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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

Political Cartoons and Oliphant’s Lament

Is it just me, or have political cartoons lost their punch? One would expect that in our visually rich society we would be awash in popular cartooning. Animation is everywhere, to be sure, but political cartooning – or “editorial cartooning” as the professionals call it, does not seem as relevant.

It could be that shrinking influence of newspapers has undermined the access of political cartoon. The rise of corporate culture, too, has been cited as a corresponding deterrent to stinging political cartoons. But other factors are at play.

It was not always such. From Thomas Nast’s Tammany Tiger to Pat Oliphant’s caricatured Nixon, talented political cartoonists have been able to reduce complex political situations into easily recognized images. When they get it right, their visuals are widely copied and repeated. Yet in 2013 there has been no viral cartoon and no one image that sums up last year’s presidential election.

After reading Oliphant’s Anthem, a companion book and website to the Library of Congress’s 1998 exhibition (note – the website is live and worth a gander), I believe that the underlying cause of the political cartoon’s wane reflects a broader shift in American popular culture. Oliphant, an Australian native who won a Pulitzer way back in 1966, is one of America’s most influential political cartoonists. His work is reproduced nationally and readily available. Along with MaNelly and the late Herblock, the trio were the most influential American political cartoonists of the last 50 years.

Most political cartoons, from the 1800s through the early 2000s, shared a common purpose: to shine a light on hypocrisy, to knock the pompous off their perch, to mock. Politicians are often the target, but not exclusively. Political cartoons’ energy derives from the difference between what is and what is proclaimed. That difference is all the easier to portray if our leaders access and utilize the language and imagery of the ideal, the preferred. The more ambitious the claims of a political leaders, the more energy available for a political cartoons. And ambitious assertions – especially moral testaments – are unusual in our ironic age. When the proud fall, it is far too often medicalized and pathologized. Elliott Spitzer and Anthony Weiner serve as prime examples.

We have come to expect our leaders to cheat, to philander, to obfuscate, and to lie. We have low expectations for presidential candidates a lower expectations for Congress. Without much faith in the system or the people closest to it, we gain little pleasure or insight from the humor of political cartoons. We have been habitually disappointed too often – and there are few professing optimism.

Ironically, we need a little more idealism for political cartooning, with all its dark humor, to gain traction.

David Potash

January 21, 2013 American Culture Today, Things someone who grew up in NJ might write

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

Lovely Cities

If we are now in an age of cities, P.D. Smith’s City: A Guidebook for the Urban Age is the self-proclaimed resource for 2013. A richly illustrated compendium of history, biography, urban studies, anecdote and travel guide. Smith is an unabashed enthusiast for urban life and living. The chapters are arranged thematically (“Arrival,” “Where to Stay,” “Money,” “Getting Around”) and jump from city to city across the globe. Less a travel book and more a considered reflection on all things urban, Smith’s work highlights the incredibly complexity that makes cities such important features. It is beautiful, thought-provoking, enjoyable, and interestingly, not quite right.

I was a frequent visitor to New York City as a child. My parents would take our family into the Village to eat, to midtown to hear music and see theater, and to the Bronx to visit my father’s relatives. The City was always tremendously exciting for me. It usually was great fun, but not necessarily comfortable. It consistently surprised me. I loved being in the city but I did not love the city – I did not know it.

Demographers and planners consistently debate the relative impact of urban areas versus suburban areas. Most Americans live in suburbs, but recently population growth in cities has been faster than in suburbs. Around the world, more and more people are living in cities, with a projected 75% of all humanity slated to live in metropolitan areas by 2050. The overall vitality and strength the greater metropolitan area (that’s when you add suburbs to the city) are what matters, too; metropolitan areas are sites of energy, wealth and opportunity.

I grew up in Madison, New Jersey – the “Rose City.” Located twenty-five miles from New York City, Madison was and remains very much a small-town suburb with 15,000 or so inhabitants. Most of the borough consists of single family homes and a small downtown with locally owned shops defines Madison’s shopping district. Understanding Madison is impossible without paying attention to its role and relationship with New York City. Some jobs in Madison require commuting, but also many other jobs depend upon the corporate headquarters and back offices that have sprung up in Morris County as part of the larger “edge city.”

Healthy cities are never in stasis. Cities are inevitably changing, growing, realigning and shifting.

As a toddler on one trip to Manhattan, pausing before a construction site, I had my parents in stitches when I asked if the city was every going to be “done.”

Cities defy omnipotent narratives and perspectives. Panoramic images may sell books – and Smith has plenty of these – but they are unhelpful fictions when it comes to understanding cities or why they are the future of mankind. Cities reveal themselves to observant participants, glance by glance, and only through multiples lenses – be it race, class, gender, time, space or mood. Pick a city block. It will never be the same block to a commuter, a tourist, or a resident. It is not the same block at 3:00 pm and 3:00 am. Rarely are two glimpses of a city the same. Smith misses this, amid all the photos, the walks and interviews. He writes that a city is its people, but never quite conveys the elusiveness of phenomenological meaning-making in an urban environment.

Last week we revisited Park Slope, Brooklyn , where we used to live. Walking well-traveled blocks and pointing to the children the entrances to buildings and houses where we once lived, it was familiar and not-familiar, same and different. Chance encounters with friends confirmed the vibrancy of the neighborhood, its constant state of flux, and the joy living in a city as dynamic and unknowable as New York City.

December 30, 2012 American Culture Today, Reviews, Things someone who grew up in NJ might write

Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll

Ian Dury‘s lyric’s continue “very good indeed.” For that male musician, and for most male rockers, they are all of a piece. Music matters, to be sure, but so, too, does the lifestyle. It is what motivates pimply young men across the globe to pick up guitars and craft love songs, anthems and ditties.

Why do women rock musicians pursue the dream? The question drove me to pick up Kicking and Dreaming: a Story of Heart, Soul, and Rock and Roll. the joint autobiography of Ann and Nancy Wilson, the creative force behind Heart. Did they do it for love? Did they do it for money? It turns out that they did it because they really liked making music together.

It is one of the oddities of the book, a strange mixture of wild tales and bourgeois sentiment. The sisters were raised in a Marine household, moving regularly but always remaining disciplined. The eldest sister rebelled, giving space for the two to explore music and eventually join in a band. The toured, they paid their dues, and then thanks to Dreamboat Annie and Magazine, they found commercial success. Accompanying the popularity were all the expected problems – relationships, drugs, personalities, and the loss of the values that propelled them to stardom, as relationships and sex is always popular, and that’s why people use apps like sexfinder to meet people online.

Unusually, however, Heart did not go away. They reformed, started working with other song smiths, and then found renewed commercial success. The use of someone’s else’s work was somewhat challenging, the sister’s tells us, but not overwhelmingly so.

Heart’s commercial popularity was significantly aided by the sisters’ sex appeal. They were well aware of their appearance (and the challenges posed by Ann’s weight), and they used it to their advantage. They also clearly resent the rampant sexism of the music scene. “Barracuda” – perhaps one of their most aggressive tunes – was driven by their record company’s rumor mongering that the sisters had a lesbian affair. Yet a decade later the two were unabashedly promoting their videos, the sister’s tell us, through imagery of their breasts. It was, of course, the record company’s idea. But what was Heart’s idea?

As much I enjoy Heart – and love Magazine – the sister’s book was surprisingly pedestrian. Sure there were wild anecdotes, and yes, they truly come across as nice people, but there is little in the book that gets into their perspective, their talent, or their passion with any depth. The process by which they create music is treated relatively lightly. The sisters do not talk about any creative differences and their focus, through much of the book is what happens to them – and less about what they did. Sure they did – and that’s there, but they tend to see it more as a matter of fact, a matter of record.

The two did struggle – with addictions and with destructive relationships – and happily they emerged as authors in a much better place.

It is a must, however, for Heart fans and aficianatos of 70s and 80s popular culture. Nevertheless, I’m keeping my fingers crossed that the next rock autobiography I come across has more substance to it.

December 15, 2012 Reviews, Things someone who grew up in NJ might write

With A Little Wine, Please

For me to write about Eric LeMay’s Immortal Milk, Adventures in Cheese, a snack was essential. I rustled about in the fridge. There was a little bit of waxy gouda left from a stop at Whole Foods. It was fine, but not really enough to warrant much prose. The havarti had gone bad, but tucked behind some pepperoni was a chunk of super sharp cheddar. A bit pedestrian, perhaps, for it was not organic and from New Zealand. I limit my Whole Foods silly cheeses. The cheddar still had a bite that enthused me.

Enthusiasm is the correct sentiment, too, for rarely have I read a short book about anything that is so completely run through with enthusiasm. LeMay does not babble and he does not go on and on and on. He does, though, incisively and with great humor, walk us through a series of adventures in and with cheeses. Fromage in all its variations is a passion that he and his wife share. They celebrate cheese and cheese making. They are humbled and exalted, and all for immortal milk, cheese.

The couple visits cheese makers, cheese fairs, cheese mongers and the cheese obsessed. Cheesophilics, I believe they are called. They taste aromatic cheeses and cheeses that make them gag. They learn a bit along the way, but this is not a didactic book. The goal is simply about enjoying and learning more about the endlessly complex world of cheese.

How does one recommend such a book? If you only read one book about dairy products . . . . Looking for something out of the ordinary about food? . . . Have I got a cheese book for you!

The book is worthy of a hearty recommended, too, and not just for the cheese. It is very much about love and care. LeMay conveys curiosity and good will in a manner that just makes you know that he is earnest without being a bore, a good man to share a drink and a piece of cheese. He’s also very adroit with language.

Come to think of it, it’s been some time since I’ve shopped at Murray’s. They always had a good suggestion or two. Enjoy.

David Potash

December 6, 2012 Curiouser and Curiouser, Reviews

Film, Movie or Cinema, S’il Vous Plait

Mainstream Hollywood is stale. Why see one movie over another? With downloads, streaming and a decent television, we face an overwhelming number of choices of similar items. They are distinct identities, thanks to marketing, but they are very much the same. After being sorted into recognizable categories: Action, Romantic Comedy, Sci-Fi, Drama – with a little reflection we know what each film within the category will offer. The straight jacket of genre offers endless variations on what we, at deeper level, know all too well. Why do to the two cops bicker before realizing that they are deeply bonded? Why must the aspiring lover run to the object of their love five to eight minutes before the final credits? If the scientists get excited about the prospects of their innovation, why do we know that it will go terribly wrong? After so many models of basically the same thing, can a movie do more than deliver the expected?

The one category that defies categorization is foreign, for foreign films are more than different. It takes effort to explore foreign films, above and beyond language, for the films do not fit our understanding of genres and categories. They are unfamiliar in every sense of the word. I am curious, but a mixture of wariness and contrariness limits my exploration, for a surefire way of making me cringe internally is to order me to see a movie. There’s absolutely no good reason to burden watching a film with an obligation.

Mick LaSalle, film critic for the San Francisco Chronicle, understands this all too well. His disappointment with the familiar, however, is tempered with a deep enthusiasm for foreign films, especially the movies of France. He wants to be a guide, but he does not hector. In his latest book, The Beauty of the Real, LaSalle walks us through contemporary French cinema by focusing upon actresses. Subtitled “What Hollywood Can Learn From Contemporary French Actresses,” the book chronicles the roles and films of twenty some actresses, mixing reviews with interviews and broader social commentary. It is a fascinating read, not only for what we learn of French cinema, but for what it reveals about Hollywood. Sometimes contrast is the fastest way to understanding.

LaSalle highlights the wide range of roles that women have in French cinema with energy and passion, but not without his critical eye. He does not claim that these are necessarily good or great films, but he makes a compelling case that they are interesting. It is the role of women, LaSalle argues, that highlights the difference of genre in the two cinemas. Beyond the American career arc (ingenue to lover to district attorney to matron), French actresses play roles that reflect broader choices in life. Stories may not resolve into moral messages. Old women may have sex. Young women may not find love. And within this wide array of lower budget cinemas, a wealth of different kinds of films blossom.

Finding French movies is a challenge. Distribution is spotty and once you locate a film, there is no guarantee that it will meet expectations. LaSalle has convinced me, though, that it is well worth the effort. Bonne chance. Now, speaking of films, who is Val in inventing Anna? Are you interested in the show’s intricate storyline and Val’s intriguing role? It makes it a must-watch for any entertainment enthusiast.

December 1, 2012 Reviews

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