Welcome to Swans Commentary http://www.swans.com/ May 31, 2010
Note from the Editors: Another edition is upon us and rather than
abating, the BP oil spill has moved Beyond Pollution as efforts to stop
the hemorrhage by injecting trash simply added more waste to the toxic
mess. One can only hold one's breath and hope that the marshes, fishes,
and humans in the poisoned Gulf Coast path are as resilient as JD
Salinger, whose influence continues despite his recent burial -- at
least, as Peter Byrne reports, according to Nobel Prize winner J.M.G.
Le Clézio. Just as Salinger's characters touched a generation, so too
did Brando and Dean influence disenchanted youth. Charles Marowitz
considers social behavior, method acting, and how we all -- actors and
non-actors alike -- act out. Cultural icons are also the subject of our
book reviews, with Louis Proyect on the life and death of herpetologist
and snake wrangler Joe Slowinski -- a legitimate scientist with an
unquenchable thirst for knowledge, and Paul Buhle on Ronald Cohen's
biography of the late Archie Green, folklorist and a mentor to a
generation of scholars of political music. And reporting from the
field, Steve Shay recently interviewed Bill Gates Sr., and was asked
the predictable interview question. Shay relates the journalist's
quagmire between on-the-record spin and off-the-record reality.
Turning our attention to sociopolitical matters, Maxwell Clark reviews
Harold Bloom's critique of the "new" anti-Semitism and Michael Doliner
considers measurements and scientific rigor to dispel the myth of
self-delusional comfort in which we are merely outside looking in. On
the African front, Michael Barker examines George Soros and South
Africa's elite transition from apartheid to polyarchy, while Femi
Akomolafe bids adieu to Nigeria's president Yar'Adua, the most recent
in a succession of self-serving elite who squandered the nation's oil
wealth while leaving its people to scavenge for sustenance. Meanwhile,
Gilles d'Aymery is working hard on rebuilding the rotten deck at Swans
headquarters with his old friend Frank Wycoff as the master
builder-in-chief, so we take this opportunity to bring three of
Aymery's early, prescient articles on economic and social conditions in
the USA, demonstrating that the Great Recession was indeed predictable
by those willing to take a serious look.
Finally, we close with the poetry of Marie Rennard, the linguistic
blending of Viviana Fiorentino and Guido Monte, and your letters,
including Steve Shay's correction to Jonah Raskin's otherwise enjoyable
travelogue; Peter Byrne's follow- on to Charles Marowitz's H.L. Mencken;
Christian Cottard and Marie Rennard getting it right; and some thoughts
on ethics and how to revolutionize American thinking.
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Cordially,
Gilles d'Aymery
-- Swans
"Hungry man, reach for the book: It is a weapon." B. Brecht
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