1PatrickMurtha
New here. Pocket bio: Retired humanities teacher, residing in Tlaxcala, Mexico, with two dogs and six indoor cats. Passionate about literature, history, philosophy, classical music and opera, jazz, cinema, and similar subjects. Nostalgic guy. Politically centrist. BA in American Studies from Yale; MAs in English and Education from Boston University. Born in northern New Jersey. Have lived and worked in San Francisco, Chicago, northern Nevada, northeast Wisconsin, South Korea.
I suppose this counts as a group revival, since the official listing here is “Dormant”. In any case, as I’m getting involved in LT Groups again, if the group I want exists and doesn’t seem beyond resuscitation, I’m going to go ahead and post in it. I’d rather do that, using an existing shell and membership, than start a new group. And Midwestern literature is a great topic.
Humorists are among the writers usually “lost” to later generations, because of their topicality and adherence to the styles of the time. But I like getting back to them! Indiana-born George Ade (1866-1944) became famous around the turn of the 20th Century for his Fables in Slang. I’m currently reading one of his breezy Chicago novels, Artie: A Story of the Streets and Town. Our hero is a young confident clerk on the make.
I suppose this counts as a group revival, since the official listing here is “Dormant”. In any case, as I’m getting involved in LT Groups again, if the group I want exists and doesn’t seem beyond resuscitation, I’m going to go ahead and post in it. I’d rather do that, using an existing shell and membership, than start a new group. And Midwestern literature is a great topic.
Humorists are among the writers usually “lost” to later generations, because of their topicality and adherence to the styles of the time. But I like getting back to them! Indiana-born George Ade (1866-1944) became famous around the turn of the 20th Century for his Fables in Slang. I’m currently reading one of his breezy Chicago novels, Artie: A Story of the Streets and Town. Our hero is a young confident clerk on the make.
2PatrickMurtha
At the time I read Charles Dickinson’s Crows, I had no first-hand experience of small-town Wisconsin, but I obtained a lot later! I have a strong bias in favor of regional and small-town novels; just by writing one, an author is halfway home with me. As a reviewer noted, Dickinson doesn’t try to make the characters in Crows ingratiating; but stick with it, this is a very rewarding read.
I need to get back to these regional novels of the Seventies and Eighties, since I loved pretty much all of those that I read at the time. And I see that other titles of Dickinson’s are available in my Scribd subscription. *
When I was working at the Doubleday Bookshop in the early Eighties, I had responsibility for “featured paperbacks” and display sections, and man oh man, did I push books like this, every single one that came my way. Publishers of literary paperbacks had a friend in me. Even better, I had certain customers who paid attention to what I was doing and let it guide their buying! Needless to say, that was intensely gratifying.
*UPDATE: I just started in on Dickinson’s first, well-regarded, Michigan-based novel, Waltz in Marathon, because hey, no time like the present. Published exactly 40 years ago, it has (I can already see) gained a period air by virtue of being pre-cell phone, pre-Internet, pre-all of that. In other words, it’s peaceful. 🙂
I need to get back to these regional novels of the Seventies and Eighties, since I loved pretty much all of those that I read at the time. And I see that other titles of Dickinson’s are available in my Scribd subscription. *
When I was working at the Doubleday Bookshop in the early Eighties, I had responsibility for “featured paperbacks” and display sections, and man oh man, did I push books like this, every single one that came my way. Publishers of literary paperbacks had a friend in me. Even better, I had certain customers who paid attention to what I was doing and let it guide their buying! Needless to say, that was intensely gratifying.
*UPDATE: I just started in on Dickinson’s first, well-regarded, Michigan-based novel, Waltz in Marathon, because hey, no time like the present. Published exactly 40 years ago, it has (I can already see) gained a period air by virtue of being pre-cell phone, pre-Internet, pre-all of that. In other words, it’s peaceful. 🙂
3PatrickMurtha
I just love the unrushed fullness of James T. Farrell’s Studs Lonigan trilogy, so characteristic of fiction of the era both literary and popular, what people would now call “slow” because they’ve been conditioned by film and television. I’m currently well into the second volume, The Young Manhood of Studs Lonigan.
The street attitudes and language are absolutely reflective of the time and place depicted, early 20th Century Chicago, which would seem too obvious to even mention EXCEPT that many reviewers come off as shocked, SHOCKED, that books written in the past are OF that past. I used to argue with people about this, now I try to ignore. * The most heinous stuff in Studs Lonigan belongs to the characters rather than Farrell himself, but even if it did belong to him, I could easily deal with that. Being a historicist and all, I prefer my past full-strength. 🙂
* I find that this is delicate territory in almost all online groups. As a Burkean conservative who does not subscribe to the contemporary progressive agenda, I have to tread carefully - every day there are comments I decide against making, because it would look like picking a fight - but on the other hand, I don’t want to completely muzzle myself either. It’s not always the easiest place to be.
The street attitudes and language are absolutely reflective of the time and place depicted, early 20th Century Chicago, which would seem too obvious to even mention EXCEPT that many reviewers come off as shocked, SHOCKED, that books written in the past are OF that past. I used to argue with people about this, now I try to ignore. * The most heinous stuff in Studs Lonigan belongs to the characters rather than Farrell himself, but even if it did belong to him, I could easily deal with that. Being a historicist and all, I prefer my past full-strength. 🙂
* I find that this is delicate territory in almost all online groups. As a Burkean conservative who does not subscribe to the contemporary progressive agenda, I have to tread carefully - every day there are comments I decide against making, because it would look like picking a fight - but on the other hand, I don’t want to completely muzzle myself either. It’s not always the easiest place to be.
4PatrickMurtha
Recently read and enjoyed Justin Wolff’s excellent biography Thomas Hart Benton, and what strikes me are the same things I noticed while reading Herbert R. Lottman’s Albert Camus: A Biography: An awful lot of writing about “culture” is really just writing about politics, and the insistence that everything is in some sense political (hard to argue with) rapidly becomes an insistence that everything is ONLY political. Those who occupy positions somewhere in the center will be pummeled quite nastily by the hard Right and Left. Critics tried to both enlist Benton and repudiate him, on the basis of interpretations that he himself gave no support to (and which seem flimsy and non-insightful in retrospect). And so it goes.
5PatrickMurtha
Just started Christian Holmes’ Company Towns of Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Seems a little specialized? Well, pull up a chair…
Local history is a distinctive branch of publication, and one dear to my own heart. Much of it is produced and distributed locally, by small presses, state and municipal historical associations, museums, etc, and may not be obtainable through Amazon or conventional sources. Looking for a specific older piece of local history literature can be as daunting as seeking a rare edition of an obscure novelist.
Much of this material is “non-book” and even downright ephemera: periodicals, booklets, brochures, flyers. Much of it is produced by dedicated non-professionals.
When I lived in Northeast Wisconsin in the Oughties, I was really involved in local history - and arts, economic development, small town revitalization, journalism; too much really, but it was fun. For several years I lived in the town of Little Chute, on the Fox River between Appleton and Green Bay, one of the most Dutch-American municipalities in the country. I was very active in the Little Chute Historical Society and Little Chute Windmill Association (which eventually succeeded in its goal of building an authentic Dutch windmill as an attraction).
I also served on the Editorial Board of Voyageur Magazine, “Northeast Wisconsin's Historical Review”. This was a great gig! I got to review and comment on submissions for the magazine, and the Board met quarterly to hash out the contents of future issues. Those sessions were intensely stimulating, because we had the cream of local history professors, librarians, and dedicated amateurs on the Board.
Here in Mexico, government funding for local history publishing is EXCELLENT, way exceeding the US on a per capita basis. Every Mexican state capital seems to have at least one bookstore devoted to local history, and the number of very substantial publications on offer is simply amazing.
I would be most interested to learn what the situation is in other nations in this respect. I would assume that the conditions are good in the UK, which has long been a bastion of local history, but elsewhere I don’t know.
Local history is a distinctive branch of publication, and one dear to my own heart. Much of it is produced and distributed locally, by small presses, state and municipal historical associations, museums, etc, and may not be obtainable through Amazon or conventional sources. Looking for a specific older piece of local history literature can be as daunting as seeking a rare edition of an obscure novelist.
Much of this material is “non-book” and even downright ephemera: periodicals, booklets, brochures, flyers. Much of it is produced by dedicated non-professionals.
When I lived in Northeast Wisconsin in the Oughties, I was really involved in local history - and arts, economic development, small town revitalization, journalism; too much really, but it was fun. For several years I lived in the town of Little Chute, on the Fox River between Appleton and Green Bay, one of the most Dutch-American municipalities in the country. I was very active in the Little Chute Historical Society and Little Chute Windmill Association (which eventually succeeded in its goal of building an authentic Dutch windmill as an attraction).
I also served on the Editorial Board of Voyageur Magazine, “Northeast Wisconsin's Historical Review”. This was a great gig! I got to review and comment on submissions for the magazine, and the Board met quarterly to hash out the contents of future issues. Those sessions were intensely stimulating, because we had the cream of local history professors, librarians, and dedicated amateurs on the Board.
Here in Mexico, government funding for local history publishing is EXCELLENT, way exceeding the US on a per capita basis. Every Mexican state capital seems to have at least one bookstore devoted to local history, and the number of very substantial publications on offer is simply amazing.
I would be most interested to learn what the situation is in other nations in this respect. I would assume that the conditions are good in the UK, which has long been a bastion of local history, but elsewhere I don’t know.
6PatrickMurtha
Among the rather specialized titles I’m currently reading is Farm Broadcasting: The First Sixty Years (1981). I’d like to own it, but hard copies are pretty pricey and it can be read for free online:
http://publications.iowa.gov/30172/1/Farm-Broadcasting-The-First-Sixty-Years-Bak...
When I was a New Jersey kid waking up gosh darn early on Saturday mornings to watch cartoons like Colonel Bleep and Dodo the Kid from Outer Space at 6 AM, there were farm programs scheduled even earlier - Modern Farmer or Agriculture USA * at 5:30 AM. This Baker book includes info about the latter, which started on KNBC in Los Angeles in 1961, produced and hosted by John A. Stearns, and was widely syndicated over the next two decades. Information about the production history of Modern Farmer is more elusive, even though I’ve seen old New York Times TV listings for it, and many people online remember the show. No footage from either series on YouTube - probably all wiped a long time ago.
The book contains proportionately much more information about farm radio, surveying the field state by state. I love forgotten pockets of media history like this.
* Also the title of a USDA radio series produced in the 1950s.
http://publications.iowa.gov/30172/1/Farm-Broadcasting-The-First-Sixty-Years-Bak...
When I was a New Jersey kid waking up gosh darn early on Saturday mornings to watch cartoons like Colonel Bleep and Dodo the Kid from Outer Space at 6 AM, there were farm programs scheduled even earlier - Modern Farmer or Agriculture USA * at 5:30 AM. This Baker book includes info about the latter, which started on KNBC in Los Angeles in 1961, produced and hosted by John A. Stearns, and was widely syndicated over the next two decades. Information about the production history of Modern Farmer is more elusive, even though I’ve seen old New York Times TV listings for it, and many people online remember the show. No footage from either series on YouTube - probably all wiped a long time ago.
The book contains proportionately much more information about farm radio, surveying the field state by state. I love forgotten pockets of media history like this.
* Also the title of a USDA radio series produced in the 1950s.
7PatrickMurtha
I love history books of the past because they were not written for us, nor with our preoccupations in mind; they had no way of knowing what our preoccupations would BE. They do provide a sense of the time when they were written, as well as the specific past they were written about. I don’t generally see them as “superseded”; they are informative. Whether the theory-ridden, hectoring books of today will hold up as well remains to be seen.
The 50-volume Chronicles of America series published by Yale University Press in 1918 makes for delightful reading, and are very handsome hand-sized volumes as well. I have read Charles M. Andrews’ Colonial Folkways: A Chronicle of American Life in the Reign of the Georges and Maud Wilder Goodwin’s Dutch and English on the Hudson: A Chronicle of Colonial New York, and am just about to start Emerson Hough’s The Passing of the Frontier; A Chronicle of the Old West.
The 50-volume Chronicles of America series published by Yale University Press in 1918 makes for delightful reading, and are very handsome hand-sized volumes as well. I have read Charles M. Andrews’ Colonial Folkways: A Chronicle of American Life in the Reign of the Georges and Maud Wilder Goodwin’s Dutch and English on the Hudson: A Chronicle of Colonial New York, and am just about to start Emerson Hough’s The Passing of the Frontier; A Chronicle of the Old West.
8PatrickMurtha
I am reading the States and the Nation series of bicentennial histories; ex-library copies can be had very inexpensively. (I get this uneasy feeling that libraries don’t hold onto anything anymore, but are in a constant itch to deaccession.)
I read North Dakota first, because who knows anything about North Dakota? And it was fascinating. Now I am starting South Carolina, because my sister was until recently living in Charleston. And I have New Hampshire in my possession.
A nice feature of the series is the inclusion of a photographic essay about the state in each volume. The notes and bibliographies are excellent, and are hard on my wallet, because I have discovered MANY books that I want to have.
A benefit of reading these books is that I afterwards feel a deeper connection to that state, that I kind of “own” it, because how many residents of a state have read a full-length history of their home? One in a thousand? Probably not even that many.
So even though North Dakota is one of the few states that I haven’t visited, because it is not on the way to anything and requires a separate trip, I now feel very possessive of North Dakota. Did you know that Lawrence Welk’s distinctive accent was North Dakota Russo-German? He didn’t learn English until he was an adult.
I read North Dakota first, because who knows anything about North Dakota? And it was fascinating. Now I am starting South Carolina, because my sister was until recently living in Charleston. And I have New Hampshire in my possession.
A nice feature of the series is the inclusion of a photographic essay about the state in each volume. The notes and bibliographies are excellent, and are hard on my wallet, because I have discovered MANY books that I want to have.
A benefit of reading these books is that I afterwards feel a deeper connection to that state, that I kind of “own” it, because how many residents of a state have read a full-length history of their home? One in a thousand? Probably not even that many.
So even though North Dakota is one of the few states that I haven’t visited, because it is not on the way to anything and requires a separate trip, I now feel very possessive of North Dakota. Did you know that Lawrence Welk’s distinctive accent was North Dakota Russo-German? He didn’t learn English until he was an adult.
