The C.L.R. James Institute: Bulletin Board

The C.L.R. James Institute

Bulletin Board

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Book Publication: CLR James's Notes on Dialectics: Left Hegelianism or Marxism-Leninism?
Special Delivery Reissued in Paperback
Live Interview with Ralph Dumain on "Living Room"
Not Without Love: The Memoirs of Constance Webb Pearlstien
The Miles Davis Story Comes to American Television & Video Stores
Letters from London Scheduled for U.S. Publication
Book Publication: Radicals Against Race by Brian W. Alleyne, with web site
Tim Hector Obituary (24 November 1942 - 12 November 2002)
Sightings/Citings/Sitings: New Feature
Letters from London by C.L.R. James: Book Publication
The Miles Davis Story in Washington, DC
The Dialectics and Aesthetics of Freedom: Hegel, Slavery
and 19th Century African American Music by Greg Harrison
Martin Glaberman (1918-2001) Dies
C.L.R. James on BBC Radio Four
New Richard Wright Biography on C-Span 2
The "Organic Principle" in the Writings of C.L.R. James
C.L.R. James in the Time of Terrorism
Inauguration of The Richard Wright Connection
C.L.R. James in the New York Times
C.L.R. James & Creolization: New Book
Book launch: A Hubert Harrison Reader
The Institute & Miles Davis on TV
James Lectures in Print: Big News from Small Axe
The Pequod Project
James in Print: Mariners to be Republished!
Hunting Captain Ahab: New Book
New James Memoir from Farrukh Dhondy
Anna Grimshaw’s New Book on Visual Anthropology
The C.L.R. James Centenary in Trinidad
Fourth International Conference on Caribbean Literature (I.C.C.L.)
Clare Spark: Unveiling the Hidden History of Ralph Bunche

HOW TO SUBMIT ITEMS TO THE BULLETIN BOARD

Here’s the deal: Send your item, in any format, e-mail preferred. Give it a date and a title, like: Now Hiring, Book Published, James Sighting, NYC Housing Sought, Humor Column, Four Stars, Overheard, whatever you make up. Make it approximately index card, or post card, length, which will be easier to do because you can give whatever contact info you want, including or not your name, initials, email address, phone, etc. We will try to update it frequently; we like it when you come back. The newest announcements are first in this list.

Sightings/Citings/Sitings: New Feature

Check out the new feature on this site: Sightings/Citings/Sitings: References to C.L.R. James in Current Scholarly & General Literature. This web page consists of brief quotations on C.L.R. James found at random in literature on various subjects. Your submissions are welcome. (12 Oct. 2002)

Live Interview with Ralph Dumain on "Living Room"

Ralph Dumain was interviewed on C.L.R. James's American period by C.S. Soong on the KPFA radio program "Living Room," on 21 January 2004, the six-month anniversary of Jim Murray's death. See full report Live Interview with Ralph Dumain on "Living Room" with link to sound file. (3 March 2004)

Book Publication: CLR James's Notes on Dialectics: Left Hegelianism or Marxism-Leninism?

New from Lexington Books: John H. McClendon III's CLR James's Notes on Dialectics: Left Hegelianism or Marxism-Leninism? is the first-ever book devoted exclusively to James's “magnum opus,” Notes on Dialectics: Hegel-Marx-Lenin. The seed for this study was planted over thirty years ago when James handed the author his personal copy of Notes. . . . (14 October 2004)

Special Delivery Reissued in Paperback

Special Delivery: The Letters of C. L. R. James to Constance Webb, 1939-1948 has been reissued, now in paperback for the first time (June 2004), by the University Press of New England. (9 August 2004)

Not Without Love: The Memoirs of Constance Webb Pearlstien

Constance Webb (Pearlstien) has lived an exciting life, including but not limited to her relationship to her former husband C.L.R. James. Not Without Love: Memoirs, her "extraordinary memoir of political activism, high-fashion glamour, and life with C. L. R. James," is scheduled for publication in October 2003 by University Press of New England. (19 September 2003)

Letters from London by C.L.R. James: Book Publication

Letters from London, a series of essays written by C.L.R. James in 1932, is to be published in November 2002 by Prospect Press.

These essays, which originally appeared in the Port of Spain Gazette under the title “London: First Impressions”, were written by James in the weeks after he first arrived in Britain from his native Trinidad. They are essential documents of a crucial but little known period of James’s life, describing his first immediate encounter with the world outside his home island, in which his keen intelligence and colonial education are tested against the realities of a larger world.

The first of the essays has been reprinted in several anthologies, but the rest of the series has been out of print for 70 years.

Letters from London is edited by Nicholas Laughlin with an introduction by Kenneth Ramchand, Professor Emeritus of West Indian Literature at the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine. The text is extensively annotated to explain James’s many topical references.

These London essays, Ramchand points out, display many of the themes and concerns which were to be characteristic of James’s later thought: “The diverse elements poised in James’s constitution in 1932 are to be a source of intense personal battles later, when his political and social consciousness is more strictly and technically developed. Since he is a good observer, some of the things he notices turn out to be of critical importance in his evolving vision of politics, society and the individual.”

In the depth of their perception, in the vigour of their opinion and in the verve of their expression, the essays in Letters from London make a heady overture to the half-century of maverick brilliance that still lay ahead for C.L.R. James.

For further information about Letters from London, write to nicholaslaughlin@tstt.net.tt.

(13 Oct. 2002)

Letters from London Scheduled for U.S. Publication

C.L.R. James's Letters from London is now scheduled for publication in February 2003 by the University Press of New England. (25 Jan. 2003)

Tim Hector (24 November 1942 - 12 November 2002): In Memoriam

Tim Hector has died. Tim was and is a major figure in Caribbean radical politics. We extend our condolences to Tim's family and many friends. See offsite links for details on his life and funeral: Leonard "Tim" Hector Passes / Tim Hector Laid to Rest and Working People's Alliance Press Release. Our colleague Anthony Bogues has written a Tribute to Tim Hector from the Center for Caribbean Thought. See also Tim Hector's articles "CLR James and the 21^st Century" and Definitive Biography of CLR Urgently Required. (19 Dec. 2002)

Book Publication: Radicals Against Race by Brian W. Alleyne

Our congratulations go out to our first Institute Fellow, Brian W. Alleyne, upon the publication of his book Radicals Against Race: Black Activism and Cultural Politics (New York: Berg, 2002). This book "tells the story of New Beacon Books, founded in London in 1966 as a publishing house, bookshop and international book service, and an affiliated community education and research institute."

ADDENDUM: This book now has its own web site: http://www.radicals.totalsociology.info. (12 Jan. 2003)

The Dialectics and Aesthetics of Freedom: Hegel, Slavery
and 19th Century African American Music
by Greg Harrison

The front matter, the introduction, and chapter one of this doctoral dissertation (Department of Art History, University of Sydney, March 1999) are now published on "The Autodidact Project" at its new location, with an introduction by Ralph Dumain. Chapter 1, "Lordship and Bondage", also serves as a literature review of the scholarship on the connection between Hegel and W.E.B. Du Bois, as well as on the comparative analysis of Hegel's master-slave dialectic and the enslavement of Africans in the Western Hemisphere. Various historians are also discussed in this regard, including David Brion Davis, Orlando Patterson, C.L.R. James, Eugene Genovese, and George Rawick. This is the first significant work of its kind, a project supported by Ralph Dumain since 1995 and The C.L.R. James Institute since 1997. Web publication is part of a campaign to get this dissertation published as a book. Interested parties please contact Ralph Dumain or Greg Harrison. (17 March 2002)

Martin Glaberman (1918-2001) Dies

We have received information that Martin Glaberman, long-time associate and advocate of C.L.R. James and a member of the Johnson-Forest Tendency founded in the 1940s, died on Sunday, December 16. A memorial service is scheduled for February 17 at Wayne State University. See the first obituaries forwarded to us. We would like to collect as many obituaries and tributes to Mr. Glaberman as we can. Please inform us of whatever comes your way. (20 Dec. 2001, rev. 25 Dec. 2001)

C.L.R. James on BBC Radio Four

Alistair McGhee has produced a 30 minute radio program on the life of C.L.R. James for BBC Radio Four. It is called "C.L.R. James: Marx, Cricket, and World Revolution." The C.L.R. James Institute assisted, as did the other sponsors and participants in the international celebration of the James Centenary in Trinidad in mid-September. The program is narrated by Linton Kwesi Johnson and includes the voices of James, Anna Grimshaw, Stuart Hall, George Lamming, Paget Henry, Martin Glaberman, Selma James, Jim Murray, Aldon Nielsen, and others. It will be broadcast at 11:30 am, London time, Thursday, November 15, 2001. That is 6:30 am ET. It will be broadcast on internet radio at that time: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4 — there's a listen link at the top of the page — or http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio and choose radio 4 from the buttons. An audio tape will be available from the Institute. We welcome your comments and will probably have more to say about this broadcast.

New Richard Wright Biography on C-Span 2

Hazel Rowley, author of Richard Wright: The Life and Times, will appear on C-Span 2, Sunday night, November 18, 2001, at 11 pm ET. The show is called "Public Lives" and is devoted to new biographies in print. She will discuss Richard Wright and answer questions from the bookstore audience at Harvard. The website for the show is http://www.booktv.org/publiclives. The author's website is http://www.hazelrowley.com. See also our Richard Wright Connection. The Institute will have a videotape of this program.

The "Organic Principle" in the Writings of C.L.R. James

A talk by Frank Rosengarten, with critical commentary by Russell Rockwell

Thursday, November 29, 2001; 7:30 pm
The Brecht Forum, 122 West 27th Street, Tenth Floor, New York, NY
(212) 242-4201
www.brechtforum.org
Admission: sliding scale $6/$8/$10

This talk will focus on the concept of organicism—its origins, forms, and uses—in the writings of C.L.R. James. James was a revolutionary Marxist socialist, but his ideas and perspectives on the worldwide struggle for liberation from capitalist and imperialist hegemony do not fall easily into preconceived categories of Marxist thought. One important aspect of his world view that has been perhaps insufficiently noted by James scholars is his adherence to "the organic principle," which allowed him to appreciate creativity and vitality wherever he found it. While always insisting on the material basis of human civilization, he made ample room in his thinking for subjectivity and individuality, whether manifested in artistic and other cultural forms of expression, or in social or political movements. This talk and commentary will be concerned mainly with James' intellectual indebtedness to Aristotle and Hegel; his views on Black struggle and identity; and his notion of the role played in history, especially in history since the French Revolution, of what he variously called "ordinary people," "the common people," or simply, "the people," without further designations. An effort will be made to relate these themes to the underlying organicist premises of James' conception of life.

Frank Rosengarten is Professor Emeritus at CUNY, retired. He is the editor of Antonio Gramsci: Letters from Prison, 2 vols.; author of The Writings of the Young Marcel Proust (1885-1900): An Ideological Critique; co-editor of New Studies in the Politics and Culture of U.S. Communism; and an editor of the journal Socialism and Democracy. Frank is a Fellow of the C.L.R James Institute.

C.L.R. James in the Time of Terrorism

See "The Critic in Time of War" by Margo Jefferson, New York Times Book Review, October 28, 2001. James's Mariners is cited as an exemplar of the value of writing in a time when language is debased by war hysteria.

Inauguration of The Richard Wright Connection

See our new web pages, The Richard Wright Connection and Quotations by and about Richard Wright. Richard Wright has loomed large in our intellectual interests over the past decade, and for other James scholars as well. Now we are formally promoting this research interest via the web site, beginning with a focus on Wright's perspective on modernity, and pointing to other resources on and off the web, including Hazel Rowley's new biography of Wright. Please keep checking back for further developments. (6 Nov. 2001)

C.L.R. James in the New York Times

"Embracing the Wisdom of a Castaway" by Emily Eakin, a feature article on the republication of James's Mariners, Renegades, and Castaways and the James boom in academia, appeared under the rubric of "Arts & Ideas" in The New York Times on 4 August 2001, pp. B7-9 (New York ed.) / pp. A15, A17 (national ed.). The newspaper has two photos of James, while only one—James's mug shot—appears on the New York Times web site. We don't know how long this article will remain available there, so check it out right away. We will take steps to make the article permanently available on our site.

C.L.R. James & Creolization: New Book

C.L.R. James and Creolization: Circles of Influence by Nicole King is now out from the University Press of Mississippi. Click the title for the publisher's advert.

Book Launch: A Hubert Harrison Reader
UPDATE

See our announcement of our May 30 Institute event: Researching Hubert Harrison: An Evening with Jeff Perry, and our announcement of his epoch-making anthology A Hubert Harrison Reader, and a press release for further background information. Visit also our new Hubert Harrison Center for a guide to Harrison publications and activities.

The Miles Davis Story Comes to American Television & Video Stores

The Miles Davis Story will be telecast on Bravo and made available in video stores. On Sunday February 2, at 9 pm (Eastern Standard Time), Bravo will show the two hour film. It will be shown later that night at 3 am and again on Monday February 3 at 5 pm. The C.L.R. James Institute was very proud to provide the setting for two of the interviews in the film, with Jimmy Cobb and with Ron Carter. Mike Dibb, the director, is an old friend of James who made the 1977 film Beyond A Boundary, about James and cricket. The Miles Davis Story won an international Emmy Award for best documentary in 2001. It was shown in prime time in the UK on Easter weekend, 2001, and at some festivals, including a Miles Davis 75th Birthday commemoration in St. Louis, but its US telecast has been delayed until now. Sony released the video and DVD on November 26, 2002. If your video store doesn't have it, request that it be ordered as a new release which has won an Emmy. Be sure to check your local cable listings for the Bravo telecasts in your time zone. The C.L.R. James Institute has more information, including the original Miles Davis film, copies of some of Dibb's other films on artists and writers, a rare copy of his Boundary film, and an important letter from James to Dibb on Dibb's William Morris TV documentary. See also a facsimile of the inscription Dibb and interviewer and Davis biographer Ian Carr wrote in our copy of Carr's book. (29 January 2003)

The Miles Davis Story in Washington, DC

Mike Dibb's documentary The Miles Davis Story (124 min.), partially filmed at the C.L.R. James Institute, is part of the 16th Annual Washington, DC International Film Festival. The film is scheduled for showings at 6:30 pm at the Visions Cinema Bistro Lounge on Friday 19 April and Wednesday 24 April 2002. (24 April 2002)

The Institute & Miles Davis on TV

That’s right, UK TV watchers in April saw us thanked at the end of Mike Dibb’s two hour documentary, "The Miles Davis Story." (Now who wouldn’t watch that?) That’s because the interviews with Jimmy Cobb and Ron Carter were filmed at the Institute. Stay tuned for US distribution info; meantime, inquire about private screenings. Read how this came about in an upcoming Jim’s Letter. In the meantime, click here to see the inscription Dibb and Miles biographer Ian Carr wrote in our copy of Carr's book.

James Lectures in Print: Big News from Small Axe

Our friends at Small Axe have published transcripts of three memorable lectures on the writing of The Black Jacobins which James gave at the Institute of the Black World in June 1971, with a nice introduction by Robert Hill. One is how he wrote it, two is how he would rewrite it, three is how he compares it to Black Reconstruction by Du Bois. Click here for Small Axe: A Journal of Criticism. Ask the CLRJ Inst. about hearing the tapes, which are superb.

The Pequod Project Launched

On the occasion of the unabridged re-publication of Mariners, we have launched The Pequod Project on our site, to stimulate interest in and discussion of James and Melville.

James in Print: Mariners to be Republished!

Mariners, Renegades, and Castaways: Herman Melville and The World We Live In, by C.L.R. James, is now available in a totally unabridged edition for the first time since 1953, from the University Press of New England. We want to create a special event for this at a larger space in NYC next fall. Inquire. See also our information center dedicated to study and discussion of this book: The Pequod Project.

Hunting Captain Ahab: New Book

Hunting Captain Ahab: Psychological Warfare and the Melville Revival by Clare L. Spark, from The Kent State University Press, constitutes a major reassessment of Herman Melville and his critical reception in America. See our page of blurbs for this book.

New James Memoir from Farrukh Dhondy

Farrukh Dhondy’s book has been published by Weidenfeld and Nicolson in London, and a US edition is forthcoming from Pantheon. This is a most unusual literary memoir and is certain to generate controversy. For a bit more on Farrukh, see Remembering C.L.R. James by Anna Grimshaw.

Anna Grimshaw’s New Book on Visual Anthropology

Check out Anna Grimshaw's The Ethnographer's Eye: Ways of Seeing in Modern Anthropology (Cambridge University Press, 2001), ISBN 0-521-77475-6.

The C.L.R. James Centenary in Trinidad

The Preliminary Conference Program for "C.L.R. James at 100: Global Capitalism, Culture and the Politics of World Revolution" (September 20-23, 2001; St. Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago) is now available on this site. For all inquiries regarding this conference, contact Anthony Bogues.

Fourth International Conference on Caribbean Literature (I.C.C.L.)

Martinique, November 7-9, 2001. Call for papers, in English, French, or Spanish. Send one-page abstracts by June 30 to Jorge Roman-Lagunas (French, Spanish) or Melvin Rahming (English).

Clare Spark: Unveiling the Hidden History of Ralph Bunche

Spark, Clare L. "Race, Caste, or Class? The Bunche-Myrdal Dispute Over An American Dilemma," International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society, Vol.14, Number 3, pp. 465-511.

Jim Murray, Director
Ralph Dumain, Librarian/Archivist & Webmaster

Last update: 14 October 2004
Previous update: 9 August 2004