Vintage Jerzy Kosinski Book Covers

 

Book Review

Being There

by Jerzy Kosinski

     I believe there are two ways to approach the meaning of Jerzy Kosinski’s novella Being There. One is as an allegory about the nature of corporate power and big business in post World War II America. The other is as a personal statement about the author’s authenticity as a human being. Both allegorical interpretations revolve around a postmodernist concept of the individual in American society.

Being There tells the story of a man named Chance who knows absolutely nothing about his past or his family. All he knows is that he was hired by an old man to tend the garden of a mansion. Other than his job he does nothing but watch television. The idea of tending his garden is lifted directly from Voltaire; it was in Candide that he said, and I paraphrase, that a person can never be happy if they concern themselves with the larger affairs of the world so therefore tending one’s own garden is the only way to avoid misery. Voltaire, a man who really did concern himself with the affairs of the world, was making a snarky commentary on how ignorance is bliss; happiness is for stupid people. Chance’s only objective in life is to tend his own garden. Kosinski’s view on this is not favorable to Chance since he says, and again I paraphrase, that the difference between plants and humans is that humans have the capacity for self-reflection. By this standard of judgment, Chance is more like a plant than a human because he does no self-reflection.

Chance’s only pastime, and only source of intellectual input, is watching TV. It is telling that the author never says what kinds of programs Chance watches because it actually doesn’t matter. Chance sits in the blue glow of the cathode rays like a zombie, never thinking about what he watches or whether he can relate to any of it. He gains some superficial insights into how to behave in public, but that is all. He watches television because it prevents him from thinking.

Everything changes when Chance is forced out of his home because the old man dies. He encounters a woman named EE Rand who puts him up in her home. It is there that he meets her elderly, dying husband. The two of them misunderstand what his name is, mistaking Chance the Gardener as Chauncey Gardiner. The change in names represents a turning point in Chance’s life, although the narrative refers to him as Chance throughout the whole book and only being called “Chauncey Gardiner” in the dialogue. This is significant because he accomplishes nothing through hard work. Chance is in the right place at the right time, makes the right connections, and ends up meeting the American president, appearing on TV, and becoming the CEO of a powerful corporation. He embodies the American dream, only he doesn’t earn it through achievement because he simply makes connections with the right people. The idea of the American Dream is turned upside down because the people doing the hardest work are the domestic servants in the Rand home and they obviously aren’t getting rich.

The catch is that Chance has nothing to talk about. He makes simple statements about gardening that people think of as profound proverbs and disseminations of wisdom. Everybody in the book seems to be more shallow and ignorant than he is, yet that is how he gets ahead – by doing doing nothing, making almost no effort, and superficially imitating the behavior he sees on TV. In the land of the blind, a one-eyed man is king.

The most common interpretation I hear of Being There is that it shows how television, the cult of celebrity, and the power of politics and big business are all hollow, making a huge impression on a society full of simpletons who are too dumb to tell the difference between shadow and substance like 20^th century inhabitants of Socrates’ cave. Chance impresses everyone he meets by either talking about gardening or not saying anything at all. He is an empty template for people to project themselves into. When he goes on TV and talks about gardening, people interpret his message as one of optimism about the economy even though he knows nothing about economics. When a Soviet diplomat speaks to him in Russian, he says nothing and so the diplomat assumes Chance is fluent in Russian. EE’s infatuation with Chance is based on her thinking he is everything she wants him to be. He impresses the president and the board of directors for the same reasons. Even the KGB thinks he is a master spy because they can’t dig up any information on him. The message is clearly that we live in a world of fools who think they know everything when it is obvious that they know nothing.

My own interpretation, and the one I think is more dark and poignant, is that Kosinski wrote this book to make a statement about how he saw himself. The main reason for this is that the characters and the events in the story are all drawn directly from his own life. If Chance and Kosinski are the same, then making Chance a blank slate with an unknown childhood makes sense. Kosinski’s and the controversy surrounding his supposedly autobiographical portrayal in his first novel The Painted Bird make it look like he was a man who wanted to forget his past and move on. From there, Chance meets an older woman, EE Rand, with a husband twice her age, paralleling Kosinski’s relationship with his first wife, the heiress Mary Haywood Weir who was also twice his age. In the story, Chance makes an appearance on a television talk show; Kosinski made frequent appearances on TV with Johnny Carson and David Letterman. Then when a literary agent at a party suggests Chance write a book, Chance says he doesn’t know how to write. The agent tells him not to worry because the publishers have teams of editors and ghost writers to do most of the work for him. Kosinski, a Polish Jew who immigrated to America after World War II, always felt like he struggled to express his thoughts in English. Critics in his lifetime accused him of having editors and ghost writers do his writing for him. This passage might be a confession that there is some truth to the accusation. Finally, there are two separate encounters where people try to seduce Chance, but he tells them he prefers to watch while they masturbate rather than having sex with them. Kosinski was known to be a voyeur who spent a lot of time frequenting sex clubs for the purpose of watching other people engage in sex play of all varieties. If the parallels between Chance and Kosinski are legitimate, then Being There can be read as a confession that the author feels he was living a fake life, being an empty man without any substance or authenticity.

This is where the novella reveals itself as a full-on expression of postmodernism. The irony of Chance in “being there” is that he has the essence of nothingness.He is a blank slate for people to inscribe with their own ideas. “Being there” means “not being there”; he is little more than a surface interacting in situations where everyone is nothing but a surface. There is no substance to anything anyone does in the story. It is a society of shallow people who are little more than plants in a garden who never do any kind of self-reflection. This is the postmodernist concept of being permeated with nothingness. And Chance lives in a world where authenticity is irrelevant.

Unfortunately, Being There is not postmodern on the scale of Gravity’s Rainbow or anything by Don DeLillo. You could certainly find points of intersection but Kosinski didn’t put enough into this book to make it what it could have been. Kosinski starts off with big ideas but they don’t get drawn out to their full potential. He doesn’t even reach half their potential. The book finishes with Chance watching people masturbate before he gets hired to run the corporation after the death of Mr. Rand. The book is slim enough as it is, but to have it climax (pun partially intended) with a gratuitous sex scene that plays itself out twice just makes it look like Kosinski ran out of ideas pretty quickly. I’ve played with the idea that the vapidity of this novella is part of the point Kosinski wanted to make, but its hard to tell where to draw the line between making a point like that and not putting enough effort into writing the book out to its fullest extent. Making the claim that the book is vapid because it is about vapid people is more like an excuse than a self-referential framing technique.

Being There simply could have been better. If you know anything about Jerzy Kosinski, then you know he had a complex mind that was fraught with troubles and a painful concept of himself (he committed suicide in mid-life). While I would argue that the standard interpretation of this book as being a commentary on the media and its effects on society is legitimate, I would also argue that the book strikes a deeper chord when read as an autobiographical confession that the author was not satisified with himself at the time of writing. This book is worthy of being read once, but I am not convinced it will be remembered as a great work of its time. But who knows? It might serve as an accessible introduction to postmodernism for future generations.

 

S£X LIES & JERZY KOSINSKI

BBC documentary film about American author Jerzy Kosinski

 

THE RISE AND FALL OF JERZY KOSINSKI

Fifty years ago Jerzy Kosinski stepped off a plane at Idlewild Airport. The 24-year-old from Poland arrived in New York with little money and few contacts – two of his early jobs were parking lot attendant and movie theatre projectionist – but he swiftly rose to a pinnacle. One from which he would precipitously fall.

Fall indeed. Many today would ask: Who is Jerzy Kosinski?

Read the full article by Phillip Routh on Arts & Opinion here

 

Sci-Fi Space Opera Paperback by an Underrated Female Author

Secrets Of the Lost Age

by Andre Norton

Ace Books, 1959, reprint

mass market paperback

The Constellation of the Wolf was an area of the galaxy few spacemen wanted to visit for its sparse worlds were home only to the outcasts of the civilized worlds. But now it had been learned that there was one among its runaway refugees who was more than just a misfit - one who was a definite danger to all humanity. 

The hunt was on for the desperate young man called Joktar - for if he was what they said he was, he could contaminate the universe!

Only Joktar didn't believe it - and he rallied a world of courageous outlaws to defend him.

(copied from the back cover)

Available for purchase on Ebay here

 

Forensic Psychology & True Crime Book Signed by Author

Let Me Take You Down: 

Inside the Mind of Mark David Chapman,

the Man Who Killed John Lennon

by Jack Jones

Villard Books, 1992, 1st edition/2nd printing

hardcover with dust jacket

SIGNED BY AUTHOR ON TITLE PAGE

In Let Me Take You Down, Jack Jones Penetrates the borderline world of dangerous fantasy, in which Mark David Chapman stalked and killed Lennon:

Mark David Chapman rose early on the morning of December 8 to make final preparations... Chapman had neatley arranged and left behind a curious assortment of personal items on top of the hotel dresser. In an orderly semicircle, he had laid out his passport, an eight track tape of the music of Todd Rundgren, his little Bible, open to the The Gospel According to John (Lennon). He left a letter from a former YMCA supervisor at Fort Chaffee, Arkansas, where five years earlier, he had worked with refugees from the Vietnam War. Beside the letter were two photographs of himself surrounded by laughing Vietnamese children. At the center of the arrangement of personal effects, he had placed the small Wizard of Oz poster of Dorothy and the Cowardly Lion.

"I woke up knowing, somehow, that when I left that room, that was the last time I would see the room again," Chapman recalled. "I truly felt it in my bones. I don't know how. I had never seen John Lennon up to that point. I only knew that he was in the Dakota. But I somehow knew that this was it, this was the day. So I laid out on the dresser at the hotel room...just a tableau of everything that was important in my life. So it would say, 'Look, this is me. Probably, this is the real me. This is my past and I am going, gone to another place.'

"I practiced what it was going to look like when police officers came into the room. It was like I was going through a door and I knew I was going to go through a door, the poet's door, William Blake's door, Jim Morrison's door...I was leaving what I was, going into a future of uncertainty."

"Jack Jones has written a beautiful book, rare in its attention to the social context, giving rise to stalkers and assassins of celebrities...celebrity worship is ambivalent - admiration shares the altar with envy. When the worshipped celebrity disappoints, a 'nobody' can become a 'somebody' by killing the pop culture idol...Let Me Take You Down is both fascinating and brilliant."

(copied from the back cover)

Available for purchase on Ebay here

 

Vintage Sci-Fi Paperback with Surrealistic Cover Art

Farmer In the Sky

by Robert A. Heinlein

Mayflower Books, 1968, 2nd Dell printing

mass market paperback

I had gotten past the road and maybe a quarter of a mile when it hit.

It knocked me flat on my face, the heaviest shake I had ever felt in my life. I lay down for a long moment, digging into the rock with my fingernails and trying to get it to hold still.

The seasick roll kept up and kept up and kept up and with it the noise - a deep bass rumble, deeper than thunder and more terrifying. 

The great adventure on Ganymede, with its prospect of hope for the future, had now become a tragedy. In one great, thunderous roar, nearly half the population had been wiped out. All of their spent knowledge and skills of the past had not prevented such a disaster. But could they go back to Earth - where the food supply was rationed, where homes were windowless cells occupied by many families? Or should they stay on Ganymede and work to make the planet safe for the generations to follow?

(copied from the back cover)

Available for purchase on Ebay here

 

Vintage Children's Books with Surreal Illustrations

The Walt Disney Story of Our Friend the Atom

by Heinz Haber

Simon and Schuster, 1956

oversized hardcover with dust jacket,

illustrated front board, illustrated end papers, & color

illustrations by the Walt Disney Studio

This is the fascinating story of atomic theory. A wealth of color pictures and explanatory diagrams accompanies the clear,  concise account, which traces the history of atomic research, and of the scientists who contributed the many discoveries. The author tells of Democritus, the Greek philosopher who first put forward the idea that atoms exist; of Galileo, Gassendi, Newton, and Boyle, the discoverer of elements; of Lavoisier, the champion of exact measurement; of John Dalton, who composed the atomic theory of chemistry; and of Avogadro, who shrewdly worked out proportions within molecules. Then follow the recent - and history making - modern achievements: the discovery of electrons; Roentgen's X-rays; Becquerel's studies of radioactive uranium; the Curies' work with polonium and radium; Rutherford's discovery of the core of the atom; and the formulation of Einstein's profound E=MC2. In addition, Haber explains the work of Bohr, Geiger, Fermi, Hahn, and others in clarifying the architecture of the atom, splitting its nucleus, and interpreting its radiation. The conclusion explains how man can have the benefits of enormous power, of better health, of more food, and even the blessings of peace if the atom is properly used. Hundred of ingenious pictures and diagrams in color simplify the subject.

(copied from the front inner dust jacket flap)

Available for purchase on Ebay here

 

Visually Appealing Vintage Children's Book

The Picture Story of Hawaii

by Hester O'Neill

illustrated by Ursula Koerig

David McKay Company Inc., 1950

Imagine a place where you can be riding a speeding surfboard in your bathing suit at noon and by four o'clock that same afternoon find yourself in warm skiing clothes, winging your way down a snow-crested volcanic peak. This is Hawaii, a gay and exciting land, where the most modern American customs and those of old Polynesia go comfortably hand in hand. 

Little girls still dance the hula, but high school boys play the latest popular song from the mainland on their harmonicas. The traditional lei made be made of shark's teeth - or cellophane! Outrigger canoes dot the harbors, but huge transport planes fly overhead on scheduled trips between the Islands. Natives still wade along the shallow beaches and spear fish, but they fasten acetylene torches to their shoulders to light the midnight waters. 

This book describes an ancient luau and the modern Pineapple Festival on New Year's day. There is a visit to a grass hut and a tour through a modern sugar mill. The legend of Madame Pele is included - and the history of the University of Hawaii. Between the covers of this book are the Islands which one day may become the Forty-ninth state of the Union. 

(copied from the front inner dust jacket flap)

Available for purchase on Ebay here

 

Vintage Popular Science Book with Good Cover Art

How to Make Your Own Alcohol Fuels - 2nd Edition

by Larry W. Carley

Tab Books Inc., 1981, 2nd edition/1st printing

Available for purchase on Ebay Here

 

Vintage Book Covers

The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini

 

Book Review

Autobiography

by Benvenuto Cellini

     Benvenuto Cellini was a man of mercurial temper. Get on his wrong side and you should expect to be humiliated or killed in any way he saw fit. He was also a passionate artist, one of the best goldsmiths and sculptors of his time. Cellini’s Autobiography gives his side of his life story and early on in the book, the reader is alerted that Cellini’s version may be a twisted portrayal of the truth.

Benvenuto Cellini was born in Florence, Italy during the time of the Medicis. During his childhood, he saw a mythical salamander in his family’s hearth fire, a sign that the narrator would sometimes slip into a world of exaggeration or fantasy. He was a bit younger than Michelangelo, growing up in that master’s shadow, occasionally seeking his approval, and later in life trying to surpass his accomplishments. Cellini’s early adulthood was rowdy; he solved disputes with either fistfights or knives. Although his family was humble, he had connections in high places and as long as he continued to make great art, whatever pope, king, or duke that paid his commission would see to it that he got away with any crime he committed which often was murder.

While one facet of his life story portrayed his unapologetic indulgence in violence and his hair-trigger temper that led him into bickering matches with his employers, another facet is examined in his flair for creation. Whether working with gold, silver, wax, wood, or bronze, Cellini always strove to be the best at what he did and often he succeeded. His talent, along with his narcissism and egomania rubbed a lot of people the wrong the way. Out of petty jealousy, envy, or ignorance, there were a lot of people who tried to sabotage his endeavors in life. Some of them were associates of the powerful elite in the Catholic church, others were wives or advisers of the aristocracy, and still others were the mediocre artists, competitors, and laborers who wanted as much renown and repute as Cellini. In his dealings with these enemies, Cellini always insisted on being fair and honest; most often this worked out in his favor.

As the story progresses into Cellini’s middle age, he tells less stories about fighting and indulges more in describing his artistic techniques. A good portion of the second half of the book is dedicated to describing the process of making molds for casting bronze statues with some odd little details along the way. He allowed a young woman to sleep inside a hollow bronze bust he had perched on the roof of his house and the neighbors thought they saw a ghost in there whenever she stirred in her sleep. Is this anecdote truth or fantasy? It is probably better for the reader not to care one way or the other.

So what can be made of Benvenuto Cellini’s Autobiography? It’s like a less raunchy version of Don Juan. Cellini’s balls-out willingness to tell the reader whatever it is he thinks while damning the consequences predates the transgressive writings of Henry Miller by about 500 years. All this is done with a personal candor that is modern in its sensibilities, while upholding the robust passion for living and knowledge that characterized the Renaissance. But not all of it is exciting; Cellini has a tendency to whine and squabble with the men he works for, usually over time spent working or money. The more interesting side of this is how the irresponsible nobility often try to cheat him out of what they promise to pay him. And if you want to dislike Cellini, then reasons won’t be hard to find. What is interesting is that, even as unappealing as he can be, his enthusiasm for telling his own story makes this a fascinating read. It succeeds even though it shouldn’t. And if there is any big complaint to be made, it is that while Cellini leaves out no details, there isn’t much room for interpretation. When so little is left to the imagination, placing the deeper layers of thinking on the surface, the reader doesn’t have to work too hard to think about what it all means. For those with a philosophical mindset, there isn’t a lot to theorize about in these pages.

Benvenuto Cellini’s Autobiography is obviously a blend of fact and fiction. Some readers may want to sort out what parts are what, but taking that approach doesn’t do the text justice. It’s best to just dive in and read it as it is, getting the most out of it that you can. 

 

Vintage Classic Science Fiction Books with Interesting Cover Art

The Foundation Trilogy

by Isaac Asimov

Mass Market Paperbacks Box Set w/Slip Case

Avon Books, 1964/1966, 22nd/23rd/24th printings

Available for purchase on Ebay here

 

Vintage Art Books

African Masterpieces from Munich:

The Staatliches Museum fur Volkerkunde

by Maria Kecskesi

The Center for African Arts, 1987

Available for purchase on Ebay here

 

Vintage Paperbacks with Interesting Cover Art

Equus

by Peter Shaeffer

Bard Books, 1975, 1st Bard edition/7th printing

GODS

of TERROR

in the 

MIND'S EYE

EQUUS is an electrifying journey into the mind of a 17-year-old stableboy who has plunged a steel spike into the eyes of six horses. As a psychiatrist explores the young boy's tortured psyche, the play becomes a shattering confrontation between the passionate spirit of the life force itself, and the distortions forced on the spirit by "civilized" society. 

(copied from the back cover)

Available for purchase on Ebay here

 

43 Million Americans Don't Know How to Read

Don't Become a Statistic

Buy Our Vintage Books

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Vintage 1st Editions with Interesting Cover Art

The Place of Dead Roads

by William S. Burroughs

Holt Rinehart and Winston, 1st edition/1st printing, 1983

hardcover with dust jacket

Available for purchase on Ebay here

 

Videos About Books

True Crime, Sociopathy, and Popular Culture

by Thomas B

The second video in a series about crime, criminal psychology and the on-fire genre of true crime.

Thomas B's Youtube channel can be found here

 

Vintage Paperbacks with Psychedelic Covers

The Counterfeiters 

by Andre Gide

Vintage Books/Random House reprint, 1973

mass market paperback

The Counterfeiters, published in 1926 when Gide was fifty-seven, shocked many by its honest treatment of homosexuality and the collapse of morality in middle-class France. Its three themes - the problem of morals, the problem of the literary artist, and the problem of society - are strikingly illuminated as the protagonist, a young artist, pursues a search for knowledge in the relationships of his own adolescent relatives. 

Included in this edition is Gide's journal of The Counterfeiters, the day book he kept during the writing of the book, which provides a unique view into the mind of a great novelist at work.

(copied from the back cover)

Available for purchase on Ebay here

 

Vintage Book Review

Rads:

The 1970 Bombing Of the Army Math Research Center

At the University of Wisconsin and Its Aftermath

by Tom Bates

     How did the 1960s end? Conventional perceptions point to the Manson Family murders and the stabbing of a concert-goer by a Hells Angel at the Altamont Speedway during a free Rolling Stones concert. The “end of the 60s” is actually more nuanced and complex than conventional perception will allow. For one thing, there were other events and disasters that contributed just as much to the darkening of that era’s optimistic mood. Take, for example, the bombing of the Army Math Research Center on the University of Wisconsin’s campus in Madison. Rads by Tom Bates gives a thorough and accessible account of what happened there in the summer of 1970, reminding us further that history is more complicated than the mainstream narratives, mostly fueled by the irresponsibility of the media and the entertainment industry.

The central, and most prominent figure in Rads is Karl Armstrong, a college dropout and hippy who joined the anti-war movement in 1968. He had come from a rough, working class background but did well enough in high school to make it to college. He wasn’t much of a student. With low grades and lack of enthusiasm, he dropped out before re-matriculating and dropping out two times subsequently. During his off-and-on college studies, he worked at a string of blue collar jobs and quit all of them, his own personal trend that continued up until the time of his arrest. Karl Armstrong actually loved the college life, or, at least, he loved everything about college but going to classes and doing homework. He made a lot of friends on campus and spent a lot of time hanging out there, even when he wasn’t enrolled. He also got involved in the drug scene and the political demonstrations put on by the New Left which was thriving in Wisconsin just as much as it was in San Francisco and New York City.

That is when things began to get dark. Karl Armstrong attended the Democratic National Convention in Chicago where the police began beating non-violent demonstrators with billy clubs and tear gassing them. In fact, two of them seized Karl and threw him in the river. After that, the peace movement began to turn violent. At first, Karl was dismissive of terrorist groups like the Weather Underground, but then after police brutality continued to be a problem at demonstrations held on the University of Wisconsin campus, Karl gave in and embraced terrorist tactics to end the war too.

Of other importance in this story is Karl’s younger brother Dwight who idolized him and followed him into one insane scheme after another. With assistance from various people, the two brothers set out on a bombing and arson campaign. Most of their attacks were miserable failures, but they did catch the public’s attention and Karl maintained clandestine relationships with two underground newspapers in Madison. They became known as the New Year’s Gang even though Karl preferred to be called by the gimmicky and pretentious title of Vanguard Of the Revolution. They became heroic figures in the activist community even though no one actually knew who they were.

While the police became more violent towards the demonstrators and the war in Vietnam seemed like it would never end, Karl and Dwight decided to do something more drastic. With the help of two other activists, they made a car bomb out of ammonium nitrate fertilizer and blew off the side of a building on campus, a building that housed the office of the Army Math Research Center which was a think tank that calculated probabilities to maximize America’s kill-count in Vietnam. A deeply moral question hangs over the entirety of this story: Is the bombing committed by the New Year’s Gang, a crime that mistakenly killed one innocent man, such a terrible crime in light of the hundreds of thousands of people killed by US troops in Vietnam whose only crime was being born citizens of that small Asian nation? Who are the real criminals here?

After that, the story follows the escape of the New Year’s Gang, their trials, and the effect the bombing had on the activist movement at the time.

One of the great things about this book is how well Karl Armstrong and his associates are brought to life. The author follows them around and describes them so they seem like people you can get to know. Karl was such a laid-back and peaceful person that he appeared to be incapable of ever blowing something up. In fact, he comes off as such a loser that it is hard to believe he ever pulled the bombing off. Being the loser that he was, he was also a friendly, kind-hearted young man that people felt comfortable to be with. The contrast between his persona and his crimes is starkly drawn and a little bit troubling. Just think of the calmest and nicest person you know and then picture them carrying out acts of terrorism.

Another thing that is great about this book is the way it is is written. It reads like a novel, especially in the way it describes the settings and the characters, and also in the way it switches between depictions of Karl, his family, the political scene, the university administrators, and law enforcement. It is one of those book where you feel like you are there watching things as they happen. In that regard, Rads is also an excellent depiction of a particular time and place. Bates does a great job of capturing the feel of the Midwest city of Madison and the feeling of its college town life with the bars, the frat houses, the student ghettos, the hangouts, and the drug scene. So much has been said about the hippies and the anti-war movement in the more populated urban areas of the country that a lot of people don’t realize it was happening all over, even in the flyover states.

Rads by Tom Bates is a great book in the way it depicts its time and place. It gives a lesser-known angle on the era of the late 1960s, further helping the reader to understand what happened then and why. It also makes you wonder if the 1960s really did end. More likely, they transformed as the radicals of the time entered the work force and brought new values to the American public. Psychedelic music turned into progressive rock, anarchist politics were turned upside down and embraced with anger in the Punk movement, and young people continued to do drugs. But after the bombing at the University of Wisconsin, political demonstrations returned to non-violence and activists became more confrontational as educators, lawyers, journalists, and in all kinds of other ways too. Rads will not only enhance your understanding of the 1960s, it will also enhance your understanding of the vast and complicated fabric of American society.

 

Vintage Paperbacks with Interesting Covers

In Cold Blood

by Truman Capote

Signet Books/New American Library

movie tie-in edition, 14th printing, 1968

mass market paperback

The spectacular bestseller about the brutal slaying of the Clutter family of Holcomb, Kansas - the police investigation, the capture, the trial, and the execution of the two young murderers, Richard Hickock and Perry Smith. "Capote has thrust the act of violence before the reader as if it were happening before his very eyes." - Time IN COLD BLOOD: now a major motion picture written for the screen and directed by Richard Brooks. A Colombia picture in Panavision.

(copied from back cover)

Available for purchase here on Ebay

 

Rare Vintage Anthropology & Ethnography

The Hill Tribes of Northern Thailand

(A Socio-Ethnographical Report)

by Oliver Gordon Young

Communications Media Division/Thai-American Audiovisual Services

oversize paperback

1961

Available for Purchase on Ebay here

 

Book Review

A Distant Mirror:

The Calamitous 14th Century

by Barbara W. Tuchman

     Barbara Tuchman made a name for herself by writing popular history, that is, she wrote works of historical non-fiction that were meant to be accessible to your average reader and not to a specialist. Things have certainly changed from the time she was writing to the present. Her historical book about the Middle Ages, A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14^th Century, might be a bit much for today’s average reader at almost 600 pages. With the shortening attention spans and aversion to any kind of intellectualism that is all-pervasive in the age of social media, this one might be appealing to the few scholars left around today who still care about things like history. That is too bad because Barbara Tuchman put a lot of effort into this volume.

Rather than writing a bird’s eye view of a past era, Tuchman puts the reader on the ground as if the past is happening all around the audience. It involves real historical figures that come across as real people rather than abstractions defined solely by their actions. The castles, villages, and landscapes are precisely described too, at least in the beginning. France and England serve as the epicenter of the narrative, while the action, mostly warfare, spills out into the surrounding kingdoms. The central actor in all this is Enguerrand VII de Coucy, uniquely qualified for this role because he served as a noble under two French kings and married an English princess who was also partially of Italian ancestry. That last point is important because the Medieval age saw the 100 Years War which was fought between France and England. Few people these days fully understand how deeply connected these two countries have been throughout history. I’m sure even fewer people know that French was once the dominant language of England.

Tuchman does well at explaining the labyrinthine complex of alliances, intermarriages, land possessions, and rivalries that characterized the political climate of this time. In addition to this mess of battle and peacekeeping diplomacy, there was also a curious conflict going on in the Catholic church. White popes and anti-popes fought with each other over who should rightfully lead the Christian church, a conflict between the papacies in Avignon and Rome raged on as well. Theology actually fell by the wayside at times as the inner politics of the Catholic church and economic greed took precedence over religion. Meanwhile, heretical sects filled the power vacuum and the church started the Inquisition to torture and punish those who strayed away.

The spiritual shortcoming of the time is important in this book because Tuchman uses the conflict between the secular and the sacred as a theoretical framework for analyzing the 14^th century. While the high-minded ideals of Aquinas and Augustine were circulating among the intelligentsia, average citizens were paying less and less attention to the church. The knight’s code of chivalry and courtly love were also meant to be standards for righteous conduct but ended up being justifications for debauchery instead. As the Crusades began to go out of style, the orders of knights being sent to the so-called Holy Lands began resembling the outlaw bikers of our own day, more prone to getting drunk and committing crimes than performing acts of heroism. Tuchman exemplifies how the 14^th century was a time of spiritual crisis when religious people failed to follow the impossibly high standards the moralists and philosophers of their day laid out for them. Does this sound a bit like America in the past few decades? The “distant mirror” part of the title is applicable for more reason than one.

Aside from all this, there were other nasty things happening too. Witch hunts, peasant uprisings, pogroms against the Jews, enforced poverty through taxation, and the Black Plague were just some of what we learn about here. Tuchman makes some interesting comments about the military too. One is that wars were mostly fought for economic reasons, kind of like they are now, and a historical analysis of Medieval warfare is a subject that is underrepresented in academia or so she believes. Another is that military technology at that time advanced far in excess of ethical and moral progress, a permanent gap and deficit in the human psyche that could end up being our downfall in the end. In any case, we aren’t much different now since our military capacity to kill masses of people with minimal effort has outpaced our need to understand the value of preserving human life and our planet a million-fold.

Tuchman’s prose is deliberate and detailed, something that is both a blessing and a curse. While most of the book explains the doings of Enguerrand VII, mostly in relation to politics, there is also a lot of writing about warfare, most of which can be stiff, labored, and quite dull. She seems to be more interested in other subject matters and this shows in her approach. The most fascinating parts of the book are those about the side issues mentioned previously. Some of her occasional sidetracks are more interesting than the central themes. The politics of the Catholic church and the nobility are sometimes interesting, sometimes not.

A Distant Mirror will probably appeal more to readers who came of age in the 20^th century. Although a lot of it is interesting, it is long and moves at a slow pace that only patient readers will comprehend, and patient people with healthy attention spans are a dying breed. That is unfortunate because Barbara Tuchman shows how the seeds of modernity and our own times were sown. The roots of democracy, Marxism, capitalism, modern literacy and education, science, technology, and concepts of individual liberty are all here. The distant mirror of the title is there to reflect how human nature hasn’t changed in 700 years even though the outward form of society has. But a phenomenologist might question whether those roots were really there in the Middle Ages since they could be projections of the author’s mind. I propose that you put your phone away for a very long time and study what expert historians and philosophers have to say on the matter. Do yourself a favor. You’ve got nothing to lose.

Tuchman, Barbara W. A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14^th Century. Alfred A. Knopf, New York: 1978. 

 

Vintage Paperbacks with Interesting Covers

Alfred Hitchcock's Skull Session

edited by Alfred Hitchcock

Dell mass market paperback

1st printing, 1968

DEATH

CAN BE

BEAUTIFUL

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Donald E. Westlake - Henry Slesar

Helen Nielson - Robert Bloch

August Derleth - Charles Einstein

Donald Honig - Paul Eiden

C.B. Gifford - Talmadge Powell

Robert Alan Blair - Michael Brett

Jack Webb - Fletcher Flora

All personally selected by the Master

ALFRED HITCHCOCK

(text copied from back of book)

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