John Strausbaugh

A survey of the use of blackface in various art forms in the United States in the 19th and 20th centuries; at least mostly, since the text moves a bit into "blaxploitation" and rap music, which I think is getting a bit off the beaten path. On the one hand, the author is a bit flip in certain instances, which can be a bit grating. Other times, I was deeply surprised to see him cut against the PC grain. There are portions of the book that are deeply interesting -- such as the advertisements chapter -- but I was a bit disappointed in the somewhat superficial look at individual vaudeville performers, like Lew Dockstader, or folks like Eddie Cantor and Al Jolson. Borderline recommended.… (more)

(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.)

Like most people, I've always primarily associated the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Manhattan with the Abstract Expressionists and Beat poets of the post-World-War-Two era, when the near-total destruction of Europe made this unassuming neighborhood the new global center of hipness and cool, a literal symbol of the worldwide cultural takeover the United States pulled off in general in the 1950s; but as John Strausbaugh shows in his remarkable new 600-page history of the neighborhood, Greenwich Village's bohemian roots actually go all the way back to the birth of Romanticism in the early 1800s and the invention of the term "bohemian" to begin with, and that this loosely defined confederation of "old New York" streets has been a constant haven for artists, druggies, the gay community and intellectual minorities ever since, not just in the years that it was known world-wide for this. Originally a sleepy suburb of New York City proper (thus the "Village" designation that has stuck with it ever since), it just so happened that this was the hot growing neighborhood for middle-class businessmen and their artist friends back in the early 1800s when the "bohemian class" was first invented, essentially a construct of the Romantic Era that redefined artists from hard-working craftsmen into tortured souls who suffered for aesthetics' sake; and so it was to this neighborhood that the first generation of bohemians turned when doing their suffering and drinking and casual sex, with Strausbaugh painting an enviable portrait of a sweaty, smoky Victorian-Age Greenwich populated by the nation's first gay bars and opium dens, visited on a regular basis by such stalwarts as Walt Whitman and Stephen Crane. And that's the way the neighborhood essentially continued without a break for the next 150 years, with Strausbaugh devoting large and detailed sections of his exhaustive book to the turn of the century and the rise of the great New York art museums; the Village after World War One when it became essentially the "Left Bank Lite;" its mainstream heyday in the World War Two era; and its last hurrah as a locus for gay rights in the 1960s and '70s, before massive gentrification in the '80s and '90s turned it into a permanent upper-class historical district that artists can no longer afford to live in. Smart and accessible, and full of literally hundreds of anecdotes about its most infamous citizens of the last two centuries, Strausbaugh's book is an epic read but a hugely rewarding one, and it comes strongly recommended to anyone interested in knowing more about the history of artistic neighborhoods in the United States.

Out of 10: 9.7… (more)

This book has been too widely ignored due to the title, the cover, or being miscatagorized under "entertainment" because of its references to blackface, Al Jolsen, ect...
But it is about so much more. This is a book on social sciences, human relations, discrimination/prejudice no matter what one's race is;, how Americans used to be to be able "to suck it up" & take a joke (Now, God forbid one make a joke about another race unless you are a professional comedienne!), of political correctness gone wrong, & American history in general.
And it is written in such an unbiased tone that one cannnot tell the race of the author until the last section of the book.
Everyone should read this book.… (more)