That Verdammte Ape Again!

[Markekohut]

Urwand's book seems like one that could--and should--be demolished by a crowd-sourced close reading.....

But for Denby to hold the high-ideal virtual suppression of a HAWVARD U. Press book......shows too much respect for Candelbrow U.'s press and not enough for the open discussion way to a considered opinion that effectively leaves the book in the dustbin of publishing history. 

And, of course, calling out Harvard U for even publishing it has brought out all of the defenders of free-enough speech and publishing, like me, to give it more publicity than it already has...

Sent from my iPad

On Oct 7, 2013, at 8:24 AM, "Monte Davis" <montedavis at verizon.net> wrote:

> After the post below, I should have followed up.  In July I leafed through Urwand’s book and decided it was hyperventilating, pseudo-“now it can be told” crap. It’s very much along the lines of Edwin Black’s _IBM and the Holocaust_, which “revealed” that ZOMG, the Nazis used IBM machine tabulation  in the course of the Final Solution, just as they – and  the US and other governments – used it in the course of hundreds of other programs. Ergo technology = genocide.
>  
> Fortunately, David Denby has picked up the slack:
>  
> http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2013/09/how-could-harvard-have-published-ben-urwands-the-collaboration.html
>  
> w/r/t the Rhine cruise, Denby writes, “I think Urwand completely misunderstands the pleasure cruise. The studio bosses, posing for photos in front of castles in their nifty costumes, were not betraying their closeness to Hitler (which, in any case, Urwand never demonstrates). Much more likely, they were taking a victory lap: ‘We won this war, and now we are going to run this country and ride in your goddamn boat.’ ”
>  
> Or as someone once put it:
>  
> “The Paranoids were singing, to the tune of  ‘Adeste Fideles’:
>  
>             Hey, solid citizen, we just pinched your bo‑oat,
>             Hey, solid citizen, we just pinched your boat . . .”
>  
>  
> From: Monte Davis [mailto:montedavis at verizon.net] 
> Sent: Wednesday, June 26, 2013 6:42 AM
> To: pynchon-l at waste.org
> Subject: That Verdammte Ape Again!
>  
> From a review of Ben Urwand’s _The Collaboratioo: Hollywood’s Pact with Hitler_
>  
> http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/26/books/scholar-asserts-that-hollywood-avidly-aided-nazis.html
>  
> [“Urwand] also uncovered detailed records of regular studio visits by German officials, including Georg Gyssling, the special consul assigned to monitor Hollywood, who watched films, dictated scene-by-scene requests for cuts and engaged in bizarre debates. (Did “King Kong,” for example, constitute “an attack on the nerves of the German people?”)”
>  
> And for your Chums of Utgarthaloki Afloat File:
>  
> “…a scrapbook in which Jack Warner documented a Rhine cruise that he and other studio executives took with an Allied escort on Hitler’s former yacht in July 1945 as part of a trip exploring postwar business opportunities.”
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