Friday's Notes

by Cliopatria

Peter Berkowitz,"Leviathan Then and Now," Policy Review, October/November, argues for the urgent relevance of Thomas Hobbes's classic.

Christopher Benfey,"Emily Dickinson's Secret Lover!" Slate, 9 October, draws attention to the findings of Carol Damon Andrews in this summer's New England Quarterly.

Nicholas Stargardt,"Hitler in the driving seat," TLS, 8 October, reviews Richard J. Evans's The Third Reich at War, 1939-1945.

Mark Brown,"Historian says Beatles were just capitalists, and not youth heroes," Guardian, 9 October, features Cambridge's David Fowler, whose Youth Culture in Modern Britain, c. 1920- c. 1970: From Ivory Tower to Global Movement, a new history* argues that the Beatles were mere creatures of consumer culture. Hat tip.
*Bit of a mouthful for a title, no?

William Leuchtenburg (emeritus, UNC, Chapel Hill), remembering the"Declaration of Conscience" against McCarthyism by Maine's Margaret Chase Smith and six colleagues, calls on Republicans of conscience for a public statement repudiating their party's vilification of Barack Obama; and Democrats of conscience for a similar statement repudiating their party's invoking the"Keating Five" against John McCain; and Diane McWhorter compares Sarah Palin to George Wallace for whipping up hatred in a political crowd.

The inclination of academic administrations to suppress free speech is widespread, but shallow. The latest to qualify their folly? U-Illinois, Champaign-Urbana and U-T, Austin.

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John Richard Clark - 10/13/2008

The Beatles were creatures of consumer culture?

That's funny, I always thought they were creatures of skiffle, rockabilly, R&B, blues, British music hall, rock 'n' roll, country music, and soul.

If Fowler had bothered to read some Beatles histories, he might have learned that the Beatles and their manager Brian Epstein were terrible businessmen.

The group signed a usurious record contract that initially awarded them a pence per record sold.

They virtually signed away their merchandising rights for a pittance.

They negotiated a very poor movie deal with United Artists.

They stopped performing live in 1966 and gave up on a lucrative source of income.

Lennon and McCartney lost the controlling interest in their own music publishing company because, as McCartney once said, "We didn't know you could own songs. We thought they just existed in the air."

They failed at running Apple, Ltd.

And how does Fowler explain the creative growth of the Beatles? If they had been crass capitalists, the group would have cranked out "She Loves You" derivatives ad infinitum and played it safe. Instead, they influenced and were influenced by everything going on around them in the world of music and culture.

I can't go through a day in 2008 without hearing or seeing some Beatles reference in popular culture, even though the group disbanded in 1970.

Fowler is a daft poofter. The Beatles will be as relevant four hundred years from now as Shakespeare is to our modern times.

This is just another example of cultural history gone wrong.

Robert Zimmerman - 10/11/2008

Thanks for passing on the link to that Guardian article about David Fowler's book. I love the idea of dethroning and debunking the Beatles in favor of an obscure skinny-dipping, nude-exercising, folk-dancing, DH Lawrence-loving intellectual. It's all very Monty Python, especially when you throw in the fascination with Weimar Germany's "rigorous youth hostelling, hiking and naked javelin throwing."