Jim: We have mixture of books this week. We'll be dealing with music, politics, essays, prose poems and autobiography. We'll start with Betty's pick.
Betty: I was a Twin Peaks freak. So when I saw Peggy Lipton's Breathing Out, written with David and Coco Dalton, I had to pick it up. Peggy ran the diner on Twin Peaks and she was married to Quincy Jones. That's really all I knew until I read the book.
Mike: I was reading this book in the living room and Dad comes by and does a double take and starts hollering for Ma. He's going Mod Squad and Julie and I had just started the book and had no idea what he was going on about.
C.I.: From 1968 through 1973, Peggy Lipton played Julie on ABC's The Mod Squad. The premise was three kids were brought into the police force. A reunion TV movie would be made in the late seventies, but Lipton's Julie was sidelined, among other problems. The Mod Squad was part of ABC's attempt to get the youth of America watching.
Rebecca: And you had blonde Julie, a runaway with a mother who was a prostitute, Linc, who grew up in poverty and was African-American and Pete who was a rich white kid who was seen by his family as a deliquent.
Wally: I've never seen the show and actually wished I had after reading the book but I also wished that there had been a bit more on it. The reunion movie, is it mentioned?
C.I.: No.
Wally: She writes about it like being in the same grade with the same people, year after year.
Cedric: It's really not an acting book though. It's more about her own journey and demons.
Dona: Regardless, I'd say the decision not to include the reunion movie was a mistake since she speaks of having given up acting to be a mother. What was it like when she balanced the two?
Betty: But we learned about her affairs with Paul McCartney and Elvis Presley and her almost affair with Sammy Davis Jr.
Elaine: She -- I liked the book, but . . . I'd say that if you're looking for a chronicle of the times, you're going to be hugely disappointed because she lived a very solitary life for most of it. When she begins dealing with her childhood abuse, she begins connecting with the world around her, whether it's volunteering in Los Angeles or whatever. But, this was where the book was lacking for me, what was going on in the solitary moments? She wrote songs, we're told in one chapter. She had a piano while living with her parents. So when she's off the set in one of her depressions on the weekend, what is she doing? I don't feel the book gave us any insight there. I also do not grasp how she can write a song that's a title tune to a Robert Altman film and not include even a passage from the lyrics. There were times, and she's the poster board for California blonde --
C.I.: I'd argue Michelle Phillips.
Rebecca: I'd agree.
Elaine: (laughing) I'll allow it. But she would throw out something like reading Anais Nin, who we're reviewing this discussion, and it would be obvious that something was going on during her downtime. What was it? It's not party. So what is she doing? There's a whole section of her life missing from the book until she marries Quincy Jones.
Kat: I'd agree with that 100%. The 60s moment is her audition for The Mod Squad. She's not sure what to wear, she smokes a joint, ends up five hours late, nails the audition and gets Danny Thomas' approval. Reading that, I'm wondering, "Joint?" Not in a judgemental way but in a "where are the other turn ons?" She's got a joint lying around the house, fine. But there's nothing, for me, that really leads up to that moment. What was she doing on the weekends? Getting stoned and writing songs? Whatever it was, it's not in the book. And I think it suffers for that. I also agree with Elaine that this isn't a chronicle of the times. Whatever she's doing on the weekends, it's not keeping her in contact with the times.
C.I.: She was dancing at the Daisy and she notes that. But I get your point.
Betty: I'll agree that with Quincy Jones' entrance in the book, it comes alive. I think that's actually where the book hits its stride.
Ty: The parts about her children follow that and that's a strong section of the book. I felt we got a better insight into her when she's explaining her daughter's decision to attend a certain high school and her own decision to go along with it.
Jim: So we recommend it or not?
Elaine: Kat and I were the only ones with reservations. I think it's written quite well in terms of style but let's point out the book bears the name of three people. I enjoyed it.
Kat: I'll recommend it with a qualifier. If you liked Peggy Lipton, you'll like the book. If you're a fan of The Mod Squad, look for something else. There's really nothing that insightful or deep about the show in here. I don't know if she didn't want to write about the period or she couldn't remember it, but I was very disappointed in that section. That's the reason girls wanted to look like her, that's when everyone knew who she was. If you're trying to figure out who Peggy Lipton was then, you won't get a clue.
C.I.: I'll jump in. The book does go deeper as it goes along. It's never slow reading. You're never bored. Since she came to fame at the tail end of the chronological sixties, which would extend culturally a few more years, there is an expectation that there would be some insight into those years but there's really not. What the book emphasizes, such as her cancer, it does some in a very naked manner.
Jim: So we'll say recommended but don't expect to learn a great deal about The Mod Squad. I'll add it seemed like there was more about life on the set, specifics, of Twin Peaks than there was about The Mod Squad. Peggy Lipton writes of reading Anais Nin and we've got one of her books for this discussion so let's go to that next.
Kat: I picked this one thinking it would illuminate the world of Nin for those who missed it when we read A Spy In The House Of Love. I believe I was wrong. The book we read this time is House of Incest which is Nin's prose-poem in novel form.
Rebecca: And I'm going to start because I was on vacation when A Spy In The House of Love was reviewed and didn't get to take part. I love Nin's language. I really love it in this tale.
Jess: I'll go along with that. I didn't get into A Spy In The House Of Love. With House of Incest, I had no idea what she was talking about but the imagery was distinct and well crafted.
Wally: But where was the incest?
Elaine: It was self-love, self-absorbtion.
Mike: Sabina pops back up in this.
Kat: Watch out, McKinnon, Sabina's my favorite of all of Nin's characters.
Mike: I'm just wondering if this happens a lot? The same characters in the works?
Rebecca: Sabina pops up a lot. She's June Miller, right?
Elaine: She's a bit Anais and a bit June, I'd argue, but if you've read the diaries or the journals, it's impossible not to note the similarities between things June did and things Sabina does.
Jess: I'll offer a section of the book that stood out:
I was carrying her fetiches, her marionettes, her fortune teller's cards worn at
the corners like the edge of a wave. The windows of the city were stained
and splintered with rainlight and the blood she drew from me with each lie, each
deception. Beneath the skin of her cheeks, I saw ashes: would she die
before we had joined in perfidious union? The eyes, the hands, the senses
that only women have.
Ty: I'll agree with Jess about the imagery. I would've picked the passage that begins, "I walked into my own book, seeking peace . . ." But I agree with the point on the imagery.
Cedric: There have been books we've read that I had to struggle to get through because I was so bored. I found this book stimulating with the use of words. Whether you can decode the meaning or not, I think it's worth reading. Anything like this is going to make you expand a little because it's not linear.
Jim: So we say recommended and on linear, we turn to my pick, Catherine Crier's Contempt: How The Right Is Wronging American Justice. I loved this book.
C.I.: I have a negative criticism so I'll go first. This isn't about Crier's writing. It is about the publisher. Who proofread this and how did it get printed as is? You've got quotes that lose the ending quotation marks; the first line of the second paragraph in the book has no spaces between any of the words: "TapedattheTwoRiversBaptistChurchinNashville,Tennesee,"; and I could go on from there. If that happened in a daily paper, or on a website, big deal. But books are edited and proofed. Typos will still appear but the amount in this book exceeds what even I will allow. I can deal with the wrong word being in a sentence, in fact Elaine called me about one paragraph and I had substituted the correct word without even realizing it --
Elaine: C.I. speed reads.
C.I.: But there were so many mistakes, printing mistakes, I'm not criticizing Crier, that it really needs to be noted in this discussion.
Jim: I'll agree with that and I'm far less tolerant of typos in books than you are. For the reasons that you listed. Most of these mistakes should have been caught when the book was in galley form. As for the arguments of the book, I found them sound except in one instance when I couldn't figure out what the printing error was, but she lost me on a paragraph and I sat there rereading it trying to figure out where the printing error was and finally gave up, skipped three pages and dived back in.
Betty: The argument of her book is that the religious right is using selective readings of selective bits of history to argue that the nation was founded as a Christian nation when that's not the case. She provides examples at length and, this is what C.I. and I talked about when we talked about the book, she's not just providing a history, she's tying it into today and giving you context. She explains the dangerous climate the country is in today and why this is dangerous.
Ty: And we should note, because she does, that she does not want to be seen as a liberal. She identifies as an "independent" and was an elected judge in Texas as a Republican.
Ava: And since a number of Common Ills community members are in Texas, we should note that she often uses Texas for examples. For instance, noting that Orin Hatch represents "millions" she points out that yes, two million is "millions." She then goes on to point out that the city of Houston, Texas has roughly the same amount of people as the state of Utah. The "millions" is a strong section of the book. She explains that we're a nation of over 270 million, I believe that's the figure, and that saying "millions" agree with whatever right-wing program is rather meaningless when you look at the size of the country. She documents that support for Roe v. Wade hasn't eroded and is still favored by the majority of Americans.
Ty: And she notes that it's not just abortion or just gay rights, that the religious right wing agenda is against all forms of sex outside of marriage and against contraception regardless of marital state since it turns sex into an act done for pleasure's sake.
C.I.: And to clarify, she's speaking of the right wing fundamentalists. She's not writing an attack on religion and she makes that clear nor is she attempting to trash each and every person who identifies as Republicans.
Cedric: What stood out to me was James Dobson. There's no appeasing that crazy. I was reading it and what I flashed on was when you wrote "Focus on Fool" and --
C.I.: I know where you're headed, no names.
Cedric: Okay, someone else wrote later that day that we didn't need to mock the religious and we needed to understand them and work towards finding our common ground with them. This man's a zealot. There's no common ground to be found with him.
C.I.: Which is the danger in writing about them. Someone who hopefully knew nothing about James Dobson wrote that inane piece of nonsense. What surprised me was that Crier speaks of his reach in various formats, such as radio, but she doesn't note that he also has syndicated TV spots that run on local news programs. They're usually introduced with something like, "Now here's James Dobson with the Focus on the Family moment." And, I've seen this repeatedly while traveling, he comes off like Mr. Rogers and is just as sweet as he can be. So maybe the person who wrote the thing Cedric's referring to saw one of those spots and thought, "Oh, I can find common ground with that." There is no common ground with James Dobson.
Kat: Spank your kids and don't buy Barbie! That's James Dobson at his most "light hearted."
Dona: And when someone doesn't know a thing about James Dobson or TD Jakes to name another one no left site should be citing, you really wish they'd do a little work before they did their shout outs. But I agree with Cedric. I think I was the first to complain about that idiot in an e-mail when that happened.
C.I.: I believe you were.
Betty: And that's so obvious to me that I have to wonder about the people who give shout outs to them. I'm in church every Sunday morning and every Sunday evening as well on Wednesday nights. I was raised in the church I go to and no one could get away with calling me anti-religious, unless they wanted to take on my congregation. But I don't vote for a politician to give me spiritual guidance and I'll toss out that I'm really troubled by the injection of spirituality into politics. I was before I read the book but when, for instance, Crier was talking about the war on our public schools and the utilization of those spaces for worship presented as "clubs," I was really dismayed.
Ty: She also does a strong refuting Bill Frist's claims that Clinton's nominees got an up or down vote.
Cedric: I'll agree with that and I'll drop back to what Betty said because I really don't go to politics for my religion. And when some stupid idiot starts mixing the two on a web site, I'm thinking of one in particular, I just feel like, "Lady, I don't know you, don't talk to me about what my relationship with God should be or what you think it is." I don't think she realizes how annoying she comes off. Like Betty, I'm at every service of my church. I don't need someone trying to give me a sermon. She seems to think that she since believes in Jesus that I'm going to agree with her sermons because I believe in Jesus and I don't agree with her sermons and that quite often go against what my church believes in. But then my church doesn't do shout outs to TD Jakes. There were a lot of reasons I had to stop going to her site but her constant need to inject her religion, or her understanding of it, and to assume that everyone who was a Christian would feel the same was really annoying. And that's the danger in mixing the two for the Democratic Party. America is full of believers, nonbelievers and people who don't think much about it either way and probably a host of others. But it's a mistake to think all believers, or even all believers on the left, are going to share your beliefs. The more specific you get, the more you alienate people. And Crier points out that the fundamentalists are a small segment but they turn out and vote and that's why they have some power on the right. There's been too much talk about religion in the Democratic Party since the election and not enough talk about unemployment and minimum wage.
Rebecca: And Cedric does talk about his religion at his site from time to time but it's never a "Hey, guys, we all feel this way and this is what we all believe and hey we can all come together and . . ." bullshit.
Cedric: Exactly. If I'm talking about my church, I usually include some stories from friends about their churches because belief in Jesus does not mean everyone believes in the same stuff after Jesus. I do not give sermons or sermonettes. There's a thing I'm going to write at some point about donations because there's been a lot of e-mails from every side imaginable on that. But if I'm talking about my church, I'm usually talking about it in terms of "We decided to do this to . . ." Like the computers for the elderly. I'm not giving a sermon. I'm not a preacher. I think you convey more with your actions than with your words. I'm writing about the actions of my church when I write about it. And Rebecca just said "bullshit" and I'm sure some church goer somewhere would get upset about that. It doesn't bother me in the least. To someone else that would be a major thing. It depends upon the church you go to and we need to stop thinking, the Democratic Party, that there's this catch all blue print that's going to bring in the mythical "values voters."
Elaine: Or that we don't have them already and haven't for some time.
Cedric: Exactly. For many people opposition to this war is a based on religious principles. For others it's a moral position or an ethical position or any number of reasons. When you start crafting this one single message, you're going to turn a lot of people off.
Jim: And I'd argue that since this was the most lively exchange we've had so far in this discussion that this argues that Crier's Contempt is a book you should check out. Our next choice was Rebecca's.
Rebecca: C.I., Elaine and I have all been joking back and forth with each other at our sites about books we give to each other. One book that C.I. gave me that I've always meant to read but never gotten around to was Alice Walker's In Search Of Our Mother's Gardens.
Ty: This was a great book. These are essays, the subtitle to the book is "womanist prose," and they are some outstanding essays. Like most people, I knew Walker's fiction. And we've read some of her poetry for discussions here. But this was my first time reading any of her essays.
With a lot of writers, you read one genre and that's their solid footing. Walker's really able to work in various genres and do strong work throughout. My favorite was "The Unglamorous but Worthwhile Duties of the Black Revolutionary Artist, or of the Black Writer Who Simply Works and Writes."
Cedric: I'd agree that's a good one but for me the one that stood out was "Coretta King Revisted" due to Coretta Scott King's recent health problems.
Betty: I actually skipped that one because her stroke still saddens me. She's someone who's always been larger than life to me, someone to look up to and, since her stroke, the tears well up too easily so I took a pass on that essay. Her essay on Buchi Emecheta's Second Class Citizen was the one that had me thinking the most.
C.I.: "A Writer Because Of, Not In Spite Of, Her Children."
Betty: Right and that's probably why it spoke to me. I'm getting about one thing a week written now days. The kids seem more rowdy than ever. I usually write when they're down for the night. I need those quiet moments and that section made me think and spoke to me.
Rebecca: What I enjoy most about Walker's work is the forward vision. She's not merely jotting down what is, but seeing what can be. For me, that's best captured in the essay "If The Present Looks Like The Past, What Does The Future Look Like?"
Ty: I'll go with the memories of her childhood that pop up in many of the essays. They really are vivid.
Jess: With strong imagery. Ty and I were talking about "Lulls" this week.
Ty: That's the one where she goes back to Atlanta. A woman, named Mabel?, makes the point about the jokes on Sanford & Son at the expense of Aunt Esther and how white people have called African-Americans "gorillas" for years and then seeing the same thing done on Sanford & Son with Aunt Esther means "They probably think they're right." There was a great deal of reflection on cultures and race but I'll go with that example because I think it will be the easiest to relate to.
Jim: Dona's motioning for time so we'll move on to the next book and Dallas reports there's no link. He tried Powell's, he tried Amazon. Wally found the book at a neighbors and the rest of us got it via interlibrary loan --
Rebecca: C.I. and Elaine actually had a copy of it on their book shelves.
Jim: I did not know that. Wally, set us up.
Wally: It's Rolling Stone magazine's The 100 Greatest Albums of the 80s. This was one of the neighbors that were packing up since there was still no electricity. My grandfather and I were helping her pack up. She was taking a lot and had a trailer in fact. So she calls a break and says she's going to make us lunch and to sit down and relax. The book was on a book case in her living room and I just picked it up and started flipping through it. When she came out to say lunch was ready, she insisted I take it. She said she couldn't even remember which child or grandchild's book it was. I kept saying no because we were happy to help out and she kept insisting and finally my grandfather whispered to just say thank you. Later he said she's not the type to ask for help with anything and she'd feel better giving the book for our help. And I think I just ate up all our time with that explanation.
Dona: We'll extend by five, ten if a discussion blossoms.
Mike: So it's reviewing the decade of the eighties, in music, by noting their picks for the top 100 albums.
Elaine: And to clarify, this was actually an issue of Rolling Stone. This was the cover story and they turned it into a book. I think even the cover is the same as it was on the magazine, right?
C.I.: Actually, I could be wrong, but I'm remembering the magazine cover having a white background.
Mike: I didn't know most of the albums.
Ty: I knew maybe half and of those half, only about half would make my list.
Kat: And when you've got one woman on a panel of fourteen, you know the kind of results you're going to get. No Kate Bush, who I can't listen to but she did work with noting, one album by Pretenders and only one. Learning to Crawl kicks ass and should be on the list. But no woman gets more than one album and the panel goes with the first album by Pretenders -- when men had a stronger say in the group, big surprise. You'd be hard pressed to find many people as eager as I am over each new Stones' release but Steel Wheels is not a great album in any year.
C.I.: In real time, Elaine and I trashed this list at length. 100 albums and only eight women make it as solo artists, one album each. Pretenders is the only group fronted solely by a woman that makes the list. I think we both felt that there were probably 20 albums on this list that deserved to be.
Elaine: Right. This was albums, not singles. Human League makes the list and I remembered thinking then "Don't You Want Me" is a nice single, the album was all that was wrong with so many albums in the early 80s, two to three tracks worth listening to and then filler. But it beats, on their system, Sting's Nothing Like The Sun, Aretha's Who's Zoomin' Who, Bruce Springsteen's The River, David Bowie's Let's Dance, Jackson Browne's Lives In The Balance, George Michael's Faith, John Mellencamp's Scarecrow and a host of other albums.
C.I.: And Elaine loved Scarecrow.
Rebecca: That's right. She got us those watches with the quote from "Between A Laugh And A Tear" inscribed on them!
Elaine: Now I'm embarrased. But I do love that album and I do love that song. I don't have it on CD so I haven't listened to it for years. When the list was published, CDs were taking off but not completely. More importantly, the format that probably sold the most in the eighties was casettes. And let me embarrass Rebecca by noting that she went through repeated copies of Stevie Nicks' Wild Heart.
Rebecca: There was tape drop out in those days. Where you'd lose sound for a second or two on some tapes you played a lot or maybe someone stopped them in a spot before the song was over.
Elaine: The cassette came with a paper booklet of lyrics. Everytime Rebecca lost the paper booklet, which was over and over, she'd rush out and get a new copy of Wild Heart.
Betty: I grew up during that time and I can't believe that Diana Ross' diana didn't make the list. That was the party album for my older brothers and sisters and you couldn't go anywhere without hearing "I'm Coming Out" and "Upside Down" on the radio. I actually think side two, back in the days of cassettes and vinyl, there were "sides," was better than the hits everyone knew.
Jess: I was glad Steve Earl had an album on the list but I was wondering where the new country was. That was a big thing and it went beyond Lyle Lovett who also made the list. I had an aunt who loved Roseanne Cash and I asked her about it on the phone. She said that King's Recrod Shop and The Wheel were nineties albums. An album that was from 1980 and one I grew up loving was Stevie Wonder's Hotter Than July and it's not on the list nor is anything else by Stevie Wonder. So when they start tossing in Oh Mercy by Bob Dylan, I've got a problem.
Cedric: I love Marvin Gaye, but I would've picked Hotter Than July over the lifeless Midnight Love which seems to be on the list just because it's Gaye's last album and because it had the single "Sexual Healing." I can't listen to that album and I have it on CD. It just sits on the shelf.
Dona: E-mails came in telling me that Ty had spoken only once in the last discussion. And I've cut off discussions in the past without realizing that Elaine or Kat hadn't been able to weigh in. So before I cut this off, if anyone hasn't had their say they better rush in now.
Ty: I think we've all had a say this time.
Jim: Then Jess, wrap this book up.
Jess: Any list, like any review, is subjective. The best enjoyment from a book like this will come from making your own lists, or discussing it with a friend. I worry about anyone who sees the title, picks it up and walks away thinking, "Those were the best albums." The eighties relied heavily on synthesizers and few artists found a way to humanize them. Tina Turner makes the list with Private Dancer and her voice could cut through the synthesizers and provide honest, real emotion. That wasn't the case for a lot of artists. After Hotter Than July, my pick for CD that should have made the list would be Carly Simon's Coming Around Again which came out in 1988 and actually managed to balance synths with emotion. On that album she was assisted by Roberta Flack, Stevie Wonder and others and as one of the few albums that managed to actually sound like it came from a person, and not a machine, it's omission is as glaring as omitting Hotter Than July.
Jim: So those are our five books for the week. Hopefully you'll be able to tell by our discussions if something's for you or not. And Raymond wrote in to say that he hopes we'll always state when we really hate a book because those are the ones he ends up enjoying, the books he ends up enjoying. Glad to be of assistance to you, Ray. Sorry that there wasn't one we hated this week.
