The DVD documentary - Jerry Aronson’s The Life and Times of Allen Ginsberg (2008) was re-released this week by Docudrama. What can we say? - If you still don’t have it, an essential item.

The Life and Times of Allen Ginsberg Directed by Jerry Aronson, 2008

“Fiercely funny and moving”
Rolling Stone

Visionary, radical, spiritual seeker, renowned poet, founding member of a major literary movement, champion of human rights, Buddhist, political activist and teacher—Allen Ginsberg’s remarkable life shaped the very soul of American counterculture.

For 25 years, Academy Award®-nominated director Jerry Aronson accumulated more than 120 hours of film on Allen Ginsberg, resulting in this comprehensive portrait of one of America’s greatest poets, author of Howl and other groundbreaking poems. The DVD includes exclusive and revealing interviews with his friends, family and contemporaries as well as never-before-seen materials made public because of the warm friendship that developed between subject and director.

This compilation reveals the last 60 years of American culture beginning with the Beat era in the post-war Forties and Fifties, continuing through the revolutionary Sixties and concluding with the uncertainty and possibility of current times.

6 HOURS OF BONUS MATERIAL INCLUDES:
Exclusive Interviews; Featurette: The Making of The Life and Times of Allen Ginsberg; Ginsberg reading selected poems; Bob Dylan and Allen Ginsberg at Jack Kerouac’s grave; William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg at Naropa University; Neal Cassady and Allen Ginsberg at City Lights bookstore; The Making of the Music Video A Ballad of the Skeletons; Ginsberg guides us through an exhibition of his photographs; Excerpts from Scenes from Allen’s Last Three Days on Earth as a Spirit by Jonas Mekas; Ginsberg photo gallery; Director’s photo gallery; Memorial for Allen Ginsberg

http://www.docurama.com/docurama/the-life-and-times-of-allen-ginsberg/

http://ginsbergblog.blogspot.com/2013/05/friday-weekly-round-up-126.html

Decades Later And Across An Ocean, Stoner Gets Its Due

Sometimes you need some distance to appreciate a classic.

That was certainly the case for John Williams’ novel Stoner. When it was originally published in 1965, the only publication to mention the book at all was The New Yorker, in its “Briefly Noted” column. The novel received admiring reviews over the years, but sold just 2,000 copies and was almost immediately forgotten.

Fast forward to today and the book is experiencing a renaissance of sorts. It is a best-seller across much of Europe, including the Netherlands, where it has been the best-selling novel for the past two months. But it is not the action-packed thriller or steamy romance you might expect to be topping the charts. It is a quiet, slim novel about a young man who leaves a hardscrabble farm in Missouri to become a literature professor in 1910.

“It sort of pays tribute to a man whose life is, in one sense, utterly ordinary, but, in another sense, rich as anyone’s life can be,” said Edwin Frank, who runs New York Review of Books Classics, which republished Stoner in 2006.

But in the mid-1960s, Americans weren’t drawn to that style.

“That kind of realism was not in any sense fashionable at that point,” Frank said.

So the novel and Williams, who died in 1994, faded into obscurity, forgotten to all but a few aficionados.

When New York Review of Books Classics republished Stoner, it was reviewed quite well, but sold modestly at first — until it caught the attention of Anna Gavalda, one of France’s best-selling novelists. She had to read Stoner in English — there wasn’t a French translation — but she says she still felt a deep connection with the book.

“I think it’s a book I could have written myself because I feel really close to the author and the narrator, who, in my opinion are probably a bit of the same person,” she said.

John Williams’ other works include Augustus, winner of the 1973 National Book Award.

Gavalda liked it so much that she asked her editor to buy the rights, so she could translate it herself. And the book took off.

“My books sell really well in France,” she explained, “so when all the other European editors saw that it was me who translated this book, they were all curious about why Anna Gavalda translated it, and so they all bought the rights.”

Back in New York, Frank can only speculate as to why Stoner has so moved European readers like Gavalda.

“[Stoner] resonates I think, partly, because of the art with which the story has been told,” he said. “So even as he sets the scene in Columbia, Missouri, at the same time, it could be anywhere.”

http://www.npr.org/2013/05/19/184770657/decade-later-and-across-an-ocean-a-novel-gets-its-due

Austin, Texas Redefines Urban Farming

Redefining Urban Farming in Austin, Texas

60 concerned citizens rewrite the definition of an Urban Farm in Austin

By Dustin
East Side Compost Pedallers
05/09/2013

Excerpt:

In order for a property to be recognized by the city as an urban farm, it needs to meet the criteria set by the urban farm code. That makes sense. But what is so great about getting a certificate of occupancy as urban farm anyway? Couldn’t you just start growing food and forget about the title? It turns out that there are a number of benefits that come along with being recognized by the city as an urban farm.


First, urban farm certification does away with some of the restrictions that home growers are usually submitted to under the home occupation ordinance. It also allows for employees. While it is not allowed for other residentially zoned properties to employ on-site workers, certified Urban Farms are allowed up to 1 on-site employee for each full acre that the farm occupies plus one additional employee for any partial acreage. Another notable advantage of the urban farm title is that it grants growers the green light to put up a sign outside and advertise their farm as a business.

Read the complete article here:

https://www.compostpedallers.com/compost/redefining-urban-farming-austin-texas