CultureWatch: Amsterdam, A History of the World's Most Liberal City; The Virgin of Bennington; DVD Tips: Foyle's War & Doc Martin

CultureWatch Reviews: Amsterdam, A History of the World's Most Liberal City; The Virgin of Bennington; DVD Tips: Foyle's War & Doc Martin's Return

There is a lively section on the Dutch exploration of America’s east coast, resulting in the settlement of New Amsterdam (New York). One traveler observed that in 1623, when there were "probably no more than 500 inhabitants" in the city, he noted "18 languages and dialects in the first few streets."

By the twentieth century, Shorto notes the rise of unions in Amsterdam. The culture of the city had devolved into a capitalist mecca, but its capitalism had also a "social path": thus it was incumbent on those who had the means to provide a safety net to protect the less fortunate. In other words, the capitalists joined the commitment to social welfare, a commitment tied to the 17th century when the people who ran things (i.e. who were principals in the VOC) created orphanages, homes for the elderly, and neighborhoods in which rich and poor weren’t segregated. The battle with the sea, Shorto feels, caused people to feel that the land was their own, regardless of their financial achievements. That land was not owned by the church, or the king; it was theirs, by right of the picks and shovels and human labor that had been expended to claim it.

Mr. Shorto also credits the Dutch for the concept of single family housing. Housing in Europe, he explains, meant that housing for all but the very wealthy tended to be large affairs built around a courtyard, with many families crowded into tiny rooms. The houses built along Amsterdam's many canals were meant to house just one family, and their owners took great pride in them, especially inasmuch as they were inhabited by both the wealthy and poor, with no one neighborhood preferred by a particular class. Given today’s American neighborhoods, it's hard to credit that claim, but if it still pertains, we surely have something to learn from them.

The descriptions of Holland during the Second World War are every bit as appalling as the horrible pictures from magazines of that era, like Time and Life. It hurts the heart to read Shorto's interview with his friend who was in Auschwitz with Anne Frank (and had indeed been her childhood chum). But there is a moving little story about that friend, which he has labeled as his "Postscript." If you read the book, don’t overlook it.

The Virgin of Bennington
By Kathleen Norris © 2001
Published by Riverhead Books, Hardcover, 256 pp.

The opening the pages of this book, as well as its title with its wry references to its author in her college years, give the impression that you will be reading an autobiography. Well, in a way you are, but the author soon moves out of the center of the account. She maintains her presence largely as narrator, but the story is as much about Betty Kray as it is about Kathleen Norris.

Born in the early seventies in DC, Norris was raised in Hawaii. The mere distance from all she grew up with once she found herself at Bennington seems enough to daunt any ordinary soul. Kathleen observed her contemporaries from a bit of a distance, only emulating them when she had made up her mind to do so, and only in ways that made a particular kind of sense to her.

When she graduated she went to New York to join the ranks of impecunious and determined young women with liberal arts degrees who would do almost anything to sustain themselves in the maelstrom of arts and politics represented by the Big Apple in the early seventies.

More fortunate than most, Kathleen fetched up in a (then) fledgling organization known as the Academy of American Poets. There she fell into what suited her temperament and talents so perfectly she never looked back. Eventually this experience gradually made her as necessary to them and to Betty Kray, the director, as they became to her. She more or less predictably became a poet, or perhaps better to say that she allowed herself to become one. A reader is always aware of Kathleen’s somewhat precocious self consciousness. Granted that the impression may be the result of time passed since the events she recounts.

The book becomes a meticulous and admiringly recorded history of Betty Kray’s dedication, imagination, and development of the Academy. The story of an organization devoted to trying to make a kind of home away from home and a promotion agency for legions of poets is surprisingly engaging. Thanks to Norris’s personal touch and her ability to write entertainingly, the personality of Kray catches the reader’s interest as much as that of her biographer.

If you’d like to get a feel for a particular segment of New York’s literary and artistic population at a time rife with famous names and artistic ferment (James Wright, Kenneth Rexroth, Gary Snyder, Andy Warhol and his followers ... just to name a few), read this for the atmosphere and details of mores of that time.

Pages: 1 · 2 · 3

Culture and Arts, Relationships and Going Places, Theater and Film, Literature and Poetry, History, Culture Watch, Entertaining, Shop for Home, Shop for Yourself, Travel, Senior Women Web, Articles, Joan L. Cannon, Book Reviews, Julia Sneden, Tam Gray, Authors, What's New Add comments

CultureWatch Reviews: Amsterdam, A History of the World's Most Liberal City; The Virgin of Bennington; DVD Tips: Foyle's War & Doc Martin's Return

More Articles