Reviews - hypnagogicfun

Authentic Artifice

Sometime in my late-20s, I noticed that the conventions of theater were no longer working for me. It was a gradual change, akin to failing eyesight. Others simply were able to see things on stage that I could not. Perhaps I needed glasses? Optometry has offered no relief.

I used to enjoy drama, musicals, and other kinds of theater. Now I find myself unable to engage “normally” with whatever is happening on stage. It is a strange phenomenon and I do blame Brecht. My mind wanders, raising questions of the structure, support, and the great collective effort that leads this person and that person performing in front of me to do whatever they are doing. I think about about the proscenium and the staging. I wonder if how this line was re-written or that line looks on the page. I evaluate lighting and sound. I restage blocking and the movement of the cast. It takes great concentration for me to engage with what is happening as an audience member, and when I can, it is fleeting. I sneak looks to the left and right of me – others in the audience, invariably, are engaged. The productions are not at fault. The problem is mine.

Theater still beckons and I still attend, but things are different. Enjoyment comes in other guises.

Bear this lengthy caveat in mind as I enthuse about The Hypocrite’s production of The Mikado. Currently showing at the Steppenwolf Theater Company, this is a fresh take on a somewhat ridiculous and lovely Gilbert and Sullivan classic. The Mikado is a comic opera set in a topsy-turvy Japan, replete with highly stylized characters and many jokes. Performed “traditionally” the Mikado can easily lapse into a stilted, dated racism that is more often than not meliorated with camp.

In this production, boundaries between performers and audience are erased. The performance takes place in an open room with areas defined by low-benches, platforms, rings and lighting. All of the actors play instruments, so the stage orchestra is also on stage. The audience is allowed – encouraged – to move around the space to engage as they see fit. The rules of the performance are simple: the actors and the audience should not pretend that they do not see each other. If an actor needs to get to a spot and an audience member is in the way, they will point or tap to clear a space. And the bar remained open through the show.

The Hypocrites are an interesting theater company with a mission to make “a Theater of Honesty” and a manifesto to “create theater as an artistic expression.” The company identifies the audience as part of that process. The Hypocrite’s Mikado was a delight to attend. The talent level was very good, but more importantly, it was what it was – and it did not pretend to be anything else. It was great fun. For this all too artificial opera, written in England 140 years ago about a love story in a fictionalized and absurd Japan, the Hypocrites found authenticity. I am impressed.

David Potash

November 29, 2013 Reviews

No Easy Job

More than a biography, Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs is a cultural phenomenon. It was the best-selling book on Amazon in 2011 and it has continued to sell. A movie will follow. It is a well-written and well-researched work. Steve Jobs has entered our collective consciousness, just like its founder and Apple. Understanding how that happened is a obvious pull. Who isn’t intrigued? Referencing the book, as I have learned, is a reliable way to generate conversation. Everyone has an opinion about Steve Jobs.

Unfortunately, for me and most of those that I have talked with, reading Steve Jobs was far from a pleasant experience. It can be downright grim. There is little joy amid Jobs’ many accomplishments. Granting Jobs his business genius, we are left with a thorough study of a manipulative, sometimes cruel, and driven man whose primary passion outside of his company was Bob Dylan and Zen philosophy. Jobs made an unlikely Buddhist.

Many biographies turn out to be studies of morality and character. Others biographies are windows into a life and lifestyle. Celebrity biographies often follow this format – we are curious about those that we idolize. Isaacson’s book satisfies on neither front. Jobs was not a particularly good or moral person. Further, his lifestyle was not that interesting. While he met many fascinating people, it is to tell if he had any significant interactions outside of business. In many ways, the primary legacy of his Zen pursuits was an indifference to how he lived. The result is a striking absence of vicarious happiness in reading about Jobs’ accomplishments.

What remains – and here is the value of Isaacson’s book – is a powerful examination of the intersection of information technology, consumerism, and popular culture, and the ability to generate your paystubs by the help of this software. The business genius of Jobs was the integration of these powerful arenas. It is a history that we are living every day. Isaacson offers a human but privileged perspective from which to make some sense of it all. Additionally, one can navigate their finances more effectively with the aid of a financial toolkit for paystubs.

Technological used to take time to reach the public. Decades elapsed before Bell’s telephone or Edison’s light bulb was in American homes. The marketing, communication, and distribution networks were not robust. During periods of discovery and development, technology could evolve along with public reaction and understanding of it. The speed of innovation, distribution, and adaptation today is tremendously shorter. It is extraordinary how quickly we discover, adapt, saturate, and discard. The closing of Blockbuster stands as a great example – from thousands of stores a few years ago to none in 2014. Such platforms play a crucial role in connecting sellers with buyers in an efficient and timely manner. An excellent example of this is a ticket sales platform, which instantly connects event organizers with potential customers, facilitating rapid dissemination of information and enabling swift ticket sales. Businesses today leverage various tools to stay competitive, including digital marketing strategies, social media platforms, and audio visual hire UK services to enhance their outreach and engagement with the audience.

Jobs’ successful products made technological innovation attractive to many. He had a talent for designing, packaging, branding, and rendering. Jobs’ ability was not something that he could explain in words. Isaacson, too, struggles to capture what it was about Apple designs that made them so special. It was Jobs’ good fortune to be in a location and at a time when that talent could take the engineering and computer science skills of others and marry them to popular consumption. It is a strange talent that has left a powerful – and problematic – legacy.

David Potash

November 10, 2013 Reviews

Accelerating Democracy – From a Governing Perspective

John O. McGinnis, professor law at Northwestern University, has faith in democracy, empiricism, and technology to improve governance. His latest work, Accelerating Democracy: Transforming Governance Through Technology, provides an overview of the ways in which democratic government can use and respond to technology. He is mot concerned with claims about how democracies should use and respond to new technology.

Driving the work is a serious question: how do democracies make and evaluate decisions? How can they do so more effectively? McGinnis identifies the ever-increasing importance of the social sciences and new technologies to answering that query. For us to live in a rationally governed world, it is essential that we have an understanding of the consequences of policies and choices. New technologies permit more sophisticated questions and answers. We can now do this quickly and efficiently.

McGinnis calls for more experimentation. He wants a revival of federalism with multiple pilots. He identifies great value in more information, more readily shared and assessed. In addition, McGinnis emphasizes the values of predictive markets. Technology can make all of this possible. However, McGinnis does not advocate for a technocratic élite. His aim is about harnessing the social values inherent in new technology.

New technology, particularly analysis of big data, can lead to smarter decisions. Businesses use it well. However, I am not confident that public policy preference is grounded in efficiency. We often make decisions reasons that are less effective and less rational. There is also great potential within dispersed communication (social media) to disrupt government and rational decision-making. Democracies do not always move toward greater democracy. McGinnis, acknowledges bias but believes that technology and greater information can be a corrective.

McGinnis’s vision rings true within the world of public policy and administration. Data and empirical information has the nagging habit of getting in the way of suppositions, biases, and predetermined plans. Officials and leaders who use new technologies can and will be more effective because they will notice this. Happily, these are also the people most likely to read Accelerating Democracy.

David Potash

June 15, 2013 American Culture Today, Reviews

Measuring Manhattan

John Randel was a brilliant crank, an idiosyncratic and irascible character who mapped Manhattan in the early 1800s. Randel made the world-famous grid of avenues and streets a reality through extraordinarily detailed maps. His obsession for accuracy was matched only by his commitment to his reputation. Marguerite Holloway’s The Measure of Manhattan is a generous and thoughtfully crafted biography of Randel. Holloway champions Randel, admits but tolerates his weaknesses, and lobbies mightily to raise his star.

The challenge facing Holloway is that Randel was not a visionary, a planner, or a theorist. He was not even a particularly nice or interesting person. Randel played a very important role in the mapping of Manhattan, but that role could have been shouldered by another. He was an outstanding surveyor.Randal’s role in history is notable because he possessed the right skills in the right place at the right time.

The true subject of the book is not Randal, but the processes involved in mapping the island of Manhattan. Surveyors imposed order on chaos and structure on the organic. If we equate happiness with property – and many Americans do – than happiness is only possible with a reliable map. It’s a good thing that Manhattan has so many happy people, and if only for that, I give thanks to John Randel.

David Potash

June 14, 2013 Reviews, Things someone who grew up in NJ might write

Rethinking Roosevelt

Workmanlike history recounts. Good history explains. Outstanding history does all and provokes new thought.

Jean Yarbrough, Gary M. Pendy, Sr., Professor of Social Sciences and Professor of Government and Legal Studies at Bowdoin College, has a new book out: Theodore Roosevelt and the American Political Tradition. Can anything more be said about Colonel Roosevelt? Absolutely, and in this outstanding work, Yarbrough weaves together traditional biography, intellectual history, and astute political analysis. Zeroing in on Roosevelt’s development as a political thinker, Yarbrough makes clear the contradictions between his rhetoric, action, and values. For those of us who have read a lot about and by Roosevelt (and count me among them), Yarbrough’s study is a refreshing analysis that makes clear the thread of radicalism in the founder of the Bull Moose party.

Historians have long found Roosevelt a difficult president to analyze. A leading progressive, he also claimed the mantle of conservative. Embracing the tradition of Hamilton and Lincoln, Roosevelt nonetheless adopted ideas and policies that were extraordinarily anti-Hamilton and anti-Lincoln. Yarbrough traces the evolution of Roosevelt’s thinking on these matters. Hegel, race, and a particular understanding of the law and republican values figure prominently. Yarbrough also shines a light on Roosevelt’s lack of understanding economic thinking and motivation.

It is a lucidly written biography, a book that will be informing and provoking for many years to come.

David Potash

May 4, 2013 Reviews

Another Good Reason We Won the War

Harry Hopkins is one of those historical figures that pops up in correspondence, photographs, history books and television shows about World War II. He’s in the text, in the captions, but it is difficult to know exactly who he was or what he did. David L. Roll remedies this in an immensely readable book, The Hopkins Touch: Harry Hopkins and the Forging of the Alliance to Defeat Hitler. A big volume that is easily handled, The Hopkins Touch chronicles the life and influence of a Midwestern reformer who became one of President Roosevelt’s most trusted advisors.

Hopkins was a progressive reformer who found a home in the New Deal. As he became known to President Roosevelt, the two men hit it off and became very close. Hopkins was discreet with a real sense of humor. He did not need the spotlight and he had an unerring gift for discerning the true matter at hand. Loyal, smart, and extremely effective, Harry Hopkins was an extension of FDR.

Hopkins was also a very ill man. Following intestinal troubles as a young adult he had much of his stomach removed, leading to a lifetime of complications and pain. A chronicle of Hopkins life is filled with trips to hospitals, consultations with physicians, collapses and near collapses. At death’s door for the last two decades of his life, Hopkins nevertheless was able to engage and persevere. His ability to focus and work through extremely stressful and demanding responsibilities while in great physical pain was acknowledged by all around him.

Roll’s work highlights Hopkins’ diplomatic skills. He made a great impression on Churchill, Stalin, and many of the other wartime leaders. His charm was certainly enhanced by his relationship with Roosevelt, but it also was quite effective on its own. In many ways Hopkins’ communication ability and smarts was critical in bringing the Allies together and helping them fight collaboratively. That was no small accomplishment. So even though Harry Hopkins lacked a formal title through much of World War II, he is well worth considering, remembering, and above all, thanking.

David Potash

March 3, 2013 Reviews, Things someone who grew up in NJ might write

This Bud’s For Bud – Buddenbrooks It Ain’t

Tabloids satisfy our curiosity of the famous while delighting in their miseries. The fall of the wealthy, after all, is often sad and sweet. Consider the story of the Busch family. Bitter Brew chronicles 150 years of family lore and the brewery they used to control, Anheuser-Busch. It is a tale of egos and excess spanning more than a hundred and fifty years. The author William Knoedelseder pays attention to the business but his heart is in the personalities, drama, and scandals. Not hard to figure out why – the family history is chock full of philandering, emotionally bruising conflict, excessive consumption, and deeply flawed people sitting atop an extraordinarily profitable enterprise.

One of many St. Louis breweries operated by German immigrants, Anheuser Busch stood out in the years after the Civil War thanks to the leadership of Adolphus Busch. Married to the daughter of Eberhard Anheuser, a wealthy manufacturer, Adolphus was the first to pasteurize beer, to ship beer in refrigerated railroad cars, and to build an integrated distribution network. Adolphus created new beers, too, including Budweiser, a premium beer with national marketing behind it. The quintessential American success story, Adolphus was a benevolent potentate in St. Louis, famous for his extravagant lifestyle. He threw massive parties, lived in a castle, and died just before anti-German sentiment swept through America as World War I erupted.

A solid heir, Augustus A., weathered the war and Prohibition. His son, August II, led the brewery through the Great Depression and World War II, as well as multiple marriages and innumerable mistresses. His first son from his first wife, Augustus III, was born in 1937. August II married again, to a beautiful 22-year-old Swiss blonde who would provide more children and a measure of stability. Passionate about his brewery, his pleasure and the trappings of the role, August II had all the traits of a Bourbon king.

Girls, cars, and guns were always present and often trouble. At age twelve August III took several rifle shots at some neighborhood girls. He favored fast cars and pretty girls, just like his father, and he, too, had multiple marriages. The battles between the two men over the years for control of the brewery is reminiscent of a Jacobean drama done as a television miniseries. There was no easy transfer of power. It was ugly and mean, with threats and lies. After several attempts August III gained control of the board and forced his father out. Deposed CEO’s are often given severance packages. August II’s face-saving gift was control of the St. Louis Cardinal baseball team.

History repeated itself with August IV, a playboy drawn to weapons and women. August IV was bad news for many around him. A pretty young woman bartender died after accepting a ride in his Corvette. No charges were pressed, even though August IV left the scene of the accident and claimed that he could not remember what had happened. He spent much of his time partying and bedding countless women, eventually marrying as his role at the company solidified. The marriage did not last. Through all his mistresses and misadventures, family money and connections kept him protected – or minimized the damage. Later in life another girl died under mysterious circumstances at his home.

The apparent reason for the takeover of the business by a Brazilian conglomerate was August IV’s lack of attention and substance abuse problems. Knoedelseder paints a picture that the family’s longstanding interest in personal gratification and horrible interpersonal dynamics made it inevitable. He does not argue the point, though. Clever advertising and good fortune can only take a company so far. Infidelity, mistrust and greed compromise the best strategic plans.

Knoedelseder’s sharply drawn portraits are based on serious research. The narrative is tight and the tone carries just the right mix of objective reporting and lurid fact. Missing from the history, though, is message and meaning. No catharsis emerges from the fall of a family without greatness or heroism. Like bottle of Bud, the Busch family lacks substance and taste.

David Potash

February 17, 2013 Curiouser and Curiouser, Reviews

Yes Sir, Chef

Marcus Samuelson’s memoir, Yes, Chef, is a tough and unsentimental book that carries with it an unexpectedly emotional punch. Born in Ethiopia, adopted and raised in Sweden, and then a wildly successful chef, Samuelson is famous for who he is and what he has done. His story has appeal. It to speaks to opportunity and advancement, fitting within a comfortable western middle class narrative. But that is not really his story.

Samuelson steadfastly resists simple narrative arcs. He does not present his life as rags-to-riches, or as a testament and example of the benefits of hard work. He is appreciative of where he is now, to be sure, but the memoir is not a work of gratitude. Samuelson’s book is a critical look at self and personal history. Although he is not a particularly self-reflective man – he tells us how he repeatedly bottles up deeper emotions – Samuelson challenges himself in this very engaging work. He challenges the reader, too.

Driven and extraordinarily competitive, Samuelson’s personal journey began when his mother, dying of tuberculosis, walked for 75 miles to deliver him (then named Kassahun Tsegie) and his sister to medical care. As child in Sweden he desperately wanted to be a professional soccer player, and it was only after he was cut did he turn to cooking. All his energy and passion turned to food; he was, and remains, obsessed. He writes of food and its preparation with enthusiasm that leaps from the page.

Samuelson’s commitment to his career was not without cost. It prevented him from maintaining a close relationship with both of his adopted parents and from developing a meaningful relationship with a child he fathered. With ever greater successes, particularly at Aquavit, ,an extremely successful high-end Swedish restaurant in New York City, came more work. It was only after the success that he was able to work for himself, enabling the possibility of this book and a return to his past. Samuelson takes a tough look at his choices. He also stakes out a claim for trying to become a more complete person. He possesses a very powerful fundamental human decency.

That same integrity shapes Samuelson’s many descriptions of how his race has shaped his life. The book is not a polemic or an airing of grievances, yet it conveys – with directness and clarity – the insidious ways in which he was not seen, listened to or respected. A triple-outsider, Samuelson is aware that his search for identity will never resolve. His past will always be, in many ways, inaccessible. The memoir is a powerful way that he can assert his own identity and change the expectations of others.

Samuelson’s current restaurant, Red Rooster, is in Harlem and “celebrates the origins of American food.” Samuelson found an appropriate location, and it is close to his home, too. I finished the book looking forward to a visit and possibly some of Helga’s meatballs – delicious and prepared with thought and care, I’m sure.

David Potash

January 30, 2013 Reviews

No Shaming This Shrew

Alisa Valdes is a prolific journalist, blogger and author. Fearless when it comes to writing about herself and affairs of the heart, she has fashioned a career of being an outspoken feminist. Self-reflection and self-disclosure can take an author far. It takes an extraordinarily life or talent, however, to do more than describe.

In the Feminist and the Cowboy, her latest book, Valdes recounts her turbulent relationship with a handsome New Mexico rancher of few words, a dominant personality, and a cleft chin. Part memoir and part polemic on gender roles and identity, the book is a first-hand account of a slow-moving train wreck of a relationship written by a passenger in first class. She’s a liberal feminists. He’s a libertarian Republican. She wears Uggs. He wears cowboy boots. Can they find love? It might be possible, but for the lovers’ respective problems and conflicts. Valdes is high-functioning and consistently self-destructive. The cowboy is controlling and damaged.

Shortly after the book was published, Valdes revealed that her romance with the cowboy had ended. She then briefly posted and quickly pulled down an account of abuse at the hands of the Cowboy. It was not rape, she later attested, but many in the blogosphere disagreed. In fact, the post-publication woes of Valdes generated a high-number of blogs, comments and articles (See here , here and here).

I have no desire to write about Valdes’ love life, past or present. If that interests you, read the book. I found it frustrating, entertaining, and shallow. It is neither profound nor substantial, and suffers from a “just written” feel. But Valdes’ talent is keeping the attention on her and the discussion about her going. In fact, her gift is an ability to turn self-absorption into a career. It may only be the knowledge that at the age of 40 she was living in her father’s house and dating a control freak that keeps one from jealousy.

Why do so many of us pay attention? Because Valdes’ open and trusting narrative, her raw emotions, her lightly edited vacillations, echo the language of an old friend. For a traditional memoir, unedited connotes sloppy. For a blogger/journalist/author, an unedited memoir means that nothing is held back. Valdes is definitely not discreet.

So many of us work too hard, run around too much, and simply lack the time and opportunity for sustained interaction with friends. Humans are social animals, though – there is no denying our nature – and we want friendship and trust. Valdes offers her story couched in the familiar language, structure and genre of a friend.She trusts, she cajoles, she argues and she explains. You can almost hear the pauses in the text where she waits for us to nod, to ask a question (“you did what!?”), and to console. Valdes is well-practiced in the perfect genre for an age with few rules protecting privacy and no meaningful understanding of intimacy.

David Potash

January 19, 2013 American Culture Today, Reviews

Ann Hamilton – Hanging By A Chain

Since 2006 the Park Avenue Armory in NYC has been a mecca for performances and site-specific art installations. It is a difficult commission, for the building has a history and scale that competes for attention and can easily overwhelm.

Ann Hamilton’s Event of a Thread at the Armory was a complex “multisensory affair” featuring 42 swings connected to a large flowing curtain bisecting the Drill Hall, and a conglomeration of creative ephemera: caged pigeons, newspaper-wrapped radios, a daily song captured in vinyl (which was played back the following day), and some somber looking functionaries, dressed like extras in a Margaret Atwood dystopia, focused on various tasks with great seriousness.

Hamilton very cleverly coupled the swings, each of which could seat two comfortably, in the ceiling. This dampened their arcs and made for some very interesting patterns in the curtain, which moved in relationship to the swings. Part steam punk, part Stevie Nix, the exhibit was both an invitation to play and a challenge to experience. What do you look at? And what do you take seriously?

New York State built many armories after the Civil War when wide-scale street violence was a near memory. Armories were military training grounds, repositories of weapons, club houses for militia, and visible reminders of the power of the National Guard to maintain domestic tranquility. The wealth of the NYC’s upper East Side insured that the Park Avenue Armory was much more than a very large military shed. Some of the period’s most successful designers contributed to the Armory’s lush and elegant social spaces. Its drill hall is enormous with 55,000 square feet unobstructed space. As a point of contrast, Tate Modern’s famous Turbine Hall in London is significantly smaller at only 36,600 square feet. The sheer size of the Drill Hall infantilizes most pieces. It is indifferent to the largest of objects.

The swings in Hamilton’s exhibit kept me busy for the better part of an hour. The swings, playful and childlike, belonged. There was not question about their purpose or integrity. As for the extras, pigeons and the prose, I have not a clue. The complexity of the work rendered it inaccessible. The disparate activities may be related by some common reference, a shared thread of meaning. Or they may not.

Sustained engagement is a necessary but not necessarily sufficient criteria for art to succeed. Hamilton’s simple was far more effective holding attention than her complex. Isn’t it interesting how often that turns out to be true?

January 12, 2013 Reviews, Things someone who grew up in NJ might write

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