From the time I first became aware that I actually had a favourite decade, that decade has been the 1970s, and not just because I was born during it.  It was a wild and ragged time when civil rights were starting to take off,  hedonism was on the rise along with  industrial strength sideburn/moustache combos for men, feathered hair and jersey wrap dresses women and platform shoes for both were de rigueur. Plus lots and lots of brown and beige. It was a time before Wall Street dominated; and  the much overused “family values” became a empty catch phrase (which in retrospect seemed to be a way of saying to someone “stop what you’re doing, you’re having way too much inappropriate fun.”)

 It’s difficult to write about all facets of any decade in one sitting – there are politics, film, sports, music, literature and fashion to name but some, but here are a few books I’ve read in the past couple years that like the 70s itself, were fun, fast and very enjoyable.

  Let’s start with a couple of sports books and two of the most impressive explosions of hair of any era: hockey goon Goldie Goldthorpe – who is getting is own movie ( for real!) , and slugger Oscar Gamble who is responsible for one of my all time favourite quotes ” They don’t think it be like this, but it do.”   The Rebel League: The Short and Unruly Life of the World Hockey Association by Ed Willies is a great rollicking retrospective of the upstart WHL which looked for a (very) short time to have the strength to unseat the NHL as North America’s premiere hockey league.  It was a rough and tumble league with sky high salaries for a handful of players and often had more fighting than skill on display (The Paul Newman film Slap Shot borrowed much from the WHL including the Hanson Brothers characters based on real life Minnesota Fighting Saints siblings the Carlson brothers – if you get a chance, check out the video for the Fighting Saints featuring their old arena with transparent boards (?!)– they show up in the clip after some obligatory fighting footage)…and when was the last time you read of  a player eating hotdogs on the bench during a game? Only in the WHL

Next up is baseball – Big Hair and Plastic Grass – A Funky Ride Through Baseball and America in the Swinging 70s by Dan Epstein– From Dock Ellis’ 1970 LSD influenced no hitter to Cleveland’s poorly thought out 10 Cent Beer Night (the ending of which was in hindsight fairly predictable – after fueling up on cheap booze, thousands of fans wobbled out of the stands – which they had already begun to rip apart and onto the field where they promptly uprooted the bases – which no doubt made a nice  addition to some fans’ living space) to the out of control pyrotechnics during the White Sox’s Disco Demolition Night in 1979 which scorched part of the field in the middle of a double header – this decade had it all – Oakland’s The Moustache Gang, The Big Red Machine, the volatile and violent Billy Martin/George Steinbrenner/Reggie Jackson Yankees to The We Are Family Pirates…plus plenty of greenies.  Put side by side next to players like  Bill “The Spaceman” Lee – modern day athletes seem so boring by comparison.

And now we move on to politics – or more specifically – the politics of paranoia as described in Strange Days Indeed: The 1970s:  The Golden Era of Paranoia by Francis Wheen.  The decade boasted a colourful cast of delusional characters who happened to double as heads of state in their spare time. Between Richard Nixon’s infamous late night fouled mouthed drunken rants, to the Ugandan dictator  Idi “”Lord of All the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the Sea” Amin threats to feed his enemies (i.e. just about everyone) to the crocodiles; there was no shortage of paranoia to go around. British Prime Minister Harold Wilson was caught on tape saying “”I see myself as the big, fat spider in the corner of the room. Sometimes, I speak when I’m asleep. You should both listen. Occasionally, when we meet, I might tell you to go to Charing Cross Roadand kick a blind man standing on the corner. That blind man may tell you something, lead you somewhere.”

I’m not sure if the blind man ever led anyone anywhere (providing you could find a gas station with full pumps to get you to where he wanted you to go) but adding to the feeling of unease that is often associated with the 70s, was the emergence of assorted idealistic freedom fighters/terrorists/ guerillas (depending on your point of view) which bombed, kidnapped and sometimes killed their way through the urban landscape from the FLQ in Canada, the Baader/Meinhoff Group in Germany, the Red Brigade in Italy, Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional in Puerto Rico, Uruguay’s Tupamaros  to the Symbionese Liberation Army (kidnappers of Patty Hearst) who ended their communiques with the slogan “Death to the fascist insect that preys upon the life of the people”  – which sounds fairly absurd to present day ears.  And who can forget the man who for a time captured the attention of people worldwide: Carlos the Jackel (even as a young kid he was presence in my imagination)…with all this going on, it’s no wonder people saw plots and conspiracies around every corner.  

However, the old adage “It’s not a conspiracy if it’s true” may hold some weight as it later turned out that the FBI had files on over 500 000 American citizens during the J. Edgar Hoover era.  One of those files turned out to be on author, former NYC mayoral candidate and professional loudmouth Normal Mailer, who makes a few appearances in Wheen’s book.  At one point in 1973, a drunken Mailer gave a speech to inform the public of his intentions to form a  “People’s FBI” which would spy on the real FBI and CIA..he goes on to declaim “ Is there one plot going on between the scenes in America? Are there many plots? Is there no plot?” He admitted later to being “very paranoid” – a prominant vibe that was picked up on by the Rolling Stones in their 1974 song “Fingerprint File” as well as several key films of the decade such as The Conversation and Three Days of the Condor.

On the lighter side of the conspiracy tip that swept the planet during the 70s was the widespread embrace of pseudo academic Erik Von Daniken’s theories that humans are a bi product of “an ancient union between extraterrestrials and she apes”…how else to explain many of the planet’s enduring mysteries I ask you. Apparently the general public seemed to agree (particularly the Raelians) as people picked up his books by the millions.  At the time, my eight year old brain could certainly find no fault in Daniken’s shaky theories (oddly, his theses still seem to be a draw –  during the course of reading up a bit for this blog entry I discovered that in 2003 Switzerland opened up a Daniken designed theme park called Mystery Park.)

I could go on and and on (more than I already have) but will leave the second half of my look back at the 1970s for part two.  Over the past few years I’ve ordered some of the best (and often overlooked) films from this golden decade of American cinema for the library’s DVD collection …but as mentioned, that is for another day.

Back in March I found myself at home, sick in bed looking for something to read. Due to my enfeebled state, I thought I’d go for something that wasn’t too complicated, demanding, cynical or overly blood-soaked.  That is when I reached for Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island

 I had never read Treasure Island before but had high hopes after reading the opening address to the potential reader at the start of the book:  

To The Hesitating Purchaser

If sailor tales to sailor tunes,
Storm and adventure, heat and cold,
If schooners, islands, and maroons,
And buccaneers, and buried gold,
And all the old romance, retold
Exactly in the ancient way,
Can please, as me they pleased of old,
The wiser youngsters of today:

— So be it and fall on! If not,
If studious youth no longer crave,
His ancient appetites forgot,
Kingston, or Ballantyne the brave,
Or Cooper of the wood and wave:
So be it, also! And may I
And all my pirates share the grave
Where these and their creations lie

Although it’s debatable whether or not I’ve ever fit into the “wiser youngster” category, I found the story to be everything I hoped it would be, drawing me in as strongly as it did readers 125 years ago when it first came out as a serial in 1881-1882. 

The adventure tale includes so much, not the least of which is some grade A pirate talk and plenty of rum consumption for what is often considered a children’s book…the two dovetail nicely in this toast delivered by peg legged Long John Silver himself : “Here’s to ourselves, and hold your luff, plenty of prizes and plenty of duff.”  Also part of the story is of course, buried treasure, as well as talking parrots, secret maps, mutiny, marooning, the now infamous Black Spot (which has its own Wikipedia entry) and one of the world’s most famous pirates, the aforementioned Long John Silver.  Depending on which copy you read, you may also get the fantastic illustrations by N.C. Wyeth, often reproduced from the 1911 edition. 

After finishing the book, I was inspired to re-watch Disney’s old film adaptation from 1950.  I remember seeing this movie a couple of times as a child but not since (happily, I did not find the pirate Blind Old Pew as scary as I did when I was 7) and I think it’s safe to say that Robert Newton’s portrayal of Long John Silver became the template for pretty much every cinematic pirate that followed. (Here’s a not very fun fact: As I often do when watching older movies, I check out the directors, actors etc on the internet – so naturally I looked up Disney child actor Bobby Driscoll who plays Jim Hawkins. Sadly, I learned that Driscoll had a very difficult life after he grew up – becoming a heroin addict, going to jail, hanging out at Andy Warhol’s Factory before  being found dead in an abandoned New York tenement in 1968.  His body remained unidentified for over a year afterwards and was buried in an unmarked grave.  Knowing all of this beforehand, it was hard to then watch Treasure Island without thinking about how tragic the young actor’s life turned out to be) 

Reading Treasure Island got me interested in other classic adventure tales, fantastic stories and speculative fiction from days of yore.  Some of these titles I’ve already read, but the rest of them were moved up a few rankings in my To Read List                                         

H.G. Wells – The Invisible Man, The War of the Worlds, The Island of Dr. Moreau etc 

Herge – Tin Tin  Series    

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle – The Lost World   

Jules Verne –Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Journey To the Centre of the ,   The Mysterious Island

James Hilton – Lost Horizon

H. Rider Haggard – King Solomon’s Mines, She: A History of Adventure

Robert Louis Stevenson – Kidnapped, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde 

Arthur Ransome – Swallows and Amazons  

Edgar Rice Burroughs – Tarzan series, A Princess From Mars          

In an age where nary a cell phone or gps existed, characters couldn’t always tell what was around the corner, over the mountain, across the desert, through the jungle,  beneath the sea or…well..you get the idea.  This is partly why I like these sorts of stories: the mystery of the unknown, the exoticism of the locales, the lure of lost treasure and hidden lands mixed with all the pitfalls, wrong turns, long journeys and ultimately successful resolutions that we come to expect from good yarn.

I’ve listed more titles than you can shake a cutlass at and as  Robert Louis Stevenson would say, if adventure is your thing, “So Be It and Fall On”

With my Maple Leafs falling faster than a speeding bullet, it’s time to shine the spotlight on the library’s very own homegrown underachievers –graphic novels for grown ups. 

Thankfully the days when libraries would debate whether to even add graphic novels to their collections is long gone.  With each passing year, awareness from the general public does seem to be growing (there is even a course now at the University of Toronto called The Graphic Novel) but there still to be a lot of work for us to do before the community at large starts borrowing them as often as we’d like.

 I certainly can’t claim to know all there is to know about graphic novels, not by a long shot but I do belong to a book club in my free time which reads exclusively this sort of book (the lazy man’s book club!). It has exposed me to lot of great titles which I will shine a light on here. Before I get started though I will mention right off the bat that as much as I like them; the books I’m considering here don’t include much in the way of super hero comics from Marvel or DC such as X-Men, Daredevil, Thor, Spider-Man and Batman etc because they do just fine on their own. Nor am I considering the various Manga series the library collects (such as Naruto, Bleach, Fruits Basket etc) because they too are heavily borrowed and quite frankly I simply do not get their appeal so I’ll leave them for the more ardent defender of that art form.

 So if I take away the manga and most super hero graphic novels, what is left?

 I just finished reading the 10 part series Y: The Last Man by Brian K. Vaughan, which was very addictive. With its pacing – cliffhangers, timely plot revelations, cast of international characters and settings I found it reminiscent of the TV show Lost.  One day we may see this series on the screen. 

 Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home is as good a memoir as you can find in any medium.  Named Time magazine’s best non fiction book of 2006 and it was nominated for aNational Book Circle award.

 Essex County (nominated by Canada Reads as one of the best books of the last decade) by Jeff LeMire is a series of melancholy tales set in southernOntario. It’s beautifully rendered in black in white, and as the book’s publishers put it, it is a “tender meditation on family, memory, grief, secrets, and reconciliation”

 Chester Brown’s ground breaking work Louis Riel (2003) was another book my group read. This one set the bar quite high for any graphic novel biographies that followed it.  Sometimes mentioned in the same discussion as Brown is his close friend and fellow graphic novelist Seth (The Great Northern Brotherhood of Canadian Cartoonists, and Wimbledon Green)

 Art Spieglman’s Maus may be the best known of all graphic novels – proving that tragedy, war and genocide are subjects that could be dealt with in comic form. His recounting of his father’s experience inAuschwitz opened a lot of people’s eyes as to what was possible in a graphic novel.

 A homework topic that we regularly get asked for help with is the subject of the media and its influences on society (or something to that effect) and a great resource is the non fiction graphic work The Influencing Machine  by NPR’s Brooke Gladstone.

  Rounding out the titles my group read are the locally set Scott Pilgrim series, the pioneering works Love and Rockets by the Hernandez brothers and one of my favourites: American Splendor by Harvey Pekar.  

 Conspicuous by his absence is Alan Moore (author of  Watchmen, V For Vendetta, Swamp Thing, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen etc etc) but hopefully the book club rectifies that soon.

 Some other well reviewed graphic novels that I like are:                               

Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth – Chris Ware  

Shortcomings – Adrian Tomine                       

Palestine – Joe Sacco 

Whiteout – Greg Rucka

Epileptic – Daniel B.

Walking Dead – Robert Kirkman   

And pretty much anything by Daniel Clowes. 

I hope this give you some ideas of the variety, depth and scope that our occasionally neglected graphic novel collection has to offer.