Woody Guthrie - Bound for Glory

Bound for Glory
Woody Guthrie
EP Dutton & Co, Inc
1943
430 pp

Woodie Guthrie's autobiography detailing his life from 1912 to 1942. The book is written in his Oklahoma dialect. It describes the life of someone born into a middle-class lifestyle that collapsed into dirt poor poverty as his father failed in business. About half the book describes his childhood when later focuses on his depression-era vagabond life and his emerging songwriting/singing career and political attitudes.

Includes many illustrations by Guthrie himself.

partisan resistance - 2001 - Resistance: Untold Stories of Jewish Partisans

Resistance: Untold Stories of Jewish Partisans
Seth Kramer
Great Projects Film Company Inc
2001

Resistance: Untold Stories of Jewish Partisans is a short television documentary from PBS highlighting the existence of Jewish armed resistance units in Germany during the Third Reich. There is a lot of media commemorating or dramatizing the WWII-era partisan fighters in France and other occupied countries but much less about armed resistance within Germany, let alone about Jewish resistance. Direct resistance adds another mode of Jewish response to the atrocities of the Third Reich, that of sabotage and armed direct action, in addition to the more widely historicized accounts of submission, hiding, passing for German, receiving protection from sympathetic Nazis such as Oskar Schindler, and emigration to democratic countries.

The documentary consists of a familiar pattern of showing interview subjects recalling anecdotes from their experiences interspersed with archival footage and photographs representing the referred era. This kind of subject matter provides an alternative kind military history which I am very interested in delving into further, and a quick survey has revealed that there's quite a bit of material about Jewish resistance, and this film is not the only to claim to be telling an 'untold story' in its title. Generally I ignore the military history sections of bookstores entirely but now that I am aware of the tradition of partisan fighters and oppressed populations taking up arms and developing strategies for engaging their enemies in warfare, I consider this a new topic to research within the field of counterculture studies.

To summarize the documentary briefly, the stories these former fighters tell reveal the fact that significant damage was done to the Reich by Jewish partisan fighters. They describe escaping from the ghettos to live in the woods, acquiring guns from a farmer, executing German soldiers and informers, and sabotaging the infrastructure of Hitler's Germany. It is stated during the documentary that there was an estimated 20 to 30,000 such partisans who fought in Germany, a large fighting force that must have made a significant contribution towards weakening Nazi control in Germany. The documentary's primary purpose is to oppose myths that there was no real Jewish opposition to Nazi oppression.

Surrealists - 1974 - The Surrealist Revolution in France

The Surrealist Revolution in France

Herbert S. Gershman

University of Michigan Press

1974

253 pages

This book is a survey of Surrealism in France that places a particular emphasis on defacto group-leader Andre Breton and his immediate circle (Paul Eluard, Louis Aragon, etc) - in other words, the official members of the Surrealist group. Gershman writes in a dense poetic prose that may sometimes confound the reader although it makes his book a far less dry piece of academic writing than most treatments on Breton’s group.

The author looks to the Surrealists for their inspirations, leading him to discuss love, or mad love (amour fou), more than the Freudian theory that unquestionably had a role in the Surrealist emergence out of Dada. Gershman is priviledging the poetic aspect of Surrealism over even a basic discussion of their theoretical inspirations.  Love, of course, has to be the most widespread inspiration for poetry in history, and its difficult, as a reader, to accept that a movement such as the Surrealists, new in the twentieth century, were driven only by love and dreams. So were the New Kids on the Block.  

Gersham’s book is strong but it’s directed by concerns with the poetic rather than the aesthetic. it’s longest chapter is the chapter on surrealist poetry and literature, which is clearly Gershman’s chief interest with the movement while painting, the best known component of the Surrealist work, is much shorter and often focuses on the artist’s relationship to the writings of Surrealist poets.

Probably the best chapter of the book is the second last, Surrealism and Politics, which describes in detail Surrealism’s attempt to balance its own artistic worldview and its notions of revolution through realizing desire, with that of Moscow directed Communist orthodoxy.  

avant-garde, Lettrisme - book - 1985 - Letterism and Hypergraphics: The Unknown Avant Garde 1945-1985

Letterism and Hypergraphics: The Unknown Avant-Garde 1945-1985
Jean-Paul Curtay
Franklin Furnace
1985
78 pages

Letterism (in French, Lettrisme) is one of the forgotten avant-gardes of the 20th century, having been overshadowed by its predecessors, Dada and Surrealism, and its successor, the Situationist International led by Letterist defector, Guy Debord.  The Letterists were originally formed in 1942 with the writing of the Letterist Manifesto by Isidore Isou, a young Romanian poet who, like Tristan Tzara and Constantin Brancusi before him, left his home to make a name for himself in western Europe. Isou was originally focused on creating letter poetry in the tradition of the Dadaist, Raoul Hausmann, who wrote fsmbw (a title which also makes up the bulk of the poem’s content) in 1920. Isou, in his manifesto, put things under headings such as “The destruction of words for letters” and “the order of letters” revealing an interest in reducing language to its basic form, and creating a poetry that is necessarily typographical.  

The original Letterist movement did produce letterist poetry (were they mentioned in a novel I’ve read? I have a vague memory of them being referenced in a scene of a Canadian novelist, either by Mordecai Richler or Robertson Davies). They also became an anarchistic movement that pulled off pranks such as the Easter morning address at Notre Dame in Paris in 1950 where it was declared by Lettrist Michael Mourre that God is dead.  And they produced abstract films.  They were, in essence, a belated Dadaist unit operating during wartime and then the post-war period.  In addition to these films and letter poems produced by Isou, he also developed what he called ‘hypergraphics’, a mode of writing that freely mixes words with images, or even small symbols or signs set into a sequence to convey some kind of meaning. Letterism and Hypergraphics is a kind of small catalog to an exhibition, currated by Jean-Paul Curtay (who wrote the bulk of the text for this small volume), held in 1985, that features a number of hypergraphic works by Isou and his Letterist allies.

This catalog is significant for being one of the few (very few) English texts to discuss the Letterist movement in a sustained fashion.  Elsewhere, the Letterists are referenced largely as a lead-in to a more deeply focused discussion on Guy Debord and the Situationists.  Debord is certainly mentioned in Curtay’s catalog, but only as part of the timeline of Letterist activity, as much of the text focuses on Isou, his work AFTER the split with Debord, and the influence Isou has had elsewhere (one of the pieces in this book is called Hypergraphics and America). In addition to Curtay’s writing about the Letterist’s, their history and their work, the book contains numerous reproductions of hypergraphic drawings as well as still-shots from some of the experimental films produced by these artists. The text and all the images are printed in some kind of violet.  Because this is an exhibition catalog, it focuses pretty closely on the art of the movement, and it does not actually discuss things like the above mentioned Notre Dame fiasco.  

indian independence - Gandhi - film - 1982 - Gandhi

Gandhi
Richard Attenborough
International Film Investors
1982
191 minutes

Since the late 19th century, via the Theosophists and later through some of the novels of Herman Hesse, India has been conceived by much of the west as a land that is more humanely spiritual than virtually anywhere else on planet Earth. The Hippies and their New Age descendants intensified these sentiments to the extent that, to this day, India is basically a theme park for a New Age colonialism of religious seekers. Richard Attenborough's biographic drama Gandhi, about the great leader of Indian Nationalism, shows a nation deeply fractured under the weight of a cruel British colonial rule, a mean caste system, and entrenched ethnic hostilities.

Attenborough's film is important because Gandhi too has been idealized as a quiet, monkish figure, often remembered through photographs where he is shown naked and sitting cross legged.  He's the guy who said "you have to be the change you want to see in the world" and other feel-good aphorisms. Gandhi shows him for what he was, a lawyer and a revolutionary theorist who would go take a beating from British officers, go to prison, and refuse food, to advance the cause of sovereignty for India and all of its citizens. Gandhi is depicted as intense and uncompromising in his leadership of the cause of Indian independence. He is also depicted as failing in some respects, to create an India united under its own independence, as he never sided with the cause of Hindu supremacism and was ultimately assassinated by an adherent to that cause, which comprises the final shot of the film.



One interesting aspect is that Gandhi rejected the caste system, insisting that, when his followers were building communal buildings (referred to as an 'asram') that all must share in all duties. So that some individuals of higher caste take part in the work traditionally reserved for the lower castes in order to break down this system and the consciousness it engenders. This aspect of Gandhi’s work is featured primarily in the beginning of the film however, much of the latter half of this long movie represents the leader as either an interview subject or as a hunger striker.

zines - zine - 2008 - My Time Annihilator: A Brief History of 1930s Science Fiction Fanzines

My Time Annihilator: A Brief History of 1930’s Science Fiction Fanzines
Christopher Todd
2008

My Time Annihilator is a zine I procured for a dollar from Microcosm Publishing distro.  This zine takes as its focus the phenomena of science fiction fanzines that were published by proto-nerds of the 1930s, 40s, and 50s.  These publications were perhaps one of the more immediate ancestors to the practice of zine production of the 1980s and 90s (with radical pamphlets, avant-garde art journals, and the underground press as more distant predecessors in either time or in practice).  
According to the author, Christopher Todd, the science-fiction fanzine emerged as a kind of distributed message post to enable communication between sci-fi fans about their favorite genre of literature when few fellow fans existed in their immediate environs.  

The writing in My Time Annihilator, like the writing in most zines, is far less formal and much more personal than most other forms of published material.  Christopher Todd’s opinions about his subject matter are casually expressed through the zine, letting the reader know that even though he considers sci-fi fanzines to be interesting as a broad topic, he found that the particular content of each publication was boring.  Furthermore, the zine describes Todd’s experience of conducting research into the fanzines, where he gained access to an archive of fanzines held at Temple University in Philidelphia through the using a found student ID.  Todd also gives his opinion on zines in general, and despite his efforts as a zine producer, he primarily sees the amateur publications as disposable and unworthy of widespread attention.

Todd’s zine focuses on three aspects of the fanzines, their content, formats and methods of production.  Of these aspects, content is specifically science-fiction related, which Todd describes in broad generalizations.  According to the author,  fanzines were made up of book and event reviews, letters and responses, and criticism of other fanzines.  Todd claimed to find many zines difficult to read as they developed their own linguistic forms and sets of inside jokes, thus bringing up issues of cultural capital as Todd relates these language issues to analogues found in the jargon deployed in many modern punk zines.  Todd also briefly describes methods of printing production in a pre-xerox era (1930s-1950s), including the spirit duplicator and the more popular mimeograph technologies.  Most interesting was Todd’s discussion of formatting ideas that have been lost in current self-publishing practice, such as the fanzine printed on a single postcard.

Books about zines, such as Stephen Duncombe’s Notes from Underground: Zines and the Politics of Alternative Culture do mention the science-fiction predecessor to the zine phenomena.  With that being said, Christopher Todd’s short zine about the early fanzines is the most attention that I have seen given, in print, to that material.  Todd also includes in his zine an appendix featuring a number of covers of old fanzines, and some examples of text, to give the reader some idea of the materials he discusses.  Some of his examples look as though they could be contemporary zines rather than 1930s artifacts.