Franklin Rosemont (1943–2009)

Be sure you have a strong stomach before you start this book.

Oh, I don't mean that it's full of graphic violence or something. It's just that it is completely incapable of acknowledging any view other than its own. And, for me at least, that's a feeling that makes me very queasy.

Let's be clear: I have a lot of respect for Joe Hill's intelligence and wit. I have a lot of sympathy for his political hopes, too. But I also know that, for instance, there was actual evidence against him in the court case that led to his execution. Enough to justify his fate? No. Enough that there should have been more investigation, preferably by someone more competent than the authorities in Utah? Clearly.

Similarly, I am well aware that the businesses that Hill wrote against were run by greedy, unscrupulous, self-righteous, self-centered people. But they were people. They too deserve their side.

Finally, I like organization, and I like documentation, and I like documentation that is not self-referential. This book contains a series of major sections, divided into minor sections -- the latter mostly very short, but highly repetitive -- and it has a bad tendency to cite "sources" from decades after Hill's execution. If you let me cite those sorts of "sources," I could prove that there were no labor troubles in Utah -- or that Hill was guilty as charged. In any case, only one of the major sections is about Hill's life and history.

For someone who agrees entirely with Joe Hill's viewpoint, the result may be interesting. For someone who is trying to learn what actually happened in Hill's life, it was simply too much to swallow. I read the historical part at the beginning. I tried to make it through the parts about his visual artworks. Eventually I just started skipping around, looking for something that was about Joe Hill, as opposed to Franklin Rosemont's exaggerated opinions on Joe Hill.

As with the large majority of works about Hill, this raises the (to me) very real question of why people are so opposed to trying to learn what is actually true, as opposed to what they find most comfortable. Personally, I'd rather know the truth even if it's uncomfortable. Yes, it's meant that I've had to change my political views, and quite a bit -- but it also means that my political views don't depend on ignoring facts.

OK, having listened to me be cranky, may you now all go out and read some more pleasant reviews. :-) Or, better yet, some more pleasant books!… (more)

Surprisingly little is available on this incredibly influential figure of the early avant garde. As ambiguous in life as in his writings, this book is more of a theoritcal discourse on Umour than it is an actual biography (for the simple reason that not much biographical information exists for the short 23 years of his life). Very well written and researched, it is valuable no only for its direct content on the life and theory of Vache, but for the cultural perspective that unfolds throughout the telling of his tale. A minor caveat would be that there does exist a bit of a sectarian bias to some of the opinions put forth by the writer, being a member of the Chicago surrealist group himself. Nonetheless I greatly enjoyed it and have already ordered another of his books "Juice is stranger than fiction," on T Bone Slim, who I learned of in this book which as such also works as a great reference work for finding obscure figures and writers in the history of arts and letters.… (more)