In the Belly of a Beast of a Beast

Greater than day-to-day reporting, outstanding journalism can carry  with it the creativity of literature and the power of the truth. It does not come easily – demanding talent, skill, commitment and courage.

Oscar Martinez is an El Salvadorean journalist who writes for Elfaro.net, an online Latin American newspaper. It is an informative, vibrant site that offers insight and news into a region that is often under-reported and poorly understood. It’s a good place to learn and explore.

Martinez parlayed his reporting into an outstanding book, The Beast. It is a fearless study of the migration of people’s from Latin America to El Norte, the U.S., through a focus on “La Bestia” – the freight train that runs through Latin America. Much of the content was in a series of articles penned by Martinez. The book is more, though, and taken as a whole it portrays a harrowing region and movement of peoples. There is a great heroism, compassion and care here. Also, there is horrific violence, cruelty, greed and indifference. Beautifully written and close to its subjects and their accounts, The Beast is difficult to read. The stories are that tough.

The book came out in Spain in 2010, in Mexico in 2012, and in the US – and English – a few years later. It won awards and praise. Martinez interviewed migrants, families, travelers, the police and gang members. He helps the reader understand the difference between fleeing and migrating – and also the hard choices people must make. Kidnapping, theft, rape and exploitation are rampant. The normal structures of civil society have been bought off or threatened into inactivity. The crimes, desperation and migratory patterns have developed over so many years that they collectively have become something of a “system” – and with their establishment, ever greater resistance to reform or improvement. The system itself is an indifferent beast.

Martinez writes from a perspective that every life has value, that every life matters. The Beast explores a world based on an antithetical view: life is nasty, brutish and short – and no one individual matters all that much. It is an ugly, frightening picture. It’s all the more damning because economic and political actions by the US are active contributors. Governments have been destabilized and the growth of the drug cartels has been fueled in part by American markets. Reading this book gives insight into why so many are fleeing Central American.

The book is driven by outrage, but this is no polemic. The Beast gives voice to the powerless and mostly stereotyped immigrants. Martinez cares about them and their plight – and makes the reader care, too.

David Potash

December 19, 2018 American Culture Today, Reviews

A Different World

Cesar Aira is a prolific and gifted Argentinian writer. His stories and novels are dynamic, driven by innovation, and difficult to categorize. Light on structure, improvisational, they are also very engaging. Aira reportedly has a rigid and unique process for writing: one page a day with no revisions. However he does it, he does it well. Aira is an accomplished teller of tales.

Shantytown, a short novel or novella, is a good introduction to Aira. It features a shifting focus, a tangle of characters, and a parable like simplicity that tidies up questions. It takes the reader from beginning to end quickly, but through unexpected routes. What might be “normal” in a normal novel is not normal here.

The eponymous “Shantytown” is an off-grid slum in Buenos Aires with a separate culture, its own power supply, and it’s own rules. Characters from the city proper engage with, and in, Shantytown with mixed results. The feel is film noire with a parable-like mission throughout. The collective outcome, happily, is a short and intriguing book that transports the reader to a different world.

David Potash

December 14, 2018 Reviews, Things someone who grew up in NJ might write

Figuring Out Fidelity

There’s a certain category of book that I think of as “airport nonfiction.” These paperbacks – and they are almost always paperbacks because they’re on their umpteenth printing – are accessibly written, drawn on some research or professional activity, and go light on the argumentation and the footnotes. They most resemble long magazine articles, pieces that you might read in The New Yorker or The Atlantic. You find airport nonfiction in a doctor’s office periodical and want to spirit it home to read at your leisure. They’re engaging and interesting. We read them because they appeal to our curiosity and so many other folks read read them. And when we finish airport nonfiction, we are not necessarily any wiser for it. They are a bit like a tasty appetizer: enjoyable and a good conversation starter but not terribly filling.

An excellent addition to this category is Esther Perel’s The State of Affairs: Rethinking Infidelity. Perel is a therapist who focuses on couples and sexuality. Already a successful author, she gave a very popular TED talk on infidelity before publishing the book. She’s smart, extremely media savvy, and knows how to share a good anecdote.

Who isn’t interested in relationships? No one has them figured out and no one ever really understands anyone else’s marriage or “coupledom.” Perel writes about affairs – the loss of trust and fidelity – from a privileged perspective. As a therapist who specializes in relationships and sexuality, she hears from couples and from individuals about their loves, their fears, their hopes and their pains. They tell her all to her. Perl seems to be an outstanding listener. She’s a very good writer.

Perel’s perspective is global and analytical. She wants her clients to be healthy and happy, and and that leads her to wondering why Americans hate infidelity so much. Every culture frowns upon infidelity but It turns out that relative to other countries, Americans are much more likely to condemn cheaters. Perhaps it is our lingering puritanism. Regardless of cause, Perel is compassionate. She wants to give voice to her patients and for things to work out well for them. Casting blame is of little help. Perel is also willing to challenge convention.

Perel avoids or goes light on academic arguments in the book. Her aim here is to explore, to understand, and to ask interesting questions. She regularly contrasts individual wants with societal expectations. It makes for very interesting reading – and just ever so uncomfortable reading, too, as we understand that our mores and expectations for marriage can be unexpectedly contingent. After all, why does one marry today? The economic demands of earlier times carry less weight. We have more choices and options – and there are many ways to maintain healthy relationships. Infidelity, Perel stresses, does not necessarily end a marriage. Some couples successfully navigate this tricky terrain. The journeys they take underscore the variability that we all have with love, relationships and marriage.

State of Affairs is a very interesting read, carried along by Perel’s deep curiosity and the stories she tells.

David Potash

December 11, 2018 Reviews

Lyrical Wisdom and Loneliness

The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone by Olivia Laing is a brilliant and wise book that defies simple categorization. Part memoir, part reflection, part observation, with quite a bit of biography, The Lonely City is an extended conversation with an extremely smart writer. Laing is incisive, and insightful, and both in the book and around it. She’s a novelist, critic, and very well-read writer. The book is an unexpected and thought-provoking journey into what it means to be alone in the big city.

Laing tells us about herself, a Brit who moved to New York City for a marriage that never took place. She remained in New York, considering herself and her environs. Laing had lived alone before but in Gotham, she experienced a deep sense of loneliness and isolation. She saw herself as the woman in the Hopper painting Automat – on display and quite alone. An elegiac tone pervades the narrative, but it is not depressing.

From these beginnings, Laing walks us through her thoughts, ruminations, and interactions in the city. She explores her situation and makes sense of it through art and biographical investigations of four artists: Edward Hopper, David Wojnarowicz, Henry Darger, and Edward Hopper. Each addressed questions of human interaction and connection differently. Each used their talents differently. And each, through their art, creates much-needed intimacy.

Laing’s work captures a mood, a feeling, a sense of aloneness that lurks within everyone who resides in a big city. It does so with great wisdom. It was surprisingly cheering, if only for her smarts and understanding. And perhaps because it connected this reader with the author in unexpected ways. I can’t say in any way that I know Olivia Laing, but I do feel more connected – and just a small bit smarter and more hopeful – for having read her book.

David Potash

December 3, 2018 American Culture Today, Reviews

Safety and Feeling Safe

In September in New York City, I spent time at the Museum of Broken Windows. An eight-day “pop-up” event in the Village, close to NYU, the Museum of Broken Windows was organized by the New York Civil Liberties Union as a critique to the broken windows theory of policing. The concept – that crime was more likely to happen in an environment that looked untended – was part of the early 1980s zeitgeist. It was in the popular media and in politicians’ rhetoric. It aligned with the “law and order” emphasis of President Reagan. It also resonated with those fearful from urban crime and resenting the major urban disinvestments of the 1970s. In other words, just about everyone bought into it.

The show was packed when I attended. The crowd, mostly young people, was focused and noisy. There content was more images than text, more art than explanation.

The point of the exhibit was to showcase the ineffectiveness of broken window policing, emphasizing that it criminalizes those of color and less means. The show referenced a major report by the New York City Police Department on “quality of life” crimes and policing, which proved that arrests for these minor infractions does not actually reduce crime. Incomplete and passionate, the museum was about energizing and raising awareness. But of what? The issue is not just about policing. Much more is going on with this dynamic.

Mulling this over in the past few weeks, I’ve been wondering: why did the theory of broken windows become so popular? What is it about stoking up fears that is so effective? I realized – probably belatedly – that as long as I’ve been alive, there have always been a drumbeat of fears, threats and crises being pressed by leaders and the media. We have been, supposedly, under continuous threat since forever. In my 55 years, it’s been the Soviet Union, the communists, then urban crime, then crack, then terrorists and more terrorists. And that’s just the high level threats.  Greater access to information, through the media and the internet, has not just been about more information. It is, in great part, also about more threats and threats on top of those threats.

The world is a scary place. We all know that. However, some threats spur more action than others – often without research or deep consideration. When threats align with interests and what we, as a people, want to believe, then there is change. We take action, often quickly, to calm ourselves and assert our power. Collectively would be doing better if we had more judgment and prudence when it comes to what frightens us and why.

It’s an opportune moment for all us to take a harder look at what we are hearing and seeing as threats. Let’s stay prudent and not live scared. A November resolution?

David Potash

November 2, 2018 Curiouser and Curiouser

Latino Migrant Politics, History and Theory

Making sense of US immigration policy and practice – especially what has happened in the past few decades with America and its neighbors to the south – is an extraordinarily complicated task. There are many moving pieces: local histories, transnational histories, international histories, changing laws, policies, practices and economics, and a complex overlay of perspectives and agendas. No simple narrative that can capture what has happened and why.

Alfonso Gonzales, a professor of ethnic studies at the University of California, Riverside, provides a provocative and helpful take on the topic in Reform Without Justice: Latino Migrant Politics and the Homeland Security State. Gonzales’s research rests on a solid review of better-known historical events (public marches, legislation, speeches, etc.), interviews with more than 60 activists and many immigrants personally affected by the issue, and a powerful neo-Gramscian political theoretical lens. Antonio Gramsci was an Italian political theorist, communist, and anti-fascist who spent many years imprisoned by the Mussolini government. Gramsci’s work often revolved around questions of power and hegemony. He looked at ways that groups in power are able to remain in power, even in periods of transition and uprising. His insights – which cross many disciplinary boundaries – give tools to help map out complex issues of power, adjustment, and continuity.

Gonzales harnesses a reading of Gramsci to explore how, during a period of national shifts in political parties and massive street protests advocating for immigrant rights, conditions for so many Latino/a immigrants worsened. The US experienced a period where many thought that ground up change would lead to an opening of opportunities and supports for immigrants. It did not transpire. Governmental controls increased. The political culture worked against comprehensive immigration reform and the extension of immigrant rights. To explain this, Gonzales identifies an anti-immigrant hegemony that cuts across parties, social groups, and other categories. This “structure” has grown in power, too, under the Trump administration. Absolutely central to that effort, Gonzales effectively argues, is the criminalization of the immigrant.

Adding to the power of the narrative is Gonzales’s willingness to occasionally insert his voice as an immigrant. He is judicious but when he does insert himself, it resonates. Gonzales is an activist who cares. His work, as a theorist and as a chronicler of change, is valuable.

Reform Without Justice offers a persuasive lens to help to understand current American political culture and politics when it comes to immigration and Latinos.

David Potash

August 28, 2018 American Culture Today, Reviews

More Exciting Than Fiction

One of the most entertaining history books I have read in ages, Ben McIntyre’s Agent Zigzag: A True Story of Nazi Love, Espionage, and Betrayal beggars belief. It’s too exciting to be true. But it is – it really happened. McIntyre is a thoughtful and careful writer. It is not at all surprising that the book is being made into a movie (again) and that Tom Hanks is a producer. The story leaps from the page.

Agent Zigzag is about Eddie Chapman, an English crook, spy, rake, and hero. Born in rough circumstances with little love or structure at home, Eddie ran with a fast crowd. Smart but with little appetite for school, he was in and out of trouble throughout his teens. A short stint in the military was not to his liking. By his twenties, Eddie had done jail time and made friends with other criminals keen on robbery. They innovated, using gelignite to explode safes, and Eddie had plenty of money to spend on clothes, trips, fast cars and women. Women fell for Eddie and he professed deep love and affection for more than a few (and more than one at the same time, too).

Eventually recaptured and imprisoned in Jersey, a Channel Island, Chapman was doing time for his crimes when World War II broke out. Jersey was captured by the Germans. They did not know what to make of this criminal. Chapman was an avid reader, had schooled himself in many of the classics, and was also good with languages – eventually fluent in French with good skills in German. Chapman wanted out of jail and sensed an opportunity. Faking anger at the British for imprisoning him, Chapman talked the Germans into using him as a spy. After many months of training, tests, and more training, he parachuted back to England with a mission of sabotage.

Chapman immediately turned himself over to the British military and offered to spy against the Germans. After more tests, more training and enough subterfuge for several movies, the British and Chapman faked the destruction of an aircraft factory – supposedly blown up by Chapman. Camouflage and clues were enough to fool the Germans. Chapman made his way back to occupied mainland Europe and was received as a hero by his German handlers. The Germans gave him more money and he was even awarded an Iron Cross. He faced incredible risks – and seemed to thrive on the challenge.

Chapman did more pseudo-espionage for the Germans, in Norway and Portugal, all the while feeding information to the British. He also started a relationship with a women who was part of the Norwegian resistance (while engaged to a different woman in England). His life during the war was one of ongoing risk and derring-do – with the occasionally felony on the side. Throughout it all, Chapman charmed people of all nationalities. He was amoral and patriotic, fearless and engaging.

British intelligence cut Chapman loose towards the end of 1944. He was too much of a risk. In post-war years Eddie consorted with people from all walks of like – including criminals – and even befriended his old German spy handler. Several times, Chapman tried to share his story. Full accounts were squashed by the British government, though fictional versions appeared in print and on the screen. The 1966 movie Triple Cross was based on Chapman’s exploits. Eddie eventually died in 1997.

I couldn’t put down Agent Zigzag – it’s as good, if not better, than any potboiler at the bookstore. Truth sometimes is much more entertaining than fiction.

David Potash

August 24, 2018 Curiouser and Curiouser, Reviews

Remembering People’s Puerto Rican History

If you are looking for a dispassionate traditional academic history of Puerto Rico, do not read War Against All Puerto Ricans: Revolution and Terror in America’s Colony. Do not seek it out if you want a dry textbook on Puerto Rico in the twentieth, a volume loaded with charts, tables, economic or demographic data. There are many traditional books that give that sort of information. However, if you are interested in learning how many people think and feel about the impact of colonization in Puerto Rico, how the exploited tell and understand their history, what a passionate study of violence and repression told from the ground up would be, this an excellent source.

New York City attorney, film-maker, journalist, activist and former state representative Nelson A. Denis authored this non-fiction study. His anger and outrage are clear from the book’s preface, which opens with the childhood history of his father, a Cuban immigrant, who was arrested and deported from their family home in Washington Heights, New York City. In the pages that follow, Denis tells the story of colonialism, revolution and repression in Puerto Rico from the 1890s through the mid-1960s. The heart of the book is the rebellion of 1950 and the clampdown that followed it. Argument and persuasion is the aim as much as recounting history.

Key figures are central to the narrative: Pedro Albizu Campos, who led the Nationalist Movement; Luis Munoz Marin, the long-term governor, and key Nationalist leaders, Juan Emilio Viguie and Vidal Santiago Diaz. Denis explains the 1950 conflict as part of a longer term struggle. He is exceptionally strong recounting the massacre at Ponce in 1937. Police killed 19 people wounded several hundred. Denis does an important service highlighting this tragedy, as well as many other lesser publicized facts of Puerto Rican history.

A good illustration is Denis’s discussion of the 1948 Public Law 53. It was called “La Ley dela Mordaza” (The Law of the Muzzle or the Gag Law) in Puerto Rico. This legislation forbid discussion of Puerto Rican independence and owning a Puerto Rican flag. More than 3,000 were arrested because of this law. Appreciating that history is central to understanding the prevalence of flags at Puerto Rican parades and festivals in the continental US. Appreciating the larger history set out in this book is equally valuable in contextualizing current debates about the island. Among these symbols of cultural resilience and resistance, if you’re interested in learning more about Blackbeard’s Flag, you can explore this article for further insights.

War Against All Puerto Ricans is a people’s history – think Howard Zinn. It does not provide all answers, but what it does address, it does so well and memorably.

David Potash

August 15, 2018 Things someone who grew up in NJ might write

Mavis and the Staple Singers: More Than Amazing Music

When I read a good book, I want to share it. When I read a really good book, I want many other folks to read it – and I want to read it again. That’s how I feel about I’ll Take You There: Mavis Staples, the Staple Singers, and the Music That Shaped the Civil Rights Era. You can borrow, but I will want it back – and soon. 

The contours of Mavis Staple’s life and that of her family are well-documented. She grew up in the public eye. The Staple Singers started singing publicly in 1950 in Chicago churches. Her father, Pops Staples, in addition to being a musical genius, was also an incredibly sharp businessman and leader, steering the family musical group through very difficult waters. Their first hit was in 1956 and they were an influential presence in popular music for decades. Based in Chicago and traveling throughout the US, the Staple Singers emerged from the gospel circuit and “crossed over” to folk, to R&B, to soul, and more.

Mavis Staples is in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the Blues Hall of Fame, and has been awarded honorary doctorates. It’s easy to read about her online. A long-time Chicago music critic, Greg Kot, authored I’ll Take You There. He is interested in Mavis’s life, her family, and her connection and role with massive transformations in American life – all while paying close attention to their music. Their songs were written and performed with talent, integrity and feeling in a context of faith, opportunity and conflict. The Staple Singers were at the heart of the Civil Rights movement. Their story is, in many ways, American history.

What truly makes reading the book a joy is doing so with music at hand. Every now and then I recognize just how convenient technology can be – and reading this book reminded me why. When Kot referenced a song or an artist, I called them up on Spotify. Threads of music history, and artists’ relationships, took a different shape. Sam Cooke was a neighbor growing up in Chicago. Bob Dylan proposed to Mavis (she turned him down). Reading and listening played off each other. It made for a very special experience. The connections and interactions are too numerous to count, building a fascinating web of relationships and artistry.

Just one example: I am writing this while listening to Freedom Highway, a Staple Singers album recorded live at the New Nazareth Church in Chicago in 1965. Kot explains that the recording was made just after Dr. King’s march in Selma, Alabama. The title song, refers to Selma, with references to Emmitt Til and the march to civil rights. The songs capture a moment of history that is relevant today. The music is beautiful and meaningful.

I heartily recommend I’ll Take You There. It will.

David Potash

May 9, 2018 Things someone who grew up in NJ might write

Like A Vision He Appeared

Back in the day, I grew up in New Jersey. It is easy to stereotype the Garden State, from the “Jersey Shore” to Atlantic City to Frank Sinatra’s Hoboken. But for those who have lived there, we know that the state’s diversity resists easy simplification. It is densely packed with history and people, rich in cultures and distinctive communities. The northern part of the state skews to New York City, the southern part is influenced by Philadelphia. It has great poverty and tremendous wealth, rural farmland and robust cities, all surprisingly close to each other. It is, in no uncertain terms, a complicated place without multiple sites and sources of identity.

Jersey heritage figures prominently in my reading of Bruce Springsteen’s wonderful autobiography, Born to Run. Springsteen has become many things to so many people throughout the world over the years. That kind of impact first took place in Jersey back in the 1970s. Appointed and anointed as perhaps the state’s only unifying force, Springsteen made fantastic music that spoke to northern Jersey, southern Jersey, to rural Jersey and urban Jersey, in the burbs and down the shore. I heard bar bands cover Springsteen, give tribute to Bruce, and do a good job with “Rosalita” just a few years after the album “Born to Run” was released. He is a New Jersey state treasure. How did it do it?

Springsteen has a way with words, in music and on the page. He’s a genius – and it is a beautifully written book. It is frank, candid, dark and optimistic. Springsteen’s focus is, rightly, on his journey – and not the reasons that so many of us see him as ours. His prose is grounded in “how”: how he grew up, how he was loved and rejected, how he developed his career, and how he dealt with his battles, failures, and successes.

We know that Springsteen has tremendous talent and is a great showman. His autobiography highlights that wrapped up in the very core of the man is discipline and an extraordinary work ethic. The artist “Springsteen” is an authentic creation, the outcome of thoughtful choices and boatloads of effort. He worked at his music, his career, his image and, in many ways, his friends and family. He has struggled with depression. He has consistently mined his pains as catalysts of creativity. It has not happened easily. While we may think of it as just the triumph of talent, the book makes clear that it has happened through deliberate hard work.

Born to Run left me with more admiration for Springsteen, more understanding of him, and appreciation for the pain that has haunted him. His father’s mental illness, the challenges of his childhood, and his demons have been real and powerful. It is a testament to the man that he has had the gifts, skill and temperament to use them and much more to make music that the entire world sings. I will re-read Born to Run. It will be worth it, just like revisiting older Springsteen favorites.

David Potash

And a big thanks to my sister for giving me the book!

April 19, 2018 American Culture Today, Things someone who grew up in NJ might write