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By: Rebecca,
on 4/11/2008
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Donald Ritchie, author of Reporting from Washington: The History of the Washington Press Corps, Our Constitution, and The Congress of the United States: A Student Companion, has been Associate Historian of the United States Senate for more than three decades. Earlier this week he sent me this blog along with the following introduction: Even though I study news rather than make it, last week I was invited to give a “newsmaker” luncheon talk at the National Press Club. The occasion was the club’s centennial, the video of that talk is online here. I thought the condensed version below would make a good blog.
Boy was he right! Below Ritchie talks about the National Press Club and its place in history.
The National Press Club is celebrating its centennial, raising a question about why journalistic competitors feel compelled to band together. Founded in 1908, the club had many short-lived predecessors. The Washington Correspondents’ Club, for instance, held several dinners designed to reduce tensions between reporters and their political sources during the difficult days of Reconstruction. Such nineteenth-century press clubs failed because they let their members run up a tab at the bar (the National Press Club has never extended credit), and because they were either press clubs, founded by reporters for Washington, D.C., papers that excluded national correspondents, or correspondents’ clubs that barred the local press, indicating the animosity between them. The genius of the National Press Club was that it combined reporters for both the local and the national press.
But only men. The club left women and minorities outside the parameters of mainstream journalism. Not until 1955 did it hold a vote of its entire membership to admit Louis Lautier, a reporter for the National Negro Publishers Association. Radio news broadcasters were also treated as second-class citizens at first, being permitted to join the club only as non-voting members. Women reporters founded the Women’s National Press Club, but the separation prevented them from covering the National Press Club’s regular “newsmaker” luncheons.
In 1956, the men offered a compromise by inviting women to attend the luncheons, so long as they sat in the balcony and left as soon as the lunch was over. While the men dined below, the women shared the balcony with television cameras, hot lights, and coils of electrical wiring. Women reporters appealed to the famous guest speakers not to participate unless they could dine below with the men. Among the few to comply was Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, eager to publicize an American injustice. One who failed to offer solidarity was Martin Luther King, Jr., desperate to attract national press attention to the March on Washington. Dr. King spoke to an audience segregated by gender rather than race. Economic pressures on the club, whose membership declined during the 1960s, finally persuaded the men to admit women as members in 1971. Fittingly, the club’s centennial-year president is Sylvia Smith of the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette.
Regardless of race, gender, or media, Washington correspondents have historically been caught in a creative tension between the scoop and the pack–between professional rivalries and forces that pull the competitors together. They spend much time together outside the same closed doors, riding the same campaign trains, planes, and vans, being handed the same press releases, attending the same press conferences, cultivating the same high-placed sources. This pack journalism is counteracted by each reporter’s dream of the scoop, beating everyone else to the big story that makes a difference.
Somewhere between the scoop and the pack, the club has provided a welcome respite for the working press. Formed for reasons of camaraderie, the club has helped to shape the press corps and to define legitimate reporting. Unique among world governments, the U.S. allows reporters themselves to determine who deserves a press pass. Both the press galleries and the press clubs have guarded this prerogative jealously, and have labored diligently to decide whom to admit. Sometimes they have been too narrow in their definition and too slow to diversify. But ultimately the galleries and clubs have expanded to accommodate a more diffuse news business, one that continues to evolve with each startling technological breakthrough. The Internet will not be the last. A central institution in this transformation, the National Press Club has provided a common ground for newsmakers and news reporters. It would be hard to image the Washington press corps operating without it.
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Manuel Ramos
The Wandering Ghost
Martin Limón
Soho Press, 2007
Ten years ago I interviewed Martin Limón for a radio program. His second novel, Slicky Boys, was in the bookstores, getting good press as usual, and he was waiting for Buddha's Money to be released. He was excited about his series about two "maverick agents," as he described them, of the U. S. Army's Criminal Investigation Division, stationed in South Korea in the seventies-- George Sueño and Ernie Bascom. He admitted that he was a fan of hard-boiled literature and writers, and he mentioned Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, and Lawrence Block as among those he admired. He would have preferred to write about an American private eye in Seoul, Korea, he said, but since that didn't make sense, he came up with the idea of two Army cops rooting through the corruption and sleaze that they confronted during their tour of duty. Limón spent twenty years in the Army and ten of those years were in Korea, in a variety of different jobs, one of which was M.P., military policeman. And yes, his stories were based on some of his experiences in Korea.
He said one thing that I came back to when I had finished reading his latest Sueño and Bascom story, The Wandering Ghost, recently published by Soho Press. "I was always fascinated by the clash of all these thousands of young G.I.s suddenly running into a 4000-year-old culture. ... George and Ernie are caught right in the middle of that clash." Limón has taken that thought and expanded it into an incisive portrayal of the destructive effects of such a clash, and created a book that explores themes of cultural imperialism; the struggle to maintain cultural traditions in a world that moves too fast to hang on to most traditions; gender oppression; and the invulnerability that is bestowed on men in positions of power, authority and control.
As Michael Sedano pointed out in his review of this book earlier this week, The Wandering Ghost is an excellent detective novel filled with nervous tension, frenetic action, unexpected but believable plot twists, some really bad people, and a pair of good guys who do the right thing in spite of themselves and their commanding officers, and at the risk of their goal of honorably retiring from the Army. They solve the crime with old-fashioned hard work, putting together seemingly unconnected clues, running down false leads, and knowing the right people to talk to when vital information is needed -- prostitutes, bartenders, con men, and community elders. They stick to their job although everyone else tells them that the job is over.
The core story of a missing female M.P. is juxtaposed with the story of a young Korean girl killed by reckless American G.I.s, who never have to face Korean courts or justice, and over it all is a rough veneer of black marketeers, sexual predators, and high-level depravity.
There was a break of several years between Buddha's Money and Limón's next novel, The Door to Bitterness, but it is a good sign for all of his readers that The Wandering Ghost has been a quick follow-up to The Door to Bitterness. The more we read about Sueño and Bascom, the more we want to learn. Limón is an accomplished craftsman at providing just enough additional detail in each of the books to gradually fill in the pictures of these two Chicano tough guys who can't help but side with the Korean people, the lowly grunt, the brutalized policewoman, or whatever underdog slips into the plot. The Wandering Ghost informs the reader that George came from East L.A., a product of foster homes, and that he picked up valuable lessons of life on the streets. We also see that he has the initiative and foresight to try to learn the Korean language, that he has studied that country's philosophical and religious heritage, and that he is embarrassed by the rowdy and disrespectful actions of other American soldiers, who think that their time in Korea is designed for the ultimate "bachelor experience" and very little else. On the other hand, Ernie is the rabble-rousing, hard-drinking, eager-to-throw -down-chingazos vato who is ready to act while George is still thinking about options. He fits in with the other G.I.s, but he really doesn't, if you know what I mean. Together, Sueño and Bascom make a great team.
Obviously, Limón has a deep affection and appreciation for the Korean people and their culture. The book is filled with details about music, food, language, Confucian ideals, ancient ceremonies, the interaction between young and old Koreans, and much more. Most importantly, the perspective of Limón's characters, which includes their relationship with the Korean people and culture, invites a discussion about the meaning of the ongoing and presumably perpetual presence of American troops in a country such as Korea, and whether such a presence can truly keep the peace or simply exacerbate the conflicts.
This is a fine novel filled with atmosphere and tension. As most good books do, it succeeds on several levels. If you appreciate crime fiction, military thrillers, political suspense, Chicano Lit, or just a good story, you should enjoy this book.
Later.
Manuel Ramos
TRINIDAD SÁNCHEZ, JR. MEMORIAL FOUNDATION
Regina Chávez y Sánchez has established a foundation in the name of the late poet, Trinidad Sánchez, Jr. A promotional flyer announces that several of Sánchez's books are available including Why Am I So Brown?, Jalapeño Blues, Poems by Father & Son, Compartiendo de la Nada, and Authentic Mexican Food is HOT! She notes that she is working on several unpublished manuscripts, developing a scholarship in Trinidad's name, and that she wants everyone to know her husband's "words and wisdom." You can get on her mailing list by contacting her at [email protected], or writing to her at 827 Park Avenue West, Suite 203, Denver, CO 80205.
WORDS & MUSIC: A LITERARY FEAST IN NEW ORLEANS
Words & Music, 2007, opens November 14 and runs through November 18. The overall theme for 2007 is When Cultures Collide: The Fallout for Life and Literature. This event always features a stellar list of writers and on that list this year are Loida Maritza Pérez and Marie Arana. Pérez, a native of the Dominican Republic, is author of Geographies of Home (Viking, 1999). Arana, originally from Peru, is Editor of The Washington Post's review section Book World, and author of the novel Cellophane (Dial Press, 2006 ) and the memoir American Chica (Dial Press, 2001). For more about this event, click here.
MARTIN LIMÓN
Martin Limón continues his appearances in support of his latest Sueño and Bascom military whodunit, The Wandering Ghost (Soho Crime, 2007). He will read and sign at the Poisoned Pen in Scottsdale, AZ (James Doss is also on the program), on November 14 at 7:00 P.M., 4014 N. Goldwater Blvd., Suite 101; Murder by the Book, 2342 Bissonnet, Houston, TX, on November 15 at 6:30 P.M.; The Mystery Bookstore, 1036-C Broxton Avenue, Los Angeles, November 16 at 7:00 P.M.; and M is for Mystery, November 17, 1:30 P.M., 86 East Third Ave., San Mateo, CA.
Here's an announcement about a new book:
"FOCUS ON THE FABULOUS ... features 33 GLBT people as they write about life, love and living in Colorado. Edited by established author Matt Kailey and published by Johnson Books, the anthology was among the Denver area's top five of the September 2007 best seller list of nonfiction paperback books. Titled Two Militants Who Just Wouldn't Shut Up, the essay by Donaciano Martinez is partly about growing up in an anti-Chicano and anti-gay town and partly about the Colorado Springs Gay Liberation Front that was co-founded by Martinez and Truman Harris shortly after the 1969 Stonewall riots that marked the second wave of the battle against gay oppression."
Another press blurb:
"TINY TIM IS DEAD will be staged at 7:30 p.m. every Friday and Saturday from November 23 through January 5 at the nonprofit Theatre Group's Phoenix Theater, 1124 Santa Fe Drive in Denver. Written by Barbara Lebow, the play is described as wickedly amusing and delicately poignant as it ventures into the world of urban street people whose shelter is made of cardboard boxes and trash-can hearths. Among the homeless characters are: Otis Pope, an Army veteran who decides who can stay and who must leave the shelter; Verna, a disoriented and sometimes child-like woman; Verna's nameless and mute young son; Charlie, an unemployed blue collar worker; Azalee Hodge, an outspoken woman trying to climb back up; and, Filomeno Cordero, an immigrant from Central America. Discovering a worn-out copy of Charles Dickens' book A Christmas Carol, the group responds to Verna's pleas to re-enact the old story as a gift for her son. Verna cannot wait to play the part of Tiny Tim, while Pope is cast in the Scrooge role. In a revisionist inspiration, Pope becomes MC of the Tiny Tim Telethon. Unfamiliar with the Dickens' story, Filomeno mistakes the book's Marley character for reggae music star Bob Marley. The role of Verna is played by Shelly Bordas. Tickets are $22 per person, with $17 discount tickets for seniors, students and groups of ten or more."
STORIES ON STAGE presents Masterpieces of Science Fiction on November 15, 7:00 P.M., Jones Theater, DCPA. Among the featured authors are Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, and Neil Gaiman. Presenters include Gabriella Cavallero.
A movie note: I was lucky enough to see the opening film at the Denver Starz Film Festival last night. The Savages was directed by Tamara Jenkins and stars Philip Seymour Hoffman, Laura Linney and Philip Bosco. This is an excellent movie. Hoffman and Linney are thoroughly convincing as the siblings who are forced to deal with their dying, demented father, whom they have avoided for years. And Bosco's take on the father is unsettling because his character is all too-familiar, too close for comfort. The story avoids easy sentimentality and glib moralizing but it does deal with core issues: the "inconvenience" of death, responsibility to our own, and rediscovering the solid comfort of our own life's potential at the same time that we recognize its fleeting nature. The main characters are writers: Linney (Wendy) is an unsuccessful playwright filled with guilt, some of which centers around the stories she tries to tell, stories that she herself labels as self-absorbed and middle-class; while her brother, Jon, who has achieved a certain amount of respectability as a drama professor and critic, is unable to commit to the idea of love. They are very different human beings who eventually must recognize their commonalities. Although this is not a happy movie, we get a glimpse of the spark of humanity that we all want to see in one another. There isn't a Latino in sight, which always makes me shake my head, but I still recommend the film.
That's all for a very busy week.
Later.
Manuel Ramos
Crookneck from the neighborhood Valdez Honor Garden, thank you, Molly; Romas from Mary, gracias; and the Little Green Devils from my back yard; photo by Flo
MARIO ACEVEDO UP FOR COLORADO BOOK AWARD
Acevedo's
Nymphos of Rocky Flats (Rayo 2006) has been nominated for a Colorado Book Award in the category of Popular Fiction.
The
16th Annual Colorado Book Awards ceremony happens on October 17 at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, 1050 13th Street, Denver, CO; Donald R. Seawell Grand Ballroom; 6:00 PM Reception/Silent Auction; 7:00 PM Dinner & Awards Program. Proceeds from the event benefit Colorado Humanities and Center for the Book literacy programs for adults and K-12 students including
Motheread/Fatheread, Authors in the Classroom, Letters About Literature and River of Words.Click here for more information.Mario's third book in his Felix Gomez vampire/detective series,
The Undead Kama Sutra, is scheduled for a 2008 release, and he's spreading the news that the series has been extended by Rayo for at least two more books.
CHE'S WIDOW TO PUBLISH MEMOIRSAleida March de la Torre, widow of
Ernesto Che Guevara, has announced that her book of memories,
Evocaciones, will be published in March 2008. Guevara's fellow guerrilla fighter and collaborator during the liberation campaign in Las Villas (1958), said that she hopes that the book will provide "answers to all questions one may ask her on such an intimate topic. " Che Guevara married March de la Torre in 1959, after his "electrifying campaign in the central provinces that gave Fulgencio Batista´s tyranny the coup de gráce."
GREAT SOUTHWEST BOOK FAIRThe Second Annual
Great Southwest Book Fair is happening on Saturday, September 29 from 9 AM to 6 PM at the El Paso (Texas) Public Library and the El Paso History Museum at Cleveland Square. Writers, publishers, historians and other literature enthusiasts from across the Southwest will convene to provide an international marketplace for books and Southwestern literature. There will also be presentations by some of the areas most respected authors including
Denise Chávez,
Benjamin Alire Sáenz,
Georgina Baeza, Christine Granados, Javier O. Huerta, Elizabeth Margo, and
Donna Snyder. Attendance is free and open to the public. For more information call 915-543-5466.
NEW MARTIN LIMÓN
The Wandering Ghost
Soho Crime, November
One of La Bloga's favorite authors, Martin Limón, returns with another crime fiction novel featuring military policemen George Sueño and Ernie Bascom. Here's what Publishers Weekly said about this upcoming book:
"The turbulent Korean peninsula provides the backdrop to this fine military mystery, the fifth (after 2005's
The Door to Bitterness) to feature U.S. Army criminal investigation agents George Sueño and Ernie Bascom. A crack combat unit stationed near the strife-torn demilitarized zone proves strangely uncooperative when a military policewoman disappears. The missing soldier had made herself unpopular with her chain of command when she attempted to testify against two GIs who accidentally killed a Korean schoolgirl while speeding. As Sueño and Bascom dig past the obfuscation, they uncover an unsavory mix of black marketeering, sexual harassment, corruption, rape and murder, risking disgrace in their quest to find their fellow cop before it's too late. Limón, a veteran who spent 10 years stationed in the Republic of Korea, captures precisely the experience and atmosphere of the tension that exists between the American military and South Korean society, two vastly different worlds bound together only by realpolitik. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved."
The Poisoned Pen bookstore gave this book a great review that finished with: "This crazy case introduces a female MP, ... Jill, and asks a question central then and now: what will result when you drop a group of young, raw recruits into a traditional, foreign culture?" Good question.
HAVANA NOIR
Edited by Achy Obejas
Akashic Books, October
Brand new stories by:
Leonardo Padura, Pablo Medina, Alex Abella, Arturo Arango, Lea Aschkenas, Moises Asis, Arnaldo Correa, Mabel Cuesta, Paquito D'Rivera, Yohamna Depestre, Michel Encinosa Fu, Mylene Fernandez Pintado, Carolina Garcia-Aguilera, Miguel Mejides, Achy Obejas, Oscar Ortiz, Ena Lucia Portela, Mariela Varona Roque, and Yoss.
Here's what Akashic says about its latest collection in its acclaimed and award-winning "noir" series:
"To most outsiders, Havana is a tropical sin city: a Roman ruin of sex and noise, a parallel universe familiar but exotic, and embargoed enough to serve as a release valve for whatever desire or pulse has been repressed or denied. Habaneros know that this is neither new -- long before Havana collapsed during the Revolution's Special Period, all the way back to colonial times, it had already been the destination of choice for foreigners who wanted to indulge in what was otherwise forbidden to them -- nor particularly true.
"In the real Havana -- the lawless Havana that never appears in the postcards or tourist guides -- the concept of sin has been banished by the urgency of need. And need -- aching and hungry -- inevitably turns the human heart darker, feral, and criminal. In this Havana, crime, though officially vanquished by revolutionary decree, is both wistfully quotidian and personally vicious.
"In the stories of
Havana Noir current and former residents of the city -- some international sensations such as Leonardo Padura, others exciting new voices like Yohamna Despestre -- uncover crimes of violence and loveless sex, of mental cruelty and greed, of self-preservation and collective hysteria.
"Achy Obejas is the award-winning author of
Days of Awe, Memory Mambo, and
We Came all the Way from Cuba So You Could Dress Like This? Her poems, stories, and essays have appeared in dozens of anthologies. A long-time contributor to the
Chicago Tribune, she was part of the 2001 investigative team that earned a Pulitzer Prize for the series, "Gateway to Gridlock." Currently, she is the Sor Juana Writer-in-Residence at DePaul University in Chicago. She was born in Havana."
NEW THRILLER FROM R.J. PINEIRO
SpywareForge, November
R.J. Pineiro, author of more than a dozen novels, has a new one hitting the shelves in November.
The publisher says: "Mac Savage, a former CIA officer; Marie Kovacs, a former nanotechnology scientist turned missionary; and Kate Chavez, a Texas Ranger investigating a murder, join forces to unravel a global conspiracy that starts with the diamond industry and ends with a plan to eliminate the human race." How can you not want to read this book after that intro?
Pineiro, who resides in Austin, was born in Havana in 1961. He has quite a bio, that you can
read here.Later.
This post and other current highlights from La Bloga have just been featured on my diversity blog, BEYOND Understanding. Thanks, Manuel!
Karen DeGroot Carter
Denver
Thank you, Karen, for the nice words and for stopping by La Bloga, and for your very nice post about us on your blog. We appreciate the attention, of course, and I know that I will make it a point to visit your site often.
Hola Manuel. I tagged you for seven facts. Your friend at Scholars & Rogues
Great column, Manuel! 'Ghost' sounds like my kind of book--hard-boiled, noirish, but with protagonists complex enough to have real moral dilemmas. It also illustrates that 'genre' fiction can have layered contexts and raise complicated social issues, just as well as 'literary' fiction.
Lisa