Reviews - hypnagogicfun

Voyeur Ethnography: Everyone Wants Something

In 1978, while Keith Richards was embroiled in legal troubles, Mick Jagger was living in New York City and working on Some Girls, a superb Rolling Stones album. In the album’s last song, Shattered, Jagger sings of Gotham:

Pride and joy and greed and sex
That’s what makes that town the best
Pride and joy and dirty dreams
Are still surviving on the street

The Stones captured something essential about NYC in the rough 1970s in about three minutes. Much has changed over 35 years, but much has remained the same. It would have been helpful if Sudhir Venkatesh, rogue sociologist from Columbia University, knew this when penning his exploration of the underside of NYC, Floating City. It is a deeply frustrating book, made doubly irritating because hidden away, amid a self-referential narrative, are valuable observations about an important topic. It should be more substantive.

Venkatesh made his academic and literary name with Gang Leader For A Day. That is a compelling study of the South Chicago drug economy made possible through the sociologist’s friendship with a gang leader. Through charm, persistence and a non-judgmental profile, Venkatesh earned a place of privilege in a violent urban subculture. His vantage point provided more than enough material for a provocative book.

Now in New York City and with a professorship at Columbia University, Venkatesh tries the same approach in Floating City. Problems quickly multiply. New York City’s off the books economy is very complex. He is unable to define his research or the project. He befriends a drug dealer and prostitutes, but friendship does not necessarily translate into ethnography. His academic peers describe his work as journalism. Venkatesh may embraces a “rogue” title but his confidence rings hollow. His marriage dissolves. His subjects are beaten and arrested. They are all in distress. New York City is not afloat – Venkatesh is.

If we bypass the prurient in Floating City – and Venkatesh’s fascination with prostitution and prostitutes borders on the obsessive and exploitative – and the author’s all too frequent discussions about himself – what remains are some interesting stories of how legal and illegal blur. What makes for cultural capital in a constantly shifting city? It is well-trod ground and reminded me of one of my favorite neglected books about Gotham.

In 1850, a reporter for the New York Tribune, George G. Foster, wrote New York by Gas-Light and Other Urban Sketches: With Here and There a Streak of Sunshine. He describes prostitution, drinking, gambling and the evening economy and lifestyle in a rapidly changing city. Foster focuses on more than explaining and exploring. He draws attention to the hypocrisy of respected political and civic leaders who criticize the underground culture while enjoying and profiting from it. Foster identifies with those that work at night. It is a strange book that captures a city becoming modern.

The dynamic interdependence of legitimate and illegitimate is extremely interesting. Patient readers can glimpse it in Floating City. More than the interplay of legal and illegal, it is the interplay of competing economies and cultures. An area of tremendous vitality, that interplay leads to Bronx hip hop becoming a global phenomenon, or Brooklyn street fashion travels European runways. Grasp it and you have a sense of what makes New York City such a special place.

David Potash

July 14, 2015 American Culture Today, Reviews

That’s A Beautiful Function

Making sense of architecture is no easy task. While we can recognize famous buildings and spaces, making sense of why they are important can be very difficult. Even harder is understanding how good architecture comes to be.

Rowan Moore, an architect who gave it all up to become an architectural journalist, tackles these questions and more in Why We Build: Power and Desire in Architecture. Moore does so from an inspired and thoughtful perspective. He focuses on people: the people who build and the people who experience the built environment. He grasps that human experience is critical to comprehending a structure and turning it into architecture.

The book is funny, insightful, and a bit of a kaleidoscope. Moore is not bound by a single set program or argument. He tries this approach and that, sprinkling delightful language as he travels the globe. How does a place so like Dubai, so over the top, so showy and yet so empty, happen? Why are the works of Lina Bo Bardi, an Italian architect who build in Brazil, so effective? What explains the interplay of architecture and desire? We read about imagined immortality and seduction, of Loos and Norman Foster, about the World Trade Center and the Freedom Tower, and about follies of design and true fakes (Pompidou Centre).

Moore served as director of the Architecture Foundation, where he worked with Zaha Hadid. His viewpoint is both as architect, patron, and critic. Moore tells us that eternity is overrated and form will follow finance.

I came away with a greater appreciation of the magic in a well-conceived and well-executed design, and gratitude to Moore, who writes about architecture critically in a way that makes me think.

David Potash

July 6, 2015 Reviews

Paying To Play – And Illinois Is Still Paying

The recent election of Governor Rauner and the Chicago mayoral election have many folks in Illinois talking about the state’s finances. It is not a happy story. According to George Washington University’s Mercatus Center, Illinois is in the US’s bottom five states when it comes to ranking in categories like cash solvency, budget solvency, and fiscal condition. This is not due to anemic business activity. Illinois has the nation’s fifth largest GDP. Other factors are very much at play.

To learn more about Illinois’ economy, I look to history and politics. One solid case study that provides insight into how and why is the legacy of Governor Rod Blagojevich. Leading the state from 2003 to 2009, Blagojevich was impeached, convicted of corruption, and imprisoned. He is currently serving a twelve-year sentence and will be eligible for release in 2024. He also has the dubious distinction of being the fourth Illinois governor to do time in a federal penitentiary. Joining former governors Otto Kerner, Jr., Dan Walker and George Ryan, Blagojevich is an unfortunate example of a long-standing culture of corruption.

In 2009, after his impeachment but before prison time, journalist Elizabeth Brackett wrote Pay to Play: How Rod Blagojevich Turned Political Corruption Into a National Sideshow. It is a chilling book, highlighting a amoral political climb and an environment that fostered self-serving leadership. How could it happen? It turns out that it was not all that difficult to elect an ethically empty politician. Especially one who married the daughter of a well-connected and powerful alderman.

Brackett’s book may not be the final word on Blagojevich, who probably is not worthy of the time or effort of a more serious analysis. There is no epic tragedy here. What Brackett does bring to the table is a heightened awareness of how the system worked for politicians and their teams. Self-serving interests were consistently placed ahead of any sense of shared responsibility or stewardship. The consequences were clear and critics pointed them out. But behavior did not change. Politicians awarded contracts, jobs, and resources for personal gain. Graft was prevalent. Future generations were left to pick up the bill. And here we are, today, paying for it.

One of the basic hopes of democratically elected government is that the whole will be greater than the sum of the parts. The exact opposite was the result under Governor Blagojevich. Many sought what was best for themselves. Few considered the collective interests of the community. The result was a culture and political landscape bereft of a well-funded and considered shared public good. It is a depressing story.

I have to hope for a better future.

David Potash

April 7, 2015 Reviews, Things someone who grew up in NJ might write

Old School Chicago Politics and Journalism: Boss

Mike Royko is a Chicago legend. A giant in American journalism, he wrote thousands upon thousands of columns. Most were about Chicago – its neighborhoods, its characters, its perennial hapless Cubs. For those of us who read his syndicated work – he died in 1997 – Royko’s perspective shaped our understanding of America’s Second City.

I have lived in Chicago just under two years. Dipping into Royko now and then has been interesting. What has been truly informative, though, is reading Royko’s best seller, Boss, an unauthorized biography of long-term Chicago mayor Richard J. Daley. Written in 1971 and reflecting the political and social upheaval of the period, Boss is a brilliant work of history and commentary. Royko is an amazing writer.

A short read with punchy sentences and a master’s flair for capturing the feel of a group and the nature of a person, Boss captures the rise of Daley and Chicago. The first mayor Daley was brilliant, ambitious, anti-democractic, and relentless. A product of the neighborhoods with a keen understanding of power, he brought tremendous benefit to the city at tremendous cost. Daley defined much of Chicago in the 1950s and 1960s. Inspiring both admiration and hate, he was a fascinating figure whose priorities, values and vision are visible in Chicago today. Controversial does not begin to describe Daley.

Truly outstanding biographies do much more than explain an individual. Like Robert Caro’s four volumes on Lyndon Banes Johnson, Royko’s book sheds as much light on context as subject. The complexities of America’s post-wire economic boom, the prosperity and racism, the conflicted ways in which we thought about cities, are all part of Royko’s narrative. The very concept of “downtown” is best understood in a context of geography and time. Royko gets this – and also how Daley and his contemporaries thought about it.

Boss is still a relevant book, well worth your time and consideration. And it is particularly relevant as we ready for Chicago’s first “real” mayoral election in decades. We live in a much different Chicago today – yet the legacy of Daley still looms.

David Potash

March 9, 2015 Reviews, Things someone who grew up in NJ might write

‘Merican-Made: Beth Macy’s Factory Man

Several years back after teaching lessons on US labor history I became interested in modern labor practices and how to be a thoughtful consumer. Our family income was improving and while we are far from buying jewelry or vacation homes, there were opportunities here and there to get a piece of furniture or a nice item of clothing. Skipping Craig’s list and looking at new couches in a store was a treat. I started to wonder: Where do the things I buy come from? And how was it made? Are the workers making a decent wages or slaving in a sweat shop? I decided to try to avoid cheap, to purchase less, and when possible, to buy items made in the United States and/or goods that have a greener history.

This has made for some interesting challenges on the shopping front. For instance, if you do not favor the expensive New Balance sneakers made in the USA, choices are slim. I also know that my strategy does not make all that much of a difference, is not sustainable, and probably rests on questionable assumptions. What I do know, though, is that is has made me a more conscious consumer. That, I hope, has been to the good.

I mention all of this to help you understand my thoughts about journalist Beth Macy’s Factory Man: How One Furniture Maker Battled Offshoring, Stayed Local – and Helped Save and American Town. It is a fascinating book, or rather three books, welded together. Well-written, engaging, and popular, Factory Man also highlights that “made in America” is about more than economics. It touches us emotionally, nationally, and ethically.

One focus of Factory Man is the business history Bassett Furniture Industries, a Virginia company founded in the early 1900s by two Bassett brothers. The company took advantage of inexpensive labor from Appalachia, building a factory town and exercising all manner of control as the firm flourished. Bassett furniture appealed to the burgeoning middle class. Since copyrighting furniture styles is well-nigh impossible, a smart designer – and Bassett invested in talent here – can copy and adapt with tremendous success. There was no culture of craftsmanship or innovation at Bassett, save making more money. Bassett’s growth and expansion, up until the threat of globalization, mirrored that of many other domestic industries geared toward the broad consumer market. Control expenses, find new ways to market, and seek profit.

Macy prefers people to business, though, so much of her attention returns to the people involved in Bassett. She spends years tracking down family lore, from sibling rivalries to sexual relationships between management and labor. Families involved in the furniture business inter-marry, form partnerships and break up acrimoniously. It is a bit like medieval history, without the flags. Macy is equally attuned to the history of labor in the factory towns, interviewing workers and their families. Their voices are valuable, but their perspective is limited, just as their straits were curtailed. Working at Bassett provided a wage but not much of a way of life. Those with ambition left the company towns. Much of Factory Man is colored through the lens of an inquisitive outsider trying to make sense of complicated family dynasties and their impact on the local communities.

The final key component of the book is the story of John D. Bassett III, family outsider who returns and leads the political charge against the tide of Chinese furniture imports. Led by Larry Moh, a brilliant business man, Chinese companies began to use very same techniques as Bassett to increase market share. Chinese manufacturers kept labor costs very low, controlled costs of ingredients, and copied designs. American companies responded by directing more manufacturing to Asia and shifting attention to retailing directly. US manufacturing jobs steadily disappeared. The strategy was at best a delaying tactic. Asian manufacturers started selling to other retailers and US furniture companies lost more share of the market. JD Bassett III put a halt to the trend by building a coalition of American furniture manufacturers and pressing an anti-dumping case against Chinese furniture makers. It took years and millions of dollars, but he eventually prevailed. The US case was “won” resulting in penalties and fines that eventually made it back to US companies.

It is, on one level, a great story: a “factory man” successfully fights globalization and keeps a local industry and community alive. Tom Hanks has optioned the book and it is easy to see him in the lead role.

On the other hand, Macy’s book raises more questions than it answers. Who, exactly, has won or lost here? Do workers benefit? It is difficult to argue that Bassett, despite the jobs it provided, values labor any more than its foreign competitors. Regulation and other macro-economic factors account for the differences. The US furniture industry, too, did not seem to do anything creative to either keep jobs in the US or to distinguish itself. The book regularly highlights the lack of investment, research, or innovation in Bassett industries. It is possible, in fact, to argue that the domestic furniture industry got what it deserved.

Factory Man left me a little wiser and more thoughtful. Reaching for the “made in America” label is no guarantee, but it remains a good place to start. And when it comes to furniture, I may be looking for antiques.

David Potash

February 23, 2015 American Culture Today, Reviews

Guns At Last Light: The Good War Done Well

In 2013 Rick Atkinson finished the third and final volume of his popular history of the United States military in the WWII Atlantic theater, The Guns at Last Light: The War in Europe, 1944-1945. It is the best kind of history for the broader public: well-written, informative, and driven by a clear focus. World War II is reputed to be humanity’s largest collective enterprise. It is damned difficult task for an historian to capture the scope of the conflict and still make it understandable. Atkinson handles the challenge with skill and verve.

The first two volumes, An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942-1943, and The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944, are equally well written. The first garnered a Pulitzer Prize. With the third in place, it is possible to see Atkinson’s strengths and weaknesses more clearly. The volumes, too, drive home the importance of revisiting the war and what it meant to America and the world. There are no easy answers when it comes to World War II.

Atkinson is an expert and mixing personal details with broader, well-established history. He knows how to maintain drama and interest with just the right quote culled from a journal or letter. To his credit, Atkinson never lets the reader forget that this was not just an international conflict pitting organization against organization. It was a battle among people. Maintaining that agenda, without losing sight of the larger shifts, makes for gripping history.

He is also writer with an expansive vocabulary and a love of rich prose. With a less sure hand, or a topic less important, the florid language might seem overdone. Considering he is writing about a war that killed 60 million, extremes are necessary.

On the other hand, Atkinson is not primarily an historian of battles or strategy. These books are not the best resource to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of the Normandy campaign or to consider supply line challenges. Atkinson mentions them, to be sure, but they are referenced in terms of people and ideas, not as examples of grand design. Further, the Atlantic Theater is best understood within the context of a global conflict. Atkinson’s theme – what the US military did and experienced – is valid. However, thoughtful readers should realize that there cannot be one definitive account of the war.

There are many volumes looking at WWII from a range of perspectives. What Atkinson has done in the Liberation Trilogy is make the heroic efforts of the United States military in the Atlantic Theater, warts and all, with its incomprehensible scale, and human sized. It is accessible intellectually and emotionally. It is an impressive achievement.

David Potash

February 9, 2015 Reviews, Things someone who grew up in NJ might write

City of Ambition – When Folks Could Make It There

Academic history is assiduously researched and tightly argued. Popular history, in contrast, pays homage to those methods with different goals. It aims to surprise and engage. Popular history provokes, and most importantly, it is designed to give the reader pleasure and information.

Mason B. Williams, author of City of Ambition: FDR, LaGuardia, and the Making of Modern New York, understands this well. The key protagonists in his book are well-known and well-researched figures. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, known for the New Deal and leading the United States through World War II, is perhaps the nation’s most important political leader of the twentieth century. Fiorello LaGuardia, mayor of New York City from 1934 to 1945, is perhaps America’s best known mayor. With multiple biographies on each and multitudes of studies, essays, and books about them, Williams does not aim to captivate us through deeper research and finer detail. Instead, he offers a refreshing take on the two men, their complicated relationship, and its impact on America’s largest city. He has written a very good popular history.

FDR was a wealthy patrician, born to serve in government and lead. LaGuardia was an immigrant’s son who had to scramble to get ahead. Both faced difficult personal crises: FDR struggling with polio, LaGuardia losing his wife and child. Both men fought through political challenges, and both had great spirit, able to inspire and connect with the broader public. FDR was a Democrat. LaGuardia was a Republican. Despite partisan differences, they respected each other and found many ways to coöperate and collaborate.

Williams book works well capturing the human element. Partnerships – and in many ways this was an odd sort of partnership – are shaped by personalities. The substance of this history, though, is the federal government’s investment in the development of modern NYC. Federal dollars provided many jobs and funded the creation of much of the city’s infrastructure. In turn,Williams also makes it clear that the federal government needed effective and flexible local agencies and governments to be effective. Compromise and bipartisan work was at the core of the New Deal in Gotham.

Governance was different then, and in many ways, much stronger. One clear take away from City of Ambition is that we have lost much of bipartisan spirit. It very much was a different time.

David Potash

January 9, 2015 Reviews, Things someone who grew up in NJ might write

Modern Chicago – The Third Coast

Sometimes when feeling adventurous – particularly when time is not an issue – I will engage in a free-wheeling conversation with a stranger. The place where I start this matters – a bar, a library, waiting in line – and so does the stranger’s appearance. The likelihood that I will make an observation or ask a question increases if the person looks like they have opinions and something to say. These forays fall flat every now and then. But more often that not, asking the right question at the right moment opens up a vista. I listen and learn. People are interesting. And occasionally that chance encounter leads to an informed discussion that carries with it observation, nuance, and heft.

Thomas Dyja’s The Third Coast reminds me of such a chance encounter. A novelist, playwright, and editor, Dyja has a way with words. They flow from his pen, building scenes and capturing moments. He is a long-time Chicagoan with a approach-avoidance relationship with the city. He loves it and it frustrates him terribly. Dyja’s book is a narrative history of the Windy City, covering 1932 – 1960, a period we historians think of “modern” America. He is deeply passionate about Chicago. Dyja now lives in New York City.

Dyja is no historian. He is unconcerned with large-scale continuities and movements. His story is disconnected from national economics, politics, and established historical analysis. What he brings to the table is an intimate familiarity with some key individuals, some critical conflicts and divisions, and a playwright’s understanding of drama, tension, and resolution. The key players in The Third Coast are Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Mahalia Jackson,László Moholy-Nagy, Nelson Algren, and Richard Daley. A cast of hundreds, though, vie for Dyja and our attention: Hugh Hefner, Studs Terkel, Ray Krok, Dave Garroway, Katherine Kuh, Gwendolyn Brooks, Muddy Waters, and many more. Dyja is free and funny with observations and opinions. His critical take on Robert Hutchins, for example, is withering and memorable.

The themes Dyja explores are about race, culture, and identity – played out in the development of centers of power in Chicago. North side versus south side, of course plays an important role. But so, too, does competing visions for downtown Chicago. Dyja is after an ever elusive zeitgeist, a sense of what forces were driving this extraordinarily dynamic city to be both the most American of all cities and also the most disappointing in not fulfilling its promise.

I learned much from The Third Coast. But like that lengthy discussion with a stranger, I left wondering just how much to believe – and why.

David Potash

September 20, 2014 Reviews

Her Sister’s Keeper

We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, a recent novel from Karen Joy Fowler, is an endearing disruptive read. Narrated in the first person by Rosemarie Cook, an inveterate talked who starts in the middle and loops with little regard for chronology’s strictures, the book engages and challenges. Good novels worm their way into how we think about people and the world – and We Are Completely Beside Ourselves does a wonderful job of it. Fowler is a very talented author.

Fowler does not so much have a plot as a concept, and it could be something of a surprise for those not paying close attention. A traditional nuclear family (father, mother, son, daughter) raises an orphaned baby chimpanzee as one of their own as a psychology experiment. The chimp, Fern, is the same age as the younger daughter, Rosemarie. The experiment ends after five years – the chimpanzee is suddenly sent to a “farm” – and the family suffers trauma and disintegrates over time.

Rosemarie, who has a terrific voice and a real way with words, tells us this story. Irreverent and deeply moral, Rosemarie’s coming of age is more than a journey to adulthood; it is about what it means to be fully human. Those interested in literary analysis will find numerous thoughtful references. Themes of doubling and twinning themes are woven throughout. Fowler’s skill unfolds these questions with a light, yet penetrating touch.

Well worth your time – and I would be surprised if you would want to visit the monkey cage at the zoo after reading it. When it comes to our ethical responsibilities to animals, no easy answers are possible. Some things, though, are simply wrong.

David Potash

August 10, 2014 Curiouser and Curiouser, Reviews

Modalities of Perception in a City Block

We lead distracted lives. Possibly because we are over committed and ambitious. Or perhaps to avoid our demons.

When I look around me and really pay attention – no cell phone, no earbuds, no other task at hand – I usually find myself to be the only one engaged in the pursuit. Unplugging and focusing is a skill headed the way of stone carving: cool but not all that useful.

But we often do need to sharpen our focus. Work demands it. Concentration is a learned skill that can bring with it tremendous benefits.

That sense of engagement and questions of utility dance through a deeply engaging book by Barnard professor Alexandra Horowitz. Best known for her work on canines and the very interesting Inside of a Dog, Horowitz’s latest work was occasioned by walking around her New York City block with her young son. As any new parent will relate, space and time change radically in those first years of walking with a child. With the help of contractors from sites like creativecrosswalks.co.uk, these creative crosswalks are designed to enhance pedestrian safety. Very young children see with new eyes. All is exciting to the under twos. They have yet to develop and internalize the processing taxonomies that sort the important from the irrelevant.

From those early steps with her son, Horowitz began to question her ways of seeing. What didn’t she notice? What could she see differently by engaging with those trained in other ways of observing? The result, On Looking: Eleven Walks with Expert Eyes, provokes and inserts itself, uncomfortably, in the habitual. Reading it was an exercise in itself. As I looked up from the text – focusing in a different way – I thought about my immediate environs and my relationship with it differently. It “knocked me awake” – which is one of Horowitz’s goals in writing the book.

Horowitz’s experts have to include herself and her expertise in cognitive psychology. She frames the questions of attention, perception and observing from a psychological and anthropological point of view. We are hard-wired to pay closer attention to threats, changes in the environment, and features that lead to food and safety. Those same skills are often poorly integrated into modern life, video games not withstanding. Understanding our environment, and ourselves, can call for new ways of perceiving.

Horowitz consults with a geologist, who traces millions of years through the many kinds of stone in the built urban environment. A typographer knows too much about the letters that surround us, from their history to how we respond to their size, shape, and order. An artist helps Horowitz recognize the exceptional that is woven into the ordinary. A field naturalist clues us into the many different bugs and insects all around us and a biologist identifies the clues of animals’ presence in the city.

As Horowitz’s environment is re-seen, again and again, from these robustly different schemes, two observations came to mind.

The first, learned from an art historian, is that we see what we know. If someone tells you that a painting is by Rembrandt, you see a painting by Rembrandt. It is exceedingly difficult to look and both to know and pretend that one does do not know.

The second stems from a long-standing question first sparked in a college literature class on James Joyce’s Ulysses. As a chapter opens, Stephen Daedelus, a key character, closes his eyes. The text reads, “Ineluctable modality of the visible: at least that if no more, thought through my eyes.” Joyce’s text calls into question of what is real and what is known. Does the world disappear when Stephen does not see it? Is what we think that we know true, or even the best way to know? These were rich questions for a college class, the kind of questions that can return and animate all manner of reflection.

Horowitz gets this and the problem of knowing. Though her focus is scientific and empirical – no Joycean or wild conjecture here – she is wrestling with questions of truth and perception. The book is a pleasure to read. Horowitz has a gift of asking these difficult questions in clear prose. She takes complex issues and renders them accessible. It is rare to read a work that both humbles and leaves you feeling just a little smarter.

David Potash

July 28, 2014 Reviews, Things someone who grew up in NJ might write

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