Mr. Strangelove: A Biography of Peter Sellers Review

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Mr. Strangelove: A Biography of Peter Sellers ReviewPeter Sellers has been the subject of more than a few books, some significantly better than others. Aside from Graham Stark's beautiful memoir "Remembering Peter Sellers" (still only available in the U.K., unfortunately), this is the best. Certainly it is the most comprehensive, in part because it works from, and builds upon, the many books that came before it.
In more ways than one, "Mr. Strangelove" is not a light read. Sikov's research is extensive and detail is heavy, but his writing is surprisingly nimble over the 300+ page length.
The life of Sellers was fraught with private and public turmoil, and a significant career dry spell. Some previous studies of him and his work treated both with almost cruel insensitivity (and I haven't even read Roger Lewis' much-pilloried "Life and Death of..."), emphasizing the pain he brought into the lives of others. Meanwhile, memoirs like his son Michael Sellers' "P.S. I Love You" and Stark's book, while certainly willing to admit to Peter's faults, made a case for his personal pain and his virtues.
Happily Sikov understands Sellers' good side as well as his bad one. Though this is definitely a warts-and-all portrait of the man - his bad behavior on sets and his unhappy relationships with wives and children are not spared us - and sometimes painful to read, it is also sensitive, careful to stress Peter's humanity. (His fresh interviews with some of Sellers' colleagues do much to acheive this end.) In the end, this is the story of a man who, in Sikov's words, had an "essentially good heart".
Understandably some will be (and have been, to judge from other reviews) frustrated by the extremely detailed coverage Sellers' work, especially his films, are given. But to do justice to the life of such a gifted performer requires a close look at his work, and "Mr. Strangelove" covers his work more compellingly than any previous biography has, particularly where his more obscure films are concerned.
"Mr. Strangelove" is a full, rich portrait of a tragicomic life, one that will be compelling reading for those with even a mild interest in its subject...though once it's been read, "mild" may well turn to "major".Mr. Strangelove: A Biography of Peter Sellers Overview

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Buffalo Bill in Bologna: The Americanization of the World, 1869-1922 Review

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Buffalo Bill in Bologna: The Americanization of the World, 1869-1922 ReviewThis slim volume offers an elegant, useful overview of the scholarship on mass culture in the US. It extends the picture of American mass culture to include forays into Europe and the reception of European audiences and critics.It doesn't offer much in the way of new archival work; it largely relies on the studies by other historians on separate areas of mass culture, from Wild West shows and amusement parks to world's fairs and early cinema. But this is what makes the book particularly useful: it brings this work together in order to think through the larger questions of mass culture as a whole.
Does mass culture ultimately represent a regressive ideological force, one that has united Americans by disseminating an implicitly white nationalist idea of what America is? Or is it a more equivocal force through which consumers have sometimes been able to refashion their own meanings and spaces? The authors examine these questions in a fairly even-handed way, and recognize the arguments on both sides. They don't go into these questions in great depth, however. But there is an extremely helpful bibliographic essay at the end of the book that maps out the major critical arguments, from the early 20th century to the present, and that includes both American thinkers and European intellectuals. I would recommend this essay for anyone wanting to get a quick overview of this scholarly terrain.
My one reservation about this bibliography, however, is that it doesn't give any attention to the important scholarship on mass culture and the public sphere that has been produced in the wake of Habermas's book on the public sphere. There is a whole area of scholarship, from Negt and Kluge's response to Habermas, Miriam Hansen's work on Kracauer, and Michael Warner's work on counter publics, that is vital to thinking through questions of mass culture. The authors of this book have too quickly classified the Frankfurt School as one of "pessimism" about mass culture, but the picture is more complicated than that.Buffalo Bill in Bologna: The Americanization of the World, 1869-1922 OverviewWhen it comes to the production and distribution of mass culture, no country in modern times has come close to rivaling the success of America. From blue jeans in central Europe to Elvis Presley's face on a Republic of Chad postage stamp, the reach of American mass culture extends into every corner of the globe. Most believe this is a twentieth-century phenomenon, but here Robert W. Rydell and Rob Kroes prove that its roots are far deeper.Buffalo Bill in Bologna reveals that the process of globalizing American mass culture began as early as the mid-nineteenth century. In fact, by the end of World War I, the United States already boasted an advanced network of culture industries that served to promote American values. Rydell and Kroes narrate how the circuses, amusement parks, vaudeville, mail-order catalogs, dime novels, and movies developed after the Civil War—tools central to hastening the reconstruction of the country—actually doubled as agents of American cultural diplomacy abroad. As symbols of America's version of the "good life," cultural products became a primary means for people around the world, especially in Europe, to reimagine both America and themselves in the context of America's growing global sphere of influence. Paying special attention to the role of the world's fairs, the exporting of Buffalo Bill's Wild West show to Europe, the release of The Birth of a Nation, and Woodrow Wilson's creation of the Committee on Public Information, Rydell and Kroes offer an absorbing tour through America's cultural expansion at the turn of the century. Buffalo Bill in Bologna is thus a tour de force that recasts what has been popularly understood about this period of American and global history.

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Naming Names Review

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Naming Names ReviewWhen I bought this, I was uncertain that I could trust the perspective of the author: as publisher of The Nation (which I have written for) he is certifiably of the "left". I feared that he would take an obvious side, and hammer it into the ground.
What I found instead was an absolutely and scrupulously fair interpretation of what happened in the McCarthy era and why so many good and talented people betrayed their erstwhile friends. Navasky approaches it as the worst kind of personal moral dilemma: how can you save your career and not betray your deepest personal (and sometimes still political) allegiances.
The cast of characters comes predominently from the truly first rate, for example Jerome Robbins or Elia Kazan. Navassky shows how the struggled with their decision to name names, often convincing themselves that they had to do it to be an ethical person and good american, and then - to his great credit - he explores the shattering psychological repercussions that ensued. These actors in the drama are very human and caught in a dilemma so terrible that I pray I never will face a similar choice. Rather than seek a few weak bad guys, it is an indictment of an entire political system and policial era. Even if you are not convinced by his argument, the reader feels compelled to reflect on it. I certainly did.
Warmly recommended as a profound inquiry into moral choice, placed vividly in historical context. This is a masterpiece.Naming Names OverviewWith a New Afterword by the Author"An astonishing work concerning personal honor and dishonor, shame and shamelessness. A book of stunning insights and suspense." —Studs TerkelHalf a century later, the investigation of Hollywood radicals by the House Committee on Un-American Activities still haunts the public conscience. Naming Names, reissued here with a new afterword by the author, is the definitive account of the hearings, a National Book Award winner widely hailed as a classic. Victor S. Navasky adroitly dissects the motivations for the investigation and offers a poignant analysis of its consequences. Focusing on the movie-studio workers who avoided blacklists only by naming names at the hearings, he explores the terrifying dilemmas of those who informed and the tragedies of those who were informed on. Drawing on interviews with more than 150 people called to testify—among them Elia Kazan, Ring Lardner Jr., and Arthur Miller—Naming Names presents a compelling portrait of how the blacklists operated with such chilling efficiency.

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