This Month's Articles
ESSAY
Madame Bovary’s Daughter
by Linda Urbach
An essay by Jan Alexander
Mademoiselle Bovary, c’est Chanel
On the last page of Madame Bovary is a sort of postscript that doesn’t get much attention in lit classes though it could be the beginning of a sequel. Young Berthe, Madame Bovary’s neglected daughter, having watched her mother die of arsenic poisoning, and found her father dead of a broken heart, is now a near-penniless orphan.
Flaubert is specific about her finances: When everything left in the Bovary home was sold, Berthe had only 12 francs and 70 centimes to pay the trip to go live with her grandmother, Charles Bovary’s mother. The old woman died the same year. An aunt took charge, but the aunt “is poor, and sends her (Berthe) to earn her living in a cotton weaving factory.” Flaubert put it in present tense, leaving the girl stuck forever as exploited labor in the industrial revolution
Flaubert seems to have intended this as his final swat at the French class structure. The growth of industry and urbanization in mid-19th century France produced a milieu where a country girl such as Emma Rouault could, if not exactly marry up, at least join the urban strata by virtue of marriage to a man licensed to practice medicine (Charles was an officier de santé, not an actual physician, and a doctor was just a few social rungs above a tradesman at the time) and spend her days reading romantic novels.
She could even live beyond her means, thanks to credit that was easy to get .....Read More
REVIEWING
Fug You: An Informal History of the Peace Eye Bookstore, the Fuck You Press, the Fugs, and Counterculture in the Lower East Side
by Ed Sanders
Reviewed by Sarah Vogelsong
In December 1966, Elizabeth Hardwick of the New York Review of Books attended a concert given by The Fugs, a “satiric proto-folk-rock group” founded by Ed Sanders and Tuli Kupferberg, and was riveted not by their music, but by the counterculture scene of the Lower East Side.
“The Fugs,” she wrote “are neither art nor theater, but noise…and Free Speech.”
Now, fifty-five years later, Hardwick’s words resonate once again in reading Sanders’ memoir of the Sixties, Fug You: An Informal History of the Peace Eye Bookstore, the Fuck You Press, the Fugs, and Counterculture in the Lower East Side. With the maddening enthusiasm that we have come to expect of children of the 1960s, Sanders has eschewed literary restraint and cheerfully included everything from the era that he can remember in his story.
His introduction sets the tone of the book well, opening the floodgates to “folk rock, Pop Art, Summer of Love, communes, the Revolution, sex forever, riots in Newark, the Tet Offensive, revolutions in theater and dance, Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, Chicago, Woodstock, Nixon, Chappaquiddick, the Moon Walk, the Moratoriums, Altamont, cults that kill, oh Lord, like Poe’s ‘Soriac River that restlessly rolls.’” (The last slightly misquoted, but it’s the spirit that counts, right?) The result of this exercise in.....Read More
ESSAY
Civilization—the West and the Rest
by Niall Ferguson
An essay by Jane M McCabe
Niall Ferguson, noted British historian, the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University, and author of Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World, and The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World, recognizes that, “We are living through the end of 500 years of Western ascendancy.”
He asks, “Just why, beginning around 1500, did a few small polities on the western end of the Eurasian landmass come to dominate the rest of the world, including the more populous and in many ways more sophisticated societies of Eastern Eurasia?”
His subsidiary questions are, “If we can come up with a good explanation for the West’s past ascendancy, can we then offer a prognosis for its future? Is this really the end of the West’s world and the advent of a new Eastern epoch?”
Indeed! “Are we witnessing the waning of an age when the greater part of humanity was more or less subordinated to the civilization that arose in Western Europe in the wake of the Renaissance and Reformation—the civilization that, propelled the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment, spread across.....Read More
Letters to the Editor
Dear Fred:
Thank you for the lovely review you wrote about our title THE WHIP by Karen Kondazian. When Barbara Tezsler at LCO pointed out your publication last month, I was really struck by its neat and clean layout and the content. You’ve married the look and feel of a print journal to a web publication—it’s very natural and makes me feel at home
Best,
Jon Hansen
Hansen Publishing Company, LLC
Dear Fred
Kara Fox's latest Portfolio on Helen K. Garber was on the mark for photography as an artistic presentation. "Thornton Alley" captures noir in all its fullness. Great work.
Mark Berg
Venice, California
REVIEWING
Exhibiting Blackness: African Americans and the American Art Museum
by Bridget R. Cooks
Reviewed by Fred Beauford
Pity the Poor Visual Artist
The burning question that has intrigued me for most of my adult life is why black musicians, facing the same daunting challenges that native black visual artists, novelists, actors, poets, directors, screenwriters and playwrights, faced -- gave the Europeans a swift kick in the butt, and boldly, and loudly, proclaimed themselves King of this, Queen of that, with additional Dukes, Earls, Counts and Princes; and the grand prizes of all, the Queen of Soul, the Queen of the Blues, and the King of Pop.
Talk about giving the finger to folks.
Often unschooled, black musicians, undeterred by racism, and more importantly, unfiltered and unmediated, created the sound track not only for America, but an art form for the entire planet that said “America” more than anything else we have been able to create on these shores.
Not so for the poor, unfortunate creative native blacks who wanted to have the same impact on American culture, but who pursued a career in the Visual Arts. Exhibiting Blackness brings this factor.....Read More
PORTFOLIO
Portfolio: Rob Daly - Photographer Extraordinaire
by Kara Fox
Yin and yang...light and dark...the lows and highs in life...I often wonder how much of this is random...from the low...I had a dramatic car accident...came the high...meeting Rob Daly. Kismet. Rob embraces artist in the truest sense of the word. He is the ultimate creative person...his use of words and images are magical.
Born in New Jersey and living minutes from the ocean set the tone for Rob's love of water. He and his family of five went to the shore throughout the year and sat in the car watching the waves. It is not surprising that the beach has always been his favorite place.
Rob began taking family photos with his mother’s twin lens reflex camera at age ten, when, due to rheumatoid arthritis, she no longer could no longer use her camera.
He appreciated the mechanical precision of his mother’s camera as well as the pictures it produced. Preserving a moment in a photograph was magical and powerful to him.
"I became the family photographer and am absent from many family photos as .....Read More
NOVEL
The African Gentleman
…and The Plot to Re-establish The New World Order
A Novel by Fred Beauford
Chapter 39
39
Ronald Martinez, the new CEO of transglobaltech, shared one trait with Assai: he never smiled around the office, but kept the same serious look that Assai had perfected. In fact, the only time I saw Assai smile was when I would visit him at the detention center.
Mr. Martinez called me into his office for our first formal, one-on-one, face-to-face meeting. Meeting with the top guy was a rarity, now that I no longer could have daily little chats with Assai.
My immediate supervisor was Mr. Kan, the Chief of Engineering, and on the job chart, my position was under the Engineering Department; whatever news that came from the top, was now passed on to me by him, so this was an unsuspected honor.
When I first started the job I had little experience in this kind of highly structured world. It was nothing like the old African village I knew was wired into my DNA, where everyone had a say about everything.
Not here.
After barely surviving acting, Hollywood and Angel, I decided that I wanted to become a doctor. My parents loved the idea, but after a few years of trying to qualify for med school, I discovered that becoming a doctor was an extreme flight of fancy, and the field was all wrong for me. So instead, I got an MBA in Marketing at the same university in which I received my degree in acting. I finally ended up in the Bloomberg School of Business.
***
“But son, when are you going to stop going to school?” my perplexed mother pleaded.....Read More
REVIEWING
Dangerous Ambition: Rebecca West and Dorothy Thompson, New Women in Search of Love and Power
by Susan Hertog
Reviewed by Janet Garber
Having It All
Author Susan Hertog examines the lives of two burgeoning “feminists” of the Victorian era, the English Rebecca West and American Dorothy Thompson, skipping from one to the other in alternating chapters, contrasting their beliefs, defeats and successes, romantic entanglements, family dysfunctions, and their lifelong friendship.
West famously said, "I myself have never been able to find out what feminism is; I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat or a prostitute" - a disingenuous comment from a much heralded writer and journalist who published over 25 books (novels, reportage, reviews) in her lifetime. She covered the Nuremberg trials for The New Yorker while enduring the considerable stigma of.....Read More
REVIEWING
LOST KINGDOM: Hawaii’s Last Queen, The Sugar Kings, and America’s First Imperial Adventure
by Julia Flynn Siler
Reviewed by Emily Rosen
Aloha! I’ve spent time in some of the most exotic places in the world, experienced traditions, people, history, and mores as far from my Brooklyn upbringing as my imagination had ever dared to take me, but I’ve never been to Hawaii. And since the wretched economy has placed me on travel hiatus, I plunged headlong into this other world, ready to lap up its story, (and its sugar) as I tried to retrieve old memories of James Michener’s 1959 classic, Hawaii.
Lost Kingdom is history in action, worthy of Broadway staging, complete with front-of-the-book “Cast of Characters,” including appropriate references. And lest you cannot make context connections, there is a convenient glossary of translations from the Hawaiian dictionary.
Author Julia Flynn Siler, a prize winning journalist, is no newcomer to bringing historical dynasties into full vitality on the printed page. Her 2007 The House of Mondavi: The Rise and Fall of An American Wine Dynasty won many awards.
Lost Kingdom takes us from Captain Cook’s arrival on the island in 1778, (bringing “deadly diseases, liquor and firearms”) to the establishment of........Read More
REVIEWING
Abuse of Power
by Michael Savage
Read by: Peter Larkin
Reviewed by Michael Carey
Michael Savage is the author of twenty-five books, including four bestsellers, and is a conservative talk-show host. Both his writing skills and his political views are on display in his thriller Abuse of Power. With his widespread influence, there is no doubt that there is an audience for this novel. I find it best to describe it as an ever-popular, guilty pleasure. Listening to Savage's novel reminded me of listening to a Clive Cussler novel when I was younger, except it is not quite as good.
One must appreciate the imagination, the work, and the knowledge that Savage demonstrates with the novel, but I was more connected with Cussler's Dirk Pitt than Savage's Jack Hatfield, a war correspondent whose unwavering patriotism and insatiable quest for the truth have landed him on the mainstream media's blacklist.
It wasn't for a lack of trying that Jack's character struck me as relatively flat; I simply had a hard time empathizing with him. I actually found the rogue Hand of Allah member, Abdal, a secondary, maybe even tertiary bad ........Read More
A WRITER'S WORLD
Finding your rhythm: Writing & Exercise
by Molly Moynahan
A bear, however hard he tries, grows tubby without exercise. ~A.A. Milne
Today I wandered up and down the trails of Griffith Park, hiking the alien paths in the alien territory of Los Angeles. I was aware that my legs were beginning to tire as the third hour approached but my brain was teeming with possibilities for the characters in my novel-in-progress and so the pain in my legs was easy to ignore.
These characters are navigating alien territory themselves, tiring of some of the situations they find themselves in, situations that include death, illness, marriage, parenting and facing choices they'd made in the past.
Being lost and confused on a mountain above Los Angeles paralleled nicely with my main character's sense of displacement. The strenuous physical activity kept me moving forward while I considered what I should do .....Read More
