New Exhibit: The Negro Baseball League

Check out the exhibit of The American Negro Baseball League on the first floor. This exhibit was compiled and displayed thanks to our current co-op Krissy Lattanzio. It details the early days of baseball integration (which our home team was famously late on), in mostly color photographs and reproductions from several books. The centerpiece of the exhibit is a quote from Rube Foster, the founder of the Negro Baseball League; “We are the ship, all else the sea.” “We are the Ship” is also the title of a book by writer and painter Kadir Nelson, also quoted in the exhibit. Library goers must be urged to check out this modest but interesting exhibit; this corner of the library, at the bottom of the stairs, is all too often ignored.

About The Arthur S. Goldberg Art Collection

The Arthur S. Goldberg art collection lives on the fourth floor. I am not an art critic. But I still found a few things to appreciate in this collection. What struck me about the artworks in general was not so much the  diversity of style and subject matter, but they way in which they utilized, echoed and sometimes paid direct homage to artists and artistic styles throughout history. Below I will write about two that I particularly liked. Take DeWitt Hardy’s Woman and Chair.  This painting oddly depicts a woman sitting on the floor beside a wooden chair, rather than in it. This deliberate non-conformity to the standards of portraiture is interesting  because it suggests that portraits can possibly be of two things at once, or draw relationships between objects first and people second, rather than the other way around. Purely in terms of subject, the painting can be seen as being about the ideal non-conformist; this pale, thin, spacey-looking woman smoking a cigarette, refusing to sit in the chair inches away from her, or to look beautiful for her portrait. This subject matter along makes the painting DeWitt’s own, but the first– an perhaps most superficial– thing that I thought of when looking at the painting, was the work of Andrew Wyeth. I guarantee everybody that they have seen an Andrew Wyeth painting; Christine’s World, of a girl lying in the middle of a wheat field, gazing at a farmhouse, is his most famous. With its faded colors and lines that emphasize sketching, as well as the subject of a girl, I feel Hardy was consciously influenced by Wyeth in this piece. Another painting with its foot firmly in the history of American painting styles is Robert Cottingham’s series of Barrera- Rosa’s. Each of the three paintings is a nearly photographic (just what Goldberg was looking for, apparently) reproduction of a city block of stores, including a restaurant called Barrera Rosa’s. The first painting, on the left, is a black and white sketch of the scene, giving the impression of a photograph from the late 19th or early 20th century. The second is a sketch of the same scene in brown tones, giving the impression of a negative image. The third and final scene is in color, and suddenly both the scene looks stunningly modern; this “photograph” could have been taken yesterday. In fact, not a single object has changed, and there are only two objects that suggest this could not have  been envisioned prior to the 1990’s; a digital crosswalk signal and a store advertising a payphone outside. The intention, though, is to give an impression of progressing through both photographic history and real history, even though neither history exists in the context of Cottingham’s work. It is a clever trick to play, and  in its repetition and deceptive blandness reminds me of Andy Warhol’s various art experiments. But I’ll take this one over anything he created. (Robert Cottingham’s Barrera-Rosa) These works and many others can be found on the fourth floor of the library. It is my hope that Arthur Goldberg someday donates more works; his collection is impressive and a pleasure to have here.

Share Your Library Memories

NU Libraries has employed many students and graduates throughout the years. Please share your memories of working in the Library, no matter what year you graduated, by posting a comment under this post. As a recent graduate myself, I’ll start: I highly enjoyed the visit of Patrick Tracey, who came to give a Meet the Author talk in April of 2009. His book Stalking Irish Madness is an unsettling account of his family’s long history of schizophrenia, which in turn relates to the prevalence of mental illness all over the country of Ireland. His talk– like his book– was partly autobiographical and partly journalistic. There was something powerful about listening to this world-weary looking guy, with a monotone sort of voice that still managed to convey compassion, while looking out the window at the sun setting over the smokestack at a nearby building, blowing fumes into the air… As minute and eccentric as it may seem, that is a very special memory of mine from working at the library. Please see our notice in the recent Library Supporters newsletter as well.

Ernest Hemingway: The Sun Also Rises

I recently accomplished the task of rereading one book that I was particularly taken with in high school. The Sun Also Rises (1926), Ernest Hemingway’s first novel and perhaps his most famous, was the book. It was this book that might have started the imprecisely defined genre of the “generational novel,” a label that usually entails a certain degree of cynicism. The novels of Bret Easton Ellis, or a film like Kids might later fall in to this category. But The Sun Also Rises is a generational novel in a much grander way. . The time is the roaring 20’s and the setting is Paris. We are introduced to Jake Barnes, an American ex-patriate who has all the world-weariness of a Humphrey Bogart character due to a war injury that left him sexually incompetent. He has been in love with the Lady Brett Ashley ever since the first world war, but he has no way of marrying her due in part to this injury, and due in part to her utter promiscuity. She is engaged to a Scottish man named Mike, but is having an affair with a Count. Also coming in to the picture is Robert Cohn, a Jewish boxer from Princeton who is unhappily married and prone to a victimization complex. Jake’s friend Bill, another American, will be introduced after some time in France, in which all five principle characters– Jake, Bill, Cohn, Lady Brett Ashley and Mike– will rendezvous in Pamplona, Spain, where they are attending the summer fiesta. That all of these characters–except for the reasonable Bill–are tormented and in several cases pathological people is a testament to the book’s realism. The book is not a work of realism in the sense that it depicts the grittiness of everyday life; indeed, these characters are not everyday people. They appear to have more money on hand than the average person, a more curious intellect (the narrator, Jake, and Cohn are both writers) and in one case (Lady Brett Ashley) come from aristocracy. But they are certainly not extraordinary either; in fact, the point is that each person has been barred from living a truly fulfilling life either by injury (Jake), insecurity (Cohn) or promiscuity (Brett). The story simply details the manifestations of these roadblocks that take place over a year or so. The Sun also Rises is a tragedy after the fact. The book does have to be read in the context of its time: references to “the War,” casual anti-semitism, even more casual drinking, smoking and scenes featuring horses and carriages as modes of transportation. But the characters seems modern enough to make its occasional datedness secondary. It also makes it somewhat sad. These people are in their 30’s, and yet they often act like teenagers, or people who cannot get over themselves. How many real people does this still apply to? How pessimistically timeless is that? The book can be found–along with many other Hemingway books– in the fiction section of the library.

Try Our New EBSCO Search and Give Us Your Feedback!

You may be familiar with EBSCOhost, the face of many of the library’s article databases. Now we are trying out a new concept in search: the EBSCO Discovery Service (EDS), and we hope you will help us evaluate it. The hallmarks of EDS are speed and simplicity. EDS provides a starting point for your research, an easy keyword search across multiple databases, including the library catalog, article databases and more, returning a list of results that points to articles from academic journals, magazines, newspapers, books, book chapters, video, music and more. With EDS it is easy to see what sources your results are coming from so that you can continue your search in the individual databases if you wish. The EBSCO Discovery Service is a product in progress, and that is why your input is so important. Features will be enhanced and content added as we work with the vendor to develop the service. Please check back as progress continues on the EDS and leave feedback on this blog, or use the feedback form that is linked on the EDS main search page.