bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Reflejos de la Segunda Guerra Mundial en la novela utópica española: los días están contados (1944), de Cecilio Benítez de Castro
Authors: Martín Rodríguez Mariano
Published: May 2017

al terminar la Guerra Civil española en 1939, la literatura reanudó su curso anterior, al menos en algunas de sus modalidades, como la llamada novela utópica. uno de los primeros ejemplos de la posguerra fue un libro bellamente escrito que reflejó, en forma de parábola especulativa, el conflicto coetáneo. Se trata de Los días están contados (1944), de Cecilio Benítez de Castro, una novela en la que se suceden una historia de violencia atroz en el marco de una sociedad primitiva aislada en los Pirineos franceses y la narración de una guerra total en otro planeta. Esta refleja la contienda que se estaba librando entonces en la tierra, de manera que queda subrayada la crueldad bélica como característica inherente de los seres pensantes, desde una perspectiva claramente pacifista que hace hincapié en la trágica dimensión universal de la violencia, en el tiempo y en el espacio.
The Deepest Sense
Authors: Classen Constance
Published: May 2017

From the softest caress to the harshest blow, touch lies at the heart of our experience of the world. Now, for the first time, this deepest of senses is the subject of an extensive historical exploration. This book fleshes out our understanding of the past with explorations of lived experiences of embodiment from the Middle Ages to modernity. This approach to history makes it possible to foreground the tactile foundations of Western culture—the ways in which feelings shaped society. This book explores a variety of tactile realms; including the feel of the medieval city; the tactile appeal of relics; the social histories of pain, pleasure, and affection; the bonds of touch between humans and animals; the strenuous excitement of sports such as wrestling and jousting; and the sensuous attractions of consumer culture. The book delves into a range of vital issues, from the uses—and prohibitions—of touch in social interaction to the disciplining of the body by the modern state, from the changing feel of the urban landscape to the technologization of touch in modernity. Through poignant descriptions of the healing power of a medieval king's hand or the grueling conditions of a nineteenth-century prison, we find that history, far from being a dry and lifeless subject, touches us to the quick.
Sensations of a New Age
Authors: Classen Constance
Published: May 2017

This chapter discusses the new sensations perceived as a result of the cultural and industrial shifts of modernity. It considers the new institutions which were since established at the dawn of the modern age and their emphasis on efficiency and social discipline, in the form of the drill, which shaped not only military bodies but also permeated schools, prisons, and museums as well. In addition, the chapter looks at how the nineteenth-century individual would come to experience tactile sensations in a vastly different city and domestic space from that of the Middle Ages. Moreover, it examines other new facets for sensuality in the modern, industrial age—the advent of electric power and the department store.
Introduction
Authors: Reinarz Jonathan
Published: May 2017

This introductory chapter considers the place of scent in sense history and its emergence in more recent literature. In addition, the chapter looks at the myriad ways of smelling, as olfaction has been lately regarded as one of the most delicate chemical tests we possess. Moreover, although to some extent smell remains a mystery, the chapter emphasizes that scents have always been an integral part of peoples' lives, possessing distinctive and often shared meanings. For example, odor has been intimately associated with notions of identity. Although denigrated and regarded with suspicion, smell was relied upon by members of European society whenever other forms of knowledge were less forthcoming.
Heavenly Scents
Authors: Reinarz Jonathan
Published: May 2017

This chapter focuses exclusively on sacred scents and traces smell's role in the realm of religion, particularly the Christian tradition. It concentrates on the fourth century, when scent began to play an increasingly important role in early Christian practices. Initially, smells were present in ancient Christian texts, often as undercurrents within the text's larger purpose. Ancient Christians found numerous biblical models for experiencing a domain that lay beyond the physical senses but to which the senses provided access. Through sense encounters, people in the ancient world expected and experienced interaction with their gods, even when this implied communication with realms beyond the physically finite world.
Mapping the Smellscape
Authors: Reinarz Jonathan
Published: May 2017

This chapter concentrates on nineteenth-century Europe and its public health movements, centering on London and Paris, as the most innovative work on smell has concentrated on these two European capitals. It focuses less on the washerwomen and dockers who populated these landscapes, than on the wider urban landscape. Moreover, the chapter shows that something changed in the way city smells were perceived and interpreted at this time. Although a victory over stench was claimed by century's end with the rise of germ theory in the 1880s, concerns with odor did not disappear entirely but were merely redirected. Therefore, the second half of this chapter examines the reemergence of smell in the bacteriological era and in the context of the colonies. Even abroad, a change in public responses to filth was perceptible, despite the fact that specific responses varied according to local circumstances.
Who Could Speak If Every Word Had Meaning?
Authors: Gann Kyle
Published: May 2017

This chapter attempts to provide an overview of Atalanta (Acts of God) (1982–87), which comprises three operas. Each opera focuses on one “apple,” or character, in Ashley's reinterpretation of the ancient Greek myth. In Ashley's idiosyncratic cosmology, the three golden apples thrown in front of Atalanta are transformed into three characters: the great jazz pianist Bud Powell; Ashley's uncle Willard Reynolds, described by Ashley as a shaman or storyteller; and the surrealist painter (and Mimi Johnson's late uncle) Max Ernst. Max, Willard, and Bud represent three aspects of opera: image, narrative, and music. In addition, the chapter briefly profiles two singers Ashley had met during the making of Atalanta and who would later become permanent members of his ensemble: Thomas Buckner and Jacqueline Humbert.
One Thing Follows the Next and I Just Do It
Authors: Gann Kyle
Published: May 2017

This chapter outlines several more of Ashley's operas as well as a series of nonoperatic commissions made during the late 1980s and 1990s. The operas under discussion here are: Your Money My Life Goodbye (1998); Dust (1998); Celestial Excursions (2003); Concrete(2006–9); and Quicksand, which, as of this book's publication, is still under production. For his nonoperatic work, the chapter briefly examines: Superior Seven (1988), a flute concerto; Outcome Inevitable (1991), written for the Relache ensemble in Philadelphia; the piano piece Van Cao's Meditation (1992); and a wordless vocal piece with orchestra entitled Tract (1992). In addition, the chapter discusses his other recent commissions: When Famous Last Words Fail You (1997), Tap Dancing in the Sand (2004), and Hidden Similarities (2005).
Making the Waves
Authors: Badley Linda
Published: May 2017

This chapter presents a commentary on Lars von Trier's film career. It argues that unlike auteurs shaped by existing conditions, trends, or movements within or outside the mainstream industry, Trier is self-authorized, his career “a prototype auteurist initiative,” a project “not primarily to make films but to construct Lars von Trier, the auteur filmmaker.” If his films are identified by auteurist trademarks as trilogies and movements, he systematically violates commandments like the lynchpin of continuity editing, the 180-degree rule. More characteristic yet, though, is his propensity for making 180-degree turns, whether between trilogies or within films. The remainder of the chapter focuses on Trier's work, including his student films, his television commercials from the late 1980s, and films such as The Idiots (1998), Breaking the Waves (1996), Dancer in the Dark (2000), and The Boss of It All (2006).
Efficiency, Estrangement, and Antirealism
Authors: Berrettini Mark L.
Published: May 2017

This chapter presents a commentary on Hal Hartley's film career. It begins with a biographical sketch based on material included in interviews, reviews, and essays about Hartley's work, and an earlier version of his official website, possiblefilms.com. It then moves on to analyze seven feature films: The Unbelievable Truth (1989), Trust (1990), Simple Men (1992), Amateur (1994), Henry Fool, Fay Grim (2006), and The Book of Life (1998). These films show that efficiency, estrangement, and antirealism allow Hartley to chart the struggles of individuals against the ideological precepts that pertain to public and private behavior, responsible actions, “common sense,” and the cinematic conventions that support such ideologies. (e.g., romantic characters who will live “happily ever after”).These conflicts are often related to the restrictions posed by gender norms and are depicted as conflicts with authority figures. Hartley's male protagonists struggle to live up to popular ideals of heteronormative masculinity, control, and violent mastery of the world around them, while his central female characters break from heteronormative conceptions of women as mothers, caregivers, and/or sexual objects.
Interviews with Hal Hartley
Authors: Berrettini Mark L.
Published: May 2017

This chapter presents two interviews of Hal Hartley. The first, conducted by Justin Wyatt, was originally published in the fall 1998 issue of Film Quarterly. The second, conducted by Robert Avila in 2007, originally appeared on SF360.org, the San Francisco Film Society's online magazine. Topics covered in these interviews include the darker tone of the film Henry Fool; Hartley's views about the label “independent” after being heralded as one of the most important voices in American independent cinema; whether the conflicted attitude toward technology and the corporate world seen in his films reflect his own ambivalence in these areas; whether he is concerned that his films may be straying too far to the side of self-consciousness and self-reflexivity; whether he sees a of Hollywood movies; and whether there are times when he finds writing difficult.
Journalists Fight Back: Newsweek and the Koran Abuse Story
Authors: Carlson Matt
Published: May 2017

This chapter follows the controversy caused by a small Newsweek item in which an unnamed source alleged an upcoming military report would contain charges of Koran desecration by interrogators at Guantanamo Bay. The story gained attention after government officials blamed a number of deadly riots in Afghanistan directly on Newsweek. When the magazine's unnamed source rescinded the allegation, Newsweek retracted its claims. The magazine was attacked for not properly corroborating the unnamed source's accusations, which produced broader charges of journalists using anonymity to further an antimilitary bias. However, the journalistic community responded to escalating Bush administration criticism of Newsweek by chastising the administration for its own poor intelligence record leading up to the Iraq War and by turning attention to the previously underreported treatment of Guantanamo Bay detainees.
Deep Throat and the Question of Motives
Authors: Carlson Matt
Published: May 2017

This chapter begins two weeks after Newsweek's retraction when Vanity Fair ended over thirty years of speculation by revealing the famous Watergate-era unnamed source Deep Throat to be Mark Felt, an ex-FBI official. In contrast to the other incidents, the journalism community celebrated Deep Throat as a triumph of unnamed source use. Drawing on the collective memory of Watergate, journalists reaffirmed the value of using unnamed sources to expose wrongdoing. The heroic interpretation of Felt encountered resistance from others who questioned Felt's motives and actions. In the larger view, these critics railed against anonymity by promoting an alternative normative argument suggesting government employees should work internally to resolve issues rather than in public through journalists.
The Films of Steven Soderbergh
Authors: Baker Aaron
Published: May 2017

This chapter examines the films of Steven Soderbergh. Soderbergh's twenty feature films present a diverse range of subject matter and formal styles. They range from his 1989 breakthrough hit Sex, Lies, and Videotape, about the sex lives of four twenty-somethings, to social-problem films such as Erin Brockovich and The Informant! (2009). Even the cost of making his films has shown great variety, ranging from the six-figure budget for Schizopolis (1996) to the star-studded Ocean's series blockbusters (2001, 2004, 2007) that averaged nearly one hundred million dollars to produce. The eclecticism in Soderbergh's movies would appear to invalidate a claim to the distinctive style typical of film authorship. However, the chapter argues that the variety of his work and the commercial viability of some of his films are prominent aspects of his individual style.
Vigilantes, Criminal Justice, and Antebellum Cultural Conflict
Authors: Pfeifer Michael J.
Published: May 2017

This chapter traces, in the social and legal context of the southern, midwestern, and western frontiers, the lethal transition from the nondeadly collective violence (typically floggings) perpetrated by regulator movements in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, to the prolific extralegal hangings of gamblers, alleged slave insurrectionists, horse thieves, and murderers in Mississippi, Iowa, and Wyoming Territory from the mid-1830s through the late 1860s. Furthermore, the chapter looks at the phenomenon of vigilantism and how it operates within the legal context of the period. Vigilantes articulated a preference for criminal justice that privileged local opinion over a neutral commitment to due process law and the rights of the defendant, a stance that rejected an emerging commitment in reformist circles and in the legal culture to the notion of a fair-handed, omnipotent state as arbitrator of community differences and guarantor of individual rights.
The Early Jewish Presence in the Middle West
Authors: Steinberg Ellen F. , Prost Jack H.
Published: May 2017

This chapter describes the early Jewish settlers in the Midwest. The first one was a German-Jew from Berlin named Ezekiel Solomon who landed at the northern tip of the Lower Peninsula in 1761. A simple marker, erected by the Jewish Historical Society of Michigan, in Michilimackinac State Park, Mackinaw City, says that he survived an Ojibwa massacre at Fort Michilimackinac in 1763, was a fur trader who ran a general store provisioning the British Army, and was one of the founders of Canada's first (Sephardic rite) synagogue, Montreal's Shearith Israel. The chapter also details how during the 1800s and even as late as the 1910s, Jews who kept kosher often had a difficult time during their overland journeys to or through the Midwest. They either had to carry food with them hoping their supplies would last until they reached their destination; subsist on purchased or bartered eggs, milk, nuts, and/or fruits, if they could find them; or eat at “kosher” hotels or boarding houses of which there were woefully few.
Eastern European Jews in the Cities
Authors: Steinberg Ellen F. , Prost Jack H.
Published: May 2017

This chapter presents the author's account of their search for the author of a handwritten cookbook that they purchased on eBay. It was a standard composition notebook filled with more than one hundred recipes, sprinkled with a few comments, along with some mathematical figures scribbled in open spots. They discovered that the cookbook author was one Ruth Ginsburg of St. Louis. On September 21, 1913, she married Isadore F. Dunie who, at the time, had been residing in the rich mining town of Leadwood, Missouri. After the birth of two children, the Dunie family moved to Hillsboro, Illinois. Additional research into census, birth, death, cemetery records, and the Missouri History Museum stacks, produced both concrete and tangential information about Ruth. Born around 1893, she emigrated from Lithuania in 1903 with her mother, Jennie, and six siblings, at the time when Eastern European Jewish migration was at its height.
How to Cook …
Authors: Steinberg Ellen F. , Prost Jack H.
Published: May 2017

This chapter describes efforts to accommodate the needs of the thousands of Eastern European Jews who descended in Chicago. Jews already living in the city rallied together and started the Maxwell Street Settlement House. They instituted social clubs, savings clubs, drama clubs, and book clubs. They ran soup kitchens and conducted cooking classes. Chicago public schools also incorporated domestic science classes into their regular curriculum. One effort to adapt curriculum to the needs of observant Jewish children in Chicago in 1904 included purchasing separate sets of crockery, one for milchig (milk) and one for fleischig (meat) dishes, as well as additional kitchen utensils, and procuring kosher meat for use in public school cooking classes. A few years later, public school students produced cookbooks featuring ethnic dishes, including what was called “Jewish” food, under the direction of their home economics teachers.
And When Not to Bother
Authors: Steinberg Ellen F. , Prost Jack H.
Published: May 2017

This chapter first describes the central place of bread in Jewish life. Breads of every shape and variety are made and served for the Sabbath, holidays, and daily consumption: rye breads in Eastern Europe and Russia; rice-flour breads where some of the Sephardi lived; wheat breads elsewhere. In ages past, bread-making was an essential skill passed down from mother to daughter. It has been called both a science and an art. The chapter also presents interviews with people at Kaufman's Bakery and Delicatessen, Pratzel's Bakery, Jake's Deli, Eli's Cheesecake Factory, Ella's Deli and Ice Cream Parlor, the Mustard Museum, and Morgan's Grill and Fish Market. Each one expressed incredible pride in what he or she does. And what they do goes beyond slavishly preserving Jewish food traditions, to innovating taste treats by adapting recipes, and, in many instances, adding new, exciting, items and experiences to their product lines. Not only that, but we discovered they really enjoy making quality foodstuffs for their customers, who, now more than ever before, include almost everyone.
“The Whirl of Life” The Social Structure
Authors: Reed Christopher Robert
Published: May 2017

This chapter explores the intricacies of the first discernible class structure that conformed to normative standards of socioeconomic status in Chicago's history. Black Chicago developed a very small but distinguishable upper class, large segments within the broad middle classes, enormous laboring classes including industrial and service sector workers, and an underclass. The members of the upper class owned and managed businesses, chose housing commensurate with their status, consumed their disposable income with conspicuous delight, engaged in civic activities, and socially acted as a group apart from other segments of their racial cohort to which they traditionally held their primary social allegiance. The middle class focused on occupation, wealth production, educational attainment, cultural interests, and character. The working-class, however, formed the bulk of black Chicago's citizenry.
Migration and Class Struggle
Authors: Ness Immanuel
Published: May 2017

This chapter examines the new neoliberal phase of corporate restructuring, which is producing a new foreign workforce that will have even less power than undocumented workers today. The rise of guest worker programs is an integral component of a dramatic shift in the global division of labor, perpetuated through technological advances, which permits corporations to deskill many professional jobs and reduce the number of workers necessary to perform tasks, and relies increasingly on low-skilled labor. In this hostile environment, the working class and organized labor in the United States and throughout the world must search for a means to counter neoliberal reforms that only benefit corporations at the expense of workers everywhere. But unions must reject business as usual and new forms of labor organizations rooted in nonhierarchical structures must emerge to mobilize workers in the United States and throughout the world.
Political Economy of Migrant Labor in U.S. History
Authors: Ness Immanuel
Published: May 2017

This chapter provides a historical comparative analysis of U.S. migration policy and examines why foreign migrant labor is growing at a rapid pace. In 1993, the Washington Consensus, the World Trade Organization (WTO), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the World Bank—multilateral financial institutions controlled by corporations in North America and Western Europe—established a new policy that would impose harsh penalties on any country that closed its borders to foreign trade, thereby setting the stage for monetary crises and high unemployment. That labor has no control over these organizations more than suggests the dire predicament that workers and unions confront today.
Temporary Labor Migration and U.S. and Foreign-Born Worker Resistance
Authors: Ness Immanuel
Published: May 2017

This chapter examines how skilled and semi-skilled guest worker programs contribute to the displacement of workers throughout the U.S. economy. In the future, as migrant labor programs are institutionalized through the World Trade Organization and are viewed as the latest formula for economic development, it is likely that this new commodification of labor will spread into a growing number of labor market sectors, including manufacturing and transportation. At the same time the chapter reveals that while corporate human resource executives view migrant laborers as docile and complacent, a growing number are resorting to collective action in the form of micro organizing, where small groups organize to address the specific problems they face.
Onward to Eastern Oregon
Authors: Chung Sue Fawn
Published: May 2017

This chapter begins with an overview of Oregon and then focuses upon eastern Oregon, where the Chinese played a major role in mining until the turn of the twentieth century. From the outset the Chinese encountered difficulties in living and working in Oregon. As they tried to mine in Oregon the Chinese miners had to cope with EuroAmerican racism and Native American attacks. Yet the Chinese eventually established communities in the rugged terrain of eastern Oregon where some of their leaders interacted with the local population who were also struggling to survive. Some of the miners and merchants were successful while others struggled. Moreover, Chinese merchants became involved in the formation of Chinese mining companies, and it appears that many were successful.
Conclusion
Authors: Chung Sue Fawn
Published: May 2017

This concluding chapter closes the volume with some comparisons with Idaho (as an area where the Chinese mined but were driven out) and other mining communities in the Chinese diaspora both inside and outside of the United States, and shows some similarities and differences that have occurred. It shows how the lives of the Chinese miners and merchants presented in this study and the many instances of positive interactions between the ethnically diverse members of the small mining communities in which they lived has left an imprint upon the three mining towns described earlier on in this book, as well as helped to shed new light on the history of the Chinese in the American West.
Reading about Writing
Authors: Eller Jonathan R.
Published: May 2017

This chapter explains some of the influences on authorship and reading discoveries behind Ray Bradbury's remarkable rise from raw and undisciplined talent to literary prominence. Once Bradbury realized that he could write with conviction and power from his own hopes, fears, and experiences, he was able to develop his own style instead of imitating the hallmarks of other writers. He discovered new, more mature influences and use them in honing his writing skills. Bradbury came to these discoveries through three interrelated processes: his professional reading in the nature of authorship, his ever-widening range of literary reading, and the constructive criticism offered by other writers. This chapter discusses Bradbury's professional readings between 1938 and 1944, including W. Somerset Maugham's The Summing Up, Dorothea Brande's Becoming a Writer, Lajos Egri's How to Write a Play, and Maren Elwood's Characters Make Your Story; the last three books provided the insights by which Bradbury worked out his own maturing dynamics as a writer.
Early Mentors: Hamilton, Williamson, and Brackett
Authors: Eller Jonathan R.
Published: May 2017

This chapter focuses on three mentors that influenced Ray Bradbury as a writer: Edmond Hamilton, Jack Williamson, and Leigh Brackett. Bradbury was in the early stages of a process of literary education that began roughly from 1934 and lasted until 1953. During the early 1940s, his own maturing reading interests were enriched from time to time by friends like Henry Kuttner, who introduced him to the fiction of writers such as Sherwood Anderson, Eudora Welty, Charles Jackson, William Faulkner, Thorne Smith, and John Collier. This chapter examines how Brackett and Hamilton broadened Bradbury's reading and writing horizons throughout the early 1940s, citing in particular Brackett's influence on Bradbury's science fiction and Hamilton's introduction of Bradbury to authors such as Samuel Johnson, Alexander Pope, and Emily Dickinson. The chapter also considers Bradbury's fascination with Williamson's fantasy and horror tales, including the werewolf novel, Darker than You Think.
The Road to Autumn’s House
Authors: Eller Jonathan R.
Published: May 2017

This chapter examines Ray Bradbury's creativity and publishing record in two niche market genres—weird and the detective fiction—during the war years as his maturing process, both self-taught and mentored, continued. It begins with a discussion of Bradbury's relationship with the editors and publishers of Weird Tales and the frustrations he experienced as he sought to have his weird fiction printed. It then considers Bradbury's venture into detective fiction following the wartime suspension or outright demise of a number of pulp magazines catering to fantasy and science fiction, successfully placing several stories in Detective Tales, New Detective, and Dime Mystery. Under Julius Schwartz's entrepreneurial stewardship, at least thirty-eight Bradbury short stories from this period circulated, but failed to sell.
With the Blessings of His Mentors
Authors: Eller Jonathan R.
Published: May 2017

This chapter focuses on three mentors who gave their blessings to Ray Bradbury in his quest to become a major market writer: Leigh Brackett, her future husband Edmond Hamilton, and Henry Kuttner. Between the fall of 1944 and the summer of 1945, Bradbury earned quiet recognition of a most personal kind—one by one, his mentors told him that he was now a seasoned professional, one who deserved to have his stories published in leading magazines. This chapter considers the ways that Brackett, Hamilton, and Kuttner showed their support for Bradbury as he embarked on being a professional writer. In particular, it discusses Bradbury's completion of the final half of a novella Brackett had under contract for Planet Stories, which turned out into “Lorelei of the Red Mist.” It also examines how Kuttner's opinion of Bradbury's story “From Now On” set off the latter on his own.
Lifetime Partnerships
Authors: Eller Jonathan R.
Published: May 2017

This chapter discusses Ray Bradbury's struggles and inroads in his efforts to sell his work during the year 1947. In April 1947 Hirschel Brickell announced Bradbury's first O. Henry Prize Stories selection (for “The Homecoming”), but over the next five months sales would be few and far between. The fact that Bradbury was still offering to the major market magazines without an agent was also cutting into his potential sales. This chapter examines Bradbury's partnerships with Don Congdon and August Derleth as he sought to generate more income. It also considers Bradbury's change in sales strategy for pulp submissions as well as the emergence of a recurring theme in his newer science fiction stories—the decline of literature and human values in an increasingly rational society—as well as his search for a space-age mythos on the planet Mars. Finally, it recounts the Bradbury–McClure marriage on September 30 and Bradbury's adjustments in his writing routines to the new dynamics of married life in their Venice Beach home.
Bradbury and Modernity
Authors: Eller Jonathan R.
Published: May 2017

This chapter examines how Ray Bradbury's disillusionment with modernity led him to take on Modernist themes such as isolation, alienation, the loss of values, and the decline of traditional sources of wisdom. Bradbury's early work on the Illinois novel coincided with the development of two novel concepts that would not reach print in any form for sixty years: Masks and Where Ignorant Armies Clash By Night. Behind the scenes of his award-winning success with major market magazines, Bradbury's own search for a writing identity in long fiction moved for a time beyond the psychological novel he was writing about his Illinois youth. This chapter considers Bradbury's development of Masks as a second psychological novel project beginning in April 1946 and the ways it differed from the psychological underpinnings of the Illinois novel. It also discusses how Where Ignorant Armies Clash By Night led to Fahrenheit 451 and how one set of its page fragments evolved into a published story as “The Smile” (1952).
Paradise Postponed
Authors: Eller Jonathan R.
Published: May 2017

This chapter examines Ray Bradbury's private failures in his first attempts at publishing novel-length fiction during the late 1940s. It first considers Bradbury's belief in writing as a purely emotional endeavor before discussing his frustrating encounters with the major trade publishing houses over his proposed projects that included an illustrated book based on the vampire “Family” stories; an outline for the Illinois novel, now titled Summer Morning, Summer Night; and a wide-ranging collection of Bradbury tales brought together under the still-unsold title story, The Illustrated Man. It also discusses Bradbury's disappointment stemming from Farrar & Straus's rejection of all three short stories that were part of The Illustrated Man, and how this rejection led Bradbury to lash out at Don Congdon.
Broadening Horizons
Authors: Eller Jonathan R.
Published: May 2017

This chapter examines Ray Bradbury's professional and personal milestones that followed the crisis of 1949 involving The Illustrated Man. The insights that emerged from Bradbury's April 1949 exchange of letters with Don Congdon renewed the writer's confidence in his submissions. Since then, he worked with Congdon ever more closely to have his Green Town stories, science fiction tales, and fantasies get through the offices of the mainstream magazine editors. By June 1949, Congdon had at least eighteen active story files. This chapter discusses memorable moments in Bradbury's life and career in 1949, including his interaction with UCLA's writing group; his lectures on writing; and his meeting with Theodore Sturgeon and Walter Bradbury. It also considers Bradbury's readings during the period and concludes by noting the transformation of his concept of a Martian story collection into a unified work more in line with Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio.
The Miracle Year: Winter and Spring
Authors: Eller Jonathan R.
Published: May 2017

This chapter focuses on Ray Bradbury's auspicious year as a writer during the winter and spring of 1950. Between the fall of 1949 and the fall of 1950, Bradbury submitted major works such as The Martian Chronicles and The Illustrated Man to various publications. His readers were beginning to make little distinction between his science fiction, his fantasy, and his semiautobiographical Green Town stories. Finally, Don Congdon was overcoming major market editorial resistance to Bradbury's stylistic originality and his specialized subjects. This chapter examines Bradbury's remarkable successes during the first weeks of 1950, which saw his science fiction tales “There Will Come Soft Rains” and “To the Future” being bought by Collier's, and “The Illustrated Man” by Esquire. It also discusses other significant developments in Bradbury's career, including a productive publishing visit to New York, his return to California to receive his “Invisible Little Man” award, and make his keynote address at the Bay Area society's annual banquet.
Joe Mugnaini and The Golden Apples of the Sun
Authors: Eller Jonathan R.
Published: May 2017

This chapter examines the collaboration between artist Joseph Mugnaini and Ray Bradbury for the latter's collection of short stories called The Golden Apples of the Sun. Mugnaini was a prolific book illustrator who emphasized fine arts over commercial art. He developed talent in a wide range of media, including oil and watercolor painting. This chapter considers how Mugnaini's art forged a connection between the two men that began in April 1952, when Bradbury saw a Mugnaini painting titled “The Caravan” in a Beverly Hills gallery. Bradbury regarded “The Caravan” as a grand metaphor for the long-deferred novel concept that had emerged from his story “The Black Ferris” under the working title of The Dark Carnival. In August 1952 Bradbury sent Doubleday typescripts or tear sheets for twenty-four stories which, after several revisions, became The Golden Apples of the Sun. This chapter discusses how Bradbury was able to link the Golden Applestories together visually through Mugnaini's cover art and interior illustrations.
Hollywood at Last
Authors: Eller Jonathan R.
Published: May 2017

This chapter examines the new and largely unexpected opportunities that were beginning to open for Ray Bradbury in Hollywood during the 1950s. During the summer and fall of 1952, Bradbury was able to establish his first writing credits in the motion picture industry. The proximity of the studios and the proliferation of affiliated and independent theaters in greater Los Angeles created many opportunities for him. Bradbury was already beginning to forge some lasting connections in Hollywood, thanks in large part to his friendship with cinematographer James Wong Howe and his wife, Sanora Babb. Howe introduced Bradbury to some of the legendary directors he had worked with, including Fritz Lang. This chapter considers some of Bradbury's notable Hollywood projects, including the screen treatments for Universal Studios's It Came From Outer Space, which he complemented with a variation of the story “A Matter of Taste,” and an offer to write a film titled Face of the Deep for Twentieth-Century Fox.
Political Controversy
Authors: Eller Jonathan R.
Published: May 2017

This chapter examines how Ray Bradbury got caught in the bipolar complexities of postwar literary politics. It first considers Bradbury's concern with the foreign and domestic challenges that America faced as the election of 1952 approached, along with his disappointment with liberals over what he perceived as their reluctance to stand up to Joe McCarthy. It then discusses Bradbury's political activities of the period, including his publication of an open letter titled “To the Republican Party” in Daily Variety urging moderate Republicans to maintain a distance from McCarthy, along with two other critical commentaries. It also assesses the impact of Bradbury's letter on his story “The Garbage Man,” as well as his decision to transform “The Fireman” into a full-length novel and expand it into a more fully developed characterization of McCarthyism that would also expose Modernity's more subtle signs of cultural decay.
Seeking the Kingdom of God
Authors: Gellman Erik S. , Roll Jarod
Published: May 2017

This chapter discusses Claude and Joyce Williams's move to Paris, Arkansas and the events that would eventually lead him to cross paths with Owen Whitfield. It details Williams's time as pastor of the local Presbyterian church and his later involvement with socialism (and the Socialist Party of Arkansas), as well as his efforts to combat fascism. Likewise, the chapter examines the more personal dimensions of his life as he goes through ordeal after ordeal in the spirit of social reform and the Christian faith. The chapter finally culminates in Williams's and Whitfield's first encounter, as the former gave a speech at Whitfield's Baptist church in Missouri in late 1936. The encounter, as the chapter shows, would later convince Whitfield to join in on Williams's cause.
The Formative Years
Authors: Short Simine
Published: May 2017

This chapter details the early years of Octave Chanute. In 1838, six-year-old Octave arrived in America with his father Joseph Chanut, who had accepted an offer to teach in one of the three major colleges in antebellum Louisiana. The eldest of three, Octave left the security of his life in Paris, where he lived with his mother, grandmother, and two younger brothers, to move to America with a father he barely knew. A new life, so different and not Parisian at all, began for Joseph and Octave. Joseph home-schooled his son, and his French-speaking colleagues supplied a teaching curriculum according to their expertise, usually communicating in their mother tongue. They not only taught the youngster to read and write, but also to tell the truth and observe the general rules of etiquette. In September 1846, Octave entered the Coudert Lyceum in New York for an education different than what he had received from his father and other professors in Louisiana. After graduating in August 1848 with a degree similar to a high school diploma, Octave selected the Hudson River Railroad as his path into the future.
The University of Experience
Authors: Short Simine
Published: May 2017

This chapter details the start of Octave Chanute's journey toward becoming a civil engineer. Sixteen-year-old Octave read that engineers working for the expanding railroads needed to possess universal knowledge. To become a civil engineer he had much to learn, but he felt sure that intelligent and earnest work would provide his key to success. The remainder of the chapter covers various events in Octave's life including his apprenticeship on the Hudson River Railroad; his marriage to Annie James in 1857; his real estate investments; his move to Peoria, Illinois, in 1854; and his roles in the construction of the Peoria & Oquawka Railroad, Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne & Chicago Railroad, Ohio & Mississippi Railroad; Chicago & Alton Railroad, and the Union Stock Yards in Chicago.
Self Realization
Authors: Short Simine
Published: May 2017

This chapter describes Octave Chanute's search for accomplishments beyond a successful career. While the engineering profession gave him administrative experience, personal contacts, and status, he strived for higher goals and wanted to emulate European civil engineers, who did not just design public works but sought new challenges and possessed the energy to fight for innovation. Envisioning his career, Chanute wanted freedom to realize his personal capabilities. He wished to solve problems, to attract clients who would seek his advice as the authoritative voice on special projects, and to advise in lawsuits as an expert engineering witness. Chanute also sought recognition and respect from his peers. The chapter details Chanute's membership in the American Society of Civil Engineers; his involvement in the evolution of New York City's urban transit system; his interest in aeronautics; and his life as an independent consulting engineer.
From the Locomotive to the Aeromotive
Authors: Short Simine
Published: May 2017

This chapter details Octave Chanute's contributions to the development of aeronautics. Early in his working life, Chanute had become interested in the unconventional topic of manned flight, but in the interest of his career and social standing, he did not discuss it publicly. Now approaching what he considered the end of his professional career, this seemed an opportune time to investigate mechanical flight. In the mid-1890s Octave Chanute developed the most modern and successful glider up to that time. He systematically approached the problems necessary for flight and had moved solutions forward through experimentation, observation, and communication. Chanute had also begun an international conduit, vital for the exchange of ideas and encouragement as the invention of the airplane evolved.
Introduction
Authors: Chakkalakal Tess
Published: May 2017

This introductory chapter defines slave-marriage and how it bears upon legal marriage in nineteenth-century America. Hidden from law and subject to separation, a slave-marriage was considered to be so far outside the purview of legal forms of marriage that it seemed hardly worth mentioning. Yet, as a number of slave testimonies and cases heard after the abolition of slavery suggest, slaves married in spite of the law that stipulated “the slave could not marry because he was legally incapable to consent, because the relation of husband and wife was inconsistent with that of master and slave.” Efforts to legalize slave-marriages following emancipation suggest that their marriages were, in fact, just as valued as legal marriages even though they were performed, originally, without legal sanction.
The Novel and the Theater
Authors: de Beauvoir Simone , Moy Janella D. , Feigl Joe
Published: May 2017

The novel and the theater are two forms of fiction: in both cases, it is a matter of creating an imaginary world, and making characters, whose story constitutes what is called the plot, enter into this world. In order for the impact of the work to surpass that of simple entertainment, the story must also have a signification. Through carefully constructed lies, the book, like the play, strives to communicate a general human truth, but they do not rely on the same devices, and they do not seek the same type of truth....
Existentialist Theater
Authors: de Beauvoir Simone , Crespo Sabine , Gilbert Dennis A.
Published: May 2017

Today I intend to speak to you about French theater such as it has developed and affirmed itself since the war. But, as it is a subject that would be much too long for a short talk, I think it would be best to limit ourselves to a few plays and a few authors....
A Story I Used to Tell Myself
Authors: de Beauvoir Simone , Blancpain Marc , Breining Julien , de Beauvoir Sylvie Le Bon , Zaytzeff Veronique , morrison frederick
Published: May 2017

We know about Simone de Beauvoir’s life, because for the last seven years, she has devoted her efforts and talents to making it known to us. Mémoires d’une jeune fille rangée [Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter], La force de l’âge [The Prime of Life...
Introduction
Authors: Fell Alison S.
Published: May 2017

“I took great pleasure in writing a preface for Violette Leduc’s La bâtarde [The Bastard]. I liked all her books, and this one more than the rest. I read them again, trying to make out just what it was that gave them their value and trying to pass on that understanding” comments Beauvoir in ...
Social Studies
Authors: Beal Amy C.
Published: May 2017

This chapter focuses on the Jazz Composers Guild and the Jazz Composers Guild Orchestra, which directly affected Bley's career. The Jazz Composers Guild was a member-run musicians' cooperative. Composers involved in the guild acknowledged their music as a branch of noncommercial, avant-garde art music in desperate need of subsidy and aimed to find support through foundation grants. Later in 1964, the Jazz Composers Guild produced a series of events featuring music by Bley and by some of the leading avant-garde jazz composers of the time, all of whom were founding members of the guild. Bley then created the Jazz Composers Guild Orchestra because having a band was a requirement of being in the guild.
“Mad at Jazz”
Authors: Beal Amy C.
Published: May 2017

This chapter discusses A Genuine Tong Funeral (1967), an unusual album of both lyricism and power that featured Bley's compositions. Bley titled the work for a scene from a French movie depicting a funeral procession in Hong Kong. In connection with the funereal motif, she described her piece as “a dark opera without words.” According to Bley, the thematic thread running through this “dark opera without words” explored “emotions toward death, from the most irreverent to those of deepest loss.” Moreover, in an introduction to the piece, Bley wrote that she thought of A Genuine Tong Funeral as a dramatic work that should be at least partially staged, including lighting effects and costumes for the musicians—an intent likely influenced by the theatrics of the psychedelic rock movement.
Big Band Theory
Authors: Beal Amy C.
Published: May 2017

This chapter focuses on the Carla Bley Band, a ten-person big band Bley had spent several years establishing. The Carla Bley Band effectively became the instrument for which she composed, the vehicle through which she could let her sonic imagination run free. The establishment of her own large ensemble following the creation of her recording studio, record label, and distribution service was part of a logical chain of events, one indicating a further step in Bley's ongoing quest for total artistic control in the creation, administration, and dissemination of her music. This freedom allowed Bley to focus on an uninhibited exploration of musical ideas in her compositions. Over the next few years the Carla Bley Band toured both Europe and the United States, recorded six albums on Watt between 1977 and 1983, and contributed a soundtrack of preexisting pieces for a Claude Miller film called Mortelle Randonee.
The Lone Arranger
Authors: Beal Amy C.
Published: May 2017

This chapter explores Bley's use of humor in her music. Through her long career, Bley has used satire, parody, irony, slapstick, and pure silliness, often to draw attention to the traditional treatment of certain musical and social conventions. Bley's embrace of hilarity by no means indicates music of diminished or superficial quality. On the contrary, her strategic use of humor adds a layer of information that enhances the meaning of the music as a whole. It also frequently intersects with political or politicized themes, especially in her ongoing compositional and orchestration work for Charlie Haden's Liberation Music Orchestra, which has produced four records with overtly political intentions since 1969.
Dreams So Real
Authors: Beal Amy C.
Published: May 2017

This concluding chapter argues that because of the variety of musical styles cohabitating within Carla Bley's pieces, the label “jazz musician”—which music critics to an extent rightly but far too narrowly apply to her—fails to adequately address the full range of her compositional prowess; rather, it merely points to the instrumental forces for which she frequently prefers to write. Indeed, the musical techniques of Bley's diverse compositional output are varied, their moods can be edgy or serene, and their powers of expression are vast. They are also abstract and narrative, original and full of borrowings. To date she has almost three hundred works registered with BMI and has participated in well over forty recording projects, twenty-seven of which are releases in her own name, placing her among the most accomplished composers, band leaders, and recording artists working in America today.