Hamlet: National Theatre Live (2015) via Fathom Events

If you have wanted to see the National Theatre Live's 2015 version of Hamlet and haven't had a chance yet, check the Fathom Events site to see if there will be a screening near you on July 8th. The time I saw it, the audience had a nice mix of ages which I attribute to Benedict Cumberbatch's popularity.

For what it's worth, I recommend taking advantage of this opportunity if you have the interest. I've linked to it before, but here's an interview with Benedict Cumberbatch on this production.

Women of the Gulag film

Several years ago I posted on Women of the Gulag: Portraits of Five Remarkable Lives by Paul R. Gregory. A moving and powerful book, Gregory detailed some of the problems that five Soviet women faced when victimized by the gulag system. I believe I first found out about the book from Cynthia Haven at The Book Haven, and over the years she has posted about a film based on the book being made and the awards it was nominated for. The film was directed by Marianna Yarovskaya and produced by Yarovskaya and Gregory. Over the years I've added some of Cynthia's updates to my original post, but I'll list some of them here, too.

• Terror’s human face: Women of the Gulag – the book and the movie. Help make it happen.
• Will Women of the Gulag get an Oscar next month? Please vote yes. Putin won’t like it.
• Oscar endorsement for Women of the Gulag: “To go through such suffering without going mad is a spiritual feat.”
• Stalin loses at the Academy Awards … again.

Cynthia has also posted about a screening that the film had at Stanford and a podcast on the Q&A session afterwords. Her post includes more on the film:

The film tells the compelling stories of six remarkable women – among the last survivors of the Gulag, the brutal system of repression that devastated the Soviet population during the Stalin years. Most stories of the gulag have told of men’s experience. Women of the Gulag is the first account of women in the camps and special settlements.

Check out the links from Cynthia's post and from my post on the book. I'm looking forward to when I'll be able to see the movie. Also play the podcast she includes from the Q&A session. Yarovskaya mentions that most of the ladies from the film had died or were too infirm to attend the screening the movie had in Moscow, but that one woman was able to attend. Yarovskaya and Gregory talk about how the gulags are viewed in Russia today (if someone knows about them at all) and how the screenings and support from the government gradually occurred. (Note: it may have been my system, but the podcast froze occasionally. In case others run into that problem, I could get it to resume playing by skipping ahead 10-15 seconds.)

If you're not tired of links yet, here are two more to visit:
The film's website, which has a clip from the movie and goes into more detail of its making
An interview with the director

Picture source

Under the Big Black Sun by John Doe, with Tom DeSavia and Friends

Under the Big Black Sun: A Personal History of L.A. Punk by John Doe, with Tome DeSavia and Friends
Da Capo Press, 2016
Hardcover, 336 pages

Under the Big Black Sun explores the nascent Los Angeles punk rock movement and its evolution to hardcore punk as it's never been told before. Authors John Doe and Tom DeSavia have woven together an enthralling story of the legendary west coast scene from 1977-1982 by enlisting the voices of people who were there. The book shares chapter-length tales from the authors along with personal essays from famous (and infamous) players in the scene. Additional authors include: Exene Cervenka (X), Henry Rollins (Black Flag), Mike Watt (The Minutemen), Jane Wiedlin and Charlotte Caffey (The Go-Go's), Dave Alvin (The Blasters), Jack Grisham (TSOL), Teresa Covarrubias (The Brat), Robert Lopez (The Zeros, El Vez), as well as scencesters and journalists Pleasant Gehman, Kristine McKenna, and Chris Morris. Through interstitial commentary, John Doe “narrates” this journey through the land of film noir sunshine, Hollywood back alleys, and suburban sprawl-the place where he met his artistic counterparts Exene, DJ Bonebrake, and Billy Zoom-and formed X, the band that became synonymous with, and in many ways defined, L.A. punk.

Under the Big Black Sun shares stories of friendship and love, ambition and feuds, grandiose dreams and cultural rage, all combined with the tattered, glossy sheen of pop culture weirdness that epitomized the operations of Hollywood's underbelly. Readers will travel to the clubs that defined the scene, as well as to the street corners, empty lots, apartment complexes, and squats that served as de facto salons for the musicians, artists, and fringe players that hashed out what would become punk rock in Los Angeles.
- From the inside bookflap, and also at John Doe's books webpage

While I'm slowly working through Stalingrad I thought I'd try to get to books I wanted to post on but just haven't had a chance yet. The other day I saw a review of the recently released More Fun in the New World by John Doe and TomDeSavia, which I'm looking forward to reading, and realized I had never posted on Doe's first book. I'll try and fix that.

LA punk was born from rock ‘n’ roll and one of the last steps—in the evolution of rock ‘n’ roll music. Although legends were born from this scene, there were very few stars and really no celebrities. This is an attempt to tell the story. When John and I first spoke of writing this book, I told him I thought it was important for the true story of LA punk rock to be told. He replied that everyone in the scene probably had their own truth to tell. He would be interested in that story, regardless of whether it matched his own memory. So here it is—the many true stories from a mostly undocumented era in cultural history. This book is about that time. (Tom DeSavia, xxii)

The book provides stories from those that participated in (and survived) the early LA punk era. The scene began to form around 1975 but came into its own by 1977, and the book focuses on that era up to about 1982. It's interesting to see the various recollections of how this loose communal experience came into being. Former glam rock fans becomes a common source, which made more sense the more I read through the chapters. It's also interesting to see who was included in the scene, groups like The Go-Gos and Los Lobos that you wouldn't necessarily place with The Germs, or Black Flag. Like the sources, though, it all fits together. Normal people, misanthropic misfits, and addled geniuses (and plenty of just-addled) came together and formed...well, we're probably still not sure quite what.

I'll disagree on Doe's use of "undocumented era," although he's not completely wrong, either. There was plenty of documentation of the scene at the time but usually not in high-circulation media. As the contributors note, LA's punk scene consistently placed well behind those in New York City and London when it came to coverage. One of the constant themes was how tight-knit and welcoming the early participants were, which drew in writers making their own fanzines and other outlets. Slash magazine became one of the most important outlets for writers interested in the scene. Existing from 1977 to 1980, the fanzine brought info on the LA punk scene to a worldwide audience. It also was the impetus for the founding of the Slash Records label (and its subsidiary Ruby Records). Coverage also began to go beyond alternative weeklies like the Los Angeles Reader to frequent notices in the Los Angeles Times. Coverage wasn't always positive, but that doesn't seem to have bothered anyone in the scene at the time.

Two important factors in the development of the LA punk scene revolved around where the participants lived and the venues that allowed the groups to perform and practice (such as The Masque). The stories from those that lived close to Hollywood venues allowing the punk bands to practice and play formed a community of sorts, where practice, play, and afterparties were the order of each day. Those that lived some distance from Hollywood usually talk about day jobs that funded their trips to the clubs and the groups they formed. Although not part of the closer-knit locals, acceptance was the order of the day with the scene (early on, especially). Kristine McKenna, a music writer at the time, captures both the volatility of the performances and the acceptance from audiences:

People who went to punk shows in the early days were respectful, they listened, and they were genuinely interested in the band onstage, even if they’d seen the same bank four nights earlier. We knew we’d always see something new, partly because these were mostly not professional musicians, and nobody did the same show twice, because they weren’t able to. Professionalism came later for some, but in the beginning the scene was truly experimental, and the audience was tolerant and supportive. ... We believed we were dangerous and subversive back in the day, but in fact, we were babies, yet to rub the fairy dust from our eyes. (241)

One risk for participants writing about a past movement is glamorizing what happened. While there is an occasional patina of romanticization, it's usually on a more personal level than ascribing it to the scene as a whole. Several reasons are given for the end of the "golden age" of the LA punk scene, around 1980, and these are anything but glamorized. Accidental deaths and suicides, drug abuse, incursions by violent types, record label signings, and the music splintering into various genres (hardcore, roots, country, etc.) pulled apart the feeling of community that had developed during the frenzied growth.

The sections I enjoyed the most centered on the east-side culture. Although late to the Hollywood scene, these bands mastered their own approach, paving the way for a sizable movement. Teresa Covarrubias of The Brat wrote my favorite chapter, going into detail on how the sense of geography (which was largely a factor of race), provided a healthy sense of camaraderie, competition and development within the East LA scene. In a way it was similar to what had developed in Hollywood, but there were many important differences.

I'll close with a John Doe quote that sums up a large part of the book:

This is how bonds & alliances were made & broken. This is how a bunch of outsiders, fuckups & loners turned into a bohemian, punk-rock community. People exchanged stories of where they came from, crazy shit they had done in their young lives, ideas of what was & wasn’t cool or what was or wasn’t punk rock. It was like going to the strangest, coolest graduate school of music, art & life, even though everyone was just fucking around having a wild time. (55)

What follows is of no interest to anyone else, so skip this paragraph unless you can tolerate someone strolling down amnesia lane.Regarding the noteworthy bands and names mentioned in the book, I saw X live twice. The first time was at a University of Alabama pep rally some time after their release of Under the Big Black Sun, so it must have been the fall of 1982. I can't remember if the pep rally was for homecoming or the Alabama/Auburn game. I still can't believe they got booked in Foster Auditorium! The second time was in Dallas in 1986, a bit after Ain’t Love Grand and The Knitters album was out. On this tour, Billy Zoom had left and Dave Alvin replaced him. Moving on... The Minutemen played one of the greatest sets I've seen, and I saw Mike Watt again with firehose. Strangely (or at least I view it that way), the two names from the book I've seen the most are Javier and Alejandro Escovedo. Javier was with The Zeros in LA for a brief time, while Alejandro was with The Nuns out of San Francisco, so they are minor characters in the book. It was with The True Believers I saw both of them over a dozen times, and if you add the times I saw Alejandro with Rank and File (in Memphis' Antenna Club...sa-lute!) and solo, he would be performer I've seen the most, all-time. Never sat down to try and figure that out before now. As I asked, forgive the babbling.

Links:




Review of More Fun in the New World: The Unmaking and Legacy of L.A. Punk by John Doe and Tom DeSavia at Billboard.com. Includes an excerpt from the book by Charlotte Caffey of The Go-Gos.

An excerpt from Under the Big Black Sun by Henry Rollins.

There are excerpts from the book at the Da Capo Press link at the top of the post.

Under The Big Black Sun: A Conversation with John Doe and Mike Watt at SXSW Music 2016

Slash magazine archives

Punk flyers from 1977 Los Angeles, with additional, related links

Movies with appearances by X can usually be found for free somewhere. X: The Unheard Music is currently available on SnagFilms and The Decline of Western Civilization, which covers some of the LA punk scene around 1980, can be currently be found for free on tubi and Pluto channels.

Ears, Eyes and Throats: Restored Classic and Lost Punk Films 1976-1981, ten short films from punk and alternative bands of the time. See here for more information on the films.

Picture source

Article: How the Soviet Literary Establishment Censored Vasily Grossman

Robert Chandler has a short article in The New Yorker on the censorship of Grossman's book For a Just Cause (the recent English translation uses the title Grossman wanted—Stalingrad.

The original publication process of the novel is a case study of Soviet editorial practices and censorship. Grossman worked on the manuscript from 1943 until 1949 and then spent three years battling with his editors. Anticipating difficulties from the beginning, he recorded all relevant official conversations, letters, and meetings in a document titled “Diary of the Journey of the Novel For a Just Cause through Publishing Houses.”

While many of the required changes were made to soften any criticism of the Soviet political structure, other changes were for petty things and it makes for a revealing look at Soviet taboos. The last censored item mentioned, a story about a general using a goat to lead them out of a bog, is so silly I figure it's something Grossman actually heard during his job as a war correspondent.

Father's Day, from Ronnie Lane

The poetry of Ronnie Lane...two songs that capture some challenging aspects of father/son dynamics. In a good way, at least to me.

Stalingrad by Vasily Grossman: Introduction

Stalingrad by Vasily Grossman
Translated by Robert Chandler and Elizabeth Chandler
NYRB Classics, 2019
Paperback, 1088 pages

Judging by how limited my time was yesterday and only making my way through Robert Chandler's introduction to Stalingrad, this may be a true "summer(-long) read" for me. And I'm fine with that.

A few quick notes on that introduction...
Chandler provides a good, concise introduction to Stalingrad and the trouble Grossman had with its publication. Because of the relationship between this book and Life and Fate, there is a lot on the second book, too. I liked this view of the two novels:

It [Life and Fate] is, amongst other things, a considered statement of his moral and political philosophy—a meditation on the nature of totalitarianism, the danger presented by even the most seemingly benign of ideologies, and the moral responsibility of each individual for his own actions. … Stalingrad, in contrast, is less philosophical, but more immediate; it presents us with a richer, more varied human story. (viii)

From what I understand from Alexandra Popoff's book Vasily Grossman and the Soviet Century, Chandler sums up one of Grossman's purposes perfectly when he says, “Stalingrad is, amongst much else, an act of homage. One of Grossman’s aims was to honour the dead—especially those who had been forgotten.” (xvii)

There are many historical figures in Stalingrad and Chandler looks at a couple of them. One of the central figures of the novel is Viktor Shtrum, based on Lev Yakovlevich Shtrum, “one of the founders of Soviet nuclear physics.” The historical Shtrum was executed in 1936 during one of many purges and the connection between the real-life person and the novel's character may have been lost to many people. Chandler points to an article by Tatian Dettmer establishing the relationship between the two. “The Physicist Lev Shtrum. Unknown Hero of a Famous Novel” is in Russian, but worth reading with a "Translate" option. The article covers the tragic life and fate of the physicist. I'll excerpt some of the article here. Note that the historical name shows up as "Strum" in translation.

More than half a century after the creation of the novel, a prototype of one of his main characters, the physicist Viktor Strum, was found. He was a Soviet nuclear physicist Lev Yakovlevich Strum (1890–1936), head of the department of theoretical physics at Kiev University.

The image of the physicist Victor Strum has a special place in the work of Grossman. The writer endowed Shtrum with his features and put his own thoughts on social and political themes into his mouth. Strum’s life story reproduces key points in the author’s biography: for example, the tragic story of a mother shot by the Germans in occupied Berdichev, or a slanderous letter that the Strum physicist signs at the time of spiritual confusion. A similar letter was once signed by Grossman himself, which he later bitterly regretted.

…

Another important feature of the hero of Grossman is the tendency to philosophical understanding of the surrounding reality, be it the peculiarities of the Soviet regime or the laws of physics, with the help of which Viktor Strum tries to explain the laws of social life. A versatile, enthusiastic, inquisitive person, Lev Strum was widely known in Kiev and beyond as a public lecturer and popularizer of science.

In an update to the article, Dettmer notes that Alexandra Popoff had found a couple of references to Lev Shtrum in Grossman’s letters to his father. Dettmer notes in the body of the article: “It is hoped that the answer to this question will be found: not all archival materials have been investigated both in Kiev and in Moscow.” There is more on the connection between the character and person at "Vasily Grossman and the Plight of Soviet Jewish Scientists: The Tragic Tale of the Physicist Lev Shtrum", a LitHub article credited to both Dettmer and Popoff.

Chandler is correct to note that Grossman took a risk by making the central character an “enemy of the people,” but Alexandra Popoff rounds out this observation by adding, “The fictional Shtrum is invested with Grossman’s personality: he is the author’s alter ego.” (page 202, Vassily Grossman and the Soviet Century). The importance of Viktor Shtrum to Grossman in the novel can be seen from Grossman's stubborn refusal to remove the character from Stalingrad despite repeated calls to delete the chapters in which he appeared.

Not only is the release of Stalingrad in English a cause for celebration, Chandler adds that there was a release in 2013 of the typescripts of Life and Fate that were confiscated by the KGB in 1961 and he hopes to revisit his translation in light of this new source material.

It's going to be a great summer...

Update:
Aargh, I hate it when I hit Publish before including everything I meant to. I also wanted to note that the book contains a timeline of the war (from the beginning of World War II to the surrender of German troops in Stalingrad), maps, an Afterword that goes into detail on the difficulty of piecing the text of the novel together, a helpful (and long) list of characters, and some books for further reading.

I don't know if this will be helpful for Stalingrad, but the BBC's "tree" of characters for Life and Fate might come in handy.

Also, HistoryofWar.org has a nice collection of Maps and Pictures for the Battle of Stalingrad.

More links can be found at the archived page of BBC4 Radio's page for Life and Fate. Clicking on the previously aired episodes comes up with "This episode will be available soon." Here's hoping that's correct.

Vasily Grossman and the Soviet Century by Alexandra Popoff

Vasily Grossman and the Soviet Century by Alexandra Popoff
Yale University Press, 2019
Hardcover, 424 pages

Stalingrad by Vasily Grossman is officially released today. While I'm waiting for my copy to arrive by mail, I wanted to share a little about this outstanding biography. Alexandra Popoff has written several literary biographies and is a former Moscow journalist. In Vasily Grossman and the Soviet Century she follows Grossman's life and how it was intertwined with and influenced by a large part of Soviet history. While officially a reporter in World War II, Grossman's mature writings capture two of the totalitarian nightmares of the century.

As a Jew whose mother was killed by the Nazis in his native Berdichev, Ukraine, Grossman felt the twentieth-century calamities most acutely. His mother had perished in September 1941, during one of the first massacres of Jews in the occupied Soviet territories. Her destiny became the strongest motivation force in Grossman's life. It prompted him to become an early chronicler of the Holocaust and was behind his determination to tell the whole truth about the global evil unleashed by the twentieth-century's totalitarian regimes. (page 3)

In his last and most radical anti-totalitarian novel, Everything Flows, written after the arrest of Life and Fate, he declares that "there is no end in the world for the sake of which it is permissible to sacrifice human freedom." (5)

To help in understanding Grossman's early life, Popoff describes the treatment of the Jews in Russia: pogroms, distrust, deportation. Grossman was twelve at the time of the February 1917 revolution, with promises of freedom and equality ending when Lenin seized power. As Popoff covers Grossman's life, she notes how much of his life and the experiences of his friends were used in his writings. His scientific background and job took him to various places around the Soviet Union and he was able to see firsthand some of the horror from the deliberate Ukrainian famine of the early 1930s. Members of his family were exiled or murdered, and his father lived in constant fear of arrest. Many of his early writer friends were shot as traitors to the state.

While aware of the nature of Stalin's regime throughout his life, Grossman's early works were fairly conventional even if they didn't quite fit the socialist realism (propaganda) mold that journals and censors wanted. Popoff delves into these works to find seeds for later, more confrontational writing, especially in his determination to make truthful depictions.

An endorsement from Maxim Gorky took Grossman from relative obscurity to publications clambering for his work. As Popoff details, having Gorky as a friend or an acquaintance was no guarantee of safety since there were repeated purges of those not faithful or loyal enough to the Soviet state or just simply being an inconvenience to those in power. Grossman's fame brought him close to authors who would later be suspect and/or liquidated because of relationships or publications that weren't pure enough. Some of his writings were noted for their ideological unsoundness, but he (mostly) escaped harsh treatment. His wife in the late 1930s, though, was arrested. Her eventual release was a rarity for the time.

Germany's invasion in 1941 changed Grossman's life drastically. As noted above, his mother was trapped in the former Ukraine, although Grossman would not learn of her outcome for several years. Taking a job as a war correspondent, Grossman saw firsthand the incompetence of Stalin's micromanagement and the heroism of the lowly Soviet soldier. His job also afforded him with access and information that most Soviets would never see, such as experiencing the siege of Stalingrad or the liberation of concentration camps. His reports were prominently published (after censorship, of course) and what he saw and learned provided the basis for his greatest novels.

In a book that provides exciting and moving passages, the two chapters I found the most exciting and the most moving are "The Battle of Stalingrad" and "Arithmetic of Brutality" (Chapters 8 & 9). Stalingrad provided Grossman deep insight into the Soviet (and human) psyche. Men and women fight hopeless battles, but feel more alive because of their freedom in doing so, provides some of the most stirring passages in Life and Fate. In his later writings, Grossman often focused on the ordinary...men, events, etc....for deeper looks into what it is to be human, and the siege gave him plenty of examples to use. Some of the worst aspects of the battle was the fight for recognition after it was over, ignoring the countless casualties needed to secure the victory. "Arithmetic" also looked at countless casualties, in this case those of the Jews during the war. The chapter follows Grossman during the revelations of deportations and massacres of the Jews across Soviet territory and German territory. He helped work on The Complete Black Book of Russian Jewry (often shortened to The Black Book), providing a record for a worldwide audience of the special targeting of Jews during the war. While the Kremlin was uninterested in allowing such a publication, several of Grossman's articles such as "The Murder of the Jews of Berdichev" (which included his mother's death) and "The Hell of Treblinka" combined "investigative journalism, a historical and philosophical essay, and "a requiem to the victims." (173) The strain of what he saw and his work on articles to capture the atrocities took its toll on him personally, causing Grossman to have a nervous collapse. Another result is that his writing would not be the same.

Grossman saw his duty in writing as becoming a Soviet Tolstoy, recording a War and Peace for the Soviet era. Fortunately for us, this yielded Stalingrad and Life and Fate, a deliberate comparison to Tolstoy's sweep and storytelling. Unfortunately for him, his work on such an epic would show his dedication to the truth, which was at odds with Soviet politics. Popoff mines Grossman's personal journal for the circumstances and difficulties of publishing his novel For the Right Cause (the published title for Stalingrad). He constantly had to rewrite large sections while fighting to keep central storylines in the novel. Since Stalin was still alive, many hurdles and restraints surrounded publication and it was a tortuous path before the bowdlerized version was released.

One of the low points of Grossman's life was adding his name to the letter by prominent Soviet Jews denouncing the Jewish physicians who were part of the so-called "Doctors Plot" against Stalin. His character Viktor Shtrum signs a similar document in Life and Fate and it's fair to infer that the guilt of character reflects Grossman's feelings of complicity. After Stalin's death and a slight thawing of restrictions, Grossman began work on Life and Fate in order to show the dehumanization of both the Communists and Fascists against man's needs for love, compassion, and freedom. It's still a wonder that the novel was arrested instead of the author. Despite this escape, Grossman didn't have long to live. He died from stomach cancer in September 1964 with several of his works unpublished, and those that had been released mangled by censors.

Alexandra Popoff does a superb job or recounting Grossman's remarkable life, fleshing out the political and social background of his life and times in order to fully appreciate his writings. She also details how parts of his life and his experiences make into his stories. For anyone wanting more of a background on Grossman and how he fit into the "Soviet Century," start here. Very highly recommended.

Update:
For more on Grossman, see Yury Bit-Yunan and Robert Chandler's article Vasily Grossman: Myths and Counter-Myths on sorting out facts of Grossman's life from “Soviet intelligentsia folklore."

Bennington College in the 1980s (Esquire article)

"The Secret Oral History of Bennington: The 1980s' Most Decadent College" by Lili Anolik, Esquire

Fall, 1982. A new freshman class arrives at arty, louche, and expensive Bennington College. Among the druggies, rebels, heirs, and posers: future Gen X literary stars Donna Tartt, Bret Easton Ellis, and Jonathan Lethem. What happened over the next four years would spark scandal, myth, and some of the authors' greatest novels. Return to a campus and an era like no other.

What Café du Dôme was to the Lost Generation, the dining hall at Bennington College was to Generation X—i.e., the Lost Generation Revisited. The Moveable Feast had moved ahead six decades and across the Atlantic, and while, of course, southwestern Vermont wasn’t Paris, somehow, in the early-to-mid eighties, it was, was just as sly, louche, low-down, and darkly perdu. And speaking of sly, louche, low-down, and darkly perdu, check out the habitués. Seated around the table, ready to gorge on the conversation if not the food (cocaine, the Pernod of its era, is a notorious appetite suppressant), berets swapped for sunglasses, were the neo F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and Djuna Barnes: Bret Easton Ellis, future writer of American Psycho and charter member of the literary Brat Pack; Jonathan Lethem, future writer of The Fortress of Solitude and MacArthur genius; and Donna Tartt, future writer of The Secret History and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for The Goldfinch. All three were in the class of 1986. All three were a long way from home—Los Angeles, Brooklyn, and Grenada, Mississippi, respectively. All three were, at various times, infatuated and disappointed with one another, their friendships stimulated and fueled by rivalry. And all three would mythologize Bennington—the baroque wickedness, the malignant glamour, the corruption so profound as to be exactly what is meant by the word decadence—in their fiction that, as it turns out, wasn’t quite, and thereby become myths themselves.

I'll admit I've read very little from the three listed here, familiar most with Brixton Smith (and only then when she was bass player and songwriter with The Fall). I guess there's been a mythology built up about this time at Bennington, by and due to the principles, and the article does nothing to undermine such myth-building. Lili Anolik lets the principles tell their stories, then pieces it together into chronological order. While letting the history unveil itself through the various interviews, a story of complicated relationships and compositions. The college seemed to go out of its way to make sure artistic anarchy would rule. From Jonathan Lethem:

JONATHAN LETHEM: When I got to Bennington, I had a starry-eyed feeling. People were developing in such eccentric ways, and so many professors were encouraging that so strongly—this kind of willful self-formation. It almost felt like a finishing school for people who wanted to forge an identity so that after graduation they could move to New York and knock the world dead in some artistic venue or other.

The article reads like the worst of the self-absorbed college movie genre, which may be why I enjoyed it nonetheless. I'm passing it on in case others might enjoy it, too.

Summer "school," or how I got my kids to read Dostoevsky

What to do with students in the summer? When they were younger, it was fairly easy. Take them to the pool. Get together with friends. Go to summer camps and amusement parks. Take them on trips. Wear them out, somehow. For school? If you wanted, you could do the summer "bridge" activities books, but of course they usually hated those. (Yeah, I would have been the exception if they had them back in the day.) I think for our best year we made it a third of the way through one of those books.

As they get older, parts of keeping them active during the summer gets easier with interest-related camps. Scout camp. Tear-a-computer-down-and-rebuild-it-each-day camp. Get a lifeguarding job. Etc. For my boys, especially the oldest, I'm worried about them forgetting everything they learned in math during the year. When that's someone else's problem (public or private school), you may or may not worry less. When *you're* the teacher, though, things become a little more personal. A few years ago we initiated summer math, which was 2-3 times a week with problems that would take 10-15 minutes for them to solve and then review with me. When we started the new school year and the first chapters were a review, we could fly through those and get to the new concepts quicker.

We had a few summers where we read a couple of books together, but that never seemed to quite connect with them...guess I never picked the "right" books. So this summer we're trying something different. I'm picking a dozen books that I like, which I don't think they're quite ready to read the whole work and appreciate, and we're going to read a passage or two and discuss it.

For example, today we read most of "The Grand Inquisitor" chapter (Book 5, Chapter 5) from Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov as well as some pre-reading (Jesus' temptations in Matthew 4:1-11 and some info on the Spanish inquisition, which nobody seems to expect even today). While that isn't my favorite part of the book now, I remember the impression it made on me when I first heard about it from a teacher my senior year in high school and decided to read it for myself. I guess my goals include making the boys aware and conversant on certain topics in literature, giving them a good grounding that they can use for English papers in upcoming years, and (hopefully) prod them into reading something that strikes their fancy. A major goal, hopefully without becoming "that teacher," is to have them read beyond "what happens" or whodunit.

I know it's an approach that isn't original, but I thought since they were open to doing bite-sized math lessons over the summer why not try the same thing with reading? There are so many resources available online that can help with popular books, and I'm going to rely on some of my notes for books I've posted on. So I pass this on in case you're looking for ideas to get the kids engaged with something...anything...over the summer. I was surprised how much the oldest took to this today. He made notes, wanted to discuss things that interested him, etc. For a literature geek, it warms the heart. I think I'm learning as much (probably more) from them as they are from me.

A few of the sections I have ready or I'm working on for them to go over, if you're interested in doing something similar:

• "Time Passes" from Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse (always helpful that there's a movie we can watch, too). One approach to the question of how do you skip a decade in a book?
• Thucydides—the introduction (with his alleged reason for the war), Pericles' funeral oration, and the Melian dialogue. It truly is a work for all time.
• Chapters from Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman. Continuing with some the topics we covered in this year's history classes.

And there's plenty more books I've started, such as Book 4 of The Aeneid and Milton's Satan. We'll see where else it leads and if their interest stays at this level. If you're found something that works for older students and reading over the summer, I'd love to hear about it.

The Cold Blue (2019) tonight

My oldest expressed interest in seeing The Cold Blue tonight instead of waiting for it on HBO, and who was I to say no? So we're excited about going tonight for the movie and the extra "making of" short. Plus I'm happy to see the score is provided by Richard Thompson. A good article on the movie can be found at Popular Mechanics. I'll add a note after seeing it.

I've taken the whole family to see two extraordinary documentaries in the theater this year: They Shall Not Grow Old and Apollo 11. I don't know if this is a trend or just fortuitous timing on these projects, but I do hope this style of documentary catches on. As director Erik Nelson puts it about these movies, “All three of us were consciously thinking of theatrical big screens as a time-travel machine to immerse the viewer in the motion and events."

From the Fathom Events website:

The Cold Blue is a tribute to the men who won the ultimate victory - 75 years ago. Extraordinary, never before seen color footage shot by one of the world's greatest directors, William Wyler, puts you 30,000 feet over Nazi Germany, battling killer flak, enemy fighters and 60 below degree temperatures. All the odds were stacked against returning home alive - and men literally died to bring this harrowing footage into theaters today. Now, you can fly alongside the last surviving heroes who flew, who fought, who won - the men who just might have saved the world.

Multiple Academy Award® winning director William Wyler went to Europe in 1943 to document the Air War in progress. Wyler flew actual combat missions with B-17's - and one of his three cinematographers was killed during filming. Incredibly, all of the raw color footage Wyler shot for The Memphis Belle was recently discovered deep in the vaults of the National Archives, and a new film has been constructed out of the material.

Update: Definitely catch the movie when it's available on HBO. Director Erik Nelson has woven Wyler's footage to provide both an overview of the Eighth Air Force and specifics of their daily life and of their missions. Nine of the surviving veterans of the Eighth provide narration and interviews. The movie is a tremendous accomplishment that I highly recommend.

If you have seen William Wyler's 1944 movie The Memphis Belle: A Story of a Flying Fortress, you will notice there is quite a bit of overlap in footage. Wyler's focus for the movie was The Memphis Belle's 25th bombing run, which did include quite a bit of other information and shots regarding the US 8th Air Force in its brief 44 minute length. While there is a lot of overlap of footage, the upgrade in film quality alone would make it worthwhile to watch The Cold Blue. Also, the addition of veterans "narrating" over the movie instead of a dedicated narrator also adds to my recommendation. While you're waiting for The Cold Blue to be aired on HBO, take a look at Wyler's released film The Memphis Belle, available right now on several subscription services like Netflix and Amazon Prime.