BIBLIOFILE
Masses, Classes, and the Public Sphere
Edited by Mike Hill and Warren Montag
(Verso, 276 pages, $30)

As Bush hard-sells his tax cuts for the rich and America lurches further toward an oligarchy of mega-corporations, it's nice to know that there are still liberals in the land. Masses, Classes, and the Public Sphere analyzes the current state of America's "public sphere," or the areas in an ideal society where citizens use rational thought and critical analysis to objectively evaluate everything from what laws to pass to where to build schools. Consisting of objective media, civic groups, coffeehouse discussions--any place people freely trade ideas and opinions--a healthy public sphere is crucial to a healthy society. Unfortunately, America's public sphere is far from healthy.

In an insightful and important series of essays, various authors examine the myriad ways American capitalism has silenced citizens' voices. Raul Villa details how the Chicano community has been perpetually pushed out of Los Angeles, a city established by Hispanics. Jamie Owen Daniel deconstructs how public policy and media misrepresentation combined to destroy Chicago's public housing; Stanley Aronowitz explains how America's unions have been rendered impotent, while Henry Giroux offers a revealing and timely analysis of the attack on public education.

Almost every essay is thoughtful and complex and wears its politics on its sleeve. Masses should be required reading for political and business leaders who undermine the authority of our public schools as they make another fortune "revitalizing" neighborhoods that were already vital. One can only hope that the authors of these essays don't suffer the same fate as those they write about: banishment to society's fringe, their voices drowned out by the din of money-changing. Dan DeWeese

Primetime Blues
by Donald Bogle
(Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 520 pages, $30)

Primetime Blues is a thorough survey of black roles on network television since its earliest days by black media historian Donald Bogle. Bogle provides fascinating glosses of shows from the '40s, '50s and '60s like Beulah, Julia and I Spy--programs that could never be shown now in our hyper-PC times, where we have to protect impressionable minds from the horrors of African-American stereotyping.

I personally love to watch whites squirm at the banned racist cartoons boldly shown at the Clinton Street Theater, but I prefer even more to hear them laugh with me at the stupidity of racism. So, it's a shame that the performances by fine actors have been lost to all but historians, as I'd love to see Sapphire and Kingfish from Amos & Andy or Jack Benny's sidekick Rochester, a character beloved by my entire family. This is a part of black history that America should not ignore or denigrate.

Though an excellent textbook of television history, Primetime Blues, disappointingly, only touches lightly on the importance of current black dramatic television actors, such as ER's sublimely nasty Eriq LaSalle or Deep Space Nine's bombastic Avery Brooks. Ultimately, Primetime Blues is a drag to read straight through. After 50 years, you want somebody to win. Bogle makes it clear that, at least in comedy, we haven't come very far from poor Stepin Fetchit. But
short of civil action against the whitewashed producers of network television and forcible education of a nation of sensation-numbed and segregated viewers, what will spare us from Martin? Jemiah Jefferson

Rides of the Midway
by Lee Durkee
(Norton, 316 pages, $25.95)

After Noel Weatherspoon collides head-on with Ross Altman at a Little League game, his life splinters into a thousand jagged pieces, and no one--not even in his family of hard-core Christian believers--can put him back together again. Rides of the Midway is a sharp, striking picture of a childhood cut short by God's will, an unbridled look at misguided guilt, an emotional turn on one of those rickety carnival rides that you are sure you won't survive.

After said collision, young Noel starts to see ghosts. His dead father comes to him in his sleepless hours, cautionary and full of redneck paternal advice. Afraid of his own hands, Noel wanders the dark streets of poor-white-trash Mississippi, concocting a murderous vision of his future. His stepfather, the spitting image of Billy Graham (right down to the righteous comb-over), forces the power of prayer upon him during his waking hours. But through the magical comfort that pot, Quaaludes and Lynyrd Skynyrd provide, Noel finally finds a way to navigate through adolescence.

Lee Durkee's remarkable debut novel is equally brutal and nimble. The characters are painfully real, and their stories spurt and cough just where they should. But it's in the creation of young Noel, whose relationships stammer, then gush forward suddenly with all the weight of virgin wanderlust, that Durkee excels.

Durkee gives you the feeling that you're looking through some poor bastard's photo album--past the overblown Sunday sermons, genuine imitation snakeskin boots and skinny baton-twirling sluts with sticky hair. You get the feeling you are looking at something hopelessly broken. Ritah Parrish