Obscure Languages Are Important, Too

The National Enquirer published an article called "Unspeakable Tax Waste" (August 6, 1985) that complained that the Department of Education was wasting U. S. tax dollars providing colleges and universities with funding to teach students "obscure foreign languages" such as "Dinka, which is spoken in the Sudan" and "Telugu, a language of southern India."

To me, this attitude is shortsighted as well as downright ignorant. It might even be called racist.

Language is the gateway to understanding and appreciating other cultures. And since the United States has diplomatic as well as other ties to countries around the world, it makes sense to train people to speak a variety of languages, no matter how obscure. Certainly the people who speak these "obscure languages" don't think of them as unimportant.

The newspaper amNew York (now called amMetro New York) cited in a  November 24, 2014 article the work of Ellen Bialystok, a neuroscientist, on the benefits of bilingual education. She "found that people who are bilingual tend to maintain better cognitive functioning with age and, " continued the newspaper, "are even believed to have delayed onset in Alzheimer's symptoms after diagnosis."

Also the "obscure languages" that the National Enquirer writer disparaged could very well be the source of new words, useful words in English, a language that has adopted many words from other languages.

The Man Who Coined The Word "Gig"

During the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, when millions of people nationwide were laid off their jobs and had to apply for unemployment benefits from the state and federal governments, there was talk of including people who were part of the gig economy. These individuals, called gig workers, ordinarily didn't qualify for unemployment, because they were not on anyone's payroll. They were freelancers, independent contractors. Due to the unusual circumstances brought on by the pandemic, they got to collect unemployment checks.

That brings me to the origin of the word "gig." While reading a book called Footnotes: The Black Artists Who Rewrote the Rules of the Great White Way by Caseen Gaines (Sourcebooks, 2021), I learned where the word came from. It's "a term," writes Gaines, an award-winning New Jersey-based author and journalist, "[African-American band leader James Reese] Europe coined [in the late nineteen-teens] to describe a one-night performance, which quickly caught on in the jazz community."

Now we know who should receive credit for creating "gig," a word that has become applicable to people both inside and outside of show business.

A TV Script About Aphra Behn, Britain's First Female Playwright

The first time I encountered the name Aphra Behn (1640-1689), Britain's first female playwright, was in a book one of my aunts gave me more than fifty years ago. The book is called English Literature: From the Beginnings to the End of the Eighteenth Century, Volume One by Bernard D. N. Grebanier (Barron's Educational Series, Revised Edition, 1959). (Grebanier was a professor of English Literature at Brooklyn College, in New York City.) I still have the book, although it's no longer in excellent condition, the result of numerous readings.

What brought the book to mind was an article I saw on the website Deadline.com about the unproduced film and TV scripts selected for the Brit List, a list, reported the website, "compiled each year from recommendations by British production companies, talent agencies, sales companies, financiers, distributors and broadcasters."

Out of nearly 300 scripts submitted, 18 were selected. Among those selected was the TV historical drama script Aphra by Jessica Lambert (it received eleven recommendations; a minimum of seven recommendations was needed to be included on the list). 

In the summary, Aphra Behn is described as "a bisexual libertine who lived an incredible double life as a 17th century spy." Professor Grebanier, with obvious distaste and disapproval, called Behn "the author of many novels, plays and poems, nearly all astoundingly indecent for a woman." 

I hope Aphra gets made into a television film real soon. From its description, it sounds like a fascinating script about a fascinating woman.

The New York Public Library Eliminates Overdue Fines

Better Late Than Never by Jenn McKinlay (Berkley Prime Crime, 2016), is part of her series called Library Lover's Mysteries, featuring Lindsey Norris, a young woman who is director of the public library in Briar Creek, a small town on the Connecticut shore.

The Briar Creek Public Library is holding its first annual fine amnesty day event, which brings a flood of overdue books, including one that's twenty years overdue and was checked out by a popular high school  English teacher around the time of her death. The book, after twenty years, is in pristine condition. Was the killer responsible for returning the book? Lindsey, who's also an amateur sleuth, intends to find out.

In the meantime, Ms. Cole, "an old-school librarian," who is "nicknamed 'the lemon' because of her puckered disposition," fervently disapproves of the fine amnesty day.

Ms. Cole comes across to Lindsey as "a punitive sort who enjoyed using fines and shushing to curb their patrons' naughty behavior."

I can only imagine how Ms. Cole, the "old-school librarian," would react to the New York Public Library's recent decision to follow other library systems by doing away with overdue fines altogether. The library felt the fines were burdensome to its low-income patrons and prevented them from adequately using the library and its many services.

Bibliopolitan, A Definition

Sooner or later someone was going to ask me about my Twitter handle--@bibliopolitan. That someone is Jill Davis, who recently became one of my Facebook friends. According to her Facebook profile, Jill lives in Manhattan and is a full-time missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (also known as the Mormons).

In an online message to me, Jill wanted to know what a bibliopolitan was. I explained that "A bibliopolitan is my word for someone whose love of books and literature covers a wide range of topics and genres."

Her response was "I love that!"

Remembering Archivist Thomas Wirth (1938-2014)

I recently read on science fiction writer Samuel Delany's Facebook page that Thomas Wirth, who was an independent scholar, book collector, and publisher, had died. His death occurred in October 2014, at the age of 76.

The first and only time I ever saw Wirth in person was in 1990 when he did a talk at the now-defunct Home to Harlem gift shop on 125th Street in Harlem. It was run by Kevin  McGruder, who later became an author as well as a historian and professor.

Wirth's talk focused on Fire!!, a short-lived magazine that Richard Bruce Nugent collaborated on with fellow writers Langston Hughes and Wallace Thurman in 1926, and which Wirth reprinted. (Wirth became friends with Nugent and later was appointed the executor of Nugent's literary estate.)

I mentioned this bit of Harlem Renaissance history in my article about Nugent for In the Life, the 1986 anthology edited by Joseph Beam.

Wirth, it should be noted, is responsible for editing a collection of Nugent's writings called Gay Rebel of the Harlem Renaissance (Duke University Press, 2002) and for the publication of Gentleman Jigger, Nugent's novel, written during the days of the Harlem Renaissance (Da Capo Press, 2008).

From Wirth's online obituary, I learned that he "selected historian Kevin McGruder to assume ownership and administration of The Fire!! Press."

In the seven years since Wirth's death, I haven't seen or heard anything about publications from this press. Let's hope there will be very soon.

Add A Pinch Of Salt And Pepper. And A Teaspoon Of Ammonia?

The novelist Miriam Toews was asked in the New York Times Book Review's "By the Book" Q &  A feature (October 3, 2021) what books she was embarrassed to admit she had not read. Her response: " 'The Mennonite Treasury,' a cookbook my Aunt Mary gave me. A lot of the recipes call for ammonia. For Mennonites its second in importance to the Bible."

If she knew that the recipes called for ammonia as an  ingredient, it's safe to assume she has read some of the cookbook. 

The thing that caught my attention was the use of ammonia in cooking. Anyone who has ever used it for laundry or household cleaning knows it has an overpowering smell. You can only imagine how bad it must taste. How anyone can put ammonia in a recipe and live to tell the tale is a complete mystery.

I would love to contact Miriam Toews about adding this unusual ingredient to a recipe.

Samuel Delany On The Importance Of Beauty

Science fiction writer Samuel R. Delany in a post on his Facebook page (September 20, 2021 @ 6:36 am) wrote what I think is a very wise comment, one that deserves to be printed, placed in a picture frame, and hung in a prominent spot.

"Beauty in the world," wrote Delany, "is supported because we have all experienced things that were not beautiful and even painful, which is why what is beautiful is so valuable."

Let's Hope For An Al Jarreau Biography

I recently joined a Facebook group devoted to the jazz singer Al Jarreau, who died in 2017. It's called the Al Jarreau Family Group and has more than 32,000 members who post comments, photos, album cover art, videos, and anything else that's Al Jarreau-related.

I began listening to Jarreau in the mid-seventies when I bought his album Glow, which, according to Wikipedia, was his second album. It was released in 1976. I believe I bought the album at a Discomat chain store in the Times Square area. From that point on, I became an Al Jarreau fan.

Because there are so many people who cherish his singing talent, I posted on the site a question: "Does anyone know if there is a biography of Al Jarreau in the works? Or maybe a scrapbook publication or a special magazine issue about him?"

A day later, Shannon West, who publishes a website called jazzseries.com/wordpress, responded: "The posts he did over the years when he was doing the diary/journal/blog narrative on his website gave such wonderful insight into what he was doing at the time--traveling, recording, touring, etc.--and he writes narrative as expressively as he writes songs. I wish they could dig up the archives and compile them....Nobody could write Al better than Al so my vote is to edit and release the 15 years or so of archival posts."

I think that would be a wonderful idea including photos, song lyrics, diary entries, correspondence, etc. That could all be part of a special collectors issue magazine. On the cover could be photographer Richard Avedon's black-and-white photo of Jarreau from the front cover of his 1980 album This Time. I bet the issue would sell out immediately and require several reprintings.

Dr. Dre's Mom's Long Road Out Of Compton

It was about twelve years ago when I came across a copy of Verna Griffin's memoir, Long Road Outta Compton: Dr. Dre's Mom on Family, Fame, and Terrible Tragedy (Da Capo Press, 2008). Browsing through the book in the library, I learned she was born in the same year as me (she's three months older) and attended the same high school, Centennial, in Compton, California. I'm sure we were classmates in some of the classes but I don't remember her. I looked for her picture in a yearbook, but I was unable to find it. She may have dropped out due to giving birth to Dr. Dre at age 16 in 1965.

Now I want to track that book down, probably at New York's famous Strand Bookstore. They are sure to have copies in stock. When I get it, I want to read it from cover to cover. Perhaps I can gain some insights into how she managed to rise above the gangs and street violence of Compton and successfully raise a son who is rich and famous and who has helped put the city on the map as well as raise ten million dollars to build a performing arts high school in Compton.

Gay Uncle Patrick To The Rescue

Among the "10 Best Books of May" selected by the book reviewers at the Christian Science Monitor Weekly magazine (May 31, 2021 issue) is The Guncle by Steven Rowley (Penguin Random House). The novel, says the magazine, is "about a [gay] sit-com star who becomes the reluctant--and unconventional--caretaker of his niece and nephew," who call him Gay Uncle Patrick or GUP. As a result of him taking them "into his Palm Springs home," states The Hollywood Reporter (June 2, 2021) he "introduc[es] them to his outsize life and unique wisdom and bring[s] about healing for all three."

According to Variety (June 2, 2021), the movie studio Lionsgate has acquired the film rights to The Guncle, with Rowley executive producing as well as writing the screen adaptation.

The book, sure to be a nominee for a Lambda Literary Award next year, sounds like a fun read. I'm eager to get my hands on a copy.

Writer Ralph Ellison, Monstrous?

I learned a couple of startling things about the African-American author Ralph Ellison (1913-1994) in a "By the Book" Q & A interview in the New York Times Book Review (July 25, 2021).

The interviewee, Eddie S. Glaude Jr., a professor at Princeton and the author of Begin Again: James Baldwin's America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own (Crown, 2020), had this to say about Ellison: "I loved Ralph Ellison....But after reading Arnold Rampersad's biography of Ellison, I despised the man. The way he treated his mother, his betrayal of [writer] Albert Murray--monstrous."

I own two review copies of Ralph Ellison: A Biography by Arnold Rampersad (Knopf, 2007). I never got around to reading the book. After seeing that quote from Glaude, I intend to start reading it soon.

Terror In The Sky

The best book trailer that I've seen is the one for Falling (Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster), a thriller by T.J. Newman. It's like watching a mini movie.

I first saw it at a Target store in Harlem on their giant screen near the electronics department. I bought the book the same day I saw the trailer. The trailer didn't influence me because I was planning to buy the book anyway.

I knew I wanted to read it when I read an article about the author, a former flight attendant, and her "what if" scenario on Los Angeles magazine's website. "What would a pilot do," asked the article, "if someone took his family hostage and demanded he crash the plane to save them?"

I wanted to find out and so far (at this writing, I am 85 pages from the end), the book is a real roller coaster ride, or maybe I should say, a turbulent ride, living up to the media hype.

I want to finish it before the movie version comes out which will probably be a year or a year and a half from now. It will be interesting to see how close the movie follows the book.

I read the brief review of Falling in the New York Times Book Review (July 18, 2021) in which the reviewer points to the book's "over-the-topness." But that's why people read thrillers in the first place. These books keep the reader on the edge of their seat, biting their fingernails as a result of their "over-the-topness." The movie will probably be more so.

One thing is for sure, Falling is not a book you'd want to read while flying; it's too scary.

Karmic Justice

The June 11, 2021 issue of The Week magazine published this item: "Good week for: karma, after a boatful of Memorial Day revelers on Washington state's Moses Lake shouted slurs and gave the finger to another boat that was flying Gay Pride flags. Minutes later, the harassers' boat exploded, and they swam to the other boat to be rescued while shouting 'Help us!'"

This item would make an excellent basis for a short story or film short.

A Novel About The Internment Of Japanese-Canadians During WWII

I knew about the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II. What I didn't know was that the same thing occurred in Canada. While skimming through the Canadian Oxford Dictionary, I came across the name Joy Nozomi Kogawa, a Japanese-Canadian poet and novelist, born in 1935, who wrote a novel called Obasan, published in 1981.

Wikipedia describes Obasan as a book that "chronicles Canada's internment and persecution of its citizens of Japanese descent during the Second World War" and is told "from the perspective of a young child." Obasan, continues the Wikipedia article, "is often required reading for university English courses on Canadian Literature."

I plan to put Obasan on my Must-Read list.

George Stinney Was Executed By South Carolina At Age 14

This story has haunted me ever since I saw it mentioned on the front page of The West Side Spirit (June 10-16, 2021, "Eli's Final Chapter"). In 1944, 14-year-old George Stinney, an African-American, was put to death by the State of South Carolina, writes Ben Krull, "accused of murdering two white girls, ages seven and 11." After what Krull calls a "slipshod one-day trial," Stinney was convicted and sentenced to die in the electric chair "based on flimsy, circumstantial evidence." The death sentence was carried out within three months, which did not give Stinney a chance for a retrial.

This case is the subject of a book by the late Eli Faber called The Child in the Electric Chair: The Execution of George Junius Stinney Jr. and the Making of a Tragedy in the American South. Faber was a retired professor of history at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City. The book was published on June 25, 2021 by the University of South Carolina Press.

This is the first time I ever heard of a person so young going to the electric chair. It should come as no surprise that in a Southern state like South Carolina, the life of a black person, adult or child, had no value.

The Child in the Electric Chair deserves to be read. It also deserves to be adapted into a major motion picture, showing the cruelty, injustice, and bloodthirstiness of the Jim Crow South. This book should give advocates of the death penalty an opportunity to reconsider its use and to acknowledge the barbarism of the death penalty.

Hubert Delany, Science Fiction Writer Samuel Delany's Uncle, Needs A Biography Written About Him

Stephen L. Carter's fascinating biography of his grandmother Eunice Hunton Carter (1899-1970), Invisible: The Forgotten Story of the Black Woman Lawyer Who Took Down America's Most Powerful Mobster (Henry Holt, 2018), mentions another fascinating figure, Hubert Delany.

I'm hoping someone will write a book or make a documentary film about Delany (1901-1990) who, writes Carter, "was the Negro lawyer who was the GOP candidate in the November 1929 special election for Harlem's seat in the House of Representatives." He lost that election due to the unscrupulous, racist antics of Tammany Hall Democrats.

A graduate of the New York University Law School, Delany went on to become an assistant U.S. Attorney specializing in white-collar crime.

His sisters were Sadie and Bessie Delany, who wrote the famous memoir, Having Our Say. His nephew is the science fiction writer Samuel R. Delany.

Until a book about Hubert Delany is written, I'll have to be content with whatever information can be had about him in his sisters's memoir.

Note: The mobster referred to in the subtitle of Carter's book is Charles "Lucky" Luciano.

I sent Samuel Delany a message on Facebook stating that his uncle deserved a full-length biography. He agreed with me. I asked him if he had any information about his uncle not mentioned in the Carter book. Here is what he wrote on June 20, 2021:

"Characters based on both my dad and Uncle Hubert are the focus of much of the first short novel in 'Atlantis:Three Tales.' Certainly he was the biggest influence-for-good on my father. Probably on me, too. At least one scholar was pretty convinced he was gay.

"From another older cousin, dead a few years ago, I had confirmation of a long-term-close friendship (and possibly affair) with a famous black singer who was also his client. There's a bit of not-talked-about stuff in my report of his funeral in 'Letters from Amherst.' But I'd be curious to know more myself...

"He was the paternal uncle closest to me and my father, followed by Uncle Hap."

Must-See Television Shows

Once in a while a show will come on that's must-see TV. For me, it was Dallas in the 1970s and '80s; Lou Grant in the '70s, a series about reporters at a Los Angeles daily newspaper; City of Angels, a 2000 series set in an urban hospital, with a mostly African-American cast (it lasted two seasons); and Smash (2012-2013) which concerned itself with the behind-the-scenes drama of  mounting a Broadway musical about Marilyn Monroe called Bombshell. Other shows in the must-see category are Monk, Mad Men, and the reality shows Queer Eye for the Straight Guy (the original version) and Shark Tank.

Lately, it's been the weekly night time soap opera Saints & Sinners on the Bounce channel. When I began watching it last year, I thought it was a new series. Consulting the entertainment website IMDb, I learned it debuted in 2016.

Set in a Georgia town called Cypress, the mostly African-American characters are every bit as corrupt, conniving, backstabbing, adulterous, and homicidal as any characters in a white night time or daytime soap. And each week I'm glued to my TV set eager to find out what happens next.

I'm not sure if Saints & Sinners is a candidate for an NAACP Image Award. After all it does depict African-American characters unfavorably. But let's face it, black people in real life are not angels. And there are people in the black community who are corrupt, ruthless, greedy, and murderous. In other words, not nice people. It's foolish to pretend that such people don't exist among us. In fact, it's good to see a show about African-Americans that's not a clown show, that shows us as being human, warts and all, like every other ethnic group in America.

Cops Who Support Derek Chauvin Are Chauvinists

Derek Chauvin, the white former Minneapolis police officer who was convicted of murdering George Floyd by pressing his knee on Floyd's neck for nine minutes and twenty-nine seconds, cutting off his air supply, lived up to his surname.

The Canadian Oxford Dictionary (Second Edition, 2004) defines the word "chauvinism" as "prejudice against or lack of consideration for those of a different sex, class, nationality, culture, etc."

It was stated by a black police official on a radio broadcast that there are police officers across the country who side with Chauvin and believe he did the right thing. Those officers should be called Chauvinists.

Using The Word "Unhoused" Instead Of "Homeless" Removes Stigma And Prejudice

Listening to a newscast on WNYC-AM, a public radio station in New York, the announcer used the word "unhoused" in referring to those lacking a place to call home. It's a reasonable substitute for "homeless." The last syllable of that word ("less") carries with it judgment, stigma, shame. It makes people feel that they are less than others.Whereas "unhoused" has a more sympathetic feeling and sound to it.

The word "homeless" conjures up images of people who wound up that way because of some character flaw, whether true or not.

The ways people lose their shelter are various and not always their fault such as a fire, illness, unemployment, or an unscrupulous landlord.

By referring to those unlucky to be without a home as "unhoused" allows them to be treated with civility, respect, humaneness, and dignity.

The Multi-Talented Stacey Abrams

The first time I heard of Stacey Abrams was when she was running for governor of Georgia in 2018. At the time I was working at a call center in Midtown Manhattan that specialized in political surveys. (We were polling people in Georgia regarding their choice for the governorship.)

The only thing I knew about Abrams was that she was a political candidate and a voting-rights activist.

Last Sunday (May 9, 2021), the New York Times had two articles about her: a Q &A interview in the Book Review and a lengthy profile in the Arts & Leisure section.

To my pleasant surprise there is more to Stacey Abrams than I thought. She is a novelist (writing romance novels under a pseudonym) as well as an avid, eclectic reader (among the authors she has read are David Halberstam, Canadian novelist Robertson Davies, and Charlotte Bronte).

Her latest novel, a thriller called While Justice Sleeps,was recently published by Doubleday. This book, like two previous works of nonfiction, appears under her own name.

When asked by the New York Times Book Review how she organized her books, she responded, "Fiction on one side of the shelves (poetry, classics, general fiction, romance, thrillers, comic books, etc.) and nonfiction on the other side (political biography, general biography, history, science, social science and so on)."

What especially caught my attention was her classification of poetry as "fiction." The New York Times Book Review placed The Hill We Climb by the young poet Amanda Gorman (who read it at President Biden's inauguration) in the "fiction" category; whereas Publishers Weekly classifies it as "nonfiction." The late poet Mary Oliver who wrote poems about her life and the natural world would probably scoff at her work being called "fiction."
 

Hunting A Serial Killer In 1920s Harlem

I love the Harlem Renaissance and I also love mystery novels. When those two loves are combined, I am overjoyed.

So you can imagine how I felt when I read in Publishers Weekly (April 19, 2021) that a mystery novel set in Harlem in 1926 was scheduled for publication in June.

In a sidebar interview, Nekesa Afia, author of Dead Dead Girls: A Harlem Renaissance Mystery (Berkley Prime Crime), stated that she "love[s] the Harlem Renaissance" because "it was this period of growth, and art, and music, and fashion."

Afia continued: "That post-WWI generation had such brilliance and creativity, and they were so alive and fun even though they had just gone through a war, and the world was a mess."

Dead Dead Girls is Afia's debut novel, the first in a series. Its protagonist, Louise Lloyd, a showgirl and waitress--who is black and lesbian--helps the police track down a serial killer of black girls.

The accompanying review notes that Afia "couples tender relationships with strong senses of era and place." (Will Harlem Renaissance figures like Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Countee Cullen, and Claude McKay make a cameo appearance?)

If Dead Dead Girls is as interesting as it sounds, I can't wait to read it. And I will definitely be looking forward to other books in this new series.

Police Gunfire Is Not A Good Response To Mental Illness

In April of 2020, there was a report broadcast on New York's WCBS Newsradio Eight-Eighty about a man who told police he had been diagnosed with COVID-19. After revealing that information, he came at them with a knife, an apparent attempt at suicide by cop. He was shot twice in the torso.

Couldn't the cops have found a better way to subdue this man who was obviously experiencing mental distress? Why weren't less lethal alternatives used such as a taser, pepper spray, stun grenades, a bean bag shooter, rubber bullets, or some kind of fishermen's net?

Does Conversion Therapy Change Only Gays?

The thing about conversion therapy that people don't seem to acknowledge is that if it's possible to change someone from being gay or bisexual to being heterosexual, wouldn't reverse conversion therapy apply to straight people? I don't think conversion therapy, if it's possible, is a one-way street. Just a thought.

The Ideal Reading Experience For CNN's Don Lemon

Don Lemon, the CNN host, was asked in the New York Times Book Review's "By the Book" Q & A column (March 21, 2021), to describe the "ideal reading experience (when, where, what, how)."

His answer sounds like something that would appeal to me: "The ideal reading experience is a Sunday afternoon in fall or winter with PJs, fur-lined slippers, a roaring wood-burning fireplace, WBGO Jazz 88 playing quietly in the background with a good book in hand and the Sunday New York Times in reach."

Lemon is later asked to name three writers, alive or dead, he would invite to a literary dinner party: "Obvious answer: [James] Baldwin, [Toni] Morrison, and [Truman] Capote."

A fascinating choice of writers. However, he would have to be careful what he told Capote. Anything said in confidence might end up in a short story or article. I would suggest Lemon read a biographical novel called The Swans of Fifth Avenue by Melanie Benjamin (Delacorte Press, 2016). It's about Babe Paley (the wife of broadcasting mogul William Paley) and her wealthy friends who befriended Capote and revealed their secrets to him; they later felt betrayed by Capote when those secrets were published in an Esquire article he wrote. That ended those friendships and Capote never recovered from those losses.

Kooky Conservatives

One of my co-workers (a staunch conservative and conspiracy theorist) at a call center that specialized in political surveys sent me a text message that said: " See [Matt] DRUDGE on Alex Jones sites for [John] PODESTA* doing Satanic ritual." (Sent to me on November 4, 2016.)

That brought to mind a quote from conservative columnist/Firing Line host/National Review publisher and founder William F. Buckley, Jr. In a 1962 letter to William Loeb, the publisher of the Manchester Union Leader in New Hampshire, Buckley wrote: "Why is it our side [that] is afflicted with all the loonies?" (From Buckley: William F. Buckley, Jr. and the Rise of American Conservatism by Carl T. Bogus, Bloomsbury Press, 2011.)

Bogus, a liberal, points out on the same page that "...not all conservatives were dull-witted or dysfunctional, but conservative causes attracted far more than their fair share of kooks and bigots."

Judging by the Trump era, that's still true.

*John Podesta (born January 8, 1949), former chairman of Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign.

A Translator's Literary Advice

Margaret Jull Costa is described by the New York Times Book Review's "By the Book" interview column (March 7, 2021) as a "prolific translator" of Spanish- and Portuguese-language literature.

In the interview she was asked what book she would recommend be read by everyone before age 21. Her response: "I would say probably read everything you can lay your hands on, then reread it when you're 40 or older to find out whether it was any good and, if so, what it was really about. But," she continued, "if I had to choose one it would be The Great Gatsby, just to see what it's possible to do with the English language."

If I had to choose one book to reread it would probably be A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith. I first read it when I was 11 or 12. I can still remember certain scenes from it: preadolescent Francie Nolan reading a book on the fire escape; her mother on her hands and knees scrubbing the wood floors; her father's corpse in repose in a casket in the apartment.

Magazines For Writers Are Finally Acknowledging Writers Of Color

From the 1970s to the early 2000s, when I subscribed to Writer's Digest magazine, the only black writer I can remember seeing on the cover was Alex Haley of Roots fame. In all that time I never saw any articles about black writers or other writers of color in its pages. It was as if  other writers of color like John A. Williams, Amy Tan, Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, and Ernest Gaines didn't exist.

I recently resumed my subscription to Writer's Digest (no longer a monthly; it is now published every two months). I was delighted to see writers of color like Zadie Smith and Viet Thanh Nguyen featured as well as an article about Patrice Caldwell, a young black literary agent.

Finally, Writer's Digest and other writing magazines have ceased ignoring writers, editors, and literary agents of color in their pages.

Rupert Murdoch's New York Compost

People today know the New York Post as a conservative tabloid owned by Rupert Murdoch, the media mogul.

But in the 1940s, '50s, '60s, and '70s, the Post, under the ownership of Dorothy Schiff, was very liberal and published liberal names such as Pete Hamill, Harriet Van Horne, Max Lerner, Murray Kempton, and James A. Wechsler, the editorial page editor. (Ms. Schiff sold the paper to Rupert Murdoch sometime in the mid-1970s.)

According to Winchell (Doubleday), Bob Thomas's 1971 biography of Walter Winchell, the once powerful and controversial columnist and broadcaster (as well as the narrator for the TV crime drama The Untouchables), referred to the Post as "the New York Compost."

Today that label might be considered by the paper's left-wing detractors as a more suitable description of its current content and political views.

Proofreading Cloris Leachman's Autobiography

Among the last books I proofread at Kensington Books was actress Cloris Leachman's autobiography called Cloris, which was actually ghostwritten by her husband, George Englund, who predeceased her. (Ms. Leachman recently died at age 94.) It was the first and only celebrity autobiography I ever proofread.

She was in her 80s at the time (this would be around late 2008 or early 2009) and I guess because of her age, she misremembered certain things. Whenever there was a factual error, I pointed it out on the galley proof. The one error I remember correcting was the one where she said she replaced June Lockhart as the mother on the television series Lassie. Actually, it was the other way around, it was Lockhart who replaced her.

While visiting the Countee Cullen branch of the New York Public Library in Harlem, about two or three years later, I found a copy of Cloris on the shelf in the Biography section. Skimming through the book, I couldn't find that particular error. Maybe they deleted it from the finished book. Or maybe the correction was there and I couldn't find it among the thousands of words because I couldn't remember the page it appeared on. Unfortunately, I neglected to photocopy those pages for future reference. Anyway, I might try to track the book down and do a careful page by page search for that correction.

Mislabeling Richard Wright's Bigger Thomas

Here is how Claudia Roth Pierpont described Richard Wright's Native Son protagonist, the ill-fated Bigger Thomas, in an essay on James Baldwin--"A Negro rapist and murderer" who "raped and murdered a white woman." (The essay appears in her book, American Rhapsody: Writers, Musicians, Movie Stars, and One Great Building (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2016.)

Anyone who has ever read Native Son knows that Bigger Thomas murdered but did not rape the daughter of his white employer. (He also killed his girlfriend.) In fact, the murder of the daughter was unintentional, caused by fear rather than malice. (He later incinerates the body to cover up the killing.)

I would advise Ms. Pierpont to re-read the book.

Essex Hemphill Was Not A Fiery Poet

A character in Felice Picano's novel,The Book of Lies (Alyson Books, 1999), which is loosely based on the members of a white gay male literary group called the Violet Quill*, states that in the 1980s "Essex Hemphill [the late black poet] had come up from DC" to do a reading at the Gay Community Center in New York and that "Essex was still doing his fire and brimstone act." 

The Essex Hemphill I saw at poetry readings in New York and Philadelphia wasn't doing a "fire and brimstone act." Picano's characterization of Essex does him a disservice. It makes Essex sound like some kind of demagogue. That approach would have turned off many black gay men. Instead, his eloquent, healing words boosted the morale and self-esteem of black gay men, thereby making him the foremost black gay poet in America, whose work has been widely anthologized and celebrated.

*Note: Felice Picano was a Violet Quill member.

Donald Trump, America's Savior?

Last November, President Donald J. Trump tweeted: "I am the candidate of...hard-working, law-abiding patriots of every race, religion and creed!"

How law-abiding and patriotic were those who stormed the Capitol building in D.C. on Wednesday, January 6, 2021 when the Congress was in the process of counting and finalizing the Electoral College votes?

The right-wing, Pro-Trump, Edmond,Oklahoma-based religious magazine The Philadelphia Trumpet declared, in a January 2021 article by Stephen Flurry ("The Radical Left's Ongoing Coup"), that "The radical left is making a coordinated, sustained, powerful, illegal, immoral effort to seize power over the United States!"

That description more accurately fits those thousands of white nationalists who terrorized and threatened elected officials and vandalized government property. All of this happened because they were unhappy with the 2020 presidential victory of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris and felt that the election was stolen from Trump.

"Donald Trump," writes Gerald Flurry, the editor-in-chief of The Philadelphia Trumpet and writer Stephen Flurry's father, "certainly has his problems, and God sees those--but He chose him as a SAVIOR, temporarily, for America!" (Cover story, "Why Donald Trump Will Remain America's President," The Philadelphia Trumpet, January 2021.)

Mary Trump, Donald Trump's niece, would scoff at that idea. In her book, Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man (Simon & Schuster, 2020), she describes her uncle's mindset--"the person with the power...got to decide what was right and wrong. Anything that helped you maintain power was by definition right, even if it wasn't always fair." Also, she writes,Trump believes that you must "be tough at all costs, lying is okay, admitting you're wrong or apologizing is weakness."

Does any of that make you feel that Donald Trump is America's savior?