On My Mind
The Provocation of Imagination, A Trilogy of Book Reviews
The books reviewed:
Produced By Irving Thalberg, Theory of Studio-Era Filmmaking by Ana Salzberg
Beyond the Looking Glass, Narcissism and Female Stardom in Studio-Era Hollywood by Ana Salzberg
UnMasking the Mask, Insights from Physical Theatre and Life by Arne Zaslove
Excerpt:
“I know [Arne] Zaslove as the historically imbued practitioner,[yet] came to their work through Ana Salzberg,…[through] the cultural window she opened that shed …welcomed inquiry into the imagination and collaborative impulse of those that made plays and movies such a force in tempering the American as well as the audience’s identity. Her work also gilded, unexpectedly, anecdotal dimensions onto the practical implications… of Zaslove’s work.”
White or Black or Shackleton Gray
Excerpt:
“There are moments, sometimes seconds or minutes in duration, when the risk of being outdoors in the cold or the water or on the ice is no longer diminished by gear, clothing, the learned rules of safety, or even the proximity of colleagues. It is when the white clarity of preparation confronts the black reality of nature’s deadly unpredictability, where judgment, physicality, and luck meld together to form the intuitive response to save your limb or life or your journey’s purpose. You’re in the gray.”
Unbowed and Unquestioned Politically II
Excerpt:
“The United States Senate Banking Committee hearings conducted by Ferdinand Pecora yielded disclosures about more than the self‐serving, unethical conduct of the nation’s largest banks and most prominent bank officers. The hearings, perhaps with an intention not originally conceived, also disclosed conduct by Wall Street law firms in the precise business documentation and transactions that deceived existing and prospective stockholders, and the pubic generally, to the bankers’ and the lawyers’ benefit.”
Unbowed and Unquestioned Politically
Excerpt:
“The bared, sordid underbelly of men at City Bank, Chase, and JP Morgan that Pecora’s questioning revealed was permanently solidified into the face that still haunts any predictability or prospect of an ethical-driven normalcy. The current apprehension of what such men are capable of doing, only randomly uncovered to no ones surprise and rarely rectified to even less surprise, remains fairly constant in America….Numerous, unexceptional examples of wrongdoing and bold daring to test the limited resources of even the most responsible government official, are reported daily. ‘Too big to fail”…. will continue until the complete rationale [for such conduct] is questioned and exposed. Ferdinand Pecora sought to examine that rationale in 1933…”
Absent in Body, Present in Spirit: The Tech Trilogy
Short fiction by NTP
Excerpt:
In the early months of 2013, the novelist Mary McCarthy was approached by three colleagues in literature, each concerned in distinct ways by the problematic evolution of their reputation, and how and in what form it might endure into this Century: Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck, and Mary Magdalene. Each invited a third person to aid in the dialogue: Dashiell Hammett, David Lean, and Frances Cabrini.
Irreverence, A Book Review
Lawrence in Arabia: War, Deceit, Imperial Folly and the Making of the Modern Middle East by Scott Anderson
Excerpt:
If there was an enigmatic element in Lawrence’s temperament, it may be found in his imagination under pressure, his intuitive skill at melding geographical and military thinking, and the decisiveness of his choices in giving his imagination life. He saw the moment. They were accurate and monumental choices.
The Lawyer, A Book Review
Louis D. Brandeis: A Life by Melvin I. Urofsky
Excerpt:
A specter is haunting the nation. Theodore Dreiser’s Frank Algernon Cowperwood; the financier, the titan, “perfectly calm, deadly cold,” selling stock he did not own. As the banker, he was entrusted with other people’s money. “[L]ike a spider in a spangled net, every thread of which he knew, had laid, had tested, he surrounded and entangled himself in a splendid, glittering network of connections, and he was watching the details.”
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