The Twilight of American Culture

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"If you have finally had it with CNN and Hollywood and John Grisham and New Age 'spirituality,' then pull up a chair, unplug your phone (beeper, TV, fax machine, computer, etc.), and give me a few hours of your time. I promise to do my best not to entertain you."

A slightly forbidding introduction to a book, but indicative of its author's disgust at the homogenized McWorld in which we live, and an enticing challenge to read on. As the title The Twilight of American Culture suggests, Morris Berman's outlook is somewhat bleak. Analogizing the contemporary United States to the late Roman Empire, Berman sees a nation fat on useless consumption, saturated with corporate ideology, and politically, psychically, and culturally dulled. But he believes that this behemoth--what Thomas Frank called the "multinational entertainment oligopoly"--must buckle under its own weight. His hope for a brighter tomorrow lies in a modern monastic movement, in which keepers of the enlightenment flame resist the constant barrage of "spin and hype." Ironically, despite his disdain for "the fashionable patois of postmodernism," he approvingly quotes poststructuralist theorist Jean-François Lyotard's maxim "elitism for everybody" in describing this cadre of idiosyncratic, literate devotees, these new monks.

Berman is plainspoken and occasionally caustic. The Twilight of American Culture is an informed and thought-provoking book, a wake-up call to a nation whose powerful minority has become increasingly self-satisfied as their stock options ripen, while an underclass that vastly outnumbers the e-generation withers on the vine and cannot locate itself on any map. It is a quick and savage read that aims to get your eyes off this computer, your nose out of that self-help book, and send you back to thought and action. --J.R.

Book Description

An emerging cult classic about America's cultural meltdown—and a surprising solution. A prophetic examination of Western decline, The Twilight of American Culture provides one of the most caustic and surprising portraits of American society to date. Whether examining the corruption at the heart of modern politics, the "Rambification" of popular entertainment, or the collapse of our school systems, Morris Berman suspects that there is little we can do as a society to arrest the onset of corporate Mass Mind culture. Citing writers as diverse as de Toqueville and DeLillo, he cogently argues that cultural preservation is a matter of individual conscience, and discusses how classical learning might triumph over political correctness with the rise of a "a new monastic individual"—a person who, much like the medieval monk, is willing to retreat from conventional society in order to preserve its literary and historical treasures.

Customer Reviews:

Flawed? Naive?.......2007-07-31

I mean for real - this book is flawed? Of course it has its shortcomings. What book doesn't? I can think of a few flawless poems and they are all short. It's hardly naive. I agree with another who says it is provocative. Well, that is if you could get the Ann Coulter crowd or the Harry Potter crowd to read it. I like to read Berman with Curtis White. The former lacks the latter's sense of humor and the latter lacks the former's depth of subject (though White is undoubtedly capable).

Naive Analysis that Flatters the Reader's Ego.......2007-07-01

The author believes that America is declining and that soon it will be left with nothing more than a bunch of unaccountable elites, an increasingly lobotomized middle class, and vast urban wastelands. His is for "monastic individuals" to set themselves apart, read the classics, transmit them to students on a one-by-one basis, and thus hope for the day a new civilization will emerge. Unfortuntely, Berman's undesrtanding of both economics and history is terribly naive, and his solution even more so.

For example, Berman claims the Roman empire fell because its elites became unaccountable to the masses. Perhaps; but Rome also reached the zenith of its power with emperors which were no more accountable; many similarly despotic societies--India, China, ancient Egypt, etc.--lasted as long or longer; and, if anything, it is the accountable democracies, such as the Greek city-states, that had not lasted long, historically speaking.

Berman claims the USA is economically exploiting the third world. But the quality of life in third-world countries *increases* the more the west invests: India and China, for example, are thriving while most of Africa is starving. That aside, he seems unaware the origin of his argument lies with frustrated Marxists: contrary to what Marx predicted, the working class in the west obviously live better than those elsewhere, so new "victims of capitalism" had to be found to prove Marx right.

Berman got the idea got the "monastic individual" by reading science fiction novels--'Farenheit 491' and 'A Canticle for Leibowitz'. There is something deeply ironic here: a man who complains books no longer ask tough questions and instead flatter the reader's ego gets his own worldview from science fiction novels that do just that--flatter their bookish, nerdy readers with fantasies where similarly-bookish characters save the world.

The book itself, in sum, turns out to be an ego-flatterer of the exact sort the author despises. . Its real messege is not, "America is declining", but rather, "YOU, dear reader--YOU, by buying and reading this book, are different and better than THEM". Flattering, yes; perhaps even true up to a point; but hardly a serious analysis of what is wrong with American civilization.

Ever more accurate with each passing year.......2007-06-28

If things looked bad when this slim but powerful volume was originally published, they've gotten far worse in the intervening years. Dumbing down of culture, a loud-mouthed pride in ignorance, endless consumerist addiction to flashy, meaningless garbage -- we've all see it happening around us, from the streets to the centers of entrenched power. As complex & intelligent cultural narratives dissolve under a corrosive flood of simplistic social acids, where bumper stickers & empty slogans pass for intelligent discourse, we find ourselves in the inevitable ruins of a world awash in banality, inanity, and coarse brutality.

I'd like to believe that Berman is being overly pessimistic in claiming that it's too late to turn things around, but the news every day seems to be proving him right. His more recent book, "Dark Ages America," goes into further disturbing detail about the decay he described so forcefully in this book. Thus his concept of the Monastic Option sounds more & more like the course of sanity. There's a popular phrase about being the change you want to see in the world. If Berman is right, we won't live to see that change -- indeed, he'd say that it's already too late for it. But we can still live whole & meaningful lives, at the very least as an act of witness.

Again, I'd like nothing better than to see Berman proven utterly wrong in the coming years. But both my heart & mind tell me that he's probably closer to the truth about our future than the optimists. In which case it's up to each of us to live & embody & preserve as much of the truly Good Life as we can, rather than simply submitting to the coming Dark Age.

Profoundly disturbing but absolutely necessary reading!

making lemonade from lemons.......2007-05-25

after detailing how bad the situation is, and why we should not expect a quick turn-around, the author does encourage individuals to take up small but positive steps to preserve such culture as they can, pending a revival that may be generations away. Some of the practical examples are inspiring.

Western culture is dying, solution is monastic retreat.......2007-03-08

The simple premise of this book is clear from the title - American Culture is waning. Nothing too original here. Pat Buchanan, Robert Welch, Whittaker Chambers, and a host of other conservative writers have long pointed this out. What is new is that a credentialled humanist with a leftish slant has come to many of the same conclusions.

Most of the first part of the book is examples of the failings of our culture and education. These are taken from a large variety of sources and are fairly entertaining. A quote from the author, "America has become a giant dolt-manufacturing machine" gives you the essential feelings of the author. Berman particularly excoriates education and even defends home schooling as a rational response to what passes for public education today.

Berman then delves a little deeper into social and political theory. He carefully avoids any specific Americanist philosophy and just assumes the the use of the term "Enlightenment" is adequate explanation. I found this a little too simplistic. The Enlightenment was a largely European Philsophical Movement that led to things like guillotines, Napolean, Hitler and Class Struggle. The American refinement of these ideas - combining the religious idea that God is the author of our rights with common-sense political theory and a government-limiting Constitution - is the single most important modern political achievement. Without this understanding, what exactly is to be preserved by the "NMI's" (new monastic individuals) - Berman's proposal of how to be prepared for a new rennaissance after our society has died? And Europe is pretty much a lost cause where terrorists slaughter Prime ministers in Sweden (Palme), film-makers in Holland (Van Gogh) and riot so regularly in Paris that portions of that magnificent city are completely empty of police and left to Muslim extremists.

Berman's sources are a little suspect also. For example, he frequently quotes sociologist Max Horkheimer. Horkheimer was one of the founders of deconstructive criticism - the idea that all western culture and cultural institutions must be constantly ridiculed and criticized to remove their influence. He also is a founder of the Frankfurt school - a collection of misfits who took over Columbia and ruined our teachers by turning them into pseudo-Marxist clones. He is one of the main architects of our cultural demise, so I find it odd to quote him on anything involving culture.

And yes, this is a "Chicken Little" book about how the sky is falling. Critics of this approach never fail to note that the sky hasn't fallen yet, and that social critics since Christ have predicted a fall that hasn't happened yet. But maybe they have all been right? In which case, Berman deserves to be read. Berman has a newer longer book along these same lines if you are interested.

Berman's solution is to lay low and develop isolated islands of learning and excellence - much like the Irish monks of the Middle Ages. Berman has already made the jump to this because he considers Western Civilization a lost cause. And I find that idea most objectionable. Even if the war is lost, the battle is still worth waging, and history is replete with examples of miraculous reversals.

So overall, I enjoyed this well-written survey of Western malaise with the reservations expressed above.

The Twilight of the Intellectuals: Culture and Politics in the Era of the Cold War

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Do these people matter?
Caveat
Got my eyes on you baby cause you dance so good
An aerial view of the culture war
Uncle Joe's Cafe

The Twilight of the Intellectuals: Culture and Politics in the Era of the Cold War
Hilton Kramer
Manufacturer: Ivan R. Dee, Publisher
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 1566632226

Book Description

In these provocative and engaging writings, Mr. Kramer explores, in effect, the intellectual history of the cold war and its divisive impact on our politics and culture. Tracing the critical debate over communism and modernism, he surveys the writers who were in the forefront of that debate and the issues that animated their criticism and controversies. An honest, unsparing, and often devastating analysis. --Kirkus Reviews

Customer Reviews:

Do these people matter?.......2004-01-12

In his introduction, Hilton Kramer declares himself to be a "partisan" of artistic "modernism" and a "liberal anti-Communist." These essays are, then, a critique of twentieth-century Western leftist/modernist intellectuals by one of their own.

Much of the book is taken up with denunciations of the Stalinism which was rampant among Western intellectuals in the 1930s and '40s. Kramer is here generally on target: there is no longer any honest doubt that Alger Hiss was a Soviet spy or that Lillian Hellman was a pathologically dishonest Stalinist stooge.

Even towards those intellectuals who were not tools of Stalinism, Kramer is unsparing. Although he seems in some ways to admire Mary McCarthy, he declares, "Mary McCarthy's politics were like her sex life -- promiscuous and unprincipled, more a question of opportunity than of commitment or belief."

The greater interest of the book lies in the hints Kramer offers the reader as to what went wrong with the whole twentieth-century intellectual enterprise. The author is never able to draw these hints together into a coherent explanation, perhaps because he himself continues to share the basic premises underlying the twentieth-century intellectual catastrophe.

Ernest Gellner once suggested that the rise of Anglo-American "linguistic philosophy" in the twentieth century was a consequence of verbalist intellectuals, having been displaced by modern science, trying to create for themselves a new niche which would justify their own skills of verbal manipulation.

The same analysis explains the intellectuals' attraction to both Marxism and "modernism."

In discussing modern art, Kramer refers approvingly to the "culture of modernism, with its 'difficult' texts requiring lengthy and laborious study..." He specifically lavishes praise on Clement Greenberg, one of the most influential of modernist art critics.

Why it is that "'difficult' texts requiring lengthy and laborious study..." are per se a good thing, Kramer does not say. The answer of course is that such texts provide a raison d'etre for verbalist intellectuals who possess no actual knowledge or any useful expertise. Tom Wolfe, in "The Painted Word," developed this point in a brutally brilliant (and hilarious) attack on artistic modernism, focusing specifically on Kramer's hero Clem Greenberg: modern art is nothing but illustrations for the insanely convoluted and incomprehensible scribblings of self-important twentieth-century verbalist intellectuals.

Similarly, Marxism assigns to intellectuals a far more exalted status than they would otherwise appear to deserve: whatever the ultimate metaphysical role of the proletariat, it is, in practice, the intellectuals, not the poor workers, who have grasped the Marxian dynamics of history. It is therefore the intellectuals who are fitted to run the show under Marxism.

That modernism and Marxism would appeal to intellectuals is therefore obvious. But does it matter? How could a small band of discontented intellectuals affect society at large?

Kramer again offers us hints of how relatively small numbers of leftist/modernist intellectuals spread their influence throughout American society. Kramer explains that Stalinists insinuated themselves into such "capitalist" institutions as Time magazine, the New York Times, and the universities, and, in some cases, received monetary subsidies from the Soviet Union.

The Soviets never accepted modern art, so Soviet funds were not available to fund artistic modernism. Curiously, funding for political leftists who espoused artistic modernism was provided by the American CIA! Kramer explains in some detail that the CIA-funded "Congress for Cultural Freedom" exhibited an "over dependence on the political Left as the intellectual mainstay of the Congress..." He adds approvingly, and not surprisingly given his own leftist leanings, that this "may indeed have been necessary given the realities of the moment..."

The most bizarrely fascinating essay in the book discusses the famous "Bloomsbury group" -- which included Vrginia Woolf, Lytton Strachey, John Maynard Keynes, etc. The phrase "moral decadence" is not adequate to capture the picture Kramer paints.

For example, Vanessa Bell, sister of Vrigina Woolf and the pivotal figure in the group, although married to Clive Bell, had a child by Duncan Grant, whose own real romantic interest was not Vanessa Bell but his own gay lover, David Garnett. In a final weird twist, the gay lover Garnett ended up marrying the illegitimate daughter when she matured.

The Bloomsburyites, who prided themselves on their sexual openness and lack of hypocrisy, kept the whole strange matter secret from the unfortunate girl who thought her biological father was Clive Bell.

In the early twentieth century, the Bloomsbury ethos was the preserve of a tiny group of upper-class aesthetes -- although Bloomsbury member John Maynard Keynes did succeed in selling Western governments upon an economic theory built upon the take-no-thought-for-the-morrow Bloomsbury ethos, with a resulting near collapse in the value of Western currencies.

But that ethos has now trickled down widely to the middle and working class in America, as is illustrated, for example, by the infamous Jerry Springer television program: Springer is a twenty-first century pop-culture version of the Bloomsbury group.

As an old-fashioned liberal (what is nowadays called a "neoconservative"), Hilton Kramer is an apologist for the basic political, social, and cultural institutions of the twentieth century. While he deplores much of what his intellectual colleagues have done to our society, he lacks the vantage point to see that the early twentieth century liberal "advances" in the power of government, the structure of education, etc. made this destruction possible.

That Kramer himself is now often dubbed a conservative, rather than, as he himself confesses in his introduction, a liberal, is a sign of the lack of any real conservative alternative or response to the catastrophic social and intellectual decline that constituted the twentieth century.

Nonetheless, if Kramer can offer no cure, "Twilight of the Intellectuals" is a fascinating and readable look at some of those intellectuals who helped cause the illnesses from which we and our society now suffer.

Caveat.......2003-08-12

Although I have a great interest in the topic, and I found its title promising, I could not bear myself to finish this book. Besides acknowledging the acritical position of some intellectuals toward the Soviet Union and Stalin, I did not find much of interest in this book. Kramer's book is another exemplar of the usual tirade of rightwing intellectuals against the left and liberals in general. I found particularly deplorable Kramer's intend to rehabilitate the memory of Joseph McCarthy (See "The Blacklist Revised"). In this regard, even Ann Coulter is more refreshing.

Got my eyes on you baby cause you dance so good.......2001-07-18

With this book, Hilton Kramer, a Cold-War anti-Communist Liberal of the last half of the 20th century, fills in many historical gaps for younger seekers of intellectual purity. While the book does a credible job explaining shifting differences of cold-war opinion amongst leftist academics and ideologues, it begs us to consider how otherwise intelligent people could continue to support tyranny in the face of such incontrovertible evidence of its evil. Kramer cites the verbal and media assault on anyone daring to question the tenets of the Cold War Socialist Left. He outlines the criticisms of Alexander Solzhinitsyn by George Steiner, the diatribes of Lillian Hellman, that staunch supporter of Stalinism, and the scurrilousness of Mary McCarthy, the pro-Hanoi apologist. He shines light on the Communists in Hollywood and the media and the many ways in which they aided the Soviet cause.

Starting with the intellectual rejection of Whittaker Chambers, in favor of the Soviet spy Alger Hiss, we are treated to a travesty of heresies that have yet to be renounced by their proponents. Kramer points out that Bard College today has an academic chair in their Humanities department in Alger Hiss's name. By the same token, women's studies departments at many universities still use "I, Rigoberta Minchu" as a text even while knowing that she made the story up. Current Writers who have kept on with this tradition of making it up as they go along, in the name of the class warrior socialist cause, are Mike Barnicle of the Boston Globe, Stephen Glass of the New Republic, Joseph Ellis of Mount Hollyoke and Janet Cooke of the Washington Post; and these are just the ones who got caught. Even though they are a tribe of diminishing numbers, the shrillness of their followers is reminiscent of the Pod People in "the Invasion of the Body Snatchers". They still make their presence known in the universities, worshippers of their secular religion, their social studies professor's a fit for the over 50 white guy demographic of those remaining listeners of Pacifica Radio. Even with Cold War Left intellectualism "water over the dam", we still stand witness to the twilight of the intellectual era while we watch a continued post-modernist assault on free market values. In the war of ideas, they still fight on the side of our political enemies, and their fight is as relentless as it is prolonged. The saving grace is that their numbers continue to dwindle as their message becomes ever more diluted and confused. We can only sit in awe as we watch them "rage against the machine" and tilt at the windmills of free market capitalism. The Ruckus society, Greenpeace, PETA and Friends of the Earth come to mind.

The book outlines the details of urgent political debates that tore apart friendships and sundered institutions. Kramer gives life to these issues that animated controversies, but ended in the triumph of a new sensibility over modernism, what he calls a strange fate for liberal anti-communism. What's so interesting is how people like Sidney Hook, Lionel Trilling and George Orwell were able to see the truth where other fellow travelers would not. It seems that the rigid ones suffered, and suffer still, from the condition that Thomas Sowell often refers to as compartmentalized brain syndrome. Hilton Kramer has done a fine job for those of us who are younger but still curious about this struggle of Cold war peripatetic's espousing their tale of the inevitability of a Marxist heaven on earth as the logical future for all mankind. This cruel plan, which oversaw the deaths of more than 100 million people in the 20th century, never succeeded and some of the credit has to go to those intellectuals with the courage to see the error of their ways. Hilton Kramer gives them their due.

An aerial view of the culture war.......2001-07-04

In a 1994 interview on C-SPAN's Booknotes, reporter and critic John Corry told how politically one-sided the _New York Times_' newsroom was in 1980. In that year, of all the reporters and editors on staff, he only knew of one person who voted for Ronald Reagan, and that was the paper's art critic, Hilton Kramer. Kramer left a couple of years later, continuing his art criticism in the _New York Observer_. But he also set out to do battle with the cultural Left, that "herd of independent minds", in Harold Rosenberg's famous phrase. Eventually, he founded the _New Criterion_, an intellectual journal, which features some of the finest cultural criticism on offer today. This book, Twilight of the Intellectuals, is as much a retrospective of his often lonely mission, as it is a survey of the political climate of American intellectual culture in this century.

_Twilight_ differs from Paul Johnson's _Intellectuals_ in treating only 20th century intellectuals. Plus, Kramer's high culture background allows him to provide the reader with more insight into his subjects' worlds, as opposed to Johnson's uniform tarring of his as scoundrels (mostly accurately, though). Kramer even expresses some nostalgia for some of the people here, such as Kenneth Tynan, giving him his artistic due over the political divide.

But in the main, his work here is a series of political polemics. "Socialism is the religion people get when they lose their religion," is how the Catholic intellectual Richard John Neuhaus described the mindset that Kramer battles here. Throughout, Kramer selects his old articles with the intent of fixing the truth about influential leftist intellectuals firmly in the cultural memory. People like Lillian Hellman, Alger Hiss, Dwight MacDonald, Mary McCarthy, and such are all known qualities now, and do not need to be refuted afresh. But they still hold places of honor in institutions where like-minded intellectuals cluster, so the task of telling the truth about them is an ongoing one. The progressive myth surrounding Hiss is still so thick that Kramer felt compelled to include two essays about his case.

His praise of Sidney Hook, the lone ranger of socialism, is fulsome, and deservedly so. Hook did much of the heavy lifting in building the Marxist mindset among American intellectuals in the Thirties, and then atoned for it with a long, noble and lonely career as an anti-communist cold warrior. He oddly tags Hook for a philistine, though, for having pooh-poohed an anti-communist arts festival with the comment that artistic greatness could appear in dictatorships, too. Hook was right on that point, though, in my opinion. A musical program of Shostakovich and Prokovieff at their best would more than stand comparison with a program of contemporaneous Western composers, caged birds though the Soviet artists were otherwise.

His estimation of Saul Bellow may be a little unfair. Bellow has never been known for being a brawler, which may explain Kramer's disappointment in his seeming acquiescence to PC attacks against him. One _Herzog_, one _Mr. Sammler's Planet_, ought to be enough to ask from any writer's career, without also being called upon to spend creative energy in opinion journal polemics.

A print reviewer of this book commented on how entering the culture wars must have retarded Kramer's potential as a critic, by draining his powers. I don't know about that, but he makes a convincing Horatius At The Gate, giving battle to the herd of independent minds, who marched in leftist lockstep so disgracefully, for so long.

Uncle Joe's Cafe.......2001-05-02

Like most people born in the Sixties, I was taught by the commissars to exercise proper moral outrage at McCarthy and to ridicule the excesses of anti-communism. It wasn't until I was well out of school, when I read Witness by Whittaker Chambers, that I realized there was another side to the story, one more deserving of my sympathy.

I learned that the excesses of the "Red Scare" had not proved it wrong. There had been Communists in Hollywood, in the media, in politics, and in government, including Alger Hiss, a State Department official under FDR who had been revealed to be a spy by Chambers, himself a former Communist.

Despite the exoneration of Chambers and the slow trickle of information about the Soviet Union after its fall, the Left has never come clean about its failures on this issue. Hilton Kramer tries to set the record straight in this collection of his essays, most of them published first in his monthly review, The New Criterion, by telling some of the individual stories within the intellectual history of the Cold War (roughly 1930-1990). Kramer examines the impact of the politics of the Thirties and Sixties and the gradual fall of what Raymond Aron called "the two avant-gardes," Marxism and Modernism.

These were the days of coffee-house revolutionaries who had either taken leave of their senses or were willing to do anything in the name of Stalinism. Some of them were acquaintances of Kramer; some were merely part of the cultural smog that everyone inhaled. They were divided into the Communist Left and the anti-communist Left, with the latter typically excommunicated whenever it attempted to reveal the truth about Stalin.

The excesses of the anti-anti-communists were many. Kramer found Sidney Hook's autobiography a key text in the literature of anti-communism, but historian Arthur Schlesinger thought Hook exaggerated the influence of Communism on America. Lillian Hellman claimed it was the anti-communists who were the real threat to democracy. Susan Sontag called the white race the cancer of history. George Steiner was outraged to hear Solzhenitsyn say it was Lenin, not Hitler or Stalin, who created the slave-labor camp and that Soviet terror was worse than National Socialism. Mary McCarthy defended Communism in Hanoi and attacked the anti-communism of a fellow Leftist, George Orwell. Alfred Kazin tried to drum Saul Bellow out of the club because Bellow departed from Left-liberal orthodoxy. William Phillips, an editor of Partisan Review, wrote that defectors from Communist idealism, like himself, were often denied entry into various journals and university jobs.

Customer Reviews:

More small scripts emerge as giants.......2006-07-06

This book includes even more "forgotten gems" from
the original "Twilight Zone" - from the fourth and fifth
seasons of the show. "The Incredible World of Horace Ford",
"What's In the Box", "The Encounter", "Number 12 Looks Just Like You", and "Come Wander With Me" - not all of which were
good episodes but the scripts read way better than the episodes on TV actually are. There are two versions of "Horace Ford" and "Number 12", so this book is about twice the size of Volume 1. And, a bonus item is included, "Dreamflight" by William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson (which was never produced on TV). The commentaries by Ramage are, once again, superb,
and they include anecdotes from some of the actors who are still living.

Small scripts emerge as giants!.......2005-07-06

I loved reading this book. I've been a big fan of TZ since I was about six years old and these Zone Scripts books just keep coming out...Hamner, Matheson, George Clayton Johnson, Beaumont, Serling, and now this one. I LOVE the stories when I watch them on TV, but reading them is even more of a thrill. They are really great as literary pieces, just like the intro of the book says. The commentaries are really insightful too. I have been reading the COMPANION guide by Marc Scott Zicree for many years and I am sick of reading his comments. He's way too critical, whereas Ramage wields a strong pen and gives them exactly the kind of comments they deserve. I kind of wish there had been some production shots in this book like there are in the Serling Scripts book, but that's a minor point. A great book for any Zone fan.

Gems Not Forgotten.......2005-06-21

Any true Twilight Zone Fan can tell you Rod Serling was a great writer , but although he was the main contributing writer to one of the greatest series in television history , he didn't do it alone, There were many that were responsible for bulk of great scripts that Mr Serling did not create.Richard Matheson,George Clayton Johnson , Jerry Sohl and Earl Hamner were all great writers that contributed more than a few scripts to the series,and all have had there works published in one form or another for fans to read and enjoy.But What about those other few "Forgotten Gems" that have fallen thru the cracks? I was more than excited to purchase this book , full of information about each script , the production process and actor/directer info, Andrew Ramage pays tribute to those writers of the series,that are some times over looked for thier great contributions to "The Twilight Zone" legacy .Episodes include " The Chaser", "Long Distance Call", "The Trouble With Templeton","Dead Man's Shoe's"and"I Dream Of Genie" . An unproduced concept script called "Pattern For Doomsday"(which was a great addition for me)is also included.Overall the collection is a great display of classic ideas from the begining of the television era,presented with great respect from Ramage, these scripts can now be enjoyed by sci fi fan's ," Twilight Zone Fan's or anyone that enjoy's a great story.

The lesser-known TZ writers emerge from shadow..........2005-05-21

Kudos to Andrew Ramage for assembling this collection (the first of two parts), which turns the spotlight on a few of Twilight Zone's neglected writers and scripts.

In fine fashion, this book rounds out the line-up of Twilight Zone script books currently available. Releases from the distant and recent past have provided collections of the TZ work of Rod Serling, Charles Beaumont, Richard Matheson, Earl Hamner, George Clayton Johnson and Jerry Sohl. FORGOTTEN GEMS FROM THE TWILIGHT ZONE fills in the gaps by providing a look at the work of several non-core writers who contributed to the show.

These scripts may not be the most memorable of the TZ series, but they all hold a certain charm for fans of the show and classic television, and certainly stand on their own as entertaining entries. "Long Distance Call" and "The Trouble with Templeton" are particularly interesting scripts, and it's nice to have them in published form for easy reference. This book also presents a welcome treat by printing Charles Beaumont's story concept for the unproduced story "Pattern for Doomsday."

Revisit the lost art of television writing and enjoy FORGOTTEN GEMS FROM THE TWILIGHT ZONE.

The Twilight Zone Scripts of Earl Hamner

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Spectacular
Lost & Found in the Zone
One of the best TV script books

The Twilight Zone Scripts of Earl Hamner
Earl Hamner , and Tony Albarella
Manufacturer: Cumberland House Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1581823304

Book Description

The Twilight Zone has evolved from a groundbreaking speculative television series into a cultural phenomenon. The recently revived series on FOX averaged 4.6 million viewers on its first episode. Indeed, the title itself conjures up thoughts of fantastic stories that bridge several forms of fiction to create a unique genre of morality tales with a touch of irony, unlimited by the boundaries of conventional fiction. Broadcast from 1959 to 1964, the show has run ever since in syndication, making it one of the longest running television shows of all time, creating a new genre of shows similar to The X-Files and Twin Peaks.

Five writers created the core of the show, and together these men fashioned the bulk of the 156 original episodes: Rod Serling, Richard Matheson, Charles Beaumont, George Clayton Johnson, and Earl Hamner. All went on to other projects in film, television, theater, and print, but their involvement in The Twilight Zone is well known to fans of the series.

The Twilight Zone Scripts of Earl Hamner contains reprints of the eight episodes written by Hamner, along with Albarella's commentary on each story: "The Hunt," "A Piano in the House," "Jess-Belle," "Ring-a-Ding Girl," "You Drive," "Black Leather Jackets," "Stopover in a Quiet Town," and "The Bewitchin' Pool." Also included is a "lost" Twilight Zone short story by Mr. Hamner and an interview with Albarella that covers the background details of how Hamner became involved in the series.

Customer Reviews:

Spectacular.......2003-09-06

Earl Hamner Jr wrote some of the finest Twilight Zone scripts aired on TV. This book is simply a sample of his greatest work in script form. It is a book meant for those who want to see how the original script read. I am one of those people. I personally believe the TWILIGHT ZONE is one of the most imaginitive shows ever developed for Television, and any time I can get the scripts in written form will be a treasure.
If you are a fan of the Twilight Zone, you will enjoy this treasure this book has to offer. Since I am an avid fan, this book comes as a wonderful asset to my collection.
I would like to see EVERY TZ story written for fans to read. As for now, we have these treasures to enjoy along with some written by Rod Serling himself and others.
I hope to see more books like this one that are written for avid viewers of the original Twilight Zone like myself.

Lost & Found in the Zone.......2003-03-26

Earl Hamner is truly the "lost" writer of the Twilight Zone. Author of eight scripts for the original series, making him fourth in terms of production (behind Rod Serling, Charles Beaumont, and Richard Matheson, in that order), he has nonetheless failed to achieve a major reputation in the world of Twilight Zone fans. Part of this may be due to the fact that Marc Scott Zicree all but ignored Hamner's contributions in his seminal analysis of the series, "The Twilight Zone Companion"; another likely factor is that Hamner later made his reputation with "The Waltons," about as un-Twilight Zoneish a TV program as it is possible to imagine.

But this wonderful collection makes it clear that, though not on the level of the "big three," Hamner was an important writer for the series, bringing a down-home rural sensibility to a program which was more often urban and contemporary in focus. Several of his works published here, including "Jess-Belle," "The Hunt," and "Stopover in a Quiet Town," deserve to rank highly in any overall assessment of the series. All are classics, and have stood the test of time.

It must be admitted, however, that this handsomely-produced volume also points up Hamner's limitations as a Twilight Zone writer. Some of the scripts, such as "A Piano in the House," are merely mediocre. But some are truly ghastly--none more so than "Black Leather Jackets," a notorious stink-bomb of an episode from the final season (featuring, and I am not making this up, beatnik bikers from outer space!). Incredibly--almost unbelievably--the original script as published in this collection is even worse than the transcendentally-terrible episode as aired, with even more absurd dialogue and ludicrous plot develoments.

But in truth, for the devoted Twilight Zone fan, even the bad scripts and episodes have their value--if only to point up the wild contrast with the show's established classics. At its worst, as in "Black Leather Jackets," Twilight Zone still remained enormously enjoyable television, and reading the weakest scripts contained in this book is still fun. It is worth noting, too, that in at least one case, a Hamner episode generally dismissed as a failure as produced is revealed to have been simply a victim of poor acting and directing. "The Bewitchin' Pool," Twilight Zone's final program, is never more than intermittently interesting on screen, but the script is a lovely effort, beautifully written and paced.

Finally, a word of commendation is due Tony Albarella for his superb commentaries on each of Hamner's efforts. These essays are surely the most complete analyses of any Twilight Zone works since Marc Scott Zicree, and Albarella's keen insights offer a necessary corrective to Zicree's often overzealous and dismissive criticisms. The writer also offers original interview material with many of the actors from Hamner's episodes, making this book not only a testament to Hamner's talents but also a celebration of the program itself. A generous photo section (unusual in books of this type) adds to the nostalgic glow of this volume.

In all, a wonderful contribution to the literature of the Twilight Zone. What a pleasure to see Earl Hamner, the "lost" Twilight Zone writer, once again found!

One of the best TV script books.......2003-03-14

Having read and/or casually perused more than thirty so-called 'TV script books', I can easily say that this new book is one of the best. As has been mentioned, Earl Hamner was among the forgotten writers of "The Twilight Zone" (Montgomery Pittman, Hamner, Jerry Sohl, plus a handful of others who wrote only one or two segments). His contribution to the series numbers only eight episodes, but two of these are surely among the most memorable in the entire series ("Jess-Belle", "Stopover in a Quiet Town").

At this juncture, three other volumes of "Twilight Zone"
scripts are available to us, including those of Richard
Matheson and George Clayton Johnson. Rod Serling's scripts
have not as yet been published, nor have those of
Charles Beaumont. The two "Twilight Zone Scripts" volumes containing the scripts of Matheson, released in 2001 and 2002, as well as the "Twilight Zone Scripts and Stories" of Johnson were somewhat of a disappointment. Not the scripts themselves, but the way in which they were presented.
Those of Matheson were edited (if you can call it that)
by Stanley Wiater. But really, Wiater did little more than re-state what has already been said elsewhere about Matheson's
episodes. Here and there, a new tidbit from Matheson himself is added into the commentary, nothing too special. No interviews with actors from Matheson's episodes were done,
nor is there any special insight into the material. Johnson's
volume (now out of print) is welcome, but slim and altogether lacking commentary.

So, it is with "The Twilight Zone Scripts of Hamner" that we get what we were after. The scripts are preceded by thoughtful, thorough, and occasionally critical commentary by Albarella that matches or surpasses the level of Marc Zicree's in "The Twilight Zone Companion". Albarella obviously went to great lengths to get anecdotes from stars of Hamner episodes including such luminaries whose voices we don't hear often: Anne Francis, James Best, Barry Morse, plus lesser-known actors Nancy Malone, Kevin Hagen, and Michael Forest. Of course, background as to the genesis of each story is detailed with comments from Hamner himself. The commentaries are welcome in more ways than one; after all, haven't fans been reading and taking to heart the critiques of "The Companion" for the last 21 years? Time for some new blood in the pool.

Also included is a section of production and publicity photos from each episode, as well as recent shots taken in 2002 at the "Stars of the Zone" Convention (the first convention
for "Twilight Zone") of several actors appearing in Hamner's episodes. Unfortunately the quality of many of these shots is only marginal.

As the ardent fan of the original series knows, Hamner occupied an oddly interesting place amongst the core of writers from the series. Serling focused on bespectacled bank clerks and high-paid businessmen suffering from ulcers who craved serenity in another time period. Matheson usually focused on realism and the writing is often extremely despondent and horrific. Beaumont gave us the extraordinary. Hamner's 'dissertation for Twilight Zone' compares and contrasts country folk ("The Hunt", "Jess-Belle") with city folk ("You Drive", "Stopover in a Quiet Town", "Black Leather Jackets", "The Bewitchin' Pool"). Two fantasy stories, "Ring a Ding Girl" and "A Piano in the House" round things out nicely. Needless to say, the eight shows by Hamner generate a great deal of interest,
if for no other reason that they examine a number of interesting
ideas. Luckily, the ideas are now in print!

Book Description

From its founding in 1901 to its demise in 1918, the National German-American Alliance sought to preserve and promote aspects of German culture in America. As the organization grew in size and scope, it increasingly found itself drawn into some of the more controversial political, social, and diplomatic issues of the times. This study is the first to chronicle the seventeen-year history of the organization. It also examines how the Alliance's efforts serve as an example of the many problems faced by an ethnic organization seeking to preserve its cultural identity in the volatile environment that can be American democracy.

Strange TV: Innovative Television Series from The Twilight Zone to The X-Files

Average customer rating:

A fun yet solid look at 'TV culture'

Strange TV: Innovative Television Series from The Twilight Zone to The X-Files
M. Keith Booker
Manufacturer: Greenwood Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Popular Culture | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 0313323739

Book Description

In the years since World War II, commercial television has become the most powerful force in American culture. It is also the quintessential example of postmodernist culture. This book studies how The Twilight Zone, The Prisoner, Twin Peaks, and The X-Files display many of the central characteristics that critics and theorists have associated with postmodernism, including fragmentation of narratives and characters, multiplicity in style and genre, and the collapse of traditional categorical boundaries of all kinds. The author labels these series "strange TV" since they challenge the conventions of television programming, thus producing a form of cognitive estrangement that potentially encourages audiences to question received ideas. Despite their challenges to the conventions of commercial television, however, these series pose no real threat to the capitalist order. In fact, the very characteristics that identify these series as postmodern are also central characteristics of capitalism itself, especially in its late consumerist phase. An examination of these series within the context of postmodernism thus confirms Fredric Jameson's thesis that postmodernism is a reflection of the cultural logic of late capitalism. At the same time, these series do point toward the potential of television as a genuinely innovative medium that promises to produce genuinely new forms of cultural expression in the future.

Customer Reviews:

A fun yet solid look at 'TV culture'.......2003-04-02

This book is a set of essays dedicated to thoughts about some of the surrealist and post-modernist elements in popular "strange" TV shows, from "The Twilight Zone" in the 1950's through "Twin Peaks" in the 80's and "The X-Files" in the 90's.

It is an academically focused book with references, etc. However, if you like reading about how culture was shaped by television and vice versa, or if you wouldn't mind reading a little bit of critical thinking about some of your favorite pop-culture TV shows, this book is a good choice.

It was a pleasant feeling to get the impression that the author enjoyed watching the shows as much as he liked expounding on his theories about them. The essays were humorous at times, and this tempered the academic tone that otherwise could have made "Strange TV" a very dry book.

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