Bolton
Memoir Settles Scores, Dishes Dirt, Ignores Kosovo and Uganda
Byline:
Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at the UN: Book Review
UNITED NATIONS,
October 30 -- Exception must be made for the genre of tell-all books. If one
approaches from the beginning with politics, it is an unfair assessment of
whether and how fairly all is told. Former U.S. Ambassador to the UN John
Bolton's grandiosely titled "Surrender Is Not an Option" is a surprisingly
detailed glimpse inside the Security Council, the U.S. State Department, and
John Bolton's personality. Criticism of those with different policy views, like
the still-ascendant
Nick Burns
(who Bolton pegs as a "careerist" friend of Democrat Richard Holbrooke), is par
for the course in a political memoir.
But Bolton takes seemingly gratuitous swipes at diplomats most of his readers
have probably never heard of. Bolton includes a description of the United
Kingdom's deputy permanent representative Adam Thomson as "'Harry Potter'
because of his resemblance to the character from the series of children's
books... I could never look at or listen to Thomson without immediately thinking
of Harry and all this little friends." Pg. 201. Thomson's boss Emyr Jones Parry
fares worse, being called "limp-wristed" and arrogant. Before he retired in
2006, Jones Parry speculated with reporters on how he would be treated in
Bolton's memoir. When Inner City Press asked if Jones Parry himself would put
pen to paper, he replied that he didn't like tell-alls. Perhaps he'll have time
for a book review.
Swinging
lower, Bolton writes of one of the candidates in 2006 for Secretary-General,
Thailand's Surakiart Sathirathai as "'a rich man's son' who, according to local
gossip, had once tried to bribe a college professor for a grade by giving him a
Rolex." Pg. 277. Simon & Schuster having embraced this standard of reporting,
the time has come to note, at the same standard, the whispers among the UN
press corps about Bolton's alleged past in sex clubs -- Plato's Retreat is
the referent, if only urban legend -- with
sourcing to divorce records.
Rolex, anyone?
More
seriously, Bolton evinces some refreshing political candor. Of the standoff
between Eritrea and Ethiopia (whose Meles regime the U.S. used to invade and
still occupy Somalia), Bolton writes that
"neither the Ethiopian nor the Eritrean
government would win any popularity contests, and I certainly had no favorite,
but it seemed to me that Eritrea had a point: Ethiopia had agreed on a mechanism
to resolve the border dispute in 2000 and was now welching on the deal." Pg.
344.
Apparently Bolton didn't get, or subsequently tore up, the memo, which would
downplay criticism of Ethiopia given its role as U.S. proxy in Somalia. That the
U.S. subsequently allowed a rogue shipment of tank parts from North Korea to
Ethiopia for use in Somalia is not included in Bolton's two-paragraph Somalia
analysis, which concludes smugly that "the UN's role had been and remained
minimal." Pg. 366. Nor does the book mention a major African conflict, that in
northern Uganda with the Lord's Resistance
Army. It does, however, show
George W. Bush in a September 2005 meeting with Kofi Annan raising "the question
of Iraq, saying he wanted a greater UN presence there to help out." Pg. 217.
This largely explain U.S. - UN relations since.
Still-sitting Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin is pegged as objecting "several
times to the Weisel [sic] -Clooney meeting [on Darfur], deriding it as a
media show, which just signaled to me that Russians were probably wondering how
they could put together something similar on an issue of interest to them." Pg.
356.
Kosovo, anyone?
Strangely, Kosovo is mentioned only once in the book, and then only in passing.
More a
function of anti-Francophony than Fanonian analysis, Bolton dismisses the French
as colonialists, "constantly worried that the potentially large force required
for Darfur would drain from or constrain other African operations more important
to France." Pg. 353. As an aside, there is another analysis, not in Bolton's
book or anywhere else that we have seen, that some in the U.S. administration
don't want Sudan peace talks to succeed, so invested are they in fingering al-Bashir
and "Islamists" more generally for genocide -- a theory for another day.
Since-retired French Ambassador de la Sabliere is portrayed as "insulting the
Tanzanian deputy perm rep for not known what his instructions were" about a Cote
d'Ivoire resolution that France was desperate to pass.
In full
disclosure, this reviewer in 2006 had opportunity to question John Bolton,
mostly at the Security Council stakeout, on such topics as the U.S.'s
nomination of Josette Sheeran Shiner to
head the World Food Program, on
the
threat to international peace and security
posed by drug trafficking by Myanmar
-- "known in the United States as Burma," as Bolton used to say -- and his
war of words
with now-UK "junior minister"
Mark Malloch-Brown, a shared bout, on
different (UNDP corruption) grounds.
(A
strange peace ensued in September 2007,
with an assist perhaps to Darfur,
video
here,
at Minute 8:30.
Perhaps
the most ironic section, at least to this reviewer, has Bolton lambasting
then-envoy to Sudan Jan Pronk for "popping off on his blog." Pronk's online
analysis, certainly more restrained than Bolton's book, got him expelled from
Khartoum -- "thus effectively ending his mission, which was what we had been
trying to do earlier," Bolton writes. Pg. 359. This "earlier" appears to refer
to July 2006, when Bolton "faced the bizarre issue of controversial comments on
a personal blog that the SG's special representative in Sudan, a former Dutch
minister of development, Jan Pronk, had been happily writing." And what was
Bolton's mood during this dishing -- unhappy?
"Darfur
Now" is Full of Cheadle, Director Chides UN's Paralysis by Complexity
Byline:
Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at the movies
UNITED NATIONS,
October 17 -- "Darfur Now," a just-released documentary film, cuts from actor
Don Cheadle at home to women in Darfur chanting the name of Luis Moreno-Ocampo,
the International Criminal Court prosecutor who has indicted Sudan's
humanitarian affairs minister Ahmad Harun for war crimes. There are scenes of
Mr. Moreno-Ocampo in his home, musing that if the ICC process doesn't work, the
whole world will become like Darfur. California governor Arnold Schwartzenegger,
faced with legislation divesting from Sudan, signs it, six times to be exact,
handing one copy to the ubiquitous Mr. Cheadle. There is Mr. Cheadle in Beijing
with George Clooney, and the same duo in Cairo, meeting with the son of the
president of Egypt, referred to by Cheadle without apparent irony as "next in
line."
There is footage of Messrs. Clooney and Cheadle at a surreal UN press
conference, which
Inner City Press covered at the time.
There is more convincing footage of a World Food Program official in his room in
Darfur, worrying about truck drivers getting killed, as happened only this week.
"Darfur
NOW" portrays the rebel groups, which it does not name, as being only about
returning to their land. The director, Ted Braun, told the audience at the UN's
screening Wednesday night that the rebels "do not want to secede," they only
want help from what the film's subtitles translate as "the white man." Mr. Braun
said the root of the word is "teacher... because the first people to arrive in
Sudan from Europe were teachers." Well, no. The first to arrive in Sudan were
colonialists.
The
film's Achilles heel is not only its failure to mention that there are now
twenty separate rebel groups, some of which kill the African Union peacekeepers,
but also its naive presentation of the Save Darfur movement in the United
States. For showing so many activists, and with such upbeat music -- by Stevie
Wonder and U2's Bono, no less -- it is striking that the war in Iraq is nowhere
mentioned. There is bloodshed there, too, and refugees and war crimes -- all of
which Americans have more responsibility over, and perhaps more ability to
impact, than events in Darfur.
Mr. Braun
afterwards said that complexity can become an excuse for procrastination. You
just have to do something, he said, giving as one example his ability to make
the film, after "the best journalist" -- on information and belief, Nick Kristof,
who is thanked in the credits -- predicted that it could not be done. Mr. Braun
diagnosed, not unreasonably, that some in the UN system were paralyzed by
complexity.
![](../icpcom/docdar2.jpg)
Cheadle, Clooney, Loroupe and Cheeks, bad rebels and Iraq not shown
An
example of this is the issue of enforcing, or even genuinely trying to enforce,
the ICC warrants against Ahmad Harum and Ali Kushayb. Inner City Press asked a
post-film panel including Braun and five UN officials to explain why, while the
name "Ocampo" is shown in the film being chanted by women in Darfur, it is not
chanted in UN headquarters. Earlier this week, the prosecutor
chided Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon for
not including justice in his reports on Darfur.
At Wednesday's UN noon briefing, spokesperson Marie Okabe answered that "Mr.
Ocampo is simply doing his job by bringing the world's attention to the justice
side of this issue, which as you know is very complex." Inner City Press asked
the UN panel at the film to article to other side to justice.
The most
direct answer was provided by Jack Christofides of the Department of
Peacekeeping Operations, who said that trying and convicting a few war criminals
"will not solve Darfur's problems," and who spoke of an "over-focus on indicted
war criminals." That is the view of many in the UN, but is usually not said
publicly. Isabelle Balot of the UN's Department of Political Affairs introduced
in her answer the complex word "sequencing," meaning that peace may (have to)
come before justice. A UN human right official, who had said he was speaking in
his personal capacity, noted that the UN has different arms doing different
work. Perhaps that explains the UN's Jan Egeland, and now Joaquim Chissano,
meeting with the indicted leadership of Uganda's Lord's Resistance Army and not
moving to arrest them. On that one, even the ICC's Moreno-Ocampo has remained
strangely silent.
"Darfur
NOW" is a film worth seeing. For an American audience, something balanced about
Iraq should also perhaps be seen, lest the lure of moral self-satisfaction become too
tempting.
October 8, 2007 (click
here for
review of Oct. 13 "Museum of Fake Art" in LIC)
The films of Catalan director
Pere Portabella are being featured at
Manhattan's Museum of Modern Art, complete with a hyped appearance by
Jonathan Demme, by Mr. Portabella and, on October 5 during a screening
of his most recent film, Portabella's assistant, who spoke afterwards to
Inner City Press. "The Silence Before Bach" opens with shots of a player
piano in an empty room, spinning as if radio-controlled. Then an old man
with a seeing-eye dog, speaking in French ("doucement, doucement,"
he tells the dog) is led to another piano, which he begins laborious to
tune. The audience keeps waiting for the story to begin. Two truck
drivers, in a rig with one thousand Euro religious paintings on the
side, talk about Bach. Later the trucker is asked to move a piano, using
a crane, from out of a mansion. This never takes place, or is never
shown. More than an hour in, the words in the title are spoken. Given
the lack of suspense, we won't even do a spoiler alert here - there's
nothing to spoil. In the subtitles, role is misspelled roll. There is a
mesmerizing shot of an old piano being dropped into water from a great
height; another of a dozen cello players on a Barcelona subway.
What does it
all add up to? Mr. Portabella likes Bach. Bach is everywhere. His music
was almost forgotten, until Mendelssohn re-discovered it, reportedly on
the sheet music his butcher used to wrap meat and organs. This butcher
scene is among the most through-provoking, at least for this reviewer.
In a nineteenth century Germany food market, a butcher offers advice on
how to cook lamp with garlic and lard; vegetables are laid out in
baskets and bowls, with big loaves of bread. Nearly identical markets,
but for the addition of electricity, came be found today, from Barcelona
to The Bronx. How little has changed. But the next food shot involves a
clearly-affluent couple with an expensive refrigerator, the woman
showering behind smoked glass and then playing her cello in a high-rise
condo building. Yes, things have changed. Maybe Portabella's visual
poetry is too advanced for its time. Or maybe its self-indulgent, or
both. Viva Portabella!
September 10, 2007
Our mini-review this week is of the documentary
film Manda Bala, about today's Brazil in which re-creating the severed
ears of kidnap victims can purchase a $400,000 bullet-proof car to drive
to a country house far away from Sao Paulo; where a Senator from Belem,
Jader Barbalho, stole $2 billion meant for economic development in the
Amazon region; where, the film's beginning claims, documentaries such as
this cannot even be shown. The filmmaker, Jason Kohn, previously worked
with Errol Morris and it shows. The movie's playing in New York at the
AMC on 42nd Street (25 screens over mall-like chain restaurants, welcome
to the new Times Square) and elsewhere. It's worth seeing.
March 12, 2007
Malian director Abderrahmane Sissako's ''Bamako" was gushed over in the
New York Times of Feb. 14, and a month later was still playing at the
Film Forum on West Houston Street in Manhattan, "held over" as they say.
Arriving from the United Nations at 9:45 for the 9:40 screening, the
ticket-taker said, "Don't worry, the first ten minutes is just a court
proceeding." She could have said, the whole movie is a mock court
proceeding. From speeches about the World Bank delivered in a courtyard
with stand-up electric fans, the film cuts into a parody of spaghetti
westerns, this one starring Danny Glover. People sit fanning themselves,
listening to the trial over loudspeakers. One wants to like the concept,
and it would work for 15, maybe 30 minutes. But as a feature length
film?
November 27, 2006
As reflected in the NY Times and now the New Yorker, there's been renewed high-brow interest in I.F. Stone
this year. In the Nov. 27 New Yorker, Nicolas Lemann paints Stone's
crusade as "problematic." Lemann writes that Stone "spent his whole
career in that region of the newspaper ecosystem, now vanished, where
everyone regarded the Times as unpardonably stuffy and
conservative."
What is Lemann saying? That the Times
is no longer viewed as stuffy? Or that one just doesn't hear anymore
from those with that view? Perhaps it's Lemann who is stuffy and
conservative...
Of the new Stone books, best is to go
to the source. The collection "The Best of I.F. Stone" contains piece
short and long over more than two decades. In his August 1964 piece
"What Few Know about the Tonkin Bay Incidents," Stone recounts hypocrisy
at the United Nations, where Britain's reprisal on Yemen was condemned,
but not the U.S. bombing of North Vietnam.
In Stone's "Word About Myself," he
notes that "no bureaucracy likes an independent newspaperman." As quoted
by Moyers, Stone said "I have so much fun I ought to be arrested." Hear,
hear.
Colonial Hipster Rory
Stewart, Review of Author and Book
Byline: Matthew Russell
Lee of Inner City Press at the UN
UNITED NATIONS, November
6 -- Rory Stewart is a hipster author who walked across Afghanistan. He
is also a colonial bureaucrat, who helped rule a province of Iraq and
last Thursday said he should have been more forceful. In a session at
NYU Law School, Inner City Press asked Mr. Stewart for his views on
Sudan's position against foreign troops in Darfur. "I'm not one of those
who pontificate," he answered. Oh really?
Mr. Stewart
went on to compare Sierra Leone's to South Africa's approach to
reconciliation, and to praise a 950-page study of Iraq tribes undertaken
in the 1970s. While some in the audience had come based on Stewart's
memoir of walking from Heart to Kabul, "The Places In Between," Stewart
focused on Iraq. He chided British forces for not shooting into a crowd
of Iraqis before they looted a Governor's office. He joked of a tribal
leader claiming his manhood was cut off, then settling for $20 to make
his rented protesters go away. We should just leave, Rory Stewart
advised. People don't like foreign troops.
It was at
that point that Inner City Press asked, what about Sudan? There, the al-Bashir
government claims that UN Peacekeepers would be the Trojan horse through
which the U.S. could invade, and cut Sudan in five for its oil. Whatever
one's view of this theory, it plays on the distrust of foreign troops.
But Mr. Stewart refused to compare this feeling in Afghanistan, Iraq and
The Sudan. He is not, it appears, a theorist. Where next will Britain
put him in charge? And what portion of the profits does he send to
Britain's queen?
March 13, 2006
Television is not
usually our focus. But we've seen the premiere of a TV show so
surprisingly bad that if we don't review it now, there may not be
another chance. It's called "The Unit" (CBS, Tuesday at 9) and it is
juvenile post 9/11/01 wish-fulfillment, with a four year delay. The
first episode opens with the Unit's leader (Dennis Haysbert, who doubles
or triples as the President on 24, and hawking car insurance for
Allstate) pretending to be a business man in Nangahar province,
Afghanistan, conning a nebulously evil Afghan in a leather jacket by
offering to pay for his drink. The order is a for a coffee, "large and
sweet." Outside the con continues, when Allstate shoots a donkey which
makes Leather Jacket laugh. A missile is launched and destroys a dusty
Mercedes and its occupants, then we cut to the Unit's home base, where
well-toned wives await their patriotic men. There's the obligatory plane
hijacking -- stopped, this time, in this fantasy. Incongruously, it
happens in Idaho, hardly a hot spot for trade delegations. From inside
they plane they hear the plan to only blow the bomb once the TV truck
gets there. The man from Allstate enters and shoots, in slow motion, terrorists
after terrorist. Even the Hardy Boys had more nuance. Only in the final
thirty second of the first episode is any non-rah rah material
introduced: State Farm has flash backs, and one of the wives is having
an affair with the commanding officer who's sent her husband to
Afghanistan. Instant pathos! What a come-down for David Mamet, and the
creator of FX's The Shield... And why would NPR, "Fresh Air" and others
treat it seriously?
February 20, 2006
Particularly timely in light of the
paused but not finished Abramoff lobbying scandal in Washington, and the
sailing through of Justices Roberts and Alito, there’s “Globalization,
Governmentality and Global Politics: Regulation for the rest of us?” by
Ronnie D. Lipschutz with James K. Rowe, London: Routledge, 2005, which
cites back to a 1971 US Chamber of Commerce memo by Lewis F. Powell, Jr.
(later an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court) noted attacks on
corporations from “the college campus, the pulpit [and] the media and
urged that “if our system is to survive, top management must be equally
concerned with protecting and preserving the system itself” – by
lobbying. Also on the Supreme Court’s role in American history, the book
notes that “Prior to the landmark Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific
Railroad (1886) case that bestowed legal personhood upon the modern
corporation, they were fewer, smaller, but most importantly different in
purpose.” The book emphasizes the “disappearance of politics,” for
example the “privatization of global forestry regulation.” Lacking is
similar analysis of the financial service sector. But that can be
worked on…
December 19, 2005
This week, a detour to spirituality,
specifically, a new biography of Henri Nouwen, “His Life and Vision,” by
Michael O’Laughlin (2005: Orbis). The author was Nouwen’s teaching
assistant, and he tells his mentor’s story, from Amsterdam through Notre
Dame to Peru, into a barrio nuevo in Ciudad de Dios in Lima,
where Nouwen lived in a room on the roof of another house and met with
the liberation theologian Gustavo Gutiérrez. Then – what a come down --
to Harvard Divinity School, where he taught for two years. In “The Road
to Peace,” Nouwen wrote: “I had the feeling that Harvard was not where
God wanted me to be. It’s too much podium, too much publicity, too
public. Too many people came to listen… It’s not an intimate place. It’s
a place of intellectual battle.” O’Laughlin recounts that “these were
the years of the Reagan administration, and there was a struggle going
on in the United States over Latin America.” Ya don’t say. There’s a
photo of Nouwen with Father John Vesey in Santiago Atitlan. Nouwen went
to Jean Vanier’s l’Arche community in Trosly, France then to l’Arche
Daybreak in Canada. While there, as only murkily narrated in the book,
when Nathan Ball pulled back, Nouwen went to a home of spiritual crisis
in Winnipeg. The book cites to, but doesn’t quote from, Nouwen’s journal
of this time, “The Inner Voice of Love.” Nouwen came out the other side,
and is pictured with the acrobats the Flying Rodleighs. He died in 1996,
and was buried in Toronto. A wounded healer – and truly a great man.
December 12, 2005
For our reviews this week, we go global
and local: about the United Nations, and the building of New York (with
only footnotes on The Bronx). “The UN Secretary-General and
Secretariat,” by Leon Gordenker (London: Routledge, 2005) is a short
guidebook, part of a series on global institutions. At page 71 it notes
that “Pérez de Cuéllar made a point of declining to renew the contract
of Theo van Boven, the director of the human rights office, after
several Latin American governments protested the official’s zeal in
promoting the application of the laws and their extension.”
Of the UN’s Department of
Public Information, Gordenker writes (page 87):
“For many journalists,
whose media only occasionally give attention to UN affairs, DPI is a
ready source of facts, statements by officials and full transcripts of
what the Secretary-General has said in public. At the same time, most of
what UN organs officially do is open to all comers, including
journalists, academic researchers and representatives of NGOs, for whom
access is made easy. Although media coverage of the General Assembly
over the years fell to such a low level that the representatives there
urged the DPI to do more to encourage attention [citing UN General
Assembly Res. 58/126, December 19, 2003], anyone who wishes can in
person follow all of its plenary sessions and its main committees and
can obtain press releases covering most of what is in progress or done.
For active media representatives, DPI provides the services of an
official spokesperson and staff who can be consulted at almost any time.
Yet access and availability of information obviously does not add up to
a universally well-informed public or even perhaps to a minimum
understanding of the complex procedure, programs and responsibilities.”
That hasn’t been Inner City Press’ experience
with the UN’s DPI… More colorful is “Building New York: The Rise and
Rise of the Greatest City on Earth,” Bruce Marshall (2005: Universe/Rivoli).
In this 300 page book, there are fewer than a dozen references to The
Bronx: to Woodlawn Cemetery, to the Bronx River Parkway, to Parkchester
(whose mid-Bronx location is described on page 266 as “a dismal section
of the Bronx until the Metropolitan Insurance Company built the huge
residential complex”). The example given of early urban renewal is in
East Harlem: a haunting photo of the foundations of buildings demolished
to make way for Jefferson Park on 112th Street. Even the
sections on Zoos and Botanical Gardens, while mentioning that the Bronx
has the major example of each, pictures only the Central Park Zoo, and
the Brooklyn Botanical Garden. Perhaps because fewer Bronxites could or
would buy this $50 coffee table book…
December 5, 2005
This week we recommend another book of
urban infrastructural history: “American City: Detroit Architecture
1845-2005,” by William Zbaren and Robert Sharoff (Wayne State U Press
2005). The book is chronological, leading to the Compuware building on
Campus Martius (and not a word of the demolished department stores).
Some examples:
On page 18, a photo of
what had been the headquarters of State Savings Bank, at 151 W. Fort
Street and Shelby – now the Savoyard Centre with mannequins in the
windows…
On page 24, the Dime
Building at 719 Griswold Street, with an H&R Block storefront on the
first floor, pitching tax refund anticipation loans at 400% interest
rates…
Saddest of all: the
shattered Michigan Central Railroad Station, at Vernon and Michigan
Avenue, ringed with razor wire--
Giving rise in the
reviewer to this:
In a vast and vacant railroad station
We played the game of palm. We had racquets
Cross-hatched like a barbequed steak. The blue
Spaldeen
We bashed at the glassless windows of the upper
floors.
Etiquette obituary: we went to school on it
We smoked enormous bongs and reefers
Looking down on the ball-playing jerks
In the train station lobby.
Commuters will surely return
Roundtrip through the decades
To find a Twilight Zone city in reruns
Seen on-demand, if then, if at all. -M.Lee
November 28, 2005
This week, a quote from, and reaction to, “Organic
Intellectuals and counter-hegemonic politics in the age of
globalization: The case of ATTAC,” by Vicki Birchfield and Annette
Freyberg-Inan, in “Critical Theories, International Relations and the
‘Anti-Globalization Movement,” edited by Catherine Eschle and Bice
Maiguashca (Routledge 2005). The quote:
“ATTAC associations see
themselves as part of a movement for critical, popular education. All
ATTAC publicity material, whether on websites or in print publications,
describes the association as an educational movement and a
counter-establishment social force, as opposed to a conventional NGO or
issue-based social movement… the key difference being that in ATTAC
there is ‘no hierarchical order and no top-down decision-making about
common actions’…The fact that a more permanent transnational
organizational structure has yet to emerge (there is no international
headquarters, for example) is a reflection of ATTAC’s commitment to
local autonomy and cultural diversity.”
The reaction / review: What the authors do no
sufficiently question or explore, Inner City Press opines, is the degree
to which particular global financial institutions -- as four examples
Citigroup,
HSBC,
Deutsche Bank and
BNP Paribas – are
not sufficiently targeted by ATTAC. It’s fine to talk about Gramsci and
the Tobin Tax. But where the rubber meets the road, there are
trillion-dollar institutions running circles around existing rules and
even counter-rules…
November 21, 2005
This week we recommend a dry but quite
interesting book, Reinventing Accountability: Making Democracy Work for Human
Development, by Anne Marie Goetz and Rob Jenkins (Palgrave 2005). The authors did
most of the research while working on the United Nations Development Programs 2002
report, Deepening Democracy in a Fragmented World. For that reason, the book provides
example from all over the world, from the expansion in India of public interest law and of
theories of standing and facilitated filing by letter, so-called epistolary jurisdiction,
to Bangladesh, where it is reported that micro-finance programs are known to favor
better-off villagers for credit, even though they are above the poverty line. The book recites litigation in the United
States for a range of alleged violation: Texaco for the adverse economic impacts of its
activities in Ecuador; Unocal for human rights abuses associated with its investment in
Myanmar; Freeport McMoran for environmental destruction caused by its copper mine in
Indonesia...[and] action against Rio Tinto for its Rossing Uranium mine in Namibia.
And so it goes...
November 14, 2005
Our review this week is of a new addition to the still-small bibliography of
environmental justice books: anthropologist Melissa Checkers Polluted
Promises: Environmental Racism and the Search for Justice in a Southern Town (NYU
Press 2005). Call it a case study, or (as the author does), ethnography. The Southern Town in question is
Augusta, Georgia, specifically the Hyde Park / Aragon Park neighborhood, consisting of 200
houses, 10% of them vacant. This ten percent figure is sourced: Based on my own
door-to-door survey; from this the author states that most unoccupied homes
had been left to crumble, and crack addicts and homeless people often squatted in
them (65). No source is given for this substance (ab)use, nor explanation given of
the incongruity of people in unoccupied buildings. But we digress! The author went to Augusta in the fall of 1998, to
volunteer with the Hyde and Aragon Park Improvement Committee (HAPIC). After three chapters of historical background, the
book picks up pace upon the authors arrival, with HAP residents recollections
set off in italics, intercut with pollution by ITT-owned Southern Wood Piedmont, pouring
PCBs into Rocky Creek. There follows in Chapter Five the story of three lawsuits, spanning
the early 1990s until at the time of the authors arrival, resigning themselves
to the fact that their lawsuit might never pan out, HAPIC leaders looked to longer-term
solutions to their problems (135). The solutions lists run from a study funded by
the CDC to a HAPIC leader running for county commissioner. A computer center is set up.
Other polluters are identified: Thermal Ceramics and Goldberg Brothers scrap metal yard,
whose drums of mercury-contaminated debris are pictured on page 182. Eventually the scrap
yard is cleaned up, leveled and cleaned out. The author concludes that progress
toward social change might be halting or slow, or sometimes might event take a few steps
backward, but there is progress if you look for
it. Were glad the Ms. Checker looked for it, and filed this report.
Our second, or visual, review this week is of The U.N. Building, by Ben
Murphy (Thames & Hudson 2005). It begins
with black and white photographs of the building being built (stopping at 39 rather than
the planned 45 floors, due to budget constraints), including rarely seen views
of the private apartment of Dag Hammarskjold on the 39th floor, Scandinavian
furniture facing the East River and Queens. Everything
is very Jetsons, from the curvy balconies of the General Assembly Hall to the special UN
signage typeface, a sans-serif based on Futura. As one caption puts it, Some of the
buildings most endearing features are in the details, such as the vintage clocks or
exit signs that might be overlooked during discussion, and yet they very quickly evoke an
era in which the building was designed and built. Of that era, another caption (page
128) says, At the time the Secretariat was designed, the architects considered the
view east over the river more desirable, and therefore located the restrooms on the
western side [with] glorious views of the skyline. There are photographs of the
printing plant (the largest internal reproduction plant in New York City) and
of the mail room, of which it is noted that the U.N. receives an average of 6.6
million pieces of mail per year, mostly from the United States. That last seems
strange: the country that least believes in the U.N. sends it the most mail. Or maybe the
USPS doesnt allow in some of the mail directed to the U.N. from outside the United
States
November 7, 2005
Now that the 2005 baseball season is over,
complete with Foxs send-up of Latin Legends before the final game of the
White Sox sweep, we want to review the just-out book, Early Latino Ballplayers
in the United States: Major, Minor and Negro Leagues, 1901-1949. When the Cincinnati
Reds in 1999 added to their roster two Cubans one of whom, Aramando Marsans, was
called the Ty Cobb of Cuba, apparently without intentional irony the
Cincinnati Tribune complained that the peculiar social conditions of [Cuba] make it
mighty hard to determine the exact standings of most of the natives regarding color.
Whos peculiar? In 1918, Marsans was with the New York Yankees, and was fired (and
banished from the major leagues) by manager Miller Huggins. The New York Times dubbed Marsans the
temperamental Cuban center fielder.
The book tells the tales
of such giants as Adolfo Luque (194-179 with an ERA of 3.24 in 20 major league seasons);
el Inmortal Martín Dihigo, and Hiram Bithorn, for whom the stadium in San Juan is named
and who died in 1951 at the age of 35, shot by police in Mexico. At the inquest Corporal
Ambrosio Cano claimed that Mr. Bithorn had had in his dying breath that he was a
member of the Communist Party (149). Like another of our favorites, Abraham
Polonsky, another victim of the Cold War
Our second review this week and
were sorry its dry is of Remedies in International Human Rights
Law, by Dinah Shelton (Oxford U. Press 2005, 2d Edition). Flying in the face of the
old saws of reviewing, well first note that like the first edition, this one has a
cover of dark blue and red, very classy. Our (paperback) copy of the first edition is
breaking down, so this ones just in time. Listed among the new (well, 2003) treaties
and other international documents is the UNs Norms on the Responsibility of
Transnational Corporations and other Business Enterprises with regard to Human
Rights (UN Doc. E/CN.4/Sub.2/2003/12/Rev.2), Paragraph
18 of which states:
Transnational corporations and other
business enterprises shall provide prompt, effective and adequate reparations to those
persons, entities and communities that have been adversely affected by failures to comply
with these Norms through, inter alia, reparations, restitution, compensation and
rehabilitation for any damage done or property taken.
Ms. Shelton then notes
that one reason for the focus on direct responsibility of companies is that the
obligation of states to control the activities of their registered companies abroad is
unclear. Well that needs to be cleared
us, and remedies established. To start Chapter 8, Non-Monetary Remedies, Ms.
Shelton quotes in Latin from Blackstone, Ubi
jus, ibi remedium (Where theres a right, theres a remedy). Père
Ubi?
A propos of nothing
(except the law, and the Supreme Court nominations saga ongoing in Washington), were
reminded that at the end of the movie version of American Psycho, TV news as ambient sound
describes Reagan nominating Bork. Yes, American Psycho
October 31, 2005
Our review
this week is of UN Voices: The Struggle for Development and Social Justice,
(Indiana U. Press 2005), part of the United Nations Intellectual History Project Series.
In a sense its an oral history. For example, both John Ruggie and Richard Gardner
reflect on the formation (and location) of the United Nations Environment Programme.
Gardner narrates: The [G-]77
took the position that UNEP had to be in Nairobi,
which was a terrible mistake from which we are still suffering to this day. Their attitude
was, Well,you have the headquarters of the NY in New York and in Geneva (and
by that time, they had put something in Vienna), now its our turn. I
thought, Thats your idea of economic development? To set up another UN
organization in Africa to create jobs? Youre not going to get the scientists down
there. John Ruggie agreed for the most part, complaining that UNEP sort
of sank into the morass of Nairobi, where it has been since (220-221).
Last week an Inner City Press representative attended the UNEP Financial
Initiatives annual conference at the UN headquarters in New York. To deal with bank,
UNEP has a Geneva office. UNEP FI is chair by the chief operating officer of
Australias Westpac bank. Click here for ICPs report on the
conference, which included the participation of the UNs Global Compact. Of the
Compact, Ruggie elsewhere in the book is quoted that Mary Robinson [high
commissioner of human rights at the time]
wasnt fully on board at the
beginning. She was under enormous pressure from human rights NGOs to attack companies, not
to work with them
UNEP was very excited because they had worked with companies in
the energy and chemical industries in particular
The human rights organizations
still dont like the idea that Shell is a participant in the Global Compact, because
of Nigeria. The environmental groups will say it doesnt make any sense to have a
Global Compact that seeks to have business promote environmental issues that doesnt
have Shell in it (308-309).
But is that true, that environmental groups requested and desire the
inclusion of Shell (for example) in this Global Compact? Which environmental groups? A
problem with this book is that it takes no position; it allows Ruggie and the like to
present their positions, without any analysis or counter-argument. The book does choose to
make characterizations, invariably pro-UN and/or pro-Annan. For example: today a
temporary shadow hangs over the Secretariat as a result of the oil-for-food inquiry being
led by Paul Volcker (317). How can the authors flatly state that a current
shadow will be temporary? One half expected to find that the book was
published by the UN itself. Somewhere between the hard-rights anti-UN ranting and
this hagiography, the truth must lie
October 24, 2005
Our review this week concerns the updated
2005 English version of the French book, "La
bourse ou la vie: La finance contre les peoples," by Eric Toussaint. The title
gets rendered as "Your Money [or] Your Life: The Tyranny of Global Finance," a
not entirely satisfactory transaction. More literal would be: "The Market or Life:
Finance Versus the People." Apparently, only if a book has the word
"Global" in the title are North Americans assumed to recognize that a book
touches on globalization. Anyway, the book uses Rwanda pre- and post-genocide as a case
study, from a very Western Europe perspective. Toussaint writes that "Once the
Rwandan capital Kigali had bee overrun by the opposition RPF. Rwandan leaders-in-exile set
up the head office of the Banque Nationale du Rwanda in Goma, with the help of the French
army. Until August 1994, the bank disbursed funds to repay debts for previous arms
purchases and to buy new arms. Private banks (Belgolaise, Générale de Banque, BNP, and Dresdner Bank, among others)
accepted payment orders from those responsible for the genocide and repair those who
financed the genocide." (342). Among the elided-over "others" was
none other than Citigroup. In
general, as with many such books, Toussaint is so directed at the troika of the WTO, IMF
and World Bank that (more) powerful private capital is not focused on enough. But the book
comes with an informative glossary and a "political and environmental chronology from
1944 to the present day" - focused, it turns out, on the World Bank, the IMF and the
Third World. Even this last term is getting outmoded. Another world is possible -
and so is another style of such books.
October 17, 2005
Our micro review this week is of a chapter, not a book. Its Resolving
Identities: Successive Crises in a Trading Room After 9/11, by Daniel Beunza and
David Stark. It describes its subject:
"(Pseudonymous) International
Securities is a global, non-American investment bank with 128 offices in 26 countries
across the United States, Europe, and Asia. Its American headquarters occupied. the World
Financial Center. The bank did have another available facility, a bank office in
(pseudonymous) Escapaway, a small suburban town in New Jersey."
As recounted by
Beunza and Stark, the traders proceed to make fun of Escapaway and its residents:
"The grim suburban reality of Escapaway had no amenities for the traders to escape
the pressures of their trading room.' You could drive to Wal-Mart, you could drive to Home
Depot... The people in Escapaway can eat from
McDonald's every day and not get sick.'" (page 310 in "Wounded City: The Social
Impact of 9/11," edited by CUNY sociology professor Nancy Foner, Russell Sage
Foundation 2005).
Nowhere do the authors explore or consider the morality of arbitraging anything,
from the debt of Ecuador to trading in bonds backed by predatory mortgages... For news of
chicanery by another non-U.S. investment bank (UBS, which cannot be
International Securities because its trading floor left NYC before 9/11/01, to Stamford,
Connecticut), see this weeks ICP Finance Watch Report.
October 10, 2005
Our review
this week concerns money laundering.
Nick Kochan is a British business journalist; his book The Washing Machine (Texere
Thomson, 2005) walks through recent scandals from Bank of New York through Casablanca to
Citigroup. Of this last, Kochan writes: One Citibank private bank official in Africa
stated that he does not have problems with the large deposits held in New York by
[Gabonese] President Bongo, providing information concerning them is kept completely
confidential. Citigroups regulators do not comes off much better. An
examiner from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency noted: Based on our
review of the information in all related files... we conclude that this relationship and
related transactions do more meet the level of suspicion expected for filing a Suspicious
Transaction Report because... the transactions conducted through Citibank NA are the sort of
transactions that the customer has historically been making and are normal for the Head of
State of an African country. Cultural
relativism, anyone? The books worth reading.
October 3, 2005
Our reviews this week are triggered by a recent Inner City Press
venture to San Diego, dubbed "America's Finest City" (by then-mayor Pete Wilson
in the early 1970s) but increasingly subject to gentrification, disparate lending and
stratification. Arriving late at night, one's forced to take a van; one company is
called Cloud-9 and its signs announced "franchise opportunities" as well as
"Go Padres." The driver, if asked, expresses concern about having to take her
daughter to the dentist. Where does she live? In Clairemont, which if one takes the 50 bus
through it, consists of relatively down-at-heels low-rise houses, and chain restaurants
like Chili's and Denny's. It ain't La Jolla, in short. And what is La Jolla? A fancy-pants enclave built around an
undeniably beautiful cove, complete with undersea park, sea lions and birds who're not to
be fed. There is body surfing, yes, on small strips of beach where the waves break
directly on the shore. There's a manicured lawn and a free bathroom and changing place.
Otherwise, there's no much inviting of homeless or even lower income. There use to be a
trolley coming here from San Diego, but the locals got it closed. There's sprawl out by
University Town Center - a mall and a bunch of financial services sweatshops, from Smith
Barney to New York Life - and some housing for students at UCSD (which still has a Ché
Café along with the Gregory Peck-founded La Jolla Playhouse). It's time to venture back
to San Diego, and even Tijuana. But how?
The 50 bus leaves from the mall, blasts through nowhere zones where
poorer retirees wait for hours at bus stops. After Clairemont it gets on Interstate 5,
into downtown San Diego. There's the Pickwick Hotel, the courthouses, and Lucy's (fine)
Tacos. On the street the talk is of escalated rents. Even the cops can't afford to live
here; they commute two hours for example from Temecula. Someone says the salary's higher
to join the force in Chula Vista. Imperial Beach down by San Ysidro is lower income.
Next to the Gaslamp Quarter, which used to be skid row, a new
stadium has risen. The Moores Padres got a boondoggle, ten square blocks into their own
faux Camden Yards. There's $5 general admission, and you can sneak into seats behind home
plate. There's not-bad barbeque named for ex-Padres Randy Jones. The Padres clinch the
division, despite a .500 record. There's much greater injustice, however, south in
Tijuana.
But now the books. From two years ago, from the New Press, there's a Mike
Davis production called "Under the Perfect Sun." It's history from a lefty point
of view, with anecdotes about "Red" Tijuana in 1911, and restaurant workers'
strike against the Hotel Del Coronado in 1997. You'll learn that J. Edgar Hoover spent
every August in La Jolla from 1938, and that washed-up Raymond Chandler spent his last
decade in 6005 Camino de la Costa. It's all very interesting, but lacked the focus of
"City of Quartz."
From 2005 from U Penn, there's Larry Ford's "Metropolitan San Diego:
How Geography and Lifestyle Shape a New Urban Environment." This is drier but more
comprehensive, contrasting Ocean Beach to downtown and noting that given its location, San
Diego is not the center of any wider area (and therefore, among other things, couldn't
support a basketball team). Together, these two books give a view. But you've still got to
go there.
September 26, 2005
Our review this week is a medley, the common denominator being Chicago.
With the Southside site of the now-demolished Robert Taylor Homes now primed for
gentrification, in a way that some have in mind for the lower-income evacuated parts of
New Orleans, our eye was caught by a just-published glossy book, "Chicago
Architecture: Histories, Revision, Alternatives" (University of Chicago, 2005). While
the book focuses heavily on the Loop, and Mies' high rises more generally, there's a
section on the literal ups-and-downs of public housing, including Cabrini-Green and
Stateway Gardens. The diagnosis given is that the high percentage of children in the
projects' population doomed them to failure and demolition. Gentrification is hardly
covered. But for that, we turn to the Chicago chapter of another recent book,
"The Puerto Rican Diaspora" (Temple University, 2005). There's a photo of
the Puerto Rican Gates over Division Street, and discussion of displacement (including of fritoleros -- those who cook cuchifritos -- from Humboldt Park and Logan Square.
Last stand on Division Street, then, where the 1966 riot started after the police shooting
of Arcelis Cruz. Cuchi insurection!
To study and present these trends, we make our final Chicago-related
suggestion of the week. Here the leap is longer: it's a how-to guide entitled
"The Chicago Guide to Writing about Multivariate Analysis," edited by Jane E.
Miller. Ordinary least squares, anyone?
September 19, 2005 -- Courtroom 302 and Roberts (Moses and the Judge)
For the past week, the nominee to be Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court has
steadfastly declined to comment on even the cases that he has decided, since they might be
appealed. Clearly thats not the standard lower down the judicial food change. In
Steve Bogiras 380-page tome Courtroom 302, the main character (at least,
the character most quoted) is Chicago judge Daniel Locallo. The book drills deep into the
cases heard in 1998 in Locallos courtroom (yes, Number 302). By interviewing, in the
six years since, as many of the participants as possible, Bogira shows how defense lawyers
didnt get the full story, prosecutors didnt care for the full story, judges
deferred to each other despite the real story, and journalists hardly covered the cases or
reported the stories. Its an assembly line, a soulless slaughterhouse with little to
no rehabilitation, where few even show up for the trials. Locallo is presented as a hero,
caring more than other judges, going out to crime scenes, giving defendants second and
third chances. Whether Locallos grant of
access to Bogira had anything to do with the positive portrayal is a question of
non-fiction technique. The books been praised by Robert Caro (he of) The
Powerbroker; one wonders if even Robert Moses might come off as well-meaning, if he was an
authors main source... -ML
Sept. 11, 2005 -- "Windows on the World" -- Andre
Malraux turns Toby Keith
This week we review a book called "Windows on
the World," a morphing of fiction and non-fiction by the French author Frédéric
Beigbeder. The book inter-spices the present-tense narrative of a father who takes
his two sons to the World Trade Towers restaurant back on that fateful day with the
ruminations of a pro-American French writer, eating bad croissants at the top of the
tallest building in Paris, the Tour de Montparnasse. As always, there is a Bronx
connection: the author lists among his favorite writers Jerome Charyn "who lives in
Montparnasse," and who's written a number of strange novels of The Bronx. Also on
this writers list is John Fante. Ask the Dust, indeed - this review is being written
as the radio broadcasts the memorial service from Ground Zero, the alphabetic reading of
the names of the dead. Some are mispronounced; some are supplemented by phrases like
"no te olvidaremos" or "God bless
the troops." One relative courageously says, "A world of peace." In the
other litany, the sentiment's out of place.
Beigbeder, too, as if to show his alliance with
America, takes pot-shots at Islam. So does Michel Houellebecq, but he trashes France and
the U.S. as well. Beigbeder's voicer makes plain: "I'm writing this book
because I'm sick of bigoted anti-Americanism." He praises Burt Bacharach, and quotes
Bacharach's 1967 anti-war song "Windows on the World" - then can't resist
throwing in "I wonder if the owner of Windows on the World was familiar with the
song." It's not just that Beigbeder loves America, you see - he also knows more about
it than you or me. He puts into the mouths of adultering stockbrokers stilted dialogue
about Enron and "leave your wife" (this leads to "God, I want to launch a
hostile takeover bid on you"). The father of two says of his sons: "they have
something on their mother. At least I still love them."
It's a bold book, entering the minds of imagined
Nine Eleven victims. It was a cowardly book, to translate if not to write, in that it
fetishes America and clearly wants to be liked, Andre Malraux turned Toby Keith. Let there
be more books on this topic (you'll hear from Inner City Press). This was from
Miramax / Hyperion - 'nuf said.
September 5, 2005: A recent book we at Inner City Press must note is
"Frames of Protest: Social Movements and the Framing Perspective," edited by
Hank Johnston and John A. Nokes (Rowman & Littlefield, 2005). We note it because of
its discussion of the Young Lords and other groups in the Mott Haven neighborhood of the
South Bronx - and an entire chapter on the exploits of Superbarrio in Mexico City, by
Jorge Candena-Roa. Of Mott Haven, Cathy
Schneider, author previously of "Shantytown Protest in Pinochet's Chile" (Temple
University Press, 1995), writes:
"in the 1950s Mott Haven became
predominantly Puerto Rican and black. It also became one of the poorest communities in the
country. In 1969, the Young Lords challenged the machine, using an antisystem frame. On
July 14, 1970, for instance, the Young Lords occupied Lincoln Hospital by driving a truck
up an emergency ramp. For twenty-four hours they occupied the hospital, demanding a new
hospital, a raise in the minimum wage of health care workers, and working control.. But
this radical coality of activists in hospitals, drug clinics, and the local church was
unable to pose a viable alternative."
This last is
not well-enough explained. Schneider jumps to 1992, writing that at an Episcopal church
(which she leaves unnamed, but is clearly St. Ann's) a "gang leader was show by
another gang member and buried at the church he had served. Shortly after, the diocese
removed the priest and despite weeks of parishioner protest, the priest and his supporters
were unable to win the support of established social service agencies or
politicians."
Schneider
concludes with the "sentiment of cynicism and distrust, during the focus group [she]
conducted: 'Everyone sells out here.'"
We beg to disagree --
click here for Inner City Press' Bronx Report. -ML
For four different ways to contact us, click here.
Coda to Selby's Dream
Hubert Selby Jr. died in May 2004, of lung disease. This is not an
obituary. Nor is it a review of the novels Last Exit to Brooklyn or Requiem for a Dream,
nor of the movies subsequently made from them. We'll merely note a small detail, and see
where it leads.
Requiem for a Dream, published in 1978, is set in The Bronx. Those who try to
pull Selby out of his time and place -- for example, European critics who call Selby's
stories "timelessly" American, or the decision to transpose the filmed version
of Requiem from Bronx 1978 to Coney Island 2000 -- make his work more of a fable, and less
of the indictment Selby intended and carried off. Here's a representative sentence from
Selby's 1978 novel:
"The deserted buildings that stretched for miles and made the city look
like a battleground of WWII, that gave it the pathetic and devastated look that froze on
the faces of the people that inhabited them, were spotted with tiny fires as shivering
bodies tried to keep warm and survive long enough to get some dope, one way or another,
and make it through one more day so they could start the same routine again." (Pg.
189).
In the 2000 filmed version, this is turned into science fiction, an imaginary
city where the government through benign neglect allows drug dealing to flourish. But it's
not science fiction -- it actually happened. The Bronx, from the mid-70s to the mid- to
late-80s had sections as described, for example all of Boston Road from 163rd Street to
Claremont Parkway. Junkies stripped buildings for copper wiring, pipes, even the fire
escapes. To de-historicize this, to shift to the easy funhouse mirror analogy of Coney
Island, is to devalue what happened, what people lived through, and the accuracy of (some
of) Selby's critique.
In later years, Selby couldn't get his work published in the United States; he
worked for a time as a clerk in the gift shop of a Los Angeles hotel. The 1989 filming of
Last Exit to Brooklyn, and the 2000 adaptation of Requiem, brought Selby both some money
and renewed recognition. In a 2002 interview with the San Francisco Chronicle, Selby said
it was the filmmaker's decision to shift Requiem from The Bronx to Brooklyn." Of the
shift, director Aronofsky told the Washington Times, "The culture was exactly the
same, and Selby didn't seem to mind." But was the culture of The Bronx in the
mid-70s was exactly the same as Coney Island in the late-90s? No. Selby didn't mind
because, well, Selby was just happy to see it filmed. An important American writer -- and
writer about The Bronx-- has passed away; he'll remain presente, here and
elsewhere...
Selby's Missed Exit (A Second Bite at the Apple)
"Harry locked his mother in the closet" -- that was Hubert Selby's
opening line to Requiem for a Dream, on a topic that's not often touched in mainstream
American literature. The limited point above, that Selby's novel Requiem was set in The
Bronx while the 2000 movie wasn't, made us think to take a second look and bite at the
apple, with Selby's death still fresh. Most critics have noted that Selby never again
reached the heights (or depths) of Last Exit to Brooklyn after its publication in 1964. If
descent is the measure, his second book The Room was even bleaker, involving the sadistic
revenge fantasy of an anonymous -- yes, Kafkaesque -- inmate. The Room has not been, and
perhaps could not be, filmed. But Last Exit was, by German director Uli Edel.
It was filmed in twelve weeks in Red Hook in the summer of 1988, nearly always
at night. While many had called Selby's portrayal of New York's inner cities unfair and
skewed, artificially negative because inconsistent with The Honeymooners or paeans to the
Dodgers, lords of Flatbush, it couldn't be missed that Red Hook and its residents by 1988
were in worse shape than in the novel. While race plays little part in the novel --
reflecting a blindness of Selby's, one of the exits he missed -- by 1988 large parts of
Brooklyn and The Bronx were like products of apartheid. There weren't even any jobs to go
on strike from; brass knuckles, booze and bennies had been replaced by Uzis and crack.
The novel had been optioned by Kubrick and De Palma, but never made, until Uli
Eden called Selby in late 1986. They spent $16 million making it, and released it first in
Europe, with a launch party in Munich's Olympic Stadium. They paid for Selby and his
mother to tour with the film. When it opened in the U.S., most American critics denounced
it as, in essence, a foreign invasion. "Lance your own boil," one critic wrote.
But often it does take an outsider to present and diagnose. A Bronx Tale, the Godfather,
even the canonical Mean Streets: they're all infected by schmaltz, in retrospect. Eden's
only concession, it seems, was to replace the prostitute Tralala's death with her placing
a hand softly against the cheek of her goofy flap-capped suitor, while saying softly,
"Don't cry." This is at the film's conclusion, as the striking workers return to
their jobs in the plant. Forty years after Selby wrote the novel, the factories and
shipping jobs are gone, there's incipient artists' gentrification, the poor are worse off
than before. Selby has checked out, and from these ruins we salute him. -ML
* * *
"Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble, and Coming of Age in The
Bronx"
...We managed to get the first copy to arrive at our local library
of Adrian Nicole LeBlanc's "Random Family," subtitled "Love, Drugs,
Trouble, and Coming of Age in The Bronx." It sure is gritty, ya gotta give it that.
Actually, it's reminiscent of the two novels of Abraham Rodriguez, "Spidertown"
and the more recent "Buddha Book" (which was scarcely reviewed in the
"mainstream" press). Full disclosure: we're fans of A. Rodriguez; we've
published him, early on, in Inner City Press. But compare the reviews of his Buddha
Book (we've only found four) with the gushing for Random Family. Both books focus on
teens and young adults involved in the drug culture. Mr. Rodriguez -- we'll adopt that
pompous Times-ism for now -- actually "came of age in The Bronx." Yet both of
his books have been criticized from their gangsterism. Ms. LeBlanc, whose dust jacket
pedigree includes Smith College, Yale Law School and Oxford -- very Clintonian -- appears
to believe that all young women in The Bronx spend their time looking out their tenement
windows at drug dealers. This is a portrayal of The Bronx which travels far. The problem
is that it is an extremely selective account. Protagonist Coco has four children by the
age of twenty, by three different men, two of whom are in jail. The "main man,"
Cesar, has shot his best friend in the back of the head in White Castle. It is all very
poignant; it is all very well described. But is this (the totality) of The Bronx? No. It
is a high-brow version of the Fox TV show "Cops." Here is some typical
editorializing: during a jail visit, Cesar offers a candy to his daughter Mercedes, then
pulls it away and chews it, then "smother[s] her hurt feelings with hugs." Of
this, Ms. LeBlanc writes: "In the subtle tyranny of that moment beat the pulse of
Cesar's neighborhood -- the bid for attention, the undercurrent of hostility for so many
needs ignored and unmet, the pleasure of holding power, camouflaged in teasing, the rush
of love." (Page 162).
Let's review: would teasing with food among any other social
class be subject to such a strained analogy to one's community? Ms. LeBlanc, we intuit,
means well. But the impression given of The Bronx is that all the young girls are
pregnant, all the young men are in jail, all of their parents are separated and
dysfunctional (not that those are the same thing). This is not The Bronx that we know.
Sure, you can -- and we have -- found such characters in The Bronx. But you have to reach
for them, with blinders on to everything else. When, decades ago, sociologist Oscar Lewis
did this, he was roundly denounced. Why is this different? -ML
* * *
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