tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-49091667340003233232024-03-13T16:35:41.108-07:00THE CHAGALL POSITIONEdmond Caldwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02651618912907453630noreply@blogger.comBlogger140125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4909166734000323323.post-6581251999439584722015-06-14T16:24:00.002-07:002015-06-14T16:47:58.229-07:00Schadenfreude -- When Gentrifiers Get Gentrified<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Last week Eve Bridburg, director of the <a href="https://www.grubstreet.org/">Grub Street </a>writing
center, posted the following letter on the organization’s private listserv to
warn instructors and other associates of a possible impending move from their
downtown Boston location. </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The reason? Bridburg’s missive coyly skirts the key word, but
“the cost of real estate has risen dramatically since 2012” makes it plain: Gentrification!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: 10.0pt;">Eve Bridburg eve@grubstreet.org [groupofgrubsown]
<groupofgrubsown yahoogroups.com=""> <o:p></o:p></groupofgrubsown></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: 10.0pt;">7:06 PM (0 minutes ago)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: 10.0pt;">Dearest Instructors:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: 10.0pt;">Many of you have probably heard the news that our building
is changing hands. We don’t know yet what the new owner's plans are for the
building or whether we’ll be able to negotiate staying here at 162 Boylston
beyond December 2016. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: 10.0pt;">We would like to stay in downtown Boston if possible and
are working with a realtor to explore new rental options in case a move becomes
necessary. The cost of real estate has risen dramatically since 2012 so staying
in our neighborhood might mean occupying less space and teaching again in some
satellite locations in addition to teaching in Boston. We are also exploring
city-based, collaborative projects in Boston and Cambridge and beyond. Our main
goal is affordable, long-term, accessible space. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: 10.0pt;">If you have any ideas or leads you want to share with me,
please do. We are truly open to all options. Though it’s daunting to face the
possibility of a move so quickly on the heels of our last move, it’s also
exciting to imagine the possibilities. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: 10.0pt;">I will keep you posted as things progress. Please feel
free to be in touch with questions. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: 10.0pt;">Warm wishes, <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: 10.0pt;">Eve<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: 10.0pt;">Eve Bridburg <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: 10.0pt;">Founder and Executive Director <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: 10.0pt;">GrubStreet, Inc<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<o:p> </o:p><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">For those of us who viewed Grub Street’s single-minded push
to establish a “l<a href="https://digboston.com/a-writer-used-to-live-here/">iterary cultural district</a>” in downtown Boston with a <a href="http://thechagallposition.blogspot.com/search/label/Literary%20Cultural%20District">critical eye</a>,
it’s possible to take a somewhat dismal pleasure in this development. The
founding of cultural districts is a gentrifying move <i>par excellence</i>, their primary purpose being commercial rather cultural. But what else could we have
expected from an organization that annually <a href="https://www.grubstreet.org/muse/">flogs</a> the virtues of subordinating
“the muse” to “the marketplace”?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The single most pressing (and depressing) problem for
writers in the Greater Boston area is being able to afford living in the
Greater Boston area. Bridburg and Grub Street have had nothing constructive to
say about this beyond the hand-waving implication that pandering to real estate
developers, the hospitality industry, and cultural tourists (<a href="http://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/books/2013/10/26/author-slept-here-boston-literary-community-pushes-for-literary-cultural-district/AYGRJvKI44OXzQIQU8CPjP/story.html">“who spend $62 more per day than their philistine counterparts”</a>!) might somehow raise local writers’ “profiles,” because, um, uh, because “branding.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The real beneficiary of this project, however, is a sector of the city’s
cultural bureaucracy, connected on the one hand to local politicians and the mayor’s office and on the other to corporate and foundation dollars, all of which was nicely folded into Bridburg’s revealing <a href="http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/digital/retailing/article/61917-boston-creating-a-literary-cultural-district-spotlight-on-new-england-2014.html">statement</a> to <i>Publisher's Weekly</i> in April 2014: “we’re thinking
of branding the work that everybody is doing.” See, local writers, you’re
working for “the brand,” which in turn benefits the brand holders – the “we” of
Bridburg’s statement. They’re raising cultural capital off your (mostly unpaid)
labor, and then parlaying that into enhanced status and access to power (the
Walsh administration’s big “creative economy”/"cultural plan" <a href="https://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/2015/04/08/mayor-walsh-unveils-details-boston-cultural-planning-initiative/hbBTNCzIP8vkWwxiTgFzTI/story.html">initiatives</a>), and access to more real
dollars from non-profits, foundations, and corporations among the FIRE (finance,
insurance, & real estate) sector of the economy that actually controls the
city government.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In perfectly cynical obeisance to these powers, Grub Street
didn’t peep a word about gentrification until <i>after</i> the literary district initiative had sailed through its <a href="http://thechagallposition.blogspot.com/2014/05/three-strikes-against-literary-cultural.html">faux-public</a> approval process in August 2014.
Then and only then was the issue of gentrification briefly <a href="http://bostinno.streetwise.co/2014/08/19/mcc-votes-unanimously-in-favor-of-a-boston-literary-cultural-district/">raised</a> by Bridburg in an online article celebrating the district, and moreover only in the mode of NIMBY self-pity. </span></div>
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<o:p><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> <span style="font-size: x-small;">"</span></span></o:p><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20.7999992370605px;">Areas like Fort Point channel have seen their artistic communities pushed out due to rising costs, and GrubStreet faces a similar challenge as our building is being sold and we too are being forced to consider options outside of the city. The approval of the creation of a literary cultural district in downtown Boston is an important milestone for a city that is trying hard to maintain its cultural heart. With an intentional, coherent approach to our collective work as literary organizations, publications and endeavors, we will put Boston on the map as a literary center and destination."</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Now this more recent, private message to its instructors and associates suggests that the same forces may indeed be elbowing Grub Street out a window of the Steinway Building sometime soon. But </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">as I wrote then, it also remains possible that Grub will
miraculously find a way to hold onto a prestigious address in the bosom of its darling district. Eve Bridburg <a href="http://thechagallposition.blogspot.com/2014/08/grub-street-saved-from-gentrification.html">pays</a> herself a hefty $104,000 annual salary (while the median per capita income in Boston is $33,000 a
year) and is married to a wealthy physician and medical researcher. And recently
Grub Street itself went through an eminently corporate-style restructuring
at the behest of its board and leadership, sidelining several of its former administrators,
reassigning duties, and establishing new positions with more corporate-sounding <a href="https://www.grubstreet.org/our-community/staff/">titles</a> (Director of Finance &
Administration, Content Management Consultant, and Marketing & Community
Engagement Manager), with the goal of grabbing ever greater funding from corporate and foundation "philanthropy" as well as from desperate writers shelling out for a newly developed raft of online courses. No doubt the Grub Street “brand” will continue, and writers
who play along will continue to get . . . <a href="http://thechagallposition.blogspot.com/2014/05/brand-in-boston.html">branded</a>.</span></div>
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Edmond Caldwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02651618912907453630noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4909166734000323323.post-15347250717594006922014-11-11T13:07:00.001-08:002014-11-11T14:37:51.773-08:00The Reproductive & the Perverse Novel -- a manifesto<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<!--StartFragment-->
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">There are two types of novels, the reproductive and the
perverse.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Reproductive novels are analogous to missionary-position
intercourse engaged in for the purpose of producing offspring.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Perverse novels are like tied-up face-down ball-gag
ass-slappin’ doggie-style Greco-Roman three-way pinkie-frottage for the
purposelessness of continual shatterings.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Reproductive novels change diapers, perverse novels wear
them for fun.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In reproductive novels there are characters, and in the
course of the novel they have an epiphany, which assures them that they have a
soul.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In perverse novels there are figures.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They have anti-epiphanies or no epiphanies at
all, which assures them that they might be trompe l’oeil.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Reproductive novels are moral, perverse novels revalue
values.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Reality is the scab that forms over arrested and brutalized
vitality.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The reproductive novel is the
band-aid laid over the scab.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
perverse novel tears off the band-aid with its teeth, scratches the scab away,
worries the wound.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Reproductive novels have closure, perverse novels are
open-ended: legs crossed vs. ass in the air.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Reproductive novels contribute, in the small way
that novels can contribute to anything, to the reproduction of society at the
level of the status quo.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Perverse novels are on a strike that is impossible to tell
from a jubilee.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The reproductive novel always speaks in the name of the
highest ideals, even – or rather especially – when these are embedded in the
homiest of domestic scenes.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The perverse novel is trivial where the reproductive novel
is important, anorectic where it is bloated, and chastened where it is proud.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The reproductive novel is original in unimportant ways, the
perverse novel derivative in significant ones.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Reproductive novels lay a wreath at the tomb of their
ancestors, perverse novels wear the dress their grandmother was buried in to a
banquet of their granddaddy’s balls.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">There is a reproductive novel on your nightstand.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There is a perverse novel under the mattress
on your lover’s side of the bed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Beware of faux-perverse novels, always looking over their
shoulders to make sure the outraged reproductive novel is not far behind.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(This is often known as “the underground”).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">There are reproductive novels which take on a little
perversity as inoculation; yesterday’s perversions can become today’s rote
reproductive foreplay.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(This is often
known as “style”).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Don’t jump to conclusions:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>there are subtly perverse novels in reproductive-novel drag.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In the reproductive novel you can see yourself, in the
perverse novel you feel like a stranger to yourself. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Reproductive novels say, “I am a novel.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Perverse novels ask, “What is a novel?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Glance at your watch after reading a reproductive novel,
sniff your fingers after reading a perverse novel.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">A whole department of the critical-academic-industrial
complex is devoted to reading perverse novels reproductively.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Reproductive novels should be read perversely – or not at
all.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<br /></div>
<!--EndFragment-->Edmond Caldwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02651618912907453630noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4909166734000323323.post-39194123460846388462014-11-08T11:39:00.003-08:002014-11-10T12:26:03.874-08:00Tidy Words & the End of the World: LeRoi Jones Reads a New Yorker Poem<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwce7rsXBqRR3Qq8ZCL3hN6fg6iG_-A8riu-figXL5jCnkEbBIgYzosR9uokCtcZn_UDPXoY90zJ2JKUK6lNM6u8UIO8W96ZkUMg9scwjthKQ0POJNiVolJodIEOrVuyfFqoE80SbTXGbH/s1600/jonesportrait1963.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwce7rsXBqRR3Qq8ZCL3hN6fg6iG_-A8riu-figXL5jCnkEbBIgYzosR9uokCtcZn_UDPXoY90zJ2JKUK6lNM6u8UIO8W96ZkUMg9scwjthKQ0POJNiVolJodIEOrVuyfFqoE80SbTXGbH/s1600/jonesportrait1963.jpg" height="640" width="403" /></a></div>
<br />
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Here’s a scene from Amiri Baraka’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=Z-C4E3zdBxkC&printsec=frontcover&dq=autobiography+of+leroi+jones&hl=en&sa=X&ei=f7VfVK3FBsvdsATf5YLYBQ&ved=0CBQQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=autobiography%20of%20leroi%20jones&f=false">Autobiography of LeRoi Jones</a></i>. He’s dropped out of Howard University
and joined the Air Force (the “Error Farce,” he calls it) and they’ve stationed
him in Puerto Rico. For the US it’s the mid-1950s and for Jones it’s early days
in his writing vocation; he’s just feeling his way and trying to assimilate
everything that seems to fall under the rubric of literary culture, which so
far appears to be white, Anglo-European culture.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.0in;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">One afternoon I had gone to San
Juan by myself. I had found some places in Old San Juan I could walk around.
They had a tourist section, fairly arty . . . I was in civilian clothes and I
remember I was reading <i>The New Yorker</i>.
I’d stopped at a bench and sat down near a square. It was quiet and I could see
a long way off toward the newer, more Americanized part of the city, the
Condado Beach section, where I could only go if in uniform, so they would know
I was an Americano and not a native. I had been reading one of the carefully
put together exercises <i>The New Yorker</i>
publishes constantly as high poetic art, and gradually I could feel my eyes
fill up with tears, and my cheeks were wet and I was crying, quietly, softly
but like it was the end of the world. I had been moved by the writer’s words,
but in another, very personal way. A way that should have taught me even more
than it did. Perhaps it would have saved me many more painful scenes and
conflicts. But I was crying because I realized that I could never write like that
writer. Not that I had any real desire to, but I knew even if I had had the
desire I could not do it. I realized that there was something in me so out, so
unconnected with what this writer was and what that magazine was that what was
in me that wanted to come out as poetry would never come out like that and be <i>my</i> poetry.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.0in;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The verse spoke of lawns and trees
and dew and birds and some subtlety of feeling amidst the jingling rhymes that
spoke of a world almost completely alien to me. Except in magazines or walking
across some campus or in some house and neighborhood I hadn’t been in. What was
so terrifying to me was that when I looked through the magazine, I liked the
clothes, the objects, the general ambience of the place – of the life being
lived by the supposed readers and creators of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">New Yorker</i> world. But that verse threw me off, it had no feeling I
could really use. I might carry the magazine as a tool of my own desired upward
social mobility, such as I understood it. I might like some of the jokes, and
absolutely dig the soft-curving button-down collars and well-tailored suits I
saw. The restaurants and theater advertisements. The rich elegance and savoir
faire of all I could see and touch. But the poem, the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">inside</i>, of that life chilled me, repelled me, was impenetrable. And
I hated myself because of it, yet at the same time knew somehow that it was
correct that I be myself, whatever that meant. And myself could not deal with
the real meanings of the life spelled out by those tidy words.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Baraka nails the essential quality of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">New Yorker</i> poem in a compact
formulation: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">a carefully put-together
exercise published as high poetic art.</i> And when it comes to literary
standards nothing has changed in the half century plus since the poet shed
tears over that alienating poem – <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">New
Yorker</i> still puts a premium on carefully put-together exercises that it
publishes as high poetic art. This is just as true of the magazine’s fiction,
which represents the “quality” apogee of the MFA cookie-cutter “epiphany story.”
Wrapped up in tidy packages of psychological realism, these stories reflect the
spurious “humanism” of the liberal professional-managerial class that is really
a form of fatuous, self-congratulatory narcissism and an apologetics for a
racist, imperialist, and exploitative status quo. Such work is “well-crafted,”
meticulous, careful, “clean,” and absolutely risk free – the literary
equivalent of a gentrified neighborhood. It’s a neighborhood (Baraka even
calls it, perceptively, a “place”) where people like the aspiring Black writer
are not welcome, where they are the excluded Other.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In the yearning for social mobility that painfully inflects
his response, the young poet of the autobiography implicitly realizes how this
“high poetic art” functions as a marker of status, what Pierre Bourdieu calls
“distinction.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">New Yorker</i> verse and fiction are indeed high-end consumer
commodities, of a piece with the tailored clothes, pricey jewelry, and haute
cuisine dining spots that share its pages. It’s a cultural “address”, but – as
commentators such as <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=DbSK-x5Je3AC&printsec=frontcover&dq=sharon+zukin&hl=en&sa=X&ei=yrVfVIL2HIHesATen4CYCA&ved=0CBoQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=sharon%20zukin&f=false">Sharon Zukin</a> and <a href="http://thesocialistregister.com/index.php/srv/article/view/5778#.VF-186DvYd4">David Harvey</a> have shown – one that is eminently
available to be cross-mapped onto real space, in urban neighborhoods across the
US and around the globe. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">One way that this type of “cultural address” manifests
itself in the contemporary urban arena is the phenomenon of “<a href="http://www.gcdn.net/index/">cultural districts</a>,”
specially designated clusters of arts and humanities venues which then become
the focus of public-private investment partnerships. There are many such
districts in Massachusetts already, including two here in Boston, the Fenway
Cultural District and the new Boston Literary District. <a href="http://www.massculturalcouncil.org/services/cultural_districts.asp">According</a> to the
Massachusetts Cultural Council, the state body that awards such designations,
the ultimate goal of cultural districts is “enhancing property values and making
communities more attractive” – i.e., gentrification.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In their critique of the “creative cities” model of urban
development, researchers Sacha Kagan and Julia Hahn <a href="https://uottawa.scholarsportal.info/ojs/index.php/clg-cgl/article/view/182/179">speak </a>of the results of
such cultural zoning – an exclusionary “club effect”:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.0in;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">In
the creative city model, culture is used to increase value, be it symbolically
through images or materialized. In this context, Zukin (1990) refers to “real
cultural capital,” meaning spatially linked cultural capital, which becomes a
reason for real investments (p. 38). As Bernt & Holm (2005) state, the
cultural capital (of artists) becomes objectified and transfers onto certain
places; this, in turn, makes access to it easier, as it can be consumed by
anyone who enters this space. Ley (2003) examines gentrification processes and
how the high level of cultural capital of artists increases the symbolic value
of an area and leads to “followers” (other professionals with high levels of
cultural, but also economic, capital) coming into a neighbourhood. He uses
Bourdieu‟s notions of cultural and economic capital and finds that both of
these concepts help to explain gentrification. [ . . . ]</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.0in;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Bourdieu
(1999) also describes the “club effect”</span><span style="font-size: 7pt;"> </span></span><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">as a process that excludes according to economic,
cultural, and also social capital. Select spaces acquire social and symbolic
capital based upon “people and things which are different from the vast
majority and have in common … the fact that they exclude everyone who does not
present all the desired attributes …” (p. 129). This “club effect” shows that
consequences like segregation and symbolic violence can result from a policy
that “favors the <i>construction of homogeneous groups on a spatial basis</i>”
(p. 129) This can be connected to the creative city concept, in which arts and
culture function as enablers for a creative urban milieu, in turn enhancing the
city economically and often resulting in gentrification. Artists or “creatives”
play an important role here and can be seen as pioneers of gentrification, as
they give their cultural capital to a certain district or space. As Bernt &
Holm (2005) describe, gentrified spaces become more and more general, losing
the specific characteristics that enabled their cultural distinctiveness.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The organizers of the <a href="http://www.bostonlitdistrict.org/">Boston Literary District </a>– led by Eve
Bridburg and the <a href="https://www.grubstreet.org/">Grub Street </a>writing center – like to pretend, at least in public
statements, that their cultural zone is innocent and inclusive. In fact in
their application to the Massachusetts Cultural Council they went so far as to
produce the following howler: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.0in;">
<span style="font-size: 11.0pt;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">"Also,
unique to this district, situated in a gentrified area, is that it will allow
literary groups and writers in more economically marginalized areas of Boston
to strut their literary stuff, if you will, by participating in district programming."</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Accomplished here is the feat of making a single sentence
out of a stew of euphemism, wishful thinking, and flat-out lie. The truth is
that the borders of this very large chunk of Boston real estate encompass or
abut areas such as Chinatown and Downtown Crossing that are alive with <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://www.wbur.org/2013/11/27/boston-chinatown-development">ongoing</a></i> struggles against gentrification.
Public and affordable housing units as well as soup kitchens and homeless and
domestic abuse shelters are all in the crosshairs now. In the “mixed-use” (both
commercial and residential) areas south and east of Boston Common, household
incomes are among the most savagely <a href="http://www.city-data.com/neighborhood/Downtown-Crossing-Boston-MA.html">polarized</a> in the region, with luxury condos
grudgingly rubbing shoulders with tenements and SRO hotels. In their statements
and actions the Boston Literary District’s sponsors have<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> disappeared </i>those places, and those people.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">But it’s also true that parts of the district, such as
Beacon Hill and the Back Bay, are already quite gentrified. Will the minority
youth of Boston – because that’s who we’re talking about here – really be
welcome to “strut their stuff” on that stage?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">To answer this question let’s put a couple of things
together. The first is a quote from the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Globe</i>
<a href="http://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/books/2013/10/26/author-slept-here-boston-literary-community-pushes-for-literary-cultural-district/AYGRJvKI44OXzQIQU8CPjP/story.html">article</a> that heralded the Literary District’s advent back in the fall of 2013.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.0in;">
<span style="font-size: 11.0pt;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">It’s
been 18 months since the <span style="color: windowtext; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Massachusetts
Cultural Council</span> began designating cultural districts around the
state. So far, 17 areas have been named, giving them the right to create
signage, and also a boost in attracting artists, creative enterprises — and
cultural tourists, who spend $62 more per day than their philistine
counterparts.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Cultural tourists
spend $62 more per day than their philistine counterparts</i>. We’ll let slide
for the moment the irony that nothing marks the true philistine more than
putting a dollar value on culture and instead focus on something else: What
kind of demographic are we really talking about here? Well, what else could it
be but well-heeled and mostly white upper-middle class professionals out on the
hunt for further marks of cultural “distinction”? In other words – <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">New Yorker</i> readers. <span style="font-size: 11.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Now let’s add to that another little fact of Boston life that’s
come to light recently. Or rather, come to light for those who don’t experience
it daily: the racist “stop and frisk” policing of Black and Latino youth that
is endemic to this city, as <a href="https://www.aclu.org/criminal-law-reform-racial-justice/boston-police-data-shows-widespread-racial-bias-street-encounters">reported </a>by the ACLU after an exhaustive study. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">You
don’t have to be a math whiz to see that these two items add up to Black and
brown youth not being particularly welcome to “strut their stuff” anywhere, let
alone in the Boston Literary District. In fact, as a comprehensive <a href="http://digboston.com/boston-news-opinions/2014/09/a-writer-used-to-live-here-how-bostons-new-corporate-backed-literary-district-probably-wont-do-a-damn-thing-for-hub-writers/">report </a>by Dan Shewan in <i>DigBoston</i> revealed last September, the real purpose of the district is further gentrification of the region. This is where the “club effect” cited above by
Kagan and Hahn comes into play: it “favors the <i>construction of homogeneous
groups on a spatial basis,</i>” (in this case the affluent “cultural tourists”
flocking to the Literary District), and it results in “segregation and symbolic
violence” for those left out of the club.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Social exclusion and symbolic violence inflict real damage
and pain, the pain of marginality, invisibility, and muteness – cultural
apartheid. It is precisely the type of pain that Amiri Baraka’s younger self
experienced while reading that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">New Yorker
</i>poem. The passage from Baraka’s autobiography struck me because I
encountered it at the very time I was writing about the Boston Book Festival’s
<a href="http://thechagallposition.blogspot.com/2014/10/the-face-of-gentrification-one-city-one.html">failure</a>, for the fifth year in a row, to select a local African American or
Latina/o author for their flagship “One City One Story” program. One of the
“Executive Partners” in organizing the Boston Literary District, the BBF <a href="http://www.bostonbookfest.org/attend/1c1s/">states</a> that this citywide “Big Read” event is supposed to promote literacy
and “create a community around a shared reading experience.” Yet what kind of
community are they creating? Boston is at least 42% Black and Latina/o, but in
the 5 years of One City One Story’s existence they’ve chosen 4 white authors
and 1 Asian-American author. The stories themselves, moreover, are very much of
the same “carefully constructed exercises” (white and uptight) that continue to
be published “as high poetic art” in the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">New
Yorker</i>. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I wonder how many minority youth in Dorchester, Roxbury, and
Mattapan were assigned the book festival’s 2014 offering, Jennifer Haigh’s
“Sublimation,” in their high school English classes. No doubt they were
exhorted that they were participating in civic life, and that the story’s
values and outlook were somehow “universal” and relevant to their own
experience. And no doubt that many of them felt the same confusion and shame
and anger that LeRoi Jones felt reading that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">New Yorker </i>poem in San Juan over a half century ago. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I hope none of them shed tears over it, though – the story
wasn’t worth it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Rest in power, comrade Amiri Baraka!</span><o:p></o:p></div>
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<!--EndFragment-->Edmond Caldwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02651618912907453630noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4909166734000323323.post-77897464254550755512014-10-22T20:45:00.005-07:002014-11-09T11:13:22.478-08:00THE FACE OF GENTRIFICATION: "One City One Story" at 5 Years<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i>Below is the text of a leaflet for Boston Book Festival 2014:</i></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">For the fifth year in a row the
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.bostonbookfest.org/">Boston Book Festival </a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">has failed to select a story by an African American or
Latina/o author for their flagship One City One Story (</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.bostonbookfest.org/attend/1c1s/">1C1S</a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">) program. One of
those citywide “Big Reads” currently in </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.gcdn.net/index/">fashion</a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> around the nation, the program
prints 30,000 booklet copies of a short story by a local author and distributes
them for free in libraries, bookstores, and coffee shops around the region. The
story serves as the platform for a number of reading and discussion activities,
all leading up to a big Q&A with the author at the festival itself. The
program, according to its organizers, is intended to promote literacy and “create
a community around a shared reading experience.”</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">With the selection of Jennifer’s
Haigh’s “Sublimation” 1C1S enters its fifth year, and we can now get a clear
picture of just what sort of “community” the program has in mind:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8OmZtyDi9xpU0fAGWKo2YqdK6_5g7_pRa2xlGkfIMwiGIK3dRxMS1GMrW-DatXBb4ibvruchclgvE5quAstrhWDBDBRvFY7zJBomXCVOSdfg79P6kXqc-zZjAA7yqRzL6FfkAFYj6IFqY/s1600/%231C1S+graphic+1.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8OmZtyDi9xpU0fAGWKo2YqdK6_5g7_pRa2xlGkfIMwiGIK3dRxMS1GMrW-DatXBb4ibvruchclgvE5quAstrhWDBDBRvFY7zJBomXCVOSdfg79P6kXqc-zZjAA7yqRzL6FfkAFYj6IFqY/s1600/%231C1S+graphic+1.png" height="640" width="425" /></a></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The book festival’s idea of
“community” is blatantly unrepresentative of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">real </i>Boston, which by the 2010 <a href="http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/25/2507000.html">Census </a>had at last become a “majority
minority” city, in which people of color make up around 53%:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>Black or African American<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>24%<o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>Latino/a or Hispanic<span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>18%<o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>Asian<span style="mso-tab-count: 4;"> </span>9%<o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>Other<span style="mso-tab-count: 4;"> </span>2%</b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>So-called
“White”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><u><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>47%</u></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.5in; text-align: left; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>100%<o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Now here’s the breakdown for 1C1S:
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>2 white men (Tom Perrotta in 2010 and
Richard Russo in 2011), 2 white women (Anna Solomon in 2012 and this year’s
Jennifer Haigh), and 1 South Asian woman (Rishi Reddi in 2013). That’s 80%
white and 20% Asian = 100%!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Boston is at least 42% Black or
Latino, but 100% locked out of One City One Story. <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">It’s the “literary” equivalent of a gated community.</b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">It’s not like there’s a shortage
of Black or Latina/o writers who have significant ties to the region. If it’s
marquee names you’re looking for, there’s Junot Diaz, Jamaica Kincaid, Julia
Alvarez, and John Edgar Wideman. Both Michael Thomas and Danzy Senna were born
and raised in Boston even if they now live elsewhere. Closer to home we have
Laura K Warrell, Jennifer De Leon, Marcus Burke, Iris Gomez, and others. Chapters
from Burke’s novel, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18209340-team-seven?from_search=true">Team Seven</a></i>, or
Gomez’s <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3173725.Iris_Gomez"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Try to Remember</i> </a>would’ve made
first-rate One City One Story choices. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Of course it’s not up to us to do
the BBF’s homework for them. If you claim to speak for “the community,” you should
know what you’re talking about. But of the 45 people listed on their website’s
<a href="http://www.bostonbookfest.org/about/#who-we-are">Who We Are</a> page, only 2 are African American and none Hispanic – again a
laughable (and lamentably tokenistic) proportion considering Boston’s real
demographics. Instead, their Board of Directors is a miniature Who’s Who of the
region’s white plutocracy, with a hedge fund banker, a marketing research CEO,
a senior investment officer; people with decades of experience in places like
Salomon Brothers and Goldman Sachs who push causes like corporate “education
reform.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">But even if the BBF organizers
are ignorant about the community, that’s not the biggest scandal here – <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">it’s that they don’t give a fuck.</i> They
are in fact quite consciously and deliberately constructing the community they
want, as part of a process unfortunately familiar to us all: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">gentrification</i>. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Local
literary institutions such as <a href="https://www.grubstreet.org/">Grub Street</a>, the Boston Book Festival, and others
are currently congratulating themselves on the founding of the so-called <a href="http://thechagallposition.blogspot.com/2014/07/the-literary-cultural-district-and-art.html">Boston Literary District</a>, stretching from downtown to the Back Bay. A recent <a href="http://digboston.com/boston-news-opinions/2014/09/a-writer-used-to-live-here-how-bostons-new-corporate-backed-literary-district-probably-wont-do-a-damn-thing-for-hub-writers/">report</a> in
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">DigBoston</i> by <a href="http://danshewan.com/">Dan Shewan</a> exposed the top-down and
closed-door manner in which the project was undertaken, suggesting that it has
more to do with commerce than culture and will help property developers and the
hospitality industry a lot more than writers, readers, and the community at
large. Indeed, even the state body governing the creation of such districts
<a href="http://www.massculturalcouncil.org/services/cultural_districts.asp">admits</a> that their purpose is to “enhance property values”, i.e.,
gentrification.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">As Boston’s working class people of all races
struggle with spiraling rents, Black and Latino/Hispanic youth face additional
pressures such as the racist <a href="https://www.aclum.org/news_10.8.14">stop-and-frisk</a> policies of the Boston Police
Department, revealed earlier this month by the ACLU. The Boston Book Festival
and their One City One Story program enact a cultural violence on the same
continuum, policing urban space on behalf of the white ruling class and its
professional-managerial servants and supporters (the festival’s target
audience). But a genuinely thriving culture will never arise from ethnic
cleansing and apartheid. Another Boston is possible, and a very different – and
more diverse – book festival along with it. </span><br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></div>
Edmond Caldwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02651618912907453630noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4909166734000323323.post-44316007113864470472014-09-15T15:21:00.000-07:002014-09-15T15:21:09.359-07:00Protest Bookmarks for Boston Book Festival's One City One Story 2014<div style="-x-system-font: none; display: block; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,Sans-serif; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 12px auto 6px auto;">
<a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/239849015/1-City-1-Story-2014-Protest-Bookmark" style="text-decoration: underline;" title="View 1 City 1 Story 2014 Protest Bookmark on Scribd">1 City 1 Story 2014 Protest Bookmark</a> by <a href="http://www.scribd.com/anti_epiphany" style="text-decoration: underline;" title="View anti_epiphany's profile on Scribd">anti_epiphany</a></div>
<iframe class="scribd_iframe_embed" data-aspect-ratio="1.2941176470588236" data-auto-height="false" frameborder="0" height="600" id="doc_51060" scrolling="no" src="//www.scribd.com/embeds/239849015/content?start_page=1&view_mode=scroll&access_key=key-d17Rzg8JPRnGJCJfUNKm&show_recommendations=true" width="100%"></iframe>Edmond Caldwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02651618912907453630noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4909166734000323323.post-15156066395998637482014-08-29T13:14:00.004-07:002014-08-30T11:21:17.900-07:00Grub Street Saved from Gentrification!<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">As we reported in our previous </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="http://thechagallposition.blogspot.com/2014/08/eve-bridburg-finds-her-g-spot.html">post</a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">, a cash-strapped
Grub Street writing center has told the world that it is barely holding on in
the midst of a furious storm of gentrifying downtown development. But before it
would be forced to relocate to some strip mall outside Route 128, come hell or
high water it was going to establish the Literary Cultural District, which will
safeguard both Boston's literary heritage as the "Athens of America"
(because one good slaveholding democracy deserves another) and the city's current
and much-remarked "literary renaissance." </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Well, now we don't have to worry any more –<b> a
source of funds</b> has been found which will allow Grub Street to remain downtown
in the Steinway Building, or at least somewhere else within our new Literary
Cultural District: <b>Eve Bridburg's salary</b>.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times; font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgl7ZsHE9CUanJ8SX6yphQnoJwyH_SYjiG901bR-PtZM_J7gDsnYZ4OKcEirAyY4gVvfCDIV1TNL-0GfIJd7wxB83VdaEDd4-Qi5CWNsdcBMdTHeHETudSNkSLjOwD-2H8DSIYy9393yCOe/s1600/Screen+Shot+2014-08-29+at+3.47.49+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgl7ZsHE9CUanJ8SX6yphQnoJwyH_SYjiG901bR-PtZM_J7gDsnYZ4OKcEirAyY4gVvfCDIV1TNL-0GfIJd7wxB83VdaEDd4-Qi5CWNsdcBMdTHeHETudSNkSLjOwD-2H8DSIYy9393yCOe/s1600/Screen+Shot+2014-08-29+at+3.47.49+PM.png" height="640" width="536" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">(I've blurred out information on individuals who don't concern us here)</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Yes, <a href="http://www.guidestar.org/organizations/80-0005516/grub-street.aspx">publicly-available</a> tax documents obtained by
this blog reveal that Grub Street's Founder and Executive Director earned a
remarkable <b>$104,020</b> in 2012. <i>That's 3 times the median per capita income
of the city, $33,000 a year.</i> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Also impressive is the steep rise her salary has
undergone in the last few years, from 60 grand in 2010 to 95 grand in 2011 – a raise of 35 thousand dollars in a single year, followed next year by another bump of 10 grand! And at that rate, who knows what her raise for 2013 might've been? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">All Ms. Bridburg has to do is return to her 2010
salary – still almost twice as much as the median Boston per capita income –
and Grub will be flush enough to remain the stout tentpole of the Literary
Cultural District.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">And don't worry too much about our Executive Director: Her spouse
is an extremely well-remunerated doctor with his own lab in the Longwood
Medical District, so this great gift she is giving won’t pinch her family too
much. This is an era in which we're all being forced to tighten our belts, and
pull ourselves up by our own bootraps or be hoisted upon our petards or
whatever, so it only stands to reason that the Great Mother of our Literary
Renaissance will do her part, too.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><br /></span></div>
<!--EndFragment-->Edmond Caldwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02651618912907453630noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4909166734000323323.post-10389156846675923932014-08-26T19:52:00.001-07:002014-08-30T11:20:55.965-07:00Eve Bridburg Finds the Gentrification-Spot!<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmyOsfVk-a1nilbT-uZbR2ny_NmUEP03nm6XkP8u61NrzxBN5-R7AUDcR7xS1n3bP7Co2V3fLzcumzNyho3M1fFp2cPdOG0mGLhQp-T2-I5HXsb2atDOc5ED3LdnJE-8alav2B5oGm-72B/s1600/proposed_map_cultural_district.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmyOsfVk-a1nilbT-uZbR2ny_NmUEP03nm6XkP8u61NrzxBN5-R7AUDcR7xS1n3bP7Co2V3fLzcumzNyho3M1fFp2cPdOG0mGLhQp-T2-I5HXsb2atDOc5ED3LdnJE-8alav2B5oGm-72B/s1600/proposed_map_cultural_district.jpg" height="444" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">G marks the spot!</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">On August 19, the Massachusetts Cultural Council approved
the “Literary Cultural District” application submitted by GrubStreet writing
center and a raft of other Boston literary organizations. The approval was
punctuated by the usual round of media flatulence, including this <a href="http://bostinno.streetwise.co/2014/08/19/mcc-votes-unanimously-in-favor-of-a-boston-literary-cultural-district/">offering</a> by </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i>BostInno</i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> dudebro Nick DeLuca:
“It marks the second state-designated area of this kind – the first, also
in Boston, being the Fenway Cultural District – and the inaugural in the nation
being of the literary variety.” This marks the fifth article on the LCD by
DeLuca being of the illiterate variety.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">But in the midst of all the triumphalism an uncharacteristic
note of caution sounded from the van of the parade.
Consider the following quote in the same article from none other than GrubStreet founder and director Eve Bridburg:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Areas like Fort Point channel have
seen their artistic communities pushed out due to rising costs,
and GrubStreet faces a similar challenge as our building is being sold and
we too are being forced to consider options outside of the city. The approval
of the creation of a literary cultural district in downtown Boston is an
important milestone for a city that is trying hard to maintain its cultural
heart. With an intentional, coherent approach to our collective work as
literary organizations, publications and endeavors, we will put Boston on the
map as a literary center and destination.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I had to rub my eyes and even walk around the block when I
read this: Eve Bridburg talking about . . . gentrification? Who said anything
about gentrification? How did this notion even enter the conversation? When in
the year-long public history of this project have its organizers,
spokespersons, and media shills expressed the least syllable of concern about
the g-word? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3fb512dyC4EsBSYP10Mjn0RXMS1WMzPjOZ-IW8FawtYDkuSFUCTBbhPZcm0WMTEVv32L8t9XBe6tnNPVhfEBBVUsSh59csTISECK7XGT2yWrKpv4tIW0sO3899ijaZ4pBzgUM5tyWbTo-/s1600/Eve+Bridburg.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3fb512dyC4EsBSYP10Mjn0RXMS1WMzPjOZ-IW8FawtYDkuSFUCTBbhPZcm0WMTEVv32L8t9XBe6tnNPVhfEBBVUsSh59csTISECK7XGT2yWrKpv4tIW0sO3899ijaZ4pBzgUM5tyWbTo-/s1600/Eve+Bridburg.jpg" height="320" width="297" /></a></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-small;">That Gioconda smile can only mean one thing!</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">While we’re pondering that question (or alternately savoring
the cheeky humor behind the assertion that the city is “trying hard to maintain
its cultural heart”), let’s spice it up with two additional ironies:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">1)<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> Bridburg and Co.
have waited until the district is a done deal to say anything about
gentrification. </i>I’ve been watching this process unfold for a year now,
thinking hard about it and doing the <span id="goog_1272293625"></span><a href="http://thechagallposition.blogspot.com/2014/07/the-literary-cultural-district-and-art.html">homework<span id="goog_1272293626"></span> </a>about <a href="http://thechagallposition.blogspot.com/2014/03/destination-culture-break-value-chains.html">cultural</a> <a href="http://thechagallposition.blogspot.com/2014/01/the-muse-real-estate-marketplace.html">districts </a>and
gentrification that the LCD's supporters don’t seem to be interested in. And during
that time, there’ve been some things that have struck me – as they would any
honest observer – as deeply manipulative and dishonest, including the obvious
conflicts of interest (Ayanna Pressley’s <a href="http://thechagallposition.blogspot.com/2014/05/three-strikes-against-literary-cultural.html">seat </a>on GrubStreet’s “Literary
Council” and Grub board member and donor Laura Debonis’s <a href="http://thechagallposition.blogspot.com/2014/01/i-for-one-welcome-our-new-insect.html">boasted</a> residence
“in the literary cultural district”), the deliberate <a href="http://thechagallposition.blogspot.com/2014/05/three-strikes-against-literary-cultural.html">deception</a> about the
openness of the project (no substantive attempt to rally people to the “public”
hearings), and the egregious corruptions of language from people professing to
be writers or book lovers (“<a href="http://thechagallposition.blogspot.com/2014/01/take-boston-literary-renaissance.html">literary renaissance</a>,” “<a href="http://thechagallposition.blogspot.com/2014/05/brand-in-boston.html">branding</a>,” and the serial
abuse of “community”, etc.). But so far <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">nothing
</i>beats this for sheer cynicism. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Because Eve Bridburg herself has just admitted that concerns
about gentrification are relevant to this process. In fact they are so relevant
that the very first public words out of her mouth after the district’s final
approval address this very topic. Yet concerns about
gentrification could’ve been addressed at
any time along the way. Waiting until this moment gives the impression
that the organizers failed to bring it up because they knew that due diligence and genuine democratic participation and accountability might
cause problems or slow the process. Instead, they kept their mouths
shut and rushed the process as much as possible.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">By waiting until now, Eve Bridburg couldn’t have admitted
more loudly that gentrification is a legitimate concern when it comes to the
literary cultural district – and she couldn’t have added any louder that she
doesn’t give a shit.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">2) <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Bridburg’s statement
suggests that LCD status will somehow actually help with the problems posed by
gentrification.</i> This is of a piece with other vague assurances such as
the repeated assertions that the LCD will “help writers” by “raising their
profiles” or whatever other “branding” bullshit is on offer. But in real terms
it’s a non sequitur (as well as a plain old lie), because cultural districts, as I’ve <a href="http://thechagallposition.blogspot.com/2014/07/the-literary-cultural-district-and-art.html">shown</a>
in previous posts, were developed for the very purpose of bringing up property values. The same sleazy rhetorical move is on display at the end of an unsigned
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Boston Globe</i> <a href="http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/editorials/2014/08/21/literary-cultural-district-showcases-boston-city-ideas/Gn72z3ig8E1MkJpcnFrfrL/story.html?event=event25">editorial</a> that appeared several
days after Bridburg's statement:
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8LF2Ac5hqTmRhJQ1Eb3LY93tpYebzduITulDC491XubbGQer84KqhGrMu3b093IsHnV_0CJ85SI-59q43al9AcViLia9nOhBJGs2-XG4RiOvgNoqWfkDjygP2F9flKlmnClU_RZ3RVhMM/s1600/Screen+Shot+2014-08-26+at+2.31.38+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8LF2Ac5hqTmRhJQ1Eb3LY93tpYebzduITulDC491XubbGQer84KqhGrMu3b093IsHnV_0CJ85SI-59q43al9AcViLia9nOhBJGs2-XG4RiOvgNoqWfkDjygP2F9flKlmnClU_RZ3RVhMM/s1600/Screen+Shot+2014-08-26+at+2.31.38+PM.png" height="138" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Here, too, gentrification is acknowledged as a problem, but here as well the district is rhetorically positioned as some kind of vague potential
solution rather than what it in hard fact is: </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">an aggravating factor. The idea that GrubStreet itself
might be gentrified out the area by the sale of the Steinway building is nothing but a bit of “poor me” misdirection
– loyal Grubbies have nothing to worry about when it comes to the tentpole
status of their favorite cultural arbiter. A glimpse at the overlapping personnel among GrubStreet’s board of <a href="https://www.grubstreet.org/our-community/board/">directors</a> and their <a href="https://www.grubstreet.org/our-community/our-donors/">donors</a> make it clear that the writing center
has been steadily pimping its Muse to bigger and bigger players in the
Marketplace and will do just fine in the “creative economy” of Boston’s future.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">At least the Massachusetts Cultural Council, a state agency, feels constrained in its own
<a href="http://www.massculturalcouncil.org/news/literarydistrict.asp">announcement</a> to be more forthright about the purpose of cultural
districts:</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaNWlDDHsb6TJr21Neb28CT8zXBGsEs8ViJx5-QwqkITmP7HE98643vSvmnb7Y-kUSwVJG5UeqcuIZTQ2a9y2sSozIDokSQMUnI1tv6c3grw7qVUGqweJM25cM3-4MfxkDhakNOQEHAJRC/s1600/Screen+Shot+2014-08-26+at+10.45.28+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaNWlDDHsb6TJr21Neb28CT8zXBGsEs8ViJx5-QwqkITmP7HE98643vSvmnb7Y-kUSwVJG5UeqcuIZTQ2a9y2sSozIDokSQMUnI1tv6c3grw7qVUGqweJM25cM3-4MfxkDhakNOQEHAJRC/s1600/Screen+Shot+2014-08-26+at+10.45.28+PM.png" height="152" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Take note of a couple of points in particular. The MCC reports that, "the Cultural Districts Initiative grew out of an economic stimulus bill"</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> – </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">an ECONOMIC STIMULUS BILL, not some kind of fairy-tale, feel-good "cultural stimulus bill"! The language of the third paragraph drives the point home: to "encourage business," "expand tourism," and "enhance property values." </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Could it be any clearer? </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Now, someone might logically point out that there are one or two points about art and culture in the description, such as "attract[ing] artists and cultural enterprises" and "foster[ing] local cultural development" </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">– should</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">n't that count for something? And of course it does: it counts for the kind of art that can "encourage business"; it counts for the kind of culture that will "expand tourism"; it counts for the type of creativity that will "enhance property values." This is a recipe for gentrification.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">So to sum up, here’s what Eve Bridburg and GrubStreet and the other
“Executive Partners” in the LCD coalition (Deborah Porter of the Boston Book Festival, Henriette Lazaridis Power of <i>The Drum</i> litmag, plus Suffolk University, Emerson College, the Boston Athenaeum, and Boston Public Library) are telling you:</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i>Gentrification is a real issue here, but the Literary
Cultural District will somehow help with that in some unspecified way, even
though cultural districts were designed to do just the opposite, and anyway
it’s too late because we waited until the LCD was in the bag to mention any of
this inconvenient crap.</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">OK, got it – thanks, GrubStreet!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<!--EndFragment-->Edmond Caldwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02651618912907453630noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4909166734000323323.post-7240639067371261212014-07-30T10:40:00.002-07:002014-08-30T11:20:37.573-07:00The "Literary Cultural District" and the Art of Rent -- Part 1<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKj49Z9tsA36mb0L8MYUwsslPbrDHcfshjcki17P3Jbgvx1YSFyAXfL7Mcq5MziBaKtNHFdLw_1dqErW4AXvZwK2jktGA66qodTJ_mQllS1ipAe2uLu6JgqSK6Ub3auDLHMJXnolpQ7G6M/s1600/Communes+Not+Condos.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKj49Z9tsA36mb0L8MYUwsslPbrDHcfshjcki17P3Jbgvx1YSFyAXfL7Mcq5MziBaKtNHFdLw_1dqErW4AXvZwK2jktGA66qodTJ_mQllS1ipAe2uLu6JgqSK6Ub3auDLHMJXnolpQ7G6M/s1600/Communes+Not+Condos.jpg" height="400" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">When the fix is in, the fix is in: On Wednesday, June 25,
the Boston City Council voted unanimously in favor of the Literary Cultural
District proposal submitted by a coalition of local organizations led by the<a href="https://www.grubstreet.org/"> Grub Street </a>writing center and its director, Eve Bridburg. This came after a second </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="http://michelleforboston.com/update-on-the-establishment-of-a-literary-cultural-district-in-boston/">hearing</a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">
for the district that was almost as poorly publicized as the first. Now the
application has been kicked up to the Massachusetts Cultural Council to
determine if it meets the state’s guidelines. In the meantime Grub Street has been on a mini publicity blitz, with Bridburg’s hype man, Larry Lindner, </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="http://bostinno.streetwise.co/2014/06/19/literary-cultural-district-resolution-to-by-boston-city-council/">crowing</a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> that
the district could be a reality as early as September of this year.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Does that mean Grub Street will be returning half of the 2-year
planning <a href="http://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/books/2013/10/26/author-slept-here-boston-literary-community-pushes-for-literary-cultural-district/AYGRJvKI44OXzQIQU8CPjP/story.html">grant</a> it received from the state in the Fall of 2013? (42,500 taxpayer
bucks for a project repeatedly billed as “revenue neutral.”) Somehow I think not,
but at this point such straightforward theft is one of the less sleazy aspects
of this case. As a writer – and a just as a rational, ethical human being – I’m
more offended by their serial abuse of an infinitely more precious currency: language.
For example, in the latest wave of uncritical, rah-rah articles about the
project, city councilor Ayanna Pressley is <a href="http://bostinno.streetwise.co/2014/06/19/literary-cultural-district-resolution-to-by-boston-city-council/">quoted </a>applauding the district
because it will “incentivize foot traffic” in the area. Any writer worth her
salt will be deeply revolted by this kind of thing, as she would’ve by Eve
Bridburg’s <a href="http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/digital/retailing/article/61917-boston-creating-a-literary-cultural-district-spotlight-on-new-england-2014.html">classic</a> from an earlier interview, “We’re thinking about branding
the work that everybody is doing.” Worst of all is that “Literary Cultural
District Coordinator” Larry Lindner is back to <a href="http://www.suffolk.edu/news/54677.php#.U9ksiKDvang">claiming</a> that Boston is in the
midst of “a literary <a href="http://thechagallposition.blogspot.com/2013/12/sinkhole-of-dreams-locating-bostons.html">renaissance</a>.” During the city council process a chastened,
or at least more cautious, Grub Street had downgraded their momentous cultural
rebirth to a still hugely overstated “resurgence.” It’s a sure sign they
feel the wind in their sails that they’ve now returned to the brazen ad-speak –
or what, in simpler times, was known as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">lying</i>
– of “renaissance.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The single note of caution sounded in the recent spate of
press reports was over the district’s walkability – a requirement of the MCC
guidelines. And if we look at the crude map that Grub Street released, it is
indeed a sizeable chunk of downtown real estate.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">But that’s what it’s really been about all along, isn’t it –
real estate? The urban policy of cultural districts was first created for the very
purpose of “revitalizing” – code word for gentrifying – economically depressed neighborhoods
in cities ravaged by de-industrialization and other vagaries of a market
economy. Take a look at this 1998 “Americans for the Arts” </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.americansforthearts.org/sites/default/files/pdf/2013/by_topic/cultural_districts/Cultural%20Districts.pdf">report</a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">, </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i>Cultural Districts: The Arts as a Strategy
for Revitalizing Our Cities</i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">, sponsored by a group of urban mayors, business
associations, and arts administrators. By that time, the report states, there
were already 90 cities in the US that had founded or planned such districts.
Examine the language used to describe the function of cultural districts in these two excerpts:</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUtOxtHR8Tx6v9vkLo0OcLUSzhOomwiYV6GuzXkLAqaUOvW6Tuwq_gTEOuhiBhS3zI_Igly4Yj9j8xZBWhXpma7faaEW81VNVm5wI12-LYULLxt_ba1sUYvB5eWhEdzZzie9rwlNHn2VsC/s1600/Screen+Shot+2014-07-30+at+1.18.51+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUtOxtHR8Tx6v9vkLo0OcLUSzhOomwiYV6GuzXkLAqaUOvW6Tuwq_gTEOuhiBhS3zI_Igly4Yj9j8xZBWhXpma7faaEW81VNVm5wI12-LYULLxt_ba1sUYvB5eWhEdzZzie9rwlNHn2VsC/s1600/Screen+Shot+2014-07-30+at+1.18.51+PM.png" height="400" width="386" /></a></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Now for some basic math: what happens to a neighborhood when
the tax base is “expanded,” property values “enhanced,” local businesses “complemented,”
and more “well educated employees” and tourists roll in? It should be clear to
all persons of good will and plain dealing that behind the bullshit euphemisms
we’re talking about jacking up rents, racist redlining by other means, and
cultural homogenization – in other words, gentrification.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The experience of Pittsburgh, summarized in the Americans
for the Arts report, gives us a more or less typical example of the forces and
motivations behind the founding of a cultural district:<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The first paragraph blithely asserts that the district will
“link the interests and activities of historic preservation groups, arts
organizations and downtown developers” as if these interests somehow more or
less harmonized in the first place, with the further assumption that arts
organizations do indeed represent the needs of artists and urban communities
(in fact, arts organizations often represent the interests of urban elites
before those of artists and ordinary citizens). But in the next paragraph it clearly
emerges that the primary motivation for the district came from the big urban
developers themselves. Cultivation of the arts is spoken of in terms of revenue
generation, number of events and tickets sold (the Pittsburgh example is
primarily a theater district), with everything subordinated to the ultimate
goal of economic success in market terms. As long as someone’s basking in the
benjamins, it just stands to reason that “quality of life” is going up for the
whole “community”!</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">What’s instructive in these examples is how little it has to
do with art and culture. Cultural districts are not the spontaneous or organic
outgrowths of city dwellers and culture producers’ collective efforts to remake
their surroundings at the grassroots level; they are the deliberate creations
of real estate developers and investors, urban politicians (who get their
campaign bucks from the developers, not from poor artists!), and bureaucrats
from various nonprofits. Arts and culture are an instrumentality, a means to an
end, rather than an end in itself. This is what it means when you hear
supporters of the Literary Cultural District using words like “leveraging,”
“branding,” and “incentivizing” – it’s not just crappy word choice. In their
minds, a thriving culture is one that generates dollars, even though they will
invariably frame this as an “everyone wins” scenario.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">If that’s your definition of culture, then these districts
should be fine with you. In fact they’re now so prevalent that they’ve even
begun establishing something like a trade association of their own, the Global
Cultural Districts Network. Click through their <a href="http://www.gcdn.net/index/">website</a> and then get back to me
about what kind of "cultural" vibe they’re giving off.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfvGBbOltxe6rL3I8QjddRTTPSnKFVzJcZKWsqBT5HP25ypRBC6u8Z_FECdZMcWqo598Iyr0XMHedRCWQcd7gBkQfFrRwb6H0Amd6r3Kok5pUsoofiTy3jy7wzoNcsShEMTW9Zoy8GBLPM/s1600/Screen+Shot+2014-07-30+at+1.25.51+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfvGBbOltxe6rL3I8QjddRTTPSnKFVzJcZKWsqBT5HP25ypRBC6u8Z_FECdZMcWqo598Iyr0XMHedRCWQcd7gBkQfFrRwb6H0Amd6r3Kok5pUsoofiTy3jy7wzoNcsShEMTW9Zoy8GBLPM/s1600/Screen+Shot+2014-07-30+at+1.25.51+PM.png" height="352" width="640" /></a></span></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"> <o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Call me crazy, but to me it looks a little . . . corporate.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Of course someone might reasonably remark, gazing at the LCD
map and tracing a finger from Beacon Hill over to Newbury Street, that the area happens to be a tad . . . gentrified already, yes? To which the most accurate rejoinder
would be, Yes and No. It’s true that much of the area appears fully developed commercially and “vital” enough not to indicate an urgent remedy of
“revitalization.” But there remain hundreds of units of affordable/subsidized
housing both within the district itself and quite near its borders, as well as
enclaves – particularly Chinatown – where working class families still hang on.
The Literary Cultural District has a profit-oriented rationale for taking <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">both</i> types of urban terrain into its
capacious borders, and I’ll be addressing each in greater depth in Parts 2 and
3 of this post.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In the meantime, since you’ll be hearing more and more about
how great the district will be for writers, check out the <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=3tp3j-JwvncC&pg=PA129&dq=cultural+districts&hl=en&sa=X&ei=JzHTU_uzEtOiyATUlIGIAQ&ved=0CEUQ6AEwCDgK#v=onepage&q=cultural%20districts&f=false">findings</a> of this
quantitative study of cultural districts!</span></div>
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<o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></o:p></div>
<!--EndFragment-->Edmond Caldwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02651618912907453630noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4909166734000323323.post-23813965867987524512014-05-13T09:50:00.000-07:002014-08-30T11:20:16.972-07:00Three Strikes Against the Literary Cultural District Public Hearing<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTmKVkixW4CHsrpOPBXMQ_JaSHMJVXKj2D3VjB_k7lcP8Tur-lnUr5XPC6yp9OOMbIPCUHWGHNW7v02nY6-PUz0ZZ9KXuJOkl8e_aXCS77Oq1vLrp4j7qsNO1kGkOXZUW1DyLuCYVCFBdD/s1600/rabb1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTmKVkixW4CHsrpOPBXMQ_JaSHMJVXKj2D3VjB_k7lcP8Tur-lnUr5XPC6yp9OOMbIPCUHWGHNW7v02nY6-PUz0ZZ9KXuJOkl8e_aXCS77Oq1vLrp4j7qsNO1kGkOXZUW1DyLuCYVCFBdD/s1600/rabb1.jpg" height="428" width="640" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">A "community driven" effort.</span></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Grub Street stage production of </i>The Literary Cultural District Public
Hearing<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> has come and gone after a single
performance at Boston Public Library’s Rabb Lecture Hall. The one-act farce,
co-produced by the Arts & Culture Committee of the Boston City Council, was
written by Eve Bridburg and directed by Michelle Wu. Playing the Stage Manager,
newcomer Larry Lindner turned in a harried, defensive performance – clearly
someone with professional credentials was needed in this part – while Christopher
Castellani and Henriette Lazaridis Power appeared listless and dispirited in
their supporting roles as The Writer and The Audio-Book. This left it up to Ayanna
Pressley, in her key role as The Politician, to pick up the slack, which she
did admirably. Pressley’s ambitious interpretation gave us one of those public
officials who really know the ABCs of their profession – Always Be Campaigning.
But even her nimble and rolling delivery couldn’t rescue a production that
seemed sabotaged from the start by its haplessly scattershot script, as if Ms
Bridburg had all along envisioned nothing more than a one-night engagement in
an almost empty hall . . .<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">A bit of theater:
It’s no exaggeration to say that the May 6 public hearing for the <a href="http://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/books/2013/10/26/author-slept-here-boston-literary-community-pushes-for-literary-cultural-district/AYGRJvKI44OXzQIQU8CPjP/story.html">Literary Cultural District</a> was never meant to be more than that. This is why the
project’s chief organizer, <a href="https://www.grubstreet.org/">Grub Street</a>, did nothing to publicize it. Or more
precisely, the publicity was as much a mere formality as the hearing itself was
supposed to be. Five hours before it was scheduled to start, Grub Street
condescended to mention it with a terse Facebook post and a tweet.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Grub Street
director Eve Bridburg defended her decision on Facebook, claiming, “Back in April, we
notified more than 50 media outlets and 74 other literary and civic
organizations. We hope to get a great turnout.” If this is true, then she was
grievously let down by these 124 organizations because not a single one of them made so much as a peep about the hearing either. Nor did any of the other organizations of the
LCD coalition, such as <a href="http://www.drumlitmag.com/"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Drum</i> </a>or
the <a href="http://www.bostonbookfest.org/">Boston Book Festival</a>. The only public notifications were the ones that were
mandatory – the official City Council <a href="http://www.cityofboston.gov/cityclerk/docs/SKMBT_42014041402160-6d93e4.pdf">posting</a> and the BPL listing.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Grub Street
didn’t even avail itself of its own extensive email list. They could easily
have included an item about the hearing in the weekly newsletter, the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Grub Street</i> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Rag</i>, or they could have emailed a separate notification, as they
also do from time to time. Evidently their professed desire for a “great
turnout” was not especially ardent. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The Rabb Lecture
Hall at the Boston Public Library can accommodate 350 people, but for the LCD
hearing it was “filled” to only a tenth of its capacity, around 30-35 people.
And that’s being charitable, as this number includes those who had to be there,
such as the city workers operating the video and sound equipment, plus a couple
of party crashers – myself and my co-conspirator, Catherine – who only knew about
the hearing because they had gone looking for it (my testimony <a href="http://thechagallposition.blogspot.com/2014/05/brand-in-boston.html">here</a>). Most of
the rest of those present were invitees, lined up beforehand by Grub Street to
chime in according to the pre-approved script. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The
irregularities continued once the meeting got under way. Arts & Culture Committee chair Michelle Wu
might have wielded the gavel, but it was her colleague, Ayanna Pressley, who
was both the meeting’s official sponsor and its presiding spirit. Councilor
Pressley opened the proceedings by commending the “robust coalition” that was
“leading the charge” for the LCD, while also pointing out to the echoing
chamber and 320 empty seats that the effort was “community driven.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The irregularity
here is that Councilor Pressley also happens to occupy a seat on Grub Street’s
“<a href="https://www.grubstreet.org/our-community/board/">Literary </a><a href="https://www.grubstreet.org/our-community/board/">Council</a>.” Moreover, she’s a very recent addition to that group, appearing
for the first time in the Spring of 2013 – in other words when the discussions
for the LCD had to have been already under way in order to secure the $42,5000 “planning
grant” that they received from the <a href="http://www.massculturalcouncil.org/">Massachusetts Cultural Council </a>(MCC) in Fall
2013.<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><sup>1</sup></b> Out of the 38
individuals on the Literary Board, Councilor Pressley is the only one with no
professional connection to the literary world; the others are mostly writers,
with some agents and editors. I applaud Grub’s decision to have different
voices, perspectives, and backgrounds represented on the Literary Board,
including even “extra-literary” perspectives – but why then only this single one,
and with this particular timing?</span></div>
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<o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">A politician fallen among bad company.</span></o:p></div>
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<o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></o:p></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I don’t have
access to the answers, of course, and therefore will only observe that it at
least gives the appearance of possible corruption and conflict of interest, of
a quid pro quo in which the city councilor is gifted an honorific and a line on
her CV in return for helping to lubricate the legislative process for certain
projects.<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><sup>2</sup></b> Councilor
Pressley is routinely spoken of as a future star in our political firmament,
destined for higher office. A ceremonial seat on a literary board of merely
advisory capacity may not seem like much, but it is indeed something – culture nowadays
is a form of capital, and cultural capital confers prestige for a certain sector
of voters, and, much more crucially, of donors. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Now for strike
three, which wasn’t really brought home to me until the testimony of Dan Currie.
His perspective is significant because he served on the working team putting
together the application that will shortly be submitted by the LCD coalition to
the Massachusetts Cultural Council. Currie’s remarks were highly critical of
the coalition’s leadership – its “Executive Partners” as they have dubbed
themselves – and called for a process that was more transparent, open, and
inclusive than what he had seen so far. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Dan Currie
speaks with some authority here, because he was instrumental in shepherding an
earlier Boston literary site through the official process to become a city
landmark. It’s thanks to his <a href="http://www.poeboston.org/Poe_Boston_Inc..html">efforts</a> that we now have an Edgar Allan Poe
walking tour, a Poe Square at Boylston and Charles Streets, and soon a public
statue of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Poe Returning to Boston </i>that
actually looks dynamic, interesting, and flat-out cool instead of like the
usual bronzed dogshit. Yet a monument of presumably more conventional cut had
been the first choice of the project’s other leaders; it was only because Currie
had insisted on a more democratic process, soliciting greater public
participation and feedback than the officially required minimum, that a genuinely
popular result was achieved.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">By contrast, the
LCD coalition’s “Executive Partners” are doing the opposite, barely fulfilling
even the letter of the law, let alone its spirit. This is especially the case
when it comes to their third strike: the scandalous decision to not release a
list of the district’s “assets” for public scrutiny and discussion before the application
is submitted to the Massachusetts Cultural Council. “Assets” is the MCC’s unlovely
and revealingly commercial term for the sites and properties that are supposed
to anchor a proposed cultural district – cultural attractions, of course, but
also business venues that might be associated, however tangentially, with the
cultural theme. In the Literary Cultural District’s case, such “assets” would
include specifically literary landmarks such as the Thoreau, Alcott, and
Hawthorne residences on Pinckney Street, but also businesses such as hotels,
bars, and restaurants with any vaguely literary connection (Malcolm Lowry
barfed here!), and of course organizations like Grub Street itself. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Instead, all
that was revealed at the public hearing was an empty map. The borders
delineated a quite large swath of Boston real estate, from downtown in the east
to Copley Square and beyond in the west, and from Beacon Hill in the north to
Washington Street in the south – with an elbow poking into the rapidly
gentrifying Chinatown. There were no markers for any literary sites on the map,
no key, and no list. The whole rationale for creating this district in the
first place was missing, excluded from consideration.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">"The district" -- literary & cultural TBA</span></o:p></div>
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<o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></o:p></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Of all the
irregularities, this was definitely the weirdest. The excuse for it, related by
the visibly nervous Larry Lindner, was that there wasn’t time to get<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“bogged down” in “details” or tied up in
endless debates about which sites should or shouldn’t be included in the
district (yes, Larry, democracy can be messy and inconvenient). Moreover, Lindner
further stammered, the list could change any time, sites could be added at any
point, and even the boundaries of the map itself could change, so it didn’t
really matter right now, did it? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In her closing
remarks Councilor Pressley came to Lindner’s aid by affirming that this was
going to be a “nimble and rolling process” and then repeating it several times
to make sure we all got it: “a nimble and rolling process, a nimble and rolling
process . . .” Although intended to reassure, it raises the question of just <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">who</i> is getting rolled here. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Councilor
Pressley also thanked Councilor Wu for “expediting” the scheduling of the
hearing itself. Along with Lindner’s anxiety about getting “bogged down,” this
contributed to the impression that the process is being rushed for some undisclosed
reason. Originally (in 2013) the Grub-led coalition had been awarded a two-year
planning grant, with talk that the district itself might be unveiled “sometime
in 2015.” Now we’re being told that the christening might take place before the
end of this year. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Why the rush?
What is being kept from the public? And what is being committed in the name of
writers, who have a responsibility to be good stewards of the language, and
speak the truth? <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Three strikes against the LCD public
hearing:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Strike 1:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Not publicized<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Strike 2:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Not impartial<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Strike 3:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Not informed<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><b>You’re
out!</b></span><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">_____________________________________________<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">1 </b>The Massachusetts Cultural Council (MCC) is the state agency
that, among other things, administers cultural districts within the
Commonwealth. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">2</b> This is additionally ironic when we remember Ayanna
Pressley’s vote to expel Chuck Turner from the city council in 2010. Turner, member
of the Green-Rainbow Party and a longtime Boston activist, was about as close
as we might have come to a genuine ‘people’s’ representative in city government
in our time – that is, until he was framed by the FBI for allegedly accepting
gifts in return for political favors.</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></div>
<!--EndFragment-->Edmond Caldwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02651618912907453630noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4909166734000323323.post-77791944819586546862014-05-07T13:08:00.000-07:002014-08-30T11:19:25.671-07:00Brand in Boston<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Below is the testimony I delivered from the podium at the City of Boston's public hearing on the establishment of a "Literary Cultural District." I'll give a full report on the hearing in a subsequent post. Special thanks to the individual who gave me the idea for this post's title.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">We’ve been hearing a lot
lately from the spokespeople for the Literary Cultural District about
“branding” and “leveraging.” For example, the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Boston Globe</i> <a href="http://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/books/2013/10/26/author-slept-here-boston-literary-community-pushes-for-literary-cultural-district/AYGRJvKI44OXzQIQU8CPjP/story.html">piece</a> from last October spoke of the proposed district
as a “branded zone,” while in a more recent <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Publisher’s
Weekly</i> <a href="http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/digital/retailing/article/61917-boston-creating-a-literary-cultural-district-spotlight-on-new-england-2014.html">article</a>, Grub Street Director Eve Bridburg has said, “We’re thinking
about branding the work that everybody is doing.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">Well, I’m here today with the
modest proposal that Boston’s writers be branded as well. The marking of
individual animals has long been regarded as integral to good herd management; it
is a time-honored way for this Athens of America to increase shareholder equity
in its stock of writers.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">The branding of writers can
even become a beloved annual festival just like the Boston Book Festival and
Muse & the Marketplace. We can hold it right on the Common, in the growing
shadow of new luxury developments like <a href="http://www.millenniumtower.com/">Millennium Tower</a>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">Branding has come a long way since
the days of the old west when you’d just thrust a red-hot poker into the
haunches of a lassoed, bellowing steer. Now there are plenty of other
techniques to choose from, including freeze branding, electrical branding, ear
notching, tattooing inside the lip, and even implanted microchips. Each way has
its advantages and drawbacks.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">First, however, the design
itself must be chosen by the coalition’s democratically-elected Executive
Partners. I suggest a “G” for GrubStreet (or <a href="http://thechagallposition.blogspot.com/2014/01/the-muse-real-estate-marketplace.html">Gentrification</a>) plus a dollar
sign. Just remember that the simpler the design the less painful it is for the
livestock.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj83qxP58o5gbCkyMWsFE7FWo3DVcnGbdU3jq6Kfa8saj0P-MSal0FPe2R_FZgpe8nrSHDehHavSWAk9KQoiL22JuevIQ9QGxOFcHaxr3UtsAJN-_Bkvt6JaLiA8BXTz-jjKkfdE9xoWqlC/s1600/Screen+Shot+2014-05-07+at+10.21.03+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj83qxP58o5gbCkyMWsFE7FWo3DVcnGbdU3jq6Kfa8saj0P-MSal0FPe2R_FZgpe8nrSHDehHavSWAk9KQoiL22JuevIQ9QGxOFcHaxr3UtsAJN-_Bkvt6JaLiA8BXTz-jjKkfdE9xoWqlC/s1600/Screen+Shot+2014-05-07+at+10.21.03+PM.png" height="187" width="200" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 19px;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 19px;">Next of course it must be
decided where on the body the writer will bear the brand. Ideally brands should
be easily seen and readable from over 50 feet, so this suggests the face as the
prime real estate. Here is where “leveraging” could come in, as a way of
lifting and holding the writer’s head steady during this painful but necessary
process.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">Whatever way is chosen for
them by the Executive Partners, Boston’s writers are certain to greet it with
instant, clamorous acclaim; the only downside is the stampede they’ll risk
starting to be first in line. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">Thank you.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGnJv7eKH4M_HAx842NIB_8ZyT0jRM_yJ9nJcclgL9zgPpDkpeTBpIcOv5XiY4KMNwZ_eXSn5a9cdUaYFBYrXSI6FGW2vf_Fih9ajKwsknqdf92OTgTab9wSL06JFF1yQT_C1GEqf2RPe9/s1600/salo.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGnJv7eKH4M_HAx842NIB_8ZyT0jRM_yJ9nJcclgL9zgPpDkpeTBpIcOv5XiY4KMNwZ_eXSn5a9cdUaYFBYrXSI6FGW2vf_Fih9ajKwsknqdf92OTgTab9wSL06JFF1yQT_C1GEqf2RPe9/s1600/salo.png" height="339" width="640" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Boston writers assembling for the annual LCD branding ritual</span></div>
<br />
<br />Edmond Caldwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02651618912907453630noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4909166734000323323.post-62788925444891030552014-03-26T11:13:00.002-07:002014-08-30T11:19:01.084-07:00Destination Culture (Break the Value Chains!)<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 21px;">We haven’t been hearing much about the Literary Cultural
District from its boosters lately, but a few Grub Street </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 21px;"><a href="https://www.grubstreet.org/our-community/staff/">website</a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 21px;"> updates and scattered
tweets here and there suggest that work, or whatever you’d call it, is progressing where
it matters most when it comes to issues of public life in urban spaces – behind
the scenes. Grub Director Eve Bridburg has been busy massaging the local pols,
while more quotidian tasks like being </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 21px;"><a href="http://buquad.com/2014/01/27/a-world-for-writers-readers-and-bostonians-the-making-of-a-literary-cultural-district/">interviewed</a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 21px;"> by BU communications majors
have been offloaded onto Larry Lindner, a local journalist tapped by Bridburg
to be the bearer of that awkward “Literary Cultural District Coordinator” job title.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 21px;"><br /></span>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitfz4PcDSqKbDYdpMT-lLI8ZM-LNKbPwHkRtMxNCCnU3GeRhHVH-K3qCa6FQB0lTpaxyDjx9DhDt5PSpVAIGjuMqrH0OshGSHVQlpuDonPNTxzIpUbnVErUtUnsmEDeGXjk878wPMqs5lN/s1600/Screen+Shot+2014-01-27+at+9.35.58+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitfz4PcDSqKbDYdpMT-lLI8ZM-LNKbPwHkRtMxNCCnU3GeRhHVH-K3qCa6FQB0lTpaxyDjx9DhDt5PSpVAIGjuMqrH0OshGSHVQlpuDonPNTxzIpUbnVErUtUnsmEDeGXjk878wPMqs5lN/s1600/Screen+Shot+2014-01-27+at+9.35.58+AM.png" height="320" width="309" /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 21px;">
</span><br />
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<o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></o:p></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 21px;"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 21px;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWVC9R8Dxpi11zf9yxDlsSszD68sMOSNRFn9BysJ1cdP035p6qVCVOgAjXl9MGjXrcdnjhvP0tgYvzdU5QtT45CRwSTJaeVOhgYROvRalEWyCsqqOXd2kKPoBkXz6Z2FsSSsoCljvHbzOZ/s1600/Screen+Shot+2014-03-19+at+3.41.48+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWVC9R8Dxpi11zf9yxDlsSszD68sMOSNRFn9BysJ1cdP035p6qVCVOgAjXl9MGjXrcdnjhvP0tgYvzdU5QtT45CRwSTJaeVOhgYROvRalEWyCsqqOXd2kKPoBkXz6Z2FsSSsoCljvHbzOZ/s1600/Screen+Shot+2014-03-19+at+3.41.48+PM.png" height="117" width="320" /></a><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></o:p></span></div>
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<o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">Michelle Wu & Ayanna Pressley are both Boston City Councilors at Large; Catherine Peterson is an arts administrator.</span></o:p></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEag1m6D6PMcBYlQrAmJgdM8R9SGY-K_Qk6BAgfjsfZAe22UlZsvcKVWc9Y9e1T2f0c-UqDxI12mp6p7fo_UDK7G4-VadGMaS5nc_UeE7KQdPBridPtAFfQa1f2ji4He_TNazDLqqNyS61/s1600/Screen+Shot+2014-03-25+at+1.18.18+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEag1m6D6PMcBYlQrAmJgdM8R9SGY-K_Qk6BAgfjsfZAe22UlZsvcKVWc9Y9e1T2f0c-UqDxI12mp6p7fo_UDK7G4-VadGMaS5nc_UeE7KQdPBridPtAFfQa1f2ji4He_TNazDLqqNyS61/s1600/Screen+Shot+2014-03-25+at+1.18.18+PM.png" height="200" width="125" /></a></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Oh, there will no doubt be a public hearing at some point –
some point far along the road when the local plutocrats, business owners, politicians,
nonprofit bureaucrats, and arts and culture administrators (with a backing
chorus of the complicit, the compliant, and the clueless – i.e. “writers”) are
all on board and the whole affair is a locked-down, sewn-up, air-tight, across-the-board
fait accompli. In the meantime, we need to do what we can with our own far more
meager resources.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Here for your edification are two brief passages that
illuminate different aspects of the “cultural district” phenomenon. The first
is from Sharon Zukin’s <i><a href="http://books.google.com/books/about/Naked_City_The_Death_and_Life_of_Authent.html?id=DbSK-x5Je3AC">Naked City: The Death & Life of Authentic Urban Places</a> </i>(Oxford UP: 2009). Zukin is best
known for her early, pioneering work on gentrification, <i><a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=wxkEDCUkTwsC&printsec=frontcover&dq=loft+living&hl=en&sa=X&ei=-RIzU9VNya-xBJqqgPgG&ved=0CEAQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=loft%20living&f=false">Loft Living</a></i> (1982), but she has remained a critic of the way
neoliberal capitalism reshapes urban spaces for the purposes of profit. In this
passage Zukin specifically addresses “Destination Culture” – her name for the
cultural district as a strategy for urban redevelopment –
and, using the example of SoHo, she outlines 3 stages that end up producing a
shopping-mall sameness in city after city.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">For the past few decades Destination Culture
has offered a general model of a city’s new beginnings in postindustrial
production and leisure consumption. It suits real estate developers who seek to
encourage the high value of urban land, especially in the center, by converting
it to high-rent uses and appeals to a younger generation who trend toward an
aesthetic rather than a political view of social life. Cities invest in
different forms of Destination Culture, most often building spaces of
consumption for shopping, museum hopping, or entertainment, but also building
spaces of production such as artists’ studios, live-work lofts, and cultural
hubs. With media buzz and rising rents, these spaces shift the city, one
neighborhood at a time, from traditional manufacturing to arts and crafts
production, and then to cultural display, design, and consumption, testing the
market for higher rents and creating ‘new’ space for more intensive uses. Like </i>The
Gates<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>[a Christo and Jeanne-Claude
installation in Central Park, 2005]<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">, all
forms of Destination Culture are judged according to their financial results.
In the end upscale development triumphs over authenticity, whether that is the
authenticity of origins or of new beginnings. <o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">SoHo’s recent transformation illustrates
this process. In the 1970s the legalization of loft living for artists in SoHo
created a space of city-sponsored, though not publicly financed, cultural
production. At that time nearly all street-level spaces, the neighborhood’s
storefronts and first-floor lofts, were used by small manufacturers and suppliers
that catered to them. By 1980, a few years after the artists’ district was
formed, most of these spaces were still used by factories or factory suppliers,
but almost as many housed art galleries. The district attracted an enormous
amount of media attention in lifestyle magazines and art world journals and in
‘New York’ movies as well. Foot traffic swelled. By 1990 art galleries
dominated the storefronts, joined by new, individually owned boutiques and
professional services, while manufacturing visibly waned. SoHo was now known as
an artists’ district, but it was also becoming an interesting place to shop for
new art, trendy clothing, and fine imported cheese. By 2000 art galleries began
to be outnumbered by boutiques, and chain stores of every sort planted
themselves on Broadway, near the subway stations, as well as on the side
streets. Only five years later, with rents dramatically rising, chain stores
outnumbered boutiques two to one, a small number of art galleries remained, and
factories had all but disappeared. An elderly landlord who bought a building on
Broadway in 1966 and is now replacing one of his longtime tenants, a well-known
modern dance company, with an expansion of Banana Republic, says of the rents
that chain stores are wiling to pay, “The sky’s the limit, what they offer me.”<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">By 2005 SoHo was no longer an artists’
district; it was an urban shopping mall. There were low-priced quasi-discount
clothing stores such as H&M, the high-end designer fashion stores such as
Chanel, and almost everything in between. For that matter, SoHo offered few
brands of clothing, jewelry, or shoes that could not be found Uptown on Fifth
or Madison Avenue or in most other big cities around the world. [. . .]<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">In the 1970s no one expected artists’ lofts
in old factory buildings to become the ‘wienie’ as Walt Disney called the
attraction that lures customers to an amusement park, that would make SoHo a
cultural destination. So compelling a vision of renewal did the artists’
district become, though, that the same sequence of events – the conversion of
unused or underpriced industrial buildings into live-work spaces for artists,
with local government support, followed by the emergence of a market for cafés,
boutiques, and bars developed by new cultural entrepreneurs, leading in turn to
higher rents, chain stores, and luxury housing – became a model of Destination
Culture, a model that soon spread to cities around the world.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">As I was reading this passage I remembered one of my
favorite quotes from the <i>Boston Globe </i><a href="http://www.boston.com/2013/10/24/culturaldistrict/AYGRJvKI44OXzQIQU8CPjP/singlepage.html">article</a>
that breathlessly broke the Literary Cultural District story back in October
2013:</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“I
see it as a Broadway for writers,” said Henriette Lazaridis Power, editor of
the <a href="http://www.drumlitmag.com/"><span style="color: windowtext; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Drum</span></a>. “The way Broadway is
a loosely defined geographic area of New York and everyone knows that’s where
you go to find theater, this is a place where people who want to take in
writing in the forms of events will go, and writers will find resources there.”<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFBlFMfKxHgExug6zAYeMLwwy0qUr8hfhAQPcmmTw_kqh7RPYU8HmVhoQz1Uh1wQ7hcq5VH9pom3bDHMr9RSR3WAbae6LoI_Uak3af_7pNrjeIZS1vbLG0pouxuA1gB6KDN-_qsdPHifsT/s1600/6a013481198b41970c0168e970ab1e970c.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFBlFMfKxHgExug6zAYeMLwwy0qUr8hfhAQPcmmTw_kqh7RPYU8HmVhoQz1Uh1wQ7hcq5VH9pom3bDHMr9RSR3WAbae6LoI_Uak3af_7pNrjeIZS1vbLG0pouxuA1gB6KDN-_qsdPHifsT/s1600/6a013481198b41970c0168e970ab1e970c.jpg" height="427" width="640" /></a></div>
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<o:p><br /></o:p></div>
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 21px;">Broadway! Times Square! That’s actually a perfect (and hilariously revealing) comparison
– an urban neighborhood that has been completely and utterly Disneyfied, transformed into one of those shopping malls identified by Sharon Zukin, where
nothing of any authentic culture or character remains, and where you can see
<i>Cats</i> and <i>Les Mis.</i> Seriously, how many working dramatists do you think would go there for "resources," or even theater?</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 21px;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 21px;">
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The Zukin passage gives us an example of how cultural districts
appear to someone who hasn’t drunk the developer Kool-Aid. But now let’s descend into the sausage factory and see how it looks to the producers instead of the consumers and critics. </span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9nM8TyAJSyZX3E8acZg-YUHejoki_5ADyPJ73Fou6_wNqNBANdb2XRxpaL3pXAOjny8X4GOSGAZXq4PVeycwB-XOhp14zsdZO1w6LXzZ8yfSfyki2pfphdEC1xPEWGVll4DYsjOafCRXk/s1600/shutterstock_54806905.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9nM8TyAJSyZX3E8acZg-YUHejoki_5ADyPJ73Fou6_wNqNBANdb2XRxpaL3pXAOjny8X4GOSGAZXq4PVeycwB-XOhp14zsdZO1w6LXzZ8yfSfyki2pfphdEC1xPEWGVll4DYsjOafCRXk/s1600/shutterstock_54806905.jpg" height="400" width="323" /></a></div>
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</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 21px;">Did you know
there was already a textbook out on the subject of cultural districts? Yes, <i><a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=4wS47yGsWGwC&printsec=frontcover&dq=cultural+quarters&hl=en&sa=X&ei=fxMzU8vRJo3ksASXu4GoAw&ved=0CC0Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=cultural%20quarters&f=false">Cultural Quarters: Principles and Practice</a></i>,
by Simon Roodhouse, a book for students who want to become . . . not artists or
writers or what we tend to think of as producers of culture, but bureaucrats – urban
planners, policy makers, middle managers in city government and arts and
culture administrators in the nonprofit sector. I offer this extended quote
because I think it’s important to get beyond all the hype and boosterism we’ve
been fed so far ("literary renaissance!" "a Broadway for writers!") and take a look at how the real operators think about
“culture.”</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 21px;">
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<br /></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The contraposition between the two
developmental views of culture may be traced back to their implicit functional
role: culture as a (macro-)sector of the economy amongst others or culture as a
basic developmental </i>asset<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">, its
economic dimension being a part of the whole picture. The key issue becomes how
deeply interconnected it is with most or all of the other economic sectors, and
to what extent such interconnection contributes to enhancing the local
economy’s overall vitality, competitiveness, and so on.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Typically, cultural activities tend to be
organized into clusters, and interestingly the two alternative views just
introduced act as the main clustering factors. In the traditional, value-added,
macro-sector-centered view, the driving force behind cultural clusters is
vertical integration, i.e. the spatial aggregation of players operating at
various stages of the same value chain. In this case, cultural clusters cannot
but be clusters of activities all directly pertaining to the cultural and
creative fields, characterized by more or less rich and articulated
input-output relationships and by various levels of economies of scale, scope,
and agglomeration. Alternatively, the system-wide (developmental) view focuses
upon horizontal integration, i.e. the strategic complimentarity amongst players
operating in different value chains, so that the driving force between spatial
aggregation becomes the common need to take advantage of the indirect social
and economic effects of cultural activity on a variety of different levels such
as access to innovative thinking, social animation, urban atmosphere, and so
on.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 21px;"><div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">So now let me ask all the writers out there who’ve been enthusiastically
cheerleading this Literary Cultural District project: Are you more a “culture
as macro-sector” type, or do you lean to the “cultural as basic development
asset” side of things? What about it, lit lovers, book people, and Grub Street
scribes, whaddaya say? How do you like your value chains, vertical or horizontal?</span></div>
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 21px;"><div>
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<!--EndFragment--></span>Edmond Caldwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02651618912907453630noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4909166734000323323.post-27916982388104770212014-03-09T13:43:00.000-07:002014-08-30T11:18:31.185-07:00"Literary Fiction" is Genre Fiction<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEid_Lqrxdw6MKdUUk9OMVDmZZMQnqizpg__hoDZGdlrR7pul8pGS1Q20xpmh8LgROjPcSc8xMxg3MgBTh3ISyHLZwIzA1Fus4oYFD25jXlIJyPb0Ei2SbsRXBXFp8OlKF9CB8nKaHixRZOD/s1600/IMG_0631.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEid_Lqrxdw6MKdUUk9OMVDmZZMQnqizpg__hoDZGdlrR7pul8pGS1Q20xpmh8LgROjPcSc8xMxg3MgBTh3ISyHLZwIzA1Fus4oYFD25jXlIJyPb0Ei2SbsRXBXFp8OlKF9CB8nKaHixRZOD/s1600/IMG_0631.JPG" height="480" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">This is from 2011, but well worth highlighting again as the ignorance it addresses remains in full force. It's <a href="http://ambientehotel.wordpress.com/2011/02/26/john-mullan-clapham-the-no-fuck-vampire-novel/">two</a> <a href="http://ambientehotel.wordpress.com/2011/03/12/on-both-yr-houses/">posts</a> by M. John Harrison from his <a href="http://ambientehotel.wordpress.com/">blog</a>.</span><br />
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<br />
<h1 class="entry-title" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; clear: both; color: black; font-family: Georgia, 'Bitstream Charter', serif; font-size: 28px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 33px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 10px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-size: 14px; line-height: 23px;"><h1 class="entry-title" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; clear: both; color: black; font-size: 28px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 33px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 10px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<a href="http://ambientehotel.wordpress.com/2011/02/26/john-mullan-clapham-the-no-fuck-vampire-novel/" rel="bookmark" sl-processed="1" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: black; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">john mullan, clapham & the no-fuck vampire novel</a></h1>
<div class="entry entry-content" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; clear: both; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 1.7em; vertical-align: baseline;">
<div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin-bottom: 15px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
Literary fiction <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/feb/25/literary-fiction-twelve-best-new-novelists" sl-processed="1" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #1c9bdc; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">as described here</a> is the fiction of a generation which discovered “good” novels via B-format in 1980. It is a fiction so very clearly generic that when I read John Mullan’s description of it (complete with successful business model, strict boundary conditions and committed fanbase which won’t read anything else) as <em style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-style: italic; font-weight: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">not</em> genre fiction, I weep with laughter at the sheer depth of his self-deception. Still, by the usual Freudian processes he has said what he really means, & that’s a step forward. The sooner literary fiction recognises & accepts its generic identity, the sooner it can get help. One of the more obvious results of generification is that–as with gentrification–blandness sets in, whether you’re knocking out no-fuck vampire romances or contributing to the high-performing post-Austen industry. Mullan’s genre is a generation old & already deep into predictability. There are ways out of this. The more established genres can show literary fiction how to set up the processes of perpetual lightweight detournment that have enabled them to keep churning away generation on generation, despite a restrictive audience & no economic wiggle-room. One of the benefits is that you need not lose your core content. Indeed, by definition, you mustn’t. So the good news is that, along with its liberal humanist programme, the Clapham arm of literary fiction can continue its project of watering down the linguistic fluency and technical agility of its genuinely interesting precursors from the oh-so-distant past of literature (that great age of Picador, King Penguin, and the Virago Modern Classic, which saw not just the invention of women writers but of magic realism & the euronovel too); while the hipster arm gets a bamboo chip & lemon grass latte & tries out its new neighbourhood app.</div>
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</span></h1>
<h1 class="entry-title" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; clear: both; color: black; font-family: Georgia, 'Bitstream Charter', serif; font-size: 28px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 33px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 10px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<a href="http://ambientehotel.wordpress.com/2011/03/12/on-both-yr-houses/" rel="bookmark" sl-processed="1" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: black; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">on both yr houses</a></h1>
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Judging by their responses I think some readers might have missed the sarcasm in <a href="http://ambientehotel.wordpress.com/2011/02/26/john-mullan-clapham-the-no-fuck-vampire-novel/" sl-processed="1" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #1c9bdc; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">my post</a> on <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/feb/25/literary-fiction-twelve-best-new-novelists" sl-processed="1" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #1c9bdc; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">John Mullan’s Guardian piece</a>.</div>
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For me one of the sharper delights of the piece is its implication that along with “literary fiction”, literature itself began in the 1980s. As some below-the-liners at the <em style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-style: italic; font-weight: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Guardian</em> comment, it seems shortsighted–especially on the part of someone whose academic specialism is the early history of the novel–to associate “literary fiction” not with actual literature but with a rebranding exercise from the Thatcher era.</div>
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Mullan’s snobbery is canonically based. He loves 18th & 19th Century fiction. Yet here he contributes marketing effort to a product that is shallow & trendy, as well as, at times, wafer-thin in terms of its own models and ambitions. His <em style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-style: italic; font-weight: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Guardian</em>piece is written into media time–gossip time–in which deep literary history is what your mum read when she was your age.</div>
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I’m not claiming that, just because literary fiction as described by John Mullan can be shown to have the features of a genre, some other genre therefore deserves to be the princess of everything; only that literary fiction as described by John Mullan (“What is literary fiction? It is not genre fiction.”) can be shown to have the exact features of a genre. It can be shown to have a successful business model, strict boundary conditions & a committed fanbase which doesn’t read anything else (except very occasionally and for something it calls “guilty pleasure”).</div>
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It is interesting to visit the Cheltenham Festival, literary fiction’s equivalent of the annual British Science Fiction Convention, & observe these parameters & constraints in operation. How is it that when conventional behaviour supports crime fiction, fantasy, romantic fiction or science fiction, it is a laughable, even disturbing thing; yet when it supports a certain kind of reader, in pretty, comfortable conditions, with nice food & wine, in a pretty English setting, it is a fine, celebratory thing ?</div>
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Don’t feel you need to answer that. The point is not intended to be divisive anyway, but inclusive:</div>
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If science fiction and “literary fiction” so clearly share the social, structural & economic qualities of a genre or marketing category–a clear & obvious commodification–is it any wonder that both so often represent the very worst of what writing has to offer ? The effect of “literary fiction” on literature has been as destructive as the effect of the sf & fantasy genres on the fiction of the imagination. It has reduced surface to a kind of <a href="http://www.farrow-ball.com/colours/paint/fcp-category/list" sl-processed="1" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #1c9bdc; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">Farrow & Ball</a> blandness, experiment to some clever jokes & humanity to charm. It’s the fictional equivalent of John Lewis.</div>
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A few books to read if you are offended by the deep ordinariness of both literary fiction & science fiction: <em style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-style: italic; font-weight: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The Journal of Albion Moonlight</em> by Kenneth Patchen,<em style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-style: italic; font-weight: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Ice</em> by Anna Kavan, <em style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-style: italic; font-weight: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Manhattan Transfer</em> by John dos Passos, <em style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-style: italic; font-weight: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Concrete Island</em> by JG Ballard, <em style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-style: italic; font-weight: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The Erasers</em> by Alain Robbe Grillet, <em style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-style: italic; font-weight: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The Naked Lunch</em> by William Burroughs. & if you really can’t get the contemporary litfic monkey off your back, at least read <em style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-style: italic; font-weight: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The Bridge of the Golden Horn</em> by Emine Sevgi Ozdamar or get yourself some Aleksandar Hemon.</div>
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Edmond Caldwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02651618912907453630noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4909166734000323323.post-41626032774479854432014-02-15T16:58:00.001-08:002014-08-30T11:18:11.168-07:00Gentrification of the Imagination<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<i>Looking really closely, the most
significant factor differentiating the disappeared avant-garde, destroyed by
AIDS and gentrification, and the replacement artists, more closely aligned with
the social structures necessary to be able to pay contemporary real estate
prices, is professionalization. MFA programs. Especially MFA programs as
markers of caste and brand. I came of age in the East Village in the 1980s. The
freaky, faggy, outrageous, community-based, dangerous, “criminal class” was of
course not the only influence, but they were a huge influence. Yes there were
trust fund babies slumming, et cetera, but many artists I knew and learned from
had an outlaw quality. They had illegal sex, took illegal drugs, hustled
literally and figuratively for money, lived in poverty, and said</i> fuck you<i> to dominant cultural values,
all of which made it possible for them to discover new art ideas later enjoyed
by the world. Many of them died or became marginalized. And they, in part, were
replaced by people who were trained in and graduated from expensive
institutions. The “Downtown” that I was raised in as a young artist included
real innovators, real drag queens, real street dykes, real refugees, real
Nuyoricans, really inappropriate risk-taking, sexually free nihilistic
utopians. Today, “Downtown” means having an MFA from Brown.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<i>Some of them are good writers, and
I’m thankful for that. But the larger cultural point is that the homogeneity of
preparation, combined with the lack of opportunity for those not
institutionally produced, results in an American theater profoundly complicit
with </i>and a tool of <i>the dominant
apparatus – which is the opposite of what should be if it is to provide an
alternative to corporate thinking.</i><o:p></o:p></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">This is a passage from <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Schulman">Sarah Schulman</a>’s<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> <a href="http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520264779">The Gentrification of the Mind: Witness to a Lost Imagination</a></i>. A
mix of memoir and polemic, it’s one of the most fearless and necessary books
I’ve read in a long while. It has certainly helped my thinking about local
cultural phenomena like the <a href="http://thechagallposition.blogspot.com/2012/10/read-fine-print-boston-book-festivals.html">Boston Book Festival</a>, <a href="http://thechagallposition.blogspot.com/2013/12/sinkhole-of-dreams-locating-bostons.html">Grub Street</a>’s <a href="http://thechagallposition.blogspot.com/2014/02/more-market-than-ever.html">Muse & the Marketplace</a>, and the so-called “<a href="http://thechagallposition.blogspot.com/2014/01/the-muse-real-estate-marketplace.html">literary cultural district</a>” initiative. These
examples, with their bedrock commitment to the blandest of middlebrow aesthetic
values and (not coincidentally) their many ties to the region’s <a href="http://thechagallposition.blogspot.com/2014/01/i-for-one-welcome-our-new-insect.html">financial elite</a>,
amply fit Schulman’s description of a culture that has become “profoundly
complicit with <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">and a tool of</i> the
dominant apparatus.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<!--EndFragment-->Edmond Caldwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02651618912907453630noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4909166734000323323.post-92158042615887193722014-02-10T15:03:00.002-08:002014-08-30T11:17:44.576-07:00More Market Than Ever<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I can't really add anything to this.</span><br />
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<br />Edmond Caldwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02651618912907453630noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4909166734000323323.post-18950291514325612472014-01-31T09:33:00.000-08:002014-08-30T11:17:17.537-07:00"I for one welcome our new insect overlords . . ."<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The Grub Street writing center has gone live with its new
website – slicker, more up-to-date, more corporate-looking. There’s a new face,
too, among their </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="https://www.grubstreet.org/our-community/board/">Board of Directors</a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">; make sure you read her bio all the way to
the end:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYEId7_Pbqk34tm92LWArPjT5R8IIVtMohGTQTGZdD44rmlhkbZm3miG1a3HkXqOJRFGyi3RT0KL_WUhurIRmjenpNBzocgdaJsBF2ypXtl1p1onHo6HhlkOmEjdpgUKLlRZko9_Rif8zt/s1600/Screen+Shot+2014-01-23+at+4.42.29+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYEId7_Pbqk34tm92LWArPjT5R8IIVtMohGTQTGZdD44rmlhkbZm3miG1a3HkXqOJRFGyi3RT0KL_WUhurIRmjenpNBzocgdaJsBF2ypXtl1p1onHo6HhlkOmEjdpgUKLlRZko9_Rif8zt/s1600/Screen+Shot+2014-01-23+at+4.42.29+PM.png" height="578" width="640" /></a></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Catch that last line? “</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i>She
and her husband, Scott Nathan, and their two children live in Boston (in the
literary cultural district)”.</i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> Now, according to the </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.boston.com/2013/10/24/culturaldistrict/AYGRJvKI44OXzQIQU8CPjP/singlepage.html">report </a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">that was
published in the Boston Globe, the literary cultural district’s proponents “don’t know exactly where
its borders will lie.” That’s because it’s going to take a couple of years and
thousands of taxpayer bucks just to . . . come up with the map. But wherever
the district might eventually land, someone on the Board of the coalition’s flagship organization already knows that it includes their home address! Perhaps
their nest is built on a well-established literary landmark that’s a shoo-in
for the walking tour, or maybe it’s that attitude of imperial privilege spilling over from Ms DeBonis’s work at Google, where the goal is a private
monopoly over digital access to every book ever.</span><br />
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Maybe I’m being unfair – she and her husband, hedge fund
manager <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/05/scott-nathan-bp_n_3392820.html">Scott Nathan</a> of the billion-dollar Baupost Group, do sit on an awful lot
of local boards and donate tons and tons and tons of dollars to all sorts of
worthy causes – including even Grub Street itself, where they (along with six
other wealthy members of the Grub Street board of directors) belong to the
“Patrons” circle of $5OOO-$9999 <a href="https://www.grubstreet.org/our-community/our-donors/">givers</a>. So when it comes to the virgin
territory of the Literary Cultural District, maybe it’s just a little <i>droit du seigneur</i> to go with all that <i>noblesse oblige</i> . . . </span><o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
More on the Literary Cultural District initiative & Boston's so-called "literary renaissance": </div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<a href="http://thechagallposition.blogspot.com/2013/11/literary-renaissance-or-corporate.html">Part 1</a>, <a href="http://thechagallposition.blogspot.com/2013/12/sinkhole-of-dreams-locating-bostons.html">Part 2</a>, <a href="http://thechagallposition.blogspot.com/2014/01/take-boston-literary-renaissance.html">Part 3,</a> <a href="http://thechagallposition.blogspot.com/2014/01/the-muse-real-estate-marketplace.html">Part 4</a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br />
<br /></div>
Edmond Caldwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02651618912907453630noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4909166734000323323.post-73129222982593685892014-01-16T20:16:00.000-08:002014-08-30T11:16:03.487-07:00 The Muse & the Real Estate Marketplace<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDwEnpFs2nXBBR8pmPFO57u3949F-jJQTj36RSh0ZwneUXnDTYpz-znZ4kK7kXrvxms3CJKUWdAQiNh9LWMptmxrkw-X982oCZX9wurzcGCQq4QvpqFK2pmmsruYorBSWHIWlDLJ2VAusX/s1600/cultquart.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDwEnpFs2nXBBR8pmPFO57u3949F-jJQTj36RSh0ZwneUXnDTYpz-znZ4kK7kXrvxms3CJKUWdAQiNh9LWMptmxrkw-X982oCZX9wurzcGCQq4QvpqFK2pmmsruYorBSWHIWlDLJ2VAusX/s1600/cultquart.jpg" height="300" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Culture so rich, you can smell it.</span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
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<span style="font-family: Verdana;">A friend with a longstanding connection to the
local writing scene asked an important question in a <a href="http://thechagallposition.blogspot.com/2014/01/take-boston-literary-renaissance.html?showComment=1389630694015#c8650572517782634113"><span style="color: #002eda; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">comment</span></a>
after my last <a href="http://thechagallposition.blogspot.com/2014/01/take-boston-literary-renaissance.html"><span style="color: #002eda; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">post</span></a>
on the proposed "Literary Cultural District" in Boston. My response
became a post of its own, which I include here along with her original comment:</span><span style="font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1d1d1d; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Becky said…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="color: #1d1d1d;">Hi E,</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="color: #1d1d1d;">Maybe I'm being dense but I'm
unclear what's so bad about the Cultural District project. Yeah, yeah, the bit
about the literary renaissance might just be hype. That's possibly for
marketing and what-not.</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="color: #1d1d1d;">But a cultural/literary district?
Is that such a bad thing?</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="color: #1d1d1d;">Those who are organizing it will
have their own interests met (obviously, no one is claiming pure altruism
here!) But couldn't this also benefit Boston neighborhoods at large? Won't
greater political leverage allow these organizations to do good stuff
throughout the city? Could not this ultimately lead to broader access to
writing classes, books, and the kind of literary life that presently seems
mainly tied up with Boston's elite?</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="color: #1d1d1d;">I don't actually know. It's true
that a literary district wouldn't address fundamental issues of inequality and
class tensions in the city. It doesn't help organize marginalized folks. It
doesn't go to the root of economic imbalance, labor exploitation, injustice.</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="color: #1d1d1d;">But the district does, again, give
these arts organizations more political leverage to potentially make some sort
of difference. Don't you think?</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="color: #1d1d1d;">Open to your thoughts...</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana;">Becky:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana;">Thanks for writing and engaging thoughtfully with
the issues I’ve been raising about the initiative on the part of <a href="http://www.grubstreet.org/"><span style="color: #002eda; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Grub Street</span></a>, the <a href="http://www.bostonbookfest.org/"><span style="color: #002eda; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Boston Book Festival</span></a>, and others to
establish a “Literary Cultural District” (LCD) here in the city.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana;">I wrote in the closing paragraphs of an earlier <a href="http://thechagallposition.blogspot.com/2013/12/sinkhole-of-dreams-locating-bostons.html"><span style="color: #0025e5;">post</span></a> on this topic that I’d address the
question of <i>cui bono </i>(or "who benefits," i.e., the real reason
behind the project) in a subsequent post. So here it is, and I hope it will
begin to answer your question about why I think the LCD is a bad idea.</span><span style="font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana;">In that earlier post I'd added the teaser that
the short answer was <i>real estate</i>.</span><span style="font-family: Times;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana;">By real estate I’m
talking of course about gentrification. Bluntly, property values will go up in
the district, to the benefit of the owners.</span><span style="font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana;">One might argue that any increase brought about
by a "cultural district" designation would be marginal at best.
That's true, but also misunderstands the real estate market, where every micro-fraction
of value is fought for. For owners of multiple properties and especially for
major investors and the financial institutions that speculate in real estate,
the merest shaving off a point becomes a big deal. With bundled investments,
tiny percentages translate into millions of dollars. Someone is going to
benefit <i>commercially</i> from this supposedly “cultural” venture, and it’s
going to be someone, or rather some small group of people, who sure as shit
don’t NEED any more goodies shoveled their way.</span><span style="font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana;">Now, are some of those individuals directly
behind the LCD initiative, to one or another degree? Maybe, maybe not – the
effect will be the same either way. But the question merits asking because
cultural institutions – from museums and opera houses to art fairs and book
festivals – have a funny way of connecting up to the spheres of the
all-important “FIRE” sector of the economy (an acronym for Finance, Insurance,
and Real Estate).</span><b><span style="font-family: Verdana;">* </span></b><span style="font-family: Verdana;">Go do a little digging on the
boards of directors of the Boston Book Festival, 826 Boston, and even Grub
Street (all in the LCD coalition), and you’ll find a number of individuals with
either past or ongoing involvement in finance capitalism. Here’s just a few to
start you off: The president of 826 Boston’s <a href="http://826boston.org/about/"><span style="color: #0025e5;">Executive Board</span></a>
is an individual named Kevin Whalen, who also has a seat on the 826 National
board. What’s Kevin Whalen do when he’s not fretting about how inner-city
kids’ writing skills will affect their life outcomes? He’s an <a href="http://www.morganstanleyfa.com/whalengroup/groupdetail.htm"><span style="color: #0025e5;">executive vice president</span></a> at Morgan Stanley!
And so it goes: check out the <a href="http://www.grubstreet.org/index.php?id=1870"><span style="color: #0025e5;">bio</span></a>
for Hillary Hedges Rayport, the Chair of Grub Street's Board of Directors:</span><span style="font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="color: #1d1d1d;">Hillary has over 10 years of
experience investing in and guiding small firms through periods of growth,
including seven years of venture capital investing experience in the U.S. and
in London, focused on the technology sector. Most recently, Hillary was a
Senior Consultant at Cambridge Associates, a global investment consulting firm,
where she advised client endowments worth over $2 billion in investment
strategy, asset allocation, and investment manager selection. Prior to joining
Cambridge Associates, Hillary was Vice President of Cytel Software Corporation,
where she was responsible for strategic planning, business development, and
general management. </span> </span><span style="font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana;">What an imposing literary reputation to go with
that posh name! (She also happens to be married to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Rayport"><span style="color: #0025e5;">Jeffrey
Rayport</span></a>). But that's nothing compared to the Boston Book Festival’s <a href="http://www.bostonbookfest.org/about/#who-we-are"><span style="color: #0025e5;">board</span></a>,
which is a miniature Who’s Who of the regional plutocracy, including a hedge
fund banker, a marketing research CEO, and a senior investment officer; people
with decades of experience in places like Salomon Brothers and Goldman Sachs.
I'm not asserting that these individuals will necessarily be the direct
beneficiaries of the inevitable LCD real estate "bump," but they
certainly belong to that same cohort, attend the same parties and openings,
share the same general outlook, values, and goals, etc. What influence have
they had on the decision to launch this project?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana;">On the other side are the losers – folks whose
rents will go up, plain and simple. Once again, the LCD might only marginally
contribute to such an increase, but it will be a factor in the ongoing pricing
out of working people, students, lower-paid professionals, and small
shop-owners (not to mention writers). Be prepared for the day when you see the
ad in the classifieds: “Located in the heart of Boston’s prestigious literary
cultural district, this three-bedroom condominium . . .” Sure, many if not most
of the properties in the proposed area are already overpriced and house only
rich yuppies or swanky boutiques, but there are still pockets where ordinary
people are trying to hang on (Chinatown, for example), plus there is always a
spillover effect into adjacent neighborhoods. (Remember how rents went up in
Somerville right after rent control was axed in Cambridge in 1995).</span><span style="font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana;">Note also that one of the purposes of the LCD is
to promote “cultural tourism," the <i>Globe</i> article even boasting that
cultural tourists “spend $62 more per day than their philistine counterparts.”
It’s an obnoxious but revealing statement, as close as it comes to a flat-out
admission of gentrification. Cultural districts (or cultural quarters, as
they’re called in the UK) have been around since the early 1990s, originally
devised for the purpose of “revitalizing” (i.e., gentrifying) neighborhoods
that have been hollowed out by the boom and bust vagaries of capitalism in
former manufacturing towns (locally, places like Lynn and Pittsfield). The
trendy rhetoric of a new, post-industrial economy driven by “creatives” is
always deployed in one way or another; the novelty in this case is that it’s
writers. But what it will translate into is a walking tour past some “Robert
Lowell shat here” plaques on streets lined with cafés with literary names and
foodie stops with black-and-white framed pictures of writers on the walls.
Cultural tourism raises rents and homogenizes neighborhoods in the service of
producing a spectacle of consumption, a Disney version of a city’s cultural
heritage where tourists can “shop” for the signifiers of social distinction
associated with the arts. How will that help the majority of actual writers
working in the region? Will the cultural tourists come to observe us in some
simulation of our natural environment, and toss peanuts through the bars of our
cages?</span><span style="font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana;">Inarguably, it will help a small number of
individual writers: those who are working on the project directly. But these
are really cultural bureaucrats who happen to write and publish a few things on
the side for the sake of their bureaucrat credentials – people like <a href="http://www.google.com/#q=henriette+lazaridis+power"><span style="color: #0025e5;">Henriette Lazaridis Power</span></a> – rather than actual
writers in any meaningful sense. You are therefore correct in your comment that
“those who are organizing it will have their own interests met,” but not when
you add, “obviously, no one is claiming pure altruism here!” The repeated claim
is that the LCD is being developed on behalf of “the literary community”
without the necessary addendum that by this they mean primarily themselves.
Please let me know if I’ve overlooked the places where the self-interest of the
individuals or institutions in the coalition has been acknowledged in their
requests for public status, public attention, and public funds.</span><span style="font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana;">The net social effect of these institutions is
not benign. Culture, unless it is consciously oppositional, functions to
reproduce existing social relations, and that is exactly what Grub Street, 826
Boston, and the Boston Book Festival do (see my remarks about them in an
earlier <a href="http://thechagallposition.blogspot.com/2013/12/sinkhole-of-dreams-locating-bostons.html"><span style="color: #0025e5;">post</span></a>). I certainly don’t take them as
representatives of the area’s “literary community” just because they advertise
themselves as such. What they offer are <i>pseudo-communities in the service of
the commodity</i>, and their existence is in fact a reflection of the weakness
and fragmentation of authentic cultural communities. While Grub Street, 826
Boston, and the Boston Book Festival are already braided into regional networks
of private wealth and public power (the City of Boston is one of the coalition
partners), the LCD project will help them to cohere further into a local
cultural <i>apparat </i>with ever-stronger ties to the state, property owners,
and wealthy investors. This is what the “political leverage” you discuss will
really amount to: local writers will benefit to the extent that they are <i>willing
to participate deferentially within the bureaucratic network</i>, sharing its
values and reproducing them in their works and public activities. Of course
this is already true to a great extent, but it will get even worse . . . or
better, I suppose, if one is on board with being a lackey.</span><span style="font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana;">Finally: <i>Of course</i> the literary renaissance
stuff is hype, as you come close to uneasily acknowledging. But in that case,
how can you shrug it off as “just marketing and what-not” and still claim to be
a writer? Aren’t we supposed to be the language’s caretakers? Or have we all
become cynical marketers ourselves, including marketers <i>of</i> ourselves? Do
you want to tell the truth, or do you want to churn out ad copy that happens to
take the form of stories and reviews? The literary renaissance rhetoric is not
“just marketing and what-not” – it’s a <i>lie</i>. So-called writers spend way
too much time today doing this kind of lying. It is the effect, by the way, of
the whole “Muse & the Marketplace” mentality. It’s squalid; it is
debasing; it spreads an ethical and artistic rot. Are we going to be mere
courtiers to power, or are we going to start telling the truth?</span><span style="font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana;">In the name of art and human dignity, </span><span style="font-family: Verdana;"><b>FUCK
THE MARKETPLACE</b></span><span style="font-family: Verdana;">.</span><span style="font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana;">Yours truly,</span><span style="font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana;">E.</span><span style="font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana;">____________________________________________</span><span style="font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">·</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"> *</span><span style="font-family: Verdana;">David Harvey’s essay, “The
Art of Rent,” available online <a href="http://www.generation-online.org/c/fc_rent1.htm"><span style="color: #0025e5;">here</span></a>,
should be everyone’s first stop in educating themselves about the way
neoliberal capitalism deploys culture to remake the modern city in its own
image and for its own profit.</span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"> </span> </span><span style="font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<!--EndFragment-->Edmond Caldwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02651618912907453630noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4909166734000323323.post-58265715546695408902014-01-06T10:20:00.000-08:002014-08-30T11:13:40.298-07:00Take the Boston Literary Renaissance Challenge!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEI9RqnnaZUz-jP9atKngAb9DZGoaz7Y800hJRfUEC-dF_nhgihp1uZuAdQVEdy_g5izvA_Z91whi32ZMwaJ9x8GsmncDPgDP50zfs6zMTIxEJP7L_zBbOAa07zvQBkbKrBYEBk4UNapVB/s1600/1c1s+mod+B.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEI9RqnnaZUz-jP9atKngAb9DZGoaz7Y800hJRfUEC-dF_nhgihp1uZuAdQVEdy_g5izvA_Z91whi32ZMwaJ9x8GsmncDPgDP50zfs6zMTIxEJP7L_zBbOAa07zvQBkbKrBYEBk4UNapVB/s1600/1c1s+mod+B.gif" height="640" width="478" /></a></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">For the last four years, the </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.bostonbookfest.org/">Boston Book Festival</a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> has
organized a citywide </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.bostonbookfest.org/attend/1c1s/">program</a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> known as One City One Story. The program produces
and distributes 30,000 free, bound copies of a short story by a local author
and hosts a variety of events related to it, capped off by a “town hall-style
discussion” with the author at the festival itself. Here are the four stories
chosen so far:</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">2010: “The Smile on Happy Chang’s
Face,” by Tom Perrotta<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">2011: “The Whore’s Child,” by
Richard Russo<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">2012: “The Lobster Mafia Story,” by
Anna Solomon<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">2013: “Karma,” by Rishi Reddi</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Now a coalition of local literary institutions including the
Boston Book Festival, <a href="http://www.826boston.org/">826 Boston</a>, and others, and spearheaded by the <a href="http://www.grubstreet.org/">Grub Street </a>writing center, is banging the drum about a supposed "literary
renaissance" in the region. According to <a href="http://thechagallposition.blogspot.com/2013/12/sinkhole-of-dreams-locating-bostons.html">reports</a>, the goal is the creation of a
so-called Literary Cultural District in the downtown area that will promote
cultural tourism while advancing the interests of the area’s writing community. The existence of this literary renaissance is the premise on which
the application for cultural district status hinges.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Of course it’s pure hype: the “literary community” whose
interests will be served just happens to be identical to the coalition
organizing the drive, and to inflate their trial balloon they’ve sucked a
“literary renaissance” out of their thumbs. As evidence, the organizers point
to such things as the number of writing workshops and public readings in the
area instead of to emergent literary trends, new forms, and specific works; in
other words, they look to quantity rather than quality. But surely a literary
renaissance requires qualitative measures, however subjective these might be? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">So: to all supporters of the Boston “Literary Cultural
District,” here’s your opportunity to GET REAL! If you think Boston is “undergoing
a literary renaissance,” NOW’s your chance to do more than just “Like” that
shit on Facebook! And<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> especially</i> if
you’re one of the project’s organizers, here’s the chance to walk the walk instead
of just sounding like a carnival barker. Take...</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><b>The Boston Literary
Renaissance Challenge!</b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">It turns out that the Boston Book Festival has after all
been doing us a huge favor with its One City One Story program. Four recent
works by four regional authors! Selected because they are somehow</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> good</i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> as well as representative of
regional life in a discussion-worthy way!</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">*
</b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Moreover, selected by members of the </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">same</i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">
<i>cohort </i>who now trumpet that we’re “undergoing a literary renaissance”! So it
just stands to reason that these four stories will embody, express, and reflect
the current “literary renaissance” that Boston is said to be “undergoing,”
right? What better way to test the renaissance hypothesis than by analyzing these One City One Story offerings as a group! If the judgment of the organizers is to be
trusted, surely this selection will yield four radiant examples of our
cultural rebirth, guaranteeing that new Longfellows and </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Little Women</i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> walk among us!</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The Challenge: Write an essay demonstrating how the four One
City One Story selections for the period 2010-2013 – Tom Perrotta’s “<a href="http://thechagallposition.blogspot.com/2010/12/press-release-for-dirty-bomb.html">The Smile on Happy Chang’s Face</a>,” Richard Russo’s “The Whore’s Child,” Anna Solomon’s
“The Lobster Mafia Story,” and Rishi Reddi’s “Karma” – exemplify the current
literary renaissance in Boston. What’s new and rebirthy about the form and
content of these tales? How do they reflect that highest degree of
accomplishment suggested by the vaunted term ‘renaissance’? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">There is no specific minimum or maximum word count; the
essay should simply be long enough to support the thesis in a robust and
definitive way. <a href="http://contrajameswood.blogspot.com/">Book reviewers</a> and literary critics do this all the time in
newspapers, magazines, and journals and on countless websites and blogs. They
make arguments about literary quality – what’s great, good, mediocre, and
downright bad – and try to support these arguments with clear reasoning,
informed comparison with other authors and works, appropriate historical and
biographical context, and direct citation from the texts themselves. So it
shouldn’t be any problem for you renaissance boosters, right?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In fact, I believe those who are pushing for a Literary
Cultural District based on the assertion that there’s a literary renaissance in
town have an<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> obligation</i> to do this.
If you’re going around jawing about some new age of literary wonders and
stand to benefit from others seeing it that way, too, then <i>the burden of proof
is on you</i>. Someone from the coalition
needs to step up and write this essay, making the case for a real literary renaissance based on what they’ve been placing on the table as
“quality” in recent years. <b>Failure to do so can only be seen an abdication of
responsibility, a declaration of cultural bankruptcy, and a demonstration of
the most abject cowardice.</b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Email your responses to caldwelledmond@gmail.com. I will
post them on this site and . . . we’ll go from there. Or post them on your own
site and send me the link.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">*</b> No African
American or Latina authors so far, nor any significant Black or non-Asian Brown
characters in the stories themselves. So much for the “community” we keep
hearing so much about. And yet I’ll bet that the stories have
been assigned – as part of a lovely civic participation thing – in a number of
area classrooms where most of the kids are Black or non-Asian Brown. Maybe the idea
that a literary renaissance is something one “undergoes” applies most genuinely
to them.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<!--EndFragment-->Edmond Caldwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02651618912907453630noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4909166734000323323.post-28660571589048988322013-12-27T19:46:00.003-08:002014-08-30T11:15:39.016-07:00Sinkhole of Dreams: Locating Boston's "Literary Renaissance"<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1F0wqyML773-F5B7jbrI__bJq9Szo4-paSFwYEIGXDL-Stvin0JBzGI4EnT_TxN04k19J9HW_B2NprEycrPfL4M4RnOuDuXFYGr3IsbkhWevxB-6tgYYr6VYvGs_GWrV40iIep_qLssrv/s1600/three_wise_monkeys.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1F0wqyML773-F5B7jbrI__bJq9Szo4-paSFwYEIGXDL-Stvin0JBzGI4EnT_TxN04k19J9HW_B2NprEycrPfL4M4RnOuDuXFYGr3IsbkhWevxB-6tgYYr6VYvGs_GWrV40iIep_qLssrv/s640/three_wise_monkeys.jpg" height="360" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-small;">Boston's "literary cultural district" starts here.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">First there was the </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="http://thechagallposition.blogspot.com/2013/11/literary-renaissance-or-corporate.html">job ad</a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> at the Grub Street </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.grubstreet.org/">website</a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> for
something called a “Literary Cultural District coordinator.” Then a press
release must’ve sallied forth, because next we saw a string of more or less
identical articles popping up in venues from </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.mhpbooks.com/boston-creates-the-first-literary-cultural-district-in-the-country/">MobyLives</a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> to the </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Paris Review</i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2013/10/28/literary-cultural-districts-and-other-news/">blog</a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Beth Teitell of the </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Boston Globe</i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">, however, decided to decorate her copy of the press
release with a little original research – not “investigative journalism”
exactly, but a bouquet of rah-rah quotes from the initiative’s backers, who for
some reason are granted the name of “the city’s literary community.” The </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.boston.com/2013/10/24/culturaldistrict/AYGRJvKI44OXzQIQU8CPjP/singlepage.html">article</a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> starts
like this:</span><br />
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The
end of this story has yet to be written. But if things go as the city’s
literary community hopes, sometime in 2015, Boston will be home to what’s
believed to be the nation’s first literary cultural district. Its proponents
don’t know exactly where its borders will lie, or what, precisely, visitors will
do, but more significant is this: the very idea that there could be a literary
cultural district is recognition that the city is undergoing a renaissance.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The very idea!</i> In
a different context – say, a Christopher Guest mockumentary or a Judy Garland-Mickey
Rooney matinee – there might be something breathlessly, clumsily <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">cute</i> about it: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">We don’t
know exactly where its going to be, or what, exactly, folks are going to do
there – but, by golly, let’s put on a show!!!</i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But this isn’t Blaine, Missouri, it’s Boston,
and the initiative’s founding premise is something between a delusion and a
deception.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Boston, we’re told, is “undergoing a renaissance.” The Grub
Street job ad had been even more brazen: “Today, our city is undergoing a
literary renaissance.” Strange, then,
that the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Globe</i> article doesn’t adduce
a single author or title as evidence of this rebirth, let alone the critical
mass<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>of writers and works and the
ferment of contending voices and trends that might add up to a credible
“renaissance.” What a threadbare literary
renaissance, with no literature to call its own! <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">At least Grub Street had tried to muster up a short-list. Let’s
revisit the job ad to see what was being offered as evidence: “Literary stars
like James Carroll, Steven Pinker, Tom Perrotta, and Anita Shreve work here…” Well,
James Carroll is a 70 year-old journalist who once wrote a string of
journalistic novels in a popular, journalistic style; Steve Pinker is a brain
scientist-cum-bloviator who asserts there’s no evolutionary warrant for art
that isn’t realistic and pretty; Tom Perrotta writes screenplays masquerading
as novels and keeps his fingers crossed that they’ll be picked up by Hollywood,
and Anita Shreve produces those well-crafted middle-class soap operas that are dignified
by the name “literary fiction.” It’s like calling the Washington Generals a “basketball
renaissance”; if these are your starters, what’s your bench like? On second
thought, maybe it was an act of discretion for the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Globe</i> article to leave that part out.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">No, for this “literary renaissance,” instead of writers and
their works we have . . . institutions. Come to think of it, they were Exhibit
A even in the Grub Street ad, with the list of authors just an embarrassed
afterthought: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Today,
our city is undergoing a literary renaissance. We are blessed with the Boston
Public Library, the important archives at the Boston Athenaeum, and the work of
publishers like Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and Beacon Press. Grub Street has
become the leading literary center in the country, welcoming over 2,500 writing
students a year and hosting a premier writers' conference each May at the Park
Plaza Hotel; the Boston Book Festival draws 30,000 people to Copley every
October; 826 Boston inspires children to write and publish. Literary stars like
yadda yadda blah blah blah work here…<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Globe </i>infomercial
corrals the same institutions to ratify the existence of our supposed
renaissance. Some of them – like Boston Public Library and the Boston Athenæum
(a members-only library for rich people on Beacon Hill) – are a little hoary to
be signifying the green shoots of a cultural springtide. Others, however, are
indeed of more recent minting, including the three that make up a sort of
central triumvirate in our recent rash of renaissance sightings: Grub Street (founded
in 1997), 826 Boston (2007), and the Boston Book Festival (2009). In the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Globe</i> piece, we find Christina Thompson,
editor of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Harvard Review</i>, and Eve
Bridburg, founder of Grub Street, retailing this “just so” story of cultural renewal:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Thompson
credits Grub Street, in part, for the flowering, and Bridburg, who started the
center in 1997. . . recalled the literary scene at the time. “</i><span style="color: windowtext;">826 Boston </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">[a nonprofit tutoring and writing center]
didn’t exist,” she said. “The Boston Book Festival didn’t exist, and it’s
drawing [about] 25,000 people every fall to Copley Square.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The problem is that these entities also happen to be the
project’s own sponsors, so rather than enlightening us about any actual rebirth
of the local literary arts, we’re given tautological reasoning as a cover for
possible conflict of interest. Who are these institutions that have arrogated to
themselves the right to speak as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">THE</i>
literary community in Boston?</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In public, at least, Grub Street has assumed the role of the
Literary Cultural District’s prime mover. It’s to be the chief employer of the part-time
“Literary Cultural District coordinator,” whose $18,000 salary will most likely
come from the $42,500 grant that the Globe reports the organizers’ coalition
received from the Massachusetts Cultural Council to “refine its concept” into
an actual proposal (or something like that). Grub Street is an independent,
non-profit writing center that offers a broad menu of workshops and hosts an annual
writers <a href="http://www.grubstreet.org/index.php?id=2910">conference</a> called The Muse & the Marketplace. The name of the
conference telegraphs Grub Street’s number one article of faith: writers should
accommodate themselves and their work to the corporate-dominated publishing marketplace. Drafts are read and critiqued according to
what the well-intentioned instructors think agents and editors want to see,
which is increasingly what marketing and publicity departments want to see, and
all of which goes by the name of what readers supposedly want to consume. Thus
we have the whole dreary raft of advice familiar from most MFA courses – <i>You need a conflict on the first page to
hook the reader! Your main character must be relatable! Show don’t tell! The
three-act structure recommended for screenplays is really handy for novels as
well! Show don’t tell! Every scene must contribute to the action! SHOW DON’T
TELL!!! </i>Then, because in this marketplace you have to peddle yourself as
well as your work, there are courses that will help you with your “platform” –
things like your website, your pitch, and how much thigh to flash on the street
corner when the agents and editors pass by. At Grub Street, the Marketplace <i>is</i> the Muse. <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Détourned poster for 2011 Muse and Marketplace. Original <a href="http://thechagallposition.blogspot.com/2011/04/muse-marketplace.html">here</a>.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">How about </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.826boston.org/">826 Boston</a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">? Isn’t that a writing and tutoring center
for inner city kids or something like that? Nonprofit, funded by generous
donors, staffed by hardworking volunteers? Founded by that hip writer guy and
all-around do-gooder Dave Eggers, who also started </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i>McSweeneys</i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> and </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i>The Believer</i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">?
What could be wrong with that, Mr. Grinch? Well, maybe nothing if you think
some combination of volunteerism (remember George Bush Sr.’s “thousand points
of light”?), corporate business tactics, and the innate generosity of the 1%
when unfettered by socialistic taxes and trade unions is going to solve the
problems of educational apartheid in this country. Sure, Eggers and co-founder
Ninive Calegari’s 826 centers and their “</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.theteachersalaryproject.org/">Teacher Salary Project</a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">” might give you
the warm fuzzies at first pass. But scratch the surface and you’ll find that they
are implicated in the ongoing push for charter schools and other elements
of the neoliberal “education reform” movement (see for example </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2011/09/american_teacher_dave_eggers_and_matt_damon_s_new_documentary_is.single.html">these</a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/01/24/1057784/--American-Teacher-American-Hoax#">reviews</a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> of Eggers and
Calegari’s propaganda documentary, </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i>American Teacher</i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">). Funded by billionaires
and elite foundations, and backed by Democratic and Republican politicians
alike, the education reform movement is nothing more than a corporate scam whose
ultimate goal is the gutting of teachers unions and the for-profit privatization
of public education. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span></div>
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<o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-small;">US Secretary of Education (and <a href="http://www.thenation.com/blog/170194/lesson-arne-duncan#">scumbag</a>) Arne Duncan pals it up with Dave Eggers at 826 Valencia.</span></o:p></div>
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<o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></o:p></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The third major player in this “literary renaissance” is the
<a href="http://www.bostonbookfest.org/">Boston Book Festival</a>. Founded in 2009 by
wealthy socialite Deborah Z. Porter and held each year in Copley Square, the
festival boasts a growing attendance and ostensibly widening “community” involvement.
I’ve written already about the festival’s
track record for reptilian, community-busting corporate sponsors and the elite
interests and unsavory agenda represented by their Board of Directors (<a href="http://thechagallposition.blogspot.com/2012/07/boston-book-festivals-transgressions-or.html">here</a> and <a href="http://thechagallposition.blogspot.com/2012/10/read-fine-print-boston-book-festivals.html">here</a>). It should come as no surprise, then, that the view of literary
culture <a href="http://thechagallposition.blogspot.com/2010/12/press-release-for-dirty-bomb.html">advanced</a> by the Boston Book Festival is tailored to be as inoffensive
as possible to the interests of its corporate sponsors and founders. Hewing tightly to the cultural mean
established in these parts by WNBR – our National Public Radio affiliate and
the talent pool for most of the event’s presenters – the Boston Book Festival
exists primarily to flatter the narcissism of the region’s professional-managerial
class. If writer interviews with Terri Gross and calling torture “enhanced
interrogation” are your kind of thing, then the Boston Book Festival should be right up the alley where you park your SUV. For the rest of us, it’s a top-down,
corporate occupation of public space and public bandwidth, with no actual
involvement from the “community” it purports to serve, and indeed a real
hostility to the interests of most of that community.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Of course this raises the question – in fact <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">the</i> all-important question – of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">cui bono</i>, who benefits? Whose interests
are actually served by cultural phenomena such as these? Who stands to benefit most
from the establishment of “the nation’s first literary cultural district”? Is
it possible that the organizers sincerely believe their own hype about a “literary
renaissance” here in Boston? And if they don’t – in other words if they’re just
cynical instead of delusional – what’s really going on behind the scenes? What
forces are motivating the decisions of these individuals and groups as social
actors on the local stage?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I’ll give my own thoughts in a subsequent post (although the
short answer, for those of you who want to study ahead, is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">real estate</i>). In the meantime, I invite all enthusiastic supporters
of the Literary Cultural District to take<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> <a href="http://thechagallposition.blogspot.com/2014/01/take-boston-literary-renaissance.html">The Boston Literary Renaissance Challenge!</a></b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<!--EndFragment-->Edmond Caldwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02651618912907453630noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4909166734000323323.post-77661119472326944002013-11-05T11:05:00.000-08:002014-08-30T11:11:12.312-07:00"Literary Renaissance" or Corporate Miserabilism? You Decide!<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">This listing has disappeared from <a href="http://www.grubstreet.org/">Grub Street</a>'s job opportunities page, so either they've come to their senses or the position has been filled. As a gift to posterity, however, I'm posting it here. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">With its exquisite synthesis of journalese, ad-man lingo, and management-speak, it's a sterling example of the exciting "literary renaissance" that Boston is currently "undergoing." </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Note how "writers" is comfortably nestled between "philanthropic funding" and "publishing entrepreneurs." And I can never get enough of "liaising" as a verb! Not to mention the with-it swagger of "growing" as a transitive verb -- "growing the list"! And how about the coy afterthought of "a demonstrated love and passion for the literary arts" as a "plus" for any candidate (after "political and fundraising experience" and all the other qualifications, of course).<b>*</b></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I'll have more to say in future posts about Boston's "Literary Cultural District" initiative, but in the meantime: Long may the immortal spirit of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow liaise with the "branding process" and grow the "improved signage"!</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; font-size: 18px; line-height: 24px;">Literary Cultural District Coordinator (part-time)</span></h1>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px;"><strong style="background-color: white; font-style: normal; font-weight: bold;">September 12th, 2013</strong></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px;">By the mid-nineteenth century, Boston was called “The Athens of America” because it was home to publishing powerhouses like Ticknor and Fields and Little Brown, as well as some of the most enduring writers in our history, including Nathaniel Hawthorne, Louisa May Alcott, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Washington Street was a mecca of magazine and journal publishing. Writing published in Boston contributed both to the development of literature and social justice in the United States.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px;">Today, our city is undergoing a literary renaissance. We are blessed with the Boston Public Library, the important archives at the Boston Athenaeum, and the work of publishers like Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and Beacon Press. Grub Street has become the leading literary center in the country, welcoming over 2,500 writing students a year and hosting a premier writers' conference each May at the Park Plaza Hotel; the Boston Book Festival draws 30,000 people to Copley every October; 826 Boston inspires children to write and publish. Literary stars like James Carroll, Steven Pinker, Tom Perrotta, and Anita Shreve work here, and new presses like Plympton and SixOneSeven are planting seeds.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px;">We have a unique opportunity to harness the work of these organizations, clustered together downtown, to create the nation’s first Literary Cultural District. With an intentional, coherent approach to our collective work, improved signage, partnerships with hotels and restaurants, and marketing, we will make our neighborhood more vibrant by increasing cultural tourism and participation in literary arts and by attracting more philanthropic funding, writers, and publishing entrepreneurs. Current Partners include the Boston Public Library, the Boston Athenaeum, the Boston Book Festival,</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px;"><em style="font-style: italic; font-weight: normal;">The Drum,</em></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px;">and the City of Boston, but we will be growing the list significantly now that we have funding to make the project happen. Interest is very high.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px;"><strong style="font-style: normal; font-weight: bold;">ROLE AND RESPONSIBILITIES</strong></span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px;">The LCD Coordinator will be overseen by Grub Street management, and will work 18 hours/week on the project at Grub Street’s offices.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px;">The overall role of the LCD Coordinator is to give the project momentum, to keep all partner and collaborating organizations on track and to facilitate partners' work for district by handling all administrative tasks. Specific responsibilities include:</span><br />
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<ul style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 15px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 15px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">
<li style="list-style-image: initial; list-style-position: initial; list-style-type: square; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 25px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 5px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;">Applying to MCC for cultural district status</span></li>
<li style="list-style-image: initial; list-style-position: initial; list-style-type: square; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 25px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 5px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;">Managing the branding process with outside design firm</span></li>
<li style="list-style-image: initial; list-style-position: initial; list-style-type: square; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 25px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 5px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;">Coordinating all project meetings and moving the project forward by creating a timeline and benchmarks</span></li>
<li style="list-style-image: initial; list-style-position: initial; list-style-type: square; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 25px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 5px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;">Facilitating the Literary Data Tool project</span></li>
<li style="list-style-image: initial; list-style-position: initial; list-style-type: square; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 25px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 5px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;">Managing marketing efforts for the calendar and website</span></li>
<li style="list-style-image: initial; list-style-position: initial; list-style-type: square; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 25px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 5px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;">Generating content for the newsletter</span></li>
<li style="list-style-image: initial; list-style-position: initial; list-style-type: square; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 25px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 5px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;">Liaising with hotels and restaurants</span></li>
<li style="list-style-image: initial; list-style-position: initial; list-style-type: square; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 25px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 5px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;">Actively researching funding options</span></li>
<li style="list-style-image: initial; list-style-position: initial; list-style-type: square; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 25px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 5px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;">Helping to write the district-wide marketing strategy</span></li>
</ul>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px;"><strong style="font-style: normal; font-weight: bold;">SKILLS AND EXPERIENCE</strong></span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px;">The idea candidate is a dynamic, self-starter, with excellent and proven project management and organizational skills, experience planning and facilitating meetings, excellent communications skills, and an ability to work well with a wide variety of people. Political and fundraising experience is a plus as is a demonstrated love and passion for the literary arts.</span><br />
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px; margin-bottom: 12px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px;"><strong style="background-color: white; font-style: normal; font-weight: bold;">COMPENSATION AND LOGISTICS</strong></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px;">$18,000 yearly stipend.</span><br />
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px; margin-bottom: 12px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">
</div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px;">To apply, please submit a resume and brief cover letter to</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px;"><a href="mailto:drew@grubstreet.org" style="color: #cc0000; outline-color: initial; outline-style: none; outline-width: initial; text-decoration: none;">drew@grubstreet.org</a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px;">.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px;"><em style="font-style: italic; font-weight: normal;">No calls, please.</em></span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px;"><em style="font-style: italic; font-weight: normal;"><br /></em></span></span>
<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px;"><em style="font-style: italic; font-weight: normal;">##################</em></span></span></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px;"><em style="font-style: italic; font-weight: normal;"><br /></em></span></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 19px;"><b>*</b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small; font-weight: normal;"> With extra credit bonus points awarded for the romance-novel overkill of "love AND passion"!</span></span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px;"><i><br /></i></b></span>Edmond Caldwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02651618912907453630noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4909166734000323323.post-76875826369332458812012-10-24T20:34:00.002-07:002012-10-24T20:46:18.201-07:00Read the Fine Print! The Boston Book Festival's Creepy Corporate Sponsors<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Here lies Public Education</span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSjCZNTd5Hq1fmHuhPH3gllBmMKTunGg3WjvgSrh79h8lUJWvuEiCMjKr1JJLN1L3b6Ft_gTx41TJKzjpNoh1GTHqBhMdNC4xO7O9a-TCQDbtHcXNtZ5cQCGvANJ5ZoOWSzt3f-29Fg3_0/s1600/ca-raymnd_cem_stone_9-30-10_3901.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="347" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSjCZNTd5Hq1fmHuhPH3gllBmMKTunGg3WjvgSrh79h8lUJWvuEiCMjKr1JJLN1L3b6Ft_gTx41TJKzjpNoh1GTHqBhMdNC4xO7O9a-TCQDbtHcXNtZ5cQCGvANJ5ZoOWSzt3f-29Fg3_0/s400/ca-raymnd_cem_stone_9-30-10_3901.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Brought to you by the Pearson corporation</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">On October 15, 2011, in the early
days of the Occupy movement at Dewey Square, a very different sort of
encampment briefly occupied another of the city’s public spaces barely a mile
away. The tents of the <a href="http://www.bostonbookfest.org/">Boston Book
Festival</a> in Copley Square were visited by thousands of people that day, but
the contrast between the two occupations couldn’t have been more stark: in Dewey
Square, a rough-hewn but genuinely grassroots “festival of the oppressed”; at
Copley, a top-down, stage-managed, and one-way simulation of “open”
culture. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">For those who had read the fine print,
however, this would’ve come as no surprise – the Boston Book Festival is a
prime example of culture occupied by corporations. And it’s coming back to
Copley Square again this October 27.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The BBF’s organizers, including its
wealthy founder and president, Deborah Z. Porter, have relied on a number of
morally and politically repulsive sponsors over the four years of the event’s
existence. In 2009, for example, they warmly embraced the Boston-based State
Street Corporation as their “Presenting Sponsor.” This financial investment
giant would go on to help Republican Scott Brown take Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat
in 2010 and then successfully lobby Brown and other senators to gut key
provisions from the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill, including a $19 billion
tax on banks that the senators insisted should be made up in spending cuts. One
of those tax-dodging banks was Bank of America, which at the same time was
feasting on $45 billion in government bailouts, leading the nation in home foreclosures
. . . and enjoying its role in successive years as a Boston Book Festival
sponsor.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The festival’s organizers loudly
advertise their efforts as being all about “the community” while bringing on
sponsors who are notorious community-shredders. Take Verizon: in August 2011, almost
45,000 Verizon workers – including 6000 here in Massachusetts – went out on
strike for 2 weeks before having to return to work without a new contract.
Verizon was trying to squeeze $1 billion in concessions out of its workers,
including cuts in health and retirement benefits, scheduled wage increases, and
vacation and sick days. This same company had received over $12 billion in tax
subsidies since 2008, hadn't paid a thin dime in taxes over the same period,
and continued to lavish multi-million dollar salaries on their top
executives. Yet Deborah Z. Porter and the other BBF organizers welcomed Verizon
and its ill-gotten dollars into the festival with open arms, allowing the
company to burnish its slimy reputation and secure a little brand loyalty among
future generations by hosting a children's "StoryPlace."</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">This year the honor of hosting the
kids’ <a href="http://www.bostonbookfest.org/bookfest/schedule_detail/schedule_storyplace3/">StoryPlace</a>
belongs to a different corporate sponsor, the Pearson Foundation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Less immediately familiar to most people than
Verizon, it’s a quieter choice, but in many ways even more troubling. The
Foundation is the “non-profit” arm of the UK-based multinational media octopus,
Pearson plc., the world’s largest book publisher and provider of education
materials and services. The Pearson corporation briefly made headlines last
spring when the New York State Education Department had to pull a number of flawed
questions from its Pearson-produced math and English exams, including several questions
for eighth graders relating to a bizarre story featuring a talking
pineapple.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWH1QwXo56dltFLIPCstsHikSCFyjCHi4bPZRK0pS2WWveK0a0LfXPLm6Ume2SOgbSTWl2AzHwRELP38y6CAKUqJPh8lwi_dDdy25RX2Ya-TAf-CxTZNiiwD5zS2UioLUPuv96IvwGg4jC/s1600/Screen+Shot+2012-10-19+at+12.09.06+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWH1QwXo56dltFLIPCstsHikSCFyjCHi4bPZRK0pS2WWveK0a0LfXPLm6Ume2SOgbSTWl2AzHwRELP38y6CAKUqJPh8lwi_dDdy25RX2Ya-TAf-CxTZNiiwD5zS2UioLUPuv96IvwGg4jC/s400/Screen+Shot+2012-10-19+at+12.09.06+PM.png" width="345" /></a></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">It would be a mistake, however, to
dismiss Pearson as mere bunglers. <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alan-singer/pearson-education-new-york-testing-_b_1850169.html">They</a>
are among the most sophisticated and powerful spearheads in the push for corporate
education “reform.” The courageous strike this September by teachers organized
in the Chicago Teachers Union shined a bright light on the <a href="http://bostonoccupier.com/2012/09/14/the-corporate-attack-on-public-schools/">issues</a>
involved in this corporate agenda, one that goes far beyond the imposition of high-stakes
testing and standardized curriculums. These so-called reformers, from Chicago’s
Democratic mayor and Obama crony Rahm Emanuel to “philanthropic” billionaires
like Bill and Melinda Gates, actively promote charter schools and voucher
programs in order to starve K-12 public schools (especially in poor and
minority districts) and gut teachers’ collective bargaining rights, and push for
the corporate takeover of teacher certification and assessment at all levels. The
ultimate goal is the complete privatization of public education and its restructuring
according to “free market” principles of profit and competition.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Pearson is deeply involved in these
efforts. In states from New York to Texas it rakes in millions in
taxpayer-funded profit from their monopoly on providing the standardized tests mandated
by such legislative swindles as No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top, and
of course they fund the lobbyists who push for such laws as well. More
recently, by acquiring or partnering with companies that are active members of
the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), they simply write those laws
themselves, to be rubber-stamped by willing legislators from the Democratic and
Republican parties alike. Pearson and their “reformer” buddies want a system
imposed on the 99% that benefits the 1%.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">A successful fight-back against this
agenda can only come from below, from the active resistance of students,
parents, and teachers in our communities. A recent <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/07/education/new-procedure-for-teaching-license-draws-protest.html?">example</a>
of such resistance came last spring at the UMass Amherst School of Education,
where the director of the high school teacher training program, Barbara
Madeloni, and 67 student teachers refused to participate in field testing the newly-developed
Teacher Performance Assessment, a program that would put the evaluation and
even the licensing of teachers in the hands of the for-profit Pearson. The
student teachers won the day and the test was made optional, but the university
retaliated by refusing to renew the contract of the widely-respected Dr.
Madeloni. The <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://www.cantbeneutral.org/">Can’t Be Neutral</a></i> initiative has
been organized to defend Dr. Madeloni and demand her reinstatement; it is part
of larger efforts in Massachusetts and across the country to <a href="http://unitedoptout.com/boycott-pearson-now/">boycott</a> the Pearson juggernaut
and draw a line against these attacks.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">So what’s a creepy corporation like
Pearson doing at the Boston Book Festival? A look at the festival’s <a href="http://www.bostonbookfest.org/about/#members">Board of Directors</a>
gives us a clue – it’s a miniature Who’s Who of the regional plutocracy. Here
we have a hedge fund banker, a marketing research CEO, a senior investment
officer; people with decades of experience in places like Salomon Brothers and
Goldman Sachs and the bonuses to show for it. Unsurprisingly, some of these
1-percenters have deep ties to education “reform.” Board member Rona Kiley, for
example, is the founder of Teach First, the UK-based version of the <a href="http://jacobinmag.com/2011/12/teach-for-america/">Teach for America</a>
program, which thrusts inexperienced, low-paid teachers into inner-city
classrooms as an end-run around teacher seniority and tenure.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While in the UK, Kiley also served as CEO of
Academy Sponsors Trust, an organization pushing charter schools on that side of
the Atlantic. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">More recently Kiley has been trying to impose this same
pro-business agenda on public schools right here in Boston. Working through the
misnamed “Stand for Children” organization – which gets funding from the likes
of Bain Capital, Walmart, and JP Morgan – Kiley & Co. aggressively lobbied
for a ballot initiative that Massachusetts Jobs with Justice <a href="http://www.massjwj.net/campaigns/campaign-protect-public-education">called</a>
“a corporate-funded attack on public school teachers and the unions that
represent them,” one that would “not only hurt our teachers, but also our students
and our communities.”</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Things get even shadier with board
member Nicholas Negroponte, who also happens to be the spouse of the book
festival’s president, Deborah Z. Porter. In Negroponte’s case the ties aren’t
just to education “reform” but to Pearson itself. Best known for his work at
the MIT Media Labs and as founder of the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) initiative,
Negroponte hides his neoliberal agenda in a gaseous cloud of optimistic
techno-futurism and a shower of TED-talk bullet points. Just like the Pearson Foundation
– or for that matter like the Boston Book Festival itself – Negroponte’s OLPC
project is part of the “non-profit industrial complex” that attempts to put a
kinder, gentler face on capitalism’s global rapacity. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxTsFGOPqbv-5lQzecNWF3tp7mtxdFlqieKNncNPiA3TyLeZtItk2wblSFK_vMhCDr7UlZukdv6p31NzS1fHyHXUjA6fenu1IRsgGVJwBSmPQeWPO90qYwos22vCFVdh5IDZvOHK-9l9Gn/s1600/wizofoz_us.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="280" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxTsFGOPqbv-5lQzecNWF3tp7mtxdFlqieKNncNPiA3TyLeZtItk2wblSFK_vMhCDr7UlZukdv6p31NzS1fHyHXUjA6fenu1IRsgGVJwBSmPQeWPO90qYwos22vCFVdh5IDZvOHK-9l9Gn/s320/wizofoz_us.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">"Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!"</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Nicholas Negroponte at the MIT Media Labs</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The purported mission of
OLPC is to give every child in the so-called “developing world” a free laptop, although
they are not free for the governments of those nations, who must pay for them at
the expense of other priorities. Those laptops often carry Pearson educational
software, especially in Latin America. One of Pearson’s publicity firms, Blue
Star Strategies LLC,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><a href="http://www.bluestarstrategies.com/success/113-pearson-latin-america">boasts</a>
that Pearson was “a founding partner and sponsor” of One Laptop Per Child from
the project’s inception. At last year’s book festival, Nicholas Negroponte
appeared in a panel on learning and literacy that was sponsored by the Pearson
Foundation and moderated by no less than the Foundation’s president and CEO,
Mark Nieker. In the interests of full disclosure the event should have been labeled
an infomercial.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The real purpose of OLPC is right
in line with Pearson’s own agenda: to “empower” children by sidelining parents,
teachers, and local communities, linking young people directly with the “educational”
influence of US- and Europe-based multinational corporations. It’s a “non-profit”
Trojan Horse for the market penetration of children’s minds. Negroponte’s
contempt for teachers is well known; he is on record as <a href="http://www.olpcnews.com/use_cases/education/one_laptop_per_child_education.html">saying</a>,
for example, “Teachers teach the kids? Give me a break,” and, “In some
countries, which I’ll leave unnamed, as many as one-third of the teachers never
show up at school. And some show up drunk.” </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Such neo-colonial arrogance will
come as no surprise to those who know that the OLPC founder is the brother of
John Negroponte, Reagan’s ambassador to Honduras during the bloody Contra war
and George W. Bush’s ambassador to occupied Iraq and later Director of National
Intelligence. Nicholas has even <a href="http://www.businessweek.com/stories/2007-07-08/no-child-left-offline">called</a>
his war-criminal, spymaster sibling his “closest adviser” on getting his
laptops into foreign nations.</span></div>
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<div style="text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The association of literacy and
book culture, on the one hand, and democracy on the other goes back at least to
the Enlightenment and even to Gutenberg. Education has become the middle term
linking the two. The Boston Book Festival’s organizers rely on these long-standing
links between book culture, education, and democracy to create community
support for their event even as they cynically betray those associations – and
our communities – in their deeds. Pearson and its agenda of corporate education
“reform” have absolutely nothing in common with genuine democracy, nor with
educating people for democracy. That Pearson should be a book festival sponsor
– and moreover the host of its main venue for young children – is a grotesque
mockery of everything such an event supposedly stands for.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">It is time to demand that the
Boston Book Festival drop anti-community sponsors like Pearson. But it’s worth
remembering that the festival’s chief organizers are not just well-meaning book
lovers who naïvely signed up the first fast-talking corporate reps to appear
with open wallets. People like Deborah Z. Porter and Nicholas Negroponte and
their friends on the BBF’s board belong to the New England fraction of the 1% –
they share the same neoliberal values as the event’s sponsors and they toast
their victories at the same parties. They have a track record of helping their
slimiest sponsors – State Street, Verizon, and now Pearson – launder their
reputations by hosting the kids’ StoryPlace. In the case of Pearson, the BBF’s
organizers also work for the same “reform” goal of privatizing public
education. Clearly the change of one sponsor to another would only be a
facelift on something fundamentally rotten.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">It’s also worth considering the
quality of the book festival this corporate cash has purchased for four years
running. The BBF is organized in a bureaucratic, top-down fashion, for passive
consumers rather than active participants. From the speakers and panel topics
to the annual “One City One Story” selection, its offerings are utterly
conventional, uncontroversial, and pre-masticated – the complete opposite of the
effect of truly vital books! And while billed as being for all of Boston, the
festival is actually quite limited in its audience, targeting primarily the
National Public Radio demographic. It’s little wonder then that many of the
BBF’s scheduled presenters turn out to be WBUR announcers, who can be relied on
to hypnotize festival-goers in the same tranquilized tones that they call
torture “enhanced interrogation.”</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">So while we make our legitimate demands on a cultural event
that is staged in the name of our communities and in our civic spaces, it is
also important to think differently, imagine differently, and act differently
when it comes to such events. Occupy has reminded us of what collective efforts
of self-organization can accomplish, especially when it comes to retaking city
space from corporate and state power and returning it to common use. It’s time
not only to renew these efforts but extend them as well, into the “spaces” of
culture. Another book festival is possible!<!--EndFragment--></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">This article first appeared at </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><a href="http://bostonoccupier.com/2012/10/24/read-the-fine-print-the-boston-book-festivals-creepy-corporate-sponsors/">The Boston Occupier</a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">For a critique of the BBF's "One City One Story" project, go <a href="http://thechagallposition.blogspot.com/2010/12/press-release-for-dirty-bomb.html">here</a>.</span></div>
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<!--EndFragment-->Edmond Caldwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02651618912907453630noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4909166734000323323.post-905986719746539752012-08-06T13:23:00.003-07:002012-10-24T20:46:02.769-07:00The Quahog Mafia: More on the Boston Book Festival's corporate sponsors<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMfxcBg0m4LIXDwzR0DBkiH8awoPbrVkZOTsb_c-Z-4ERbgt9IPXNG0sR3Wj5n5N22ru9Gxe6szmDhT9BECli9P1bKQLGcosTZciOQYO_p0hfH_Dj8LfAe_AW7BW5uBRpGLxiz3hCgXHZ2/s1600/Picture+1.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="333" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMfxcBg0m4LIXDwzR0DBkiH8awoPbrVkZOTsb_c-Z-4ERbgt9IPXNG0sR3Wj5n5N22ru9Gxe6szmDhT9BECli9P1bKQLGcosTZciOQYO_p0hfH_Dj8LfAe_AW7BW5uBRpGLxiz3hCgXHZ2/s400/Picture+1.png" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In my previous </span><a href="http://thechagallposition.blogspot.com/2012/08/scrub-dub-dub-has-boston-book-festival.html"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">post</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">, I noted that the Boston Book Festival has scrubbed the most offensive of last year's corporate sponsors (Bank of America, Verizon, and Target) from its </span><a href="http://www.bostonbookfest.org/about/#presenting"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">website</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">. But in a comment on that post, comrade Frances Madeson urges us to keep turning over the stones to see what crawls out. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Here are her observations on two of the BBF's new sponsors, Akamai and Good Measures, and one of its continuing sponsors, publishing giant Pearson:</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<br /></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<blockquote>
According to recent Form 8-K filings by Akamai both a Board member and a Sr. VP resigned last week. Wonder what that's all about? They're also transitioning their CEO and President out. Their most recent 10-Q looks pretty dicey as well [<a href="http://biz.yahoo.com/e/120510/akam10-q.html"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange;">link</span></a>]. All in all a pretty shaky partner for the BBF. </blockquote>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20px;">Gary Syman, board member of the Pearson Foundation (retired Goldman Sachs pahtnuh) talking about privatized education, sounds like [</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7GFlpPvmAH0"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange;">link</span></a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20px;">]. Which makes sense because The Pearson Foundation itself (reading between the lines, naturally) looks like it's running offense for the privatizing education movement. Syman's wife is a big fundraiser for Obama; they were at the recent White House dinner with Babs Streisand. "People, people who need people are the LUCKIEST people in the world." It's all so seamless.</span></blockquote>
</blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; line-height: 20px;"></span><br />
<blockquote>
<blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; line-height: 20px;">George Bennett, CEO of Good Measures was part of the Reagan Revolution [<a href="http://www.goodmeasures.com/about/bios/george-bennett"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange;">link</span></a>]. Now, remember I was working as a legislative aide in the U.S. Congress (Ed & Labor Committee) at exactly that moment. The very FIRST program under the Committee on Education and Labor's purview that Reagan via his hatchetman David Stockman tried to cut was the WIC program, a very low-budget item for impoverished nursing moms and their babies. The reason they came for this one was purely psychological: IF THEY COULD CUT IT, THEY COULD CUT ANYTHING. And they did. Now I'm thinking that was one of Mr. Bennett's "best practices."</span></blockquote>
</blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; line-height: 20px;">
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20px;"><blockquote>
<blockquote>
Maybe ketchup as a vegetable was another one, just for good measure.</blockquote>
</blockquote>
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">We'll certainly follow Frances' lead and keep digging. </span><a href="http://news.cnet.com/1200-1035-995546.html"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Here</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> and </span><a href="http://tech.mit.edu/V123/N17/17aljazeera.17n.html"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">here</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">, for example, are two articles on how Akamai Technologies (located in Cambridge, MA), abruptly terminated its contract with the Al Jazeera news service back in 2003. Obviously the Boston Book Festival is as keen on free expression as it is in "community." And </span><a href="http://www.dailycensored.com/2012/06/18/the-financialization-of-education-new-teacher-standards-and-evaluations-means-vendors-are-cashing-in-on-the-teacher-training-like-pigs-in-a-trough/"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">here</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> is an extended article on the push to privatize public education, with a special emphasis on the activities of the Pearson Foundation. Nice going, Boston Book Festival! </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">*************</span></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Frances Madeson is the author of the novel </span></span><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Cooperative-Village-Frances-Madeson/dp/0979277205"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Cooperative Village</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"> and the publisher of </span></span><i><a href="http://www.madisoncountycrier.net/"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">The Madison County Crier</span></span></a></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">. She blogs at </span></span><a href="http://writtenwordspokenword.blogspot.com/"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Written Word, Spoken Word</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">. Thank you, Frances!</span></span><br />
<br />Edmond Caldwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02651618912907453630noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4909166734000323323.post-70730192301871857452012-08-02T12:48:00.002-07:002012-10-24T20:45:42.188-07:00Scrub-a-dub-dub: Has the Boston Book Festival cleaned up its act?<div style="text-align: center;">
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>. . . or just its site?</b></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifs93zEZFHzh_nkZDM08N78QSyMe05QBEi2pw7GWKM45A8AdXdDQkkJUJySdEFsEBpUn80CjODdr20TAl11A6f0Ujx4zciUd1tvlhwO2OrofwtOJbmiZeDjBrdtugedB6B7hKU4Rlb2m2C/s1600/BBF+2012+sponsors.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifs93zEZFHzh_nkZDM08N78QSyMe05QBEi2pw7GWKM45A8AdXdDQkkJUJySdEFsEBpUn80CjODdr20TAl11A6f0Ujx4zciUd1tvlhwO2OrofwtOJbmiZeDjBrdtugedB6B7hKU4Rlb2m2C/s640/BBF+2012+sponsors.png" width="382" /></a></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">It wasn't long after I posted my </span><a href="http://thechagallposition.blogspot.com/2012/07/boston-book-festivals-transgressions-or.html"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">piece</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> on the Boston Book Festival's track record of community-busting corporate sponsors that an unannounced change appeared on the BBF's </span><a href="http://www.bostonbookfest.org/about/#presenting"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">website</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">. Gone are the most obnoxious of the sugar daddies -- Bank of America, Verizon, and Target -- that the festival's organizers had so egregiously flattered and fellated on Twitter and elsewhere a year before. A coincidence, I'm sure, but a very gratifying one nonetheless.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Still, it's worth keeping an eye on the BBF's site, Twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/bostonbookfest">feed</a>, and <a href="http://www.ashmontmedia.com/media_releases.html">press releases</a>, to see who might drop into the begging-bowl in the months leading up to this year's festival. In the meantime we can be confident that the BBF will remain a thoroughly corporate event, blandly unthreatening to the plutocracy and its servants and enforcers (i.e., what the organizers still really mean when they say "community"); the presence of 3 of the publishing mega-conglomerates (Hachette, Penguin/Pearson, and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) can reassure us of that.</span><br />
<br />Edmond Caldwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02651618912907453630noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4909166734000323323.post-1958496478787840092012-07-24T19:18:00.002-07:002012-07-24T19:19:33.252-07:00Vault: An Anti-Novel, by David Rose -- a review<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg49fbfVEZkuH_H8BE7-2XyvA32dl-BFIhQ8_4-ov8d5ex3l955AP2wTtE-YW2m2KHjBJY1DK5x0SXBLqt8ny8L1lklIle85akjH-MEFM6e6wM_mvNnTK2N80y7XbgvYyemWF7CfUVu8Kee/s1600/9781907773112.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg49fbfVEZkuH_H8BE7-2XyvA32dl-BFIhQ8_4-ov8d5ex3l955AP2wTtE-YW2m2KHjBJY1DK5x0SXBLqt8ny8L1lklIle85akjH-MEFM6e6wM_mvNnTK2N80y7XbgvYyemWF7CfUVu8Kee/s1600/9781907773112.jpg" /></a></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I'll admit, I first bought <i>Vault</i> for its subtitle - "An Anti-Novel." I thought it took some gumption for the author, David Rose, to give his novel a tag like that in our current publishing climate, and I hoped that the book would make good on its promise. The splendid cover made an additional temptation; on the Acknowledgments page Rose himself even offers a disarming remark about hoping his book lives up to it. On both counts - subtitle and cover - it does.<br /><br /><i>Vault</i> is structured in alternating chapters that give two different versions of the protagonist's life. One set of chapters tells the story of McKuen, a cycling enthusiast from the Southeast of England who becomes a sniper in WW2 and a freelance operative for the intelligence services in the Cold War. This might sound like the well-trod territory of espionage novels such as those of Frederick Forsyth or Len Deighton, which functioned in their day as fantasy compensations for the real decline of England's status in the world. But these chapters are intercut with their revisionist counterparts, first-person chapters in which the hero's "real-life" prototype comments on and criticizes the "legend nonsense" and "novelism" in the alternate sequence. He protests that the author's appropriations of his biography distort it in the service of false heroism and spurious glamour, and against these he offers the corrective of his own more prosaic account.<br /><br />Rose's anti-novel goes beyond merely questioning conventional literary heroism, however, finally implicating both versions of its protagonist in a condition of moral ambiguity. The key might be found in the "real" main character's description of his relationship with his racing cycle, the "sensation of control" and "exhilaration of being one with a mechanically-perfect machine," so fused with it that he "no longer had to think." It is the same relationship that he has with his sniper rifle. But bicycle races can be rigged, lovers can turn into double agents, and the figure of the lone existential hero, seen from another angle, might turn out to be just a pawn - as much a mere instrument as the rifle and bicycle are to the hero. The intelligence service's deployment of McKuen against the antinuclear movement broadens the frame dizzyingly, raising the possibility that the same commitment to instrumental expertise is behind the construction of the H-bomb and the specter of nuclear annihilation.<br /><br />If <i>Vault </i>is therefore also something of a historical novel, it has the advantage of never reading like one. It's not upholstered with boring period detail and barely-digested chunks of research; rather, it convincingly distills an atmosphere appropriate to the era in which it is set. An earlier, more convivial way of life is hinted at only by its absence; cycling as a genuine people's pastime and the "Great War" as a popular, mass mobilization have been chiseled down into grim existential choices made in the cold and dark. I've seldom read a first novel written with such economy, in which so much is suggested in such spare and unsparing prose. And while <i>Vault</i> refuses many of the easy consolations of more mainstream fiction, it shouldn't scare away anyone who might mistakenly believe that "anti-novel" equals willful obscurity. It's a novel about cycling, guns, and novels that suggests with great clarity that what is obscure is our fates.</span><br />
<br />
<i>Vault, an Anti-Novel,</i> by David Rose (Salt Modern Fiction, 2011), available <a href="http://www.saltpublishing.com/books/smf/9781907773112.htm">here</a>, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Vault-Salt-Modern-Fiction-David/dp/1907773118/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1343182442&sr=1-1&keywords=vault+david+rose">here</a>, and <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Vault-Anti-Novel-Salt-Modern-Fiction/dp/1907773118/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1343182607&sr=1-1">here</a>.<br />
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An article by Rose, "Dark Matter: Modernism and the Anti-Novel," <a href="http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/dark-matter-modernism-and-the-anti-novel/">here</a>.<br />
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An interview with the author <a href="http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/one-cancelling-out-the-other/">here</a>.<br />
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<br />Edmond Caldwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02651618912907453630noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4909166734000323323.post-6489927378836771192012-07-21T19:09:00.000-07:002012-07-24T19:29:34.393-07:00Gone Lawn 8<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilQTdTXwgDFDwQM19C2pTcUCL_dKKdwzdFrk5KfEytjENVriHDXKuwL_sjwNweoamI77muRvTMMN_HQNF1mZKxFHitg6d4__dbBdZaqxGGF2uIcbOIco5F3kS_9ajpeowXZnHHx02lVLRR/s1600/frontispiece.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilQTdTXwgDFDwQM19C2pTcUCL_dKKdwzdFrk5KfEytjENVriHDXKuwL_sjwNweoamI77muRvTMMN_HQNF1mZKxFHitg6d4__dbBdZaqxGGF2uIcbOIco5F3kS_9ajpeowXZnHHx02lVLRR/s400/frontispiece.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"> The All-Seeing Eye vs. The Invisible Hand (Martha McCollough, 2012)</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I had the pleasure and privilege of guest-editing the Summer 2012 issue of </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Gone Lawn</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">, a webjournal of innovative fiction. That issue is now </span><a href="http://journal.gonelawn.net/issue8/glj_current.php"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>live</b></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">.<br /><br />The contributors include writers I reached out to because I admire their work and those who sent pieces through the regular submission process and whom I now number among writers I admire. They are:<br /><br /><b>Kristina Marie Darling</b>, <b>Angela Genusa</b>, <b>Jacob Wren</b>, <b>Frances Madeson</b>, <b>Valerie Witte</b>, <b>Jake Syersak</b>, <b>Neila Mezynski</b>, <b>Malcolm Sutton</b>,<b> Frances Kruk</b>, <b>j/j hastain</b>, <b>Derek Owens</b>, <b>David Hadbawnik</b>, <b>Stephen Hastings-King</b>, and <b>Dale Smith</b>.<br /><br />The issue also features cover art and a haunting video by <b>Martha McCollough</b>.<br /><br />One thing of significance that I note among the contributors is how many of them produce work in other fields -- poetry, performance, music, digital and conceptual polyart, and criticism -- and indeed in some ways how little the generic boundaries really matter. I know I take a dim view of mainstream fiction and its insular, complacent "alt-lit" mirror-image, but the experience of reading these works (as well as others that did not make it into the issue but which I am grateful to have seen) has gone some ways towards restoring my faith that genuine literary art is still being produced, against the odds, in the Anglo-US axis. Thank you to everyone involved, with a special thanks going out to </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Gone Lawn</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">'s editor, <b>Owen Kaelin</b>, for giving me this opportunity.</span><br />
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(And be sure to check out Frances Madeson's own gone lawn, <a href="http://writtenwordspokenword.blogspot.com/2012/07/gone-lawn-8.html">here</a>.)<br />
<br />Edmond Caldwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02651618912907453630noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4909166734000323323.post-72003712212209506322012-07-08T20:20:00.001-07:002012-08-04T11:25:19.435-07:00The Boston Book Festival's "Transgressions"<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZrWurTqjtx2kIw1P3cYq0HpRzNZygCNBZINg6Sb46gqx3rGUylyt-6tv8Jl4B4Y5V9BQY0bclU_9XZDhw_eegmDE1M88wWQ7CRWMkBxaryYQzrlfUuJKVrVWsm13sxKnDkmXNazwVYVkF/s1600/BBF+%22Transgressions%22.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="440" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZrWurTqjtx2kIw1P3cYq0HpRzNZygCNBZINg6Sb46gqx3rGUylyt-6tv8Jl4B4Y5V9BQY0bclU_9XZDhw_eegmDE1M88wWQ7CRWMkBxaryYQzrlfUuJKVrVWsm13sxKnDkmXNazwVYVkF/s640/BBF+%22Transgressions%22.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">So Boston's annual <a href="http://www.bostonbookfest.org/">celebration</a> of safe, middlebrow "literary" culture, now gearing up for its fourth installment, has decided to get a little freaky, hosting a "transgression"-themed <a href="http://www.bostonbookfest.org/bookfest/schedule_detail/schedule_lounge_lit_transgressions/">reading</a> and fundraiser. The folks that whined about getting <a href="http://blog.thephoenix.com/BLOGS/pageviews/archive/2011/10/18/kicking-santa-in-the-balls-an-interview-with-the-boston-book-festival-s-literary-squatter.aspx">punked</a> last year now promise an event jam-packed with "law-breaking, rule-bending, convention-busting, [and] paradigm shifting." Funny, though, that the six perps in their line-up all have spotless records. I suppose transgression in this case means cute, titillating, "edgy." For a taboo-busting twenty-five bucks you'll be able to hear Holly LeCraw talk about the time she peed in <a href="http://hollylecraw.com/about/">The Swimming Pool</a>. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">This isn't to say, however, that the Boston Book Festival and its president, Deborah Z. Porter, don't know a thing or three about real transgression. While trumpeting the word "community" in every official utterance, the festival's organizers continue to take on corporate sponsors who are known offenders of the most community-shredding sort. Take a look at these love-tweets that the festival sent out last year to several of its corporate sponsors.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJDS46KF9bziWvSML_AGm25a6Mfd8haQsqiJYLbGRC1A-t8jxiz452BL3P3229IE63km4sUPtOoMbJUfhOnbwzW2gzkI31KOk85N4iJzZjYFL9ciE6B-RCcxXNplHwDfphEomZb5sp44vs/s1600/BBF+BofA+Tweet.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJDS46KF9bziWvSML_AGm25a6Mfd8haQsqiJYLbGRC1A-t8jxiz452BL3P3229IE63km4sUPtOoMbJUfhOnbwzW2gzkI31KOk85N4iJzZjYFL9ciE6B-RCcxXNplHwDfphEomZb5sp44vs/s640/BBF+BofA+Tweet.png" width="483" /></a></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Yes, Bank of America, one of the nation's leaders in kicking families out of foreclosed homes, fattening itself on corporate welfare at the government trough, and funding mountaintop removal mining (which poisons children's drinking water in local . . . communities). Bank of America just loves that word, "community," as well.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Here's another little bouquet:</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiq3B-UJTH_6JlUnaMy0TXlVvzLynj8NT9M1HfADNQfVEE-NFfQVbCdz_borrFvb7OUl0not9f4RTHqP5t9hFVE3Y6SW1ZKyrkRcLo8hAF8Ira_VYzOu2kBQaSdh8PPS43KTkhyphenhyphenIAMQv-e8/s1600/BBF+Verizon+Tweet.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="120" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiq3B-UJTH_6JlUnaMy0TXlVvzLynj8NT9M1HfADNQfVEE-NFfQVbCdz_borrFvb7OUl0not9f4RTHqP5t9hFVE3Y6SW1ZKyrkRcLo8hAF8Ira_VYzOu2kBQaSdh8PPS43KTkhyphenhyphenIAMQv-e8/s640/BBF+Verizon+Tweet.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Verizon! In August 2011 almost 45,000 Verizon workers -- including 6000 in Massachusetts -- went out on strike for 2 weeks before having to return to work without a new contract. Verizon was trying to squeeze $1 billion in concessions out of its workforce, including cuts in health and retirement benefits, scheduled wage increases, and vacation and sick days. This same Verizon has received over $12 billion in tax subsidies since 2008, hasn't paid a thin dime in taxes over the same period, and continues to lavish multi-million dollar salaries on their top
executives.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Yet Deborah Z. Porter and the other organizers of the Boston Book Festival welcomed Verizon and its ill-gotten dollars in to the 2011 BBF with open arms, allowing the company to burnish its slimy reputation and secure a little brand loyalty among future generations by hosting a children's "StoryPlace"!</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Finally, there's this gem:</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvnA5n1yOqvqcVCtcD1iiyidadvG8b_cElnuU-pAjQLyPl2tm85gKvdTHp2U9sQ2iYE-XSr-S_2RgrOLyaaCSvLLO5tphfWjRQ2dCWXesbmuAidSJ_p-bTu1U-MioZBtCAvMAOvNL5rmW1/s1600/BBF+Target+Tweet.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="144" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvnA5n1yOqvqcVCtcD1iiyidadvG8b_cElnuU-pAjQLyPl2tm85gKvdTHp2U9sQ2iYE-XSr-S_2RgrOLyaaCSvLLO5tphfWjRQ2dCWXesbmuAidSJ_p-bTu1U-MioZBtCAvMAOvNL5rmW1/s640/BBF+Target+Tweet.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Target, the company that requires their employees to watch a 13-minute anti-union film and donated $150K to the campaign of a notoriously anti-gay politician in Minnesota. I guess "community" doesn't include unionized workers and the LGBT . . . community.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">And so far it looks like all three sponsors will be back for this year's festival:</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHqlpX7oEDbqMCTA1BGnhg01dF4eYSAeLblAnfJc47uzd7MJ09-stkEHoj-XxLlVLylgkKndIQp4DuHI3hRgCFo2gdM9zp7NZxF8u2FuX8Q-YWAMu9IFZPTV5E15Tnz1CIywC4QFIeLonl/s1600/BBF+Sponsors.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;"></span></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHqlpX7oEDbqMCTA1BGnhg01dF4eYSAeLblAnfJc47uzd7MJ09-stkEHoj-XxLlVLylgkKndIQp4DuHI3hRgCFo2gdM9zp7NZxF8u2FuX8Q-YWAMu9IFZPTV5E15Tnz1CIywC4QFIeLonl/s1600/BBF+Sponsors.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHqlpX7oEDbqMCTA1BGnhg01dF4eYSAeLblAnfJc47uzd7MJ09-stkEHoj-XxLlVLylgkKndIQp4DuHI3hRgCFo2gdM9zp7NZxF8u2FuX8Q-YWAMu9IFZPTV5E15Tnz1CIywC4QFIeLonl/s400/BBF+Sponsors.png" width="386" /></a></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">So, when it comes to the Boston Book Festival and the theme of "Transgressions," we might chuckle at their wildly misnamed reading event, but can't exactly accuse them of being hypocrites.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />But when it comes to "community"?</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b><i>UPDATE!</i></b></span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfczOSLot_hlmjCkMC2ofiJWm5dxnZcNYkjYPn1gYf3hNy5T78RsCeAZTykFxrgeYG0ihsMVb2eRH3pbOksoclNQNtK4aLFKJMg4ei6a9Fx_dHt_l8Zvj7-fj4EmE8xXWSZeQAw6tXzf21/s1600/Picture+1.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="288" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfczOSLot_hlmjCkMC2ofiJWm5dxnZcNYkjYPn1gYf3hNy5T78RsCeAZTykFxrgeYG0ihsMVb2eRH3pbOksoclNQNtK4aLFKJMg4ei6a9Fx_dHt_l8Zvj7-fj4EmE8xXWSZeQAw6tXzf21/s640/Picture+1.png" width="640" /></a></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Ha!</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>Edmond Caldwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02651618912907453630noreply@blogger.com2