Peddling Schopenhauer

I found this ad folded inside a musty, old copy of The Works of Arthur Schopenhauer: 'The Wisdom of Life' and Other Essays (New York, NY: Black's Readers Service Company, Inc., 1932). The ad is for that book. Black's Readers Service was owned by Walter J. Black, Inc. The company was similar to the Book-of-the-Month-Club and was involved in similar legal cases concerning the meaning of a 'free' book. (E.g., is a book really free if I have to buy something else in order to get it?) According to his obituary (New York Times [April 17, 1958]), Walter Black established the Plymouth Publishing Company in 1923 and changed its name to Walter J. Black, Inc. in 1928. There was a brief article in the Times on Dec. 5, 1925, in which Black is said to have offered to publish Winston Churchill's stories (after hearing that Churchill didn't want to publish them since books were too expensive for most people to buy). Black's company was run by his son, Theodore M. Black (a Chancellor of the New York State Board of Regents), from 1958 until 1982. I don't know what happened to the company after Theodore Black's death.

Google reveals that Walter J. Black, Inc. is mentioned on p. 181 of Paul Auster's New York Trilogy (in the story 'Ghosts').

The above ad is odd for a number of reasons. First, I'm fascinated by the needless arrow after 'this amazing reason'. Next, the bit about '...more forceful and purposeful living!' isn't well-suited to the outlook of a proponent of resignation and renunciation -- it's more Nietzsche than Schopenhauer. Finally, the blurb at the bottom refers to Schopenhauer's 'delightfully fresh' views on women. On the other side of the ad are several examples of Schopenhauer's horrible misogyny.

Regarding his misogyny, there's some intriguing material in Jean Pierrot's The decadent imagination, 1880-1900. Pierrot adduces gendered bigotry as one reason for Schopenhauer's popularity among the French Symbolists. They liked Schopenhauer's conception of sex as alluring poison, and they projected the concomitant fear/resentment/neuroses onto women. The resulting strain of fin-de-siècle art is one source of the modern femme fatale.

Noir killers, family men, Methodist clergy, and debauched authors

Here's an old CBC interview with Somerset Maugham, possibly 'the most debauched man of the 20th century',whom Ward Cleaver held up as a model for his youngest son.

One of Maugham's novels was the basis for a 1944 noir film called Christmas Holiday.

Speaking of noir, Ward -- er, Hugh Beaumont -- was in several noir films, joining the ranks of actors who were known for their TV roles as loving parents but who had earlier played murderers. He was a 'confident sociopath' in Money Madness and starred in Apology for Murder, a cheap knockoff of Double Indemnity (which featured another of TV's loving parents). Outside the movies, Beaumont was an ordained Methodist minister.

That last movie, Double Indemnity, was based on a novel by James M. Cain. Here's a quotation from Steve Erickson's article on James M. Cain:

Noir was to cinema as punk was to rock and roll. European refugees like Fritz Lang, Otto Preminger, Robert Siodmak, and Billy Wilder brought with them a worldview forged of equal parts German Expressionism and Nazi barbarity.

Siodmak directed the aforementioned Christmas Holiday, which was about a prostitute who married a murderer, the latter role being played by Gene Kelly. So, Gene Kelly, Hugh Beaumont, and Fred MacMurray all had roles as noir killers.

Like another noir movie that was adapted from Maugham's work, Christmas Holiday was altered to accommodate the Hays Code. Rain (1932) was not.

Canadian New Wave Music Videos (all 80's)

At Retrospace there's a great list of 150 new wave fav's. Some good Canadian groups didn't make the list, perhaps due to lack of exposure south of the border. So, I thought I'd start my own small list here.

In this list, the first links on each line are to band histories while the links to particular songs (after colons) are to YouTube videos.

Strange Advance: We Run and Worlds Away;

The Spoons: Nova Heart and Romantic Traffic (with Toronto subway footage, inc. the old red trains);

The Extras: Can't Stand Still (nice song and one of the best animated videos I've seen);

Platinum Blonde (part British): Doesn't Really Matter and Standing in the Dark;

Men Without Hats: Pop Goes the World and Safety Dance;

Blue Peter: Don't Walk on Past (Warning: ankle injuries have been sustained by people trying to imitate the dance moves that start at 3:01);

The Box: Must I Always Remember?

Chalk Circle: April Fool;

Images in Vogue: Lust for Love; and

Saga -- I'm not sure that they were New Wave but I love this band and they do work the synthesizers. They were bigger in Germany than at home. Among their best tunes were:

Don't be Late (German concert version), On the Loose and Wind Him Up.

Update (Dec. 6, 2009): NPR has a list of 50 favourite New Wave tunes.

Retro book cover

I found this book while rummaging around in 2nd-hand bookstores on Yonge Street (Toronto) last summer. I bought it, ripped off the cover and tossed the book in a recycling bin. I really doubted that a book based on an old TV episode would be any good, but you know what they say -- don't judge a cover by its book.

Update: It turns out that this book wasn't based on an episode. It's a spin-off story from the TV series. The author, Richard Deming, apparently specialized in these spin-offs. Also, he wrote ten books under the 'Ellery Queen' name.

Another Roadside Attraction

Tom Robbins serves up a hippy-fied Nietzsche: God is dead -- more accurately, Jesus is dead, and so, too, is the 'God the Father' myth that co-opted him and that has structured our society. The old habits of thought, feeling and practice that underpin this structure are now just constricting. Their demise is liberating and should be celebrated. But what replaces the old system? Apparently, it's some sort of nature mysticism -- we are all 'slowed down light', at one with the energy at the heart of everything.

Okay, this sort of thing can easily become a big, flaky mess, but after about fifty pages I succumbed to the grooviness of it all -- well, I enjoyed the story but wasn't swept up by the early New Age philosophy.

I prefer Robbins' next book, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, but that might be because I read that one in my 20's, which is apparently when one is most susceptible to Robbins' magical-mystical writing.

Allegedly, Elvis Presley was reading Another Roadside Attraction just before he died. I'm not sure if that's a good or a bad thing....