Hitting the Books

Hi Carolyn,

This week I'm hitting the books.



A few weeks ago I snagged this volume at a library fundraiser for the hospital where I volunteer. At exactly 800 pages its a  hefty read but man it just flew by.  This book put things into perspective in a big way.  I enjoyed Mr. Halberstams writing so much I've gone on a bit of a binge and downloaded a couple more of his works. I'm already well into the next one.

I existed for all but one month the fifties ( if you include in utero time ) but  I wasn't fully present for most of it. So I figured I'd  see what I missed while I was here, through the eyes of David Halberstam.

Yes, it's about the U.S. in the 50's and I'm up here in Canuckville, but as continental bedmates, we Canadians share the same heritage, pop culture and the same future in more ways than twelve.



The fifties were, as Halberstam notes " a more complicated and interesting decade than most people imagine". He goes on to point out that " so many of the forces which exploded in the sixties had begun to come together in the fifties".






 
 
 
 
 

Being a boomer who, as Freddy Mercury sang  " grew up strong and proud in the shadow of the mushroom cloud"  I was especially taken by the number of behaviours that sprang up then and are still in full bloom. 





Russia detonated its first a-bomb in mid-1949 so now  both sides in the cold war  had to keep an eye on each other with more than just spies and  agents on the ground. 

 

 

 

The U2 high altitude spy plane is born in the early fifties and keeps the CIA and the White House in the loop as to whats happening over in the other guys back yard. Russia manages to shoot one down and pretends to be outraged.  Fast forward to 2013 and the same folks are doing the same things and eavesdropping on political leaders cell phones to boot. Incredibly, the U2 is still in service and expected to be so for another 8 or 9 years. The more things change the more they... etc.

 

 
 
 
 
 
In the early summer of 1953 a greasy-haired truck driver in Memphis finally got up the courage and walked into a recording studio owned by one Sam Phillips with the intention of making a recording for his mother. This was to be the point at which everything in popular music changed, observed Leonard Bernstein a few years afterwards. " Because of him" Bernstein continued, " a man like me barely knows his musical grammar anymore"  Another  admirer, John Lennon, would echo his sentiments later on. " Before Elvis", he said " there was nothing."


As Neil says .. " Hey hey, my my,  Rock and Roll will never die! "

 

 

Television would come of age in the fifties. Revlon was the leading cosmetics maker in America in the fifties but not by much. That would change once it decided to sponsor The $64,000  Question, a simple TV quiz show and the earliest of reality shows in that respect. Its sales virtually doubled in the first six months thereafter. A whole phalanx of imitators would pop up soon after. Its mushrooming popularity would also lead to its being the first "fixed" show to get its own Senate Subcommittee investigation, and the findings would mortify its legions of ardent fans. Hmmmmm a reality show that isn't real. Imagine that!
 

 

 

As well as its addictive nature and pseudo-intimacy television would, as Halberstam points out, " cast everything it touched"  This powerful ability to construct reality would become even more effective as a political tool as JFK would so effectively demonstrate in the infamous Kennedy-Nixon debate only a few years later. Jump ahead again to the present and see that while this is still the case TV is starting to be thrown over in that respect by the real-time two-way intimacy of the web and social media.
 

 

 

I'll be continuing in the same vein with my Halberstam-fest. The next tome of his I've tied into is The Powers That Be which looks at the big three networks that held sway in North American media for so long. I figure it should be especially interesting as I think we've seen them finally begin to loose their grip on electronic media only within the last few years.


 

 

 

To the cave we now go: My last item was actually playing cards. 52 of them unless you include the jokers - those two that can be wild, depending on the game. I too must claim complete befuddlement ( is there such a word?) on your last riddle. It's been a most hectic time around here lately and I've not been able to really concentrate on it enough yet. I am also going to give your what question would I ask of the wired generation a bunch more cranial time too. In fact I have to say I don't even have a riddle to offer up this time so this will be a hiccup week for riddles.

 Back next time with a vengeance, I assure you.


Don


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