Reviews and Recommendations

I’ve been around awhile. I’ve seen every presidential administration since JFK. I remember where I was when JFK was shot. Everyone my age does. I was a fan of the Beatles, starting when they first appeared, at the forefront at the ‘British Invasion.’ At the movies, I saw classics that are now all but forgotten.  Admittedly, I know little of today’s modern classics. I know more about the Beatles than I do about Taylor Swift.

It occurs to me that, while each generation has its own interests and its own ‘influencers’, we must endeavor to reach both backward and forward to be as fully informed as possible.   If all any of us know is our own generation, that’s a little like living inside a box. So, in these Reviews and Recommendations, I consider ‘stuff’ that is either before or after my time. It helps me to grow; it migt help you.

The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman-Lawrence Sterne

The pretentious title is deliberate.  Steren is making fun of the pretentious aristocracy of his time, 18th century England.  It is a fictional autobiography of a lower level aristocrat trying to measure up to gentlemanly exportations of his society. Given that this ‘autobiography’ begins, nit with his birth or his childhood, but with his conception, you can get some sense of Sterne’s approach.

I was assigned to read this novel in college, at the age of around twenty.  At that age, I thought the 18th century was a time of ignorance and backwards beliefs.  It was with this novel that I learned that ‘times change, people don’t’. Today, I still see pretentious upper-class people ‘putting on airs’ just as they do in Tristram Shandy.  Some things never change.

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A Fool’s Errand-Albion Tourgee 1879

We all know there was slavery in the USA.  We all know it was bad.  Near as I can tell, few people know much more than that. Slavery was THE BIGGESST ISSUE in the early USA, not just some afterthought that people forgot to notice. You wouldn’t know that from today’s history classes.  There’s a lot you don’t know from today’s history classes.  Let Albion provide some information.  He was a Union solider in the civil war. This is not a war story, it’s a story of people and attitudes of the time.  Read A Fool’s Errand, and I can nearly guarantee that you will come to realize that your ‘understanding’ of those times is mostly wrong.

And here I will insert a shameless plug. I have edited a book, combing passages from three different books, A Fool’s Errand, The White Castle of Louisiana, and Twelve Years a Slave. They represent the viewpoints of a Northern abolitionist, a Southern slave owner, and a free black man who was kidnapped into slavery.  The contrasts are compelling.

Metropolis-silent movie 1927

Chances are, you’ve never seen a silent movie.  You should see this one.  Made two years before the Great Depression wreaked havoc on the world, the movie examines the dehumanizing effect that industrialization has on society.  Sound familiar?  Of course it does.  Chance are you’ve discussed it yourself at Starbucks.

Watch this movie (with a terrific musical theme, so no entirely silent) and you will get a fascinating perspective from the Roaring Twenties.

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