RIP, Adam Yauch

Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention

Manning Marable’s autobiography of Malcolm X, A Life of Reinvention, that was finished before Marable’s death in April of 2011 is a fascinating look into the life of the revolutionary icon and a prominent figure of the civil rights movement era. While this book has won critical acclaim, received a Pulitzer Prize in the “History” category and was listed as one of the best 10 books of 2011 by the New York Times, it also has some controversy associated with it. As I read this book, I found myself reviewing Marable’s notes and examining many of his sources.

The Autobiography of Malcolm X as told to Alex Haley that was published shortly after Malcolm X’s death in 1965 is put under the magnifying glass in this book; Marable makes the claim that Malcolm X wasn’t as big of a criminal as he made himself out to be to Alex Haley, and Marable quotes many of Malcolm’s speeches post  Malcolm’s initial trip to Mecca that contradict that he had reversed many of his views on race, Martin Luther King, integration, and hinted that he may not have been totally opposed to the Nation of Islam and Elijah Muhammad.  Marable’s accusations of Malcolm having a homosexual affair with a white businessman are also brought up and are all according to rumor; Marable also suggests that his wife Betty Shabazz also had an affair with one of Malcolm’s security detail, and that Malcolm’s journal entries in a couple of places during Malcolm’s trips abroad suggest he had extramarital affairs as well.

At the same time while Marable makes some strong accusations throughout the book, the life of Malcolm X aside from what you read in Alex Haley’s autobiography is well written. The problem with acquiring sources based on interviews and being on record and going through someone’s journals is that it still doesn’t paint an accurate picture, but Marable does include a lot of good information of Malcolm’s activities in and out of the Nation of Islam. He goes further into the things that we also already know about Malcolm and the Nation of Islam.

There are a lot of disputed claims from the Nation of Islam and some of Malcolm’s closest associates when it comes to this book, but a lot of the information regarding the Nation of Islam, Elijah Muhammad and Louis Farrakan, and that fateful day of Malcolm X’s assassination is consistent with other accounts that have been documented. Elijah Muhammad definitely formed the Nation of Islam based on schemes that had nothing to do with traditional Islamic practices or philosophies, which the Nation of Islam still embraces to this day and makes traditional Islamic groups refuse to embrace the Nation of Islam. Malcolm’s conversion to traditional based Islam after Elijah Muhammad banished him were probably bound to happen—Malcolm was already questioning Elijah Muhammad’s beliefs and morality.

The problem with any book on Malcolm X is that Malcolm himself didn’t leave a lot of information about himself behind, especially in the sense that he never released any writings of his own, and he left behind several recorded speeches and media appearances. Malcolm X also died in the midst of a transformation that became very problematic for him due to his association with the Nation of Islam. Elijah Muhammad produced Malcolm X; Malcolm X saw Elijah Muhammad as his personal savior, a prophet who could do no wrong, and Malcolm was shattered when he discovered Elijah Muhammad was a man who was having inappropriate sexual relationships with the Nation of Islam’s secretaries. The group was threatened by Malcolm’s activities in creating groups that would likely lure away members of the Nation of Islam, and while Malcolm exposed Elijah Muhammad in the process of reinventing himself.

Marable’s accusations that Malcolm never completely reinvented himself and never changed his views on race are up for debate. The more Malcolm traveled overseas to Islamic countries, the more people he met, the more that the Nation of Islam threatened him and his family are what led to his many revelations. And to be fair to Marable, he does quote an interview that Malcolm gave right before his death where he said that the infamous incident where he answered “nothing” to a white student who asked what she could do to help his cause was something that he later came to deeply regret. Had Malcolm X survived, he would have likely had more time to evolve and further his transformation.

If there’s one conclusion that this book makes well, it’s that the Nation of Islam is a dangerous organization and that Elijah Muhammad was not who he made himself out to be. Malcolm built the reputation that the Nation of Islam enjoyed, built up its membership, lived and breathed the cause, and then spent his last days trying to rediscover himself and destroy the mentality that Elijah Muhammad installed in him. 

Arthur Goldwag's "The New Hate: A History of Fear and Loathing on the Populist Right"

“As it’s turned out, ‘The New Hate’ is less about prejudice than it is about American’s long-standing penchant for conspiratorial thinking, its never-ending quest for scapegoats.” – Excerpt from The New Hate

When the people elected Barack Obama to office in 2008, it didn’t take long for the craziness to ensue afterward. The Tea Party, birth certificates, death panels, hostility at town hall meetings, and of course a slew of conspiracy theories started to present themselves from right-wing figures on television, the radio, and bloggers began to surface and become mainstream. If there’s one person who knows about conspiracy theories, it’s Arthur Goldwag. Arthur Goldwag has spent several years writing about conspiracy theorists and has researched most of the conspiracy theories out there. He has a blog where he addresses various conspiracy theories, and he also wrote Cults, Conspiracies, and Secret Societies: The Straight Scoop on Freemasons, The Illuminati, Skull and Bones, Black Helicopters, The New World Order, and many, many more. Arthur Goldwag’s new book, The New Hate: A History of Fear and Loathing on the Populist Right, examines many of those same conspiracy theories the right-wing populists were promoting after the 2008 election—but they aren’t exactly new.

Goldwag goes into detail tracing the origins of what we see today. Much of it is recycled fear from other eras of history; he describes what a conspiracy theory is and how these beliefs become fact in some people’s minds. Glenn Beck channeling an anti-Semitic Mormon named W. Cleon Skousen, Sarah Palin quoting an anti-Semitic figure during a speech, the theories of the John Birch Society, Freemasonry and the Illuminati, the new world order, Henry Ford and many others quoting an anti-Semitic text known as The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the theories surround 9/11, and the conspiracy theories that drive Al-Qaeda and other jihadist groups are some of the things discussed in this book in great detail; the final result is a history lesson and a debunking of many of these theories.

Goldwag’s in-depth look at Glenn Beck’s rhetoric and reading material that he would suggest to his audience makes you wonder why anyone would put Glenn Beck on the air. The fascination for W. Cleon Skousen, a former police-chief of Salt Lake City, was one of Beck’s main inspirations; Glenn Beck also told his fans to purchase and read Skousen’s book, The 5000 Year Leap. Skousen’s history is filled with controversy—he was a member of the John Birch Society, he accused Dwight D. Eisenhower of being a communist, ran the Salt Lake City police department like a Gestapo, and promoted the idea of a New World Order and world government. Skousen was so unpopular amongst conservatives that even William F. Buckey, who ran The National Review, dismissed him as insane, Ronald Reagan tried as hard as he could to distance himself from Skousen, and many other conservative figures were not impressed by Skousen, either.

The one interesting piece of literature that Goldwag discusses is The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,  an anti-Semitic text that states a theory that the Jewish people are out in a quest for global domination. The writings, described and proven mostly to be a hoax, have been used many times by conspiracy theorists. The writings have been used by 9/11 conspiracy theorists to promote the idea that Israel was behind bringing down the twin-towers, by various figures to promote the idea that our banking system is part of their plot for world domination, and that things such as labor unions and liberal politics are also part of the Jewish quest for world power and the enslavement of the Christian white man. The writings also went on to inspire a number of other political figures and people such as Father Coughlin during WW2 (an anti-Semitic priest),

The history of hysteria is something in our past that we cannot deny, but it’s also starting to rear its ugly face in this modern age. Trying to make sense of many of the conspiracy theories that we have been seeing over the past few years can only be understood by examining the roots of where they come from. Goldwag’s history of these theories is a very accurate and scary piece of insight for those of us who are concerned about the future of our society. It’s a must read for any political minded person who believes in bringing reason and sanity back into our political system. 

Visit Arthur Goldwag's blog HERE

The Death of Gay Literature

I read a great article yesterday that asks the question,“Is gay literature dead?” The article is in part an interview with Christopher Bram about his new book, Eminent Outlaws, a retrospective on the era of James Baldwin, Gore Vidal, Truman Capote, and other gay writers from the post-WW2 era. There are many questions about the death of gay literature, what caused it, the current gay generation attitudes towards the older gay generation, and the current era of gay literature. As a gay man myself, I have concluded that the days of great gay literature are indeed over. While working as a bookseller, I found myself unimpressed with the selection of “gay literature” that the chain bookstores stock, and even the stuff that is stocked in the independent LGBT bookstores.

When you look back on the post-WW2 era of gay literature writers, you can’t argue that they weren’t great writers. Gore Vidal is one of my major influences given he wrote on a variety of subjects. The Narratives of Empire series of books offering a look into our history based on fictional characters being the narrators are only a handful of Gore Vidal’s masterpieces. Gore Vidal’s ability to write fiction, history, politics, essays, plays, and screenplays made him an American literary icon. His gay literature novel , The City and the Pillar, that was published in 1946, is one of the first books in American literary history to have homosexuality as its main theme; The City and the Pillar was also controversial upon its release—The New York Times refused to review any of Vidal’s writings after its release. Vidal wrote his mystery novels under the pseudonym of “Edgar Box” to avoid any connection with the controversy of The City and the Pillar.

James Baldwin was just as brilliant of a writer as Gore Vidal. Baldwin also wrote on a variety of subjects and a variety of formats. He wrote novels, essays, poems, plays, and was a social critic. Baldwin was an African-American and a homosexual in a time when America was racially divided and homosexuals were scorned. Baldwin relocated to France given France’s treatment of African-American artists, musicians, and writers. His 1956 novel, Giovanni’s Room, published 10 years after Vidal’s The City and the Pillar, is about a young man living as an expatriate in France who has relationships with other men. Baldwin was also involved in the civil rights movement and took part in the Civil Rights March on Washington in August of 1963; his writings about combining the dissimilar philosophies of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King inspired the second phase of the civil rights movement in the 1970s.

When you take a look at the gay literature of today and look back on the era of Gore Vidal and James Baldwin, it’s easy to say that gay literature is dead. Gay literature today, for the most part, is glorified erotica writing, love stories that are the Nicholas Sparks for gay society, and characters that don’t really have any depth to them. The closest thing to the gay literature that Vidal, Baldwin, Capote, and Isherwood provided in the post-WW2 era would be the writings of Armistead Maupin, the author of the Tales of the City series, which made light of the AIDS epidemic. It’s amazing to think that the post-WW2 era gave us the best years of gay literature. The interview with Christopher Bram asks if it’s a generational disconnect and whether the young doesn’t want to acknowledge the old, but it doesn’t seem that indifference is the reason for the death of gay literature given Bram doesn’t believe there is any difference between the older and younger gay generations.

When you take a look at modern literature, whether it’s gay or not, you could argue that literature is slowly dying. Many of the writers that defined literature in the postmodern era—John Updike, Toni Morrison, Vladimir Nabokov, and Samuel Beckett to name a few—aren’t leaving many worthy heirs in the modern day. We’re also living in the times where the formats are changing from print to e-Readers, corporate book stores and independent bookstores having any possibility for a future is in question, and when people are choosing to curl up with their James Patterson and Stephanie Meyer books. The quality of today’s literature is questionable given it doesn’t seem to inspire and influence the way that it used to. Gay literature is not the only genre that has gone through a transition of masterful literary works to erotic and romance writing in the modern era; African-American literature is now less Toni Morrison and Alice Walker and has become filled with the erotic romance novels of Eric Jerome Dickey, Zane, and Noire  

Gil Scott-Heron's "The Last Holiday"

"I was trying to get people who listened to me to realize that they were not alone and that certain things were possible." - Excerpt from The Last Holiday 

If there was a man who had a way with words, it was Gil Scott-Heron. The revolutionary poet and songwriter, who mixed jazz and poetry together, was an iconic figure in the 1970s. His songs and poems were the backdrop of the post-civil rights era and were the early inspiration for hip-hop and rap music. His poem, “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised,” was a big hit and has been named one of the “Top 20 Political Songs” by The New Statesmen.

The Last Holiday was posthumously released in January after his death in May of 2011. In 2010, his career was on a comeback after a decade of drug problems, health issues, and incarceration. He released his first album in several years that was amusingly titled I’m New Here--the album was praised by critics and sparked an interest in his previous recordings. He started touring again and played the big music festivals around the world.

He begins The Last Holiday discussing his family’s origins. He has warm memories of his grandmother who raised him after his parents separated, he talks about his father’s career as a professional soccer player, and he talks about how all of his maternal family were educated people. There is no doubt that Gil Scott-Heron was an intelligent person, and we learn just how intelligent he was as a child when he discusses his full-scholarship to a preparatory school, his college years at Lincoln University, and Johns Hopkins where he received his masters degree in creative writing.

He discusses his music career with stories from the road and playing in various cities in America. One of which is where he talks about playing a benefit concert against nuclear energy put together by Jackson Browne, where he went on stage to an audience screaming for Bruce Springsteen, who was scheduled to play later on that evening. In one amusing tale, he talks about how we walked into his hotel room to find Bob Marley and his friends sitting in there after being given the key to his room. Touring with Stevie Wonder and talking about Stevie Wonder’s benefit to establish Martin Luther King Day included a story about meeting Michael Jackson, and when he and Stevie Wonder learned about the assassination of John Lennon.

The one problem I had with The Last Holiday is that it’s a collection of stories being told in chronological order as they happened. There were a lot of moments where I found myself wanting to know more and what happened next in transition, but you end up starting a new story when you turn the page. It’s as if you’re getting samples of his life at times and that you want him to emphasize more on what he’s sharing. I came to a part towards the end where he said that when he used to teach creative writing courses before he became a musician, he would tell his students to write about an event that they could remember in vivid detail, and it seems that’s how he decided to write his memoir. The memoir ends around 1999 when he talks about his mother’s death. We don’t get to hear anything about those lost years that followed where he was struggling with drug addiction, with arrests, and his fight to attain sobriety where he decided to revive his music career again. The one thing that he eventually admitted to in a later interview was that he was HIV-positive.

For music fans or anyone who has heard of Gil Scott-Heron, The Last Holiday is definitely a delight to read. For those who are just being introduced to his music, it’s a good place to start. The Last Holiday is the climax and last testament of the life of the man who changed how he listened to music and how we experienced poetry. 

"Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close"

I read an article today that called the film adaptation of Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close the “worst reviewed Oscar nominated film in the past decade.” I read the book a few years ago after all of the hype surrounding the book had past. I honestly wasn’t shocked that the reviews that were coming out for the film’s release were mostly negative. I had been waiting to see this movie since I read that they were creating it given I enjoyed the book. There have been film adaptations of my favorite films that have ruined the book forever for me; Where the Wild Things Are in my opinion was one of the worst nightmares to have ever been created for the big screen, and I lost a little respect for Dave Eggers for writing such a horrible adaptation for the big screen of a magical children’s book turning into an ad for Zoloft. The film version of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close was very well done, and I find it funny that some critics who hailed Where the Wild Things Are took shots at Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and said it does the book a horrible injustice. When I saw this movie last Friday, I left the theater very impressed and felt that this one of those films where the director gets the idea to make it as close to the book as possible, and I felt that the movie was just as worthy as the book.

In my opinion, a lot of critics didn’t judge this film fairly. The performances in this film by the actors/actresses of the characters in the book were something I had a lot of concerns about, especially the main character Oskar. Oskar had to be played by a child actor who could really pull off his personality quirks, his anxieties, his Aspergers syndrome like mannerisms, and his emotional moments and make them all seem believable. Thomas Horn playing Oskar is truly magical, and I don’t think anyone else could have pulled it off as well as he did. Thomas Horn is a no-name, didn’t seem to have any acting background or resume given this is the only film on his iMDB resume, there is no information out there on him, and the only thing they have on him are a few interviews that he did recently. Tom Hanks as Thomas Schell was a perfect fit, and he played the difficult role of the adventurous, story-telling father remarkably. Plus you really never go wrong when you have a veteran actor like Max von Sydow in your film; my friend who has a background in acting whispered in my ear after seeing the character on screen, “Playing a silent role is a real bitch!” Max von Sydow playing a silent role and getting an Oscar nod is quite an accomplishment.

The story line is probably where the critics aimed most of their criticism. The movie is a very emotional one, and it deals with the subject of a little boy with a brilliant and sensitive mind who is very close to his father having to deal with losing him in one of the worst events in our nation’s history. The subject of 9/11 in the story made me believe that people were going to see it in the trailers, conclude that it’s a film they don’t want to see, or the people who would brave it out in the theater would find the 9/11 inspired plot to be too heavy to handle. The premise of the story is that Oskar must learn how to face his fears, learn to relate and share emotions with other people, and must learn how to move on from his pain. The story has a lot of emotional moments, but I think that emotional moments in a film that have a positive impact on people make for cinema gold, and this is one of those stories. The book had mixed reviews and sold very well, and I have talked to some people who said that the book helped them move on from the pain of 9/11, and others say that they hated the magical realism of the novel.

The critics showed their distaste for certain elements of the film such as the opening credits showing dramatizations and non-graphic images of what appears to be bodies falling from the twin towers, they call the film “exploitive,” and even made it seem that it was too emotional and “plucked at the heartstrings.” The Oscar nominations that this film has received obviously show that there are people who focused on the performances of the cast, obviously found the artistic element in the movie, and it obviously goes to show that even though the Oscars are a joke and a Hollywood pissing contest, the movie has some wonderful qualities that the critics just didn’t seem to get. The book adaptation went through the same thing for a while, and yet it went on to become a bestseller. I’m hoping that Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close will keep on having a solid box office performance, will gain some interest with its Oscar nods, and will defy the critics proving that you can’t always trust their opinions.

Steve Jobs

I’m probably a bit late on Walter Isaacson’s biography on the late Steve Jobs. The book has been reviewed to death, the more exciting moments of the book have been discussed in the media, and I’ve seen many people in public carrying and reading the book. Shortly after my injury in November, I was given the book as a gift and I recently just started it. With all of that being said, I looked forward to starting the book and was happy when I was finally able to start it. I wondered if a 600 page book on one of the most fascinating of entrepreneurs in American business. When it comes to Apple products, I’m a huge fan. In 2005 when I moved to California, one of the first things I had to do was purchase a new computer; I decided to take a look at Apple products. I was tired of dealing with Microsoft Windows issues, I was tired of dealing with software that wasn’t user friendly, and I decided that it was time to consider Apple. The first time I got to play around with an iMac in the Apple store I was sold on Apple’s technology.

Anyone who is a fan of Apple knows all about Steve Jobs. The company’s rise and fall after Steve Jobs was forced out and then its rise again when Steve Jobs came back made the American public wonder how Steve Jobs operated, and how he managed to pull this off. The book goes all the way back to his childhood; his adoptive parents had made a pact with his birth mother that they would make sure he went to college. His father as a mechanic taught him a lot, including that the components in anything that aren’t seen and covered are just as important that taught him a lesson on quality. He was an engineer from an early age; he managed to create technology gadgets that annoyed his parents and won him friends. Life events when he was an adult such as taking LSD, discovering various vegetarian diets, practicing Zen Buddhism, befriending Steve Wozniak, and attending Reed College led to him becoming the person that he was. His personality was far from perfect and he was known to be a bit on the cruel or manipulating side, but he was still a brilliant engineer despite dropping out of college.

The story of Apple’s creation is quite fascinating, especially when the handlers were hiring handlers to deal with Steve Jobs and his personality. The creation of Apple’s first products such as the Apple II, the Lisa, and the Macintosh all have stories of conflict. Steve Jobs’ manipulation and cruel personality were a daily obstacle. Putting Steve Jobs solely on the Macintosh program was chaotic, but it led to one of the most innovative and successful products that became part of American consumer culture--as well as a very colorful ad campaign that Steve Jobs was also part of. The connection between Microsoft and Bill Gates with Apple at the time led to a very strange business relationship. Bill Gates an Steve Jobs were both highly eccentric, had different ideas about what they were creating, and both of them had their insulting comments to each other. The people who have been around Steve Jobs in their careers both past and present all discuss his “this is shit!” comments when they presented him with their ideas. They also discuss how there’s a code in dealing with Steve Jobs and what each of his insulting comments mean.

The failures of Steve Jobs after Apple with the “Next” system he created, his involvement with Pixar, and his failed relationships with his colleagues and girlfriends provided learning experiences in business and relationships. When he returned to Apple, it seemed like he wasn’t much different, but he had an idea of what he wanted to do and where he wanted the company to go. He pointed out Apple’s failures in creating innovative products, he addressed the lack of quality for the sake of creating profits, and he wanted to get people who were “A players” instead of having a bunch of “B players.” It’s well documented that he laid off people, made insulting comments at board meetings—such as telling all of the engineers that their products suck. One of my favorite parts of the story of his return is when he was given a tour of all of Apple’s existing products before his return; anyone who remembers that period knows that they had several models of the same system and that they were confusing to consumers. His response was asking “Which one do I tell my friends to buy?” to which he wasn’t able to get a response. He simplified the product line, he took a look at where the company needed to go, and Apple’s failure before he came back was a prime example of what happens when successful companies forget their roots and focus more on profits.

In the world of business books, I think that this is one that corporate executives could learn from. I also think that the key word that is used many times in the book is “innovation.” While Steve Jobs wasn’t an angelic figure with a rosy personality, he knew how to create and sell products. At the same time there were positive results for the company due to his personality. Any fan of Apple or technology products has probably already read and loved this book. Walter Isaacson being the one to pen the only authorized biography on Steve Jobs proves Isaacson is a very detailed writer when it comes to research and attaining facts. Isaacson’s biographies on Albert Einstein, Ben Franklin, and Henry Kissinger are all notable biographies, but this one is going to be his masterpiece throughout his entire writing career.