Penniless and nearing thirty circa 1990, the one ace up my sleeve was that I “worked with Grossman.” Grossman. The Brandeis English department’s quite literal resident “genius” poet and pedagogue. In August 1989, Allen R. Grossman had in fact received a John D. and Catherine T. Mac Arthur “Genius” Grant. Needless to say, I owned no mutual funds back then, but Grossman’s stock was on the rise when he was my doctoral adviser.
Culturewatch
The Politics of Forbearance: Shirley Sherrod in Our Time
This story was originally published here at “The 19th.”
A decade after she was forced to resign as Georgia state director of rural development for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Shirley Sherrod says she “holds no ill will” towards Agriculture secretary nominee Tom Vilsack, who played a key role in her resignation. She hopes that if Vilsack is confirmed, he will return to the role — which he held under the Obama administration — with a focus on Black farmers.
Addio Alle Armi
Bruce Jackson wrote this reflection on an Italian cultural festival, lessons of Attica and a perfect night in Piacenza a few years ago, but it’s still on time.
We Are All One
If not that, two.
Reese Pieces
I watched Legally Blonde (2001) for the first time last night. I have become interested in Reese Witherspoon. The turning point of the story is a piece of sexual harassment, and I found it moving.
Was Spencer Haywood Good For Business?
The Spenser Haywood Rule: Battles, Basketball, and the Making of an American Iconoclast, Mark J. Spears & Gary Washburn, 2020.
Christmas and the Multiplication of Light
Fr. Rick Frechette is a medical doctor and Catholic priest who has been working in Haiti for a more than a generation. He wrote the following epistle to his family and supporters last Sunday, December 20th, the day before the Winter Solstice.
“One Fast Move or I’m Gone”: Kerouac and Big Sur
Prose by Zalokar (AKA David Golding) (x2), Bob Levin, Richard Meltzer, Aram Saroyan, and Theodore Putala prompted by Jack Kerouac’s Big Sur and the documentary, One Fast Move or I’m Gone, about the stretch in Kerouac’s life chronicled in that novel. You can watch One Fast Move for free online here. (H/t Theodore Putala.)
Gentlemen[1] (Author Keeps Punching)
The basement had bare concrete floor. bare plywood walls. Ceiling beams lay exposed. Pipes showed here and wires there. Storage cartons rimmed the perimeter, reliquaries for the bones of books Shemp’d authored. Dust a more likely outcome than university archive.
Corso’s Shirt (Poverty & Poetry)
What follows is a brief excerpt from Robert Creeley on the Poet’s Work, in conversation with & photographs by Bruce Jackson–a new book documenting a Q&A between Jackson and Creeley that took place in 2001. In the passage below, Jackson’s prompts are bolded.
Feelings of a Prisoner
The author wrote this poem when he was detained in Tacoma ICE Processing Center. He has since been deported to Jalisco in Mexico. His poem is translated by David Golding.
True Crime
Just now at the age of 76, for the first time in my life, I was the victim of a crime. It was done largely over the internet, through emails, texts, and digital bank transfers, and I never laid eyes on the perpetrator, or spoke with her over the phone, or knew her address.
The Bag I’m In
Things being as they were, when it became clear COVID would close the gym, I started hunting something new to punch. A heavy bag, I should say, besides being a fit way for any sentient being to respond to the world, aids your average septuagenarian’s anaerobic condition, hand-eye co-ordination, and balance – so’s he don’t fall on his nose when going down the hall for the night squirt.
The Life of Little Richard and Deaths of Despair (A Review of Six Reports on the American Grind)
Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism, Anne Case and Angus Deaton, 2020.
The Meritocracy Trap, Daniel Markovitz, 2019.
On the Clock, Emily Guendelsberger, 2019.
A Collective Bargain, Jane McAlevey, 2020.
the case for A JOB GUARANTEE, Pavlina Tcherneva, 2020.
A Brief History of Fascist Lies, Federico Finchelstein, 2020.
On Diversity and Tolerance: James Fitzjames Stephen vs John Stuart Mill
First of the Month readers might not warm to a Victorian criminal lawyer and judge who believed that law and morals were inseparably linked and for whom capital punishment was the bedrock of an effective system of justice. Offenders would emerge from the court presided over by James Fitzjames Stephen (1829-94) with their character in shreds and facing either a long and harsh period of incarceration, or the gallows. The judge, Stephen believed, was merely the servant of the public’s sense of righteous indignation, and was duty bound not to disappoint.
However, law enforcement was only the day job for Stephen; he doubled as a prolific and combative writer who waded into every controversy – political, literary, theological, and scientific – that unsettled his age. He has recently featured in Russell Jacoby’s perceptive book, On diversity: the eclipse of the individual in a global age, as the robust critic of John Stuart Mill.
Grazing with the Goats
So much was unique about the Lakers’ championship run in this year of the bubble, the suspension of play, the interpenetration of NBA business and progressive political action, the back-to-back erasures of 3-1 series leads by the inspired Denver Nuggets. So much that we might fail to appreciate the degree to which we were witnessing the majestic raising of the bar for dominant duos in league history, just as the Lakers’ 16-5 playoff record proved their greatness.