Show 2E Standard-Examin- Sunday er June 28 1981 Book on freedom BOOK REVIEWS of press precise easily understood Turbulent JRolling Stone' period reexamined in new perspective Minnesota Rag" by Fred W House $1295) Friendly (Random The “Duluth Ripsaw” was a somewhat scandalous publication which appeared weekly in Duluth Minn between 1917 and 1926 The editor John L Morrison an upstandman could not tolerate the ing church-goinof morals easy public officials on Minnesota’s fabulous Mesabi Iron Range and said so in print In 1924 he attacked three Range politicians in particular who decided that they needed a law to put Morrison out of business So in 1925 the Minnesota Legislature with the active help of the “respectable” press of the state concocted a law to ban “malicious scandalous and defamatory newspapers” as a public nuisance Morrison died of a blood clot in the brain in 1926 before the Ripsaw’s “Head Sawyer” could be brought into court The law lay unused for a year while the scene shifts to Minneapolis the western half of the Twin Cities At the time it was one of the most corrupt cities in the Midwest The police chief was on friendly terms with and the payroll of the local underworld In addition to local rackets “The Cities” sat in the middle of underground routes for liquor being smuggled in from Canada in violation of Prohibition The respectable newspapers in “The Cities” weren’t doing much in the way of investigative journalism at the time however ” To fill the gap little weekly came into newspapers being Filled with lurid headlines over even more lurid stories which may or may not have been libelous they charged corruption in high places and strong connections between the underworld and the g “four-sheeter- “overworld” One of these was edited by Jay M Near was Iowa who from originally and anticommunist who wrote with his prejudices right out front After just nine issues Near’s “Saturday Press” was supressed under the Minnesota law because he attacked the chief of police who was later indicted by a grand jury for corruption And the what was to become the famous “Near v Minnesota” case in Constitutional law was off and running Along the way the author introduces us to Near’s supporters which featured the strange bedfellows of Roger Baldwin founder of the American Civil Liberties Union and Col Robert McCormick reactionary owner of the powerful Chicago Tribune It was through the legal efforts of the Tribune that the case was taken all the way to the US Supreme Court Friendly also draws telling human portraits of the Justices of the Supreme Court and how they arrived at what has become a very basic part of the entire concept of “freedom of the anti-Cathol- anti-blac- k anti-Semit- ic anti-lab- ic or press” Under the rule established in the case no government in the United States can censor or forbid a publication to publish something a decision which was reaffirmed at least in part in the 1971 Pentagon Papers case (US v New York Times Co) The author has spent his life in the news media spending many years at CBS where with Edward R Murrow he helped to found such news programs as “See It Now” and “CBS Reports” He noted that very often he would hear references to “Near v Minnesota” and finally he decided to find out what it was all about Friendly has done an exhaustive amount of research interviewing some participants and many others who knew the participants who are now dead He also has visited many of the locations described in the book The story has been carefully crafted it into a little jewel of just 240 pages which avoids the pitfalls of length that authors often mistake for exhaustive authority It is an book on an important topic which on should be everyone’s reading list this year easy-to-understa- Craig Huntley (Standard-Examine- nd r) Current best sellers Fiction Noble House — James Clavell Goodbye Janette — Harold Robbins God Emperor of Dune — Frank Herbert Gorky Park — Martin Smith Glitter Dome — Joseph Wambaugh Clowns of God — Morris West The Cardinal Sins — Andrew M Greeley Free Fall in Crimson — John D McDonald The Covenant — James Michener Trade Wind — MM Kaye Non-fictio- "Gone Crazy and Back Again: The Rite and Fall of the 'Roiling Stone' Generation" by Robert Sam Anson $1495) The “unique and fabulous” sixties have become perhaps one of literature’s most overanalyzed and tedious subjects in numerous and often forgettable books And indeed toward the end of this new offering’s introduction a sense of trepidation builds as all the cliches are marshalled into print once again The children of that recent era — presumably many of us — “grew up on their own without guides or models convinced that law — any kind of law — was a code word for repression” Robert Sam Anson lectures his audience in “Gone Crazy and Back Again” “Everything they did was extreme ‘had’ to be extreme continually testing the limits of the possible lest the natural order of things reassert itself They were different in those ways and in so many others and they knew (Doubleday it” It would be easy to pan this book with copious quotes from the introduction but once underway it quickly becomes contagious— Inof to the history — chapter and verse and weaves anecdotes Anson Stone” “Rolling reminiscences around the character of publisher Jann Wenner Unpredictable emotionally explosive generous to a fault Wenner assumes mythic proportions in a narrative that also deifies heros like Hunter other counter-cultur- e Crouse the Grateful Thompson Timothy Dead and Janis Joplin Dirty laundry and all the heroes of those times that actually in chronological time reach well into the seventies are paraded before the reader’s eyes Lest anyone suppose “Rolling Stone” was ever an idealized citadel to the values of the counter-cultur- e Anson reiterates on several occasions the publisher’s disdain for hippies Out to make money by his own admission Wenner was and presumably remains a man k by the rich and powerful Appropriately enough the book’s first chap boy-wond- er star-struc- ter opens with descriptions of a party at Wenner’s New York home in 1976 where Carter’s campaigners are being feted in the company of household names who litter the pages of “People” magazine A metaphor perhaps for the demise of an era the merging of supposedly antithetical cultures is complete as Establishment figures like former Secretary of State Cryus Vance mingle over cocktails with a Hunter drug-sodde- n Thompson Anson fortunately resists the temptation to analyze why the values of the sixties haven’t carried over into the present and rather suggests via “Rolling Stone’s” development that a blending of cultures was inevitable as the rock industry became ever more sophisticated Anxious for contemporary links to the youth market in the early seventies Wenner turns enthusiastically to politics with the now infamous political commentary that Thompson wrote on the fall of Saigon and political campaigns for the presidency in 1972 With the opening of offices in Washington at that time the magazine became ever more vulnerable to the hype that surrounds Washington power stars who often receive short shrift in Anson’s hands Set up for the populist appeal that launched Carter’s presidential bid “Rolling Stone” succumbed lock and barrel to its manipulators when in 1977 it ran a cover story on the “naughty” political insiders press secretary Jody Powell and advisor Hamilton Jordan captured fondly on the cover with playful grins and sporting bowlers Since those times the magazine has bludgeoned its way on to supermarket checkout stands Among its fans the magazine still retains a refreshening slant on politics and music To Anson though whatever “Rolling Stone” was is no longer it has moved toward irrelevancy in an era where Caroline Kennedy was the guest commentator on mourners at the Elvis Presley mansion in Memphis — Benjamin Read (Standard-Examin- Staff) er Offenbach from another view "Jacques Offenbach" by Alexander Farit (Scrib- ner's $25) Along with Johann Strauss and the Gilbert and Sullivan combination Jacques Offenbach y was one of the immortals of light music He remains very much in the operetta repertory and his “Contes d’Hoffmann” regularly appears in the opera houses of the world But there has been no serious biography of him in English since the Siegfried Kracauer study in 1937 The Kracauer book is still valuable despite lapses in scholarship and offers a lively account of the Paris of Offenbach’s day Recent years however have seen a good deal of scholarly work on Offenbach and especially on “Contes d’Hoffmann” This information of course was not available to Kracauer in 1937 Alexander Faris now has written a study of Offenbach that complements the earlier book and adds much of the new information Faris is especially strong on Offenbach’s music A British conductor who directed Offenbach productions for the Sadler’s Wells Opera in the 1960s Faris is also a film composer and a conductor of British musicals Thus he is a man of the theater and an experienced musician with first-han- d information about much of the music he discusses A Jew born in Cologne in 1819 Offenbach was a child prodigy on the cello studied in Paris was baptized and married a Catholic became a conductor and then started writing the series of comic operas that took the world by storm “Orfee aux Enters” “La Belle Helene” “La Vie Parisienne” “Barbe-bleue- ” e “La de Gerolstein” 19th-centur- Grand-Duchess- THE GIRLS “La Perichole” — Faris discusses these and many more He also goes quite a bit into the nature of the genre itself Offenbach once called opera comique “sung vaudeville” It was his intention “to mine the inexhaustible vein of French gaiety of the work (and many Offenbach past” In aareshort he went on short operettas “the ideas and melodies have to be in hard cash Note too that with this restricted orchestra — which was after all enough for Mozart and Cimarosa — it is very difficult to conceal mistakes” He succeeded brilliantly Rossini labeled ” him “The Mozart of the Even Wagner admired him — Wagner who detested all things French and who detested Jews even more Offenbach turned out to be a composer supreme in his field He probably was the greatest most wicked musical parodsocial comist who ever lived a Daumier-lik- e mentator who worked with notes rather than brush or pencil He had an inexhaustible fund of melody he orchestrated with Mozartean economy his music bubbles over with joie de vivre At his death in 1880 all knew that a master had gone In Vienna the great critic Eduard Hanslick summed it up with his sentence “He created a new style in which he reigned absolutely one-acter- s) Toasts — from love to rage Brewers' toasts the scenic part of a booklet cover put out by a St Louis Brewery is one of the many illustrations in "Toasts: The Complete Book of the Best Toasts Sentiments Blessings Curses and Graces" by Paul Dickson (Delacorte $1250) Dickson says a toast is a basic form of human expression that can be used for virtually any emotion — and then he proceeds to demonstrate by offering more than 1250 sentiments suitable for any topic or occasion Beginning with a brief history of raised glasses the volume is a fun collection d ready source for celebrants or just plain browsing These new books available at county library Books Featured at the Weber Ears in a secret world within a world where lamas chant their deCounty Library : votions where mystery and "Annie" By Thoma Meehan as the irrepressYou know her reign Where karma one lone man to leads and the rules ible star of the comic page and — save the religion of a war-torBroadway stage Now Annie America’s favorite little orphan land ''THE FATE OF MARY ROSE" By girl — returns in a richly illustrated book for readers of all ages Caroline Blackwood An elegant and skillful horror This delightfully narrative full of real heroes and story that keeps the reader on the villains is suspenseful and funny hook even when the book is set aside and heartwarming The author is honest angry and "Tibet" By Gil Ziff adand uncompromising and that is quite Being the recollections ventures of the hermit called Small scary enough n old-fashion- ed Champs-Elysees- alone” To most of us Offenbach is quintessentially French Faris has his doubts about that received opinion He thinks that Offenbach “lent a style to French music rather than finding a style in it” To him the seeming “Frenchness” of an Offenbach operetta “lies in the subject matter the social comment and the wit of the libretto rather than the music” Franklin Folger n The Lord God Made Them All — James Herriot “Beverly Hills Diet — Judy Mazel Never-Say-Di- et 'Cosmos — Carl Book — Richard Simmons Sagan Miss Piggy’s Guide to Life — Miss Piggy as told to Henry Beard Eagle’s Gift — Carlos Castenada Survive and Win in Inflation 80’s — Howard Ruff Alpha Strategy — John Pugsley Everything We Had — A1 Santoli Pain Erasure: 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