is now remembered as a progressive voice in the ultra-conformist wilderness of the 1950s, the Beats were a surprisingly chauvinistic bunch of guys, all too ordinary for their time. That unfortunate fact helps explain the relative obscurity of most of the women who ran with, influenced and, in some cases, loved them. (You probably know that William S. Burroughs accidentally murdered his common-law wife while playing William Tell, but do you know her name?) This wonderful volume goes a long way towards correcting that oversight. Featuring previously unpublished letters, rare pictures and - best of all - a generous sampling of creative works, it's a near-perfect survey of the Beats' female contemporaries, lovers and even a few of their precursors.

Although most of the women profiled here published at least one work in their own right at some point, many of those are not currently in print anywhere else. Additionally, some of the poems and stories here are previously unpublished, and in the case of many of the wives and lovers (referred to as "The Muses"), the works presented here are by far the most intimate look at their lives published thus far. In short, there's something here for everyone: a good starting point for newcomers to the Beats as well as a good supplementary piece for even the most serious students of women's literature.

Never enough Beat.......2002-06-16

This a good addition to the true beat fan's bookshelf. The histories of the women who took part in the beat movement and the excellent photos are worth the price alone. But you may find yourself surprised by the quality of some of the work. I ended up reading "Door Wide Open" by Joyce Johnson after finishing this book and enjoyed it immensely. The section on Denise Levertov is great as well.
The most enjoyable part of the book for me was the section on Elise Cowan. Cowan represents what Beat really is. She never produced a large, lasting amount of work, but she was a street soldier on the scene, down in the dirt, living the beat dream. Cowan was a lover to Allen Ginsberg, a friend to Joyce Johnson, a fling to Jack Kerouac, and a beautifully tragic figure of the time. If you want to dig deep in the beat and explore all of the characters, then invest in this book.

Excellent insight into the beat generation.......1999-03-24

This book is very interesting from both an historic and literary view. When I first started reading books from authors like Jack Kerouac and others, the Beat Generation seemed to be male dominated. But by reading this book one can see just how important the women really were. I recommend this book very much.

The Thirsty Muse: Alcohol and the American Writer

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phenomenal

The Thirsty Muse: Alcohol and the American Writer
Tom Dardis
Manufacturer: Houghton Mifflin (P)
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0395574226

Customer Reviews:

phenomenal.......2005-07-01

This is a phenomenal study of the artistic spirit and alcoholism. Dardis takes our three greatest writers of the last century, Faulkner, Fitzgerald, and Hemingway, and the greatest American playwrite, Eugene O'Neill, and studies the effect their alcoholism had on their work. It's a frightening tale for any writer battling addiction. It's a critical/biographical/sociological study of the best American letters had to offer at the turn of the last century. Read it.

The Muse in the Machine: Essays on Poetry And the Anatomy of the Body Politic (The Life of Poetry: Poets on Their Art and Craft) (The Life of Poetry: Poets on Their Art and Craft)

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The Muse in the Machine: Essays on Poetry And the Anatomy of the Body Politic (The Life of Poetry: Poets on Their Art and Craft) (The Life of Poetry: Poets on Their Art and Craft)
T. R. Hummer
Manufacturer: University of Georgia Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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The Infinity Sessions: Poems (Southern Messenger Poets)

ASIN: 0820327972

Product Description

Music, race, politics, and conscience. In these eight essays written over the span of a decade and a half, T. R. Hummer explains how, for him, such abiding concerns revolve around the practice of poetry and the evolution of a culturally responsible personal poetics. Hummer writes about the suicide of poet Vachel Lindsay, the culture wars at the National Endowment for the Arts, the 1991 Persian Gulf War, the divided soul of his native American South, and the salving, transcendent practice of musicianship. Inevitably entwined with a personal or cultural component, Hummer's criticism is thus grounded in experience that is always familiar and often straight to the heart in its rightness.

In one of those statements of "poetic purpose" that goes hand in hand with a residency, guest editorship, or lecture tour, Hummer once wrote that "poetry inhabits and enunciates an incommensurable zone between individual and collective, between body and body politic, an area very ill-negotiated by most of us most of the time. Our culture, with its emphasis on the individual mind and body, teaches us very little about how even to think about the nature of this problem. . . . E pluribus unum is a smokescreen: what pluribus; what unum? And yet this phrase is an American mantra, as if it explained something." This is a quintessential Hummer moment: a writer has just given himself a good reason to quit. What Hummer knows must happen next is what The Muse in the Machine is all about.

Book Description

In twenty-six essays, Codrescu turns his skeptical, amused gaze to such topics as Plato's effect on American sex, the cultural meaning of Ed McMahon, baseball's literary underpinnings, his own conception in a Romanian darkroom, an cuisine under the Ceausescu dictatorship, as well as to larger subjects, including the suicide of communism, American culture and politics, and his adopted city of New Orleans.

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The Multiple Muses of Virginia Woolf

Manufacturer: Univ of Missouri Pr
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0826208827

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