Suchergebnisse

"This is the second volume in the First of the Year Series. Contributors like Armond White, Philip Levine, Donna Gaines, Lawrence Goodwyn, Irving Louis Horowitz, Charles O'Brien, Fredric Smoler, Paul Berman, and Amiri Baraka are back (and blazing). And there are important new voices in the First mix, such as Vincent Harding, Roxane Johnson, and Bob Levin. If there is a leitmotif to this edition, it is the election and inauguration of Barack Obama as the first African-American president. First aims to be up to the minute of this moment.As Benj DeMott notes "a glance at this volume confirms the margin is still the center for us." And that margin stretches from Harlem to the world. There are tales of edgy sojourns in Afghanistan, Thailand, and South Africa. The volume also has a Question & Answer with Ousmane Sembi, who taught Africans to resist "elements of received culture-those fixed rules and values which nobody but those on the margins dare to question." A second interview with Adam Hochschild celebrates the Englishman who invented abolition, and an African-American original who coined the phrase "crimes against humanity."The volume includes a protest against the Israeli war machine by Uri Avnery who has long been a creative outsider in his own society. It makes the case that American ideologues (on both extremes) keep getting the Middle East wrong because they cannot grasp the complexities of any country, including their own. First of the Year's minority angles of vision will help readers see with new eyes. It will help their hearing too. The volume has plenty of music writing marked by loving attention to details of pop performances. In short, this collection reflects its editor; direct, unafraid, urban, and entirely contemporary."--Provided by publisher.

"This is the third volume of the First of the Year annual series. Contributors such as Armond White, Philip Levine, Charles O'Brien, Uri Avnery, Donna Gaines, Tom Smucker, Scott Spencer, and Amiri Baraka are back (and fractious as ever). And First's family of writers keeps growing. This volume includes vital new voices such as A.B. Spellman, Bernard Avishai, Rudolph Wurlitzer, and Diane di Prima. First never shies away from hot button issues?Fredric Smoler, for example, offers a definitive consideration of America's recent history with torture. But First's approach to current political firestorms is often marked by a cool sense of the past. History is always in the mix when First writers examine the roots of Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin and contemporary right-wing pundits who falsely claim the mantle of Whittaker Chambers. First's refusal to toe "correct" lines is apparent in Benj DeMott's reconsideration of Chambers' work. The new volume is also marked by its cultivation of radical imaginations. The ideas of the Situationists and Cornelius Castoriadis are revived. A young historian, David Waldstreicher, recovers the radical, useable past in the 60s work of Staughton Lynd. Amiri Baraka evokes the felt quality of Jesse Jackson's 1988 campaign and another poet remembers (in verse) long-forgotten, extreme political acts of American Renaissance poets. A recent review of First of the Year: 2009 used a phrase of Kenneth Burke's?"perspective by incongruity"?to make sense of the method that shaped it. First is committed to thought-provoking incongruities. Faith that wonder is our best teacher informs this volume. First's music writing provides a high-low soundtrack of surprise. Beyond the section on Michael Jackson, there are serious responses to John Coltrane and Bach, World Saxophone Quartet and Mariah Carey, Sonny Rollins and Willie Mitchell. First's message is in"--Provided by publisher.

"This is the first in a continuing series of reminders that the past informs the present as it infuses the future. As Benj DeMott notes, the aim of First of the Year is to define "the democratic imperatives and demotic tones that make our ongoing politics of culture matter." This annual publication is grounded in the needs of "dissed" people: disenfranchised, disadvantaged, disinherited, discomfited, and dismissed. But the concept has been sharpened to acknowledge that though the underdog is owed sympathy, the mad dog is owed a bullet. In short, First of the Year is very much an effort of the twenty-first century. The publication aims to be more than a launching pad for writers. It attempts to bridge the gap between radical perspectives without losing focus on the centrality of African-American culture to the national conversation. The coming together of figures like Armond White, Kate Millett, Lorenzo Thomas, Russell Jacoby, Adolph Reed, and Amiri Baraka is quite unlike what can be found in standard literary and social publications. They treat the African-American condition as a policy issue or an executive summary report--not as a touchstone for the state of the nation as a whole. The initial volume also deals extensively and seriously with the issue of humanism and terror, the nature of social movements, electoral and urban politics, and the musical trends of our time. It does so with a sense of urgency often denied in mainstream literary reviews. Issues of "standards" are addressed from the angle of African-American cultural traditions, and the mind-body problem as a matter of race not just of metaphysics. In a nutshell, this volume intends to open a new chapter in the Harlem Renaissance; or better, an American renaissance with a Harlem lilt. First of the Year is an attempt to make political arguments breathe through cultural voices. Contributors include Sheldon Wolin, Jean Bethke Elshtain, Kurt Vonnegut, Paul Berman, Cha"--Provided by publisher.