INDIE BOOKS COMMEMORATE WOODSTOCK

This month marks the fortieth anniversary of Woodstock, the music festival that defined the 1960s. The occasion is marked by the release of many books, including a few from independent publishers, as well as the Ang Lee directed Taking Woodstock. The movie from Focus Features, which will be released August 28, is based on the book of the same name by Elliot Tiber, first published by Square One Publishers in 2007. A softcover movie tie-in edition of Taking Woodstock was released in June (978-0-7570-0333-2).

Another book that delves deeper into the background of the festival than any other recent title is the June publication, Roots of the 1969 Woodstock Festival (Woodstock Arts). FTW spoke to the publishers of both Taking Woodstock and Roots about their unique books.

When Rudy Shur, publisher of Square One Books heard Elliot Tiber’s story of how he helped find a venue for the Woodstock Festival, he knew it would make a great book. But he didn’t feel that Square One, a publisher of nonfiction, niche books like Does Your Baby Have Autism? and The New Art of Negotiating, was the right publisher for this entertainment memoir.

“I told him that he really needed someone bigger, that I wasn’t set up for this kind of market,” Shur told FTW. “I gave him some names of publishers. He called me two weeks later and said no one wanted the book. I said, well you really need an agent. So I gave him the names of some agents. After two more weeks he called me and said, I talked to them, but nobody wants it.”

At that point, Shur decided to break his own rules and publish the book. He set Tiber up with co-writer Tom Monte, who had co-written two bestsellers, and soon the book was born.

“When the book came out, we sent it to every movie person we knew and a lot we didn’t know. And nothing happened,” Shur said.

Six months later, Tiber was scheduled on a radio talk show in San Francisco. He arrived two hours early and spent some time talking to the show’s next guest, Ang Lee, and gave him a copy of the book.

“During his interview, Ang was asked how he gets ideas for his movies, and he said that they just come to him,” Shur said, “and he turned to Elliot and winked. Six months later we were signing a contract.”

The movie’s screenplay was written by James Shamus. Tiber was asked for his approval and was invited to the first day of filming. Later, Shur and Anthony Pomes, Square One’s director of publicity and marketing, were invited to a private screening of the movie, and to a New York premiere.

“Taking a chance on a book, thinking it could become a movie, watching it become a movie, then actually watching the movie is crazy,” Shur said.

Square One printed 75,000 copies of the softcover movie tie-in edition, which is being carried by retailers including Books-a-Million, Urban Outfitters, and Hudson News. The new edition includes French flaps with lists of the era’s most popular movies, music, fashion, and television.

“Baby boomers love it,” Shur said. “We’ve gotten some letters from people telling us how much they appreciate it.”

Among the dozens of other books being released to celebrate the anniversary are many photo essays, examinations of the bands that performed, and narratives from people who were in attendance. Weston Blelock, publisher of Woodstock Arts, hopes that after the “thundering stampede” of these books passes by, readers curious to know more about the town of Woodstock and what led to the festival will turn to Roots of the 1969 Woodstock Festival.

In 2008, Blelock organized a panel discussion in Woodstock to celebrate the upcoming anniversary of the festival. The panel included Michael Lang, who organized the festival; Jean Young, co-author with Lang of Woodstock Festival Remembered; local politician Bill West; Jeremy Wilber who tended bar at the Sled Hill Café; and Paul McMahon, a local musician. Blelock enlisted Geddy Sveikauskas, longtime Woodstock resident and publisher of the Woodstock Times, to moderate.

The panel was so well received in town, that Blelock decided to publish the transcript along with photographs to provide a visual timeline of music in Woodstock.

“I wanted to bring people together to get a sense of why Woodstock happened here,” Blelock told FTW. “I wanted to get Michel Lang to speak to that. In the panel discussion, Michael addresses that the festival was named Woodstock on purpose. It was meant to be here, and the name conjured up all the right images.”

Blelock went on to explain that Woodstock was first settled as an artist colony in the early 1900s by novelist Hervey White, who rented land to artists and created chamber concerts called the Maverick Festival.

“Later there were other festivals where people were encouraged to dress up in costumes to receive half off the price of admission. These artists were short on cash, but had great imagination,” Blelock said. “Of course at this time the music was classical, and then in the 60s things changed and the music was rock and roll.”

Blelock said the town has always been politically conservative, but there is a good balance between the farming community and the artists.

“That’s how it’s always been,” he said. “The conservative farming folk put up with the artists’ antics and they accept them.”

The panelists also cover the Sound-Outs, concerts that were held in the years before the Woodstock Festival; the reason Woodstock actually took place in Bethel; what Woodstock was like during the festival; and the musicians who lived in and visited the area, including Bob Dylan who appreciated the town’s atmosphere.

“The locals did not gawk. They did not fawn and did not chase after autographs,” Jeremy Wilber said in the panel.

The second half of the book includes photographs from the Maverick festivals and the Sound-Outs, historical images of local artists, concert programs, and other photos from the era.

by Whitney Hallberg, Managing Editor

This week at Shelf Space, Pam Coughlan believes in summer reading.

At Publishing Matters, Eugene Schwartz talks about Google and the future for bookstores and libraries.

At Publishing Insider, Sara Dobie answers questions from readers in her fourth and final blog post at Publishing Insider.

Visit www.forewordmagazine.com for publishing news, book reviews, and the ForeWord Book Club.

BOOK REVIEW

Taking Woodstock
by Elliot Tiber
(Square One Publishers, 978-0-7570-0333-2)

When in 1969 the promoters of the Woodstock Festival in Upstate New York lost their preferred site for a concert, Elliot Tiber helped them relocate to Max Yasgur’s cow pasture. The festival totally changed his life. Born in 1935 to immigrant Jews, Tiber was an artist commuting between New York City and the depressed town of Bethel in the Catskills where his parents owned a rundown motel.

Much of the first half of this gleefully candid and often hilarious memoir chronicles Tiber’s unhappy ’50s boyhood and the discovery of his gay sexuality. Despite the cameo appearances of famous writers, artists, actors, and musicians—Truman Capote, Tennessee Williams, Marlon Brando, Richie Havens, and his impossible maddening mother, who never tires of relating how she escaped the Czar’s soldiers through the snows of Minsk—Tiber is clearly the star of the book.

When the narrative closes in on the event itself, the miracle of the promoters’ money and influence transforms (and twists) the lives of the Tiber family in unimaginable ways: “Woodstock was like some kind of UFO that had landed and released armies of the sexually liberated in the very uptight town of Bethel. I had been suffocating in the closet for fourteen years. Now, Mike Lang had thrown open the closet door and let me loose in a wild party of sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll.”

Taking Woodstock is the story of a middle-aged gay man challenging bigotry, intolerance and the rural peace of Upstate New York residents for the legal rights to sing, dance, and make love not war. Tiber’s success created a kind of bonfire on which the excesses of the era would burn for years, but the music and the lyrics sparked a universal brotherhood of youth that occasionally still flairs up today, often in unlikely places, like the Velvet Revolution in Prague. Meanwhile, the remote Catskill region economically and spiritually revived, and Tiber found himself at one with himself, his father, the world. His mother, bless her soul, holds out against the sentimentality: “‘I hope you don’t mention my name in your book,’ she said. ‘… I hated all those kids with their dirty sex and drugs—kids who should be home with their mothers. … I am ashamed of you and Woodstock.’”

Reviewed by Bob Blaisdell

Read more reviews at www.forewordmagazine.com.

AUTHOR PAGES: EMIL DRAITSER

The Author Pages feature nearly 100 interviews with authors whose work has been reviewed in ForeWord magazine. Emil Draitser, author of Shush! Growing Up Jewish Under Stalin (University of California Press, 978-0-520-25446-6) writes:

When I was a youngster, reading a book on ancient Greek mythology, I was especially fascinated by the myth of King Midas. Not with his ability to turn whatever he touched into gold, however…. As the myth goes, one day, when called to judge a competition in musical performance between two gods, Apollo and Pan, King Midas had the gall to vote against the popular and highly praised Apollo. The angry Apollo punished him by turning his ears into those of a jackass.

The King was heartbroken. He couldn’t get rid of those damned jackass ears no matter what, short of cutting them off. So he covered up his shameful misfortune with a tall cap. But he couldn’t hide it from his barber, of course. Under the threat of death, his barber was told to keep his mouth shut. Holding on to the secret for so long proved too much for the barber. One day he snuck out to a meadow, dug a small pit in the ground, whispered the secret into it, and filled the pit with soil. Come spring and summer, a thick bed of reeds shot up in the meadow right over the spot where the barber had buried the secret. With every gust of wind, the reeds whispered: “King Midas has jackass ears!” To me the psychological truth captured in this story is the quintessential metaphor of a writer’s main motivation. I long understood that you have to write about what is most important to you, what you can’t help but tell the reader. And the desire to tell that story should be so strong that it is unbearable to hold it in for too long.

Visit ForeWord’s Author Pages to read more about the authors reviewed in the pages of ForeWord.

FOREWORD FOOTNOTES

Art. ALAN GUSSOW: A PAINTER’S NATURE by Martica Sawin (Hudson Hills Press, 378 pages, 250 color plates, hardcover, $70.00, 978-1-55595-308-9): Alan Gussow (1931-1997) combined abstraction and realism in his paintings over a long and distinguished career. He was also a prominent environmentalist, essayist, and, with his wife Joan, an organic gardener. This book presents his paintings, including many that have never before been published, and a biography that illuminates the many facets of his life and their influence on his art.

Biography & Autobiography. THE GOOD TIMES ARE ALL GONE NOW: LIFE, DEATH, AND REBIRTH IN AN IDAHO MINING TOWN by Julie Whitsel Weston (University of Oklahoma Press, 248 pages, softcover, $19.95, 978-0-8061-4075-9): in a combination of personal memoir and historical research, Weston portrays the founding and development through five generations of Kellogg, an Idaho mining town. “Uncle Bunker,” as the Bunker Hill Mining Company was known to residents, is now a Superfund site, the town’s residents have adapted to other ways of making a living, and Weston reflects on her, her family’s, and her town’s past.

Biography & Autobiography. MACLURE OF NEW HARMONY by Leonard Warren (Indiana University Press, 376 pages, hardcover, $27.95, 978-0-253-35326-9): William Maclure (1763-1840), also known as the Father of American Geology, completed the first geological survey of the United States. A native Scot and later an American citizen, Maclure’s international travels reinforced his concerns about social justice. He founded schools to educate the children of the working classes, supported scientific institutions, and founded a utopian community in Indiana called New Harmony.

Business & Economics. THE SKINNY ON THE HOUSING CRISIS: WHAT EVERY HOMEOWNER AND HOMEBUYER NEEDS TO KNOW by Jim Randel (Rand Publishing, 170 pages, softcover, $14.95, 978-0-9818935-2-5): the story of the recent housing market crash as experienced by stick figures named Billy and Beth. Clear, entertaining, and informative, this book teaches the reader what to believe and how to buy and sell amid the wreckage. Part of the “Skinny On” series.

Cooking. THE LAVENDER GOURMET: CULINARY RECIPES FOR ENTERTAINING AND EVERY DAY by Jennifer Vasich (Moose Run Productions, 344 pages, softcover, $19.95, 978-0-9766315-3-8): lavender is well-known for its scent and its beautiful appearance; it also is a culinary herb that Europeans have traditionally enjoyed. This cookbook contains 140 recipes which use the versatile herb in everything from lemonade to lamb stew.

Psychology. OVERCOMING ADHD: HELPING YOUR CHILD BECOME CALM, ENGAGED, AND FOCUSED—WITHOUT A PILL by Stanley Greenspan (DaCapo Press, 198 pages, hardcover, $25.00, 978-0-7382-1355-2): diagnoses of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) have been steadily increasing. The medications that are often the first medical response can constrict a child’s emotional range, creativity, and perception. Greenspan, an accomplished child psychiatrist, has developed an approach that can be tailored to the needs of an individual child, and which focuses on reinforcing needed skills to improve attention.

Poetry. THE REAL WARNINGS by Rhett Iseman Trull (Anhinga Press, 94 pages, softcover, $15.00, 978-1-934695-11-1): winner of the Anhinga Prize for Poetry 2008, this collection offers poems that “will both stun and uplift,” with their energy, insight, and range of feeling. Love and its damages are this book’s terrain, and Trull is a wise guide. As she writes in “The Last Good Dream,” “…even if banked by the best words / and buoyed by honesty, love can fail. / Or maybe we do know / and unharbor ourselves anyway.”

Political Science. THE HIDDEN PEOPLE OF NORTH KOREA: EVERYDAY LIFE IN THE HERMIT KINGDOM by Ralph Hassig and Kongdan Oh (Rowman & Littlefield, 296 pages, hardcover, $49.95, 978-0-7425-6718-4): this book explores all aspects of life—the economic system, information, everyday life, politics, law, human rights, and defectors—in North Korea. Ruled by dictator Kim Jong-il, who deliberately shrouds the country in secrecy, the government shapes every aspect of its citizens’ lives. The book concludes with policy recommendations for continuing the flow of information to North Koreans.

Body, Mind & Spirit. UNFINISHED EVOLUTION: HOW A NEW AGE REVIVAL CAN CHANGE YOUR LIFE AND SAVE THE WORLD by Teena Booth (Scotalyn, 352 pages, softcover, $19.95, 978-0-615-22972-0): explores the New Age movement and its role in American popular culture, examines its connection to politics and social change, and calls to the “spiritual but not religious” (which constitute as much as 24% of Americans) to create and become part of a re-energized New Age community.

Science. CHASING MOLECULES: POISONOUS PRODUCTS, HUMAN HEALTH, AND THE PROMISE OF GREEN CHEMISTRY by Elizabeth Grossman (Island Press, 246 pages, hardcover, $26.95, 978-1-59726-370-2): by the writer who drew our attention to the toxins in discarded computers in High Tech Trash, this book explores the use and impact of synthetic chemicals. For example, most children carry toxic chemicals in their bloodstream because of the widespread use of synthetic chemicals. Grossman also explores the field of green chemistry.

by Teresa Scollon, Book Review Editor

RECENTLY RELEASED IN AUDIO

Fiction. THE ASSASSIN’S SONG by M.G. Vassani. Unabridged. Recorded Books, 978-1-4407-0344-7.

Fiction. CAPRICE AND RONDO by Dorothy Dunnett. Unabridged. Recorded Books, 978-1-4407-1639-3.

Fiction. THE GRADUATE by Charles Webb. Unabridged. Blackstone Audio, 978-1-4332-5544-1.

Fiction/Young Adult. THE PIGMAN by Paul Zindel. Unabridged. Graymalkin Media, 978-1-9351-6900-0.

Fiction/Young Adult. THE PIGMAN’S LEGACY by Paul Zindel. Unabridged. Graymalkin Media, 978-1-9351-6907-9.

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