Masked Man Research Articles

Adding Machine, a Musical (review)

Reviewed by: Adding Machine, a Musical Carol A. Fischer Adding Machine, a musical. Music by Joshua Schmidt. Libretto by Jason Loewith and Joshua Schmidt. Based on the play The Adding Machine by Elmer Rice. Directed by David Cromer. Minetta Lane Theatre, New York City. 3 April 2008. For those concerned that musical adaptations of plays can lead to disappointing changes (such as the absence of the masked man at the end of Spring Awakening), Joshua Schmidt and Jason Loewith offer an intelligent, faithful version of Elmer Rice’s The Adding Machine (1923), keeping intact both the words and the expressionistic spirit of the play— from the opening moments, to the communication of “dis-ease,” to the depiction of heaven and hell and the externalization of inner states of being—with the use of technology throughout emphasizing the tension between man and machine. Adding Machine, a Musical evoked expressionism— without being self-referential—even before the production began. Washed in lime-green light, the pre-show stage housed an imposing concrete-looking wall angled toward upstage center. Three desks were stacked on top of one another so that sidelight cast shadows hinting at prison bars, silently introducing the external imprisonment to come that parallels the pervasive inner entrapment of the characters. A bed standing upright on its foot-end was a disturbing opening visual indicating the lack of rest in that world. Being thus positioned voyeuristically, the audience seemingly gazed down onto a nonsleeping couple, with Mr. Zero (Joel Hatch) turned away from his wife as she sang the vituperous opening monologue. Cyrilla Baer was an operatic Mrs. Zero, vocalizing a booming attack, then descending from higher registers to a Brooklyn-like colloquialism; her talk-sing voice repeatedly stabbing “I was a fool for marrying you!” and “You ain’t much to be proud of!” stylistically emphasized the inner discontent in the marriage and in their lives. Episodic scenes revealed the underlying stress points in Zero’s life: first his wife, then his workplace, where his boss states that he is being replaced by an adding machine. The electronic music of a synthesizer mixed with piano and percussion reinforced the inner traumas of the man, expressing Zero’s anger as it motivated murder. Abruptly, the music changed the audience’s focus to Daisy, played by Amy Warren, who sang her long-harbored romantic daydreams about Zero in an endearing, bluesy “I’d Rather Watch You.” But the reverie ended as sharply as it began with the entrance of a particularly nasty evening party accompanied by discordant carnivallike underscoring. Visuals and music worked together to reflect the discontent and ruthlessness at the heart of the Zeros and their community. Heightening the sense of “dis-ease” was makeup that hollowed eyes, and staging that had actors looking over the audience or past one another. Enhanced by a touch of the fantastic, the wellcrafted scene in a jailhouse illustrated what musicals can accomplish with panache. Each of three prisoners was enclosed in his separate cell, with just enough space for him to sit on a stool. While Zero ravenously ate a requested last meal of scrambled eggs and ham, he failed to notice the ridicule being sung at him by the jailers. As they removed his plate, his wife entered carrying a plate of his favorite meal, ham and eggs, which he ate as well. In a moment of possible marital redemption, the Zeros sang about good times in a number, “Didn’t We?” which included the jail cells being lifted by their occupants [End Page 643] Click for larger view View full resolution Joel Hatch (Mr. Zero) and Cyrilla Baer (Mrs. Zero) in Adding Machine, a Musical. Photo: Carol Rosegg. [End Page 644] and waltzed around in a dance break; the reconciliation shattered when Zero asked his wife to give a scrapbook about him to his co-worker Daisy. The distinctive anomalies of a musical continued as the fellow-jailbird Shrdlu narrated his sordid story in intricately interwoven dialogue and song before the convicted were marched off, jail cells and all, to their executions. The music and sung lines punctuated the thought begun in spoken lines, even as the power of the music...

Byron and the Artifice of Sincerity: 'To the Po' and its Epistolary Analogues

My subject here is a self-subverting artifice: the mutable blend of false truths, true lies, serious triviality and trivial seriousness that constitutes the sincerity of a masked man such as Byron. I will explore this subject by way of a case study - a close comparative reading of 'To the Po' and some of Byron's letters to or about Teresa Guiccioli that circumscribe the poem. However, this essay is also a shoutout to Jerome McGann on the occasion of the birthday that is apparently his seventieth if, like the Don Juan narrator, we want to be particular about dates. I first became aware of McGann's scholarly work as a 23-year-old graduate student. That initial encounter introduced me to an expert on ... Edward Bulwer-Lytton. I was using McGann's text based on the hard-to-find first edition of Bulwer's novel Pelham, a brilliantly witty, surprisingly wise, once popular but now too little read book that has much to say about mask-wearing, figure-cutting and how both allow for simultaneous revelation and concealment.1 Pelham the dandiacal protagonist is persistently under-rated by the habitues of his milieu because he makes himself seem much less substantial than he actually is, and Pelham the book has been neglected by scholars for much the same reason. Both offend against commonplace notions of sincerity, the novel doing so in part because, until its mask-dropping conclusion, it deftly follows the lead of Don Juan. The protagonist-narrator Pelham, like his young creator Bulwer, emulates Byron's cheerfully sceptical, amiably ironic, tolerant and yet unremittingly moral aspect. And Byron's riff on the trope of Romantic sincerity, as I would gradually learn over the next decades in ever-increasing detail, is one of the many matters McGann understands as well as or better than anyone else. In Sincerity and Authenticity, Lionel Trilling sees the pre-modern English understanding of sincerity, 'communicating without deceiving or misleading others', as less exacting than its French counterpart, which entails recognising and then disclosing the truth about one's self. He goes on to assert that a watershed moment in the making of the modern sensibility was Rousseau's conflation of these two sincerities. The conflated Anglo-French sincerity was, more or less, what readers expected from Romantic poetry, a discourse generally meant to demonstrate, as McGann puts it, 'a deeply felt relation binding the poetic Subject to the poetic subject, the speaking voice to the matter being addressed'.2 Being two-faced or many-faced is at first blush the antithesis of Romantic sincerity: it is apparent hypocrisy. And yet, as McGann, following Kierkegaard, points out, Romantic sincerity founds itself on a contradiction and performs an illusion.3 Byron, the poet of self-conscious mobility, exposes and articulates the contradiction in many varying ways, perhaps the most concisely notable and quotable being a couplet from late in Don Juan: 'But if a writer would be quite consistent, / How could he possibly show things existent?' (XV, 86). As to the illusion, which involves an indirection that belies rhetoric and instead pretends that a reflective presence, indifferent to or unaware of an audience, engages in self-communion - well, Byron habitually centrestages rather than displaces his rhetoric-that-conceals-rhetoric. Like most writers, he adopts a voice and envisions an audience. Unlike most Romantic writers, he does so directly - or with an appearance of directness that can be the ultimate indirection. The paradoxical consequences of masked self-revelation in art result in such literary situations as Oscar Wilde's character Jack Worthing posing as 'Earnest' in town but discovering that he is indeed Earnest after all. Or there is the literally reformed rakehero of Max Beerbohm's Regency fable, 'The Happy Hypocrite', Lord George Hell, behaving virtuously and donning an angelic false face to win the heart and hand of an ingenue and eventually finding that his actual face has improved in correspondence with his change of heart so that it now has come to look just like the beautiful saintly mask that once belied but now reveals his true nature. …

Superman on the Couch: What Superheroes Really Tell Us about Ourselves and Our Society

Superman on Couch: What Superheroes Really Tell Us about Ourselves and Our Society Danny Fingeroth. New York: Continuum/London, 2004. Books about superhero comics are typically written by fans, creators, or scholars. Danny Fingeroth's work transcends usual limitations of perspective that find in such books because his life has encompassed all three roles. He was an eager reader as a child; he worked editorially at Marvel Comics for a couple of decades; and he has now settled into a period that combines analytic writing, editing WriteNow magazine, and teaching at New York University. Participating in one of PCA/ACA's finest traditions, Fingeroth came with his informed insider book to 2005 meetings at San Diego. As a long-term manager for Spider-Man character and consultant to 2002 blockbuster film, Fingeroth reports that he had firsthand knowledge of what those stories meant to readers of all ages who told in no uncertain terms what they meant to them (174, emphasis in original). In addition to being the caretaker of superhero icons, he created some brand new superheroes from scratch (174). This background affords an unusually practical knowledge of costumes, dual identities, special powers, and requirements to differentiate between competing heroes-all compounded by demand to create marketable products from unstable ingredients. Influenced by clamorous voices of fans, his knowledge of sales charts, and recent scholarship, most of Fingeroth's thematic treatments emphasize some form of reader identification with a heroic fantasy. While this approach has been applied to comic books at least since Frederic Wertham's Seduction of Innocent (1954), Fingeroth brings elegant nuances. Chapters deal with longer history of superhero concept, dual identity, orphans, female superhero, angry superheroes, superhero families, values that underlie heroism and villainy, and superhero tale's future. While many categories and insights are familiar to those who have read works such as Richard Reynolds' Superheroes (1992) or Gerard Jones's Killing Monsters (2002), most readers will find an original touch or a significant speculative question associated with each theme. (Fingeroth leaves many of his vexingly challenging questions for others to grapple with.) I will list some sample observations. On Gratitude. The hero of masked dual identity doesn't want to get used to being thanked (49). Drawing on Lenny Bruce's Thank You, Masked Man routine, Fingeroth suggests that convention of Lone Ranger escaping from rescued community allows purity of deed to stand alone. The stance of selflessness is a cliche for genre. What Fingeroth adds here is how escape-from-thanks maneuver appeals to an audience wanting heroes who emphatically do right thing for its own sake. The Primal Appeal of Secret Identity. The hidden identity of superhero, when identified with by audience, permits an enlarged fantasy about myself, reader, as source of justice: IF ONLY THEY (whoever your they may be) KNEW THE TRUTH (whatever that truth may be) ABOUT (whoever you believe yourself to he), THEY'D BE SORRY FOR THE WAY THEY TREAT ME (60, caps and emphasis in original). Orphan Heroes. There are legions of orphans in heroic world, a tradition that goes back to Moses, Oedipus, and Hercules. The orphan status intensifies secret identity theme but also reflects an existentialist form of individualism. Without families, we are all alone. We fight our own battles, make our own rules, defy those who would destroy us (70-71). The Incredibles film of 2004, which appeared after Fingeroth's book was written, cleverly plays with this idea by showing how difficult it is for a superhero (Mr. Incredible) to be embedded in a family and work situation. Thus, orphan with superpowers becomes ultimate American individualist. …

South Africa: Pagad, Islam and the challenge of the local

This article examines representations of Islam in South African media through an analysis of images of Pagad in one particular South African newspaper, the Cape Times in one week of coverage from 5 to 12 August 1996. Reference is also made to the Cape Argus. Major patterns of visual and verbal images are considered that characterised the Pagad news-stories, showing that the fi gure of the “masked man” became a primary marker of the stories. The impact of the group's visibility on images of Islam in South Africa is discussed. The article situates this analysis within the context of a longer timetable of representations originating in the colonial era and argues that the legacy of such portrayals lingers in apartheid and post-apartheid representations of Islam. The article supplements its approach of discourse analysis and political economy by drawing on interviews with journalists.

South Africa: Pagad, Islam and the challenge of the local

This article examines representations of Islam in South African media through an analysis of images of Pagad in one particular South African newspaper, the Cape Times in one week of coverage from 5 to 12 August 1996. Reference is also made to the Cape Argus. Major patterns of visual and verbal images are considered that characterised the Pagad news-stories, showing that the fi gure of the “masked man” became a primary marker of the stories. The impact of the group's visibility on images of Islam in South Africa is discussed. The article situates this analysis within the context of a longer timetable of representations originating in the colonial era and argues that the legacy of such portrayals lingers in apartheid and post-apartheid representations of Islam. The article supplements its approach of discourse analysis and political economy by drawing on interviews with journalists.

The philosopher's toolkit: a compendium of philosophical concepts and methods

Preface. Acknowledgements. 1. Basic Tools for Argument. 1.1 Arguments, premises and conclusions. 1.2 Deduction. 1.3 Induction. 1.4 Validity and soundness. 1.5 Invalidity. 1.6 Consistency. 1.7 Fallacies. 1.8 Refutation. 1.9 Axioms. 1.10 Definitions. 1.11 Certainty and probability. 1.12 Tautologies, self-contradictions and the law ofnon-contradiction. 2. More Advanced Tools. 2.1 Abduction. 2.2 Hypothetico-deductive method. 2.3 Dialectic. 2.4 Analogies. 2.5 Anomalies and exceptions that prove the rule. 2.6 Intuition pumps. 2.7 Logical constructions. 2.8 Reduction. 2.9 Thought experiments. 2.10 Useful fictions. 3. Tools for Assessment. 3.1 Alternative explanations. 3.2 Ambiguity. 3.3 Bivalence and the excluded middle. 3.4 Category mistakes. 3.5 Ceteris paribus. 3.6 Circularity. 3.7 Conceptual incoherence. 3.8 Counterexamples. 3.9 Criteria. 3.10 Error theory. 3.11 False dichotomy. 3.12 False cause. 3.13 Genetic fallacy. 3.14 Horned dilemmas. 3.15 Is/ought gap. 3.16 Masked man fallacy. 3.17 Partners in guilt. 3.18 Principle of charity. 3.19 Question-begging. 3.20 Reductios. 3.21 Redundancy. 3.22 Regresses. 3.23 Saving the phenomena. 3.24 Self-defeating arguments. 3.25 Sufficient reason. 3.26 Testability. 4. Tools for Conceptual Distinctions. 4.1 A priori/a posteriori. 4.2 Absolute/relative. 4.3 Analytic/synthetic 4.4 Categorical/modal. 4.5 Conditional/biconditional. 4.6 De re/de dicto. 4.7 Defeasible/indefeasible. 4.8 Entailment/implication. 4.9 Essence/accident. 4.10 Internalism/externalism. 4.11 Knowledge by acquaintance/description. 4.12 Necessary/contingent. 4.13 Necessary/sufficient. 4.14 Objective/subjective. 4.15 Realist/non-realist. 4.16 Sense/reference. 4.17 Syntax/semantics. 4.18 Thick/thin concepts. 4.19 Types/tokens. 5. Tools of Historical Schools and Philosophers. 5.1 Aphorism, fragment, remark. 5.2 Categories and specific differences. 5.3 Elenchus and aporia. 5.4 Hume's fork. 5.5 Indirect discourse. 5.6 Leibniz's law of identity. 5.7 Ockham's razor. 5.8 Phenomenological method(s). 5.9 Signs and signifiers. 5.10 Transcendental argument. 6. Tools for Radical Critique. 6.1 Class critique. 6.2 Deconstruction and the critique of presence. 6.3 Empiricist critique of metaphysics. 6.4 Feminist critique. 6.5 Foucaultian critique of power. 6.6 Heideggerian critique of metaphysics. 6.7 Lacanian critique. 6.8 Critiques of naturalism. 6.9 Nietzschean critique of Christian-Platonic culture. 6.10 Pragmatist critique. 6.11 Sartrean critique of 'bad faith'. 7. Tools at the Limit. 7.1 Basic beliefs. 7.2 Godel and incompleteness. 7.3 Philosophy and/as art. 7.4 Mystical experience and revelation. 7.5 Paradoxes. 7.6 Possibility and impossibility. 7.7 Primitives. 7.8 Self-evident truths. 7.9 Scepticism. 7.10 Underdetermination. Internet Resources for Philosophers. Index.

Arkansas Listings in the National Register of Historic Places: Crime Scenes and Criminals

MANY PEOPLE THINK OF HISTORIC PROPERTIES simply as monuments or artifacts, not always realizing that these were places where people lived, worked, and, in some cases, committed crimes. There are numerous Arkansas buildings listed on the National Register that were either scenes of crimes or places where criminals paid for their illegal acts. One such place was the Pottsville Citizens' Bank (Pope County), which opened for business in 1913. On December 13, 1926, a man wearing a Santa Claus mask entered the lobby of the building and shouted Merry Christmas. He then ordered those present to raise their hands. Teller Roy Falls, believing this to be a prank, returned the holiday greeting and told the masked man that he would assist him in a moment. The ersatz Santa once again demanded that the bank's employees and patrons put their hands up in the air. Falls continued to ignore him, helping two customers with their transactions while the would-be robber was kept waiting. Not until the masked man was joined by an accomplice wearing a handkerchief over his face did Falls realize it was no joke. Although the pair escaped with $4,200 in cash, they were later apprehended in Oklahoma. They had used their ill-gotten gains to pay bills and had also shared some of the loot with family members. In March 1928, the Pottsville Citizens' Bank was once again the object of criminal intention when a drifter from Chicago went on a one-man crime spree in the small community. The itinerant desperado burglarized the Falls & Sinclair Store, Henry's Drug Store, the post office, and the train depot before unsuccessfully attempting to break into the bank by cutting a hole into the vault. The local newspaper noted that it took an outsider to smear Pottsville's reputation as a lawful community. The Pottsville Citizens' Bank, having been consolidated with the People's Bank & Trust Company of Russellville, was robbed a third time in the 1980s. The robbers fled the scene aboard an off-road motorcycle. They fared no better than their predecessors, however, and were soon brought to justice. On June 30, 1992, the institution, then a Worthen Bank, ceased operation. The building was then donated to the city for municipal use. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on March 28, 2002. After serving as, then ceasing to be, the county seat of Little River County, the town formerly known as Rocky Comfort, but more recently dubbed New Rocky Comfort by local residents and Foreman by the postal authorities and the Arkansas and Choctaw Railroad, once again became the county seat in 1902. The first civic building to be constructed was the New Rocky Comfort jail, erected in 1902. It used stacked six-by-two pine boards for the walls. …

Reflections on community psychiatric nursing

1. Who Was That Masked Man? - The Identity of the Community Psychiatric Nurse 2. No Such Thing as Society - Sociological Aspects of Community Psychiatric Nursing 3. A Day in the Life - The Role of the CPN 4. Learning in Lay-Bys - Teaching and Assessing 5. Risky Business - Risk-Taking and Safe Practice 6. If You're Happy and You Know It - Promoting Positive Mental Health 7. Totally Atypical Taste - Coming to Terms with Newer Treatments 8. We Are Family - Family Interventions 9. True Colours - Working with Primary Care 10. Reintegration Through Creativity Conclusion

Who was that masked man?

Stephen Gaukroger, Descartes: An Intellectual Biography. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995. Pp. xx+499. ISBN 0-19-823994-7. £25.00.Stephen Gaukroger's new biography of Descartes is a major accomplishment. Gaukroger offers the reader an overview of Descartes' life and works, with healthy doses of intellectual background thrown in for good measure. It should have a major impact on Cartesian studies, both within the history of philosophy and within the history of science.

The Superhero Meets the Culture Critic

The Superhero Meets the Culture Critic Christian L. Pyle Reynolds, Richard. Super Heroes: A Modern Mythology. Studies in Popular Culture. Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 1994. Although the “superhero” has been a staple of American mass media since the emergence of Superman in 1938, a definitive study of the genre has not appeared. Therefore, I greeted the American edition of Reynolds’s book (first published in London by B. T. Batsford in 1992) with enthusiasm. Its potential seemed substantial, as suggested by the back cover copy: The popular figure known as the superhero has exerted such a strong and mushrooming influence upon society, morality, and politics that a mythology now pervades our culture. . . . Here is a study of this superhuman creation, revealed as a proliferating symbol whose dimensions over sixty years of comic book history have been rendered to satisfy the demands and expectations of the popular audience. This fascinating book shows how the superhero has become a vivid figure in the mainstream of modern culture. This is a description of the book that popular culture scholars and postmodernists have needed: a wide-ranging yet detailed study of the proliferation of the superhero myth. Regrettably, Reynolds’s Super Heroes, while it has several merits, is not that book. Reynolds begins with “a first-stage working definition of the superhero genre” expressed in seven criteria: 1. The hero is marked out from society. He often reaches maturity without having a relationship with his parents. 2. At least some of the superheroes will be like earthbound gods in their level of powers. Other superheroes of lesser powers will consort easily with these earthbound dieties. 3. The hero’s devotion to justice overrides even his devotion to the law. 4. The extraordinary nature of the superhero will be contrasted with the ordinariness of his surroundings. 5. Likewise, the extraordinary nature of the hero will be contrasted with the mundane nature of his alter-ego. Certain taboos will govern the actions of these alter-egos. [By taboos, Reynolds will explain further on, he refers to myths in which the hero gains strength through abstinence.] 6. Although ultimately above the law, superheroes can be capable of considerable patriotism and moral loyalty to the state, though not necessarily to the letter of its laws. 7. The stories are mythical and use science and magic indiscriminately to create a sense of wonder. (16) Rules 1 and 3 are accepted facets of the American hero, as true of Natty Bumppo and Huck Finn as they are of Superman and Batman. Rules 4 and 5 are also familiar and straight-forward (although rule 4 could use a footnote regarding heroes who alternate between mundane surroundings and fantastic realms, such as outer space, Asgard, or astral planes). Rule 2, however, is flawed in a way that points to a major weakness of Reynolds’s book: its forshortened historical perspective. Parallel to the “earthbound god” tradition of costumed heroes stemming from Superman is the “masked man” tradition of heroes with no real “superpowers.” The best-known comic book example is Batman, but he was preceded by other comic book heroes (the Crimson Avenger), pulp fiction heroes (the Spider, the Black Bat), and radio heroes (the Lone Ranger, the Green Hornet). Batman, the subject of three sections within Super Heroes, is obviously in Reynolds’s mind when he refers to “superheroes of lesser powers.” One could argue that Batman’s above-average intelligence, athletic ability, weaponry, or fear-instilling costume are “powers,” but Reynolds does not go into that. Instead he defines the super-ness of such heroes in terms of their interaction with the Superman crowd. This idea, as well as Reynolds’s lengthy discussion of continuity later in the book, depends upon the existence of a “universe” in which all the characters owned by a particular company inhabit the same fictional world. However, the idea of a fictional universe is more recent than Reynolds seems to realize. He links it to superhero teams (37–38), but, prior to the emergence of Marvel in the 1960s, the adventures of superteams were isolated from the solo adventures of the teams’ heroes. (I don’t mean to be overly pedantic, but one could...

The Attack by the U.S. Religious Right on “Government Schools” or “Who was that Masked Man who Stole our School Reform?”

The Attack by the U.S. Religious Right on “Government Schools” or “Who was that Masked Man who Stole our School Reform?”

Acquittals in Jeopardy: Criminal Collateral Estoppel and the Use of Acquitted Act Evidence

A man is tried for attempting to rob a home while using a mask and gun. In spite of the victim's positive identification, he is acquitted. Later, he is brought to trial for a bank robbery committed with a mask and gun. At the second trial, the prosecution introduces evidence of the first robbery to prove defendant's identity as the masked man.' Persuaded that the defendant is a habitual criminal, the jury convicts. The judge, taking evidence of the earlier robbery into account during sentencing, imposes a harsher sentence.2 Was this defendant tried and punished for a crime for which he had already been acquitted? If so, should the Double Jeopardy Clause protect him? These questions, long debated in the lower courts,3 were recently addressed by the Supreme Court in Dowling

Sam Shepard: A Casebook ed. by Kimball King (review)

Book Reviews 447 KIMBALL KING. ed.Sam Shepard:A Casebook. New York', Garland 1989. pp. xxiii. 176. $36.00. lnSam Shepard: A Casebook, editor Kimball King has assembled a dozenoriginaJ essays on the playwright-cum-cowboy-cum-movie star, preferring range ofsubject to depth. As such. King's methodology emulates previous scholarship that has studied anyone of Shepard's forty plays in isolation, contributing to an obfuscated or disjointed view of the corpus. Given the advanced stage ofcriticism on the "masked man" and his oeuvre, King's approach - which further endorses fragmentation - seems unnecessary. in fact, counterproductive . Recent independent research by Ron Mottram, Doris Auerbach and Lynda Han seeks to offer a unified picture of the man and his work. In book-length texts. these authors coordinate a biography of Shepard with insights into his subject matter and thematic obsessions. Examining his familial and dramatic roots, they establish a coherent framework that becomes all-inclusive as it unravels the riddles that Shepard may deliberately perpetuate. Consequently, it would seem advisable for today's students of the maverick playwright to begin connecting all the disparate images and issues that a host of critics has already identified. After twenty-five years ofproductivity, Shepard has indeed staked out a sizable terrain for analysis. The man who glorifies the myths of a bygone era has now - perhaps inadvertently - created his own cult status and shored up his own past. Time and a decelerated output ought to enable us to pin him down or, at least, bring him into clearer focus. Thus, in soliciting these articles, King's quest for "a sense of fun" and " exhilaration " seems misdirected. Had the editor had a more rigorous agenda or a single vision of Shepard that he wished to see developed, he might have generated a volume significant for pioneering the frontiers of Shepard scholarship. As it is, this Casebook skips from topic to topic, following the plays in a vague semblance of chronology, without providing much information that is new or useful. Even Patrick Fennell's reference guide to Shepard's early and as yet unpublished plays offers little more than brief summaries of their content. Elizabeth Proctor's criticism of •'offbeat humor and comic mystery" inLa Turista,The Unseen Hand, and other plays also dissolves into plot recapitulation instead of cultivating ideas that sustain an argument. Many of the essays in this col1ection, like the afore-mentioned, can be faulted for excessive regurgitation of storyline. and the parroting of stale remarks about the decline of the American family or the degeneration of the American Dream according to Shepard. It would be very difficult to top Bonnie Marranca's anthology American Dreams.' The Imagination o/Sam Shepard, which excels because it was culled from the best criticism already published by 1981. Unfortunately, there is not enough freshness of voice or novelty of thought in King's assemblage of essays. Where there is originality, as in Albert Wilheim's treatment of Icarus's Mother, the subject matter becomes an excuse for displaying erudition. Conceding the unlikelihood that the nineteen-year-old college drop-out would have been acquainted with Naucrate, "one of the least known figures in Book Reviews classical mythology," Wilheim suggests that Shepard is attempting' 'a refocusing ofthe Icarus myth" by naming the play after the daredevil's mother. However, Wilheim fails to convince that the title signals arevisionary perspective. Instead, herelies on inferences and convoluted logic to defend his hypothesis. He argues more successfully when he retreats into a discussion of the son as artist battling the father for creative p~wer. a variation on a theme that recurs in Shepard's corpus. The unadulterated pleasures in this collection begin with "Story Itself: Curse ofthe Starving Class through Foolfor Love." Composed by ChristopherBrookhouse, aretired English professor and fiction-writer, it centers on the device ofstory-telling in Shepard'5 family dramas. Brookhouse investigates subjectivity as it locks characters, audience, and author into disparate and conflicting perceptions of reality. Allowing - with great chann - that his "comments betray (his) own prejudices and in tum (his) own story," Brookhouse describes True West as a search for oneness achieved through a merging of stories, while Foolfor Love is "about...

Letter From The Horse Latitudes

LETTER FROM THE HORSE LATITUDES ICW. Smith DAD, YOUR VISIT and our agonized parting have stirred up things I'd long since hoped were still for good. Your every gesture spoke a need to ask how I came to be who and where I am. Yet I can remember you as a fugitive. Garner State Park, Texas. We heard on the car radio the police were after you. I was eleven, thrilled to be in the company of a criminal. You who obey all laws great and small, you were deaf to the voice of Authority, fleeing the scene while Mother urged you to turn yourself in. You were (are) a lean man gnawed with American worry, quenching the fire in your gut with buttermilk and Bach, a virtuoso on your major talent—joking your way clear of painful situations. "Calling all cars!" you boomed. I laughed uproariously, delighted. "Who was that masked man?" My flattopped head was stuffed with what we left behind; some of those images lingered there for these many years, counting up to this afternoon. No doubt a first for you, being pursued by the police. I recall when you became Scoutmaster for Troop #108, which met in the basement of the First Methodist church on Tuesday nights. We were uneasy about the change; to meetings your predecessor had worn the suit he sold life insurance in, but you donned, of all things, a Scoutmaster's uniform, that crap-brown adult version of our own, complete with hat and kerchief. You didn't relate to us very well. I was tormented that you were much too earnest, when I knew you privately to be a joker. Your religious air was deadly, deadly to our spirits. You never cursed, though this was consistent with your behavior at home. Your predecessor ribbed us about the lines in the Manual which counseled us to sleep with our hands above the covers, not to lie abed in the mornings, and to take cold showers when we felt "restless." He taught us the expression "loping your mule." We liked him; he knew who we were. But you, you seemed oblivious to this side of our nature. At camp you strolled about at night leaving fruity wisps of pipe tobacco hanging in the air as you oversaw everything with the myopia we have in common, the least of many flaws that bind 26S · The Missouri Review us. What's going on in the tents of the Phantom Buffalo Patrol is better left unacknowledged. Tonight, we "Phantom Butt-holes," as we're known, are trying to live down our name in a marathon farting contest. After lights are out and you've retired, we scoot out in the dark to other tents, stumbling onto cornhole orgies, barging in where the victor of a circle-jerk is sweeping up his winnings. The Explorers smoke Luckies on the sly, talk about getting your finger in it, heady stuff to we Phantom Butt-holes. Behind the law, life goes on. A dangerous freedom crackles in the air, but you are asleep already. It's not likely you've forgotten how proud I did you on the rifle range, but let me tell you why: for one, I take instruction exceedingly well; for another, what I saw in the targets helped. The scoutmasters gathered just behind me on the firing line talked about Korea, where things hadn't gone well since "Frozen Chosin." I was paying close attention, having filled two scrapbooks with AP Wirephotos and traced undulations of the battlelines on a map. Although I was only twelve, I'd heard Mother wish that the war would be over before I got older. She had good reason to fear: my secret ambition was to be the next Audie Murphy. Gradually, the conversation turned on the axis of collective guilt, and you all began trading credentials from the Big One. Last in line, you chuckled and told these bombardiers and dogfaces about your draft-exempt job in the oil fields, how with the "Home Guard" you went to the beaches to drill by tossing beer cans filled with sand into the surf, and the closest your unit...

The Mystery of the Masked Man's Music: A Search for the Music Used on "The Lone Ranger" Radio Program, 1933-1954

The Mystery of the Masked Man's Music: A Search for the Music Used on "The Lone Ranger" Radio Program, 1933-1954

The Masked Man[n

Journal Article The Masked Man[n]: Felix Krull is Siegfried Get access L. J. RATHER L. J. RATHER Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Opera Quarterly, Volume 2, Issue 1, Spring 1984, Pages 67–75, https://doi.org/10.1093/oq/2.1.67 Published: 01 March 1984