Richard M. Baker, Jr. (1924–1978)
Teoksen Predatory Will tekijä
Tietoja tekijästä
Sarjat
Tekijän teokset
Zengo's Revolt 1 kappale
Gentle Mako 1 kappale
Tomorrow or Ashes 1 kappale
Lack of Restrainrt 1 kappale
Neighboring Eyes 1 kappale
Promise of the North 1 kappale
High Rise Orange Groves 1 kappale
Merkitty avainsanalla
Yleistieto
- Syntymäaika
- 1924-02-13
- Kuolinaika
- 1978
- Sukupuoli
- male
- Kansalaisuus
- USA
- Syntymäpaikka
- Worcester, Massachusetts, USA
- Kuolinpaikka
- Portland, Maine
- Asuinpaikat
- Cape Elizabeth, Maine. USA
- Koulutus
- Bowdoin College
- Ammatit
- accountant
writer - Lyhyt elämäkerta
- Richard M. Baker, Jr. was born in Worcester, Massachusetts in 1924 and lived with his wife and five children in the suburbs of Portland, Maine until his death in 1978. After brief service in the Army Air Force in 1943, and graduation from Bowdoin College in 1946, he worked as a public accountant, and in 1957, gambled on a career as a writer.
A victim of severe multiple sclerosis, he devoted eleven years and two fingers to his Smith Corona typewriter, enlisted his wife and children when the progressively-debilitating disease warranted, and brought personal struggle, exhaustive research and powerful imagination to his writing.
Dick Baker grew up in a small, coastal Maine town, never strayed far from his roots, in turn rooted his family there, shared with them his love of the ocean and lakes, the changing seasons, sandlot baseball and the Boston Red Sox, batter-fried clams, and old and new friends.
A fine athlete and sportsman, accomplished jazz drummer, avid reader, and self-taught author, he was fully engaged and engaging throughout his 54 years. He accepted his disability with a sense of humor and purpose and passionate lack of self-pity exemplified by his belief that the one good thing to come of his diagnosis was the opportunity to write.
Jäseniä
Kirja-arvosteluja
Completed in late 1963 by novelist Richard M. Baker, Jr., Promise of the North barely preceded the final passage of the United States Civil Rights Act of 1964; a defining moment in US racial and gender history that outlawed major forms of discrimination, including segregation. The timing of Promise of the North couldn’t have been more appropriate, for Baker heralded his work as a “protest” novel, and dropped it at the doorstep of a federally-legislated equality movement that has since gripped the country.
Here, the author places a young, determined, married black couple from Washington, D.C. in Baker’s home state of Maine at a time before black migration, thus, in a place where issues of racial integration had yet to be fully addressed.
One might question how white, Maine-bred author Baker could credibly address racial inequalities and present the face of discrimination from his position of cultural isolationism. The answer -- validated by several well-researched novels of social and cultural literature -- is a credit to the brilliant, sensitive, imaginative mind and recognized style of the author. In Promise of the North, Baker plucked two emotionally distraught, determined blacks from an inner-city ghetto and dropped them in the supposedly promised-land of peaceful coexistence in unaffected Portland, Maine. Influenced by current political and social events, and shaped by the opinions, perceptions and behaviors of social contacts, Baker was sensitized to an imaginative view of what it would be like to drift into a closed culture.
Promise of the North uncovers important and unfortunate truisms of racism, among them, fear, unfamiliarity, and ethnic stereotyping. The good-hearted Jacksons are challenged at every turn by habitually offensive practices that, for lack of direct cultural engagement if nothing else, hadn’t changed much in a hundred years. The North may have won the Civil War and signaled its moral promise with the Emancipation Proclamation, but remnants of the black/white cultural divide in the far North were conveniently surrendered to its seclusion.
Promise of the North is significant for this very reason. The novel dispenses lasting pain by demonstrating that the wounded bee of racism retains its sting after a century of institutional dormancy. Indeed, Promise of the North awakens the memory to blind holdouts of segregation - paradoxically, in a land where statues were erected to those who died in the name of abolition, equality and union.
Promise of the North delivers a potent, thrilling and modern-day essay on multiculturalism, providing an ever-lasting marker on the personal origins of anti-racial behavior despite long-standing political and societal rejection of intolerance. Available at: http://www.web-e-books.com/promise/index.html… (lisätietoja)
Here, the author places a young, determined, married black couple from Washington, D.C. in Baker’s home state of Maine at a time before black migration, thus, in a place where issues of racial integration had yet to be fully addressed.
One might question how white, Maine-bred author Baker could credibly address racial inequalities and present the face of discrimination from his position of cultural isolationism. The answer -- validated by several well-researched novels of social and cultural literature -- is a credit to the brilliant, sensitive, imaginative mind and recognized style of the author. In Promise of the North, Baker plucked two emotionally distraught, determined blacks from an inner-city ghetto and dropped them in the supposedly promised-land of peaceful coexistence in unaffected Portland, Maine. Influenced by current political and social events, and shaped by the opinions, perceptions and behaviors of social contacts, Baker was sensitized to an imaginative view of what it would be like to drift into a closed culture.
Promise of the North uncovers important and unfortunate truisms of racism, among them, fear, unfamiliarity, and ethnic stereotyping. The good-hearted Jacksons are challenged at every turn by habitually offensive practices that, for lack of direct cultural engagement if nothing else, hadn’t changed much in a hundred years. The North may have won the Civil War and signaled its moral promise with the Emancipation Proclamation, but remnants of the black/white cultural divide in the far North were conveniently surrendered to its seclusion.
Promise of the North is significant for this very reason. The novel dispenses lasting pain by demonstrating that the wounded bee of racism retains its sting after a century of institutional dormancy. Indeed, Promise of the North awakens the memory to blind holdouts of segregation - paradoxically, in a land where statues were erected to those who died in the name of abolition, equality and union.
Promise of the North delivers a potent, thrilling and modern-day essay on multiculturalism, providing an ever-lasting marker on the personal origins of anti-racial behavior despite long-standing political and societal rejection of intolerance. Available at: http://www.web-e-books.com/promise/index.html… (lisätietoja)
Once again, Richard M. Baker, Jr., hits his accomplished writing stride with Neighboring Eyes, a taut, fast-moving novel about the adverse affect of societal mores on individual behavior. As is his way, Baker steps out boldly, carrying the torch and enlightening the reader with a solid depiction of everyday people struggling for a foothold on the success-driven, slippery, American dream slope.
The author manifests his talent for psychological drama by unveiling the lengths to which people go to secure and protect social position. Neighboring Eyes is his blueprint, a well-drawn tale of financial, sexual, emotional, and societal manipulation. Baker pits neighbor against neighbor in the name of neighborhood, whatever the cost, in a masterfully engineered story of exploitation, self-examination, resiliency and accountability.
Baker challenges us to question the sanity of social and economic systems -- in the author’s opinion, man-made fabrications for the masses at the expense of individuals, and clear causes for many modern-day problems. The troubled Reynolds family becomes the microcosm for a critical observation of the consequences of nonconformance with acceptable community standards.
Clever originality vitalizes the story and characters, the idea being that sometimes the most unlikely are the natural preservationists of a threatened community. In deference to the relatively innocent and unfairly victimized, Mr. Baker thoughtfully rewards the reader by plucking a champion from among the vulnerable. Available at: http://www.web-e-books.com/neighboring-eyes/index.html… (lisätietoja)
The author manifests his talent for psychological drama by unveiling the lengths to which people go to secure and protect social position. Neighboring Eyes is his blueprint, a well-drawn tale of financial, sexual, emotional, and societal manipulation. Baker pits neighbor against neighbor in the name of neighborhood, whatever the cost, in a masterfully engineered story of exploitation, self-examination, resiliency and accountability.
Baker challenges us to question the sanity of social and economic systems -- in the author’s opinion, man-made fabrications for the masses at the expense of individuals, and clear causes for many modern-day problems. The troubled Reynolds family becomes the microcosm for a critical observation of the consequences of nonconformance with acceptable community standards.
Clever originality vitalizes the story and characters, the idea being that sometimes the most unlikely are the natural preservationists of a threatened community. In deference to the relatively innocent and unfairly victimized, Mr. Baker thoughtfully rewards the reader by plucking a champion from among the vulnerable. Available at: http://www.web-e-books.com/neighboring-eyes/index.html… (lisätietoja)
Lack of Restraint showcases the creative range of Richard M. Baker, Jr.’s writing and his technical ability to weave from imagination a momentous story. The fluidity of his style -- like a wine’s bouquet of flavors on the palate -- blends powerful social protest with erotic suggestion. Seductive episodes will linger in readers’ dreams until admitted to consciousness.
In Lack of Restraint, Baker addresses the challenge of awakening awareness to a difficult social reality. Noting an oppressive view of teen pregnancy.
Lack of Restraint may not ring true to those with orthodox views -- it is difficult to pity reckless teens that make predictable mistakes and gripe about the consequences -- yet Baker felt a sense of obligation, expressed through main character, Reta Ellis, to protest against potentially harmful, social dispositions at a time before birth control pills, legalized abortion, sex-education and abstinence programs, and the fear of AIDs. Before such advances, the author provided a prophetic view of today’s continuing tragedy of teen pregnancy, runaways, and unwed mothers.
Provoking and impassioned, Lack of Restraint results from Baker’s propensity to write what characters say, do, think, and feel, and to portray life as he sees it - shock value notwithstanding. Available at: http://www.web-e-books.com/lack-of-restraint/index.html… (lisätietoja)
In Lack of Restraint, Baker addresses the challenge of awakening awareness to a difficult social reality. Noting an oppressive view of teen pregnancy.
Lack of Restraint may not ring true to those with orthodox views -- it is difficult to pity reckless teens that make predictable mistakes and gripe about the consequences -- yet Baker felt a sense of obligation, expressed through main character, Reta Ellis, to protest against potentially harmful, social dispositions at a time before birth control pills, legalized abortion, sex-education and abstinence programs, and the fear of AIDs. Before such advances, the author provided a prophetic view of today’s continuing tragedy of teen pregnancy, runaways, and unwed mothers.
Provoking and impassioned, Lack of Restraint results from Baker’s propensity to write what characters say, do, think, and feel, and to portray life as he sees it - shock value notwithstanding. Available at: http://www.web-e-books.com/lack-of-restraint/index.html… (lisätietoja)
Tilastot
- Teokset
- 9
- Jäseniä
- 9
- Suosituimmuussija
- #968,587
- Arvio (tähdet)
- 5.0
- Kirja-arvosteluja
- 9
High Rise Orange Groves is the author’s prophetic and technically farsighted view of millions of people engaged in interactive social networking -- in this case, to the detriment of the populace. In this speculative, dystopian fantasy novel - reminiscent of George Orwell’s 1984, Eugene Zamyatin’s WE, and Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 - Richard Baker envisions an unspecified future time when people are isolated by the authorities and ruled by inertia, ignorance, and an absence of love. Uniquely his, Baker wrote High Rise Orange Groves during the height of the Cold War when fear of atomic annihilation was compounded by the population explosion and the sexual revolution, and America was being spoiled by human and technological wastes.
Beyond this period of human-induced catastrophes, the imaginary majority of peoples in this new world order are uneducated “tans” and the minorities are black or white. The tans – loosely ruled by the “Authorities” -- live in high rise buildings, do not work, and occupy themselves with sex. One, a self-educated tan who, rather than go by a number names himself Richard, tries to establish contact with other tans via his “telecom”, part of the building-to-building, room-to-room, audio-video system.
In High Rise Orange Groves, Baker writes of a disturbingly bleak, future society. The impression imparted here is that it may be far more difficult for man to realize a meaningful social identity than to adapt to a mindless one. Available at:
http://www.web-e-books.com/hrog/index.html… (lisätietoja)