The Return of C-Mac

The University of California Press has published a paperback edition of my Carey McWilliams biography--this time with a fabulous foreword by Mike Davis. An advance copy of American Prophet appeared in my mailbox last week. The official publication date is March 5, but you can buy it here now.

My respect for McWilliams hasn't diminished a bit since I began the research more than 15 years ago. His brains, range, versatility, and classic prose style still floor me. And as I research Hunter Thompson's literary formation, McWilliams once again looms large. It was McWilliams, of course, who gave Thompson the idea for his story on the Hells Angels. After McWilliams ran it in The Nation, Thompson parlayed it into his first bestseller.

The good folks at Truthdig ran a Q&A; on McWilliams and my longstanding interest in his achievement--often in the face of fierce resistance from formidable adversaries.

Zodiac Killer Podcast

Some far-flung friends and former students have contacted me after listening to "Monster: The Zodiac Killer." It's a 15-part podcast from iHeart Radio. The production team taped the interview here at the house toward the end of last semester; next thing I knew they had it wrapped up. Their last podcast, on the so-called Atlanta Monster, was downloaded 36 million times.

They asked me to set the stage a bit in Episode 1--what was happening in the San Francisco Bay Area when the Zodiac killer first struck. In Episode 6, I get a few more words in edgewise (starting at the 17:30 mark) on the role of the media.

They also interviewed Duffy Jennings, who was working at the San Francisco Chronicle at the time. As noted earlier, Duffy actually took one of my classes at San Francisco State University. After a long career in journalism and public relations, he came back to finish his degree. Duffy's memoir, which I read in manuscript, is due out soon. Here's the go-to spot for All Things Jennings.

Media Roundup

Deutschlandfunk Kultur interviewed me about Bay Area student protests in the 1960s. Here's the radio piece and website summary; Scott Saul and I get a few words in during the last nine minutes or so. Naturally, my remarks sound smarter in German.

I was also interviewed for a 15-part podcast on the Zodiac killer. The first two episodes are available now. Here's a Hollywood Reporter article on the series and its creators. The last time out, this team produced a series that was downloaded 36 million times. For the new one, they interviewed former San Francisco Chronicle reporter Duffy Jennings. Duffy, it turns out, took my course at San Francisco State University when he returned to complete his degree about ten years ago. It's not very often that students bring that kind of experience to the classroom.

Review of Timothy Denevi's "Freak Kingdom"

Truthdig posted my review of Timothy Denevi's new book on Hunter Thompson. Essentially, Denevi follows Thompson's personal and professional life from the Kennedy assassination to Nixon's resignation. That's a canny way to frame Thompson's peak period. As you can see from the review, I enjoyed the book on several levels. Very worthwhile.

Miriam Pawel's "The Browns of California"

I asked to review Miriam Pawel's The Browns of California and am glad I did. My review ran in the San Francisco Chronicle (Datebook section) a week ago, and Miriam has been making the media rounds both here and elsewhere.

The New York Times review ran two days ago. The last sentence is a doozy: "Jerry Brown’s counterculturally-inflected distrust of government has helped make liberal California the poverty capital of America."

This is skywriting, in my humble opinion. Perhaps the reviewer is especially attuned to the rise of the right and California's role in that. And I think Governor Brown's urge to run budget surplus (again!) can be criticized both from the right and the left. But this last sentence feels like (oversimplified) score-settling re: neoliberalism, not a comment on Gov. Brown's record.

Review of Gary Krist's "The Mirage Factory"

I'm always interested in popular histories of Los Angeles, and Gary Krist's new one caught my eye. He tells the stories of three important figures--William Mulholland, D.W. Griffith, and Aimee Semple McPherson--and does a fine job with each. I wrote a review for Truthdig; its title comes from Carey McWilliams's description of the Owens Valley water caper that preceded and permitted the city's explosive growth. Although the book doesn't come together as the urban history implied in the subtitle, I learned a lot about Griffith and admired the craft.

Review of Barlow's "Mother American Night"

Truthdig just ran my review of John Perry Barlow's memoir, Mother American Night: My Life in Crazy Times. My interest in the Grateful Dead piqued my curiosity, but tech culture has also become a more important part of my teaching and writing, so I read Barlow's memoir in big gulps.

As I mention in the review, the book sometimes reads like a long turn in a conversation--or rather, an edited transcript. This might have to do with the role of Robert Greenfield, Barlow's accomplice, who has produced several oral biographies. That approach makes for a smooth, quick read.

But I also think that Barlow's anecdotes are meant in part to test the reader's credulity. In the review, I quote several passages that support my hunch, but there are many more. At one point, for example, he says that Deadheads "are hapless and credulous and will believe anything you tell them."

In short, this is a quick, interesting read, but I wouldn't bet the ranch on its veracity.

Ransoming Pagan Babies

The San Francisco Chronicle ran my review of Ransoming Pagan Babies: The Selected Writings of Warren Hinckle. I worked hard to keep it under 800 words; there's certainly more to say about Warren, his work, and his influence.

Maybe we can fill in some of those gaps at the Bay Area Book Festival. I'll moderate a panel that features this book and Who Killed Hunter S. Thompson? The panelists will be Robert Scheer, Steve Wasserman, and Ron Turner. Bob worked with Warren at Ramparts magazine, Steve published (and co-edited) Ransoming Pagan Babies, and Ron Turner published Who Killed Hunter S. Thompson? at Last Gasp Books.

The festival will be held April 28-29 in downtown Berkeley.

Michael Wolff and Hunter S. Thompson

I just finished reading Michael Tomasky's review of Michael Wolff's Fire and Fury in the New York Review of Books. This paragraph struck me:

However, there is one sense in which he doesn’t play by the usual rules. Wolff doesn’t do “fairness.” He comes to his conclusions, and he lets you know them. He doesn’t tell the other side. No New York Times or Washington Post reporter could have written this book. They follow rules that demand more “balance,” rules under which they might have been more likely to get all the small things absolutely right but would have diluted the larger truth. And so, free from that stricture of straight news reporting, Fire and Fury has performed a great public service: it has forced mainstream Washington to confront and discuss the core issue of this presidency, which is the president’s fitness for office.

Compare this to Hunter S. Thompson's remarks when Richard Nixon died in 1994:

Some people will say that words like scum and rotten are wrong for Objective Journalism--which is true, but they miss the point. It was the built-in blind spots of the Objective rules and dogma that allowed Nixon to slither into the White House in the first place ... You had to get Subjective to see Nixon clearly, and the shock of recognition was often painful.

In Thompson's case, this wasn't clear hindsight; his book on the 1972 campaign matches Tomasky's description quite well. And seven years before that, he told Angus Cameron, "Facts are lies when they're added up." Compare that to Tomasky on getting "all the small things absolutely right" and diluting the larger truth.

Wilentz Review of Arthur Schlesinger Jr. Bio

I think Sean Wilentz's review of a new Schlesinger bio is letting its subject off easy when it comes to his 1950s anticommunism.

Wilentz concedes that Schlesinger's "actions in the early 1950s were not impeccable." Parenthetically, he mentions Schlesinger's campaign against an unnamed book editor (Angus Cameron), says it was disgraceful, and says that Schlesinger later regretted it. I would say that the campaign was despicable. It led right-wingers to label Little, Brown and Company a communist front, and it forced Cameron to resign as editor-in-chief. Cameron's crimes were turning down George Orwell's Animal Farm and publishing Howard Fast's Spartacus. (He also published The Joy of Cooking and Catcher in the Rye.) It took Cameron almost a decade to land an equivalent editorial position at Random House, where he specialized in cookbooks.

The Cameron episode wasn't unique. In his New York Post column, Schlesinger called Carey McWilliams and his colleagues "typhoid Marys of the left"--they weren't communists, but they spread the disease. At the time, McWilliams was editor of The Nation and one of Cameron's authors at Little, Brown.

Wilentz writes: "The rise of Senator Joseph McCarthy soon thereafter led to unjust charges that Schlesinger ... had abetted the rise of the Red Scare." But as Wilentz certainly knows, McCarthy was a latecomer. The probes, purges, and blacklists began in the late 1940s. Schlesinger's attacks did real and lasting damage when they were made.

In short, the claim that Schlesinger aided the Red Scare is just, and "not impeccable" doesn't begin to capture the damage that aid inflicted on real people's lives and careers. It may be true that Schlesinger was "alarmed by the witch hunts" and denounced red-hunters. But if he couldn't imagine the damage his attacks would have at the time, he was naive. Ironically, that's how he described McWilliams on the subject of international affairs.