Category Archives: Books

Books, Culture Jamming, Drugs, Entertainment, Music, Politics

New Left

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Throughout this year I have embarked on a journey of self-education through reading inflammatory recipes for revolution and amongst the incendiary material on my bookshelf, works concerning the New Left appear the most prominently. The New Left, unlike the Old Left of the 1930s and 1940s, focused on social activism and American culture. Elvis Presley and the Lone Ranger were just as important as Che Guevara and Fidel Castro. Their main aims were ending the War in Viet FUCKINGnam, ending racism at home, and protesting the conformist, capitalist, greedy, Amerikkkan lifestyle, amongst other initiatives, As I mentioned, I’ve read several books this year on this subject that I highly recommend to anyone and everyone. These include:

From Yale to Jail By: David Dellinger
Steal This Book By: Abbie Hoffman
The Black Panthers Speak By: Various Panthers
Kingdom of Fear By: Hunter S. Thompson
Flashbacks By: Timothy Leary
Soon to Be A Major Motion Picture By: Abbie Hoffman
Fugitive Days By: Bill Ayers
Do iT! Scenarios of the Revolution By: Jerry Rubin

It’s been fantastic learning about these turbulent times through such diverse, charismatic, and first hand accounts. It’s really funny seeing how certain figures are portrayed differently in various works. For example, acid guru, Timothy Leary paints Yippies Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin as pessimistic, Anti-American agitators that advocate violent revolution. Leary says some nice things about the boys, but he tends to omit their personal charm and dedication to social change. On the contrary, through the Yippies’ eyes, the sky is the limit, nope scratch that, after they levitated the Pentagon they could fly with it to the moon! You’ll have to do some reading to understand what the hell I’m talking about right now haha. All of these characters appear in just about all of these books at least once. And the aforementioned protests at the Pentagon, the 1968 (Un)Democratic National Convention and ensuing Chicago Conspiracy Trial are events that are discussed in depth in all of these works. I have also read about Tim Leary’s prison break through his perspective as well as his rescuers’, The Weathermen. Here are some other key New Left figures I haven’t mentioned:

Tom Hayden
Noam Chomsky
Howard Zinn
David Horowitz
John Lennon
Allen Ginsburg
Angela Davis
Mario Savio
Rennie Davis
That is by no means a complete list.

Chris DeCarlo

Books, Entertainment

Book review: Six Characters

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Hello all. This post I will be reviewing a true classic work. I speak of Luigi Pirandello’s play Six Characters in Search Of An Author. The basic synopsis of the play is a family of six crash a rehearsal of a humdrum comedy and try to convince the director/manager to put on the drama that is the family’s dirty laundry. Now, this is my absolute favorite play of all time. It seems to assess who we are as people and what family means. The dialogue seemingly flies off the page and takes flight. Not only is the dialogue extraordinary and deep, but the characters are the best I’ve ever seen. The main characters are The Father, The Mother, The Step-Daughter, The Son (my personal favorite), The Boy, The Child and The Director as well as other assorted members of the company. The way the family interacts with each other is the true definition of drama and tragedy.  Overall, I believe this is Pirandello’s masterpiece as it won the Pulitzer prize in 1924. I highly recommend this to anyone who enjoys transcendental ideas as it blurs the lines between fact and fiction. I say again, in the words of Edward R. Murrow, “Good Night and Good Luck.”

Books

Frank McCourt Peaces Out

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YAHOO! – NEW YORK – Frank McCourt, the beloved raconteur and former public school teacher who enjoyed post-retirement fame as the author of “Angela’s Ashes,” the Pulitzer Prize-winning “epic of woe” about his impoverished Irish childhood, died Sunday of cancer.

McCourt, who was 78, had been gravely ill with meningitis and recently was treated for melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer and the cause of his death, said his publisher, Scribner. He died at a Manhattan hospice, his brother Malachy McCourt said.

Until his mid-60s, Frank McCourt was known primarily around New York as a creative writing teacher and as a local character — the kind who might turn up in a New York novel — singing songs and telling stories with his younger brother Malachy and otherwise joining the crowds at the White Horse Tavern and other literary hangouts.

Didn’t read it, but from what other students have said…sounded good.

Books, Culture Jamming, Entertainment, Politics

Recommended Reading

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Incendiary Material:

1)The Catcher in the Rye By: J.D. Salinger

2)Our Band Could Be Your Life BY: Michael Azzerad

3)A People’s History of the United States By: Howard Zinn

4)Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas By: Hunter S. Thompson

5)Bill Hicks: Agent of Evolution By: Kevin Booth With Michale Bertin

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