Every passion borders on the chaotic, but the collector's passion borders on the chaos of memories. More than that: the chance, the fate, that suffuse the past before my eyes are conspicuously present in the accustomed confusion of these books. For what else is this collection but a disorder to which habit has accommodated itself to such an extent that it can appear as order? (Walter Benjamin, "Unpacking My Library," _Illuminations_, trans. Harry Zohn, NY: Schocken Books, 1968, p. 60) *****
Yoshie
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Speaking of memories.
The post put up on William Mandel, came in handy today at work.
One of the editors of UCB alumni magazine was in the shop today worrying over a noise in her left motor. It turned out to be worn brushes. In any event, I was complaining about the content of this magazine while I dug around in the tiers of parts and scrap wheelchair components---mechanical memory banks---and said they should stick to interviewing football coaches and doing travel pieces on exploitable third world vacation tours with skinny kids and photogenic backdrops. This seemed to piss Linda S. off, more than I expected---which I considered a hopeful sign. The basic thrust of my complaint was that this glossy rag pushed the UC propaganda line about its great educational mission (bogus) and the wonders of capital and technology (double bogus) to exclusion of all its concrete history.
As a response and defence, Linda answered they were going to do a piece on the Disability Movement and Civil Rights Conference (held in November). Yeah, sure, the third generation's completely void shine on the real history. I told her, I went to that and was so pissed I left at noon and went for a bike ride---not to mention the fact that the conference organizers put the oral history presentations off until seven at night when nobody would be there.
We went back and forth on this for awhile. I tried to make the point that the arch of the student movement from institutional confrontation to community activism was replicated as disabled students started appearing on camus in the mid-sixties, etc, none of which was reflected in the conference speakers or discussions. I said, you realize FSM didn't die, but is replicated endlessly and is an ongoing process because the university is a pre-emanant political animal and denies it.
Linda admitted this. Then, finally it started to come out. The managing editor had been with the magazine for thirty years, and had kept his job by constantly negotiating (sucking up to) with the university on feature after feature. She cited some recent examples and said her boss almost got fired barely two months ago. I said, well there are lot of ways of dodging the blade, and one of them is to systematically shift the entire palette over into historical pieces, and interesting people, where there is never really a blatant controversy to point to, but the whole rag is centered in forbidden territory. You don't have to do an expose of nuclear weapons research, just interview the older faculty up at LBL or the relatives and friends of people like Seaborg, Oppenheimer, Alvarez, and Lawrence.
Anyway, dot, dot, dot. I told her about two people she might look into to do features: William Mandel and Judith Butler. I warned her, Butler got world's worst writer award several years running. I finished by saying, stick with me kid and you'll get fired before Christmas.
She laughed, said no thanks, but did take my note with the names to look into---and left with a more reliable motor.
Chuck Grimes