A nasty post from an academic in France responding to mine on an award
reads, in full: "Narcissism rules OK, does it not? Are you absolutely
sure this is of interest to the list?" The list concerned is titled
Social Policy. There were three others of similar nature.
There were also posts in the opposite vein, including the following one
from an astonishing man, Joe Bryak, Polish-American raised in a poor
section of Los Angeles, fluent in barrio Spanish, unique in having been
essentially drafted into the Black Panthers where he was treated with
exactly the same roughness as others deemed to have crossed the
leadership, welder and cable-puller in the belly of submarines under
construction, M.A. in English literature, writer capable of convincingly
portraying a Black lesbian in the first person singular (he is married
to an African-American), and seeker after the whole truth to the point
of traipsing across Cuba last year with a massive pilgrimage of
penitentes flagellating themselves on the way to a religious shrine.
[log in to unmask] wrote:
>
> A PEN free speech award is indeed very very prestigious! Congratulations.
> Just today I happened to have occasion to think of yr book, while
> driving my cab (the mind so wanders while working). I keep meaning to write
> you a proper appreciation of the book. Naturally the memory is not so fresh
> now. But let me take advantage of that to tell you what remains with me the
> most. You tell us how it *feels* to be an activist, fleshing out what is
> almost always a self-limited and supposedly selfless "hero" poster view most
> lefties feel they must project of their activities. I think this would
> especially be valuable for non-activists, as how else would they know what it
> is and was like to be socially "engaged"? Hollywood's view of course is that
> we're a bunch of wiseass punks, egomaniacs, cowardly, lazy, fuzzy thinkers,
> etc. You show the actuality of it, our nobility and pettiness, genius and
> stupidity, show real folks trying to make history from the bottom up. I
> almost would say that is even more valuable a contribution than just the
> telling of historic events. You speak for us all.
> What was it *like* to have been engaged in oh, let's say the women's
> vote campaign in Wyoming? I dunno, but you show us what it was like to be
> engaged in the Martinsville (do I have name right?) case, to "go to industry"
> in the Midwest, to go to school in the old USSR. You have a novelist's eye
> for the telling detail, rope us in *emotionally,* which is where we all
> really live, manifestos be damned.
> Well, up in 5 1/2 hours, so I'll leave it there, short-sheeting you. But
> it was quite a book. Hell, quite a life! Maintain, Joe
--
===================================================================
Do you teach in the social sciences? Consider my SAYING NO TO POWER
(Creative Arts, Berkeley, 1999), for course use. It was written as a
social history of
the U.S. for the past three-quarters of a century through the eyes of a
participant
observer in most progressive social movements (I'm 83), and of the USSR
from the
standpoint of a Sovietologist (five earlier books) knowing that country
longer than any
other in the profession. Therefore it is also a history of the Cold War.
Positive reviews
in The Black Scholar, American Studies in Scandinavia, San Francisco
Chronicle,
forthcoming in Tikkun, etc. CHAPTERS ON POST-60s YEARS MAY BE READ AT
BillMandel.net
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