Dada: The Revolt of Art / by Marc Dachy

Nothing in the art community previously could prepare people for Dada, a movement beginning in Zurich in 1916. A meld of abstract art and avant-garde, Dadaists were the edgiest of the full-fledged anti-establishment artists, breaking all the rules, keeping none of the past traditions alive, rebelling against any type of "isms" and broadening the scope of what art could be. This new generation of visionaries were certainly not aiming to please the critics. 20 years later Adolf Hitler used Dada to point out what high art was not, using an exhibition of Dada pieces in sort-of derisive motif. So what was it exactly? The movement can best be described as "direct relationship between an artist and his art--as opposed to the art that until then had been imposed by social constraints." Figures like Hugo Ball, Jean Arp, Sophie Tauber and Marcel Duchamp essentially reconfigured artwork that removed the medium. Dada wasn't purely painting; it wasn't sculpture. And while you could call many of the pieces a collage, an amalgamation, it wasn't purely dimensional, necessarily, in any respect. Even as it maintained its integrity by conceptually representing an artist's inception of ideas, it did so by remaining void of popular styles. Dachy's little book, part of a larger series of humanities publications, is filled with Dada creations as well as the story behind it. Best of all, it manages to concentrate the material inside a very manageable, easy-to-get-through volume of artistic concepts. (709.04 DACHY)

Ulysses / by James Joyce

Born to a middle class family in Dublin in 1882, James Joyce was the eldest of ten (surviving) children had by his father John, a city rate

collector, and a mother who'd originally come from one of Dublin's wealthier families. Always a good student with an early astuteness in writing, Joyce's education was predominately concentrated within the surrounding Jesuit Catholic institutions, especially after his father's drinking and mismanagement of family funds deteriorated the family's situation. Upon graduating from University College Dublin in 1903, Joyce emigrated to continental Europe where he would spend most of the rest of his life. Dropping out of medical school in Paris, he lived periodically in other parts of the continent, namely France and Switzerland, where he made several unsuccessful stabs at publishing his writings. It wasn't until 1914 that his first major success, Dubliners, a short story collection chronicling citizens of Dublin, was released to great acclaim and speculation, sentiments echoed upon the publication of his first major novel, Portrait of An Artist As A Young Man, in 1916. His crowning achievement, Ulysses (1922), a serialised novel chronicling a day in the life of a Dublin man named Leopold Bloom whose story mirrors that of Ulysses (Latin for Odysseus) from Homer's Odyssey was and is seen as one of the pinnacle works modernist literature, its "stream of consciousness", intricate structure, allusory style and experimental prose considered a groundbreaking dénouement of the time. With its success came boatloads of controversy including several obscenity trials on the then explicit content, bannishments of the text in the US and elsewhere, harsh criticism of the book's theoretical innacuracies and charges of misrepresentation of Ireland's Catholic majority. Still, Modern Library has consistently named it the #1 English-language novel of the 20th century and the the date of June 16th, the day the novel takes place, is celebrated in Ireland and worldwide in various literary circles as Bloomsday, something not a lot of works of literature can claim.

"Welcome, O life, I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race. Old father, old artificer, stand me now and ever in good stead."

June 16, 1904 is a normal day in Dublin. For Leopold Bloom, it may as well be any one on the calendar. Even though he knows his wife Molly is having an affair with a colleague, he has neither the initiative nor the inclination to do much about it and his job as an advertising agent, though decent, isn't getting him anywhere. Ever since the death of his young son Rudy some years back, his life has been one of quiet soul searching and dissillusionment. His actions mirror his thoughts as depressive, largely escapist manners and habits including long breaks from work, strolls along the nearby waterfront, drinking, daydreaming and occasionally lusting after women in view. Meanwhile a younger man named Stephen Daedalus is fledgling writer and part-time school teacher whose struggling to find his place in the world. He lives in a house with two other boarders and has family in town though his mother has recently died. A connoisseur of many things cultural and someone who can be opinionated, Stephen shares much of the same quiet longing as Leopold and lives with the same paradoxical sensitivity, "[fearing] those big words which make us so unhappy". As the day passes and characters mix and mingle, both Leopold and Stephen (only vague acquaintances) interconnect and interact with the life of Dublin, a city in the early twentieth century on the verge of so much yet held down by maddeningly inauspicious circumstances.

Even for a masterpiece, Ulysses is not an easy book to digest. Especially when you consider the multiple implications each section--three parts subdivided into eighteen individual episodes correlating to portions of each of The Odyssey's adventures--carefully and intricately contributes to the novel's larger whole. Add to that the connection between the novel and the epic poem not to mention the reflection of the work on Joyce's own life, Stephen Daedalus viewed as Joyce's literary alter ego, and it's not hard to see why the book's many merits still come under scrutiny. The fact stands though that as a novel, Ulysses is a seminal work of English-language fiction, not only groundbreaking as a novel in both format and focus but as a conjunctive artform at a time--post-WWI, post-Easter Rebellion, rise of avant-gardism, introduction of self-consciousness in art, etc.--which would prove most pivotal in the cultural evolution of the 20th century. The day of the novel's plot can even be seen as a crucial player in this interwoven tapestry, the date itself being ample evidence of literary self-consciousness--June 16, 1904 was the day of Joyce's first "stepped out" with his future wife, Nora Barnacle--and therein a tip-off to the abstraction within the work. Perhaps of foremost importance, and therefore the element of the book of which can be attributed with the most critical precedence, is Joyce's use of the "stream of consciousness" narrative. Prominently featured throughout the book and highly concentrated in the final section Penelope, in which Bloom's wife Molly contemplates the previous day, is this soliloquy-styled inner voice privatized in the mind of each individual character. Among the first English-language novelists to use such a device in fiction--Shakespeare's soliloquized bits in such plays as "Hamlet", "Romeo and Juliet", "Othello", "Julius Caesar", etc. as well as Proust's A La Recherche du Temps Perdu's first installment Swann's Way had utilized it previous--Joyce showcased his talent by indwelling his world with the loosely connected interior monologues of his characters, their public and private lives very much isolated through their internalizded meanderings and yet equally bonded together by such a 'stream' of waking conciousness. It can be said the nothing in the novel makes much sense upon a first reading of the considerably lengthy (nearly 800 pages in the Modern Library's small-print edition) work. There's a lot of it which seems disjointed and confusing, anecdotal passages associated with vaguely identifiable characters compounded by multiple run-on sentences with no clear direction. But to the reader who invests the time and energy to extract from the novel what the author is really saying, it is indeed one of the greatest novels of all time. (FIC JOYCE)

The Faith of Graffiti / w/ Words by Norman Mailer & Photographs by Jon Naar

"No, in the environment of the slum, the courage to display yourself is your only capital, and crime is the productive process which converts such capital to the modern powers of the world, ego and money" (p. 31)

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New York City in the mid-seventies was an dirty, ugly place. By 1973, financial woes had brought on a full-blown recession and removed any doubt from an already disenchanted population of a well-founded American dream. Plummeting economic stability stagnated employment and skyrocketed the crime rate. The drug trade thrived, vice proliferated and poverty rose all while crooked politics derailed badly needed reforms. Many thought it was the end for the Big Apple, once a harbor of hope for the newly arrived now a cesspool of filth and corruption seemingly gone to pot. Aesthetically, as civically, the city was an eyesore of eyesores. Trash in the streets and crumbling brownstones seemed to spell the atmosphere of moral ruin and decay; largely dilapidated structures attracted garbage, grime and graffiti (more than usual) to accommodate the increasingly more prevalent world of sleaze and pornography. .

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Witnessing the then plight of his hometown, author Norman Mailer, rather than look upon the scene with disdain, embraced the spectacle with an artist's eye, noticing the ingenuity of street art as an outlet for creativity rather than misdemeanor vandalism reserved for petty criminals. Accompanied by Jon Naar, a photographer who shot all of the graffito-tagged public property from street scenes to the subways, back alleys to freeway ramps, and aside countless buses and buildings around town, the writer/artist team gave a voice to birth of the street art movement in New York City. Years later their effort stands as an almost idyllic testament to a troubled and changing society which would witness a resurgence and urban renewal only decades later.

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Graffiti is seen for what it is (defacement of public property) and what it's not (wanton criminality absent of meaning). Modern culture invariably pins it as the former, as vandalism, and rightly so. But for so many living in the ghettos and slums of the world, graffiti is "a way of gaining status in a society where to own property is to have an identity". (p. 30). How ironic then that legally authorized street art would become prominent in the following years. First printed in 1973, resulting body of work is nothing grandiose, catching only a glimpse glance of what is no doubt one the largest and most universal of artistic mediums. Yet it's a powerful account of an iconic (if controversial) ensemble collection of art now largely forgotten by the culture. (751.73 NAAR)

The Life and Times of Homer Sincere: Whose Amazing Adventures Are Documented By His True and Trusted Friend Rigby Canfield / by Nathaniel Lande

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Rigby Canfield and Homer Sincere are best friends in 1930's New Orleans when their story begins, both living in the French Quarter despite belonging to polar opposite social classes--Rigby's family is rich, Homer is more or less a destitute orphan. Meeting over a game of marbles one day, the two instantly hit it off, united by their love of the Cinema with the local Rialto Theatre, showcasing their ultimate hero Billy Sunshine, becoming their weekly ritual. Not satisfied just to two watch movies, Rigby and Homer begin filming their own with an long-saved-up-for 8mm camera, recording the goings-on of their colorful neighborhood which usually includes its daily amusements, sideshows, frequent parades and one very savvy, rhyming vegetable cart owner named Waldo--always their leading man.

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Things fast-forward to years later when both Rigby and Homer, still best friends, are in New York City working as journalists where each cultivate their creative vision through jobs with the Time-Life news group. Together and separately they're afforded the opportunity to witness some of the period's most high-profile events in some of the world's most high profile places. It is in New York also where both fall in love with the same woman, Daisy, a beautiful, intelligent modern working woman who provides the crucible for which the pair's friendship must pass. Their bond survives though, just as it did in the early years, the two remaining united through their one fervent passion: movies. Having never forgotten their ultimate dream, the pair soon resettle in California where they confront the monster that is the world of Hollywood show business.
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'Homer Sincere' is about many things: friendship, humanity, following your dreams, the mid-twentieth century as perceived through popular events and entertainment, Americana and the cultural influence of Hollywood on a generation, etc. Lande takes tidbits from his own background as a reporter for Time magazine as well as his tenure as a film critic, and weaves together a story as unforgettable as any of the more recent coming-of-age tales, chronicling the eventful, pivotal years of the last century in all its abundance and progress through two very real, very determined and very enduring individuals. (FIC LANDE)