The crypt of Bob Considine in Gate of Heaven Cemetery: photo by Anthony22, 13 April 2010
But I really hate band concerts
in the park and
...........Bob Considine
3000 Sundays ago
when half the world
was mopping up the fire storms
I hate them.
who can among men retain
.....their honor
praising such things
men, men are always put in chains
the world is just shit.
All of it.
Edward Dorn (1929-1999): Bob Considine, c. 1962, from Derelict Air, 2015
Edward Dorn (1929-1999): Bob Considine, c. 1962, from Derelict Air, 2015
Igor Gouzenko, the former Russian Embassy cipher clerk whose defection in 1945 broke up a Soviet atomic spying ring, warned the United States to be wary of the Soviet Union's new "soft line." His prediction that the U.S.S.R. would attack the United States "as soon as it gains enough confidence," came in an exclusive interview with an international news service correspondent, Bob Considine. Considine is shown taking notes as Gouzenko donned a hood when photographers entered the room, [and] spoke.: image by maru press, 11 March 2003
"men are always put in chains"
ReplyDeleteBob's eyes on Igor's, whose head is in a bag, his eyes and nose holes not lined up with anything . . .
Steve's got it right. Everything's always been completely out of kilter, ever since whenever it was.
ReplyDeleteIgor Gouzenko was a code clerk at the Russian Embassy in Ottawa. His defection in September 1945 was thought by some to mark the beginning of the Cold War. No, the Klan did not start the Cold War, despite appearances in the photo here.
Gouzenko took with him several hundred pages of documents that implicated a number of Canadian civil servants and scientists as Soviet spies. In fact, the revelations disclosed that Stalin had agents engaged in fulltime spying business all over North America, and that there was actually no such thing as a "nuclear secret", because Stalin knew them all.
How do you like that, Virginia.
Here is the Hollywood version of his story. Well, at least the location shots were done in Ottawa.
The Iron Curtain, dir. William Wellman, 1948
Bob Considine was a familiar American reporter/mythographer of an era probably now remembered only those who have lost their memories... as well as by the one senior citizen I know who has an absolute steeltrap memory, and who relayed his Bob Considine memoria backchannel.
He (that's Bob I mean not... well, you know) "ghosted" a lot of famous American stories, Babe Ruth among others.
But he is probably most famous for, and the film Ed perhaps has in mind here, is the biggest success of Bob Considine's career -- his ghosting of the memoirs of Captain Ted W. Lawson.
Dalton Trumbo -- keeping in mind this is a few years before the blacklist -- did the screen play, Sam Zimbalist produced, Mervyn LeRoy directed.
I mean, Aeschylus, stand back.
Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (MGM, 1944), trailer
In the unbelievably drear concrete block departmental colleaguiality of a provincial Brit University, where Ed and I passed in a kind of revolving-doors scenario Sam Zimbalist might have appreciated (Ed entering the academic orbit, me escaping), we filled many an empty hour shooting the breeze about our common cultural background as Illinoisans, Ed of the rural strain, me not so much.
Whatever gets you through the endless world night.
Out of these discussions at one point came an "assignment" I proposed, that Ed would "cover" the World Cup of 1966 for a mimeograph magazine I was producing, which he then in fact proceeded to do. We discussed possible narrative voices to be employed, touching on various familiar radio voices out of that jerkwater mid american heritage, including Bob Considine as well as the guy Ed eventually settled on, Bill Stern (who became "Stern Bill" in his poem-report).
the world is just shit.
ReplyDeleteAll of it.
What an awful thought. Thoba!
He said it
ReplyDelete