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Kate: Artist & Photographer: "After her successful charitable ventures, Kate decided that she wanted to spread her wings & handed in her notice at Jigsaw... [Kate interned w/ photographers Mario Testino in NYC & Alistair Morrison]
"Kate approached me when she was at university to come & do a little bit of work w/her & we've kept in touch. She is very, very good, and it shows. She takes very beautiful, detailed photographs. She has a huge talent and a great eye. I'm sure she will go far." Alistair Morrison¹
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¹Kate The Making of a Princess by Claudia Joseph p259
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"the 18-year-old, who was a keen photographer...a promising artist as well as a talented photographer, Kate had left Marlborough College that summer with an A grade in art at A level under her belt"²
"Kate had applied to study art history at several universities and it was almost a given that she would spend a portion of her gap year in Italy...a 12-week course in Italian at the world-renowned British Institute. She was one of about a dozen girls in her class at the Institute, "³
² ³Kate The Making of a Princess by Claudia Joseph p141-142
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Star Trek TOS crew biographies
There are plenty of detailed biographies of the TOS crew, both online and in reference books. But I wanted to check what actually appears in the Original Series and the six TOS movies about this subject (that is, not counting secondary sources or later series). And the result is... very little, actually. I was surprised by the amount of data that I took for granted, just to find out it came from a novel or wasn't 100% set in stone. This is what I could find about each major character, just judging from the TOS series and movies. Feel free to add to this or correct mistakes.
James Tiberius Kirk:
Although in the series he's referred just as James T. Kirk, his middle name "Tiberius" appears in Star Trek VI. "Tiberius" was also his middle name in TAS episode Bem, and the novel The Galactic Whirlpool (both by Gerrold), as well as in Roddenberry's TMP novelization. So yeah, no doubts about his name.
He was born in Iowa (Star Trek IV) and had one brother, George Samuel Kirk, and three nephews (What are little girls made of?). Sam married a woman named Aurelan (Operation: Annihilate).
Kirk was 34 in The Deadly Years. Assuming each season is a year of the five year mission, he could be 33 at the start of the series. And this is the only reference for his age I could find. As for actual dates, I didn't find anything, except his statement in Star Trek IV that he comes from the late 23rd century. (It wouldn't be until Voyager episode Q2, that a date was given for the end of the five-year mission: 2270. This follows Michael Okuda's Star Trek Chronology, and all other dates for TOS are inferred from this).
At age 13 he witnessed the massacre of Tarsus IV (Kodos was governor twenty years ago, in The Conscience of the King).
At age 18 he had just entered the Academy and was tormented by Finnegan. At this time he also met Ruth (fifteen years before Shore Leave).
He served in the USS Republic as an ensign, at some unspecified time after his Academy years, where he reported Ben Finney for negligency (Court Martial).
At age 21 he visited the planet Neural and befriended Tyree (thirteen years before A private little war).
He teached at the Academy as a lieutenant. One of his students was his friend Gary Mitchell (Where No Man has Gone Before).
He was a lieutenant in the USS Farragut at age 23 (eleven years before Obsession), where he first encountered the cloud creature that massacred his crewmates.
Kirk had a relationship with Areel Shaw when he was 29 (four years before Court Martial).
He became captain of the USS Enterprise after Pike. If we suppose TOS first season happens during the first year of the five-year mission, Kirk was around 37 at the end of this mission.
There's a big gap of fifteen years between Space Seed and the second movie. And apart from the five-year mission, most of those years are unaccounted for. Kirk's been an admiral for two years and a half at the start of TMP. But we don't know if he became an admiral right after the Enterprise's mission, or much later. That is, we don't know at what point of that gap take place the events of TMP. Around this time, both Spock and McCoy had retired from Starfleet, though they both returned when Kirk took the Enterprise again for the V'Ger incident.
By The Wrath of Kahn, Kirk should be 48 years old (fifteen years since he left Kahn stranded in Space Seed). If David is around 30, Kirk's relationship with Carol could have been at the Academy, but it's also possible that David is younger.
The third and fourth films happen shortly after The Wrath of Kahn, but no idea how much time elapsed since then and the fifth and sixth films (though see the info for McCoy).
Spock
Known simply as "Spock". His full name is considered unpronounceable for humans, though the novel Ishmael gives it as "S'chn T'gai Spock".
His parents are Sarek and Amanda (Journey to Babel). Amanda's last name was never given, though TAS episode Yesteryear, some novels, and the 2009 reboot film establishes it as "Grayson". Spock also has a half-brother: Sybok (Star Trek V).
I couldn't find anything about Spock's actual age during the series/movies.
He was betrothed to T'Pring at age seven (Amok Time).
He probably joined Starfleet eighteen years before Journey to Babel, since that's the time he spent not speaking with Sarek. If he joined Starfleet at 18 years old, he'd be 36 by season two (but that's just a supposition).
He was part of Pike's crew thirteen years before The Menagerie, during the events in Talos IV. He'd be 22 by then. Spock served under Pike for eleven years (also from The Menagerie). That means Kirk had been captain of the Enterprise for at least two years before season one.
After that, Spock's career runs more or less in parallel with Kirk's, so I won't go over it again.
Leonard H. McCoy
His middle initial first appears in Star Trek III, as well as the name of his father: David. The novel Provenance of Shadows explains the middle initial as "Horatio", but other novels call him "Leonard Edward McCoy" (???).
Much of his biographical background comes from the "Writer's Guide" by Roddenberry and Fontana, but never made it to the series. That includes the fact he's 45 (by season one?) and born in Georgia. As well as the fact that he's divorced and joined Starfleet as a result of this, and that he has a 20 year old daughter (Joanna). Presumably, the story of his divorce and Joanna would have appeared in The Way to Eden, but the story was severely altered. His daughter is mentioned, but without name, in TAS episode The Survivor, and in several novels. The Gold Key comics call her "Barbara" instead. His ex-wife is given different names in the novels and comics: Honey, Jocelyn, Joan, Gillian...
No idea when he joined Starfleet (that depends on how long was his marriage), or when he met Kirk.
Ten years before The Man Trap, he had a romance with Nancy Crater. Though in the episode he sometimes says he knew her twelve years ago, and other times ten years ago. Either it's a mistake, or the relationship simply lasted two years (though McCoy's doubts about Nancy remembering him, imply the relationship wasn't very long).
At some point, he visited Capella IV for a few months (Friday's Child).
He served in the Enterprise for 27 years (Star Trek VI), but only under Kirk, it seems. If he was 45 when he started, he'd be 72 in the last film, and Kirk would be 60 years old.
Note on McCoy's age in later series
The "Writer's Guide" statement that McCoy was 45 at the time of TOS, was contradicted by later series. In TNG episode Encounter at Farpoint, he's said to be 137 years old. While in the episode The Neutral Zone (also from TNG season one) the year is 2364. As both episodes probably happen in the same year, McCoy would have been born in 2227. Since, according to Voyager, the five-year mission lasted from 2266 to 2270, McCoy would have been 39 at the start of the mission. I'm following the Writer's Guide figure, however, because I consider this document more relevant for TOS itself. After all, many things that are facts in later series, aren't the same in TOS, and viceversa. Also, considering that the age of the characters seems to be close to the age of the actors, I find more likely that McCoy was 45, and not 39, at the start of TOS. To give you an idea, Shatner was 36 in season two (Kirk was 34), Nimoy was also 36 (just as Spock) and Kelley was 47. The twelve year gap between Kirk and McCoy, would be almost the same as the eleven year gap between Shatner and Kelley.
Montgomery Scott
Very little about him, but at least we got his full name in the series. He's supposed to be Scottish, and has lived in Aberdeen (Wolf in the Fold).
Apart from being Chief Engineer in the Enterprise, he was engineer advisor in a freighter, running from Deneva to the asteroid belt (Operation: Annihilate).
Uhura
We never knew her first name in TOS! This is one of the things that surprised me the most. However, "Nyota" is her first name in the reboot films, the new series, and well before that, the novel The Entropy Effect.
She was probably born in east Africa, since her native language seems to be Swahili (the language she reverted to when her memory was wiped in The Changeling). Thanks to user @sapsuckers-and-stardust for pointing this out.
Very, very little about her bio background. Most of it has to be collected from novels or comics, and those never intended to be coherent with each other.
Hikaru Sulu
Though his first name was unknown for a long time, it was revealed to be "Hikaru" in Star Trek VI. But before this, he was also called Hikaru in The Entropy Effect.
Sulu was born in San Francisco (Star Trek IV).
Again, almost nothing of his bio in the series/movies. Though the DC comics explored his character significantly. And in Star Trek: Generations, he had a daughter, Demora.
By Star Trek VI, he was finally a captain of his own ship, the Excelsior.
Pavel Andreievich Chekov
His full name appears first in The Way to Eden, where we also learn he had a romance with Irina Galliulin at the Academy.
Chekov has no siblings (Day of the Dove).
He's 22 by season two (Who mourns for Adonais?).
After serving in the Enterprise, he was first officer in the USS Reliant during The Wrath of Kahn, though he returned with Kirk after the Reliant's destruction.
Christine Chapel
She abandoned her career in bio-research to sign aboard the Enterprise as a nurse, and search after her fiancé Roger Korby (What are little girls made of?) Strangely enough, a few episodes before, she had confessed her love for Spock. She chose to stay in the ship after finding out Korby was dead.
By the time of TMP, she was a doctor in the Enterprise, though she doesn't appear as part of the crew in the later movies.
Janice Rand
She served as a yeoman in the Enterprise during the early five-year mission, but disappears from the series afterwards.
In TMP, she's the transporter chief. And in Star Trek IV, Janice is seen at Starfleet Command, along with Chapel.
By Star Trek VI, she was the communications officer of the Excelsior, under Sulu.
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joachimnapoleon · 2 months
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A look at three Fouché biographies
Over the past few months I've read three English-language biographies on Fouché: Joseph Fouché: Portrait of a Politician, by Stefan Zweig; Fouché: Unprincipled Patriot, by Hubert Cole; and Medusa's Head: The Rise and Survival of Joseph Fouché, Inventor of the Modern Police State, by Rand Mirante. These are a great example of how dramatically interpretations of a historical figure can vary from one historian to another (see also the difference between Alan Schom's interpretation of Napoleon vs. that of Andrew Roberts). And also a great example of why it’s a good idea to read multiple biographies on the same figure, to gain a more well-rounded perspective, instead of simply accepting/adopting that of the first biographer you read.
Zweig is a colorful writer and his biography is highly entertaining—he actually had me laughing out loud a few times—but his depictions of Fouché are so hilariously sinister and malignant throughout that at times it almost feels like a caricature. Zweig also utilizes the least amount of primary source material out of the three biographers--hardly any, actually--and so much of what he writes in regard to Fouché's motivations and thoughts come across as pure speculation or projection, but are always stated very matter-of-factly. Zweig presents a Fouché who chafes at the smallness of the roles he is given, driven by "unflinching selfishness." "When in power," Zweig writes, "he does not work for the State, does not work for the Directory or for Napoleon, but for himself." Aside from raw ambition, Zweig attributes most of Fouché’s actions to his sheer delight in engaging in intrigue for the sake of intrigue, an interpretation that seems to come straight out of Napoleon’s venting on St. Helena: “Intrigue was to Fouché a necessary of life. He intrigued at all times, in all places, in all ways, and with all persons. Nothing ever came to light, but he was found to have had a hand in it. He made it his sole business to look out for something that he might be meddling with. His mania was to wish to be concerned with everything.” Overall, Zweig’s book is worth reading, but out of the three English-language Fouché biographies, it’d be ranked third on my list.
Hubert Cole’s interpretation of Fouché is as different from Zweig’s as night is from day. The key word in Cole’s title is “Patriot,” and Cole’s central point is that Fouché, at each point in his career, was doing what he believed was in the best interests of France, even if that meant negotiating for peace with Britain behind Napoleon’s back, or pushing Napoleon towards a divorce and remarriage for the sake of shoring up the Bonaparte dynasty, or even (repeatedly) abandoning one master to serve another. This is the second one of Cole’s biographies I’ve read, and as most of you following me already know, I loved his dual biography on Joachim and Caroline Murat, the deceptively named The Betrayers, which is actually a very sympathetic look at the Murat couple. Cole is no fan of Napoleon and doesn’t really attempt to hide it, and maybe it’s because of this that he feels inclined to look deeper at the motivations and actions of those who ended up in opposition to Napoleon at various points (and who have therefore been demonized in history books accordingly). Cole draws heavily on primary sources, from letters and memoirs of Fouché’s contemporaries, to Fouché’s police bulletins (quoted at length throughout) to argue that “It is possible… that he was a sincere and moderately successful patriot. It is not uncommon in France for egoists to be hailed as patriots, and patriots condemned as traitors.” Far from the sinister, cold-blooded figure that haunts Zweig’s biography, or the “universally distrusted, feared, and hated” social pariah of Mirante’s, Cole's Fouché is charming, a welcome figure in the drawing rooms of Paris society, with a preference for making friends rather than enemies; nevertheless Cole does not deny that Fouché could also be ruthless, ambitious, and cunning. Cole also uses numerous accounts regarding Fouché by British, German, and Russian contemporaries, “in the belief that their prejudices, if national, are less personal.” Out of these three biographies, this one was my personal favorite, as I think it provides a more well-rounded picture of Fouché as a human being.
The primary focus of Mirante’s book is Fouché’s administration of the Ministry of Police, and the biography goes into great detail about the operations of the police in Napoleonic France, its vast network of informants, subversion of the press, surveillance of emigrés, and steady stream of information flowing in from all quarters. Fouché emphasized to his subordinates how one small detail or event could be “of great interest in the general order of things by its connections with related matters of which you are scarcely aware.” Like Cole, Mirante quotes frequently from Fouché’s police bulletins, as well as from memoirs of the era (though most of the excerpts are those hostile to Fouché). Unlike Cole, Mirante’s Fouché is driven not by any higher patriotism, but—especially after his humiliating flight from France in 1810—by a deep and abiding hatred of Napoleon, towards whose final destruction Fouché is willing to go to any length. Mirante provides more detail on Fouché’s exile and final years than either Zweig or Cole, one interesting aspect of which is the warm welcome Fouché received in Trieste from Elisa Bonaparte, who had been driven from power in Tuscany largely through Fouché’s machinations with Murat in 1814. Mirante ends the book with a critical look at Fouché’s dubious, ghostwritten “memoirs,” the credibility of which he is far more suspicious than Cole, who accepts the argument of French historian Louis Madelin that they are “largely authentic and accurate.” Mirante, on the other hand, is not convinced, and concludes that the memoirs are “highly assailable, at least quasi-spurious, and shrouded in controversy and deceit.” Mirante ends by drawing parallels between Fouché’s policing methods and those of the Gestapo and NKVD in the 20th century.
Overall I enjoyed all three of these for different reasons, and taken together they offer a more complete picture of Fouché. I haven’t gotten around to reading any French-language biographies on Fouché yet, but I do have a couple works on him by Emmanuel de Waresquiel that are definitely on my to-read list.
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lets-get-lit · 2 months
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We age not by holding on to youth, but by letting ourselves grow and embracing whatever youthful parts remain.
- Keith Richards, Life
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hanzajesthanza · 9 months
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i made my first witcher video!
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hi everybody! if you've been following me for a while, you may know that i've been working on creating a witcher analysis youtube channel for a couple of years now (the kind that does video essays and deep dives).
though my first video is not an analysis, it is equally important—a biography and bibliography of author andrzej sapkowski's life and works! if you ever wondered how the witcher was created, this video is for you!
also... it's over an hour long! so i'd recommend that you watch it when you can get some time on your hands :)
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useless-catalanfacts · 4 months
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Hi, I hope you haven't answered this question already, but do you have any books to recommend about catalan history? Like biographies/autobiographies or just something general. Thank you 😊
Hello! I assume you mean books that have been published in English.
There are many history books in Catalan of course, way less in English, but still some. As you will understand, I have read history books about Catalonia in Catalan, and not the ones made in English, so I can't recommend much from first hand. However, there are some that I can recommend.
I have heard very good recommendations of the book A People's History of Catalonia (2022) by Michael Eaude.
Another classic is George Orwell's Homage to Catalonia (1938), his autobiography from his years fighting in the Spanish Civil War. It's clearly written by a foreigner but definitely very interesting.
For more recent stuff, there's The Case of the Catalans: Why So Many Catalans No Longer Want To Be Part of Spain (2020) coordinated by Clara Ponsatí.
@guillemelgat also recommends Monturiol's Dream: the extraordinary story of the submarine inventor who wanted to save the world (2003) by Matthew Stewart about the Catalan inventor and revolutionary Narcís Monturiol, and also talks to the context where he lived in, 19th century Barcelona when the Eixample was being built.
Lastly, I would also like to add a novel. It's a historical fiction but it's very very well researched and has been translated to English. It's Victus: The Fall of Barcelona (2012) by Albert Sánchez Piñol, set during the War of the Spanish Succession, which together with the Civil War is the most important moment in Catalan collective memory.
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burningvelvet · 4 months
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Read good portions of The Art of the Brontës by Christine Alexander (https://archive.org/details/artofbrontes0000alex) and The Brontë Cabinet: Three Lives in Nine Objects by Deborah Lutz https://archive.org/details/brontcabinetthre0000lutz.
I highly recommend both. They're very well-written books which explore the Brontës through the lens of material culture, which I love. Both novels are essentially collective biographies inspired by and centered around the personal artifacts of the Brontës, which may sound like a limited method of exploration, but by no means is! They contain a wealth of information which I feel has expanded my knowledge bank as a relative beginner to Brontë biography.
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intothestacks · 11 months
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Comic by Tom Gauld
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germanpostwarmodern · 11 months
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Separating artist, and therefore oeuvre, and biography in contrast to art history still prevails in architectural history, especially with regards to sexual identity and especially so in the German-speaking world. While Philip Johnson in 1996 greeted from the cover of the Gay magazine „Out“ e.g. German postwar heavyweights like Helmut Hentrich or Friedrich Wilhelm Kraemer throughout their lives hid their gayness. This shadowy part of their biographies was the point of departure for Uwe Bresan and Wolfgang Voigt to trace the lives and biographies of gay, lesbian and trans architects. They don’t ask the question of a gay architecture but instead focus on the social, societal and professional surroundings that forced them to hide their sexual identity. In „Gay Architects - Silent Biographies from 18th to 20th Century“ Bresan and Voigt collect 41 biographies ranging from Ernst Georg Sonnin, architect of Hamburg’s famous „Michel“, over Napoleon’s court architects Percier and Fontaine to Paul Rudolph, Horace Gifford and Chen Kuen Lee. With Emilie Winkelmann and Hildegard Schirmacher the authors also included a lesbian and a trans person.
At this point one might argue about the accuracy of the book’s title but in view of the insightful biographical miniatures the authors compiled despite a poor source situation this is negligible. Instead each biography reveals a sometimes less, sometimes more secretive dealing with homosexuality as a result of societal and legal circumstances. In Germany for example Friedrich Wilhelm Kraemer almost lost his chair at TH Braunschweig because in 1950 he had been caught red-handed with a man in a hotel by the police. At this time intercourse between men still was a criminal offence.
An example of outright foul play was the termination of Charles Moore’s tenure as dean of Yale School of Architecture after the university’s committees secretly agreed that Moore was a weak character due to his sexuality.
The latter stories are only two of the 41 told in the book but quite plainly show why it is so important to no longer omit them. Thus the book can only be the starting point for a queer architectural history. An essential and important book!
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gothicwidowsworld · 6 months
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The F1 bookshelf is up with two new additions this evening. Mr Lando Norris & Mr George Russell welcome to the collection 📚
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the-anxious-acrobat · 5 months
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bookshop regular\book lover concept! 📚📖
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I received a book for Christmas: Kate Middleton Princess in Waiting.
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The author, Claudia Joseph, seems to be a REAL journalist. While the others are losing their collective minds, Jordan has chosen to share a bit of history about Catherine's ancestors.
In Catherine's biography, Joseph writes that after the big Wills & Kate split, Catherine received loads of letters which were very comforting to her during that hard season. It made me think of all the mail she's receiving during this hard season. I pray her heart is comforted and at peace.
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I think Claudia Joseph used a 2005 photo of Miss Kate Middleton
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https://www.tumblr.com/princesscatherinemiddleton/743844369104322560/miss-catherine-middleton-accompanied-prince?source=share
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weneverlearn · 25 days
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Aaron Lange, Peter Laughner, and the Terminal Town of Cleveland, Ohio
Cleveland-based artist, Aaron Lange, tackles his first graphic novel, Ain't It Fun -- a deep dive into the oily depths of the Rust Belt's most influential music town, it's most mythological misfit, it's oft-forgotten artistic and political streaks, and beyond...
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Aaron Lange and his book, 2023 (Photo by Jake Kelly)
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There’s a recurring line in Aaron Lange’s remarkable new graphic novel, Ain’t It Fun (Stone Church Press, 2023), that states, “Say the words out loud. The River isn’t real.” The river Lange was speaking of is the Cuyahoga, that infamously flammable mass of muck that dumps out into Lake Erie.
Peter Laughner (the ostensible topic of Lange’s book) was an amazing artist who probably could’ve ditched the banks of the Cuyahoga for more amenably artistic areas back in his early 1970s heyday. Aside from his frequent pilgrimages to the burgeoning NYC Lower East Side scene (where he nearly joined Television) and a quickly ditched attempt to live in California though, he mostly stuck around northeast Ohio.
While desperately trying to find his sound and a workable band, Laughner smelted a post-hippie, pre-punk amoebic folk rock, and formed the influential embryonic punk band, Rocket from the Tombs, which later morphed into Pere Ubu. All of which – lumped up with other rust-belted oddballs like electric eels, Mirrors, DEVO, the Numbers Band, Chi-Pig, Tin Huey, Rubber City Rebels, and more – essentially helped formed the “proto-punk” template.
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Laughner was also a rock writer of some regional renown, and contributed numerous amphetamine-fueled articles to regional mags like The Scene and Creem -- mostly concerning where Rock'n'Roll was going, colored as he was by the Velvet Underground, the Stooges, David Bowie, and Roxy Music playing in Cleveland a bunch of times around his formative years.
Sadly, in June 1977, Laughner died of acute pancreatitis at age 24. Aside from the first two seminal Pere Ubu 7-inch singles, the rest of Laughner’s recorded output was just one very limited self-released EP and, posthumously, a great double-LP comp of demo and live tracks, Take the Guitar Player for a Ride (1993, Tim Kerr Records). A surprisingly large batch of unreleased lost demos, radio shows, and live tapes appeared on the beautiful and essential box set, Peter Laughner (Smog Veil Records, 2019), that brought Laughner’s legend just a few blocks outside of Fringeville, as it received universally great reviews….
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The Dead Boys became the most well-known act of that mid-70s Cleveland scene, though that only happened once they high-tailed it to NYC. Aside from DEVO, Chrissie Hynde, and the Waitresses (all of whom did their own versions of high-tailing it), nearly every other act in that fertile Cle-Akron proto-punk vortex soon dissipated, eventually getting the cult treatment at best.
Cleveland is indeed right there with NYC and London as punk ground zero, but Americans tend to equate buyable products as proof of import, so shockingly, the Pagans and The Styrenes just aren’t the household name they should be.
Decades of tape-trading stories, sub-indie label limited releases, and fanzine debates kept the mythology of those acts barely breathing underneath the end of the milennium’s increasingly loud R'n'R death knell. And as that mythology slowly grew, the fans and even the musicians of the scene itself still wonder what it all meant.     
Which, as you dig deeper into Ain’t It Fun, becomes the theme not just about the legendary rocker ghost of Peter Laughner, but of Cleveland itself. Ala Greil Marcus’ classic “hidden history” tome, Lipstick Traces, Lange interweaves Laughner’s self-immolating attempts at Beatnik-art-punk transcendence with a very detailed history of Cleveland, with its insane anti-legends and foot-shooting civic development.
Like much of the dank, rusted, and mysterious edges of the one-time “Sixth City,” the Cuyahoga has been cleaned up since, though I still wouldn’t suggest slurping up a swallow if you’re hanging on the banks of the Flats. I grew up in Cleveland and visit as often as I can because it’s an awesome place, no matter what they tell you. Or maybe, because of what they tell you.
If you are keen to swim down through the muck and mire of Cleveland’s charms, you don’t just get used to it, you like it. As for the “Cleveland” that the City Fathers have always tried so vainly to hype, us hopelessly romantic proto-punk fanatics say to those who would erase Cleveland’s fucked-up past and replace it with that weird fake greenspace underneath the Terminal Tower: “The City isn’t real.”
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Give us a quick bio.
Born in Cleveland, 1981. We moved to the west side suburbs when I was six. My parents didn’t listen to much music, and I don’t have older siblings. So I didn’t really listen to music at all until I was in high school, and I didn’t listen to any of the grunge or ‘90s stuff that was popular. I got real into the Beatles when I was in ninth grade, and at some point I got the Velvet Underground’s first album from the library because I saw Andy Warhol’s name on the cover. I didn’t know anything about them, so that was a real shock. I probably first heard Iggy Pop via the Trainspotting soundtrack, and pretty soon after I started getting into punk and generally more obscure stuff. Now I listen to more electronic stuff, ambient stuff. I also like most anything that falls under the broad “post-punk” umbrella. I really hate “rama-lama ding-dong” rock and roll.
What came first – music or drawing interest?
Drawing. I was always drawing… I’ve been a semi-regular contributor to Mineshaft for many years, which is a small zine/journal that features a lot of underground comix related stuff, but also has a beatnik vibe and includes poetry and writing. I’ve done the odd thing here and there for other zines, but I don’t really fit in anywhere.
Don’t really fit it – I feel that phrase describes a lot of the best / more influential Ohio musicians / bands. Did you feel that kind of feeling about Peter as you researched and wrote the book?
Peter was well liked, and he knew a vast array of people. If anything, he fit in in too many situations. He was spread thin.
When you lived in Philly, did you get a sense of any kind of similar proto-punk scene / era in that town? I sometimes, perhaps jingoistically, think this particular kind of music is almost exclusively confined to the Rust Belt.
I lived in Philly for nearly 11 years. As far as the old scene there, they had Pure Hell. But back then, anybody who really wanted to do something like that would just move to NYC.
So, is there a moment in time that started you on a path towards wanting to dig into Cleveland’s proto-punk past like this?
It was just something I had a vague interest in, going back to when I first heard Pere Ubu. And then later learning about the electric eels, and starting to get a feeling that Cleveland had a lot more to offer than just the Dead Boys. The Rocket from the Tombs reunion got things going, and that’s when I first started to hear Laughner’s name. A few years later, a friend sent me a burned CD of the Take the Guitar Player for a Ride collection, and I started to get more interested in Peter specifically.
Despite any first wave punk fan’s excitement about a Laughner bio, this book is moreso a history of Cleveland, and trying to connect those odd underground, counterculture, or mythological connections that the Chamber of Commerce tends to ignor as the town’s import. Was there a moment where you realized this book needed to go a little wider than only telling the tales of Laughner and the bands of that era? (Not that there’s anything wrong with that!)
Very early on I realized that none of this would make sense or have any true meaning without the appropriate context. The activities of the early Cle punk scene need to be viewed in relation to what was going on in the city. I think this is just as true with NYC or London – these were very specific contexts, all tangled up in politics, crime, rent, television, and also the specifics of the more hippie-ish local countercultures that preceded each region. You’ve got Bowie and Warhol and all that, but in Cleveland you’ve also got Ghoulardi and d.a. levy. Mix that up with deindustrialization and a picture starts to form.
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So when did you decide on doing this book? You’ve mentioned this was your first attempt at doing a full graphic novel – and boy, you went epic on it!
I did a short version of Peter’s story back when I was living in Philadelphia. But upon completing that version – which I now think of as a sketch – it became clear that there was a lot more to say and to investigate. I spent about a year just thinking about it, forming contacts with some people, and tracking down various reference materials like records, zines, books, etc. Then my wife got a new job at Cleveland State University, so we left Philly. Once I landed back in Cleveland I started working on the book in earnest.
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Page from Ain't It Fun -- all book images courtesy of the author.
By any chance was Greil Marcus’ book, Lipstick Traces (1989), an inspiration, as far as the “hidden history” factor, the trying to connect seemingly unconnected and lost historical footnotes into a path towards the culture’s future?
Yes. I read Lipstick Traces when I was around 19 or 20, and I’d never seen anything like it before. It really blew my mind, all the stuff about the Situationists and Dadaists and all that. Later on, I read Nick Tosches’ Dean Martin biography, Dino, and that was another mind blower. Another major influence is Iain Sinclair.
Ah Dino, another Ohio native. So, Laughner’s one-time partner, Charlotte Pressler’s book is mentioned, and I’ve seen it referenced and talked about for years – any inside word on if/when she might have that published?
Charlotte never wrote a book, though she did co-edit a book that collected the work of local poets. As far as her own writing, she’s done all manner of essays and poetry, and probably some academic writing that I’m not familiar with. As far as her completing “Those Were Different Times”— which was intended as a total of three essays— I’ve got some thoughts on that, but it’s not really my place to comment on it.
Pressler sounds like a very serious person in your book, as you say, she was kind of older than her years. But how was she to talk to?
Charlotte is serious, but she’s not dour. She’s got a sense of humor and she’s very curious about the world, always looking to learn new things. She’s an intellectual, and has a wide array of interests. We get along, we’re friends.
The fact that the town’s namesake, Moses Cleveland, left soon after his “discovery” and never came back – that’s like a template for how people envision a town like Cleveland: nice place to grow up, but you want to get out as soon as you’re legal. Even the musicians of the area might’ve agreed with that sentiment, even if many never left.  Do you think that has changed?
I’m glad I left Cleveland, but I’m also glad I came back. First off, my family is here. Second, the cost of living is still reasonable. I don’t know how people live in New York. I never have any money. I’d make more money if I had a full-time job at McDonald’s. That’s not a joke, or me being self-deprecating. How do artists live in New York? How do they afford rent and 20 dollar packs of cigarettes? I’m just totally confused by the basic mechanics of this. So yeah, I’m in Cleveland. It’s not great, but what are my options? I can’t just go to Paris and fuck around like a bohemian. I would if I could.
In Ain't It Fun, you reveal that one of the seminal Cleveland scene dives, Pirate's Cove, was once a Rockerfeller warehouse  – these kind of enlightening, almost comically perfect metaphors pop up every few pages. Not unlike the mythology that can sometimes arise in musician fandom, I wonder if these are metaphors we can mine, or just an obvious facts that the town drifted down from a center of industry to relative poverty.
“Metaphor” might be at too much of a remove. These facts, these landmarks — they create a complex of semiotics, a map, a framework. The city talks through its symbols and its landscape. If you submit to it and listen, it will tell you secrets. There is nothing metaphorical about this.
Is it a sign of privilege to look on destitution as inspiration? I’m guessing the sick drunks at Pirate’s Cove in 1975 weren’t thinking they were living in a rusty Paris of the ‘30s. Though I will say a thing I really loved about your book was that, for all its yearning and historical weaving, you still stick to facts and don’t seem to over-mythologize or put any gauze on the smog, like “Isn’t that so cool, man.” You capture the quiet and damp desperation of that era and Laughner’s milieu.
Poverty, decline, decay, entropy – these things are real. By aestheticizing them we are able to gain some control over them. And once you have control, you have the power to change things. This is not “slumming.” “Privilege” has nothing to do with it.
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Page from Ain't It Fun
Do you know why the Terminal Tower (once the second tallest building in the world when it opened in 1928) was named that? It seems somewhat fatalistic, given the usual futurist positivism of the deco design era.
Terminal as in train terminal. It really pisses me off that there was once a time where you could go there and catch a train to Chicago or New York. It’s infuriating how this country dismantled its rail systems. And the Terminal Tower isn’t deco, but I think it is often confused with that style just by virtue of not being a gigantic rectangle. In that sense it does have more in common with a deco structure like the Chrysler building. Honestly, if you are looking for deco you might find more notable examples in Akron than you would Cleveland.
I notice a kind of – and bear with my lesser abilities to describe illustrative art – swirly style in your work that kind of aligns with art deco curves, maybe some Gustav Klimt…? In general, who were some illustrative inspirations for you early on?
That “swirly” style you describe is art nouveau. Deco came after that, and is more angular and clean. Additionally, a lot of underground comix guys were also poster artists, and there was often a nouveau influence in that psychedelic work – so there’s a bit of a thread there. As far as Klimt, I came to him kinda late, but I love him now.
The music of many northeast Ohio bands of that era has been generally tagged as “industrial” (the pre-dance industrial style, of course), cranky like the machinery of the sputtering factories in the Flats, etc… My guess is maybe the musicians were already finding used R'n'R instruments in thrift stores by that time, which would add a kind of layer of revision, turning old things into new sounds. Did you hear about of any of that? Or were there enough music stores around town? I know DEVO was already taking used instruments and refitting them; or electric eels using sheet metal and such to bang on…
I’m not a musician, so I don’t know anything about gear or stuff like that. I do know that Allen Ravenstine made field recordings in the Flats, and utilized them via his synthesizer. Frankly, I wish more of the Northeast Ohio bands had taken cues from Ubu and early Devo, because an “industrial” subculture definitely could have formed, like it did in England and San Francisco. But that never really happened here.
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That kind of music was pretty popular on college radio and in a few clubs in Cleveland, though not many original bands with that sound arrived, aside from Nine Inch Nails who quickly took his act elsewhere… So in the book you mention local newsman, Dick Fealger. My memories of him are as a curmudgeon whose shtick was getting a little old by the time I was seeing him on the news, or his later opinion columns. Kinda your classic “Hey you kids, get off my lawn” style. You rightly paint him as a somewhat prescient reporter of the odd in his earlier days, though. I once had to go to a friend’s mother’s funeral, and in the next room in the funeral home was Dick Feagler’s funeral. I always regret not sneaking over and taking a peak into it to see who was there.
I like Feagler in the same way that I liked Andy Rooney on 60 Minutes. These were people that my grandparents liked. So I suppose my appreciation for Feagler is half nostalgia, half irony. I like cranks, grumps, letter-writers, street prophets. I like black coffee, donuts, diners, and blue plate specials – that’s Feagler’s world, the old newspaper world. Get up at 6 am and put your pants on, that kinda thing.
Yeah, I still found Feagler kinda funny, but like Jane Scott, while respect was always there, by the later ‘80s/’90s, both were set into almost caricatures  who were kind of resting on their laurels. 
Yeah, I remember seeing Jane at some random Grog Shop show back in the ‘90s, and I was kinda impressed. But no, she was never really cool. Jane was pure Cleveland, her career couldn't have happened anywhere else.
I remember seeing her sit right next to a huge house amp at the old Variety Theater for the entire duration of a Dead Kennedys show, taking notes for her review. Pretty impressive given her age at that point.
You also make a point of carving out an important space for The Damnation of Adam Blessing, a band that seems to get forgotten when discussing Cleveland’s pre-punk band gaggle. I find that interesting because in a way, they are the template for the way many Ohio bands don’t fit into any exact genre, and so often people don’t “get” them, or they’re forgotten later.
Damnation worked as a good local example for that whole psychedelic thing. They were very ‘60s. While the James Gang on the other hand, was more ‘70s— the cracks were starting to show with the ‘70s bands, they were harder and less utopian. Damnation feels more “Woodstock,” so they were useful to me in that regard.
I must add – for years I thought it was pronounced Laugh-ner, as in to laugh, ha ha, not knowing the Gaelic roots. Once I learned I was pronouncing it wrong, I still wanted to pronounce it like laughing, as it seemed to fit so darkly correct with how his life went, and Cleveland musicians’ love of bad puns and cheap comedians and such… Of course when I learned that it was an “ethnic” name, it made it that much more Cleveland.
Yeah, everybody says his name wrong. I used to too, and had to really force myself to start saying it as Lochner. But everybody says Pere Ubu wrong as well – it’s Pear Ubu.
I hate any desecration of any artwork, but I always loved the blowing up The Thinker statue story, as it seemed such a powerful metaphor of the strength of art, and Cleveland itself – the fact that The Thinker himself still sits there, right on top of the sliced-up and sweeping shards from the blast. It’s still there, right? And isn’t it true that there are like three more “official” Thinker statues in the world?
Yeah, I don’t condone what happened, but it is kinda cool. As a kid, the mutilated Thinker had a strong effect on me — I couldn’t have put it into words at the time, but I think it gave me a sense of the weight of history. It’s almost like a post-war artifact in Europe, something that is scarred. And yes, it’s still there outside the museum. And it’s a cast. I think there might be five official ones, but I’d have to look that up. If you are ever in Philadelphia, swing by the Rodin museum and check out The Gates of Hell.
I have only become a bigger fan of Laughner’s as the years pass. But there is something to the critique that perhaps he never really found his singular sound; that he was copping bits from Lou Reed and Dylan, and couldn’t keep a band together to save his life. And there was supposedly a feeling among some in the NYC scene that he was a bit of a carpetbagger.
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Everybody has their influences, so Peter wasn’t in any way unique in that sense. I know he has a reputation for doing a lot of cover songs — which is true — but he also wrote a lot of originals, and there are some damn good ones which are still unreleased. “Under the Volcano” is just one such unheard song which I mention in my book, but there are others. As far as finding his own singular sound, he probably came closest to that with Friction. That group borrowed heavily from Television and Richard Hell, but also drew upon Richard Thompson and Fairport Convention. And when you think about it, those were really unlikely influences to juxtapose, and it created something original. Frustratingly though, Friction never achieved their full potential, as Peter was already losing it.
Yeah, Friction is kind of way up there with the “What if” bands… It’s interesting that for all his legend as a proto-punk figure, perhaps Laughner’s signature songs – Sylvia Plath” and “Baudelaire” – were gorgeous acoustic numbers. Though of course those early Pere Ubu songs were proto-punk and post-punk templates, somehow...
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I honestly don’t know what happened with Ubu, as it is pretty distinct from Peter’s other work. Thomas isn’t really a musician, so we can only give him so much credit with how that sound developed. I honestly don’t know. There just must have been some sort of alchemy between the various players, and Thomas understood it and was able to encourage and guide it in the projects that followed over the years.
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Page from Ain't It Fun
You also didn’t really detail Pere Ubu’s initial breakup – was there just not much to say?
Yeah, I think I mentioned it, but no, I didn’t really get into it. Pere Ubu is kind of a story unto themselves. But it might be worth mentioning here that Home and Garden was an interesting project that came out of that Ubu breakup. And Thomas also did some solo albums, but I’m not as familiar with those.
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Yeah, I saw Home and Garden a few times way back, good stuff. You’ve mentioned to me that there were some people that didn’t want to talk to you for the book; and that people were very protective of Peter’s legacy and/or their friendship with him. To what do you attribute that?
It has everything to do with Peter’s early death. Some people are very protective of how Peter is remembered. And I think some people weren’t exposed to Peter’s dark side, so when they hear those descriptions of him it strikes them as untrue. I think Peter showed different sides of himself to different people.
I kind of felt as I was reading that you might say more about Harvey Pekar, as not only is he an interesting figure, but the most famous graphic novelist from Ohio, and I assume an inspiration of your’s.
Pekar’s great. Especially the magazine-size issues he was doing in the late ‘70s up through the ‘80s. It was important to me to include him in the book. But Pekar was a jazz guy, and that’s a whole other story, a whole other tangled web.
So, Balloonfest! Hilarious. I almost forgot about that. But I do remember Ted Stepien owning the short-lived Cleveland professional softball team; and for a promotion, they dropped softballs off the Terminal Tower, and if you caught one you won $1,000 or something. Do you recall that? It’s one of my favorite fucked-up Cleveland stories. Balls smashed car roofs, and cops immediately told people to run away.
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Yeah, I’m aware of that baseball stunt. I generally try and stay away from anything even remotely related to professional sports teams — it gets talked about more than enough elsewhere. Oddly, I am interested in athletes who work alone, like Olympic skiers. I’m attracted to that solitary focus, where the athlete isn’t competing against other teams or players, but more competing with the limits of the human body, competing with what the physical world will allow and permit, that whole Herzog trip. I’m also interested in the Olympic Village, as this artificial space that mutates and moves across time and across continents.
As far as Balloonfest, I still watch that footage all the time. I use it as a meditation device. I’ll put it on along with Metal Machine Music and go into a trance.
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A few years ago, as I am sure you are well aware, noted British punk historian Jon Savage put together a Soul Jazz Records comp of Cleveland proto-punk called Extermination Nights in the Sixth City. I grew up in Cleveland, lived in Columbus for awhile, and I never heard it called “the Sixth City.” Have you? If so, what does it refer to?
Nobody calls it that anymore. It’s an old nickname back from when Cleveland was literally the sixth largest city in the country.
I’d guess Ain’t It Fun was a tiring feat to accomplish. But do you have another book in the works? And if someone wanted to option Peter’s story for a movie, would you sign on? I personally dread rock biopics. They’re almost universally bad.
Yeah, I’ve got an idea for another book, but it’s too early to talk about that. As far as biopics, they are almost always bad, rock or otherwise. Rock documentaries are often pretty lousy too. A recent and major exception would be Todd Haynes’ Velvet Underground documentary, which is just goddamn brilliant. A film about Peter in that vein would be great— but there’s just no footage to work from. He didn’t have Warhol or Factory people following him around with a camera. So unless somebody like Jim Jarmusch comes calling, I won’t be signing off on movie rights any time soon.
Unless there is more you’d like to say, thanks, and good luck with the book and future ventures!
Stone Church Press has a lot of projects planned for 2024 and beyond, and I encourage anyone reading this to support small publishers. There is a lot of very exciting stuff going on, but you have to work a little to find it. Amazon, algorithms, big corporate publishers — they’re like this endless blanket of concrete that smothers and suffocates. But flowers have a way of popping up between the cracks.
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Aaron Lange, 2023 (Photo by Jake Kelly)
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deadpresidents · 7 months
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I don't read a ton of books about science or scientists, but Katie Spalding's book, Edison's Ghosts: The Untold Weirdness of History's Greatest Geniuses (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO), which was released in May, is easily one of the most entertaining books I've read in the past couple of years.
When you're sitting down to read a book by someone with a PhD in mathematics, you don't expect it to be fun from cover-to-cover, let alone flat-out funny. In fact -- and I know that the fine folks at Hachette won't be able to use this in a blurb -- but Dr. Spalding's book is fucking hilarious! And that description is especially fitting because Katie Spalding had to have set some sort of record for creative profanity in a book primarily about science and scientists, an achievement that only makes Edison's Ghosts more entertaining by the chapter.
Speaking of chapters, I can't do justice to Dr. Spalding or Edison's Ghosts -- which was published in Harding's native UK under the even better title of The Limits of Genius: How Some of the World's Greatest Minds Were Surprisingly Stupid -- with a couple of quick paragraphs, so I'm just going to share some of the actual titles of the chapters of the book from the table of contents so you can get a hint of how amazing this book truly is:
1. The Mathematical Cult Leader Pythagoras, and His Incredibly Stupid Death 2. Confucius Was an Ugly Nerd with Low Self-Esteem 3. Never, Ever Hire Leonardo da Vinci 4. Galileo Utterly Fails to Read the Room 6. When René Descartes Got Baked 10. Émilie du Châtelet Cares Not for Your Social Mores, and She Will Fight You in Her Underwear to Prove It 13. Lord Byron, the Patron Saint of Fuckboys 16. John Couch Adams Ignores His Mail, Loses Neptune 18. Charles Darwin: Glutton; Worm Dad; Murderer? 20. Sigmund Freud Used Cocaine So Much He Thought Numbers Wanted to Kill Him 21. Arthur Conan Doyle Gets Pranked So Hard He Claims Fairies Exist 23. Real-Life Supervillain Nikola Tesla Takes the Term 'Pigeon Fancying' a Bit Too Literally 24. Marie Curie Defies All the Odds to Accidentally Poison Both Herself and Thousands of Strangers 25. Albert Einstein: Public Nuisance, Love Rat 29. Yukio Mishima and the Shortest, Gayest Fascist Coup in History 30. NASA Forgets about Women, Toilets and the Metric System
And those are just SOME of the actual chapter titles. If you don't want to read Edison's Ghosts: The Untold Weirdness of History's Greatest Geniuses after that taste, you're as big of an idiot as many of history's geniuses, as Katie Spalding so colorfully reveals in this brilliant book, available now from Hachette Book Group's Little, Brown and Company
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omg-hellgirl · 2 months
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I'm having some crying spells while reading Mick Jagger biographies — even though I've always considered myself above that (ha, I'm exactly on that, it's pathetic, really). They are more frequent than I would like, but they are not so long that they dry out my tear ducts.
I definitely didn't expect reactions like this from me, mainly because some things weren't new and I had already read about it somewhere, but the things I didn't know, the details, are completely heartbreaking. All the negative adjectives in my small English vocabulary are not enough to describe my feelings of indignation, disgust, and disbelief.
I can't have fluid and uninterrupted reading because I need to stop several times, breathe, read again and again, ask myself if I'm reading it right or if I'm reading it wrong, then read it again, ask myself again if I understand it right or if my English is lacking, then translate it into my mother tongue, just to be completely sure.
And in the end, there was no misunderstanding in words or context — it was simply the most complete lack of consideration and respect possible from a man to a woman. Women. Friends. Children.
It also affects my writing process because with every turn of the page of the biographies I'm reading, I feel like the real Mick would never change (Jerry Hall waited for over 20 years and it never happened). The quest to capture his personality and make it close to reality would never work in a romantic story with a happy ending. Mick never gave his women a happy ending or most importantly — respect.
I'm still going to keep posting excerpts. I will continue reading; my anguish does not diminish my curiosity or my desire to know more. I always want to know more. I always want more detail and precision. And I still fancy Mick — against my better judgment — but I wanted to get it off my chest that even though I try to take things lightly, for inexplicable reasons, I feel fragile reading all this.
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buckets-of-dirt · 5 months
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Looking for Book Recommendations
Help me find a book I can give my right-wing little brother for Christmas following a harm-reduction model for deradicalization. I need something he'll actually read that will subtly expand his worldview just enough to help him take the tiniest baby step towards the center (we'll work on further left once he gets to the "reasonable" stage).
Book topics he seems genuinely interested in:
Memoirs by/biographies of "self made men"
Stoicism (he's read Marcus Aurelius already)
Those self-help books that supposedly tell you how to be wildly successful (ie rich and powerful)
Remember, the goal is subtlety. I need to meet him where he's at. He's not gonna read bell hooks or Das Kapital right away, especially if it's me handing it to him. If it's not an innocuous-seeming gift given in good faith it won't work.
Thanks for your help!
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