Mr. Hornsby,

I have to hand it to you, Rupert, your almost-guaranteed-to-fail Plan B seems to be working. This past week I’ve sent a handful of students home for wearing “WWJPD?” (What Would J.P. Morgan Do?) T-shirts.

What’s worse is that a group of parents have been circulating a petition to remove Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle from our reading list and replace it with Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. While Rand’s philosophical novel is a classic, the parents claim their reason for the replacement is to, “Prevent the Red Plague from infecting our family, schools and country.” This just so happens to draw more than a few parallels with the Red Scare of the 1940’s and 50’s, a dark time in our nation’s history. I am all for students getting a fair balance of view points, but we also mustn’t take a step backwards and teach our children that those of a differing opinion are evil and out to destroy the fabric of American society.

You’ve left me no choice but to move on to my Plan B, which is posing as too-cool-for-school-but-cool-enough-to-hang-around-it-all-day Super-Senior Janet von Gams. I’ll be hanging around outside the Middle Schools, buying the 8^th graders cigarettes, giving the teachers the middle finger when they tell me to stop loitering, and explaining the advantages of unions and Universal Health Care. Soon, every student will demand fair treatment of all employees and wish to go to college and have a reasonably successful career. Your plan will be foiled and I will retain my title of President of the Dorland County School District PTA.

I warned you about playing the game with me, Stryker. Now you let the tiger out of the cage. RAR!

-Krystine Markowitz

Title: The Jungle

Author: Upton Sinclair

Where bought: amazon.co.uk

Why bought: Set text on a university course

Review:

There is a shortlist of books that crop up time and again on lists of must-read classics that anyway with any kind of interest in reading and literature should have read. Dickens and Austen and Orwell inevitably are mentioned, along with a predictable set of others. Now I will admit I have not read all of the ‘classics’ of English Literature, and among those that I have read, I would say that I couldn’t see what all the fuss was about. So it does pain me somewhat that there are a raft of works of great importance, or just complete genius that never grace such lists.

The Jungle ticks all the boxes for me that would warrant it going down in history as a novel of great import that deserves greater recognition that it has got.

Of course it received a certain, albeit slightly nefarious stamp of approval when it was first released, as it was highly censored when it first came out in the USA. Its depiction of the lives of Polish immigrants, and specifically their interaction with the Chicago meat packing industry was so shocking in its gritty revelatory nature, that it would cause a scandal if it was published in its uncensored form.

Any novel that becomes embroiled in politics and exposes runs the risk of becoming too focussed on the details and so loses its power purely through the loss of any impact as a novel. It is because the Jungle managed to avoid doing so completely that is its greatest asset and makes it (while not necessarily enjoyable) a highly worthwhile read.

The obvious political and social message of the novel is not explicitly stated for the most part. In the last 50 or so pages, the novel seems to go off the rails as politicians are brought in as characters in order to act as mouthpieces for political ideals. However, the majority of the novel is focussed on the human struggle of the characters that allows the significance of their lives to come through by itself.

You are introduced to the characters in the middle of a party, a dance that is laced with lashings of Orientalism in its depiction of foreign customs. The promise of their new lives in America is then inflated so that you will find yourself believing in the American Dream. The rest of the novel then becomes a rollercoaster of naivety and revelation in which the journey of the characters themselves becomes the one you the reader are lead on. You make the gradual discoveries of the truth as the characters do, and the focus of the perspective makes this slow percolation of the action and the revelations all the more powerful.

As the novel goes on it is the oscillations between hope and despair that keep an impetus to it. There are a few moments in which there is a single pinprick of joy, or the possibility of salvation for the characters that goes to make the plunge back into the gritty darkness of reality even more crushing and heartbreaking.

Sinclair’s writing makes the bleak world of the stockyards feel horribly real, painting a vivid image of the various shades of dirt that the immigrants find themselves amongst. The characters themselves all that a certain 3 dimensional quality to them, however much they are only in the background of the import of the plot. The descriptions of the goings on in the factory are not overly dressed up in metaphor or highfalutin language, the grim details are laid bare for the reader to see (and try not to picture while eating) themselves.

Sinclair’s way with words and development of character allow the gruesome details that form the backbone of the significant undercurrent of this novel to insinuate themselves into the reader. The details of life in the stockyards and the goings-on of the corporations remain shocking to a modern reader even with our own cynicism and knowledge of the reality of the evils of modern society. The hard-hitting material is brilliantly framed by Sinclair with a plot and cast of characters that only heighten the effect of more unpleasant details of his novel.

This novel is an excellently written novel that seems to evoke the full spectrum of emotions when reading it. It has significance both as a historical artefact in its history of censorship, but also its depiction of both a culture and a wider society that should never be allowed to be forgotten. For this reason it should sit proudly along other greats, but unlike many of them, it is a classic to be read and absorbed rather than merely spoken about and admired.

The job market is a little less dismal today. The jobless rate apparently decreased to 10 percent. That is a modest step forward, although I’m not aware of anyone predicting a quick return to the mis-named “full employment” (which is actually the “natural” rate of unemployment, somewhere around five percent). Below this rate, workers start asking for more and inflation kicks in. High unemployment creates downward pressure on wages (an expense to be minimized) and is therefore good for business. Keep in mind that the stock market has been doing just fine while six unemployed persons chase each available job.

The Wall Street Journal said it best (perhaps sarcastically): “Only 11,000 lost jobs! Praise heaven.” Indeed the editorial blatantly concludes that we should avoid any government jobs program and let the market do its magical thing.

Whatever the case, a drop in unemployment is good news for the average person. So how do we get more of it? I want to take a look at a couple of approaches (not counting the market idea, which is pretty self-explanatory). First, using government policy to boost the job market. Second, the grassroots cooperative job creation that tends to happen on its own when people get hungry enough.

This weekend, Nobel laureate economist Paul Krugman called for an urgent jobs-creation program. He notes that the Fed is forecasting unemployment to remain above eight percent until sometime in 2012, and calls for an urgent government program based on creation of public-sector jobs and incentives for hiring.

Happily for Krugman, this week President Obama hosted a jobs summit. He divided participants into six topical working groups, including “small business” and “strengthening Main Street.” Participants were intended to “span the spectrum” to provide “fresh perspectives and new ideas.” I haven’t found any sign that co-ops were at the table, or that the concept was even discussed. If anyone has seen this (or a participant list) please let us know with a comment. I really hope I’m wrong here, but it seems like they left out a major perspective.

And that brings me to the other approach, which requires a little trip back in history. During the depths of the Great Depression, hundreds of thousands of people formed a wide variety of mutual-aid systems. These often used barter, and were often organized along cooperative lines. This was a continuation from previous economic crises, as John Curl has chronicled in his mind-blowing book For All the People. (Read this; you’ll never look at our supposedly individualist history and culture in the same way again.)

Oddly, this laid the foundation for a different approach to government intervention. It was never fully tried, and parts of it might be worth examining again.

Upton Sinclair latched onto mutual aid and created a radical movement for the 1934 California gubernatorial election. It was called EPIC – “End Poverty in California.” The detailed platform is available, ironically at the Social Security web site. (with the note that it “may not reflect current policies or procedures” Really?) A key part of the plan was for the government to build on the great successes of the mutual aid cooperatives. The state would rent (not seize) unused factories and turn them over to worker cooperatives and “production for use” rather than for profit and speculation. EPIC also planned huge “land colonies” that would get people back to growing their own food.

Essentially it would be a massive publicly-supported barter system, modeled after a smaller plan that was already underway in Ohio. Sinclair had apparently done the math, and it would have been cheaper than continuing to provide people with public assistance. And more importantly, it might have gotten around the problem we once again face: creating new jobs is not profitable for capitalist business. Of course, we should wonder what happened to the “Ohio Plan.”

EPIC is really wild stuff and I’m really not sure what I think of it. However, the idea apparently had legs and did fairly well on election day. First, Sinclair won the Democratic primary with more votes than the other six candidates combined. Then, despite intense red-scare tactics, no support from his party, and Roosevelt’s last-minute decision not to endorse the plan as he said he would, Sinclair still managed to take more than a third of the vote, while keeping the incumbent from winning a majority.

What would have happened if EPIC had been enacted? One thing is certain, California – and probably the nation – would look dramatically different today.

Systemic joblessness is a critical flaw of capitalism. I’m not aware of anyone who has even theorized a way out of it. But I’ve got a growing suspicion that if we can reduce the need to keep investors fat and happy, there will be less of a need to keep wages low and therefore less of a need for unemployment. We might not be able to eliminate joblessness or recessions, but hopefully we can minimize their frequency and intensity.

I don’t think that “production for use” should originate from the government. But as long as the government is messing around with all aspects of the economy, it seems like this is something worth trying. A little funding for a pilot project could go a long way.

Regardless of the government’s involvement, cooperatives seem to be catching on. Nancy Folbre at the NY Times Economix blog seems to be all riled up about co-ops. The model is now spreading like wildfire throughout the Midwest.

Even if the economy perks right up and gets back to where only five percent of people are systemically unemployed, we need something new. There are no quick fixes, no magic bullets, and no guarantees that we’ll be able to build a cooperative economy to supplement or replace the capitalist one. But if we really want to try “new ideas” we at least owe ourselves a read of the EPIC Plan and a serious consideration of mutalist approaches.

It is very difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.  Upton Sinclair – The Jungle 1906

For me this quote is more about company values than anything else.  Employees will do what they are paid to do.  It could be a salary at the end of a month or an incentive that drives their mindset, work ethic and decision making process.  There are the exceptions, but we are not talking about them right now.

For many businesses this is the age old system that has worked to drive revenues up.  The first cause of concern is that revenues seem to be the only key purpose to the exercise.  The values of the company are steeping in making profit before anything else, be it care for the environment, employee growth and even human life.

This was the case a few years ago at Anglo American.  Tonnage used to be number one objective, so much so that if a person died underground in order to achieve that goal, that was acceptable.  Salaries depended on meeting goals, not on saving human beings.  To Anglo’s immense credit, they are now pushing safety as the number one objective.  What this means is that performance is measured not by how much was mined but rather if every employee returns safely at the end of the day.  Human life has quite rightfully replaced tonnage as the primary management objective.

Pete Laburn

For the second time this season, a jazz book has so astonished me that I want to write about it before I take the time to read it at the leisurely pace it deserves.  This book is published in a limited edition of 500 copies, so I hope that someone might be moved sufficiently to order a copy before they are all gone.  TRAVELING BLUES: THE LIFE AND MUSIC OF TOMMY LADNIER, byBo Lindstrom and Dan Vernhettes, is a lively yet scholarly study of the life and music of the short-lived trumpeter.  Many jazz books are enthusiastic but lopsided; books that collect beautiful photographs sometimes have minimal or unsatisfying text; scholarly books are often not appealing to the eye.  This book strikes sparks in every way: the diligent research that has gone into it, the expansive prose; the wonderful illustrations.  I have been reluctant to put it down.  Each page offers surprises.   

Tommy Ladnier isn’t widely known: he has been dead seventy years.  The fame he deserved never came, even though he had enthusiastic champions in Mezz Mezzrow, Hughes Panassie, and Sidney Bechet.  But a brief list of the people Ladnier played alongside will testify to his talent: Bechet, Ma Rainey, Ida Cox, Bessie Smith, Alberta Hunter, Ethel Waters, Jimmy Harrison, Coleman Hawkins, Jelly Roll Morton, Jimmy Noone, Fletcher Henderson, Clarence Williams, Sam Wooding, Doc Cheatham, Noble Sissle, Chick Webb, James P. Johnson, Teddy Bunn, Walter Page, Jo Jones.  He was known as a “sensational” trumpeter in Chicago in 1921: he appeared in Carnegie Hall in 1938.   

The reasons he is so little known have nothing to do with the quality of his art.  Ladnier did not enjoy the high-pressure urban scene, and he occasionally retreated from it (in 1934-8, when he could have been playing more often in the city, he he lived upstate); he also spent a good deal of his playing career in Europe (including a sojourn in Russia) before it was fashionable.  And in a period when hot trumpet playing was fashioned in splendidly extravagant Louis-fashion, someone like Ladnier — quieter, even pensive, choosing to stay in the middle register – might have been overlooked.  (At times, he makes me think of a New Orleans version of Joe Thomas, Shorty Baker, or Tony Fruscella.) 

I first came to Ladnier’s music indirectly, by way of his most enthusiastic colleague, reedman, pot-supplier, and proseltyzer Milton “Mezz” Mezzrow, who saw Tommy as someone with pure jazz instincts.  Mezzrow idolized Tommy as a quiet prophet of soulful New Orleans jazz, music not corrupted by the evil influence of big-band swing.  My youthful purchase of the RCA Victor record THE PANASSIE SESSIONS (circa 1967) was motivated by my reading of Mezzrow’s autobiography, REALLY THE BLUES.  But Mezzrow played and improvised so poorly, never stopping for a moment, that I could hardly hear Ladnier properly.   

Eventually I heard the 1932 New Orleans Feetwarmers session, where Ladnier and Bechet were effectively the front line, and too-brief live performances from John Hammond’s 1938 FROM SPIRITUALS TO SWING concert where Ladnier, Bechet, Dan Minor, James P. Johnson, Walter Page, and Jo Jones roared through WEARY BLUES.  Finally, I understood what it was that others admired so in Ladnier’s work.  A terse, nearly laconic player, he placed his notes and phrases perfectly.  His solos never overwhelm; his forthright earnestness is convincing; he doesn’t care to shout and swagger, but he is intense.  

As is this book.  Other scholars might have rearranged the easily accessible evidence: the recollections of Mezzrow, Bechet, and Panassie, written admiringly of Ladnier’s recording career, and left it at that.  Some writers might have brought melodrama to the facts of Ladnier’s life — his ambitious wife jeopardized a number of opportunities for him (one possible drama).  Ladnier died of a heart attack at 39, and could perhaps have been saved (another drama).  One could cast him as a victim of a variety of forces and people including the recording supervisor Eli Oberstein.  But the authors avoid these inviting errors.

They succeed not only in examining every scrap of evidence they could find – their research has been cautious, comprehensive, and lengthy — about Ladnier as a musician, born in Louisiana, migrating to Chicago, taking on the life of a jazz player in the Twenties and Thirties, dying in Harlem. 

But there’s more.  These scholars are also thoughtful historians who delight in placing the subject of their loving scrutiny in a larger context.  “What did it mean?” I can hear them asking.  So that their inquiry broadens beyond the simple chronological tracing of Ladnier’s life.  When we learn (through a beautiful reproduction of Ladnier’s draft card) that he worked for the Armour meat-packing company – so justly excoriated in Upton Sinclair’s THE JUNGLE — we can read about Armour and what it meant to Chicago and Chicagoans.  What did it mean to be an African-American musician traveling overseas in the Twenties?  The appropriate footnotes are easily accessible on each page.  The book also concludes with a detailed discography — noting not only the labels and issues, but on which performances Ladnier has a solo, a break, accompaniment, and the like. 

And the book is also visually quite beautiful.  A large-format book (the size of a 12″ record, appropriately) it is generously illustrated in color, with fine reproductions, nicely varied.  I was happily reminded of a beautifully-designed history or biology textbook, where the book designers had sought to set up harmonious vibrations between print and illustrations.  Indeed, one could spend an afternoon immersed in the illustrations: maps, a handwritten letter from Ladnier, record labels, photographs of individual players and of bands.  One illustration I particularly prize is an advertising handbill for a dinner-dance, “A Night At Sea,” to be held at the St. George Hotel in Brooklyn Heights, New York, on January 22, 1939.  In part, the music was provided by “Milton ‘Mez’ Mezzrow and his Bluebird Recording Orchestra featuring Tommy Ladnier.”  Even better: heading the bill were Henny Youngman and Molly Picon.  Without this book, I would never have known.

The music?  Well, the authors have taken care of that, too.  As part of the complete Ladnier experience, they have created a CD containing all 189 of Tommy’s recordings in mp3 format.  I don’t entirely understand the technology, but the CD is certainly the ideal companion to the book — containing the equivalent of eight CDs of music. 

I urge you to visit http://www.jazzedit.org/Traveling-blues.html and see for yourself.  In this era of deeply discounted books, the initial price of this one might seem serious, but its beauty, thoroughness, and devotion make it a masterpiece.

As a coda: the noted jazz scholar and collector of rare photographs Frank Driggs wrote an introduction to the book.  Here’s its closing paragraph: “This remarkable book is loaded with details on the lives of Tommy Ladnier and most of the people he played with.  There are hundreds of illustrations, photos of people I’ve never even seen before and I’ve seen most of the photos of jazz musicians over the last fifty years.  The depth of research is I believe unparalleled.  God bless these two fanatics who have devoted so much of their time and energy to bring this work of love to fruition.”

My sentiments exactly! 

Jonathan Safran Foer wants YOU… to put down the 99 cent junior whopper and pick up his new book. No, seriously. One of America’s most eccentric (and rather polarizing) authors has been dabbling in nonfiction, Upton Sinclair style. His new book, Eating Animals, takes a stab at what he considers to be  corruption in the factory farming industry. However, Foer also pointed out in a recent interview with Salon that the books focus is NOT the indoctrinization of vegetarianism:

I think there are a lot of different choices people can make that will lead to dismantling the system. It’s not like everybody has to go vegetarian. There are plenty of people who feel like, for whatever reason, they just can’t stop eating meat, but if they bought meat at the green market, from farmers they know by name, that’s as effective a rebuttal.

Hmm. Our jury is still out on that one. And although we probably won’t read his new book (sorry J.Saf) we’re glad that he can manage to take a stand for what he believes in and still flexing his writing muscles at the same time.

Brave compatriots, poor sloganeers.

There is nothing more unwieldy than a strike– and you can believe me about it, because I spent most of the early part of the century in the pro striking leagues.  Dental floss factories, safflower refineries, beet packing plants… you name it, I’ve striked it, and striked it with the best of them.  Who did Upton Sinclair come to for advice about California’s sulfur mines for his novel, The Jungle?  You guessed it.  Who was the popular, serialized comic hero “Colin Foradecenthourlywage” based on?  Yes, also true.  You see, for the striker with moxie, fame comes naturally.  And for those who are (often violently) opposed to work, striking provides an attractive and lucrative alternative.

Many a time has some young soul come up to me and said, “Hi.  My name is Joe.  I’ve got a wife and three kids and I work in a button factory.  One day, my boss says to me, ‘Joe, are you busy?’  I says, ‘no.’  ‘Then push a button with your left foot.’…” and so on and so on, until Joe is pushing buttons with all possible appendages, both major and minor.  He wants the madness to end.  What can he do?  The answer is simple, but many people are afraid to try it.  To this I ask, “Joe!  Will you live your whole life in fear, buttons governing your every move and a big bad boss always breathing down your chimney?  Light a fire in that chimney, and be free!  Get up off your tuffet!  Plant your magic beans and if you’re waiting for the right kind of pilot to come, I would fly to the moon and back. “  I know my words are encouraging– most folks like Joe are already running, running off to make a sandwich board or find a megaphone I assume, before I have even come to the end of my inspirational statement.  Such is my charisma, the charisma of a veteran.

Most folks also presume that in order to strike a place, you must first work there.  Not so.  The most important thing is to incite other workers to strike along with you.  This makes you the clear leader, and most places of employment keep such poor records that the egg is on their faces when they cannot find your employment file.  It is important to become properly enraged when this information is disclosed, and to tell all the local media outlets.  It was through this process that I was once hired on as Executive Vice President in charge of Worker Affairs at a button factory.  Oh, no no no… I know what you’re thinking, but our business was producing the buttons that pin to your clothing– primarily for presidential campaigns and for striking workers.  Funny how things tend to come full circle!

“The great corporations which employed you lied to you, and lied to the whole country — from top to bottom it was nothing but one gigantic lie.”

A quote from Upton Sinclair’s book “The Jungle.” Sinclair’s muckraking showed the trials of immigrants and how big business ceaselessly took advantage of them.

The book is famous for the action President Roosevelt took to correct the corruption in the food industry, and after 100 pages, I see why it had such grand impact. 

The Tank wants to become vegetarian.

G

In 1968, Walter Cronkite addressed the nation concerning his experience in Vietnam.

“It is increasingly clear to this reporter that the only rational way out then will be to negotiate, not as victors, but as honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy, and did the best they could,” Cronkite said.

That night Cronkite tapped the most powerful aspect of journalism, stimulation.

He engaged the public and, while certainly stating an opinion, he also cultivated much needed dialog. It is through dialog and conversation that minds are change and minds are opened. Conversations at the bar or at the water cooler about Cronkite and his opinions led to discussions and an eventual swing of public opinion.

Many who study such things believe that this was a spark for the popularity of the eventual pull out of Vietnam.

Muckraking journalists of the early 20th century such as Ida Tarbell and Upton Sinclair sensationalized the corruption of the monopolies and industries that they covered, but their reports stirred the discourse and outrage that would presumably persuade the legal changes that soon followed.

Sinclair once said, “You don’t have to be satisfied with America as you find it. You can change it. I didn’t like the way I found America some 60 years ago, and I’ve been trying to change it ever since.”

These people realized that in our modern world it’s not enough to simply inform.

As a journalist one must actively attempt to open the channels that were previously only lurking in the subconscious.

It’s only in the minds of a talking public that problems get solved.

It is in their image that we publish.

Chris Curry

-Features Editor

Two days after I finished Uwem Akpan’s “Say You’re One of Them”, Oprah Winfrey selected this collection of short stories as part of her popular book club. As a reader, I personally hate to have my literary consumption tattooed with giant “O”s on the cover but I generally support the arguably most influential woman in modern history’s attempt to get people to read good books. Akpan joins the rest of Winfrey’s literati entourage: Gabriel Garcia Marquez, William Faulkner, Leo Tolstoy, and Toni Morrison to name a few.

I’m curious to how Winfrey’s devotees, usually middle class women, will react to possibly the most violent, morally-challenging books I have ever read. In fact, whether you read “Say You’re One of Them” on lazy Sunday mornings, on your lunch breaks, or a few minutes before bed time, I should warn the prospective reader that there is no “good” time to read Akpan’s horrific tales.

Prior to reading “Say You’re One of Them,” I considered Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle” the most violent, though poignant, social commentary I have read. It also contained, in my opinion the worst literary death, in which a minor character, young Stanislovas, falls asleep from exhaustion and malnutrition after hours at his place of illegal employment and is eaten alive by rats (please let me know of a worse literary fate.) Akpan’s protagnists, all of which are children, now vie for this terrible distinction as they face an adult world of ethnic  and religious violence, rape, prostitution, drug use, AIDS, poverty, and hunger.

When Khaled Hosseini’s “The Kite Runner” first debuted, I was in the awkward position of hating a novel that everyone and their grandma adored.  To say you hated “The Kite Runner” in 2003-2004 was akin to declaring you considered drowning kittens as a hobby. I still maintain that Hosseini’s prose and structure are amateurish at best and the novel simply capitalizes on a contemporary event. Whether, intentional or unintentional, the popularity of “The Kite Runner” among Americans is in part due to its complicity with the American invasion of Afghanistan. I worried similarly that Akpan’s work would suffer the same trappings. It does not. Akpan is a talented writer and one I hope to follow as I age.

For one, let’s not think that There Will Be Blood is a departure for Paul Thomas Anderson, who loosely adapted the film from Upton Sinclair’s novel Oil!. It was Anderson’s whimsical, lovely Punch-Drunk Love (2002) that left behind the director’s admirable, but portentous megagoliath films Boogie Nights (1997) and Magnolia (1999). His last film turned towards crafting an almost expressionistic mise-en-scène, one built around a character, a world-view, a feeling, and not a smearingly glossy, over-broad narrative of grandiose linkage and showoffery. That most strange of Adam Sandler vehicles has as unified—and off-kilter—a film world as that of Daniel Day-Lewis in There Will Be Blood: a style of cinema that finds its natural place as it tries to become accustomed to the eccentricities of the most eccentric of characters.

And Daniel Day-Lewis’ early 20th century oil prospector Daniel Plainview is indeed eccentric, showcasing a proclivity to absurd obstinacy and capitalistic tenacity, and blessed with a gift of gab that, when tied to the cut-throat business of the booming oil trade, soon reveals in the character a merciless hatred for the people around him. He even says as much, in a moment of rare, though clearly relished, frankness; Day-Lewis practically lavishly smacking his lips as he curls his words of condemnation and isolation to his nighttime confessor. But to get back to Anderson, with the inestimable help of regular collaborator Robert Elswtt’s naturalistic photography and Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood’s score (part Jon Brion’s avant-garde percussive work for Punch-Drunk Love, part the Penderecki/Ligeti of Kubrick), piece by piece he constructs his film around this oddity, this character of Plainsview.

It is noticeably an incomplete view of the man, as if from a book not with missing pages, as it is not that There Will Be Blood suggests other, off-camera parts of the man’s life and character, but rather it is a view of a book where the edges of the page leave off. It is artistically incomplete and fragmented, ideas gathered about this man’s dogged lifestyle and thoughts, his cruel, passionate character, but never truly brought together, strands connected, everything fleshed out to a reassuring depth of artistic perception. Anderson’s film is like a vision of notes he took on a Great American Epic, ideas and angles introduced but rarely followed through. Instead, we get a narrative that skips at will from the initially days of Plainview’s silver prospecting to the accidental adoption of another miner’s son, who takes Plainview’s own name under the initials H.W. (Dillon Freasier). The film finally moves elliptically to the older man’s fateful arrival at the promising field near the podunk town of New Boston. Here we seem to get at the meat of the film, Plainsview convincing a town that exploiting their bountiful oil will bring modernization and wealth all around, a promise that also suggests an inevitable clash with locals. The oilman’s nemesis takes the form of a young Christian minister, Eli (Paul Dano), who claims to be a healer and seems to threaten to turn the town, and potentially the employees of Plainview’s oil rig, towards a fevered fundamentalism.

We see snatches in Anderson’s sprawl: Plainview’s early injury in his mine and his wherewithal dragging his mangled leg along with his silver find to the assayer; brief moments of love, or at least care, between Daniel and his adapted son; the gab with which he wraps up an oil deal with a small town assembly; stuttered but never complete confrontations with Eli, and so on. It is not that the film moves at a montage-like clip as does much of Anderson’s two mega movies, but rather the narrative touches down at telling details, small and large, to suggest something of Daniel Plainview and the world he represents, and then moves on to another idea, rarely finishing the first.

Plainview is, like The Shining’s Jack Torrence, to which the film implicitly compares him, is as much a monster as a mystery. A man in a quintessentially American position, here the capitalistic prospector and entrepreneur (Torrence, the trouble writer, middle-class family man), he gradually turns monstrous—or, perhaps, reveals his monstrosity—piece by piece as he voraciously uses his passion to better his position. I do not wish I had take him at his own word, but Anderson does ets him explain himself in terms that leave little ambiguity to the character, his obsessive need to find a method to get the man out in the middle of nowhere, near only a representative and minimal amount of humanity. It is this mysterious drive and this mysterious misanthropy that is the center of There Will Be Blood’s appeal, and Anderson’s inadequate plotting often helps underline the gulf of understanding between Plainview and the audience. He seems to have a bit of everything in him, but with not enough given to us to explain him thoroughly.

Jonny Greenwood’s atonal score and Elswit’s long takes, many using tracking shots or the Steadicam and limited camera coverage, clearly present Plainview with an almost total strangeness. There seems little dissonant stylization as there was to Sandler’s idiosyncratic relationships in Punch-Drunk, or the slick, omniscient/omnipresent direction of Boogie Nights and Magnolia. Shot principally on location, There Will Be Blood views its subject with a fascination but also a kind of restraint or naturalism (a few shots early on, and a later, amazing confrontation at a restaurant, are covered like a Hou Hsiou-hsien film) that lets Day-Lewis’ rich acting dig itself into its own hole. Anderson holds back in muffled awe at the potential, growth, and finally the blossoming of Plainview’s warped character, of the mania that transforms from capitalistic fervor to psychopatholical in minute, elliptical shifts in Day-Lewis. As the film’s skittish plot and ideas fail to gel, it is only the presence of Plainview that holds the film together, and Day-Lewis’ fierceness makes up for, and helps cover, much of the film’s gaps and immaturities.

The perhaps inadvertent side effect of There Will Be Blood’s problems is that the discrepancy between the film’s knowing, considered distance and the oddness of its subject provides a gross dissonance in the film’s tone, producing a remarkable, ungainly strangeness, an inability to nail down purpose, meaning, and direction in even the most over-planned moments, the most over-scripted dialogs. Anderson has his plans, that’s for sure. The film has a propensity to hit its Biblical notes, its Kubrick influences, its doublings (brothers and twins, fathers and sons, mostly) as hard as it possibly can. Yet the film’s strangeness is so potent that the film escapes the aims of these over-determined structures, which seek to close the film off and seal in particular meanings, explanations.

The sprawl of the film, its somewhat ragged and unusual structure (perhaps sloppy), are where the film’s crevasses of mystery are to be found. In Day-Lewis’ swallowing of his ur-American comicbook villain from Gangs of New York into a more psychological and thereby more of-this-world, believably unhinged psychosis, and in the film’s avoidance or, as the case may be, eccentric versions of conventional or assumed plot high points are the film’s most powerful, strange visions. Eli and Daniel’s confrontations, breaks and re-unions between father and son, and inevitable oilrig disasters are not done as one would assume, an indicator both of Anderson not seeing his ideas through to the end, as well as his ability to idiosyncratically divert the film away from convention. How else to explain the turgid father-son concluding scene of the film juxtaposed against the brilliant grotesqueness of the final bowling alley showdown?

We can still see the old Anderson in There Will Be Blood, determined to control the film and the meaning, the experience itself, but thankfully we are blessed with the artist who grew into someone who could direct—believe it or not—the most plausible and lovely Adam Sandler romance ever to be made. We find someone embracing the strange; dedicating not just a film to it, but letting it, for the most, and brilliant, part letting that strangeness move and alter the film in frustrating, tantalizing, and often unknown and unknowable ways. The pleasure, then is to see this film, perhaps yet another re-invention of Citizen Kane (crossed with The Shining), find in its look at an American passion for moneymaking and adventure, its somewhat less fleshed out attraction to the security of the church, and both institutions bonds with human relationships and building foundations for tomorrow, a new weirdness, a freshness that finds in the these warped American archetypes evil itself.

Article can be found on The Auteurs website (http://www.theauteurs.com/film_articles/88)

Just yesterday I was inquiring at the farmer’s market about buying a whole steer and stalking standalone freezers on Craigslist. Today the Times — in a piece that definitely fails the breakfast-table test — gives me another good reason why: American Chef’s Selection E. Coli Patties, and related products.

The frozen hamburgers that the Smiths ate, which were made by the food giant Cargill, were labeled “American Chef’s Selection Angus Beef Patties.” Yet confidential grinding logs and other Cargill records show that the hamburgers were made from a mix of slaughterhouse trimmings and a mash-like product derived from scraps that were ground together at a plant in Wisconsin. The ingredients came from slaughterhouses in Nebraska, Texas and Uruguay, and from a South Dakota company that processes fatty trimmings and treats them with ammonia to kill bacteria.

And this:

The listed ingredients revealed little of how the meat was made. There was just one meat product listed: “Beef.”

Hey, I’ve eaten deep-fried fish heads that young girls were carrying around on their heads all day under a hot sun. I’ve eaten hard-boiled eggs that were black with ants—after wiping off most of the ants, mind you. I ain’t squeamish.

But none of those was labeled “Chef’s Selection.”

En la misma ciudad, respirando el mismo aire contaminado, hay quien gana 512.000 euros al año y quien no llega a los 10.000. No existe teoría económica que explique esto sin recurrir a conceptos esotéricos como el “riesgo” o la “excelencia”, palabras comodín para usar cuando no se tiene razón.

Los idiotas de la new age, fervientemente conservadores (tarde o temprano se unificarán con los neocon evangelistas), dicen que el dinero es la cura de todos los males. Un amigo, intoxicado de incienso y manual de autoayuda, intentó hace tiempo convencerme de que es energía positiva a la que hay que saber atraer mediante la correcta alineación de los chakras (bien dobladitos cuando el jefe pasa revista).

Otra corriente asegura que el dinero es “la kundalini cristalizada”. Si no fuesen tan graciosos habría que colgarlos, como al recientemente fallecido Reverendo Ike, un loco de Nueva York que modificó el cristianismo para predicar las bondades del dinero. “Jesucristo era un capitalista”, decía, y pedía a sus fieles que cerrasen los ojos y visualizasen el color verde de los billetes de dólar:

Upton Sinclair estaba algo más cuerdo:
“El dinero es como el papel higiénico. Cuando se necesita, se necesita urgentemente”.

La teoría económica de Javier Krahe debería ser estudiada en Yale:

“My connection with Bates is not dissolved now that I’ve graduated.  In fact, in some ways it’s becoming stronger than ever, for not only did I make some of the best friends I’ve ever had…, but I’ve been cruising the Bates alumni scene and Batesies are all over.  I mean all over… And what’s so great is that the majority of them are more than willing to help Bates post-grads out, whether that means helping you get a job in the company they work for or just meeting with you to discuss their career path.” Read on as Steph picks apart a variety of her job search tactics post-Bates HERE.

“Fix”

September 22nd, 2009

In the world of Sons of Anarchy, everyone’s got a problem they’re trying to fix; heck, in every single show on television, people are looking for solutions to problems. Early on in its second season, it’s clear that the real conflict on this show is not within any single problem but rather the inability for various characters to see (either due to ignorance or due to being too traumatized by their situation) that there are two levels of problems. One is the growing threat of the League of American Nationalists against the Sons of Anarchy or, if you’re on the other side of the coin, the ongoing blight of SAMCRO on the town of Charming. However, there is also the internal struggle between Clay and Jax, not to mention Gemma’s own personal tragedy as well as personal struggles for Opie (Donna’s tragic death), Tig (who murdered Donna) and it seems like just about everyone else.

“Fix” represents the episode where three weeks of letting these secrets and struggles linger is catching up with just about everyone, and everyone wants a solution that will make everything better but has no idea how to really find it. The show continues to embrace an almost satirical sense of the genres it plays with, never quite delving wholly into melodrama, and the result is that the show remains a pleasure to watch even as it deals with serious subjects in an emotional fashion.

In a lot of ways this episode comes down to the decision of Deputy Sheriff Hale. When he comes to that meth lab, he knows that he was given every opportunity by Jax to bust that legally, and to do his job protecting the people of Charming from an initial flood of meth into the market. However, he also knows that he let Zobell talking him into the idea that you can only defeat SAMCRO if you are in their own game, mucking up their works by  forcing them out into the open. We learn, through Jax’s research, that this is what happened at his last shop in San Bernadino: an entire MC was arrested for aggravated assault after attacking Zobell’s store, an attack incited by the various instigations placed before them. We know, of course, that this is what Zobell had intended for Gemma to be, the victim who would break down and give Clay reason to get himself arrested going after him. Zobell, having lost his wife to a drive-by shooting, is entirely without fear in instigating men like Clay Morell, and Hale is effectively allowing it to happen out of his own desire to see SAMCRO go up in flames – although Jax has said he has his own plans, Hale sees an easy way out and is willing to get into bed with the devil when a SAMCRO-less Charming is dangled in front of him.

In many ways, Zobell and Opie are not that far apart: both lost their wives, and both have thrown themselves into a dedication to finding vengeance for their deaths. For Zobell, this has become a finely tuned science, utilizing those who feel more strongly about white supremacy (A.J. certainly more radical than Zobell, who has never really preached the doctrine) in order to instigate while he pulls all of the strings. For Opie, however, it is (whether he’ll admit it or not) a death wish, a willingness to tempt fate to ensure that the meth lab is destroyed (refusing to use a remote) and being willing to go after Aryan bodyguards with guns because of what they represent. He has become the embodiment of everything SAMCRO stands for, but the problem is that no one can truly accomplish that goal. The supposed anarchy of the Sons is maintained through careful organization and “club decisions,” so Opie’s one-man wrecking squad is reckless and dangerous and potentially tragic for his motherless children.

The club, by and large, remains as screwed up as it was before. Bobby, newly out of prison and doing Elvis Bah Mitzvah gigs in order to make money to send to his baby mamas, knows something is up between Jax and Clay, and we see it here: Clay, seeing Bobby struggling, tells him to set up a salary position at the club new porn studio without telling Jax, leading to a conflict that’s as much about Clay taking power over Jax’s strategy as it is about helping Bobby. And Jax, attempting to balance a romantic picnic with Tara with this business, makes his move to try to convince the club that Hale wouldn’t be in Zobell’s pocket (“if he could be bought, we’d have him already”), only to have Hale lie to him about the information being bogus and to some extent prove Clay right. If Jax wasn’t dealing with the arrival of Zobell, chances are he might be working to take down Clay and uproot the club from the inside, but with Hale pulled between both sides and Jax busy dealing with everything else on the inside it just isn’t going to happen.

There’s no other character more aware of that change than Gemma, who has been pulling away from Clay for about three weeks and the tension gets to the point of an enormously physical confrontation. If Katey Sagal isn’t headed towards an Emmy nomination next year, something is very wrong: her reaction to Clay grabbing her from behind was stunning to watch, as their fever pitch argument (sold by both Pearlman and Sagal) suddenly gives way to the wave of memories from her rape just weeks earlier. Gemma is fine dealing with the physical or medical ramifications: she has no issues with the HIV test (even joking with Tara with “Here’s my pee.”), and she says herself that the “pussy isn’t the problem.” Instead the problem is in her mind, the trauma staying with her to the point of making her more friendly with the bird than her husband: the episode ends with Gemma considering opening the Bible in search of God (as Unser had suggested) while clay enjoys the oral pleasure of one of Luann’s girls, indicating that whatever gulf is opening between them can’t be filled by a simple conversation or anything else.

It makes us wonder just why Tara is so willing to open herself back up to this world, a world she abandoned back when she was 18. If her cat fighting days are over, as she insists, then she’s getting into the wrong organization. She insists on going with Jax to the porn studio, and eventually shows up at the wrap party, in an effort to exert her control over Jax, who we know is largely faithful but who also plays boy toy for the prostitute manipulating her way into his life. It’s true that it’s a business decision, keeping Luann’s biggest draw happy, but it gives reason for Tara to be concerned. However, seeing what Gemma is going through having been part of the organization, how can she so easily fall into the same kinds of behaviour, staring down the girl as she and Jax have sex in a bathroom? It’s an amazing look from Maggie Siff, owning the skateboard-to-the-face attitude of Gemma, but turning into her boyfriend’s mother who was just raped for being associated with the club is all sorts of messed up, and doesn’t seem like a solution to anything.

But, as noted, you can only fix what you can see. Gemma is so busy dealing with her own problem that she doesn’t see anything else, while Jax has found himself deemed the problem solver by just about everyone. When Bobby discovers that Luann was skimming off the club for years, she solves the problem by agreeing to have sex with him, but Jax is dealing with problems that don’t have libidos, and which have him trapped between about three different organizations. And right now, there isn’t really any way for him to handle all of it: he can talk to Opie, he can try to reassert himself with Clay, but Jax is trapped in a position where he can’t do what he wants to (take down the club) which is going to alienate everyone like it alienated Hale in due time. When that happens, fixing things is going to be even more challenging, although the more complex things get the more likely it is for all hell to break loose and for someone, or something, to slip up enough for things to change all over again.

Cultural Observations

• None of that sounds too fun, but the episode got some great mileage out of the Mad Men-inspired porno, “Meek Men,” which cracked me up and kept making me laugh even through the alcoholic sodomy committed. This is a dirty, dirty show, and I love it.
• We know that Gemma is technically fine with Clay straying when on rides, but that she doesn’t take as well to those women showing up at the club or in Charming. So, do we take his time at the wrap party as a necessary part of her life (that’s even welcome when she’s unable to perform for obvious reasons), or as a sign that he’s desperate for sex and willing to break the “rules” to get it?
• Tara reading “The Jungle” (Upton Sinclair’s tell-all about the disgusting conditions in meat processing plants which helped revolutionize labour regulations – can you tell I took a class on labour history?) is so damn perfect I don’t even know where to begin: note that the book made Jax want to become a vegan, while for Tara it makes her crave a steak. Perhaps there’s your explanation: she learns everything there is to know about the club, and all she wants is to own it (and thus own Jax). It’s a bit on the nose if you’ve read the book, but it’s such a bloody great choice that I’m too pleased to complain.

The Center for Fiction has announced the finalists for its first novel prize: Philipp Meyer’s American Rust, Patrick Somerville’s The Cradle, Paul Harding’s Tinkers, Yiyun Li’s The Vagrants, and John Pipkin’s Woodsburner. I can strongly endorse both The Vagrants and American Rust—more on the latter soon.

Daniel Menaker catalogs the various agonies of working in the publishing business today. “When you are trying to acquire books that hundreds of thousands of people will buy, read, and like, you have to have some of the eclectic and demotic taste of the reading public,” he writes, which rankles Michael Orthofer: “Why not give literary discernment a try?” he asks. I suspect the books reflecting literary discernment don’t get financed without the largesse that’s facilitated only when you luck out at making books that hundreds of thousands of people will buy, read, and like.

Case in point: MacAdam/Cage, a small press that prides itself on publishing fiction of literary discernment, is having financial troubles. Unfortunately, this means a delay for Jack Pendarvis’ upcoming novel, Shut Up, Ugly, but he’s taking it in stride.

On October 13 in New York, Don DeLillo, Paul Auster, and others will participate in a reading of documents relating to the torture of detainees.

In related DeLillo news, the new cover for the paperback edition of White Noise is both very attractive and uncannily appropriate—something about illustrator Michael Cho’s style slyly echoes the satirical, pop-culture-soaked tone of the novel.

Leonard Gardner recalls his work on Fat City, both the book and the film. Regarding the fact that he never wrote a second novel, he has a stock answer: “Sometimes you only get to win one championship.”

A reminder that John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath wasn’t admired in all quarters when it was first published.

In 1908 when burglars broke into Mark Twain’s home in Redding, Connecticut. Twain would quip shortly after the incident: “Now they (the burglars) are in jail, and if they keep on, they will go to Congress. When a person starts down hill, you can never tell where he is going to stop.”

And American Agriculturist would like to call bullshit on people who compare the works of Michael Pollan et al to Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle.

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something when

his job depends on NOT understanding it.”

- Upton Sinclair, novelist and truth-teller

La trilogía de Nueva York de Paul Auster por Art Spiegelman

Jungle de Upton Sinclair por Charles Burns

Ethan Frome de Edith Wharton por Jeffrey Brown

Cuentos fantásticos de Hans Christian Andersen por Anders Nilsen

Mujercitas de Louisa May Alcott por Julie Doucett

Moby -Dick de Herman Melville por Tony Millionaire

El amante de Lady Chatterley de D. H. Lawrence por Chester Brown

Cándido de Voltaire por Chris Ware

Via: FLOG

]]> http://thehistoricpresent.wordpress.com/2009/08/19/the-fda-and-government-regulation-of-food-safety/ Wed, 19 Aug 2009 12:20:29 +0000 thehistoricpresent http://thehistoricpresent.wordpress.com/2009/08/19/the-fda-and-government-regulation-of-food-safety/

Part 2 in the series, basically Truth v. Myth, on whether the federal government can be trusted to compassionately and capably protect the public health and well-being, in which we continue our look at the founding of the Food and Drug Administration.

We’ve seen the dangerous and criminal state of food production in the U.S. by the turn of the 20th century. Starting in the late 1800s, some U.S. food manufacturers were petitioning the government to regulate their industry. These were manufacturers that actually spent the money to produce good-quality food, and they were afraid of being driven out of business by those companies that saved a fortune by pasting ashes together, canning it and calling it potatoes. (It’s amazing how many things were canned early on. Potatoes are one example. Even in the 1930s—I saw a movie from the late-30s where a woman says she’s running to the store to buy a can of potato salad.)

Farmers also protested that they took the blame for adulterated butter, eggs, and milk even though they sent good quality material to the manufacturers. “Shady processors …deodorized rotten eggs, revived rancid butter, [and] substituted glucose for honey” (Young, “The Long Struggle for the 1906 Law“).

During the Populist era of reform, one bill for federal food manufacture standards managed to clear the Senate but was blocked in the House. Congressional representatives, well-paid by shady manufacturers’ lobbies, blocked every clean food and drug law that came to them. One bit of progress was that during in 1890-1 meat was set aside for special inspection after a scare in Europe over tainted pork from America led to a ban of U.S. meat on the continent. Later in that decade, tainted beef sickened U.S. soldiers in Cuba fighting the Spanish-American War, causing a furore at home. The culmination of the meat uproar was the famous publication, in 1906, of Upton Sinclair’s novel The Jungle, which described in a brutally unsparing section how meat was processed at the great packing houses in Chicago, detailing the rats, feces, human fingers, and floor sweepings that were incorporated into the finished product. American consumers boycotted meat, with sales falling by half.

This was enough to get Congress to finally act on President Roosevelt’s December 1905 demand for a pure food bill. It wasn’t as easy as it should have been–there was still plenty of resistance in both houses. But thanks to pressure from the president and Dr. Harvey Wiley, a longtime pure food advocate who would be placed in charge of its enforcement, the Pure Food and Drugs Act was passed in 1906.

There was protest from criminal food manufacturers. Whiskey producers complained the loudest, as they were the largest producers of quack medicines. Quack medicines actually accounted for more advertising dollars than any other food or product in the nation in 1906. Their manufacturers claimed the federal government had no right to “police” what consumers chose to buy. This, of course, ran on the incorrect presumption that consumers knew what was in the products they consumed and decided to take the risk (Janssen, “The Story of the Laws behind the Labels”).

Many manufacturers of impure foods claimed that being forced to list ingredients on their labels would put them out of business. Their secret recipes would be exposed! The cost of printing long labels would bankrupt them! Such “technical” labels would turn off customers! Of course, none of this came to pass. Americans were grateful for protection from fraudulent food and medicine, and the Act would go through a few more iterations. The Bureau of Chemistry created to enforce the Act would become the Food and Drug Administration in 1937, and cosmetics would be added to its charges in 1938 when the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act was signed by FDR.

The FDA was weakened in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Food supplements, like vitamins and diet potions, are not subject to FDA scrutiny, and are the new quack medicines, just as dangerous and fradulent as 19th-century snake oil. The organization has had its funding cut by deregulation-minded politicians who wanted to re-establish a completely free marketplace for food and drugs.

This negative turn of events merely proves that bad things happen to our food and drugs supply when the federal government relaxes or impairs its oversight of that market. A strong FDA is a vital necessity to American manufacturers and consumers, and a shining example of the power of good federal management of consumer health and well-being to drastically improve both.

Next time, the federal government and car safety.