Making the World Strange Again

The Newspaper of The Literary Arts BOOKPRESS Volume 3, Number 1 February, 1993 Ithaca, New York COMPLIMENTARY Making The World Strange Again Chris Furst and eccentricities and American and legends to create a narrative ours. We’d be freezing, we'd notice Peter Doyle, especially the scene Jeff Schwaner tragedies, offered with sly purpose that only appears to be whole. all sorts of unfamiliar smells, where Pete and Josie tire sitting and cracked wisdom. ” The book's everything in the sensory world, together by a tree, remembering the John Vernon, whose essay on “deliciously preposterous narrative JS: How is the essay on historical everything related to material smell inside the tepees. In the the dubious history o f Napoleon's device ” is none other than the fabled fiction going ? beginning of the btxik, the penis was published in the New phallus itself as it slips through the JV 1 wrote this dowm the first thing 1 was struck by York Times Book Review last July, fingers of characters savory and oilier day: “The idea is to be was the sense of how dirty will be reading at the Bookers unsavory, but Vernon incorporates curious about what the world Manhattan was, a real February 7tlt. We visited him in great ficitional portraits of Horace was like before it all started sense of what the living Vestal to talk about his upcoming Greeley, Walt Whitman, Emily to be the same." I think I conditions were like. I larper’s essay on the new historical Dickinson and the entire Western first became attracted to JV: It was the time when fiction, as well as his latest novel frontier into a novel that deals with historical themes or the first tenements were Peter Doyle, which the San a constant search for what 's missing, historical fiction out of a being built and waves of Francisco Chronicle called "a and how our perception of what desire to restore some European immigrants funhouse-mirror distortion of would make us complete affects our strangeness to the world. were arriving. There were American dreams, American expectations and behavior. The Russian formalist pigs on the streets of New In his Harper's essay, Vernon critics in this century said art York in the 1870s. There posits the incompleteness o f history or literature makes the world were piles of trash and as one of the forces driving the strange again and trees us rubble. The Brooklyn INSIDE historical f iction o f the last decade. from banal and predictable Bridge was started at that With the glacier of the Cold War ways of judging things. I time; I can’t remember period beginning to recede, novelists started reading some of the what the tallest building Porus Olpadwala are in the vanguard of a new French Annales historians, was, but 1 think it was one on World Hunger encounter with our past, breaking and 1 remember something of the churches on lower P- 3 the ice between the contemporary that Fernand Braudel said in Broadway. It was a New Janice Levy and Hector reader and a reconstitution o f the the preface to one of his York we wouldn’t language, dreams, and sensors txxiks: I le said if we were to recognize today, but just Velez-Guadalupe experience of individuals living go back to the 18th century barely beginning to Photograph: Pat Roberts on Cuba under circumstances more foreign and talk with Voltaire, we'd become something we p. X-9 or strange to us than conventional be able to have a John Vernon could relate to. history would have us believe. In the conversation with him and JS; But to go back to Natural History case of Napoleon's missing member. we’d understand each other. But comfort, eating and defecating—all Voltaire, how do you as a writer by Scott Camazine Vernon demonstrates in Peter Doyle what would really be appalling to those things would be vastly research the material circumstances p 5 that conventional history comes up us would be the material differences different of his life? short, relying on many half-truths between his circumstances and CF. You really conveyed that in see Vernon, page 6 The Labor Beat The Colors of Jazz The New Labor Press compelling and passionate argument the New York l imes ’ former labor Meet Me at Jim and Andy’s of violinist Joe Venuti and guitarist Sam Pizzigati and that the labor press must play a reporter. William Serrin, chroni Gene Lees Eddie Lang. Lees’ friendliness is Fred J. Solowey, Editors leading role in helping the labor cles the demise o f the “labor beat ” Oxford, paper, $8.95 that he wants you to listen to the IFR Press, Cornell University movement transform itself into a at virtually all major newspapers. music and hear it freshly, and free of paper, $16.95 /cloth, S38.1X) dynamic, fighting force for working Robert Kalaski, President of the Waiting for Dizzy the preconceptions accreted over people. “We harbor no romantic International Labor Communica Gene Lees generations of often narrow and A1 Davidoff illusions about the power of the labor tions Association, writing on Oxford, paper, $10.95 contentious criticism. press. No publications alone, no television's approach to working In his foreword to Waiting for Only one form o f written commu matter how vital, can overcome the people, says, “If we were to judge Joel Ray Dizzy, the writer Terry Teachout nication outside the mainstream social and economic pressures cur the prevalence and importance of says, commercial press regularly reaches rently squeezing labor. But we jobs in American society by what After reading a Gene Ixes piece 20 million Americans—the labor deeply believe that a reinvigorated appears on television, nearly half 1 nearly always want to listen to the Jazz, being an improvised music, press. Virtually every national un labor press can make a significant of us would work in law enforce music. His essay on Bill Evans in takes shape at the crossroads o f the ion has a paper or magazine that contribution to tabor renewal. We ment. ” Kalaski points out that TV's Meet Me at Jim and Andy's sent me improviser's personality and the gets mailed to its members' homes deeply believe that labor papers can attitude toward worker organiza to the used record stalls for an early circumstances under which he is each and every month. The Na help people feel their unions belong tions is even less well-rounded: Riverside LP, and for Evans' last improvising. An outsider... cannot tional Education Association's to them. We deeply believe that “Through the distorted eye of tel concerts in Germany; thirty years tell you what it felt like to play with Director of Publishing, Sam labor journalism can help union evision, unions contribute little to apart, the two sessions were, to I axis, Duke that night-—or ride the train Pizzigati, and the (new) Teamster's members recognize the necessity> of society except strike turmoil. " embodiments of the same searching with him the next morning. Far too Conununications Coordinator, Fred unity—and respect the value of di Pizzigati and Solowey 's collec spirit. His remarks on the fluent, little o f (such inside knowledge) has Solowey (both former Ithaca activ versity in an increasingly tion provides useful ideas for how imaginative tenor style of Benny gotten into the history books. ists), have edited a collection of multicultural work environment. ” to create more relevant grassroots Golson helped me to hear Golson Wailing for Dizzy is a welcome ex twenty essays critiquing the labor Two early essays describe how publications. Labor journalists much more clearly, and to appreci ception.... press and offering inspiring visions labor can aggressively improve candidly explore questions about ate the link between his playing and for its future. While dozens of books mainstream newspaper and TV coverage o f women, new non-Eng his genius as a jazz composer. The A lyricist, biographer, and his have proclaimed the demise of the coverage, and lay the groundwork lish-speaking minority workers, first two chapters in Waiting for torian, Lees is an engaging writer labor movement, this one. Hie New for Pizzigati and Solowey s empha racism, and such tactical issues as Dizzy, highlighting the jazz of the with a storyteller’s sense of pacing Labor Press, offers hope and some sis on the importance of labor's the best uses o f cartoons and pho 1920s, stimulated a birthday request and style. His essays open the door specific ideas fo r rebuilding. improving and expanding its own tos. They also address the limits of that was recently satisfied with the to the lives of relatively obscure and Pizzigati and Solowey make a internal publications. An article by see Labor, page 15 vivid, swinging 1926-33 recordings see Jazz, page 10 page 2 the BOOKPRESS February, 1993 Letters to the Editor Vanishing Savings: household savings rate has been matters. sands of Americans. decisions that will be more respon Compelling Argument or falling. The decline explains our • A low domestic savings rate What can be done? It is instruc sive to the needs of workers, their present malaise and threatens the does not constrain domestic invest tive to look at a period of successful communities, and the environment. Red Herring? future. Thus die savings rate— spe ment. Financial markets arc global; restructuring—the post-World War The way present investment deci cifically its intensification— if investors liave a burning desire to II period (the same period that P ro sions are made simply will not do.

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