JONAH RASKIN :
BOOKS | Rails and roads

Posted on July 29, 2021 by Thorne Dreyer

Novelist Colson Whitehead’s ‘The Underground Railroad,’ is an epic novel of bondage and liberation.

By Jonah Raskin | The Rag Blog | July 29, 2021

Near the end of The Underground Railroad, his epic novel about bondage and freedom, the author, Colson Whitehead, offers two related ideas that are separated by only two pages. The first, which sounds like recycled Rousseau, goes like this: “Men start off good and then the world makes them mean.” The second idea, which might have been inspired by Jean-Paul Sartre or Albert Camus, reads, “The world may be mean, but people don’t have to be, not if they refuse.”

Cora Randall refuses to be mean, though she is born a slave on a Georgia plantation and is abandoned by her own mother and abused by white men all through her childhood. She has every reason to grow up and become mean as a whip, but she maintains her essential goodness while toiling as a slave and then as a fugitive from slavery.

Anyone who took part in the Civil Rights Movement, supported the Black Panthers or who marched in the streets after George Floyd’s murder will find The Underground Railroad sobering and inspiring, and a good reason to keep on keeping on. Even if you didn’t cotton to any of those causes and organizations, you might read the book or watch the film. You’re liable to learn a lot about Blackness and whiteness in America.
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Joshua Brown :
POLITICAL CARTOON | Trump Library

Posted on July 22, 2021 by Thorne Dreyer
Previous installments are archived at
http://www.joshbrownnyc.com/ldw.htm

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THORNE DREYER :
BOOKS | Look for the book: ‘Exploring Space City!’

Posted on July 22, 2021 by Thorne Dreyer

Our much-anticipated book about Houston’s historic underground paper will be published before the end of the year.

Vendor promotion for Space City News.
Art by Kerry Fitzgerald from Exploring Space City!

By Thorne Dreyer | The Rag Blog | July 22, 2021

Exploring Space City!: Houston’s Historic Underground Newspaper. Yes, our much-anticipated book about Space City! now has a name.

This project, which has been in the works for more than two years, is about to come to fruition. The book, which will run close to 350 pages, will be released towards the end of this year. A companion to Celebrating The Rag: Austin’s Iconic Underground Paper, which was published in 2016, Exploring Space City! tells the story of Houston’s dynamic progressive tabloid that ran from June 1969 to August 1972. Both books are published by the New Journalism Project, a Texas 501(c)3 nonprofit that also produces Rag Radio and The Rag Blog.
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Harry Targ :
BOOKS | The threat to democracy continues

Posted on July 15, 2021 by Thorne Dreyer

Revisiting Nancy MacLean’s groundbreaking 2017 book, ‘Democracy in Chains.’

By Harry Targ | The Rag Blog | July 15, 2021

Nancy MacLean, in her groundbreaking 2017 book, Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America, addresses one of the central problems facing the American people, indeed majorities of people around the world: the contradiction between democracy and capitalism.

As we look to the 2022 elections, the seemingly successful efforts of state governments, with support from the court system, to suppress voting, gerrymander districts, and in other ways to squelch the voices of the people, threatens majority rule. In addition, media consolidation, the creation of “news deserts,” restricting what is to be taught in the education system from grade one through the university, all are part of the concerted threat to fully inform the public. This too is a threat to democratic participation and majority rule. Consequently, it is useful to revisit MacLean’s main arguments.
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JONAH RASKIN :
BOOKS | ‘By the Light of Burning Dreams’: Everybody
is a star

Posted on July 9, 2021 by Thorne Dreyer

The book honors ‘the triumphs of the Sixties,’ though it does not neglect ‘the tragedies.’

By Jonah Raskin | The Rag Blog | July 8, 2021

Near the end of his days as a cultural revolutionary, Abbie Hoffman explained, facetiously, that he was to blame for crime in the streets, kids acting out, and drug addiction. He was reacting to the ongoing assaults on the Sixties and the smears on his own personality.

Even before the decade of the 1960s ended, critics of the counterculture and the anti-war movement lambasted radicals, feminists, and left-wing ideologists for creating anarchy and fomenting chaos.

Over the past five decades, the culture wars — with defenders of the Sixties on one side and detractors on the other — have not abated. Americans are still scapegoating “The Sixties.”
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ALLEN YOUNG :
BOOKS | Ethel Rosenberg’s life story told in new book

Posted on June 13, 2021 by Thorne Dreyer

I found the book to be painfully sad due to the injustice and the cruelty of the execution.

By Allen Young | The Rag Blog | June 13, 2021

COLD SPRING, N.Y. — On June 19, 1953, the government of the United States of America, utilizing its much-heralded but deeply-flawed system of justice, ended the lives of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. They were put to death that day in the electric chair at Sing Sing prison on the banks of the Hudson River.

This atrocious action was, in my view, the most egregious moment in the long, dark period of mid-20th America combining the Cold War and the related anti-communist crusade often called the McCarthy era.

The Rosenberg case has been the topic of many books, and I highly recommend the newest one, Ethel Rosenberg: An American Tragedy, written by Anne Sebba, an award-winning biographer, lecturer, and former Reuters foreign correspondent. She is a senior research fellow at the Institute of Historical Research in London, where she resides. I found the book to be interesting and well-written, though painfully sad at times due to the injustice and the cruelty of the execution. Focusing primarily but not exclusively on Ethel makes this book unique.
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THORNE DREYER :
REMEMBRANCE | Texas film and theater icon Gary Chason passes at 78

Posted on June 11, 2021 by Thorne Dreyer

Events celebrating Gary’s life are planned for Austin and Houston.

Gary Chason in 1979. Portrait by Janice Rubin / The Rag Blog.

By Thorne Dreyer | The Rag Blog | June 11, 2021

  • Listen to Thorne Dreyer’s August 17, 2010 Rag Radio interview with Gary Chason, here.

Gary Chason, an iconic figure in Texas film and theater – and my dear friend and longtime colleague – passed away on Sunday, April 18, 2021, at the age of 78. There will be celebrations of Gary’s life in Austin on Saturday, June 19, 3-6 p.m at Spiderhouse, 2906 Fruth St., Austin 78705, and in Houston on Saturday, June 26, 3-6 p.m., at Rudyards, 2010 Waugh Dr., Houston 77006.

Gary Chason and I first met in 1964, when we were both studying theater at the University of Texas. We lived in adjoining apartments (with only one kitchen) and we quickly established a friendship that would endure through the decades. Gary and I were both involved in the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and the movement against the War in Vietnam and, in 1966, I helped Gary publicize the Student League for Responsible Sexual Freedom which he co-founded at UT: an organization way ahead of its time (it fought for sexual freedom for all students, regardless of sexual orientation).
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JONAH RASKIN :
BOOKS | Hilton Obenzinger bears witness to the times that have tried our souls

Posted on May 28, 2021 by Thorne Dreyer

His new book of poems is ‘Witness 2017-2020.’

By Jonah Raskin | The Rag Blog | May 28, 2021

Ezra Pound, the twentieth-century American poet, once said, “Make it new,” and “Literature is news that stays news.” He would probably read Hilton Obenzinger’s new book of poems, Witness 2017-2020 (Irene Weinberger Books; $16.95), and observe that they are timely and topical and that they also go beyond the present historical moment and aim for something called universal.

As the title suggests, Obenzinger’s poems derive from his own observations and lived experiences in the four years from 2017 to 2020, when Donald Trump cracked a whip and when many, though not all Americans, jumped.

Obenzinger didn’t jump, but he heard the crack of the whip, and in “Fear Itself,” which is dated April 28, 2020, he writes “I’m afraid of Trump.” With good reason.
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Lamar W. Hankins :
WAR | My military ambivalence

Posted on April 22, 2021 by Thorne Dreyer

I thought it was wrong to fight in the Vietnam War, and there has not been one since that I found compelling.

By Lamar W. Hankins | The Rag Blog | April 22, 2021

Ambivalence is the most accurate word I’ve found to explain my respect and disrespect for the military. I came of age during the Vietnam-era military draft that conscripted 2.2 million draftees. Of those in the military sent to Vietnam, 25% were draftees, and they accounted for over 30% of the deaths in that war. More than 2.6 million young men and nearly 7500 women were used in Vietnam in our effort to prevent the unification of that country under the leadership of Ho Chi Minh, who lived for brief periods in both the US and France, two countries that beset his land with war for over twenty years.

Researching the demographics of those who served in the military in Vietnam, I was surprised to learn that so few were draftees. At the time, it seemed that most of those going to Vietnam had been drafted. But whatever their status, I thought it was wrong to fight in that war, and there has not been one since that I found compelling, as was World War II, though not everyone agreed with that assessment. I have known conscientious objectors to WWII who did alternate service.

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JONAH RASKIN :
LITERATURE | To cancel or not to cancel Jack London

Posted on April 22, 2021 by Thorne Dreyer

Reflections on an American writer and a controversial movement.

By Jonah Raskin | The Rag Blog | April 22, 2021

Jack London’s ashes, which are buried under a rock on Sonoma Mountain in Northern California, must be calling wildly to the living. In a new movie just out, that’s titled Jack London’s Martin Eden, Russ Brissenden, one of the main characters, who also figures in the novel, Martin Eden, is an African-American. The film also features two women of color who are labor activists and socialists. In London’s 1908 book there are no Black characters or people of color. Brissenden is as white as can be.

In fact, there are no significant Black characters in any of London’s 50 books, though there are some Mexicans and some Asians. The author wanted the real world to be for whites only. He mostly populated his fictional universe with white men and white women.

London was raised by an African-American woman
and an ex-slave.

As a child, London was raised by an African-American woman and an ex-slave, named Virginia Prentice, whom he called “Mammy,” much to her annoyance. It’s likely she would have been sad, hurt, and angry if she had read London’s essays, like “The Salt of the Earth,” on the superiority of the white race, and his letters in which he expresses what sounds like racist ideas.
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Ivan Koop Kuper :
LITERATURE | Larry McMurtry: The Houston years and beyond

Posted on April 1, 2021 by Thorne Dreyer

‘I had two novel manuscripts in my drawer, which meant that I had options my fellow graduate students just didn’t have.’

Larry McMurtry at Rice.

By Ivan Koop Kuper | The Rag Blog | April 1, 2021

HOUSTON — Pulitzer Prize-winning author and Academy Award-winning screenwriter, Larry McMurty, age 84, died of heart failure the night of March 25, 2021, in his North Texas hometown of Archer City, 25 miles south of Wichita Falls.

In the fall of 1954, then-18-year-old McMurtry, right off the family ranch, arrived in Houston to begin his first semester at Rice Institute (later to be renamed Rice University). As an undergraduate, McMurtry shared a garage apartment on North Boulevard near Rice Village with roommates Douglas Milburn, who would become a German language professor at Rice, and future Houston engineer, John Haydel.

In his memoir, A Literary Life (2009), McMurtry fondly recalls how at Rice he was introduced to American-born, British “Modernist” poet, T.S. Eliot, and his “stream of consciousness” writing style used in his 1915 poem, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” This was a technique that would also be adopted by Beat-era writer Jack Kerouac, songwriter Bob Dylan, and McMurtry’s own son, singer-songwriter James McMurtry. In the 1970s, there was also a watering hole that was popular with Rice University faculty and students alike; including McMurtry, located on Lower Westheimer, in the Houston neighborhood of Montrose. Named for the epic poem, it was known to all as Prufrocks.
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Alice Embree :
THE VOTE | Voter suppression in Texas

Posted on March 25, 2021 by Thorne Dreyer

It’s all wrapped in a thin white sheet called ‘voter integrity,’ but you can call it Jim Crow Revisited.

By Alice Embree | The Rag Blog | March 25, 2021

AUSTIN — Texas is one of the hardest states to vote in in the country, and the Texas Legislature is about to double down on difficult. Bills marked as priority by Governor Abbott have been filed in the Texas Senate (SB7) and House (HB6) and scheduled for hearings.

Rep. Briscoe Cain says his bill, HB6, is intended to protect the “purity of the ballot.” That already sounds like the dystopian world of The Handmaid’s Tale, but wait, it gets worse. The legislation increases criminal penalties and creates new offenses. It’s all wrapped in a thin white sheet called “voter integrity,” but you can call it Jim Crow Revisited.
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