Minnesota Books

I picked up this book because I met Professor Doyle socially and I am into art. I particularly enjoyed her chapter on Tracey Emin and her introduction, wherein she discusses Moby Dick in decidedly non-academic terms. Most academic prose is like soap without water, but Doyle manages to get a good lather going. Her work is deep but accessible in the best way, not because it's easy, but because it actually makes you think about thinks that matter, and mean something.

You know that any book of criticism with Thomas Eakins, the notorious pornographic film "Moby Dick," Andy Warhol, Vanessa Beecroft, and Tracey Emin in it is going to be quirky. What links all of these quirky artists in this work by an associate professor of English at the U. of California-Riverside and co-author of "Pop Out: Queer Warhol" is their approaches to handling sexuality. With Eakins, the approach in his time and place of Victorian era America was subtle and ambivalent. With Warhol, the approach was ironic and often detached. With Beecroft, forward and multiplicitous. These and the other unconventional treatments of sexuality are critiqued with reference to "the queer theory that addresses the limitations of dominant (largely binary) models for sexual identity for describing our sexual lives and for understanding representations of sexual difference and sexual desire." Doyle demonstrates a sure understanding of the latest methodology and critical possibilities of queer theory.

The filmmaker and associate professor of new media at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago sees that despite being "unapprehendable" though being "often sensed," the shadows, specters, and shards of the title "are nevertheless part of the energy of the past and exert themselves as a force on the present." It is the avante-garde filmmakers rather than the mainstream or conventional ones relying on narration, chronology, and cultural symbols who tap into such "unseen forces" in their films to create an "awareness of other temporalities in which linear chronologies are called into question in favor of other temporal structures such as simultaneity and virtuality." This not only better reflects the way individuals and societies are aware of history, but also reflects the innumerable heterogeneous incidents, events, personalities, tendencies, etc. which make for history and have little coherence. Skoller goes beyond analysis of the shards, etc., as characteristics of postmodern culture; and as these have often been used by writers and artists to reflect this culture or to comment on or in some cases criticize it. Skoller puts these characteristics in a useful and in some respects productive light by examining them as techniques rather than simply effects. His material is not laudatory, however; nor does it especially commend the techniques; for history does not lend itself to stable definition or complete comprehension by means of any techniques. The author is concerned mainly with noting that the shadows, specters, and shards despite their elusiveness, incompleteness, and even insubstantiality are better suited to not only recording but also conveying history. The material of the book is in large measure illustration of this central point by considering how movies by leading and influential avant-garde filmmakers such as Jean-Luc Godard, Daniel Eisenberg, Ken Jacobs, and Patricio Guzman have dealt with historical issues and material even though this has not been widely recognized or accepted.

I've been reading film criticism for two decades, from my first experiences with Bordwell `s film histories to Laura Mulvey's treatise on visual pleasure to the densely layered cinematic revelations of Deleuze. But it wasn't until I read Jeffrey Skoller's Shadows, Specters and Shards that I discovered the kind of lively, intellectually rigorous observations of a "film thinker" who allowed his adventurous imagination to tackle the sadly undervalued world of avant-garde film. As a teacher of film production and studies, I was thrilled to discover this erudite series of essays which have provided my New York University film students with a remarkable introduction to the works of contemporary experimental film artists. By describing and then interpreting their aesthetic processes, Skoller guides his reader through the political and historical dimensions of works by such illustrious makers as Ernie Gehr, Craig Baldwin, Leandro Katz, Dan Eisenberg and Zoe Beloff. If you are lucky enough to have seen these brilliant works of filmmaking, then you will find that Skoller's engaged observations will enhance your initial understanding. If you have not yet had this viewing opportunity, don't worry! Skoller provides such a vivid sound/image recounting in his analysis that your vicarious experience will prove surprisingly rewarding!

The culmination of a lifetime of research and writing on Minnesota history, Steven Keillor's Shaping Minnesota's Identity is a most read for anyone interested in the history of Minnesota and the Mid West. Like many important historical works, it is written with style, passion and a certain sense of loss. Its focus on community formation, economics, politics and religion does great service to a state noted for sobriety, hard work and moralistic politics. As an insider, Keillor is at his best explaining the complex regional, ethnic, religious, economic and cultural divisions in Minnesota. His previous work on Minnesota's farmer cooperatives and rural farmer-Labor leader Hjalmar Peterson means that he knows (as Hubert Humphrey knew) that to reduce Minnesota to the Twin Cities leds to inevitable misunderstandings.

In spite of his academic training and close ties to many at the Minnesota Historical Society, Keillor is an independent scholar who has no cooperate or academic sponsorship. In a world of increased cooperate sponsorship of history, it is refreshing to read a work whose content has not been pre-approved by 3M, Dayton-Hudson, Cargill, or politically correct but subservient tenure conscious academics. In a thoughtful chapter aptly entitled " Marketplace Minnesota," Keillor writes that "public morality was narrowed to an economic size and shape."

It is replacement of a moral economy deeply rooted in personal religious beliefs by a morality disciplined by market forces that Keillor bemoans. It is this sense of loss that will make this one of the most read and discussed accounts of the Minnesota experience.

This little book, no doubt intended as a textbook for Minnesota college history classes, is so much fun to read that anybody will find it amusing. It's 297 pages long but the pages are smallish, the print is largish, and the reading goes fast, with many delightful anecdotes and vignettes. I loved its description of the three-candidate election of 1998 - Republican Norm Coleman was the sort who plays squash, Democrat Skip Humphrey was the sort who prefers herbal tea to coffee, professional wrestler Jesse Ventura was the sort who talks as if he was in a bar (and won the election).
It's foreshortened - fewer pages on earlier periods, fuller treatment of recent times, with World War I in the middle of the book. It leaves out altogether the prehistoric Native Americans and the age of exploration and fur trade. I don't think it treats at all the earlier women's movement and the struggle for woman suffrage, although it is good on the Minnesota case of Roe v . Wade and the role of "Minnesota Twin" Justice Blackmun in deciding the case. It finds continuity in protest movements from the Grange through the Progressive Movement and then into the Minnesota Commission on Public Safety which persecuted German-Americans and leftists during World War I. Like many state histories it details political squabbles election by election, but it is also excellent on Minnesota's diverse ethnic and religious history from 19th-century German Catholics to the sometimes polygamous Hmong.

Why do some people put their necks out for others? Why is the call for honor and justice answered even when there is so much to be lost? "Shelter Half" is the first and sadly only novel by author Carol Bly, who unfortunately passed away last year. Her tale lives on as an examination of honor among human beings, as a murder occurs in a small Minnesotan town. A finely written mystery from a new perspective, "Shelter Half" is highly recommended for community library fiction collections.

Carol Bly, "Shelter Half." Duluth, MN: Holy Cow! Press, 2008. 248 pages. $15.95. ISBN 978-0-9779458-6-3

Carol Bly's posthumously published and only novel is a remarkable achievement by any standard--plot, characterization, theme, intelligence, perception.
It esembles earlier Bly essays and stories, but extends and deepens her range as a fiction writer. Although, or perhaps because, she takes risks, they are all to good and relevant purpose. One senses Bly's beloved Tolstoy in the background, whispering, "go deeper," and she does, as the novel resonates with the history of the last half-century.
The narrative unfolds in a series of scenes following the discovery of a young woman's body on the outskirts of a small town in northern Minnesota. Each chapter almost a story in itself. Events and characters that may appear tangential to the main narrative, however, are eventually woven into its complex tapestry of related and integrated portraits and experiences.
Shelter Half's assemblage of characters and personalities may remind the reader of Chekhov, with various members of the community playing significant roles. They include a no-good, lying Brad Stropp and his abused wife, Arlene; Pearl, bartender, church organist, and a no-nonsense judge of character; Eliza MacInnes, a 23 year-old Episcopal rector; Vern Denham, a handsome young whistle-blower, and John Rubrick, a smooth executive whose Institute for Humane Research "tortured rabbits as part of product development." Each of the characters remain consistently and imminently believable, in their instincts and flaws, their failure and hard-won victories.
Flashes of wit inform the narrative, as in this comment by local social worker about Californians. "There was no more futile exercise than agreeing to do psychological work with clients in California; they came to their first sessions full of cheer like expectant shoppers for in-season organic fruit."
Thirty-year old Imogen Tenebray, is a kind of central consciousness, whose choices and decisions impinge on other characters. She is a memorable woman thinking her way through her life and making choices that distance her from her family and neighbors, even those sympathetic to her values. Her thoughts, as she is about to talk with her therapist "about something very, very bad, are representative: "For a murderous species. we are certainly courteous,"
Following a personal tragedy earlier, Imogene has immersed herself in the moral and political concerns of the wider community, as a counselor and director of a peace center in Duluth. Once admired as a community organizer, she is eventually forsaken by her contemporaries for tolerating homeless people sleeping on the stairway to the peace center.
Imogene's parents, Peter and Natalie Tenebray, are local sophisticates who "didn't share their private lives with folks having coffee at the bakery or even after church. They were said to give bash-up dinner parties on the weekend, where other Episcopalians who were college graduate types went--but news never sifted from those parties out to...the Friday night philosophers at the VFW." Peter, a Harvard alumus, supplements his inherited income writing articles that present corporation's interests "in the light of that company's good intentions and potential good behavior." He is a "whitener," in other words, whose moral behavior is shaky, but not completely hopeless.
Shelter Half concludes with a meeting of a German and an American veteran of World War Two, conquered and conqueror, in a reconciliation at once mysterious, complicated, and convincing. Bridging a gap that we sometimes feel toward events of the past half century, it offers valuable insights into the moral, cultural, and aesthetic implications of the present.
Not surprisingly, the novel responds to demands Bly made of American writers, in her memorable pamphlet, Bad Government and Silly Literature, 1986. "Most of the characters in American fiction are fools," she wrote at that time, "who have no political or ethical feelings, seldom betraying any feelings of shame for our nation and fear for the planet itself." Although they "are not meant to be fools, the characters "conduct their joys and frets during unjust wars and terrible domestic poverty and never notice.
Ducking that condition, if we like," Bly continued "our literature will remain what it largely is now--rather too self-centered and capricious, with its plots full of private love life and financial considerations". Needless to say, Shelter Half ventures far beyond the narrow fictional landscape that she criticized.
In a body of work that includes essays, stories, commentaries on writing, ethics, and community, and finally this novel, Bly claims a special place among American writers. She is populist and sophisticated, with a moral vision and wit reminiscent of Sinclair Lewis and J. F. Powers. Although her gentle satire differs from theirs, it reflects a similarly penetrating eye for detail, as she plummets the depths of that Upper Midwestern and American culture.
Having known Bly's work, since we first became friends three decades before her death, I have long admired her intelligence and daring as an artist. But I must admit to being even further impressed by this novel. It took my breath away. The prefatory note on the title, Shelter Half--that is, the half a pup tent issued to American infantrymen--is alone worth the price of the book.
--Michael True

Shepherdess is a delightful book that kept me laughing throughout, it reminds me of the James Herriots "All Things Bright and Beautiful." In this true story Joan tells of the transition from research biochemistry to shepherdess with all the changes of image, the loss of romance and the discovery of self. Tis is a great book to read aloud and share the laughter. While there is information that would be helpful for someone looking to make this transition, it' really a good read for everyone.

As my husband and I were pondering our move from City to Country Life, this book was given to us as a gift, and we found it to be an absolute joy! The short chapters make it amazingly easy to pick up for short reading spurts. Each chapter tells it's own story of Joan's sometimes hilarious, sometimes frightening, but always entertaining adventures from biochemist to shepherdess. Her willingness to poke fun at her obvious naivety regarding sheep is refreshing. Everyone we've loaned our book to has found it very entertaining. You'll be amazed at what you learn about sheep! (We now have our own flock of 25 ... be careful!)

Szasz's twofold premise is that not only is the plethora of contemporary products touted as helping improve the environment not doing all that much, but these are also diminishing the prospect that the large-scale, systematic programs and practices required for actually improving the environment will be conceived and promulgated. To bring a focus to his premise and multifaceted argument for it, Szasz reaches back to the fallout shelter phenomenon of the early 1960s. And he also points to the phenomenon of suburbanization which accelerated about that time and continued over the following few decades. These two phenomena--the first part of a government program to deal with the nuclear threat, the latter a widespread sociological movement--are ways large numbers of Americans responded to threats and concerns in their day; similarly to how large numbers of Americans are responding to environmental, ecological, and health threats these days.

The plethora of environmentally "conscious" products and practices (e. g., recycling, diet regimens) allow individuals to devise a "personal commodity bubble for one's body". While this bubble does offer genuine physical and psychological wellbeing, collectively--even considering the millions who follow similar environmentally aware lifestyles--they bring virtually no material improvement to the environment. Nor in that they bring no improvement, do they do much to conduce to better health or a better environment for the society in general.

The phenomenon of suburbanization exemplifies how individuals--mostly more affluent individual families--make choices to improve their own lives but do nothing to resolve fundamental social problems. The fallout shelter phenomenon urged by government and enthusiastically bought into by many businesses exemplifies for Szasz how major programs devised and promoted by central institutions can, like suburbanization, be a way to avoid coming to grips with a problem, in this case the environmental problems which are worsening year by year.

The way many individuals are responding individually and in some cases by communities or groups to the environmental problems is a form of "inverted quarantine" whereby they are walling themselves off from deteriorating environmental conditions instead of acting to improve the environment permanently for the good not only of their own children but for future generations and for their own society and global society. Szasz does not argue that the environmental products and the consumer choices and lifestyles developed around them should be abandoned--even as "inverted quarantines"--but that no matter the number and ingenuity of such products and increasing numbers of individuals availing themselves of them, these are "not enough". The professor of sociology at the U. of California-Santa Cruz and author of the book "EcoPopulism" tenders some specific changes in perspective on environmental issues and some specific policies for environmental improvement. Mainly though, he argues for a society-wide approach to dealing with evident and perpetuating environmental problems which can be led only by government at all levels and social policies and practices that are different from consumerism or fancy types of escapism. Only when the "fallout shelter" mentality of dealing with a problem is put aside will relevant, effective ways for dealing with environmental problems come about.

I worry about my family's health. I buy organic food, I use "green" cleaning products, and I buy bottled water. But I have always had an uncomfortable feeling that these choices were woefully inadequate to protect them and the planet we inhabit.

Reading "Shopping Our Way to Safety" showed me how my efforts are "sold" to me, along with the belief that I can protect my family by being a conscientious consumer. Szasz explains that individual consumption not only doesn't make us safer, it masks the true problems of the toxins that fill our environment. What will make a difference is when we all work together to impact policy changes to address these huge problems.

After reading the book, I notice examples of Szasz's theory of the inverted quarantine everyday. Yesterday, and I am NOT making this up, I saw a TV ad for a product that removes toxins from your body through the bottom of your feet while you sleep!

"Shopping Our Way to Safety" gave me a framework to understand how we got into this environmental mess and how we can get out of it. It is easy to read and filled with a fascinating history of how many of us came to believe that we could ignore the rest of society while imagining that we could protect ourselves. Szasz never pontificates nor slams you with dense sociological theory. He does explain the race and class dimensions of the problem and gives you plenty of sources for more information. Easy to understand.

After reading this book, I donated money to my local environmental justice group and our state-wide occupational health and safety organization. I plan to work with both of them to protect people from workplace toxins and to demand cleaner air, cleaner water, and non-toxic food and goods, not only for my family but for all of us.

If you are a Minnesota sports fan, as I am, then Sid will give you great memories of all of the major pro and college sports teams. His years of expertise and great photos will bring back a lot nostalgia. Sid is the dean of Minnesota sports coverage. A great book at a great value through Amazon.

For someone who grew up through much of these events and missed many others this book is a must-have. It is a great way to look back at the memories and learn a thing or two in the process.

An indispensable volume of Native American writing. Every library, home, and school should have a copy.

This anthology of contemporary Native women's voices is the first of its kind to weave a plethora of voices and visions together. Many great authors and works in the book. A worthwhile purchase!

I really enjoyed this book. I know most of the places mentioned. It was wonderful to hear about the people's stories. I'm very impressed that they also put in a section honoring Native Americans. VERY good.

This is the sort of guidebook real Minnesotans appreciate, not one of those listings of pizza parlors and nightlife opportunities for all persuasions. In fact, even if you're not planning a visit to our northern wonderland soon, you ought to get this book and keep it in the dash compartment of your car, cuz you never know when the urge to get buried might come upon you. I can guarantee there's no more friendly place to be interred than Freeborn County, where I am now.

If you're considering a long sojourn here, however, I suggest doing an amazon search for guidebooks. You'll find something for almost every traveler's taste. But don't forget your bug spray or your mittens.

Enjoyable, challenging book. Osa uses multiple data sources to analyze how socio-political change was accomplshed. She demonstrates how group ties evolved, moving from unsuccessful events to the successful ties and events. Osa challenges the current explanations, and succeeds.

In these days where 'uninformed wishful thinking' controls US policymakers, it is most helpful to read how political-social change was actually accomplished. Osa carefully and clearly describes the networks (personal & organizational) and historical events that lead to massive positive political change. She documents the changes in groups, and the composition of groups, that lead through sets of failed uprisings and culmunated in real political change. It is a most worthwhile book that challenges both common (mis)understandings and academic arguments about political change.