September 2014 – education and deconstruction.com

Everything is Wonderful

The Book of the Week is “Everything is Wonderful: Memories of a Collective Farm in Estonia” by Sigrid Rausing, published in 2014. This ebook is a PhD thesis that describes the past and current situation of Estonian Swedes in Estonia. Their identity became confused and lost through the decades of the Twentieth Century as they were alternately oppressed by the Soviets and the Germans.

Rausing, a Swede, started her ethnographic fieldwork in Estonia’s capital, Tallinn, in the summer of 1993. This was two years after Mother Russia had released Estonia from its iron grip. The country still had yet to modernize and come into its own.

Rausing soon learned of the harsh conditions the residents faced, including unreliable availability of dirty coal heat in the snowy wintertime, when the temperature fell tens of degrees below zero, and unreliable availability of clean water for drinking and bathing year-round. She taught Swedish to Estonian Swedes at a boarding school at a previously Baltic-German-occupied wooden manor house. She found the people to be reticent, and tight-lipped about their past. Many had trouble with alcohol.

Read the book to learn the history and current nature of this little-known victimized ethnic group in Estonia.

Life Is Not a Stage

The Book of the Week is “Life Is Not a Stage” by Florence Henderson with Joel Brokaw, published in 2011. This is Henderson’s autobiography. She is best known for playing the mother in the American TV sitcom “The Brady Bunch” which initially aired from 1969 to 1974.

Her early life was difficult to say the least, because she was born to a poverty-stricken family with an alcoholic father at the height of The Great Depression, the youngest of ten siblings. In Indiana. Her mother left her father when she was thirteen. But she had singing talent, so she had that going for her, which is nice (apologies to Bill Murray). She has been a Broadway actor, TV star, night club singer and has also been in movies.

Read the book to learn how: but for Henderson’s good friend from a wealthy family, Henderson probably would not have had the fabulous career she has had; she was a product of her time as a female; despite all her fame and fortune, she has suffered much unhappiness; and how her outlook on life has seen her through many difficulties and allowed her to keep her sanity and avoid dying young like so many other super-famous entertainers.

Madboy – Bonus Post

This blogger skimmed “Madboy” by Richard Kirshenbaum, published in 2011. This ebook is mostly a name-dropping brag-fest.

Granted, the author does have bragging rights as an adman and did provide numerous tips on acquiring clients and maintaining good client relations, and described what it was like working in the ad industry in the 1980’s and 1990’s. But the first anecdote about a major business decision that resulted in a large financial loss, appeared almost halfway through this book. The author did gloze over a few mini-fails prior to that. However, this blogger thinks a career memoir need not put a happy face on every negative story, as though the author is in a job interview. He should be more introspective. Kirshenbaum seemed a tad insecure, and both he and his wife seemed easily starstruck. This blogger is not impressed that he has met and worked with dozens of celebrities in the last few decades.

The author recounted one amusing anecdote involving indecency during a camera shoot in Mississippi. He also made a few rather unfortunate statements:

Witty ads for his agency’s first client mentioned politicians famous in the 1980’s, that he said, “…captured the public’s attention, as it hadn’t seen this kind of creativity in the advertising business before.” Doubtful. There is nothing new under the sun.
About social networking: “…where now consumers actually control the conversation about brands and have honest and controversial conversations about a company’s brand preferences.” See https://educationanddeconstruction.com/?p=4180
Kirshenbaum believes American consumers are fiercely brand-loyal and “…the rise of social media (Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube) influence them.” Again, see https://educationanddeconstruction.com/?p=4180

Read the book to learn of some of the big-name people Kirshenbaum met through the years, the campaigns and entities he spearheaded, places to which he traveled, what he learned from whom, and what became of his agency.

Stephen Sondheim

The Book of the Week is “Stephen Sondheim: A Life” by Meryle Secrest, originally published in 1993. This is the biography of a Broadway composer who was born in spring of 1930.

In 1946, when Sondheim was attending Williams College, he was finally accepted to a fraternity on his third attempt. Many fraternities automatically prejudged people who had last names that were perceived as Jewish, and rejected them. Throughout this entire book, there was mention of neither Sondheim’s religious observances, if any, nor of his beliefs. Nevertheless, in the spring of 1948, Sondheim religiously wrote more than twenty musical numbers for a show that parodied the school.

After graduation, Sondheim wrote an entire musical. Oscar Hammerstein, a family friend in his childhood, became his mentor. He taught Sondheim that “an author was not writing to satisfy himself… or even the actors… His main consideration should be how to relate the work to the audience’s experience… if the sympathies of the audience were not engaged, it did not matter how brilliant the work was.” The musical, on the initial draft, was angry and bitter, and had no likeable characters– they were all jerks. This blogger is reminded of various unfunny works of that nature: the plays, “Art” and “Some Americans Abroad” and the TV shows, “Curb Your Enthusiasm” and “The Office.”

On a more entertaining note, Sondheim also invented a board game called “Stardom” in which players have sex with show-business celebrities in order to reach the peak of the social ladder. There were different levels of fame and real properties (like in Monopoly) of stars’ homes. However, a player would regress when an opposing player leaked a rumor of a love affair to a gossip columnist.

Sondheim’s score of West Side Story (both a musical and a movie-musical) became popular largely due to the movie’s expensive ad campaign; people had a chance to get to like it. Absent the making of the movie, the songs would have languished in obscurity.

In 1960, Sondheim bought a house in the Turtle Bay section (East 40’s) of Manhattan, five stories high, for $115,000. It was next door to Katharine Hepburn’s. He and the other creators of “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum” learned from producer/director Jerome Robbins that the opening number of a musical is crucial for setting the tone for the whole show, so it must be likeable and indicative of the nature of the show.

At age 29, Sondheim formed his own publishing company in order to make significantly more money than other composers. By age 32, he had three hit Broadway shows under his belt. During his career, he wrote more than eight hundred songs.

Read the book to learn the rest of the intimate details of Sondheim’s life.

Toughing It Out

The Book of the Week is “Toughing It Out” by Claire Reed, published in 2012. This ebook is the autobiography of a “shrinking violet” turned political activist.

Reed was born in Brooklyn, New York in the late 1920’s into a relatively wealthy Jewish family typical for its generation. Her parents cared not a whit for her education, allowing her to miss school to spend time out-of-town with her wealthy friends. Her mother was an especially bad influence, conditioning her to believe that she should simply marry a rich man to have a good life. After the deaths of various of her relatives within a few years, and lacking income-producing skills and self-confidence, she was obliged to get married.

The author illustrates the American mentality of the rich in the immediate Postwar Era through several anecdotes on herself and her sexist husband, who was like her late father. One example involved a fur coat– the material object a wife needed to wear as a symbol of a husband’s ability to provide for his family and of his masculinity.

Read the book to learn how Reed overcame her low-self esteem problem, came to play a vital role in Congresswoman Bella Abzug’s political activities and came into her own as a productive member of society.

Bob Hoffman – Bonus Post

This blogger was reminded of two books by Herschell Gordon Lewis (“Direct Mail Copy That Sells” and “On the Art of Writing Copy”) that contain actual facts and excellent advice, after watching this video:

This blogger thinks the above is well worth watching in its entirety.

[Warning: some language in this video]

Three On A Toothbrush

The Book of the Week is “Three On A Toothbrush” by Jack Paar, published in 1965. This is an autobiographical account of Paar’s adventures in the early days of television. It might be recalled that he hosted “The Tonight Show.” What Paar was learning was embodied in Fred Allen’s prescient quote, that “Everything is for the eye these days– TV, Life [magazine], Look [magazine], the movies. Nothing is just for the mind. The next generation will have eyeballs as big as cantaloupes and no brain at all.”

Paar had some memorable moments during his career. He and a television crew visited the Solomon Islands to meet the native who saved the life of President John F. Kennedy during the “PT109 incident” in WWII. Needless to say, the president had a crack public relations team. During another escapade, Paar drove around Westchester County, New York with a lion in his car.

Read the book to learn more about Paar’s exciting livelihood.