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shmegmilton · 4 years ago

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Hey! Just been looking through your blog and saw some of your posts re: Jumel, Burr and Alex Jr. While it’s true Chernow told the story in his biography and that’s where the popular idea that he was her lawyer came from, the story has apparently been repeated by Burr biographers long before Chernow wrote his Hamilton. There’s a book called ‘Aaron Burr and the Literary Imagination’ by Charles J Nolan (1980) who mentions the story in Chapter 1: ‘The Man who Killed Hamilton’, he gives his source as ‘Aaron Burr: Portrait of an Ambitous Man’ by Herbert S Parmet, published in 1967. I don’t own the latter book so I have no idea who he gives as his source but it seems that this story has been in currency for a long time regardless of whether it’s true or not.

Yeah, I’m aware it’s been around for a while. My first intro to the myth was in Vidal’s book on Burr in the 1973, which implies Vidal got it from the 1968 book, I imagine. As for the 1980 book (which I haven’t read), from whatever instantly accessible info about Charles J. Nolan I can find on Google, his Staff Page on the USNA website says that he was more-or-less exclusively an English & Creative Writing professor. Granted, you don’t NEED a degree is history to enjoy it, study it independently or even write a book about it, but none of his credits imply anything about him having a background with history and/or historical research.

Also, judging by the title (Aaron Burr & the American Literary Imagination) I assume that it’s less of a Burr biography and more of an essay on all of the different Burr interpretations in fiction books, plays, etc. Nancy Isenberg has a whole section covering the topic in her Burr biography, as well. If that’s the case, if Ron Chernow got his information from this 1980′s book, he’s either grossly irresponsible with his research, or an idiot. Which means that it was probably the 1968 book, or a book printed before that.

But the thing about those historians in particular (ie. pre-1960s historians) is they have a “pass” for lack of a better word; they did what they could with the info that they had, which was mostly unvetted newspapers & washed biographies written either by direct descendants/family members that had an agenda (“make them look as great as possible”), or by third parties with their own agenda. There wasn’t “standards” for research, no one was under any obligation to be truthful--not to mention, it’s hard to be truthful in the first place if your only sources aren’t truthful themselves.

As much as a hate the Hamilton play, the way Lin Manuel Miranda writes his obsession over “legacies” makes a good point; the Founding Fathers cared MORE about their legacies than historical accuracy. Case and point, this is why we didn’t know about Thomas Jefferson & Sally Hemings, or the fact that Alexander Hamilton most likely DID own slaves until relatively recently--because over the last few decades, historians have finally been getting unrestricted access to historical archives that were hidden to “protect” these people’s images. ‘History is written by the victors’, or however that saying goes.

This poses a problem for Chernow because, if he DID get his info from one of these books... that kind of diminishes his credibility, doesn’t it? Because any professional in any sort of field SHOULD know, as a general rule: the older your sources are, unless it’s a first-hand account or written documents, the less likely they are to be accurate.

This is why peer-review is an important step in a lot of fields; academics every few decades will double-check these older books or studies alongside the new information we know & realize that they’re incorrect, or that the conclusion is different than what we thought it was.

This is why we don’t think recognize outdated information like ‘humans only use 20% of their brain’, or ‘homosexuality is a choice’ as fact anymore. Because we double-checked and now we KNOW it’s wrong. Ergo, no academic who wants to be taken seriously is going to cite 3rd party books that are 30, 40, 50 years old/clearly outdated. Unless you’re Chernow, I guess.

But the BIG issue I have with the “Alexander Hamilton Jr. was Jumel’s divorce lawyer” myth (you mentioned seeing my other posts before, so you probably know that Jumel’s biographer discovered that Alexander Jr. was a real-estate broker who temporarily took ownership of her property during the divorce so Burr couldn’t get to it, which means this myth is most likely a misinterpretation), is that even though he may have sourced this from a book (not that we’ll ever know because HE never sourced it).... I have yet to see it repeated in any Burr biography before & since. Which should be a red flag, but Chernow’s confirmation bias was too great, I guess.

The two OLDEST biographies on Aaron Burr that we have, Memoirs of Aaron Burr (1837) and The Life & Times of Aaron Burr (1858) don’t even mention Alexander Jr. or much about the divorce proceedings at all. Aaron Burr: A Biography (1938) also doesn’t mention it at any point when discussing the divorce.

Some Burr biographies that I’ve read before & since Chernow’s book was written (May 2005) that ALSO don’t mention it are:

Aaron Burr (Milton Lomask, 1980)

Burr, Hamilton & Jefferson (Roger G. Kennedy, 1999)

Fallen Founder: The Life of Aaron Burr (Nancy Isenberg, 2007)

The Heartbreak of Aaron Burr (H.W. Brands, 2012)

The Secret Wife of Aaron Burr (Susan Holloway Scott, 2019)

American Emperor (David O. Stewart, 2011)

War of Two (John Sedgewick, 2015)

I haven’t read many biographies on Alexander Hamilton, but my current theory is that this myth originally started in one of his biographies because:

Judging about how Chernow wrote Burr, he didn’t care enough about him to read more than two pages, let alone an entire biography about him.

Like I said, no other Burr biography that I’ve seen verifies this information, so unless he’s an idiot it’s virtually impossible for him to have sourced this from a Burr book.

So, yes, while you’re 100% correct that Chernow isn’t the originator of this myth, he still perpetuated something that a majority of SERIOUS historians seem to be in agreement is unverifiable/false, to an audience of thousands of people & now that’s all you see when you type in Eliza Jumel or Alexander Hamilton Jr. into Google. It’s obnoxious, and he’s obnoxious.

#Alexander Hamilton Jr.#Eliza Jumel #Aaron Burr #Hamilton #Ron Chernow #AmRev

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jamesgraybooksellerworld · 5 years ago

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343Ja. Gilbert Burnet. 16143-1714 & 343Jb. William Congreve 1670-1729

Two pamphlets on Queen Mary II.

Mary II (30 April 1662 – 28 December 1694) was Queen of England, Scotland, and Ireland, co-reigning with her husband, King William III & II, from 1689 until her death. Popular histories usually refer to their joint reign as that of William and Mary.

Although their father James, Duke of York, was Roman Catholic, Mary and her sister Anne were raised as Anglicans at the wishes of their uncle, King Charles II. He lacked legitimate children, making Mary second in the line of succession as James’s eldest child. She married her Protestant first cousin, William of Orange, in 1677. Charles died in 1685 and James took the throne, making Mary heir presumptive. James’s attempts at rule by decree and the birth of his son, James Francis Edward Stuart, led to his deposition in the Glorious Revolution and the adoption of the English Bill of Rights.

William and Mary became king and queen regnant. She wielded less power than him when he was in England, ceding most of her authority to him, though he heavily relied on her. She did, however, act alone when William was engaged in military campaigns abroad, proving herself to be a powerful, firm, and effective ruler. Her death left William as sole ruler until his own death in 1702, when he was succeeded by Mary’s sister Anne.

An essay on the memory of the late Queen by Gilbert, Bishop of Sarum.

Dublin : Reprinted by Jos. Ray for Will. Norman, El. Dobson, and Pat. Campbel .., 1695. $1,100

Quarto 7 ½ x 6 inches. Π2, B-K2. Disbound pamphlet.

Wing (2nd ed.), B5785:: ESTC R37518

Copies – Brit.Isles Cashel Cathedral Library Derry and Raphoe Diocesan Library Dublin Honourable Society of King’s Inn Marsh’s Library Trinity College Library Copies – N.America Boston Public, Main Yale University, Beinecke Rare Book

Along with this I am offering a Poem by an Irish Author on a Queen Mary II.

343Jb. William Congreve.

The Mourning Muse of Alexis. A Pastoral. Lamenting the Death of our late Gracious Queen Mary.

London: for Jacob Tonson, 1695. $1,100 (for both)

Folio 12 x 7 ½ inches. A-C2 Disbound Wing C-5860

During the 1690’s there wasn’t much output from the Irish press concerning foreign affairs, the exception to this is the two pamphlets on the Death of Mary II from small pox. Both lament the passing of a Queen loved by the Irish.

Congreve was educated at Kilkenny College, where he met Jonathan Swift, and at Trinity College in Dublin. He moved to London to study law at the Middle Temple, but preferred literature, drama, and the fashionable life. Congreve used the pseudonym Cleophil, under which he published Incognita: or, Love and Duty reconcil’d in 1692. This early work, written when he was about 17 years of age, gained him recognition among men of letters and an entrance into the literary world. He became a disciple of John Dryden whom he met through gatherings of literary circles held at Will’s Coffeehouse in the Covent Garden district of London. Dryden supported him throughout his life, often composing complimentary introductions for his publications.

)O(

342J William Hamilton

The life and character of James Bonnel Esq; late Accomptant General of Ireland. To which is added the sermon preach’d at his funeral: by Edward Lord Bishop of Killmore and Ardagh. The life by William Hamilton, A. M. Archdeacon of Armagh. Psal. 37. 37. Mark the Perfect Man, behold the Upright; for the End of that Man is Peace.

Dublin: Printed by and for Jo. Ray, and are to be sold A. and J. Churchill, at the Black Swan in Pater-noster-row, 1703. ON HOLD

Octavo 6 ¾ x 4 ½. Fold out portrait,1 , π1,a -c4 +1, B-S8(new title page)T-U8,X5, Lacking final blank X6. X5 is errata and present. In this edition the first line of the imprint reads “to be”. It is bound in contemporary calf binding with the front board detached Ownership signature of Anne Orme (1698 Birth ?)

Very little is known of William Hamilton one of the more than 15 children of Rev. James Hamilton and his wife, Catherine (Leslie) Hamilton. It is believed he died in 1729, without descendants, possibly a soldier fighting on the Continent during one of the many local wars in what is now Germany He was buried in St. John’s Church, Dublin, and his funeral sermon was preached by the Bishop of Killaloe (Edward Wetehall), who uses these remarkable words in his preface to the sermon: ‘I am truly of opinion that in the best age of the church, had he lived therein, he would have passed for a Saint.’ His life was written by the Archdeacon of Armagh (William Hamilton), who fully bears out this encomium. Archdeacon Hamilton has wisely fortified himself by attaching to his ‘Life’ letters from several bishops who fully endorse all that he has written, and there does not appear to be a hint from any other source which would lead us to doubt the truthfulness of the account. Bonnell’s piety was of the strictly church of England type, though he was tolerant of those who differed from him. During; the greater part of his life he attended church twice every day, and made a point of communicating every Lord’s day. He was a careful observer of all the festivals and fasts of the church, and made it a rule to repeat on his knees every Friday the fifty-first Psalm. He took a deep interest both in the ‘religious societies’ and the ‘societies for the reformation of manners,’ which form so interesting a feature in the church history of his day. Of the former, which flourished greatly at Dublin, we are told that ‘he pleaded their cause, wrote in their defence, and was one of their most diligent and prudent directors;’ of the latter ‘he was a zealous promoter, was always present at their meetings, and contributed liberally to their expenses.’ He gave one-eighth of his income to the poor, and his probity was so highly esteemed that the fortunes of many orphans were committed to his care. Bonnell was a man of great and varied accomplishments. ‘He understood French perfectly, and had made great progress in Hebrew, while in philosophy and oratory he exceeded most of his contemporaries in the university, and he applied himself with success to mathematics and music.’ Divinity was, however, of course his favourite study. He was a great reader of the early fathers, and translated some parts of Synesius into English. He also reformed and improved for his own use a harmony of the Gospels. His favourite writers were Richard Hooker and Thomas à Kempis. Many of his ‘Meditations’ (a vast number of which, on a great variety of subjects, are still extant) remind one slightly of the latter author. Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900, Volume 05 by John Henry Overton

[Hamilton’s Exemplary Life and Character of James Bonnell, &c.; Christian Biography, published by Religious Tract Society.]

ESTC N19165

Copies – Brit.Isles Trinity College Library. Dublin, Republic of Ireland. Copac adds no copies. National Library of Wales / Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru (Is possibly a copy but I’m not sure the description is sparse )

Copies – N.America Henry E. Huntington Library University of California, Los Angeles, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library.

)O(

344J. Joseph Trapp 1679-1747

A sermon preach’d at Christ-Church, Dublin, before their excellencies the Lords Justices of Ireland; on Tuesday May the 29th. Dublin

Dublin: Printed by A.R. [i.e., Aaron Rhames] for J. Hyde, 1711.

Quarto 7 ½ X 6 inches. A2, B-D4. Disbound.

In January 1711 Sir Constantine Phipps, the Lord Chancellor of Ireland. Whose term of office was marked by bitter political faction-fighting and he faced repeated calls for his removal. Trapp was taken on as as his chaplain, and Trapp wrote partisan political pieces, incurring scorn from Swift. He married in 1712 a daughter of Alderman White of St. Mary’s, Oxford, and resigned as a Fellow of Wadham. That year he was chaplain to Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke, a place Swift claimed he had arranged. On 1 April 1713 Swift would not dine with Bolingbroke because he was expected to ‘look over a dull poem’ of Trapp’s; afterwards he did correct the poem, printed anonymously at Dublin, as Peace, a Poem. It was set to music by William Croft.

After reading this sermon it is obvious that Trapp missed his calling as a Puritan Hell and Dmanation Presacher. “ Can we be called the City of Righteousness, when all sorts of Debauchery and Profaneness have, like the Deluge, overspread these Nation? When there are so many, whoeven Glory in their Shame, make a Science of Leudeness, and are not only Workers, but Professors of Iniquity?” Fun reading indeed.

ESTC T172845

Copies – Brit.Isles Armagh Robinson Library Cashel Cathedral Library (3) London Library National Library of Ireland (2) Oxford University Regent’s Park College (includes Baptist Union Library) Royal Irish Academy Trinity College Library No US copies

)O(

349J. Church of England. Province of Canterbury. Convocation. For the Church of Ireland. Convocation.

A representation of the present state of religion, with regard to the late excessive growth of infidelity, heresy, & profaneness: unanimously agreed upon by a joint committee of both Houses of Convocation, of the province of Canterbury, and Afterwards rejected by the Upper House, but Passed in the Lower House. Members of the Committee. The Bps. of Peterborough Landaff Bangor St. Asaph St. Davids. Dr. Atterbury, Prol. Dr. Stanhope Dr. Godolphin Dr. Willis Dr. Gastrell Dr. Ashton Dr. Smalridge Dr. Altham Dr. Sydell Archd. Brideock.

[Dublin] : London printed : And, re-printed and sold by Edward Waters, Dublin,1711 $760

Quarto. 7 ¼ x 5 ¾ inches. A3,B-D2 (lacking E1&2) [2]17+[1]p Disbound.

As with many 17th century tracts the title pretty much says it all. But to put it in perspective.

The convocation of the English Church in 1711 decided that by the opportunity by Royal License and permission to frame their canons and declarations which could eventual become law. It was true that the Irish Church was Weak not altogether by its own fault, If the Church of England was strong. The English Church had had the opportunity of expressing, whatever value it might have, its concurrence with that measure. The Irish Church appealed to them for the same permission. There was in Ireland as in England a Convocation, which had been in abeyance for many years as that of England had been for about the same period. Called by Royal writ—it dated as far back as Parliamentary Government in Ireland; that from 1625 to 1711 it was repeatedly so summoned; that at its last period of meeting, in 1711, it passed five canons, which, having received the assent of Her Majesty Queen Anne, became part and continued part of the ecclesiastical law of Ireland.

ESTC T145807

Copies – Brit.Isles Armagh Robinson Library British Library Cashel Cathedral Library (4) Cork University College Boole Library Dublin City Libraries National Library of Ireland Royal Irish Academy Trinity College Library (3) Copies – N.America Henry E. Huntington Library University of Texas at Austin, Harry Ransom Center University of Virginia

)O(

A collection of Poems and Letters by Christian mystic and prolific writer, Jeanne-Marie Guyon published in Dublin.

348J François de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon 1651-1715 & Josiah Martin 1683-1747 & Jeanne Marie Bouvier de La Motte Guyon 1648-1717

A dissertation on pure love, by the Arch-Bishop of Cambray. With an account of the life and writings of the Lady, for whose sake The Archbishop was banish’d from Court: And the grievous Persecution she suffer’d in France for her Religion. Also Two Letters in French and English, written by one of the Lady’s Maids, during her Confinement in the Castle of Vincennes, where she was Prisoner Eight Years. One of the Letters was writ with a Bit of Stick instead of a Pen, and Soot instead of Ink, to her Brother; the other to a Clergyman. Together with an apologetic preface. Containing divers letters of the Archbishop of Cambray, to the Duke of Burgundy, the present French King’s Father, and other Persons of Distinction. And divers letters of the lady to Persons of Quality, relating to her Religious Principles

Dublin : printed by Isaac Jackson, in Meath-Street, [1739]. $ 3,800

Octavo 7 3/4 x 5 inches First and only English edition. Bound in Original sheep, with a quite primitive repair to the front board.

Fenélon’s text appears to consist largely of extracts from ’Les oeuvres spirituelles’. The preface, account of Jeanne Marie Guyon etc. is compiled by Josiah Martin. The text of the letters, and poems, is in French and English. This is an Astonishing collection of letters and poems.

“MARTIN, JOSIAH (1683–1747), quaker, was born near London in 1683. He became a good classical scholar, and is spoken of by Gough, the translator of Madame Guyon’s Life, 1772, as a man whose memory is esteemed for ‘learning, humility, and fervent piety.’ He died unmarried, 18 Dec. 1747, in the parish of St. Andrew’s, Holborn, and was buried in the Friends’ burial-ground, Bunhill Fields. He left the proceeds of his library of four thousand volumes to be divided among nephews and nieces. Joseph Besse [q. v.] was his executor.

Martin’s name is best known in connection with ‘A Letter from one of the People called Quakers to Francis de Voltaire, occasioned by his Remarks on that People in his Letters concerning the English Nation,’ London, 1741. It was twice reprinted, London and Dublin, and translated into French. It is a temperate and scholarly treatise, and was in much favour at the time.

Of his other works the chief are: 1. ‘A Vindication of Women’s Preaching, as well from Holy Scripture and Antient Writings as from the Paraphrase and Notes of the Judicious John Locke, wherein the Observations of B[enjamin] C[oole] on the said Paraphrase . . . and the Arguments in his Book entitled “Reflections,” &c, are fullv considered,’ London, 1717. 2. ‘The Great Case of Tithes truly stated … by Anthony Pearson [q. v.] . . . to which is added a Defence of some other Principles held by the People call’d Quakers . . .,’ London, 1730. 3. ‘A Letter concerning the Origin, Reason, and Foundation of the Law of Tithes in England,’ 1732. He also edited, with an ‘Apologetic Preface,’ comprising more than half the book, and containing many additional letters from Fénelon and Madame Guyon, ‘The Archbishop of Cambray’s Dissertation on Pure Love, with an Account of the Life and Writings of the Lady for whose sake he was banish’d from Court,’ London, 1735.

[Joseph Smith’s Catalogue of Friends’ Books; works quoted above; Life of Madame Guyon, Bristol, 1772, pt. i. errata; registers at Devonshire House; will P.C.C. 58 Strahan, at Somerset House.]

C. F. S.

Fénelon was nominated in February, 1696, Fénelon was consecrated in August of the same year by Bossuet in the chapel of Saint-Cyr. The future of the young prelate looked brilliant, when he fell into deep disgrace.

The cause of Fénelon’s trouble was his connection with Madame Guyon, whom he had met in the society of his friends, the Beauvilliers and the Chevreuses. She was a native of Orléans, which she left when about twenty-eight years old, a widowed mother of three children, to carry on a sort of apostolate of mysticism, under the direction of Père Lacombe, a Barnabite. After many journeys to Geneva, and through Provence and Italy, she set forth her ideas in two works, “Le moyen court et facile de faire oraison” and “Les torrents spirituels”. In exaggerated language characteristic of her visionary mind, she presented a system too evidently founded on the Quietism of Molinos, that had just been condemned by Innocent XI in 1687. There were, however, great divergencies between the two systems. Whereas Molinos made man’s earthly perfection consist in a state of uninterrupted contemplation and love, which would dispense the soul from all active virtue and reduce it to absolute inaction, Madame Guyon rejected with horror the dangerous conclusions of Molinos as to the cessation of the necessity of offering positive resistance to temptation. Indeed, in all her relations with Père Lacombe, as well as with Fénelon, her virtuous life was never called in doubt. Soon after her arrival in Paris she became acquainted with many pious persons of the court and in the city, among them Madame de Maintenon and the Ducs de Beauvilliers and Chevreuse, who introduced her to Fénelon. In turn, he was attracted by her piety, her lofty spirituality, the charm of her personality, and of her books. It was not long, however, before the Bishop of Chartres, in whose diocese Saint-Cyr was, began to unsettle the mind of Madame de Maintenon by questioning the orthodoxy of Madame Guyon’s theories. The latter, thereupon, begged to have her works submitted to an ecclesiastical commission composed of Bossuet, de Noailles, who was then Bishop of Châlons, later Archbishop of Paris, and M. Tronson; superior of-Saint-Sulpice. After an examination which lasted six months, the commission delivered its verdict in thirty-four articles known as the “Articles d’ Issy”, from the place near Paris where the commission sat. These articles, which were signed by Fénelon and the Bishop of Chartres, also by the members of the commission, condemned very briefly Madame Guyon’s ideas, and gave a short exposition of the Catholic teaching on prayer. Madame Guyon submitted to the condemnation, but her teaching spread in England, and Protestants, who have had her books reprinted have always expressed sympathy with her views. Cowper translated some of her hymns into English verse; and her autobiography was translated into English by Thomas Digby (London, 1805) and Thomas Upam (New York, 1848). Her books have been long forgotten in France.

Jeanne Marie Guyon

b. 1648, Montargis, France; d. 1717, Blois, France

A Christian mystic and prolific writer, Jeanne-Marie Guyon advocated a form of spirituality that led to conflict with authorities and incarceration. She was raised in a convent, then married off to a wealthy older man at the age of sixteen. When her husband died in 1676, she embarked on an evangelical mission to convert Protestants to her brand of spirituality, a mild form of quietism, which propounded the notion that through complete passivity (quiet) of the soul, one could become an agent of the divine. Guyon traveled to Geneva, Turin, and Grenoble with her mentor, Friar François Lacombe, at the same time producing several manuscripts: Les torrents spirituels (Spiritual Torrents); an 8,000-page commentary on the Bible; and her most important work, the Moyen court et très facile de faire oraison (The Short and Very Easy Method of Prayer, 1685). Her activities aroused suspicion; she was arrested in 1688 and committed to the convent of the Visitation in Paris, where she began writing an autobiography. Released within a few months, she continued proselytizing, meanwhile attracting several male disciples. In 1695, the Catholic church declared quietism heretical, and Guyon was locked up in the Bastille until 1703. Upon her release, she retired to her son’s estate in Blois. Her writings were published in forty-five volumes from 1712 to 1720.

Her writings began to be published in Holland in 1704, and brought her new admirers. Englishmen and Germans–among them Wettstein and Lord Forbes–visited her at Blois. Through them Madame Guyon’s doctrines became known among Protestants and in that soil took vigorous root. But she did not live to see this unlooked-for diffusion of her writings. She passed away at Blois, at the age of sixty-eight, protesting in her will that she died submissive to the Catholic Church, from which she had never had any intention of separating herself. Her doctrines, like her life, have nevertheless given rise to the widest divergences of opinion. Her published works (the “Moyen court” and the “Règles des assocées à l’Enfance de Jésus”) having been placed on the Index in 1688, and Fénelon’s “Maximes des saints” branded with the condemnation of both the pope and the bishops of France, the Church has thus plainly reprobated Madame Guyon’s doctrines, a reprobation which the extravagance of her language would in itself sufficiently justify. Her strange conduct brought upon her severe censures, in which she could see only manifestations of spite. Evidently, she too often fell short of due reserve and prudence; but after all that can be said in this sense, it must be acknowledged that her morality appears to have given no grounds for serious reproach. Bossuet, who was never indulgent in her regard, could say before the full assembly of the French clergy: “As to the abominations which have been held to be the result of her principles, there was never any question of the horror she testified for them.” It is remarkable, too, that her disciples at the Court of Louis XIV were always persons of great piety and of exemplary life.

On the other hand, Madame Guyon’s warmest partisans after her death were to be found among the Protestants. It was a Dutch Protestant, the pastor Poiret, who began the publication of her works; a Vaudois pietist pastor, Duthoit-Mambrini, continued it. Her “Life” was translated into English and German, and her ideas, long since forgotten in France, have for generations been in favour in Germany, Switzerland, England, and among Methodists in America. ”

P.144 misnumbered 134. Price from imprint: price a British Half-Crown. Dissertain 16p and Directions for a holy life 5p. DNB includes this in Martin’s works

Copies – Brit.Isles. : British Library, Dublin City Library, National Library of Ireland Trinity College Library

Copies – N.America. : Bates College, Harvard University, Haverford Col , Library Company of Philadelphia, Newberry, Pittsburgh Theological Princeton University, University of Illinois University of Toronto, Library

Some new Irish books…. By, For or About! 1) 343Ja. Gilbert Burnet. 16143-1714 & 343Jb. William Congreve 1670-1729 Two pamphlets on Queen Mary II.

#Conclave of 1711 #Dublin printing #female mystics #James Bonnell #Madame Guyon #Quakerism #Science of Leudeness

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sgannaoui-blog · 6 years ago

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The Odyssey- 2019 Film Adaptation

"'When your crew have taken you past these Sirens, I cannot give you coherent directions as to which of two courses you are to take; I will lay the two alternatives before you, and you must consider them for yourself. Homer’s great literary work, The Odyssey, is coming to the big screen in 2019. With background information on the film, we are interviewing Sound Designer Sophia Gannaoui. We have a list of songs featured in the film with descriptions of why they were chosen by Gannaoui herself.

*Note: This film is Rated R because of strong references to alcohol and the inclusion of mild curse words.

1. The Light Behind Your Eyes by My Chemical Romance

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSg-eHng52E

Book 1 in The Odyssey holds an introductory discussion about the fate of Odysseus- the king of Ithaca. The instrumental of this song at the beginning represents sadness and mystery which is reflected upon the whereabouts of Odysseus himself. When the song transitions into having lyrics, the lyrics contain a very resigned mood starting off by saying, “So long to all my friends, every one of them met tragic ends.” For Odysseus’ son, Telemachus, he has given up all hope of reuniting with his father by saying “‘My father is dead and gone,’" answered Telemachus, ‘and even if some rumour reaches me I put no more faith in it now. My mother does indeed sometimes send for a soothsayer and question him, but I give his prophecyings no heed.’” Odysseus is the friend of Telemachus and the possible death of Odysseus is the “tragic end” that is mentioned in the song.

2. Pachelbel's Canon in D Major

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlprozGcs80

Love is in the air in Books 3 and 4 filled with great elegance. Pachelbel’s Canon in D Major is a classic song played at weddings and is enjoyed by many. It already emotes romanticism through its legato playing. The celebration of the marriages of the children of the King and Queen of Sparta was a grand event, “For his only son he had found a bride from Sparta, daughter of Alector. This son, Megapenthes, was born to him of a bondwoman, for heaven vouchsafed Helen no more children after she had borne Hermione, who was fair as golden Venus herself. So the neighbours and kinsmen of Menelaus were feasting and making merry in his house. There was a bard also to sing to them and play his lyre, while two tumblers went about performing in the midst of them when the man struck up with his tune.] “

Weddings bring people together in great unity and the ones in the story were what brought Odysseus closer to the royalty that took him in and discussed the Trojan War altogether.

3. Aaron Burr, Sir from Hamilton the Musical (Karaoke)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLgo9drgZ6g

This song contains many breaks for dialogue to speak over which is needed for scenes in Book 7 because of the main conversation going on between Ulysses and Alcinous. The original song contained comedic lines of reasoning and logic about drinking and reaching an elite level of political control. When “Ulysses said: ‘Pray, Alcinous, do not take any such notion into your head. I have nothing of the immortal about me, neither in body nor mind, and most resemble those among you who are the most afflicted,’” we had our actors saying this in a teasing way for the idea of immortality to be such an absurdity to Ulysses.

4. Troy Song from Phineas and Ferb

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIOjFkcWT5g

In Book 8, “the muse inspired Demodocus to sing the feats of heroes, and more especially a matter that was then in the mouths of all men, to wit, the quarrel between Ulysses and Achilles, and the fierce words that they heaped on one another as they sat together at a banquet... Thus sang the bard, but Ulysses drew his purple mantle over his head and covered his face, for he was ashamed to let the Phaeacians see that he was weeping.” The Troy Song tells the story of the Trojan War in an upbeat matter. It is a positive song about defeat and victory which would give a reason for Odysseus to cover his face while crying. If the song was meant to be sad, Odysseus could freely express his sadness and memory of the war through tears but because it is a celebratory song, it gives him the purpose of hiding his true emotions.

5. I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles) by Sleeping at Last

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vU81DihqD0c

When Odysseus reveals who he is in Book 9, he describes his experience in fighting throughout the time of the Trojan War. When telling of the victory his soldiers faced, Odysseus said, “‘Thence we sailed onward with sorrow in our hearts, but glad to have escaped death though we had lost our comrades, nor did we leave till we had thrice invoked each one of the poor fellows who had perished by the hands of the Cicons.’” This represents sadness and struggle after the war and I imagine each soldier to have had the mission and duty to work as hard as walking the “500 miles” somberly sung in the song. The song does represent the hope of reuniting with loved ones saying “when I wake up, yeah I know I’m gonna be, I’m gonna be the man that wakes up next to you.” Soldiers waking up each day in hopes of being a day closer to being at home with their family in comfort, a fantasy that could not be lived by other members of their party.

6. Sail by Awolnation

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CaypEojjKQ

As the men accompanying Odysseus on the ship believe him to be hoarding gold and silver in Book 10, their distrust corrupted their minds “‘Thus they talked and evil counsels prevailed. They loosed the sack, whereupon the wind flew howling forth and raised a storm that carried us weeping out to sea and away from our own country.’” The “ooh’s” in the song represent the strong howling noise caused by the wind escaping from the sack that was irresponsibly opened. In addition, the fragmented beats of the song represent the quick jumping of conclusions that led Odysseus’ men to open the sack.

7. Coming Home by Diddy featuring Skylar Grey

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-ImCpNqbJw

In Book 12, Circe warns Odysseus, "'When your crew have taken you past these Sirens, I cannot give you coherent directions as to which of two courses you are to take; I will lay the two alternatives before you, and you must consider them for yourself.” This line marks the true life or death matter in the journey back to Ithaca. Circe gives the choices of safety or risk to Odysseus and the beginning of the song’s slow tempo and somber tone represents this sad moment of decision making and risk taking. When the song transitions into rap, this follows the build-up of anticipation and danger in what Odysseus would have to face on his journey back home.

8. Thrift Shop by Macklemore and Ryan Lewis Featuring Wanz

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QK8mJJJvaes

This song represents a complete wardrobe change based on a lower budget on clothing spending in thrift shops. Minerva transformed Odysseus into a man that looked older and dirtier than what he was in Book 13 and “As she spoke Minerva touched him with her wand and covered him with wrinkles, took away all his yellow hair, and withered the flesh over his whole body; she bleared his eyes, which were naturally very fine ones; she changed his clothes and threw an old rag of a wrap about him, and a tunic, tattered, filthy, and begrimed with smoke; she also gave him an undressed deer skin as an outer garment, and furnished him with a staff and a wallet all in holes, with a twisted thong for him to sling it over his shoulder.” The complete transformation of Odysseus’ looks is something new for him to experience and the increasing pace in the song is empowerment and motivation to make this change worth the sacrifice in order to take his kingdom back.

9. Jealous by Nick Jonas

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQw2qIl838Q

In Book 18, Odysseus gets into a fight with a beggar named Arneaus (also called Irus). Irus challenges Odysseus in fighting for the hand in marriage of Penelope by saying, “I have a good mind to lay both hands about you, and knock your teeth out of your head like so many boar's tusks. Get ready, therefore, and let these people here stand by and look on. You will never be able to fight one who is so much younger than yourself." As the song says, “I turn my cheek, music up, and I’m puffing my chest, I’m getting ready to face you,” Odysseus is indeed getting mentally prepared to fight off Irus to become the suitor of his own wife Penelope. This is the moment where Odysseus goes into his mind for a moment to gain strength and realize his fight from the Trojan War is not over until he is reunited completely with his family.

10. Thousand Years by Christina Perri

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrM-Bkm4c_I

In Book 19, Odysseus talks with Penelope, still in disguise, about how he will return to her soon. Penelope has waited for so long for him to come home but there would be civil unrest if she waited any longer to find a suitor. She comes up with a solution to the public that would delay time for her marriage in order for Odysseus to come home before then which “Ulysses answered, ‘Madam wife of Ulysses, you need not defer your tournament, for Ulysses will return ere ever they can string the bow, handle it how they will, and send their arrows through the iron.’” Thousand Years reflects the undying love Penelope has for Odysseus as she truly does not want to find a new partner. She has waited for a long time for Odysseus to come home which can hyperbolically be compared to waiting a thousand years.

11. Shut Up and Drive by Rihanna (Karaoke)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPVo9MnoiEc

In Book 22, Eurymachus encourages Odysseus to fight every man fighting for Penelope by announcing, “‘My friends, this man will give us no quarter. He will stand where he is and shoot us down till he has killed every man among us. Let us then show fight; draw your swords, and hold up the tables to shield you from his arrows. Let us have at him with a rush, to drive him from the pavement and doorway: we can then get through into the town, and raise such an alarm as shall soon stay his shooting.’" The fighting montage that ensues after this proclamation has the karaoke track of Shut Up and Drive playing underneath it because it is as fast paced as the action taking place.

12. i love you by Billie Eilish

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXfh63M5yLo

In Book 23, Penelope struggles with believing that the man who claims to be Odysseus really is him. Euryclea reasons "‘My dear child," answered Euryclea, "I am not mocking you. It is quite true as I tell you that Ulysses is come home again. He was the stranger whom they all kept on treating so badly in the cloister. Telemachus knew all the time that he was come back, but kept his father's secret that he might have his revenge on all these wicked people.’” The back and forth tempo increase and decrease in the song represent the fluctuating belief of Penelope that Odysseus is with her.

To listen to all of these songs incorporated within the storytelling of Odysseus’ journey home, watch The Odyssey in theaters- coming in the summer of 2019.

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thefederalistfreestyle · 7 years ago

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[. . .] According to Miranda, Angelica nurtured an unsatisfied (and potentially requited) love for Hamilton for her whole life. The fact that she was buried in the same graveyard, but not the same plot, as Hamilton and his wife Eliza, inspired the line made Miranda “cry the hardest” when he was writing the musical: “She is buried in Trinity Church / Near you”. What else did Angelica Schuyler get upto with her ��wealthy husband… [who was] not a lot of fun” for the rest of her life? Well, firstly, she changed her name, to the rather less exciting Church. Angelica married John Barker Church, an Englishman who escaped to America after racking up considerable gambling debts (and an alias: John Carter), who supplied arms to the revolution. Contrary to the reasons she rejected Hamilton – against her heart’s desire – the real Angelica couldn’t give two hoots about how her social standing affected her match, and eloped in 1777 with the disgraced Church after her father became understandably suspicious about his past. The couple moved to Europe after the war, in 1783. Angelica had eight children, and by this point there were three of them in existence (the subsequent five were born afterwards). Church proved, indeed, a safe bet. He became a US envoy to the French government, moving the family to France and enabling Angelica to unleash her long-honed social skills on high society: she befriended Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and the Marquis de Lafayette – whom, in 1794, she attempted to free from the Austrian prison of Olmutz along with a coterie of French emigres in London. After Paris, the Churches moved to London, where Angelica continued to charm the Prince of Wales before he became King George IV. She became a patron of the arts, sponsoring artist and Revolutionary darling John Trumbull. They had a house near Windsor, Downe Place, where Angelica enjoyed hosting parties. In the late 1780s, the Churches abandoned the city for a pile in Wendover in Buckinghamshire while he served as a member of parliament. Angelica kept up her links with America’s upper echelon, attending George Washington’s inauguration in 1789. A decade later, the family moved back to New York and were given 100,000 acres of land in New York state because Congress couldn’t afford to pay back a debt to Church. It was their son, Philip, who took charge, and built a village inspired by the architecture and town planning of Paris - he named it Angelica. It's still there, but looks a lot like any other upstate New York town. His parents were similarly humble in their building ambitions: merely creating a 30-room mansion called Belvidere, which was meant to be a summer home. Once they had finished it, in 1810, they decided they’d just live in it all year round. Angelica died four years later. Angelica really was as smart as the musical suggests: she made literary quips in the correspondence that she kept with the founding fathers, including, of course, Hamilton. The letters between the star-crossed in-laws suggest there was a more affection relationship than normal between them, but we’ll never know if an affair actually took place. [. . .]

Hamilton: What happened next for Eliza, Angelica and Aaron Burr? (The Telegraph)

#hamilton #angelica schuyler #angelica schuyler church #angelica church #history #the telegraph

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aion-rsa · 4 years ago

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One Night in Miami Trailer, Cast, Release Date and Everything You Need to Know

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

Malcolm X, Sam Cooke, Jim Brown, and Muhammad Ali walk into a motel room. No really, this isn’t a put-on. It’s an event that actually happened (more or less) on the night that Ali won the heavyweight championship of the world in 1964, and right before he changed his name from Cassius Clay. Now what these four historic figures at the intersection of Black male celebrity and wider American pop culture said to each other that evening is unknown… but it makes the mind wander; it also makes for a hell of a good story in One Night in Miami.

The new film from director Regina King (Watchmen, If Beale Street Could Talk) marks the Oscar and Emmy winning actor’s first foray into feature-length directing intended for the big screen—even as most audiences will only see One Night in Miami on Amazon when it premieres on the streaming service later this year—and already it’s generating more deserved award buzz. As a film written by Kemp Powers, who is adapting from his own play of the same name, One Night in Miami is a chance to interrogate the challenges of celebrity for Black men in America, and the larger responsibility one feels toward the Black community. These dueling pressures can pull in different directions, and they can elicit fascinating conversations.

Here’s how they inform One Night in Miami.

One Night in Miami Trailer

Here is the trailer that gives you an idea of the film’s unique approach…

One Night in Miami Cast

Kingsley Ben-Adir – Ben-Adir plays Malcolm X, a seminal leader of the Civil Rights era. Malcolm was an American Muslim minister and human rights activist who grew national attention for his blunt advocacy for Black empowerment and an end to segregation, as well as Black separation from whites and a possible return to Africa. In the white mainstream (and among some Black leaders), he was a controversial figure due to his support for the Nation of Islam, but One Night in Miami is set about a month out from Malcolm’s exit from NOI due to the sexual predations of Elijah Muhammad.

One Night in Miami is a breakout role for Ben-Adir who is a revelation as Malcolm X. He’s previously enjoyed small roles in King Arthur: Legend of the Sword, The Commuter, and Noelle. On Showtime’s The Comey Rule, he played President Barack Obama.

Eli Goree – Goree plays Cassius Clay on the last night he would go by that name. The film pivots on the evening Clay shocked the world when he defeated Sonny Liston by TKO in February 1964. Only age 22, Clay became the youngest heavyweight champ to claim the belt by knockout (a record Ali still holds). The day after the victory, Clay would announce he’s joined the Nation of Islam (at Malcolm X’s urging) and would go by the name of Cassius X (later changed to Muhammad Ali). He would also soon become a figure of controversy when he refused to be drafted in the Vietnam War due to being a conscientious objector. The resulting harassment by the U.S. government would see Ali banned from the ring for four years.

One Night in Miami is a breakout role for Goree, whose few other film credits include an unnamed character in 2014’s Godzilla. He’s previously had recurring roles on Ballers and Riverdale, and appeared in GLOW.

Leslie Odom Jr. �� Odom portrays Sam Cooke, the pioneering singer, songwriter, composer, producer, and entrepreneur who became one of the first Black musicians to found his own record label and publishing company. Also known as the King of Soul, Cooke contributed to the rise of Aretha Franklin, Al Green, Stevie Wonder, and Marvin Gaye (among others), and recorded a string of mid-20th century hits that include “You Send Me,” “Cupid,” “Chain Gang,” and “Bring It On Home to Me.” One Night in Miami is set, significantly, before Cooke recorded his first song demanding political change, “A Change is Going to Come” … and before Cooke was shot to death by a motel manager later that same year.

Odom is best known for playing the morally ambiguous Aaron Burr in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Broadway musical, and pop culture sensation, Hamilton. He won a Tony and Grammy for his portrayal. He’s appeared in a variety of Broadway productions, including Rent, Dreamgirls, and Leap of Faith. On screen, his credits include Harriet, Red Tails, and Murder on the Orient Express. He’s also released four solo albums.

Aldis Hodge – Hodge depicts Jim Brown, one of the greatest running backs of all time in the National Football League. After earning unanimous all-American honors playing college football at Syracuse University (as well as basketball, track and field, and lacrosse), Brown went on to play for the Cleveland Browns between 1957 and 1965, earning the AP NFL Most Valuable Player for three years, and leading the browns to an NFL championship in 1964. He’d go on to be a major sports analyst and appearing in films and television series like Slaughter (1972), The A-Team, and Mars Attacks! (1996).

Prior to depicting Brown, Hodge might be best known for playing MC Ren in Straight Outta Compton. He also memorably appeared in a supporting role in The Invisible Man last year. Other credits include Hidden Figures, Clemency, and al lead role on City on a Hill.

One Night in Miami Release Date

One Night in Miami opened in limited theatrical release on Dec. 25 after premiering at the Toronto International Film Festival and Venice Film Festival. It premieres on Amazon on Jan. 15, 2021.

One Night in Miami Story

The film is loosely inspired by real events. On the night Cassius Clay knocked out Sonny Liston, Malcolm X was sitting ringside. Afterward Clay agreed to meet Ali at the Hampton House, a motel that Black celebrities frequented at the time in Miami’s Brownsville neighborhood. The two were later met by Sam Cooke and Jim Brown. However, Kemp Powers as first a playwright and then a screenwriter, took literary license to imagine what that evening was like before Cassius Clay announced the next morning he was now Cassius X.

Regarding the appeal of the project, director Regina King recently told The New York Times, “We don’t get the opportunity to see [on screen] our men, Black men, shown the way we see them so often in our family members and friends. Like every other human being they’re layered. They are vulnerable, they are strong, they are providers, they are sometimes putting on a mask. They are not unbreakable. They are flawed. They are beautiful. And just Kemp captured all of that in, you know, less than 110 pages…. I told him I felt like you’ve written a love letter to Black men.”

The official synopsis reads: “One Night in Miami is a fictional account of one incredible night where icons Muhammad Ali, Malcolm X, Sam Cooke, and Jim Brown gathered discussing their roles in the civil rights movement and cultural upheaval of the 60s.”

One Night in Miami Review

Here is an excerpt to our review out of the Toronto International Film Festival.

Each of the four key performances recreate the well-known tics of their historical personages. And in this arena, Goree is a delight. With wind in his sail after winning the heavyweight belt, his Cassius is so nimble in his dancing and prancing that it’s a wonder his feet ever touch the ground. Yet whereas most biopics, particularly in the last few years, have leaned into the legend of its subjects, One Night in Miami seeks to imagine a psychological truth that’s far slipperier, and far more rewarding.

In this context, Ben-Adir’s Brother Malcolm may be the most revelatory. In contrast with Spike Lee and Denzel Washington’s electric depiction of the civil and human rights activist, there is something slightly subversive about King and Ben-Adir’s interpretation. Here is the firebrand who preached African American separation and just several months before the film’s February ’64 setting referred to JFK’s assassination as “chickens coming home to roost”—a statement that gets him no shortage of grief from his friends in One Night in Miami—yet beyond his moral disgust at Elijah Muhammad’s affairs with young secretaries in the NOI, this version of Malcolm is full of second-guessing anxiety and a pained inner-life just bubbling behind the horn-rimmed glasses.

You can again read the full review here.

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rajpersaud · 4 years ago

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How To Think Like Shakespeare - Scott Newstok discusses his new book

Scott Newstok teaches literature of the English Renaissance as well as film, rhetoric, education, lyric poetry, and the humanities. In 2012 Professor Newstok received the Campus Life Award for Outstanding Faculty Member and in 2016 he received the Clarence Day Award for Outstanding Teaching. Before joining the Rhodes faculty in 2007, Professor Newstok earned his doctorate from Harvard University, taught at Oberlin College, Amherst College, and Gustavus Adolphus College, and held the Post-Doctoral Fellowship in the Humanities at Yale University Library′s Special Collections.

Dr. Newstok has published five books: a scholarly edition of Kenneth Burke′s Shakespeare criticism; a collection of essays on Macbeth and race (co-edited with Ayanna Thompson); a monograph on early modern English epitaphs; an edition of Michael Cavanagh's Paradise Lost: A Primer (CUAP 2020); and How to Think Like Shakespeare (Princeton, 2020). Newstok′s work has been recognized by grants and fellowships from the American Philosophical Society, the Folger Shakespeare Library, the Institute for Research in the Humanities, the Marco Institute, the Mellon Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Humanities Center, and the Newberry Library.

Newstok is the Founding Director of the Pearce Shakespeare Endowment and is a board member of Opera Memphis, Beth Sholom Synagogue, and the Libertas School of Memphis. He previously served as Co-Director (with Dr. Judith Haas) of Postgraduate Scholarships, Humanities faculty member of the Rhodes Board of Trustees, President of Rhodes′ Phi Beta Kappa chapter, and trustee of Humanities Tennessee, the state chapter of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Prof. Newstok's Website

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

Book projects

Orson Welles, Shakespeare, and Race, supported by a fellowship from the Folger Shakespeare Library

Duluth in Mind, on the place of the Zenith City within the American cultural imagination

Twinomials: "Residual Bilingualism and Philological Citizenship in English Renaissance Literature," supported by a fellowship from the American Philosophical Society

Books

How to Think Like Shakespeare: Lessons from a Renaissance Education (Princeton University Press, 2020).

"Insightful and joyful, this book is a masterpiece. It invokes and provokes rather than explains. It reminds rather than lectures. It is different than any book I have ever read. And it works. Drawing on the past in the best sense of the term, it reminds us that we are part of a long tradition. Few books make the case for liberal education as creatively as this one does."—Johann N. Neem, author of What's the Point of College? Seeking Purpose in an Age of Reform

"Ranging widely from the classics right up to the present with apt quotations, all in service of ideas we lose at our peril, How to Think like Shakespeare winningly blends respect for tradition with thoughtful steps toward a more equitable society. It is the work of a Renaissance man in both senses."—Robert N. Watson, author of Cultural Evolution and Its Discontents: Cognitive Overload, Parasitic Cultures, and the Humanistic Cure

https://lithub.com/5-shakespeare-scholars-on-the-past-present-and-future-of-theater-amid-covid-19/

5 Shakespeare Scholars on the Past, Present, and Future of Theater Amid COVID-19

In Honor of the Bard's 456th Birthday

By Literary Hub

April 23, 2020

It’s strange to think that on the day we began contemplating a roundtable to mark William Shakespeare’s 456th birthday, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo created a containment zone in the city of New Rochelle, formerly the epicenter of the state’s coronavirus outbreak. We were on the eve of the pandemic declaration and approaching the day Broadway would go dark for the first time since 9/11. It became apparent that just as the death toll would rise, so too would there be consequences for the social and cultural fabrics that bind us to one another.

Briefly, the prospect of a conversation centered on the Bard seemed, at best, like a convenient escape. But the following discussion, between five scholars who have devoted their careers situating Shakespeare alongside issues of performance, education, identity, partisanship and more, feels uniquely primed to our moment. It is an essential guide to the possible futures of our collective engagement with theater.

Scott Newstok (author of How to Think Like Shakespeare) moderated this discussion with Emma Smith (This is Shakespeare), James Shapiro (Shakespeare in a Divided America), Jeffrey Wilson (Shakespeare and Trump), and Vanessa Corredera, who is currently at work on a book about adaptations of Othello. I hope you gain as much from their vibrant dialogue as I did.

–Aaron Robertson, Assistant Editor

Scott Newstok: I suppose we have to start with our inescapable moment: social distancing policies have led to cancellations of public gatherings, and we’re now all teaching remotely. Artistic companies have gone dark; some worry whether they can survive the coming months.

Are there any precedents for this fraught moment in theater history—whether in the UK, the United States, or elsewhere?

James Shapiro: If plague closures in Elizabethan and Jacobean England hold any lessons for us, it’s that theater is precarious, actors and companies are vulnerable. Many wonderful companies will go under, as talented ones did in Shakespeare’s day. Airlines are sure to get a bailout; I doubt that theaters will, though they will need it just as badly.

Jeffrey Wilson: English theaters closed due to plague outbreaks between 1592 and 1594. So Shakespeare, as he was launching a career in drama, took some time to write poetry. That poetry was very dramatic, and his later drama very poetic. A lot of teachers with campuses closed due to the coronavirus are undergoing a different shift. They’re wondering how their physical classrooms will transfer into online settings. I’ll be very curious to see, six months from now, how our experiences with online teaching transfer back into our physical classrooms.

Emma Smith: It’s hard to imagine an equivalent. I’ve seen people comparing the situation in the UK to the situation during the Second World War, only for our seniors to say that they spent much of the war in theaters and dance halls. I’ve been interested to revisit the old chestnut about early modern companies releasing scripts for publication when the theaters were closed, in light of the National Theatre London and the Royal Shakespeare Company releasing their live screenings during the lockdown.

Vanessa Corredera: I share concern over the vulnerability of the arts during this time, especially since the powers that be (at least for the moment) do not seem interested in what would be a modern version of patronage—by that I mean extending monetary and structural support to the arts. I also think our current situation continues to spotlight issues of access and theater. For instance, many people (my family included) cannot access Shakespeare on the stage on a regular basis because of prohibitions ranging from locale to time to finances.

All of sudden, out of necessity, artistic institutions are turning to streaming, for which I and others are very grateful. This decision opens up a new audience for these performances. What remains to be seen is not only which institutions will be able to weather the storm, but also, how the effects of

their changes in mode inform their decisions regarding audience and accessibility moving forward.

JS: I’d only add that King James I provided Shakespeare’s company with “a gift” in “the time of infection” when theaters were closed in early 1604, and then again in 1608, 1609, and 1610. We’ll see if the governments of Donald Trump and Boris Johnson will be as generous to the arts.

JW: Vanessa makes such a good point—this difficult episode has shown that artistic institutions have the desire, ingenuity, and infrastructure to use technology to make art freely accessible to people who aren’t able to make it to a show in New York or London. And wouldn’t it be wonderful to see initiatives like those continue after the current emergency subsides? But that costs money. I suppose the question is: Would it be possible to develop a born-digital version of the Public Theater’s Mobile Unit? A Digital Unit?

JS: I work at the Public Theater and am closely involved with the Mobile Unit, which has had to put its upcoming and dazzling production of

Cymbeline on hold. I can tell you that there are no plans for a born-digital version of the production, which tours prisons and other facilities in and around New York. But one thought I’ve had of late—as odd as it might sound—is to enlist actors who have already had the virus and have developed immunity so they can rehearse and create a taped version of a production and be poised to perform publicly once a vaccine makes it possible for the rest of us to attend shows safely.

JW: Perhaps one historical analogy could be the world wars of the 20th century. A Google Ngram suggests that Shakespeare’s popularity declined—along with interest in other arts, I have to imagine—during the wartime years. But then the post-war periods saw big rebounds in interest in Shakespeare. Perhaps some post-war theaters might provide models for how today’s theaters can respond to the inevitable thirst for art, reflection, and human connection that will come after social distancing subsides.

ES: That’s so fascinating that interest in Shakespeare declined during those periods. I think that streamed theater productions will be wonderful for those who already include Shakespeare in their cultural life. For new audiences, it might not be as easy to make a space for those amid all the other digital offerings.

Most likely begun in the plague-free summer or autumn of 1605, King Lear was almost surely not written during an outbreak of plague.

SN: You all have probably seen social media posts along the lines of “When Shakespeare was in quarantine, he wrote King Lear” (some citing Jim’s The Year of Lear). There’s cold comfort in recalling that some artists have flourished during prior outbreaks. What other kinds of solace can we derive reading Shakespeare now?

JS: It’s maddening that my book was misread in that way. Most likely begun in the plague-free summer or autumn of 1605, King Lear was almost surely not written during an outbreak of plague (though Lear horrifically calls Goneril a “plague-sore”). What I actually wrote was that the return of plague in late 1606 led to theater closures, and a remarkable season at the Globe—that included

King Lear, Macbeth, Volpone, and The Revenger’s Tragedy—ended prematurely, once weekly plague deaths rose to above 30 or so.

That said, all of Shakespeare’s Jacobean plays, from Measure for Measure through Coriolanus, were written during or not long after yet another outbreak of plague, which struck London repeatedly (if not always as punishingly) from 1603-10.

ES: It’s interesting that “solace” hasn’t really been what we have looked for in Shakespeare—or in literary texts more generally—for some time. I remember A.D. Nuttall saying something in the preface to Why Does Tragedy Give Pleasure to the effect that we used to praise work by saying it was comforting, but now the greatest praise is to say it is discomforting, or something similar.

And now that we need solace, perhaps we will need to return to some less disquieting interpretations of the plays. The great solace I think we could get is the solace of concentrating over something knotty and rewarding. Most people I know feel their ability to focus has been really challenged by the current circumstances.

VC: While I love Shakespeare, I don’t think his works are particularly unique in their ability to provide solace, at least not any more so than other literature that may speak to our affective needs right now. If we are even seeking solace—which Emma interestingly challenges—the beauty of Shakespeare’s language might provide it, but so might the familiarity of the barnyard animals as I read Charlotte’s Web each night to my son, or the complexity people experience upon finally reading that long novel they’ve been putting off.

SN: All of you have worked with digital mediations of Shakespeare, whether Emma’s podcasts, Jim’s recorded lectures, Vanessa’s scholarship on Serial, or Jeff’s extensive online resources. What’s one bit of advice you would offer about teaching remotely?

ES: It doesn’t need to be perfect. And it doesn’t need to be synchronous—that adds stress with technology. Recording things people can play in their own time has worked for me.

VC: I agree with Emma. Also, since we lose community by being asynchronous, lean into online experiences that help form virtual communities. Encourage students to engage with these digital meditations of Shakespeare—like Patrick Stewart reading Shakespeare’s sonnets—and then participate in an online forum, thoughtful debates in comments, or a Twitter discussion (like #ShakeRace).

JW: Vanessa’s point about the possible loss of community is so important. It’s been a big challenge for me. I’ve tried to think very deliberately about how to maintain those connections that students make in the little conversations before class, and the fun we have when we jump into an impromptu performance of a scene. They’re called “plays” for a reason: this is supposed to be fun. I’ve found it vital to spend valuable class time developing those moments and using things like group chats to keep the energy of the course strong.

SN: Parents are improvising schooling at home. Any suggestions for helping children engage with Shakespeare beyond their conventional classrooms?

ES: I admire anyone who is improvising schooling as well as everything else right now, and I’d say, do what’s fun. That might be watching movie versions, or acting out scenes with Lego figures, or learning speeches to show off. I think we need to take whatever advantages there are here, but not to be overambitious!

VC: As someone trying to homeschool and work right now, helping children engage with Shakespeare is not really on my radar! That said, my kindergartener is now around my work much more, which gives me an opportunity to explain who Shakespeare is and what he wrote or to pause a movie or clip and explain more about Shakespeare when he asks about what I’m doing.

JS: One of the initiatives we’re undertaking at the Public Theater is the Brave New Shakespeare Challenge. Every week a new passage will be posted, and we’re encouraging everyone—starting with schoolkids—to share a link with their performance of that speech, poem, or scene. It’ll be fun, and a necessary break from the boredom of quarantine.

VC: James, this sounds like a great initiative!

SN: Shifting gears, Shakespeare is, exceptionally, the only author named in the Common Core. As secondary school curricula increasingly focus on contemporary prose, Shakespeareans find themselves in a discomfiting position: we teach a figure who is sometimes the solitary pre-20th century poet on the syllabus. Which of Shakespeare’s peers do you wish were assigned more often? (I, for one, love assigning Christopher Marlowe’s deceptively simple “

Come Live with Me” ballad.)

It’s impossible to know what the world will be like in a year or so, once we’re all vaccinated for coronavirus. But it seems likely that theaters will suffer, schools and universities too.

ES: I also love “Come Live With Me”. Texts I enjoy—and my students too—include revenge tragedies by Thomas Kyd (The Spanish Tragedy) or Thomas Middleton (Revenger’s Tragedy). John Webster sometimes makes it onto our high school curriculum in the UK—some A Level students here study Duchess of Malfi.

JS: Emma’s list dovetails with my own. I’d only add John Donne.

VC: Some of my non-Shakespearean favorites to teach are The Spanish Tragedy, almost anything by Marlowe (last term, it was Dr. Faustus), The Duchess of Malfi, and Elizabeth Cary’s The Tragedy of Mariam. I wish they were taught more so that we could see the different ways authors in the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras approach the same topics (revenge, race, gender, etc.), as well as identify the ideological and social concerns to which they return.

SN: Vanessa, you’re writing a book that examines adaptations of Shakespeare’s Othello. How did Shakespeare’s “Moor” come to be “American,” yet also “Global”?

VC: In an essay on teaching Othello, Francesca Royster notes that it has become the play for thinking about race and Shakespeare in America. I think that’s because Othello taps into long-standing American stereotypes about black masculinity that a wide range of scholars on race in America identify. The work of Joyce MacDonald, Ayanna Thompson, and Robert Hornback, for example, shows how burlesque and blackface versions of Othello were key to reifying these stereotypes of black masculinity during Reconstruction. Othello is angry (the Brute), he endangers and then murders white femininity, and by the end of the play, he threatens the white social order (the Nat). I’m interested in thinking about what has to happen to Othello to make it an anti-racist play.

In Citing Shakespeare, Peter Erickson also calls Othello Shakespeare’s global emissary, pointing to the way the play and character speak beyond America. Issues of race, otherness, religion, and anti-blackness aren’t distinctly American problems.

Ambereen Dadabhoy’s and Dennis Britton’s respective work, for instance, aptly highlights the importance of religion, specifically Islam and issues of conversion, when intepreting Othello. I don’t want to suggest that Othello’s narrative is universal so much as it’s easily adaptable. As Kim F. Hall remarks regarding Othello, “one of the gifts Shakespeare gave us is the ability to use his texts to talk about the modern world,” including issues of race, sexuality, and status that appear in the play.

JW: Vanessa, if you were to swap a scholarly hat for a creative one, how might you do Othello to achieve that anti-racist aspect that you describe?

VC: I get asked this question so often, and I think I always provide such haphazard and inadequate answers. My responses reveal my vexed relationship to this play. The most hope for an anti-racist version of Othello, I believe, remains with creators willing to let go of Othello almost entirely. One example is Keith Hamilton Cobb’s American Moor. In the play, the unnamed African American actor auditioning for the role of Othello weaves together the threads of Shakespeare and authority, race in America, and the problems with American regional theater (among other topics) into a provocative, hopeful dialogue with the director he’s auditioning for, and the audience itself.

SN: Jeff, I know that in addition to your recent book Shakespeare and Trump you’ve been thinking about Shakespeare and stigma. Where do you find overlaps across your projects?

JW: Literary works create contact zones for conversations spanning the centuries from the early modern period to today. Shakespeare—as both written text deeply shaped by the classical tradition, and living performance often acted and adapted today—is the most obvious example. Under a banner of better living through historicism, I study the past to better understand today’s ethical and political questions. Sometimes that means historicizing the modern manifestations of early-modern literature, as in Shakespeare and Trump. Other times it means using modern ideas to unpack early-modern texts and traditions, as in the “Stigma in Shakespeare”

project.

VC: Jeff, could you speak to what you see as at odds between historicism and presentism in Shakespeare studies?

JW: Perhaps it goes back to Ben Jonson’s statement that Shakespeare was “not of an age, but for all time.” Shakespeare’s works—as both very old printed texts and plays often performed today—call for both historicism (“of an age”) and presentism (“for all time”). A historicism that doesn’t account for the present is as limited as a presentism that doesn’t account for the past. And this dynamic, which grows organically out of the multi-temporality of Shakespeare, provides a model for other fields of humanistic scholarship.

SN: Jim, you close Shakespeare in a Divided America with a guarded statement about Shakespeare’s future, which, you write, “seems as precarious as it has ever been in this nation’s history.” Have the crisis developments allayed or amplified your fears?

In times of crisis, we tend to neglect Shakespeare’s poems in favor of his plays, which (rightly or wrongly) appear more readily amenable to contemporary concerns.

JS: It’s impossible to know what the world will be like in a year or so, once we’re all vaccinated for coronavirus. But it seems likely that theaters will suffer, schools and universities too. Colleges will close, faculties will likely be downsized. When that happens, the study and performance of Shakespeare will suffer too. It would be nice to imagine people emerging from self-isolation eager for culture, but without government support, it’s likely that few companies will be back on their feet anytime soon.

VC: I agree that it would be great if people emerge eager for culture, and I think they might! But if economic resources aren’t evenly distributed, and there’s no reason to think they will be, then the divide in America may only deepen, and the arts will be affected by that.

JW: Jim, more broadly, could you predict the future for us: “what’s past is prologue,” etc. How might some of Shakespeare’s plays interact with the issues likely to exacerbate partisanship in America in the coming years—climate crisis, automation, tax code, public education, etc.? Any Shakespearean resonances you see?

JS: I recently taught the opening scene of Coriolanus to my Columbia students and I couldn’t help imagining, while doing so, a grim future in America in which—given the scarcity of resources—protests and violence were once again a defining feature of our culture. Anyone who imagines higher education and the arts in America won’t be diminished for years to come will have to persuade me otherwise.

SN: Emma, Shakespeare’s works seem prone to being “weaponized” in the US cultural sphere. Does such weaponization function differently in the United Kingdom?

ES: I learned so much from Jim’s book, and as I was reading it I wondered whether things would be similar in the British context. It’s been interesting to see in recent years the role of performed Shakespeare in ideological debates about so-called “color-blind” casting, or in arguments over casting women in male roles. Because it touches on ideas of cultural propriety, the question of who gets to perform Shakespeare may be our version of the weaponization that Jim interrogates so brilliantly.

SN: In times of crisis, we tend to neglect Shakespeare’s poems in favor of his plays, which (rightly or wrongly) appear more readily amenable to contemporary concerns. Let’s conclude on a lyrical note: what’s your favorite Shakespearean sonnet, and why? What do you cherish about its formal details?

ES: Confession time: I find Shakespeare’s sonnets alienating. Difficult, yes, but that’s not the problem. To me they are just a touch onanistic—solipsistic, rebarbatively masculine. The space I find for myself or for alternative voices in Shakespeare’s plays I struggle to find there. I’ve been rereading Venus and Adonis, and thinking about it as the signature work for Shakespeare during his own lifetime.

JW: I do a PSA in my classes every Valentine’s Day: be careful giving your beloved one of Shakespeare’s sonnets

because they’re a lesson in toxic love. Nowhere is this better captured than in the lines that open Sonnet 138: “When my love swears that she is made of truth, / I do believe her, though I know she lies.”

That also captures the follow-the-leader partisanship we see right now in America, and later in the sonnet Shakespeare gives a good gloss of the audience that enables post-truth politics: “Simply I credit her false-speaking tongue: / On both sides thus is simple truth suppressed.” The closing couplet is a searing takedown of willful self-delusion—whether it’s in love or in politics: “Therefore I lie with her and she with me, / And in our faults by lies we flattered be.”

VC: At the risk of seeming much more sentimental than Emma or Jeff, I have a soft spot for Sonnets 29 (“When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes”) and 73 (“That time of year thou mayest in me behold”).

I remember reading these sonnets in one of my first college English classes and being struck by the beautiful language of love and community in Sonnet 29, and the stunning imagery in Sonnet 73. As a novice major, I was excited that I could understand that symbolism! I’ve come a long way in my training and thinking, but those sonnets stay with me for very affective reasons.

JS: The Public Theater initiative I mentioned earlier just posted Sonnet 29 as its first selection, with Phylicia Rashad reciting it in English, Raúl Esparza in Spanish, and Steve Earle doing a beautiful musical version. If anyone is interested, add your own version!

Check out this episode!

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mariacallous · 11 months ago

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Up from the Depths tells the interconnected stories of two of the most important writers in American history—the novelist and poet Herman Melville (1819–1891) and one of his earliest biographers, the literary critic and historian Lewis Mumford (1895–1990). Deftly cutting back and forth between the writers, Aaron Sachs reveals the surprising resonances between their lives, work, and troubled times—and their uncanny relevance in our own age of crisis.

The author of Moby-Dick was largely forgotten for several decades after his death, but Mumford helped spearhead Melville’s revival in the aftermath of World War I and the 1918–1919 flu pandemic, when American culture needed a forebear with a suitably dark vision. As Mumford’s career took off and he wrote books responding to the machine age, urban decay, world war, and environmental degradation, it was looking back to Melville’s confrontation with crises such as industrialization, slavery, and the Civil War that helped Mumford to see his own era clearly. Mumford remained obsessed with Melville, ultimately helping to canonize him as America’s greatest tragedian. But largely forgotten today is one of Mumford’s key insights—that Melville’s darkness was balanced by an inspiring determination to endure.

Amid today’s foreboding over global warming, racism, technology, pandemics, and other crises, Melville and Mumford remind us that we’ve been in this struggle for a long time. To rediscover these writers today is to rediscover how history can offer hope in dark times.

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rockymountainwriter · 7 years ago

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Amazon: Literary Suicide or Genius of the Future

Like Walmart, Amazon is a global superstore. It not only publishes books, it sells books, technology, videos, has its own literary magazine, and its own production studio. Amazon’s founder and chief executive, Jeff Bezos, a graduate of Princeton, also owns a major newspaper, The Washington Post. Amazon is turning or has turned the publishing industry upside down and they are feeling the effects. Bowker reports that over one million (1,052,803) books were published in the U.S. in 2009, which is more than triple the number of books published four years earlier (2005) in the U.S. (April 14, 2010 Bowker Report). More than two thirds of these books are self-published books, reprints of public domain works, and other print-on-demand books, which is where most of the growth in recent years has taken place. Bezos told Charlie Rose on 60 Minutes, “Amazon is not happening to bookselling. The future is happening to bookselling.” (Packer 17).

One traditional publisher, Dennis Johnson, co-owner of Melville House out of Brooklyn and one of the few publishers willing to criticize Amazon publicly, says the mega giant has turned into the bully of the publishing world. When Johnson’s distributor was approached by two Amazon employees, he described the dinner meeting “like dinner with the Godfather.” Refusing to budge on making a payment to Amazon for carrying their books, (in 1999, Amazon received $3,621,250 in co-op fees) Johnson contacted Publishers Weekly, who ran their story about the strong arm of Amazon. The next day, the “buy” button on all their titles had been deleted. Because Amazon accounted for eight percent of their sales, Melville House caved to the pressure and paid the ransom. Though major publishing houses believe Amazon has monopolized the digital works of fiction and non-fiction genres by selling books for just a few dollars, unknown authors and readers who live hundreds of miles from any bookstores, disagree.

History of Amazon

In 1994, Amazon started off as a bookstore, an internet bookstore. Jeff Bezo’s, a Princeton graduate, quit his job at a Manhattan hedge fund and moved to Seattle to cash in on the “exponential growth of the early commercial Internet” (Packer 2). In Chicago in 1995 Bezos manned an Amazon booth “at the annual conclave of the publishing industry”, called BookExpo America with a sign that read “Earth’s Biggest Bookstore”. When approached by Rainy Day Books owner, Doeren, he asked “where is this bookstore?” Bezos replied “cyberspace”. When Bezos told Doeren his business plan, by gathering data on affluent, educated shoppers then selling books close to cost in order to increase sales volume, Doeren went back and told his business partner “I just met the world’s biggest snake-oil salesman. It’s going to be really bad for books.” (Packer 3).

By 2010, Amazon controlled ninety per cent of the market in digital books (Packer 10). One literary agent, Andrew Wylie, was worried Amazon had no competition. E-Book prices were being slashed to a mere dollar ninety-nine or ninety nine cents and publishers feared it would not be long before they had to slash the cover prices of all their titles. Publishers wanted control back and along came Apple. Apple wanted a deal with each of the big six publishing houses, Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin, Random House, and Simon and Schuster. All but one, Random House, took the Apple deal and though the deal was worse from Apple than Amazon. “Apple’s terms included the provision that it could match the price of any rival” (Packer Cheap Words 12). It gave publishers control over pricing and a way to challenge Amazon’s grip on the market. However, in April of 2012, the U.S. Justice Department filed a complaint against Apple and the big publishers on conspiracy to fix prices after Attorney Steve Berman filed a class action suit. Because Berman was an avid reader of e-Books, he discovered a number of different publishers had increased their book prices from $9.99 to $13.99. After some investigation, Berman decided it was exactly what the publishers were trying to do, fix prices. “The federal complaint was a shock and an embarrassment to the publishing community” (Gessen “The War of the Words” Vanity Fair 7). Apple and the big publishers were trying to squash a monopolist-in-the-wings, Amazon, and the government stepped in and stopped them. It was catastrophic for the publishers who had to pay out millions in damages to rid themselves of the class action suits (Gessen “The War of the Words” Vanity Fair 7).

Despite all this drama, behind the scenes, publishers were making money, just like Bezos said they would. Print book sales may have been down, but e-Book sales were up. With the e-Books there were no manufacturing costs, no warehousing costs, not shipping costs, no returns, and so even at a lower price, their profit margins were higher. For instance, the retail price of a hardcover book of $27.99 would net profit to the publisher at $5.67, a profit margin of 41%. An eBook selling for $14.99 retail will profit the publisher $7.87, a profit margin of 75%, therefore, publishers are making more money on e-Books than hardcover books due to the low cost of publishing.

In 2014, a war between Hachette, book publisher for writers such as James Patterson, Malcom Gladwell and Douglas Preston, and Amazon began. The business dispute grew into a high stakes one, authors got involved because it was their bread and butter. They organized a group called Authors United and circulated a petition that gathered more than 900 signature. It called for Amazon to put an end to the sanctioning of books” (Gessen “The War of the Words” Vanity Fair 8). In a nutshell, the Amazon-Hachette dispute mirrored a culture war which had been playing out since the 1960s in America.

Authors United was able to obtain 900 signatures to put an end to Amazon’s sanctioning of books. However, writers who had self-published with Amazon, some who had made a good living out of doing so, came to the defense of Amazon. They were tired of New York publishing making the decisions of what stories people were allowed to read. They were tired of the high prices of books, and they were tired of the little profits made on each book, with the majority of profits going to the publishers. So they fought back. They made it known that Amazon wasn’t the evil enterprise these authors purported Amazon to be. They explained it was the natural and inevitable transition to online book sales. They said the same transition happened to other forms of entertainment, they blamed the publishers for “resisting technology” (Gessen “The War of the Words” Vanity Fair 8). These same publishers could have done the same thing that Amazon did, but they didn’t, they choose to fear the future and fight to protect the status quo (Gessen “The War of the Words” Vanity Fair 8). Their petition on Change.org obtained more than 8,000 signatures.

The dispute with Amazon and Hachette ended in November of 2014 with both parties seemingly happy with the results. The dispute was mainly over pricing and how much royalties an author could expect on sales of e-Books. Hachette sent a letter out to its authors informing them their royalty payments would not decrease and they were given the right to decided how much to charge for their eBooks on Kindle. Amazon in turn would provide incentives for Hachette to have lower e-Book prices, however the details of their deal remains unclear. According to Sarah Kahn, an industry analyst at the market researcher IBISWorld, said the agreement shows that “large publishers have some kind of impact to negotiate with Amazon” (Stenovec 1).

Amazon’s self-contained publishing world has its advantages and disadvantages to the author who decides to publish with them. First off, the majority of book sales, 20%, are through its e-Books, on the Kindle platform or on Kindle Direct. The books are never seen in a book store, most won’t carry Amazon titles because they believe they are being undercut by Amazon and that they are out to destroy them (Shapiro 2). Authors are also sacrificing the traditional New York based literary world as well as some amount of recognition in the world at large (Shapiro 2). Amazon promotes the titles on its website and the Kindle, and uses one vendor, Amazon. This is definitely not a path to riches for the author. In fact, some find themselves working for almost nothing. Aaron Shepard, an author of three “how to” books on Kindle publishing says he has told his readers to deliver the message, “The party’s over”.

One of the advantages of self-publishing with Amazon would be the low production costs, through their CreateSpace program. With Kindle Direct, authors don’t pay any upfront cost to Amazon, they take a cut of 30 percent once the book starts making money. This leaves a 70 percent royalty payment to the author much higher than the 10-15 percent from traditional publishers. One self-publishing author has made upward of $450,000 a year. According to an article in Forbes, a UK-based author, Mark Dawson, who writes thrillers and crime novels, has sold 300,000 copies of his thriller series about a British assassin named John Milton netting him a six figure total.

Future Issues

Around eighty percent of newly released books originate from self-publishing or small presses and this figure has been increasing yearly (Carolan & Evain 285). In order to establish the positioning of self-publishing’s future development, one must look at current industry practices. By profiling self-published authors, Carolan and Evain, who wrote a journal article “Self-Publishing: Opportunities and Threats in a New Age of Mass Culture” (2013), broke these profiles down into three categories: the big fish in the big pond, the big fish in the small pond, and the small fish in the big pond. The author’s example they used for “the big fish in the big pond” was John Grisham. Prior to becoming a bestselling author of legal thrillers, Grisham’s first novel, A Time to Kill,was rejected by dozens of publishers and agents until a small New York publishing house, The Wynwood Press, decided to release an initial run of five thousand copies. Because Grisham had been studying the market, he knew his book would not obtain the success he was looking due to the limited marketing potential of the small independent press. He sold his law firm, purchased one thousand copies of his book and went on a three month book tour cross state. He ultimately sold every copy. He then set out to produce his second novel, The Firm, which attracted Hollywood into making a major film, and in turn was then adopted by a major publishing house. Though Grisham is often mistaken as a self-published author, he remains heavily involved in the promotion of his work and yet is also engaged with traditional publishers.

“The big fish in a small pond” category corresponds to self-published authors who have managed to “establish their authority as author-entrepreneurs in niche markets” (Carolan & Evain 288). This is the perfect example of author James Redfield and The Celestine Prophecy. Redfield sold almost one hundred thousand copies of his philosophical dissertation on new age spirituality before Warner Books picked him up. Niche markets are successful as self-published books because “these specialty books do not appeal to large-scale publishers and it is far easier to market a book to a specific audience” (Yakawicz 2010). He has since sold over a million copies and the book is translated in thirty-four different languages. Another reason for his huge success was the timing of his book. The author had a great deal of knowledge in both his subject and his readership and the small interconnected communities used word of mouth to help develop his product (Carolan & Evain 288).

“The small fish in the big pond” concept deals with the self-published books that are released through Print-On-Demand which sells about an average of seventy five copies of any given book (Carolan & Evain 288). The competition in this market is fierce. Most self-published authors keep a low profile so it is important for them to engage with their readers either electronically or physically. It’s important in this day and age for the authors to let readers know why they should invest their time in getting to know them. Blogging and social media networking websites are ways for authors to build their online communities and interact with their readers.

Diversification of Publishing

With the e-Book renewing the love of reading for many people, it has also helped the book industry all the way around. People are checking out books at the library and they are still buying hard copies via the internet. With the diversity offered to the public, it seems the modern publishing environment has been able to co-exist and complement each other’s activities. Gabriel Zaid explains it beautifully:

The technologies that lower the threshold for investment and the cost of the product respond to the need of a better educated population to read and express itself in an ongoing conversation in which diverse subjects and interests multiply. By rooting themselves in this economic reality, some forms of conversation that actually favor diversity may thrive. But those that impoverish conversation instead of enriching it will encounter difficulties inherent in the very nature of books.

Conclusion

More than two thirds of the over one million books published each year are self-published books, reprints of public domain works, or other print-on-demand books. All of this growth has come in the name of Amazon, the global superstore. And even though in the beginning, traditional publishers felt Amazon was monopolizing the digital works of fiction and non-fiction genres, the publisher’s profit margins increased from 41% to 75%. With 80% of newly released books originating from self-publishing or small presses, it’s no wonder this is the way of the future. It has opened up diversity in the market place and has allowed both the traditional publishers and the e-Book publishers to find a way to co-exist in the market. After all, enriching people’s lives will help a society thrive in an ever changing market place. Amazon opened the doors to the future, and the future is here to stay.

Works Cited

Bowker Report. “Self-Publishing Movement Continues Strong Growth in U.S.” Tools and Resources. Thorpe-Bowker. A ProQuest Affiliate. 2010. Web.

Carolan, Simon. Evain, Christine. “Self-Publishing: Opportunities and Threats in a New Age of Mass Culture”. Springer Science+Business Media, New York. 12 Oct. 2013. ProQuest.

Gessen, Keith. “The War of the Words. How did Amazon End Up as Literary Enemy No. 1?” Vanity Fair. Dec. 2014. Web.

Packer, George. “Cheap Words. Amazon is good for customers. But is it good for books?” The New Yorker. 24 Feb. 2014. Web

Ronning, Helge. Slaatta, Tore. “Marketers, publishers, editors: Trends in International Publishing. Media, Culture & Society. Sage Publishing. Journal. 2011. ProQuest.

Shapiro, Nancy. “The Perks, Pitfalls, and Paradoxes of Amazon Publishing.” Seattle Weekly News. 4 Nov. 2014. Web

Stenovec, Timothy. “Amazon Probably Didn’t Get What It Wanted In the Hachette Deal” The Huffington Post. 14 Nov. 2014. Web.

Yakowicz, Susie. “Find Self-Publishing success with a Niche Market”. 2010. Web.

Zaid, Gabriel. “So Many Books: Reading and Publishing in an Age of Abundance. Sort of Books. 2010. Print.

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aion-rsa · 4 years ago

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The Trial of the Chicago 7 Ending: What Happened Next?

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It’s a strangely feel-good finale. After spending more than two hours witnessing a gross miscarriage of justice that seemed to suggest the deck is stacked against those the establishment deems “radical” or “extreme,” Aaron Sorkin’s The Trial of the Chicago 7 ends with the smallest of victories being given Hollywood heft. Tom Hayden (Eddie Redmayne) is all but promised a lenient sentence by the vindictive, and potentially senile, Judge Julius Hoffman (Frank Langella), provided he offers a contrite statement before the court.

Instead Hayden attempts to read off the names of every American who died in Vietnam since this sham trial began. It’s a symbolic act of defiance, and a welcome one that sends the court into temporary pandemonium. It doesn’t change anything, other than maybe Hayden’s sentence, but the audience can savor the good fight against corrosive authority, so perfectly personified by Langella’s judge.

That’s all well and good, but what happened afterward? A handful of freeze frames and sentences worth of bite-sized information tells us a little bit of what came next for each major player in the trial, but not enough. So allow us to expand a bit.

Abbie Hoffman

As played with resounding cynicism by Sacha Baron Cohen, Aaron Sorkin’s Abbie Hoffman convincingly proves you can turn contempt for court into a religion. The actual Hoffman was a leader of the Yippie movement and later wrote Steal This Book, but his career extended beyond the courtroom and that literary subversion. Prior to being indicted for conspiracy to incite a riot across state lines, Hoffman was already a counterculture figure who cut his teeth as a member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and organizing Liberty House in the fight for Civil Rights.

He became focused on the Vietnam War in the late ‘60s, but was never afraid of a good stunt, such as when he rained fake and real dollar bills down on the New York Stock Exchange in 1968. Some investors booed, others began filling their pockets with the green on the floor. Additionally, he had the notoriety of being chased off stage at Woodstock by Pete Townshend after he interrupted The Who’s set to demand the release of John Sinclair, co-founder of the anti-racist White Panther Party. This occurred about one month before the trial started.

After the trial, he built his fame with Steal This Book in 1971, which encouraged readers to find ways to live for free without paying for possessions. However, Hoffman soon disappeared from public life, becoming a fugitive after he was charged with intent to sell and distribute cocaine in 1973 (he claimed it was entrapment). In 1974, he had plastic surgery and began living by the name Barry Freed, until he turned himself into authorities in 1980—the same day his interview with Barbara Walters aired. He’d go on to stage civil disobedience to protest the CIA and Iran-Contra affair in 1986, and write Steal This Urine Test to protest the War on Drugs in 1987. He even appeared in Oliver Stone’s Born on the Fourth of July.

But suffering from Bipolar disorder, and depressed both by his mother’s cancer diagnosis and at the lack of protest in youth culture of the ‘80s, he eventually died by suicide when he swallowed 150 phenobarbital tablets with liquor in 1989. He was 52, and the FBI had a file on him that was over 13,000 pages long.

Tom Hayden

Prior to the Trial of the Chicago Seven, Tom Hayden became a national figure on the left for authoring the first draft of the Students for a Democratic Society’s political manifesto, the Port Huron Statement. In it Hayden advocated for, among other things, a “New Left” that pursued participatory democracy in the spirit of nonviolent civil disobedience, allowing citizens to directly vote on social issues. He also toured North Vietnam in 1965, later co-writing The Other Side with Staughton Lynd. The pair also disavowed the anti-Communism of their parents’ generation.

After the trial, Hayden returned to tour the conditions of North Vietnam multiple times, as well as in Cambodia and Laos as the Richard Nixon administration began bombing those regions. While Hayden did not meet movie star and future second wife Jane Fonda during her own infamous trip to Hanoi in 1972, the pair shared a drive to be politically active and motivate social change, including urgently ending the Vietnam War. Hayden and Fonda married in 1973, and collaborated on the 1974 documentary Introduction to the Enemy. During this time, he also founded the Indochina Peace Campaign, which Fonda would name her production company, IPC Films, after.

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Hayden soon became more active in Democratic Party politics, advocating for strong environmental protection policies, beginning with an unsuccessful primary challenge against Democratic U.S. Senator John V. Tunney in 1976. He did, however, succeed in being elected to the California State Assembly for 10 years, beginning in 1982, and the California State Senate for eight years, beginning in 1992. He also ran unsuccessfully for governor in 1994 and Mayor of Los Angeles in 1997.

He and Fonda divorced in 1990, but he married again three years later. Hayden passed away in October 2016, but not before being one of the Democratic National Committee’s California representatives that year. He threw his support behind Hillary Clinton after initially saying he was leaning toward (but not endorsing) Bernie Sanders.

Jerry Rubin

As the other co-founder of the Yippies, Jerry Rubin’s early life shared many of the same values as Abbie Hoffman. After all, he dropped out of the University of California, Berkeley in 1964 to become a full-time social activist. In 1967 that included running for mayor of Berkeley and winning 20 percent of the vote on a platform of being anti-war, pro-Black Power, and wanting to legalize marijuana. That didn’t work out, but along with Hoffman, Rubin had better success in a number of publicity events, including the Stock Exchange demonstration events mentioned above, and when he appeared before the House Un-American Activities Committee dressed as a Revolutionary War soldier who quoted Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine while blowing soap bubbles at congressmen.

This contempt was an example of Rubin’s original worldview that television news mythologizes whatever it covers. “I’ve never seen ‘bad’ coverage of a demonstration. It makes no difference what they say about us. The picture is the story.”

Yet shortly after the trial, Rubin’s perspective changed. While during the early ‘70s he continued protesting, organizing demonstrations that would lay down before trucks transporting napalm, as well as attempting to organize protests at both the Republican and Democratic National Conventions of 1972, he became disgusted after Nixon was reelected that year. He retired from politics in the mid-‘70s to become an entrepreneur, making his first millions by being an early investor in Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak’s Apple Computer.

By 1980 Rubin was a full-fledged Wall Street stockbroker for John Muir & Co., and was organizing parties at Studio 54 via his own Business Networking Salons, Inc. company. He even took on a debate tour with old ally Abbie Hoffman in a series of events called “Yippie versus Yuppie.” Rubin claimed counterculture was too scary to affect real change and that “wealth creation is the real American revolution.” From George Washington-chic to Washington D.C. Brooks Brothers attire. He died in 1994 from a heart attack after being hit by a car in Los Angeles.

Bobby Seale

A co-founder of the Black Panther Party with Huey P. Newton, Seale was one of the most powerful voices for Black rights and Black Power in the late ‘60s—hence why the Justice Department dubiously charged Seale with conspiracy to incite a riot alongside the rest of the “Chicago Seven.” As demonstrated in the film, Judge Julius Hoffman grotesquely ordered Seale be gagged and beaten after denying Seale the right to legal counsel for months. While Seale was later severed from the trial, the Netflix film glosses over what exactly happened afterward to the Black Panther leader.

Seale indeed stood trial again in Connecticut in 1970 for the murder of Alex Rackley. Rackley was a 19-year-old Panther when he was tortured for two days at the New Haven Panther headquarters after being suspected of being an FBI informant. After days of interrogation and physical violence, Rackley confessed under duress. He was executed the next day. As a Black Panther co-founder, Seale happened to be in New Haven for a speech at Yale during the second day of Rackley’s confinement. And after turning over state’s evidence and confessing to the murder, Panther George Sams Jr. claimed Seale learned about Rackley’s kidnapping and ordered his murder. The jury was unable to reach a verdict on Seale’s involvement, and the charges were subsequently dropped.

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After the trial, Seale ran for Mayor of Oakland in 1973, and earned the second most amount of votes in a field of nine. But he lost the subsequent runoff. He left the Black Panther Party in 1974, according to some accounts due to a physical altercation with Lewis due to Lewis’ desire to produce a movie on the Panthers. Lewis and his bodyguards allegedly beat Seale with a bullwhip, though Seale denies these events occurred. Despite their parting of ways, their demand for equality as laid out in their Ten Point Platform—which includes demands for full Black employment, an end to police brutality, the end of “robbery by the capitalists” of the Black Community, and decent housing—remains a touchstone for those calling for social justice.

In 1987 Seale published his autobiography A Lonely Rage, as well as cookbook Barbeque’n with Bobby Seale: Hickory and Mesquite Recipes. He’s since taught Black Studies courses at Temple University and has toured the country to speak to college campuses about his experiences as a Black Panther and to encourage community organizing. He still lives in Oakland.

Julius Hoffman

Frank Langella’s horrifying depiction of a biased and borderline senile jurist does not appear to be far off the mark from the real Judge Julius Hoffman, a figure very much unprepared for the 1960s or the major trial placed in his lap. Literally born in the 19th century—1895 to be exact—Hoffman was a Northwestern graduate and private lawyer before becoming a Judge of the Superior Court of Cook County in 1947. President Dwight Eisenhower then nominated him to the bench of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois in 1953.

Apparently already having developed a reputation for bias and incivility before the movie’s famed case, The Trial of the Chicago 7 is correct in noting that a 1974 survey of Chicago attorneys found that 78 percent of them had an unfavorable opinion of Hoffman’s court. However, the judge never actually lost the gavel or suffered severe consequences. Although when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh District first struck down his numerous contempt convictions and then the subsequent convictions of the Chicago Seven causing a riot, they did so in part because Hoffman exhibited a “deprecatory and often antagonistic attitude toward the defense.”

In 1972 Hoffman assumed senior status, which acts as a semi-retirement for federal judges where they receive a full salary but have the option to take on a reduced caseload, allowing the U.S. president to select a new jurist for their bench. However, Hoffman continued to oversee cases throughout the ‘70s—hence his notorious bad marks in Joseph Goulden’s survey—and continued to judge cases until the 1980s.

In 1982 the Executive Committee of the United States ordered Hoffman not be assigned any new cases after further complaints of erratic behavior and abuse of power. He still was allowed to preside over his ongoing cases, however, until his death a year later. He was a week away from turning 88.

William Kunstler

Both before and after the Trial of the Chicago Seven, William Kunstler was famous for finding himself at the center of the most politically controversial cases that always ended up on the front page. A “radical” lawyer who received his law degree from Columbia after attending Yale as an undergraduate—with a stint in the U.S. Army during World War II in between—Kunstler was already an ACLU director in 1964, five years before the movie’s trial. He’d become an ACLU board member by 1972.

Before the film’s trial he represented Freedom Riders in 1961 Mississippi and at various times advised the likes of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Stokely Carmichael, Lenny Bruce, and the Catonsville Nine (Catholic activists who burned Vietnam War draft files in Maryland). He also less glamorously defended Jack Ruby.

After the movie’s trial, Kunstler worked with the American Indian Movement (AIM), defending Russell Means and Dennis Banks, two leaders of AIM who helped lead the 1973 occupation of Wounded Knee, and defended AIM members again after the murder of two FBI agents. He also defended John Hill who was charged (and eventually convicted) of killing a prison guard during the Attica Prison riot of 1971. Yet his defense helped convince New York Governor Hugh Carey to pardon Hill…. He also defended clients tied to the mafia, including Joe Bananno, John Gotti, and Louis Ferrante.

At the time of his death in 1995, due to heart failure, Kunstler was defending Omar Abdel-Rahman, aka “The Blind Sheik,” for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Abel-Rahman was later convicted.

David Dellinger

Prior to being one of the Chicago Seven, David Dellinger was most famous for his radical pacifism during World War II. During the 1930s he’d studied at Yale and Oxford, even touring Nazi Germany in 1937 before the war. He then worked as an ambulance driver in the Spanish Civil War and came to the conclusion he would remain totally anti-war as a result. He was arrested in 1943 after failing to report for his draft physical, and was ultimately imprisoned despite his conscientious objections. In prison he helped protest racial segregation of federal dining halls, leading to their integration.

Throughout the 1950s and ‘60s, Dellinger participated in freedom marches in the American South, protesting segregation. He became acquainted with Dr. Martin Luther King in this time. He also traveled to both South and North Vietnam in 1966, having contact with North Vietnam President Ho Chi Minh.

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After the war he stayed politically active, including when he staged a sit-in at Chicago’s Federal Building during the Democratic National Convention of 1996. He also protested free trade in 2001. He received the Peace Abbey Courage of Conscience award in 1992. He died in 2004 at the age of 88.

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