Happy Holidays and Some Updates

Happy Holidays Everyone!

The site is about to reinvent itself.. We have some wonderful things to announce for 2010! So please stay tuned..Meanwhile--under All the Buzz check out award winning writer Brad Auerbach's guide to a Beatles themed gift giving for this years' Holiday Season!

Reflections on The 40th anniversary of the Moon Landing: One Giant Leap to Nowhere?

The 40th anniversary of the Moon Landing was a good time for those of us of a certain age to reminisce. We looked at that silvery orb in the sky that night
a bit differently. But we also looked at ourselves with new eyes too.
Norman Cousins, who addressed a Congressional hearing about what going to the moon meant, where he said, 'The significance of Apollo was not so much that man set foot on the moon but that he set eye on the Earth.’

We certainly had the wonderful photos to prove that the earth was indeed a tiny blue fragile looking planet set against a sky of infinite blackness. But after 1969 not much else happened. We still found ourselves in too deep in the VietNam war. Nixon did not change his policies as a result. The so called technological "victory" over the Soviet Union did not much to change the determination to confront their eastern bloc neighbors if they showed any signs of breaking free of their communist yoke.
Schools just added Neil Armstrong to the list of great American explorers who made history. Probably the best outcome was the use made by politicians to make us believe in ourselves as capable of solving enormously intractable problems such as world hunger. How many of us heard that phrase--"if we can go to the moon..then.."
and stopped listening to it after it was repeated too many times and issues such as radically unequal education and housing persisted.

The moon project was then dropped. I heard from one commentator recently all the technology was sort of placed in deep freeze, the teams of engineers that were assembled the variety of resources supporting a manned landing all were dissolved as if the entire enterprise had been nothing but a show. Funding for NASA sank like a stone. As Tom Wolfe wrote in the New York Times the moon landing was "one giant leap to nowhere"

As Wolfe writes the funding for NASA went "from $5 billion in the mid-1960s to $3 billion in the mid-1970s. It was at this point that NASA’s lack of a philosopher corps became a real problem. The fact was, NASA had only one philosopher, Wernher von Braun. Toward the end of his life, von Braun knew he was dying of cancer and became very contemplative. I happened to hear him speak at a dinner in his honor in San Francisco. He raised the question of what the space program was really all about. Therefore we must build a bridge to the stars, because as far as we know, we are the only sentient creatures in the entire universe. When do we start building that bridge to the stars? We begin as soon as we are able, and this is that time. We must not fail in this obligation we have to keep alive the only meaningful life we know of.

Unfortunately, NASA couldn’t present as its spokesman and great philosopher a former high-ranking member of the Nazi Wehrmacht with a heavy German accent.

As a result, the space program has been killing time for 40 years with a series of orbital projects ... Skylab, the Apollo-Soyuz joint mission, the International Space Station and the space shuttle. These programs have required a courage and engineering brilliance comparable to the manned programs that preceded them. But their purpose has been mainly to keep the lights on at the Kennedy Space Center and Houston’s Johnson Space Center — by removing manned flight from the heavens and bringing it very much down to earth."

But even had Werner Von Braun had better credentials to be the kind of Captain Kirk like visionary for the new age of space exploration it is doubtful that any air would have pumped back into the space program. If a venture is conceived as a PR victory it stays a PR victory. Kennedy's words we "choose to go to the moon not because it is easy but because it is hard"--an appeal to man's never ending search for challenge--rings hollow today--the reason --we have ignored doing some easy things because it is too hard to do the hard work of organize a vision around our common humanity--our essential brother and sisterhood. Without that vision the people indeed do perish as do missions however brave and magnficent as the moon landing.

Salinger--Overly Protective Literary Parent or Litigious Recluse? You Decide

In a strange legal twist, J.D. Salinger the author of (arguably) the most read book by babyboom generation The Catcher in the Rye has now successfully challenged an effort to censor a So called sequel to the book. The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) explains
that the new work is entitled 60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye, and "depicts Holden as Mr. C., an irascible 76-year-old still spouting the same vitriol about "godamn phonies" and nursing the same distrust of the world around him. But this is not a sequel penned by Mr. Salinger, now 90, whose last published work appeared in June 1965. And if the author, a Swedish publisher named Fredrik Colting, is to be believed, it is not a sequel to the original. Rather, he maintains that the book is "literary commentary on 'Catcher' and the relationship between Holden and Salinger." To that end, a fictive Salinger makes an appearance as a character in "60 Years Later."

The judge ruled in Salinger's favor --disagreeing with the defense position that the Swedish author was attempting a work of literary criticism and upholding Salinger's attorneys who argued that Holden's character was "copyrightable."

"..literary critique in the form of a novel is not unheard of. Jean Rhys's "Wide Sargasso Sea" retells "Jane Eyre" from the point of view of Bertha, the madwoman in the attic. Rita Copeland, a comparative literature professor at the University of Pennsylvania, calls it "a deep exploration of the political, social and racial issues that underlie Charlotte Brontë's novel. Of course Rhys' book is a great novel, but it's also an important 'reading' of 'Jane Eyre,' of the Caribbean side of the story in Brontë's novel and of the European relationship to the West Indies."

The ruling seems bizarre and will likely be overturned on appeal--(if of course Mr Colting has the funds to appeal) since there is no question that Salinger owns Caulfied in the way that Shakespeare owns Macbeth and Hamlet--only that author could have created the actual character and only his rendering is authentic. Colting has not disguised the fact that he is writing the story not Salinger. But the counter logic would suggest that since no one but Disney can market Mickey Mouse or Donald Duck in the verbal realm--Salinger's rights are akin to those of Disneys. But we are hitting here the limits of the legal imagination that can make a distinction between marketable Mickey Mouse and not so marketable Holden Caulfield.

But the more important lesson from this is perhaps the way that Salinger sees himself at this point in time. The WSJ characterizes his posture well:

"Mr. Salinger is notorious for his protection of his creations. He has denied movie directors the rights to option "Catcher" and turned down licensing deals that could have turned Holden Caulfield into a mass-marketing bonanza. We should add he bitterly fought British author Ian Hamilton from publishing his biography."

According to the WSJ "60 Years Later" mostly centers on Mr. C. (70% of the book is devoted to him) and includes only a few snippets of the Salinger character; the climax of the interaction is sketched out in one of the final chapters. Without Mr. C., the book could not exist. Without Salinger, it still paints a vivid portrait of how Holden stayed huddled in his cocoon and remained a boy in a man's body."

Is Holden really Salinger? I guess we will have to read the book to find out...

Boomers Receive another Call to Service

Harvard University's Business Guru, Rosabeth Moss Kanter issues a new blast of encouragement to boomers to dedicate their "retirement years" to service--

World, get ready! The Baby Boomers are becoming the Senior Boomers, and they want to change you again.

The generation that marched in Washington in the 1960s is marching into elementary schools, high schools, hospitals, and homeless shelters seeking opportunities to serve. Activists in civil rights and women's movements four decades ago now want to eradicate diseases, transform education, reform health care, or alleviate global poverty.

She contrasts the last generation's choices--Gerry Ford and let us add George Bush--with those of the boomer crowd:

Post-career options for healthy adults once ran the gamut from A to B & B. They could choose athletics (as in golf), like former President Gerald Ford and countless former CEOs, or run a Bed-and-Breakfast, the choices of former Senator George McGovern. Today's mature boomers aspire to be Bills: to start a foundation and champion social causes like Bill Clinton and Bill Gates. Among leading edge boomers, 50-59 years old, who say they will never retire, nearly two-thirds are interested in public purpose work.
For a nation still reeling from the economic meltdown, this is a huge opportunity. The Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act recently signed by President Obama, includes provisions encouraging boomers to embrace service careers for their next life stage.

We should add for realism purposes--that the two Bills can well afford the choices they made--since they continue to earn income as they move through the more morally uplifting worlds of philanthropy--many of us not so blessed with the skills and talents they share may have to engage in more mundane activities. But it would be interesting to hear from you dear reader as to what choices are on your mind right now.

A 1966 Liverpool Meeting Remembered

Dylan met with some Liverpool kids when on a historic European tour in May 1966--one of the children whom he was photographed with--Chris Hockenhall describes in a blog why he made this short film for the BBC. Chris remembers the day (despite being 10 years old) so well for two main reasons--"On the morning of 14 May 1966 I had been doing some extra school maths work (not my decision) with my aunt but my concentration was nil as I literally counted the minutes away to when I could get back home for the BBC showing of the Cup Final." The final was between his own team Everton and Sheffield Wednesday. Everton won the cup that year despite being two goals down at one point.


After the game he and some other "similar aged Everton fans" kicked a soccer ball around "on some waste ground on Dublin Street, near the Dock Road" when a curious Bob Dylan came across them and had some photos taken... That night, Chris adds "one of rocks greatest tours played at the Odeon and If I had been a few years older I may well have been there... and what a 24 hours that could have been — except I was oblivious to the evenings events at that time."

I wondered what I would have have made of meeting Mr Dylan at age 10? Why did he want to be photographed with these children? Was he sensing something authentic here--something hard to find in the States? Was he intrigued by the poverty and dour nature of these hard looking Victorian streets? What do the adults now make of Dylan's music? What songs, if any. touch them or speak to their experience? On a more contemporary note--where were their lawyers? Since most probably Barry Feinstein (Dylan's photographer and featured in the video below) failed to gain parental permission to take these under age children's pictures, and most probably did not compensate them for their work-- it seems odd there were no lawsuits filed.
A testament to the positive feelings for Dylan shared by this group?

Here is the little over nine minute video :

Darwin, Lincoln and Us

Angels and Ages: A Short Book About Darwin, Lincoln and Modern Life, is a good read. Smart, well written, non condescending and large visioned. His case that Lincoln and Darwin--born on the exact same day in history --February 12, 1809 (any astrologers listening?) shaped profoundly the late Victorian view of the world--and modern liberalism is well argued. Gopnik--an accomplished New Yorker writer focuses on both mens' use of language and shows how their literary style enabled them to make their arguments resonate beyond the elites. Lincoln found a way to look at history--as a working out of the balance of forces the moral fate of mankind--a Providence that acted without regard to individuals throughout history. Darwin--came more or less to the same conclusion--in terms of our place in the universe using methods 180 degrees different from Lincoln. The interest is not in the profundity of these ideas--ideas that could easily have been dismissed or ignored in the hands of other less accomplished writers--but in the ways they advanced their ideas and gained large and influential followings. Both created a new kind of scientfic based secularism--one that did not so much banish faith--but placed religion on a different less central track in our affairs. What does this have to do with boomers? Some thoughts come to mind--boomers questioned the way that liberal ideas had been handed down to government (in the post JFK era) in the service of flag and country to justify a militaristic set of policies that benefited one group rather than the larger whole. Instead they urged a new foreign and domestic policies --policies based on anti colonialism, pluralism rather than the numbing 50s conformity and freedom of expression. Boomers rebelled against the way the mass media worked hand in hand with governments in the "manufacturing of consent." In doing so they turned to Freud and Marx--(successors at least to Darwin--Lincoln having got lost somewhere in the mix). Freud and Marx back in the sixties needed a bit of spicing up so their latter day interpreters--Marcuse, Fanon, Levi Strauss, O'Brown, Reich)got to work to do battle with the military industrial complex and post colonialism. Since these intellectuals had no real lasting answers to society's ills-it is not surprising that the 60s counter culture movement such as it was --ended up in such a mess.

As the new right gained ascendancy in the post Goldwater years--conservative intellectuals such as William F Buckley seemed to offer some moral spine to what was perceived as directionless social forces. But what was lost in the mix was the moral beliefs articulated by Lincoln--that democracy --government of the people--by the people-- embodied a more important set of values than government as the uncritical friend of the rich and powerful.

Possibly now under Obama--influenced strongly by Lincoln as well as Darwin (note the new Presidents' support of stem cell research, his respect for the science supporting aggressive approaches to combating global warming)can help bring us back to a return to the older version of liberalism. Arguably, Obama's political project is now possible because the right ca no longer use race and gender as a barrier to social progress or employ crude patriotic appeals to support policies that only benefit the rich and powerful. Our victory as boomers was key to this success--but as in all things but particularly politics--there are no lasting victories--and no permanent defeats--we must keep on working for the values we believe in.

Boomers Unprepared for Retirement

Boomers who tended in their youth to live for the moment need to wake up according to Washington Post columinist David Ignatius--who writes as a fellow boomer

"People have accused the baby boomers of being whiners almost since we were born. But just wait until we get to retirement age and discover that we don't have nearly enough money to take care of our "golden years." That's going to be the ultimate generational bummer."

According to new research boomers who have not taken seriously the need to prepare for their "golden years" are about to get hit with another whammy--the recent economic meltdown:

"53 percent of households that hold at least one retirement account, the median combined balance was a mere $45,000.Hold on, you say, that figure includes some younger workers who haven't started saving in earnest yet. Okay, for households headed by persons between the ages of 55 and 64, the median value of all retirement accounts was just $100,000. Purcell noted that for a 65-year-old man retiring last month, that $100,000 would buy an annuity that would pay a paltry $700 a month for life, based on current interest rates. And here's an extra bit of bad news: The Fed data used in Purcell's study were gathered in 2007. With stock market declines since then, the median account balances are probably even lower now."
Ignatius quotes from a poll released in January by the National Institute on Retirement Security showing that "83 percent.. were worried about having a secure retirement; of those with a 401(k) account, only about half thought they would have enough money to retire. And 71 percent said it was harder to retire now than for previous generations."

So no longer is the line "I am going to work until I drop" a throwaway line--it is going to be all too true of our fellow boomers. Boomers helped by people like Madoff, may have killed retirement as a serious option in America for a generation or more, except as an option for the extremely wealthy--and even many of those (haven't you noticed) --prefer to keep on working.

Are Boomers Prepared for Alzheimers?

Alzheimer's is the second most-feared illness in America, following cancer, and may affect as many as five million Americans. As the baby-boom generation moves through retirement, that number could soar to more than 11 million by 2040, and have a huge economic impact on America's already fragile healthcare system."
Maria Shriver (wife of the California Governor) is raising awareness about the need for research into this tragic disease and offering some hope in focusing on some recent discoveries that will accelerate a cure if further funding is forthcoming.
According to the HBO Alzheimers Project Shriver (whose father died of the disease and is the projects executive producer) described Alzheimer's as "an epidemic for this generation", saying that as Baby Boomers age, the disease is coming right at them and something needs to be done.
She said a cure could be within reach if the world focused on it, allocated the funds for research, and pressured lawmakers.

On a personal note, I started my website LifestoryDVD in part as a way to help people who maybe in the early stages of the disease at least record their memories for their children and grandchildren, and use lifestory telling as a therapy to at least help delay the full onset of the disease.

Will Boomers Embrace or Resist the Coming E-Book Revolution?

Will boomers embrace the new e-book revolution or resist it and leave it to generation x or y to figure out?
As the largest generation with still a good deal of disposable income despite the crash, also with the last
generation for a taste for reading as opposed to sitting by an electronic screen--my guess is that the boomers
will reinvent the entire process of writing books, distributing them and reading before we move off.
I was prompted by these thoughts due to an excellent article in the Wall Street Journal that
focused on how the economics of ebooks--otherwise known as digital books will transform
our half a millenium or so habit of reading the printed word. Author Steven Johnson writes
in this section about how we will get to discover new books:

"The economics of digital books will likely change the conventions of reading and writing as well. Digital distribution makes it a simple matter to offer prospective buyers a "free sample" to entice them to purchase the whole thing. Many books offered for the Kindle, for instance, allow readers to download the first chapter free of charge. The "free sample" component of a book will become as conventional as jacket-flap copy and blurbs; authors will devise a host of stylistic and commercial techniques in crafting these giveaway sections, just as Dickens mastered the cliffhanger device almost two centuries before.

It's not hard to imagine, for instance, how introductions will be transformed in this new world. Right now, introductions are written with the assumption that people have already bought the book. That won't be the case in the future, when the introduction is given away. It will, no doubt, be written more to entice readers to buy the whole book.

Steven Johnson tells a story about how he was suddenly inspired in a coffee shop to stop what he was reading on his Kindle
and "dutifully working my way through an e-book about business and technology, when I was hit with a sudden desire to read a novel. After a few taps on the Kindle, I was browsing the Amazon store, and within a minute or two I'd bought and downloaded Zadie Smith's novel "On Beauty." By the time the check arrived, I'd finished the first chapter."

Nice.

Johnson predicts that a la carte pricing will emerge

".. as it has in the marketplace for digital music. Readers will have the option to purchase a chapter for 99 cents, the same way they now buy an individual song on iTunes. The marketplace will start to reward modular books that can be intelligibly split into standalone chapters.

This fragmentation sounds unnerving -- yet another blow to the deep-focus linearity of the print-book tradition. Breaking the book into detachable parts may sell more books, but there are certain kinds of experiences and arguments that can only be conveyed by the steady, directed immersion that a 400-page book gives you. A playlist of the best chapters from "Middlemarch," "Gravity's Rainbow" and "Beloved" will never work the way a playlist of songs culled from different albums does today."

Boomers are we ready for this world--will we be the ones to embrace or resist? What about you? Please send us your comments.

Is the Obama Era Heralding a Return to Sixties Values?

Frank Rich got it about right this week in the New York Times as he applauded Harvard's President and Ohio Weslyan's cajloing new graduates to forgoe the promises of getting rich and do something important for humanity.Rich quotes first Dr Drew Giplin Faust who urged the new grads to

to "Find work you love,” adding that The “most remunerative” job choice “may not be the most meaningful and the most satisfying.”
This same note was hit a month earlier by the commencement speaker at Wesleyan University, Barack Obama. “The big house and the nice suits and all the other things that our money culture says you should buy,” he said, amount to “a poverty of ambition.” He wasn’t speaking idly. As America knows, Obama turned down the lucrative career path guaranteed to the first African-American president of The Harvard Law Review to pursue the missions of service and teaching instead. The potential rewards for our country, now that that early choice has led him into the White House, are enormous.



Obama had choices--but many of today's grads know that the high paying jobs on Wall Street aren't likely to come back for a while if at all. The loans however that it took to enter the Ivy League are not going anywhere and so most new graduates will have to look forward to a long period of reduced lifestyles before they can become the new masters of the universe.
Good thing though? Non profits and idealistic enterprises can sure use the brainpower that would otherwise be wasted making huge bonuses for not very economically productive work.

So our "thought leaders" will need to help our young students whose reward system has been measured out in dollar signs with new harsher realities. Boomers will have to rise to the challenge too. As the parents of many of these youngsters -they have a role to inform them of the choices they made not necessarily between serving mamon and public service but in terms of the humanistic values they recognize as important and lasting. Good luck everyone as we enter (re-enter) this brave new idealistic age.
Let's hope this one--makes the lasting improvements that the sixties seemed only to promise us.

John Martyn Original Singer Songwriter Dies--1948-2009

John Martyn-- a much under-rated singer songwriter from the 1960s died in January.
Martyn leaves behind many great songs to remember him by. Solid Air was a masterpiece album and it deserves to be better known. Martyn's musical originality was easily apparent --his ability to fuse jazz and folk rhythms set him apart from his fellow artists. He was not one to court fame or seek a more commercial sound. It is sad to read about the misfortunes that attended him towards the end. We hope that Word Magazine a new and superbly written and edited UK music journal will allow us to reprint some of the great article they published in their March issue on the singer's life and achievements..

New Dylan Album on the Way- and-the Oracle Gives another Interview

Who of us given some of the great tracks on Modern Times can resist another Dylan fix? Who can resist another glimpse into the musical worlds Dylan now so masterfully creates? Yes folks a brand new album (not one of those compiliations of outtakes and rejects that he likes to throw out from time to time) the title is intriguing enough--Together Through Life-- to be released in April 28. As expected there is a new interview out--designed to create the necessary "buzz"--in it Dylan delivers the same mixture of wry wisdom, humor and mystery as he prepares his audience for another musical reinvention. Asked why he doesn't "milk" his best selling Modern Times album and not change things around:

"I think we milked it all we could on that last record and then some. We squeezed the cow dry. All the Modern Times songs were written and performed in the widest range possible so they had a little bit of everything. These new songs have more of a romantic edge."
How so?
These songs don’t need to cover the same ground. The songs on Modern Times songs brought my repertoire up to date, and the light was directed in a certain way. You have to have somebody in mind as an audience otherwise there’s no point.
What do you mean by that?
There didn’t seem to be any general consensus among my listeners. Some people preferred my first period songs. Some, the second. Some, the Christian period. Some, the post Colombian. Some, the Pre-Raphaelite. Some people prefer my songs from the nineties. I see that my audience now doesn’t particular care what period the songs are from. They feel style and substance in a more visceral way and let it go at that. Images don’t hang anybody up. Like if there’s an astrologer with a criminal record in one of my songs it’s not going to make anybody wonder if the human race is doomed. Images are taken at face value and it kind of freed me up.

The last point is an important one--Dylan's supersensitivity to all aspects of his personae--including the prophet image that has stuck with him since the early days
must have been a burden. Now he has found, it seems, a way to work through it--to free himself artistically even more. So eager anticipation across the globe--this is a master setting an example for all of us boomers as to the possibilities of reinventing and reimagining ourselves..and we all should pay close attention.

First Beatles Masters Degree Offered--Mixed Reactions

Well it has finally happened--the first Masters Degree Program in Beatles studies--now hosted in the home of the Beatles at Liverpools' aptly titled "Hope University."

There are about six reactions I have--three vaguely negative and three a bit more positive--here are the negatives:
1) It is a bit of a leap--to study just one rock group--how about the entire phenom known as British rock circa 1960 -1975--perhaps more ripe for sociological explanations and less more iffy speculations based on personality and armchair psychology?
after all we don't do Wordsworth or Keats MAs --rather we study Romantic Poetry, the Late Victorian novel within the context of an established discipline.
2) As the New York Times op ed writer Allan Koznin also notes "what do you do with a degree in Beatles studies?"--be a Beatles tour guide? Aren't you setting yourself up for polite chuckles if you add this particular credential to your resume?
3) How do you do original research--Abbey Road/ Apple tapes--interviews with Paul and Ringo? Do you make the two surviving Beatles honorary professors?
On the positive side:
1) As Beatles books over the last few years have become more serious and interesting it is fitting that more academics move into this space concerning this remarkable band. We need to understand better the interplay between commercial pressure, individual artistry, audio engineering etc.
2) A degree program will encourage more scholars to cross the usual academic boundaries that the best Beatles criticism is able to straddle.
3) Understanding the popularity of the Beatles is a step towards understanding one of the unifying aspects of the boomer generation. The Beatles were our avant garde--leading us towards new forms of expression and experiences that had an important role, if we are honest in shaping the kinds of people we are today.

OK where do I really stand? What should Beatles study be all about? What is the "meat" in the sandwich? I think the meat is to understand the sixties which they mostly inhabited. Understand their social and historical background and the way that like the great artists they were--together they transcended their early influences. Studying the Beatles is different from studying someone like Dickens if only because you are taking on a larger range of social forces --ones that have not been properly absorbed into some of the usual disciplines like literature, sociology and history. The study involves musicology, sociology
and cultural studies (absorbing media studies) and semiology. It is also about the interplay of four very different personalities and their managers, record companies, studio engineers, agents, friends, girlfriends, wives, other artists, politicians and what can be losely called the 'temper of the times.'

Let it roll I say--let us all await a new generation of Beatles scholars--just as long as they keep a sense of humor about them--I won't mind too much and don't try to over interpret Yellow Submarine as some kind of answer to Freud's theory of the subconscious.

Boomers Trending to Facebook in Large Numbers

What are we to make of the fact that Facebook's fastest growing demographic group are boomers and more specifically, boomer women. Inner Architect refers to the following statistic:


"According to Hitwise, there has been a big shift in audience demographics over just the past year. While users aged 18 to 24 represented a 42% share of the Facebook audience in January 2008, that segment in 2009 accounted for only 24%. Take a look at how the age distribution has evolved:



So a trend in motion--produced by? Here are some of my thoughts--
1) Generational envy--as the media has talked more and more about Facebook
and we have looked at our children's ease with the social networking thing--we have slowly come on board.
2) We are finding a way to keep current not just with our children but with the new generational force that the new Obama administration represents.
3) Facebook is very easy to use and Facebook has maintained a better control over unwanted ads and nastiness found in sites like MySpace.

My prediction is that Facebook will grow as the preferred choice for social networking among boomers and once the non boomers realize this they will fly off in greater droves to find new hipper forms of networking--at the moment --Twitter serves this function quite well for non boomers. Boomers are not quite as comfortable staying in touch on a 24x7 basis with their chosen peer group and find the notion of instant texting somewhat neurotic--now there is a word us boomers are familiar with..

John Updike--Major 20th century Author Departs the Scene

John Updike died of lung cancer on Tuesday and with his passing vanishes one of the last of the great American novelists of the past century. And the first person many of us boomers read (let us be honest) to find out about male female relations. There was no more joyful introduction to that world than his superb novel Couples. In this novel he seemed to perfect a wonderfully lyrical sentence that fused insight with crystal clear observation that allowed us to glimpse a more spirtually resplendent world than the one we currently inhabited.

Updike was wonderful observer of humankind--particularly a certain type of New England middle class American--many of whom might be described as self involved boomers. If his themes were a bit too narrow to win him the Nobel prize, his range as a writer was large-from Bech a Book, to Witches of Eastwick to Terrorist. .


But they all seemed terribly minor works next to the Rabbit books for which he will undoubtedly be remembered for.
The novels bring to life a version of what it was like to experience an America that although prosperous and happy on the outside was often anxious, depressed and disatisfied. Rabbit is Rich, possibly the best of the novels and the last in the series describes a less than fulfilling American dream for the former basketball player as a Toyota dealer salesman. Updike's technique in the Rabbit series clearly influenced Richard Ford to create his own Bascombe series of novels (The SportsWriter, Independence Day and Lay of the Land) to take the analysis of American middle age discontent further and deeper. He was also a fine critic--he leaves several volumes of superb criticism that was often too exquisitely written and lacking a central punch or theme.


Jesse Kornbluth recounts an interesting anecdote. As a testament to that early greatness that was so obvious as early as the 1970s Jesse Kornbluth recounts a mistaken call that led the writer John Cheever to write an early obituary of Updike.

"

A reporter who called him at four in the morning to tell him --- incorrectly --- that Updike had been killed in a car crash. Later, Cheever wrote in his journal:

As for John, he was a man I so esteemed as a colleague and so loved as a friend that his loss is indescribable. He was a prince. I think it not difficult to kiss him goodbye --- I can think of no other way of parting from him, although he would, in my case, have been embarrassed. I think him peerless as a writer of his generation; and his gift of communicating --- to millions of strangers --- his most exalted and desperate emotions was, in his case, fortified by immense and uncommon intelligence and erudition."

For a first seismic sense of the magnitude of the loss and the debt felt by the American literary scene--from Jonathan Lethem, Joyce Carol Oates to Richard Ford---there is no better place to visit than the New Yorker magazine's "Remembering Updike"

Patrick McGoohan Dead at Age 80: Forever Remembered as "The Prisoner"

Patrick McGoohan was to many of us who grew up in the UK in particular a boomer hero-and in The Prisoner became the epitome of a rebel aginst conformity, encroaching state and corporate control--with his great speech--always played at the opening of the Prisoner--I am not a number --I am a free man. See Chas Andrews review on the website for more details of the Prisoner and why it quickly became the hit among so many of us boomers.

While McGoohan did not have a stellar film career as the Washington Post obituary points out --he did deserve credit for keeping the man he played in several TV and cinematic roles essentially the same straight arrow: He resisted the womanizing Bond image and interestingly turned down playing Bond before Sean Connery took the part and made it his own:


"When Drake fights, he fights clean," Mr. McGoohan once explained. "He abhors bloodshed. He carries a gun, but doesn't use it unless necessary -- and then he doesn't shoot to kill. He prefers to use his wits. He is a person with a sophisticated background and a philosophy. I want Drake to be in the heroic mould, like the classic Western hero -- which means he has to be a good man."

And so he has entered TV and Boomer legend history--except he was more than just an actor--writing some of the episodes of The Prisoner himself--directing others and
was also responsible for choosing the great setting for the show--always to be known as "the village" --he discovered the sinister place whule making "Danger Man, which as the Post informs us "was filmed at the Portmeirion resort in North Wales. He was so struck by the architecture, which blended several incongruous styles, that he made it the background for "The Prisoner."

So we will miss him. If any of the networks will care to re-run the Prisoner --I will be watching..

William Zantzinger dead--Made Infamous by Dylan in Song

The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll is surely one of Dylan's most important songs --the detailed imaginative leap in understanding Hattie Carroll's world allows us to feel in our spleen Zantzinger's repellent racist act--teaching our entire moral sensibility-- not just our heads.

We now might regard the death of William Zantzinger on January 3rd this year as an end of an era as we get ready to inaugurate our first African American President. A bookmark made more poignant by noting that Zantzinger was a child of privilege and attended the same school--Sidwell Friends --as the one that the Obama children have just begun this past week.
The Washington Post notes his passing and opens the obituary notice with words taken from the great lyric:

William Zanzinger killed poor Hattie Carroll

With a cane that he twirled around his diamond ring finger

At a Baltimore hotel society gath'rin'.

The song first appeared on his 1964 album "The Times They Are A-Changin'." The Post informs us that "Dylan used an incorrect spelling of Mr. Zantzinger's surname in the song lyrics."


The Post reconfirms that Dylan did not change any of the essential details of the incident :

On Feb. 8, 1963, a young, socially prominent tobacco farmer from Southern Maryland named William Devereux Zantzinger got uncontrollably drunk at a charity ball hosted at Baltimore's Emerson Hotel. Carrying a cheap toy cane and dressed in top hat for the Spinsters Ball, he began the evening in a spirit of jest by imitating Fred Astaire.

As he drank more, Mr. Zantzinger, who was a husky 6-foot-2, became threatening in his demeanor. He assaulted a bellhop with his cane and shouted at a waitress, "Hey, black girl, bring me a drink!" He tumbled down on his wife while dancing with her.

Then he went back to the bar and demanded a drink from Hattie Carroll, a 51-year-old barmaid with 11 children and a history of high blood pressure. "Just a minute, sir," she said, which angered Mr. Zantzinger. It was not how he was used to being treated on his 630-acre farm along the Wicomico River in Charles County.

Zantzinger we learn from the obituary served only six months in jail and paid a $500 fine. The 'regular Southern Maryland boy' then in 1991 was indicted for collecting more than $64,000 in rent on properties he no longer owned--properties located off a dirt road and lacked indoor plumbing. He even had the audacity to sue for rent when his "tenants" did not pay and raised the rent on the properties. He had no kind words for Dylan whom he called a "no-account [expletive]" who had distorted the facts of the case. He told Dylan biographer Howard Sounes, "I should have sued him and put him in jail."

But let Dylan have the last word on this as he sings circa 1964 his great song--courtesy of YouTube:

Tom Rush on the Gentle Art of Forgetting

This is a post from an excellent website "Fifty is the New."..http://www.fiftyisthenew.com/

Honey, Did you Put Away the Groceries… (or did I)?
December 23, 2008, by Prudence Baird

If you have ever found the dishwasher running and wondered who turned it on—even though you’re the only one home—then this song is for you!
I was lucky enough to see folksinger Tom Rush at the fabulous and vintage Colonial Theater in Keene, New Hampshire, last month. He makes mis-remembering acceptably cool.

Learn more about Tom Rush at his website >>