Clarke Books

As you would expect, the book begins with tools and materials. The basic hand tools are described along with sophisticated professional equipment for drywall handling. Ways to efficiently and safely handle large sheets are shown. Drywall comes in a wide variety of types and sizes that are not "off the shelf" items at your lumber yard, but can be ordered. Here you will find out when and why you should use these specialty items that can be very advantageous in the right situation. Also covered are all the various fastening and corner treatment options and the advantages of each.

There is a detailed section on preparing walls and ceilings, including framing repairs or modifications that might be needed. This includes enhancements such as adding a niche and soundproofing. Preparation for drywalling over masonry and with steel framing is also covered. Then the techniques of measuring, cutting and hanging the drywall are presented. Special situations such as curved or irregular walls, stairways and arches are emphasized. This book shows you how to handle the difficult applications.

Drywall finishing, troubleshooting and repairs are also covered in detail, including a number of textured finishes that can be applied directly to the drywall. Many of these can be done using joint compound and they add an easy but sophisticated premium touch to your walls. Written with a personal touch, expert tips throughout and a "can-do" attitude, this is the book you need to get those walls up safely and securely.

"Epicene" was less easy to digest, but was worth the effort. There is a surprising twist in the final scene and I suggest that the reader avoid any literary criticism or introductions to "Epicene" until after your first reading. I had less empathy for the characters in "Epicene" and it was difficult to identify any "good guys". The characters were not terribly disagreeable, but simply dilettantes that had little concern for morality or ethics. The dialogue is more obscure (and more bawdy) than in "Volpone". I found it helpful to first read the footnotes for a scene before actually reading the scene itself.

"The Alchemist" is more like "Volpone". The main characters are unscrupulous con-men; their targets are gullible, greedy individuals. I learned quite a bit about alchemy, at least alchemy as practiced by 17th century con-men. As with "Volpone" and "Epicene", I was unable to predict how Ben Jonson would bring the play to a satisfactory conclusion. I enjoyed "The Alchemist" and I expect that I will read it again. I don't know if it is performed very often, but it would probably be quite entertaining.

"Bartholomew Fair" introduces a large, motley collection of characters that largely converse in lower class colloquialisms that require some effort to master. The comedy was intended in part to be a satire on Puritans and thereby please King James, but it was equally an introduction to the varied individuals that might be encountered at an annual fair. It was not easy to keep track of the many characters and I continually referred to the cast listing to reorient myself.

There are a number of collections of Ben Jonson's plays. I recommend an inexpensive collection, "The Alchemist and Other Plays", publish by Oxford University Press as a World's Classic. The introduction, glossary, and explanatory footnotes by Gordon Campbell are quite good. Begin with either "Volpone" or "The Alchemist" if you are new to Jonson. I hope you are as surprised and pleased as I was.

Unfortunately, that's not the book she wrote.

Clarke regards recent scholarly literature as too often downplaying the role of women's agency in the development of 1950's consumer culture. Moreover, Clarke sees consumer culture of the 1950's as an important, politically multifaceted phenomena. Her conclusions are correct, but her argument is flawed.

Early on, Clarke appears to be concerned mainly with outlining the historical circumstances of Earl Tupper, the inventor of Tupperware. Tupper's journals outline a spirit of scientific benevolence in service to society. Combined with a classically-described "Protestant" work-ethic, Tupper's innovation and self-reliance paint a picture of classic American mythmaking at work. But Clarke is quick to recognize that it was the contributions of Bonnie Wise, Tupperware's marketing guru, that actually successfully connected Tupperware to the marketplace, and henceforth to the larger consumer culture.

According to Clarke, Wise was the pioneer behind the idea of Tupperware parties. Dismissed by other scholars as mere consumerism worship, Clarke emphasizes the entrepreneurial nature of thiese parties, as well as the social effect of creating networks of communication and support for women.

As a "modernist icon" Tupperware embodied effort to meld a univocal aesthetic to practical functionality, while at the same time providing a non-threatening social and financial space for women. What was regarded as homemaking basics became a "marketable skill" (117). Wise herself radically differed from the cultural ideal of feminine passive domesticity that so many have regarded as the norm for the time.

Clarke's analysis is valuable, but it doesn't fit the task shw outlines for herself. She skillfully utilizes an array of primary sources, from Earl Tupper's journals to company pamphlets to advertisments. She ends up "parroting" the company's official marketing strategy, and speculates on what that meant in the culture of the time.

If she had stuck with her stated intentions, she would have relied much more on oral histories of the people involved with tupperware parties, and others who bought tupperware. That would have told us how the product was appropriated and used by consumers----but we only get 1 page of these sources buried-- and then at the end of chapter 5. Moreover, she fails to adequately address the Tupperware marketing phenomenon in the context of other house -to-house sales schemes she discusses in chapter 4.

What she writes is a history of the production of tupperware--not the consumption and usage. That's all well and good in itself---but it is not good cultural history. A cultural history of consumption relies on consumers---not producers---for the consumers are the ones who decide what the meanings of products are---not the producers.
So her analysis of Tupperware as a cultural barometer fails.

How Tupperware is treated by various factors of society seems to me a more valuable measure of a cultural barometer rather than the intentions of the inventors and marketers. Such records give us an insight into production, which is valuable, but do not alone provide a strong enough measure of a product's effects.

In bringing these primary historical soruces to light Clarke adds much to the discussion she aims to join, but her evidence does not support a conclusion of cultural meaning-only of cultural intent. It's a good book, but only if you read it differently than how she intended it to be read.

Nonetheless, for its inclusion and discussion of heretofore largely ignored primary sources, Clark's book remains an important part of the literature regarding the mythic and ideological dimensions of 1950's consumer culture.

If you are looking for a guide that will help you "narrow down" the choices of sights to see in Venice, this one is not for you. If you are looking for extensive lists and reviews of hotels, again this is not for you. Finally, if you're looking for detailed restauraunt information, you won't find it here. Basically, this guide is not a planning guide. I have used the Internet for most of my planning (e-mail me if you need some help finding some great sites MarySorens@hotmail.com).

What this guide does have to offer is an amazing amount of cultural, historic, and artistic information in a very packable sized guide. This will be the guide to read when you are doing your own tours of Venice. It will tell you far more than any tour guide would.

This guide also has map pages included. At first they are difficult to read and understand. But once you get the hang of them, you will love them. They are very detailed, and who wants to be seen walking around a city with a two foot map in their face??

The blue guide also gets you oriented to the city. Even if you don't use the Blue Guide's walks, they will show you which attractions are grouped together and will help you plan your routes (this is the one sense in which this guide works for planning). I haven't left yet,and my guide looks worn!

In conclusion, I am putting together my own itinerary that will contain details like restaurant and hotel addresses. And then this will be the only guidebook that I take with me to Venice. And I am looking forward to reading it and absorbing as much of the city as possible! If you are remotely interested in history and art and more, you will not regret purchasing this guide. I have used many guidebooks for trips, and the Blue Guides are the most informative and educated.

I use other guidebooks for planning (Access is excellent, and Littlewood's "A Literary Companion to Venice" is great for walking tours) but the Blue Guide is only one I carry in my purse every day in Venice.

While the book has a certain merit when discussing 19th Century political murderers and mandmen, it is full of outright disinformation about the murders of the Kennedy brothers. Oswald never met Sylvia Duran; she was tortured by the CIA and forced to "confess" that she had met him. CIA officials such as David Phillips have admitted under oath that the visitor to the Embassy where Ms. Duran worked was NOT Oswald. See Peter Dale Scott, Deep Politics and the Death of JFK, University of California Press 1992.