Unruly History in the News #37
In honor of Banned Books Week, we're doing a bit of literary history
Hey everyone,
Slightly shorter round today because it’s been a very busy week. Yesterday I got to go to the Rare Books Fest here in Los Angeles—it was a blast. I picked up a rare copy of Five Hundred Delinquent Women. It studies 500 women who were imprisoned, how they were “rehabilitated” and what happened after they were released. Of particular interest to me and my research (the emergence of sexual identity) is that most of these women were imprisoned for “sexual misconduct” during the late Victorian Era.
Now, onto our weekly news round-up. This one is a little longer than the previous one. And I’m curious, do you all prefer longer round-ups or shorter ones?
On to the show! This week, in history acting unruly…
A tiny but beautiful Van Gogh just sold for €1.5 million (that’s 1.6 million USD).
Mexico’s radical attempt to legalize drugs in the early 20th century is often forgotten today, but it foretold the ongoing relationship between the US and Mexico in modern drug wars."
There is debate about whether we should continue excavating Pompeii. While an estimated 20% of the city still lies untouched since the explosion of Mount Vesuvius, archaeologists are arguing that it should remain there to be preserved for future generations.
When The Adoration of the Kings first came to market, it was identified as being from “the Circle of Rembrandt.” Now that infrared technology has confirmed it is a true Rembrandt painting, it is estimated to fetch an incredible $18 million at auction.
Rembrandt’s The Adoration of the Kings, courtesy of Sotheby’s. A skull from the perplexing archaeological site Kanaljorden was just successfully reconstructed.
In literary history…
Venus Magazine debuted in January 1995 to honor Venus Landin, an Atlanta Black lesbian activist and community organizer, “and build on her legacy of raising consciousness in the Black LGBTQ+ community.”
Do you know about the first English-language children’s novel? The History of Little Goody Two-Shoes changed the literary landscape when it was published in 1765.
Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged was published this week in 1957. I am, quite frankly, not a big fan of the book. “Her heroes and heroines prevail over inferior others in ruthless hierarchical worlds not unlike the high school at the center of the 2004 megahit movie Mean Girls.”
“There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year-old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.” - John Rodgers
How obscenity laws almost stopped Lolita from being published.
This excerpt from Red Memory by Tania Branigan is so moving. The book about the Chinese Cultural Revolution was just shortlisted for the 2023 Cundhill History Prize.
If you enjoy fantasy novels, you need to be thanking Lester del Rey. He popularized publishing fantasy novels during a time when the only good ones on the market was Lord of the Rings.
Khaled Hosseini’s reflections on the surprising success of The Kite Runner twenty years later moved me to tears.
“Just why The Kite Runner has become so popular isn’t entirely clear to me, but based on letters that I have received over the past two decades, I can take an educated guess. There is a universality to this tale of a boy who feels inadequate and longs for his father’s love. Amir is deeply flawed; he can be maddening, and his cowardice and hypocrisy at times border on appalling. But I think he is always recognizably human. He walks the world painfully aware of his faults and failures. They haunt him through adolescence and into adulthood. He knows that a more noble version of himself lies somewhere ahead, but the reach is far, the path treacherous, and to get there he must summon the courage he disastrously lacked as a child. Despite our aversion to his actions, we root for him, perhaps because we find fragments of ourselves reflected in him: We all know we fall short; we all want to walk in the shoes of that more noble self.”
When a member of the Aasvik family lost an earring in the garden, they naturally broke out the old metal detector. What they ended up finding was a rare Viking belt buckle that dates to the 9th century.
Did you know that there was a violent crime wave at late Medieval universities? Across the UK and Europe, male students were murdering each other at an extremely alarming rate. In fact, students at Oxford were “roughly three times more likely to commit murder or be brutally murdered than other residents of the medieval English city.”
In the ancient city of Aizanoi, Turkey, a treasure trove of 2,000-year-old makeup and hair accessories was just discovered while archaeologists were excavating a market square.
Barbie pink has always been a vibe. Photo courtesy of Anadolu Ajansi. An American tourist has been arrested after deliberately smashing second-century Roman artifacts at a museum in Israel. His lawyer claims he was suffering from Jerusalem Syndrome, “a psychotic state that manifests in religious pilgrims as delusions of grandeur and obsessive ideas. It’s a bit of a controversial diagnosis, as it’s almost always diagnosed in individuals with pre-existing mental disorders such as schizophrenia.” Sounds a bit similar to Paris Syndrome.
Last week I talked about new videos released of sunken ships from the Battle of Midway. This week we have new photos as well. The story they tell is fascinating.
Archaeologists found 1,800-year-old evidence of ginger, clove, and turmeric in southern Vietnam, suggesting that curry traveled along maritime trade routes, enjoyed by many people along southeast Asia. The discovery pushes the date of cultural contact back a few centuries.
Have you heard of pro-extinctionists? Émile Torres is a philosopher who thinks it might not be so bad if humanity ceased to exist. Torres’ new book Human Extinction: A History of the Science and Ethics of Annihilation is an academic dive into their philosophy, whch runs directly counter to the recent rise of longtermists, who look toward the great achievements of the distant future as a reason to make careful decisions now. “Longtermism is similar to many utopian movements that became violent,” Torres points out.
Bras are MUCH older than you think.
“Roman women in a 4th-century A.D. mosaic from Sicily exercise while wearing an amictorium, an ancient bikini-type linen garment that bound the breasts. Scholars are divided on whether Greek and Roman women wore bra-like garments for support, style, or both. Photo by Luisa Ricciarini, Bridgeman Images”
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The Rare Books Fest sounds so interesting! Wish I knew about it, would have totally joined 🤓📚