Minnesota Books

Carol Bly's stories call me home. She captures nuances of Midwest culture, and in particular, aches in the souls of Midwest women, with a startling precision, honesty, and eloquence that reminds me of everyone I ever grew up with.

But a Bly story goes beyond simply the personal level of her characters' lives. "Chuck's Money," for example, the final story in her new collection, is a penetrating analysis of issues of class structure, power politics, and moral crises in Small Town America as they play themselves out in quiet marriages, church carpools, and funeral suppers. Through the eyes of bookkeeper Leona and her oak tree of a husband Allen, we see how the suicide of a teenager sets in motion a series of events that redress old and new injustices. The net result is an exuberant image of people who can be so decent sometimes it takes your breath away.

David Campbell's book is a very well-researched application of the thought of Jacques Derrida and Emanuel Levinas to the decisionmaking in the former Yugoslavia...a topic once again sadly in the news owing to troubles in Kosovo.

Campbell argues that the very visible failures of the West in the war in Bosnia and the 1995 Dayton peace settlement was due to a very deep conceptual failure of policymakers...a failure that came with their education, and that they might regard as wisdom.

This is to oversimplify national affairs down to a misunderstood "identity politics."

Real identity politics would respect what Campbell describes as a basic moral demand the "other" makes upon us, with his different needs and views. Campbell's ethical view is that the "other" makes a moral demand upon us even if his suffering has "nothing to do" with us.

Campbell bases his deepest views on the thought of Levinas, an interwar thinker who radically departed from Western philosophical traditions in that Levinas regards ethics, not metaphysics, as fundamental to philosophy. There's a glimmer of this in Kant and in literary thinkers like Clives Staples Lewis, but Levinas is one of the few Western philosophers to show how mere coherence of thought depends on respect for the "other."

The deconstructive turn in philosophy is to center difference, and borders between people as the focus. This was not an attempt to be cute, or post-modern, on the part of the French beginning in the 1950s; instead, it was a serious response to the fact that placing concepts like man at the center hadnt liberated people in the period 1900-1950. Instead it had led to the Holocaust and the Gulag, for when ordinary people are told to implement some concept like man they immediately triage people into the prime and the secondary and the marginal examples of man. They simplify and the result is that people get hurtfrom downsized in corporations to killed in camps.

Western policymakers, educated outside this tradition, instinctively abhor this as "soft" thinking. Instead, the Kissinger school of *realpolitik* was brought to bear in Bosnia. In part, this simplifies complex and multidimensioned ethnic issues into Serb/Croat/Moslem, when even a hard-nosed mathematician can see that if intermarriage is permitted there are many more combinations possible.

This has had the result of further violence, both resulting from Dayton and now in Kosovo. However, for Americans to criticise this violence seems to get them in a confusing zone where "all parties are guilty", including the Bosnians and the Albanians.

Campbell helps to sort out the "bad" guys and the not-so-good but better guys by showing how the West, the Serbs and to an extent the Croats were able to victimize a state which, for all its real flaws, expressed respect for the ethnic Other in its constitution, and made an effort to live up to this committment.

The book IS hard going at times, but this reminds me of a statement Chicago's "Fast Eddie" Vrydolyak, made when a reporter made a suggestion about race relations: Vrdolyak said "yer talkin' Martian." Simplicity, in a complex world, can be as ideological as undue complexity.

The author would have us consider a wide diversity of materials as evidence of our cohabitation with the evil we prefer to think of as being in some other or former place. His aim is for us to see rather than to continue to "not see" certain continuities and juxtapositions that are out there. The good news is that if the author has indeed succeeded in (re-)locating the horror of National Socialism within the psychoanalytic discourse, then there is the outside chance at least that it can be contained (for example as ambivalent introject). The author does insist that the materials undergo the mediation of the unconscious, in particular his own. Hence his style, which walks the borderline, slipping and sliding in and out of pop-cultural puns or noise, will upset those who believe that neutrality and objectivity are still options for "historians" of twentieth-century traumatization. The author, who clearly and endearlingly (or naively) believes that there is intelligent life out there, is looking for nonphobic readers.

This book is an excellent primer for understanding the unique working conditions of film actors. Clark effectively identifies the actor's true status as worker first, celebrity/artist, etc. second. The lessons from this book can be applied to organizing other types of contingent workers such as I.T. workers and construction workers. A definite read for labor students and organizers.

Armand Mattelart is a French professor of information and communication theory at the Université de Paris-VIII, Saint-Denis. His book is concisely written at only 123 pages and provides an insightful argument against globalization. Mattelart explains how freedom of speech translates on a global scale to freedom of commerce.

The central problem for Mattelart is that by letting corporations network the world, we are letting them control the marketplace of ideas, as if they have shackled the invisible hand of capitalistic self-governance. This inevitably leads, says Mattelart, to what is essentially nothing more than human commodification, such that the marketplace of ideas is essentially a parroting frenzy of talking heads socioeconomically engineered to spread profitable memes.

I read most of the text recently and have to say it is one of the finest I have come across in recent years. From the Delezians I am familiar with in the States, I would rank Connolly highest along with Brian Massumi. Unlike a number of their colleagues, they do not simply reiterate familiar themes, but make genuine contributions to the field. And very much like Massumi (whose famous essay on affect he cited very favorably a few times), Connolly too works at the intersection of Delezian and Deleuze-inspired philosophy (Guattari figures prominently too, even though in this text he is hardly ever mentioned - my only minor objection) and contemporary cognitive science, in addition to providing fine-tuned analysis of some classical movies using Deleuze and Bergson.

It is a very fine text in political thought,provided one accepts a necessarily extended definition of the term tapping into a number of 'non-political' scientific disciplines. It might be a bit hard to read for the beginner, yet theoretical precision and fascinating intellectual depth are some of the major rewards. In terms of my own academic (as well as non-academic) interests, this has been one of the luckiest hits I have had in recent years (after dropping Lacan and Zizek upon coming across Anti-Oedipus and Guattari). A great read and a lovely book.

It is great to have these playwrights out and available to the general public. Anne Washburn and Erin Courtney are especially worth reading.

This book is awesome. Read it from cover to cover. Beautiful paper ideas. Glad I chose it. Making baby announcements, and I was looking for the right envelope to enclose them. Mimi's Envelope Template on page 28, hit the spot. The Hand Card on page 85, gave me excellent ideas for gift cards. Truly recommend this book to anyone looking for new paper ideas. Mimi when is your next book due?

The New Politics Of Race: Globalism, Difference, Justice, is a collection of superbly crafted essays by Howard Winant (Professor of Sociology, University of California - Santa Barbara) dealing with contemporary American social issues arising from considerations of race and ethnicity. A mix of new and previously published essays, The New Politics Of Race combine to provide the reader with a comprehensive perspective on the origins and nature of post-World War II complex racial politics that evolve and persist to the present day. Of special note are Professor Winant's thoughts on identifying the ways in which racial hierarchies everywhere are being reestablished and reenergized (often clandestinely and in newly refashioned forms) by contemporary political state and national forces. Also available in a a hardcover edition (0816642796, $59.95), The New Politics Of Race is a seminal and critically important work of impeccable scholarship which is an invaluable contribution to academic library Contemporary Social Issues, Political Science, and Black Studies reference collections and supplemental reading lists.

Now in a newly updated and expanded edition, "A New Theatre" is a fascinating description of the founding and launching of the Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis, Minnesota in 1963. Written by the great director himself, "A New Theatre" traces the four year (and longer) process of investigating appropriate communities, seeking building coalitions with business and philanthropic theatre supporters, and designing, building and successfully opening one of the most notable American regional repertory theatres to date. Full of pungent witticisms and underlying humor, "A New Theatre" expands the reader's awareness of the importance of classical theater in American, or indeed any culture. Perhaps today it is difficult to imagine the magnitude of the undertaking of creating a viable, artistically rigorous classic repertory theater in the Upper Midwest of the early 60's. "A New Theatre" reminds us of some of the ground that was broken in this stunning pioneer effort. A foreword by Joe Dowling, present Artistic Director of the Guthrie, explains that the theater's latest reincarnation, a wonderful new complex on the Mississippi River, has evolved into a place where "Future generations of actors, directors, and writers will have ideal conditions to create and develop their work, and the beautiful audience facilities combined with the iconic architecture of Jean Nouvel will maintain and even enhance the Guthrie's ability to attract both local and national support (p. 6)." Hence the present need for retelling the story of the beginning of the Guthrie in the words of its founder, Sir Tyrone Guthrie himself.

Included in the chapter on Rehearsals and Opening are black and white photos of the early company, even volunteers organizing to support the Guthrie, and amazing reviews of the opening productions of "Hamlet" and "The Miser" and others, from 1963. Life was not all strawberries and cream and roses for the early company. Certain reviewers seemed to need to make their aim to denigrate rather than to digest. Nevertheless, the Theatre began to thrive. I was fortunate enough to live in the area in the early 60's and I remember well attending the 1963 productions of "Hamlet," "The Miser," and "Death of a Salesman." My mother was determined that we should all benefit from this wonderful new cultural opportunity that we were beginning here in Minneapolis, Minnesota. I loved it all.

"A New Theatre" is both a chronicle of an amazing cultural undertaking and a salute to a glorious beginning that continues to prosper and grow today. It has great appeal to both the nostalgic audience whose memories it touches, and new audiences whose present experience is informed and enhanced by it. It is also a very entertaining book to read. I close with one of Guthrie's favorite statements to his actors: "Astonish me in the morning!" What a legacy this is to us all!

Nancy Lorraine
Reviewer