ustxtxb_obs_1990_06_01_50_00020-00000_000.pdf

military contracts, as much as 73 percent of the research was concentrated in the top 10. Looking at the relationship from the perspective of universities, the DOD share of federal support for university research exceeded 50 percent for the departments of mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, aeronautics ,materialssciences,andcomputersciences. Feldman also addresses the faculty connections realized through consulting work with military advisory boards and the defense department. In a sectionentitled, “From Pentagon Consultant to Trenchcoat Academic,” he looks at faculty membership on various advisory boards. He also summarizes the famous case of Nadav Safran, the director of Harvard’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies, who received CIA contracts for research and organizing conferences. The disclosure of this incident in 1985 ultimately led to Safran’s resignation. In another appendix Feldman actually lists over four pages of names of academicians and their military and academic affiliation. This is good stuff. It is a concrete analysis of a concrete situation: The book is not just an indictment of universities for their complicity in “murder and theft.” As a manual for, focusing and guiding struggles against U.S. intervention, the book also offers organizing methodology and research tips. It also provides some thoughts on how political movements can use selective divestment of universities’ investments to create corporate pressure against government both here at home and Central America. Feldman suggests as prime targets for “corporate campaigns” are corporations in the banana industry, coffee industry, tire and oil industry, and banks. Feldman’s book is a great manual, but it is not a good read. Though it is full of facts and historical sketches, it should not be approached as a smoothly written overview of the history of the policies and practices of U.S. government and corporations in Central America. Instead, it should be appreciated for what it is, an excellent study of the role of universities in business and repression in Central America. It should also be considered a must for those for whom it was intended activists, writers, and “militant readers.” D Less Than a State of Grace BY STEVEN G. KEIJJBAN AMAZING GRACE Directed by Elena Mannes CADILLAC MAN Directed by Roger Donaldson mazing Grace nearly as amazing as “Amazing able spiritual is not nearly as tantalizing as the miracle of grace itself. Produced and directed by Elena Mannes but marketed as Bill Moyers’ Production of Amazing Grace because he was co-executive producer, with Judith Davidson Moyers, and on-camera interviewer the feature documentary is in limited theatrical release prior to a PBS broadcast in the fall. “Amazing grace, How sweet the sound, That saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, But now I’m found, Was blind, But now I see.” “It’s just a good song wrote like it’s supposed to be wrote,” explains a white Baptist who performs it with the rest of his rural community at the Sunday Sing in Holly Springs, Georgia. That is about as perceptive as anything else said about “Amazing Grace” throughout the film. Amazing Grace is most appealing when it eavesdrops on performances of the versatile hymn by very different singers in very different settings. When, at Steven Kellman is a professor of comparative literature at the University of Texas at San Antonio. the prompting of earnest Moyers, musicians are tempted into analyzing its mesmerizing effect, they are often as profound as the athlete who attributes his team’s victory to its willingness to give 110 percent. “It’s more than a song,” declares Jessye Norman, who is most worth listening to when she sticks to the song, in extreme closeup, on the stage of Manhattan Center. Judy Collins also sings it, in St. Paul’s Chapel of Columbia University, where she recorded it for her 1970 hit single. “There is a song with no guile,” she says of the piece that helped her contend with alcoholism. “It frees the spirit,” explains Johnny Cash, who performs “Amazing Grace” at Huntsville, where even the lifers are reduced to tears by its heartfelt lyrics and melody. “It was written from the soul,” contends gospel singer Marion Williams, who performs three renditions of “Amazing Grace” for us. In point of fact, “Amazing Grace” was written between 1760 and 1770 by John Newton, a retired English sea captain. Amazing Grace keeps returning to the irony that the song has become a staple of AfricanAmerican culture though it was created by a ruthless slave trader, as though the history of a musical piece itself demonstrates the operations of amazing grace. Newton turned to God during a storm over the Atlantic and to the abolition movement after his retirement from sailing. The voice of Jeremy Irons reads from Newton’s diary as the camera visits his old haunts, in England, Africa, and the Caribbean. His is the least engaging voice in the film. Amazing Grace works best as an adult specimen of music video, a visual and aural record of interpretations by a wide variety of talented singers. Jean Ritchie intoning, “Amazing Grace” at the grave of a kinsman in Kentucky cannot be confused with a later sequence of the Boys Choir of Harlem touring the song in Japan. Amazing Grace is an experiment in ethnomusicology, and one can imagine applying the same treatment to any number of other traditional songs; take, for example, “Michael, Row the Boat Ashore,” and trace it as far back and as widely as possible. However, except for Norman’s offhand comment that she likes to imagine its origins in Africa, Amazing Grace makes no effort to pin down the source of the melody Newton used. And, except for an excerpt from a recording by the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards, all of the performers of this English song black and white, rich and poor, old and young are American. As a pious interviewer, Moyers makes much of the complex effects produced by a very simple song. But the very simplicity of “Amazing Grace” makes much of the oncamera commentary seem impertinent. The film appears forever tempted to follow a digression into another film; the portrait of a Harlem Boys Choir boy becomes most intriguing when most tangential to the topic at hand. In Ozark, Alabama, interviewing ebullient 91-year-old Dewey Williams, the grandson of slaves and a master of shape note singing, Moyers wants to know: “How does a man live a life of joy?” Williams’s answer “You can’t be poor or rich” seems less convincing than his spirited performance of “Amazing Grace.” “God, I love to sell!” exclaims. Joey O’Brien, not so much to the Supreme Being 20 JUNE 1, 1990