1968: The Year That Rocked the World

Near the end of this excellent history, Mark Kurlansky says:

"The year 1968 was a terrible year and yet one for which many people feel nostalgia.  Despite the thousands dead in Vietnam, the million starved in Biafra, the crushing of idealism in Poland and Czechoslovakia, the massacre in Mexico, the clubbings and brutalization of dissenters all over the world, the murder of the two Americans who most offered the world hope, to many it was a year of great possibilities and is missed. . . The thrilling thing about the year 1968 was that it was a time when significant segments of population all over the globe refused to be silent about the many things that were wrong with the world.  They could not be silenced.  There were too many of them, and if they were given no other opportunity, they would stand in the street and shout about them.  And this gave the world a sense of hope that it has rarely had, a sense that where there is wrong, there are always people who will expose it and try to change it."

I was only a junior in high school that year, a senior for the last of it, and was only vaguely aware of what was going on.  Not until I went to college in 1969 did I become involved in any sort of protest, first the mild demonstration that occurred on the Muhlenberg campus (I still have the "Peace" armband I wore then) and then some Washington marches.  There was definitely something in the air that I felt and absorbed.  By the end of my college years, much of the hope Kurlansky talks about was gone, especially after McGovern lost the election in '72n and the Vietnam War continued to drag into the 70's. 

It seems to me that people were less afraid in the 60's.  They spoke out.  They fought for their beliefs with their bodies, not just via e-mail or text or Facebook.  People have not given up - I applaud the Veterans for Peace who protested (130 of the protesters arrested) December 16th when they demonstrated against the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and President Obama's decision to move our troop pullout from 2011 to 2014. 

What's so amazing is that, despite certain governments thinking it was all a conspiracy, the student revolutions happened at the same time, independently of each other.  I was aware of Paris and Czechoslovakia, but didn't know - or didn't remember -- the details, and don't remember hearing about Mexico and the other revolts that happened back then, in Italy, Spain, Germany. 

The government learned how to work the media for their own ends.  We don't see the coverage we should be seeing today; the war is a footnote.  How many of you knew there was a protest in December in Washington?  The numbers are manipulated, photos destroyed and data skewed (that went on in the 70's too) so that the wars can go on.  It happened then and happens today.  There will always be truth-tellers who can't be silenced, though (Joe Sacco, Michael Herr, Michael Moore).

I knew nothing about Alexander Dubcek, and plan to read more on him (HOPE DIES LAST: THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALEXANDER DUBCEK).  He seemed to me a wise and compassionate man.  If you want to learn some sharp history with a slew of anecdotes, connections, and references to music, feminism, art, philosophy of the times, read this book.  It may not make you a revolutionary, but it will make you think about what matters, about what makes a nation great.  It will teach you much and if you already know all about it, will make you remember.

(You may be able to get a used copy at http://www.powells.com/ like I did.)

The Best Anti-War Book I've Ever Read

This is another older book that's been on  my "Books Wanted" list for a long time.  I finally purchased it at Powell's (if you still have Christmas shopping to do, Powell's has free shipping now, with guaranteed Christmas delivery at http://www.powell's.com/  -- I got the Vintage International 1991 edition for $7.95).

Hunter Thompson said "We have all spent ten years [now over 40!] trying to explain what happened to our heads and our lives in the decade we finally survived -- but Michael Herr's Dispatches puts all the rest of us in the shade."

This is one instance where the critics were right on.  It's a harrowing, heartbreaking, honest, enlightening book.  The theme of youth destroyed runs throughout:  "I realized later that, however childish I might remain [Herr was in his mid-20's when he was a Vietnam War correspondent] actual youth had been pressed out of me in just the three days that it took me to cross the sixty miles between Can Tho and Saigon."  He is meticulous about his word choice: "pressed out of me" is perfect, encompassing the weight of many things, among them the heat, death, constant danger.  Or what about this:

              ". . . it was never easy to guess the ages of Marines at Keh Sanh since nothing like youth ever         lasted in their faces for very long.  It was the eyes:  because they were always either strained or blazed-out or simply blank, they never had anything to do with what the rest of the face was doing, and it gave everyone the look of extreme fatigue or even a glancing madness.  (And age: If you take one of those platoon photographs from the Civil War and cover everything but the eyes, there is no difference between a man of fifty and a boy of thirteen.)"

What's changed?  War destroys youth, and the war we're involved in now is no different in that respect from Vietnam.  That destruction of youth, of innocence, of life itself - for what? - eats at Herr.  All becomes meaningless, a dream, a longing to escape hell.  "How many times did somebody have to run in front of a machine gun before it became an act of cowardice?"  Think about that.  Bravura has morphed into indifference, a desire for the ultimate escape.

This is the kind of book where each sentence is so striking I could have underlined entire chapters.  "Colleagues" is just what it says, what it felt like for Herr and his fellow reporters.  It is also an indictment of the military elite who worked in concert (a different type of collegialism) to lie to the American people - and the world - through their distortion of facts on the ground.  Herr and his friends saw the war firsthand and struggled against that hardened elite to reveal the extent and many levels of destruction.  Other "reporters" bought into the "cross-fertilization of ignorance", the "psychotic vaudeville" that disgusted Herr and his friends.

The second part of this chapter could be subtitled "War As Movie".  Herr begins by saying "I kept thinking about all the kids who got wiped out by seventeen years of war movies before coming to Vietnam to get wiped out for good."  Growing up on war movies made the war initially seem unreal - you were in your own movie -- and it quickly became a horror movie.  This chapter also contains the crux of the problems faced by the reporters, "what we knew together, that in back of every column of print you read about Vietnam there was a dripping, laughing death-face; it hid there in the newspapers and magazines and held to your television screens for hours after the set was turned off for the night, an after-image that simply wanted to tell you at last what somehow had not been told."

He talks about an older correspondent who blew off the numbers in Khe Sanh (200 dead, 1000 wounded) by saying, "Oh, two hundred isn't anything.  We lost more than that in an hour on Guadalcanal."  This so disturbs Herr and his friends that they leave the table, but they "heard that kind of talk all the time, as though it could invalidate the deaths at Keh Sanh, render them somehow less dead than the dead from Guadalcanal, as though light losses didn't lie as still as moderate losses or heavy losses.  And these were American dead they were talking about; you should have heard them when the dead were Vietnamese."  This passage reminded me of a poem I wrote years ago:

                                                           Significant Losses

(Madeline Albright stated that “significant losses”

were not expected in a war with Iraq)

What makes a loss “significant”?

What is the magic number that

crosses the border into “significance”?

One death reverberates.

One death is significant

to the mother,

the father, wife, children,

sisters, brothers,

grandmothers, grandfathers,

aunts, uncles, cousins,

not to mention to

the one killed.

And what of the innocents gone?

The many children maimed, dead?

Those who were in the line of fire,

losing their arms, legs, heads?

Are they significant?

Those who calculate loss

as significant

only when the numbers climb

until the death toll reaches

a particular thousand

and the screams and protests of

the survivors grow to a blood-red

river’s roar –

then, and only then, say

it’s time to stop,

to pull out.

After they’ve proven their guns

still work,

their bombs still kill,

that they’re still significantly

effective.

Your mother and my mother,

your sister and my sister

say

One death –

one –

is not slight.

One death is a

significant

loss.

The Cool Cat with More than 9 Lives

It's hard to imagine any Rolling Stones fan who won't want to read Keith Richards' Life, and anyone who's at all familiar with Richards from past articles won't be buying it for the gossip factor.
Mick Jagger claimed in Sunday's NY Times Style magazine, "Personally, I think it's really quite tedious raking over the past.  Mostly, people only do it for the money."  Notice that he says "most people" - Keith may or may not be included in that company.  It's hard to believe that would have been Richards' motivation, as he turns an exceedingly critical eye upon his own past behavior -- there would have been less painful ways to make money.  And his compliments regarding Mick far outweigh any gibes.  That's not why I bought the book -- and I don't think it's hit the bestseller list because of what Keith might have to say about Mick.  I wanted to hear him tell about how the band started, but especially to hear what he has to say about the songs.  And I got what I was looking for.

Sure, he tells long and harrowing stories about his past drug addiction(s).   Even then, though, what comes through is his concern about how his behavior affected the band and its music.  He's worried more about collateral damage than any harm to himself.  The guy does remember a lot, though, considering his state much of the time, for decades.  His descriptions of the lure and horrors of heroin abuse - and cocaine - seemed to me (a person who has dealt with this in her own family) to be unabashedly honest.  He completely captures the power of addictive desire and the ravages that desire can bring to a person's world and the people around him.  He has no compunction about showing things as they were, no matter how selfish or damaged he may appear.  As revealing  -- and often laugh-out-loud amusing -- as Keith's stories are, the extended quotes by other musicians and friends like Tom Waits are just as revelatory - Waits' being, unsurprisingly for such a literate musician, very good indeed.

What redeems Keith, and always has, is his talent and tremendous love for music and fellow musicians, which is apparent whenever you see him play.  His vulnerability and care for his true "mates" -- male and female -- also comes through, unforced and uncloying.  The man has a great heart, which is probably why so many remain(ed) so loyal to him through thick and thin.

I remember seeing the Chuck Berry film Keith talks about in his book, and thinking how patient he was dealing with Chuck's crazy demands and quirks.  That story's in here, along with many others on fellow musicians (Willie Nelson, John Lennon, Etta James).  For me, though, some of the best parts of the book are when he describes the genesis of a song.  Another reason for wanting Keith's story is you know the man fears no type of censure (the book only reinforces this). 

Re: songwriting, Keith repeatedly says,

                  "Good songs write themselves.You're just being led by the nose, or the ears.
                   The skill is not to interfere with it too much.  Ignore intelligence, ignore everything;
                   just follow it where it takes you. . . You think, where did I steal this from?  No, no,
                   that's original. . . And you realize that songs write themselves; you're just the conveyor." 

Sure, this has been said before, (the same thing happens with poems, as other poets, too, have said before), but I think we're getting some originality here, a truly individual way of wording a truism.  I just like the way he puts it. 

It would be interesting to get Charlie Watts' take on the band's history (Keith has nothing but good things to say about his pal and bandmate, from the get-go).  But if Charlie never does (and it seems unlikely given his quiet reticence), we have this loud and honest memoir by the father of all rock 'n roll pirates.

Just Give Me Some Truth

Last week I saw two films on John Lennon, and both were disappointing.  As a Beatles fan(atic) from way back, it troubles me to see distortions onscreen, particularly when the audience may consist of people unfamiliar with Lennon's life who may take these depictions to heart.

The first was the feature film +Nowhere Boy, directed by Sam Taylor-Wood.  The best thing I can say about this film is that Aaron Johnson looked, in long shots, like the young John, especially when he had his Buddy Holly-like glasses on.  The most effective scenes were those when John and Paul first meet and the Quarrymen play their first gigs.  On the other hand, the scenes with Ann-Marie Duff (estranged mother Julia) were exaggerated (her acting, their relationship with each other).  Yes, Julia was young when she had John, but I've read many many books on the Beatles and didn't expect to see her attraction to and love for him so over-the-top flirtatious, nearly incestuous.  John grieved deeply and always after her sudden death, but it wasn't because of any sexual attraction; it was because he was just starting to know her after years of absence.


Christopher Eccleston in Lennon Naked had the accent down, but is too old to be portraying John Lennon in the the mid-60's through early 70's.  That alone was distracting, but more than that, again we had stereotypical Lennon anecdotes, including

•  his cruelty to others (Cynthia, childhood friends, Brian Epstein)
• his possible sexual liaison with Brian Epstein (the beginning of the film concentrates on this)
•  his childishness/failure to "grow up" (jumping into pool with clothes on, bed-in being mocked by the press)
• his insensitivity to the other Beatles when breaking up the band (at least they showed Paul jumping the gun by announcing he was quitting before Lennon could get the word out)

Although these things are documented and well known, to concentrate on them without also showing clearly his creativity, humor, and generosity seems just another attempt to sensationalize. 

Fortunately, Lennon NYC on PBS Monday night redeemed John's portrait.  Of course, it was a documentary, so we saw what was.  Documentaries can also distort, but this one did not.  John didn't come off looking like a saint -- his excessive drinking and boorish behavior during his famous "Lost Weekend" was honestly depicted, as was his neglect of Julian.  But we saw his outspokenness against the Vietnam War and Nixon's efforts to have him deported for this; his love for NYC/America; his great love for Yoko and Sean.   And, of course, his huge talent in action.  It was fascinating to see how the melodies came and lyrics were revised as the songs evolved.  This is the John Lennon we should remember.

Striking Oil with Rick Bass

Where The Sea Used To Be, there are now forests, mountains, tremendous layers of rock.  This deeply-layered novel has multiple depths as well - several layers of storylines going - the topmost being the search for oil, led by Old Dudley. 

Old Dudley echoes characters in books I've previously read:  Marcus in Iris Murdoch's A Message to The Planet, Sam Pollit in Christina Stead's The Man Who Loved Children, and Maurice Conchis in John Fowles' The Magus, all impish master manipulators, sometimes sadistic, seemingly impervious to the human/physical destruction they leave in their wakes.  Despite his extremely difficult and often repulsive personality, Old Dudley is loved.  It is not, however,within his capacity to return it; the only thing he feels any passion for is his constant search for oil as he penetrates the rocks beneath him, and his dominance over others as he strives to attain this end.

Although I've probably read short pieces by Rick Bass in lit journals, as his name was familiar, I had never read any of his books.  For a first novel (1998), this book is profound, learned, and polished.  At times it is mythic, as in the moving scene when the great black bear joins the dying Helen at her picnic table for a late-night pancake feast.  It's also deeply grounded in reality -- Bass's descriptions of the tiny mountain town of Swan and its surrounding land and water, of its inhabitants both human and animal, and of the relationships that develop among them are as sharp and clear as November mountain air.

Even the town's name has echoes and reverberations, layers like the rock Old Dudley seeks to master.  There are two Swans - when Wallis, one of Dudley's proteges, first seeks out the town, he is told to go onward to the second Swan.  At the end of the book, Artie, the owner of the town bar, says he spotted two swans for the first time in thirty years.  The swans, which had been plentiful before that, had been killed by wolves many years since, so their visits had ceased.  Matthew, Old Dudley's finest protege (until Dudley sapped his essence, his oil, his richness) tells how the only time swans make a sound is "right before they die.  It's the only sound they make in their whole life.  That's why they call it a swan song.  They lie down and stretch out their neck and whistle.  It's not a pretty sound -- not at all like you'd think.  It's horrible."  Matthew then goes on to say that he heard this sound when, as a kid, he caught one and stoned it to death.  Perhaps this is why Matthew allowed Old Dudley to sap the life out of him -- he was caught ( baited) and, like the swan, gradually killed (the swan's stoning by Matthew like Old Dudley's repeated shots to Matthew's life force).  Stoning - an appropriate image in a book filled with images like this, of the earth's various layers being, in one way or another, put to mankind's service. 

Old Dudley's manhood could be compared to the oil drill - his worst nightmare is waking with a flaccid penis (dry oil well).  What constitutes manhood?  In Dudley's mind, it is bending others to his will, whether it be his proteges, women, townspeople, or nature in its various forms.  Although he feels superior to the rock he drills, Dudley is still afraid of the nature he doesn't know -- the woods, the upper layers of the earth, animals, snow --  and repeatedly curses these things. 

The one thing he can't control is his daughter Mel.   She retains her independence from him, having chosen long ago to stay in Swan and track the wolves( see Women Who Run With the Wolves - Mel personifies one of these archetypal women).  Although she's inherited Dudley's stubbornness, she refuses to be cowed by his cruelty, his sarcasm, his will.  She's connected to the upper earth (people, the wolves and other animals around her), to the townspeople (particularly Helen) and possesses a respect for life, nature, and self that Dudley lacks. 

Dudley teaches Matthew and Wallis how to find oil; Helen teaches the townspeople how to read the weather; Matthew teaches Wallis how to track elk; and Mel leaves her decades-long tracking of wolf patterns to teach the town's children.  Along the way, people learn as much from the world around them as they do from their specific tutors.  One character, young Colter, springs free from the confines of the town to explore farther north, out of reach of the rigs and Dudley's grasp, leaping over the rock wall Matthew built years ago (it runs for miles through the land) and which was lengthened and built on since by all the townspeople.  This wall is a constant work-in-progress.  It connects the people to their land.

Rick Bass is a wonderful nature writer with a deep understanding of human nature as well.  I knew I would love this book after reading the first sentence:  "He had been eating the whole world for the seventy years of his life; and for the last twenty, he had been trying to eat the valley."  Clever Bass, hooking me.

The Singular Mark Twain

This year is the 100th anniversary of Mark Twain's death.  He stipulated that his Autobiography not be published until this date occurred - now it is coming out in 3 volumes to be published by the University of California Press (1st volume due November 2010).  After reading The Singular Mark Twain by Fred Kaplan, I am even more anxious to delve into Twain's autobiography.  Twain said, "I think we never become really & genuinely our entire & honest selves until we are dead -- & not then until we have been dead years & years.  People ought to start dead, & then they would be honest so much earlier."  His Autobiography promises to be a revelatory read.

The Singular Mark Twain is another tome - 655 pp. - but his story was told with such panache that it was not at all daunting.  As a longtime fan of Twain -- I re-read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn again last year and found it even deeper than I remembered it -- it was interesting to me to read of his life, his love for his wife Livy, and the relationships he had with other important figures of the age, particularly William Dean Howells.  I read Howells' A Hazard of New Fortunes in college, but don't remember much of it.  Howells certainly was a good and loyal friend to Twain over the course of many, many years, and Twain was often not an easy man to deal with. 

I would have eliminated some of the details of Twain's financial problems; his penchant for poor investments was detailed repeatedly.  These are the only parts of the book I glossed over.  I'd been aware that he became even more difficult toward the end of his life, but did not know the details.  It was dismaying how easily swayed he was by his daughter Clara against Isabel Lyon, who devoted so many years of her life to making Twain happy as secretary, companion and housekeeper.  This was probably the worst case of Twain turning against people he had formerly held dear.  The darker aspects of his personality (and his writing) were always there -- it seems that as he aged, he was less reticent to keep them hidden.

What was most entertaining to me was seeing the variety of ways he manifested his individuality. He was generally fearless in airing his opinions, some of which were quite unpopular in his day -- he was disdainful of religion, outspoken against prejudice (a contrast to his early years), and against imperialism.  He was an avid traveler who preferred ships over trains, curious to experience the mores and people of many different lands.  He explored areas physically and mentally that many of his contemporaries were reluctant to visit.

I can see why Hal Holbrooke never gets bored playing Twain.  Mark Twain was such a rich personality, so full of wit, so very "singular."  He was very often blind to his faults, but aren't we all? 

What Happened to the Battle That Was Ragin'?

As Jenny Diski says repeatedly in Picador's lovely "BIG IDEAS/small books" edition of The Sixties:  "The music was undeniably as great as we thought it was."  She repeats this over and over again, and over and over again I agreed with her.  She says, perfectly, "The music knew where we were going in our heads and wrote the score."  It reminded me of the scene in The Big Chill when one of Harold's (Kevin Kline's) college friends accuses him of being stuck in the 60's because all he plays on his stereo is 60's music.  One friend says, "Come on, there's been some great music since then", but isn't able to name any.  (That film soundtrack remains one of the best of all time.)

This is a small book, in both size and length, at 134 pages, but Diski is succinct, objective, and honest in her analysis of those times.  She's also a Brit, so it was interesting to read her take on what was happening in the U.S. from someone "across the pond."

I have another book by Diski, Stranger on a Train, (subtitled "Daydreaming and Smoking Around America With Interruptions").  The title alone was funny, and I really enjoyed this addition to the Travel section of my bookcase.  It was much more than a book on her travels by train, and the difficulties of smoking during her travels; like Paul Theroux, she has a knack for writing memorable portraits of the people she meets, and for writing profoundly on life in general as she makes her way to her destination.

I'm glad Diski made clear at the beginning of the book that:

"The Sixties, of course, were not the decade of the same name.  They began in the mid-1960s with the rise of popular culture. . . aided by a generation of people who did not have an urgent economic fear, nor (in Britain) a war to deal with, and it ended in the mid-1970s when all the open-ended possibilities we saw began to narrow. . ."

She says that the "big idea" we had, that included "freedom, liberty, permission, a great enlarging of human possibilities" was "an idea we failed to think through.  It was a failure of thought essentially, rather than a failure of imagination."  This is crucial.  What made those times so exciting and made them feel so open-ended was the power of our imaginations.  We had a great sense of play. 

She talks about the "terrible clarity of vision" that's "available to the young of every generation, and those who look become the trouble-makers, the difficult ones, that the elders complain about eternally."  How much better could the gist of those times be stated?  This also rang a bell to me personally, as I have always felt that I'm the "difficult" one of my siblings, the one unafraid to pull the covers off the truth and talk about what lies underneath.  I think a lot of those who were close to me at the time held that same spot in their family dynamic.

Diski is truthful about the failures of those times, but also kind toward our youthful hopes and dreams.  "Like the young at all times, I imagined that such as us had never happened before, and that nothing was ever going to be the same again once the old had passed into their pottering retirement.  What the young don't get is that they are young; the old are right, young is a phase the old go through."

To paraphrase Dylan, there are certainly still "battles ragin'", but I don't see youth on the front lines of those battles (against war and various oppressions) like we were in the 60's.  There are surely youth out there who are pursuing their ideals, and those ideals surely include freedom and liberty.  But despite the proliferation of media tools for networking and the spread of information, I don't hear or see much real rebellion in the air, at least not from youth.  Diski thinks the generations older and younger than us "are more inclined than we were to reproduce for their young what they experienced in their childhood, rather than offer them Wonderland.  We were stardust, we were golden and we had to get ourselves back to the garden. . ."