Strange Seventies Textbooks: Mixed Bag and Montage

Strange Seventies Textbooks

In the early 70s there was a push to reboot the ‘composition’ textbooks intended for introductory English classes in colleges and universities. According to faculty in Ed Schools and English departments, textbooks needed to move away from the staid presentation of short stories, poems, and play and novel excerpts found in traditional composition books, into a ‘multi media’ or 'mixed media' format that was modern, cutting-edge, and resonated with the Younger Generation.

According to an abstruse 2019 doctoral dissertation by Nidhi Rajkumar, two exemplars of the multimedia textbook were ‘Montage: Investigations in Language’, by William Sparke and Clarke McKowen, and ‘Mixed Bag: Artifacts from the Contemporary Culture’ by Helene Hutchinson. Both titles were released in 1970.

‘Mixed Bag’ is a compilation of stories, poems, song lyrics, and essays, with an emphasis on material issued in the 1950s and 1960s. Visual media is represented by advertisements, paintings, photographs, and graphic art, such as cartoons and comics.

The chapters are organized around the ‘heavy’ themes of Family, Violence, Race, Death, Religion and……………TIGERS ?!

Groovy !

'Mixed Mag' is markedly superior to 'Montage', which is.......utterly incoherent. The authors of 'Montage' plainly were carried away by the lure of presenting mixed-media formatting; they Overdosed on it, in fact.

Typesetting and printing 'Montage' must have been a nightmare; in 1970 there was no such thing as desktop publishing, no digital typesetting, no Adobe InDesign, no Photoshop. Each page was its own collage, painstakingly assembled by hand and photographed. All 495 pages.

Reading the content in ‘Mixed Bag’ and to some extent, 'Montage', is to travel back in time more than 50 years, to era of political and cultural ferment. Racial conflict, the Vietnam War, the Generation Gap, and (in an oblique way) the Sexual Revolution. 

The presented material is, by 21st century standards, provocative, even offensive. Indeed, some of the material in 'Mixed Bag' likely would get it banned from contemporary classrooms and lead to the suspension or dismissal of course instructors………..but things were a little different, back in 1970.

Book Review: Into Deepest Space

Book Review: 'Into Deepest Space' by Fred Hoyle and Geoffrey Hoyle

3 / 5 Stars

Fifty (!) years ago, in the summer of 1974, I joined the Science Fiction Book Club. My selections included 'Again, Dangerous Visions', and 'The Ice People', by Rene Barjavel. Another of the books I wound up getting was 'Into Deepest Space', by Fred and Geoffrey Hoyle. 

How well does the novel come across when re-read five decades later ?

Well......

'Into Deepest Space' was published by Harper / SFBC in hardcover in September, 1974. A mass-market paperback edition was released in November, 1975 by Signet, with the cover artist uncredited.

'Deepest' is a sequel to the 1969 novel 'Rockets in Ursa Major', but it's not really mandatory to have read 'Rockets' in order to understand the background of 'Deepest.'

As 'Deepest' opens, lead character Dick Warboys, and his alien friends from Ursa Major, Alcyone, Betelgeuse, and Rigel, are enjoying their victory over the malevolent Yela (who, as detailed in 'Rockets', were prevented from destroying the Earth by a stratagem administered by Warboys). However, the Ursa Major crew's celebration quickly is ended by the discovery that a massive cloud of hydrogen is entering the solar system. It appears the cloud is the result of an action by the Yela; should the cloud impinge upon the atmosphere of Earth, it will trigger a catastrophic explosion that will end all life on the planet.

So it's back to dealing with the Yela, and Warboys and his friends board the Ursa Major vessel, and join up with a hastily assembled armada of Terran warships for a rendezvous near Jupiter. The fleet will then speed to a confrontation with the Yela. It seems at this point in the narrative that 'Deepest' is going to unfold as a traditional 'spacewar' novel.

However, barely a quarter into the novel, the plot undergoes a considerable shift, focusing on the travails of the ship carrying Warboys and friends consequent to an encounter with a Yela vessel. There is much exposition on the mechanics of space travel, with drama generated from the need for the Ursa Major crew to come up with solutions to various engineering dilemmas, such as the loss of power, malfunctioning navigational arrays, broken intercoms,  uncooperative airlocks and hatches, and ship-to-ship combat with the Yela. 

Inevitably with this type of sidereal, 'hard' science fiction narrative, things get rather boring, for the realism permeating the book doesn't bring with it much excitement.

Where 'Deepest' redeems itself is in the closing chapters. I won't disclose spoilers, save to say that the Ursa Major ship does indeed travel into Deepest Space......and beyond. The book's ending brings with it a 'cosmic' revelation that strains credulity quite a bit, but at the same time, is in keeping with the Hoyle's intent of giving the novel an educative quality.

The verdict ? 'Into Deepest Space' deserves commendation for being an unashamedly hard sci-fi novel during the apogee of the New Wave movement, and for its efforts to present concepts of astrophysics and space travel to intellectually inclined laymen. Thus, I am assigning it a rating of Three Stars. 

Penthouse June 1974

Penthouse magazine
June 1974

June, 1974, and the single at the top of the Billboard Hot 100 chart is 'Billy, Don't Be A Hero' by Bo Donaldson and the Heywoods. Cool ! I remember hearing it on the little yellow AM transistor radio we had, back in that Summer of '74.......... 

Let's dip into the pages of the June issue of Penthouse, the cover of which showcases the delectable ladies vying for the Pet of the Year honor.

The ads in this issue are eclectic. Who remembers Schlitz brand beer ?! It was considered a working man's beer, back in '74. Schlitz, Ballantine, Pabst.......they all were pretty much birds of a feather. Always, much preferable to Budweiser.

Buried in the back of the magazine is a small ad for something called the 'National Vasectomy Club' ?! Strange stuff, back in the mid-70s........

As for the Pet of the Year contestants, in my opinion, all of the ladies are genuine contenders. It's a shame the photos in the magazine are underexposed; trying to correct for display on a modern-day PC monitor can be problematic.

The non-nudie content in the June issue is underwhelming. An interview with heavyweight champ Muhammed Ali focuses on his training camp, his poetry, and the Nation of Islam. Yawn.

Fortunately, one of the portfolios in the June issue, titled 'Georgia Girl', is an outstanding example of the soft focus, David Hamilton-inspired photography in which Penthouse specialized. Lensed by Earl Miller, our Georgia girl - 'Deborah Clearbranch' - looks exceptional when posed against the various backdrops.

Pretty girls, and good times with Schlitz beer, all from fifty years ago........!

At Wonder Book and Video Gaithersburg

At Wonder Book and Video Gaithersburg

Last month, while returning from a weekend trip to Baltimore, I decided to make a detour to the Wonder Book and Video store at 15976 Shady Grove Road in Gaithersburg. I hadn't been there in 15 (?) or so years, so I was overdue for a visit.

This is the smallest Wonder Book and Video store, and not an easy one to find. It's located in the 'Shady Grove Center' plaza on Shady Grove Road. You have to turn off Shady Grove Road into an alley that runs alongside a Sherwin-Williams paint store, and ends up behind Shady Grove Self-Storage (photo below).

Looking up the alley from Wonder Book, towards the plaza entrance at Shady Grove Road

There is a large selection of CDs and vinyl in this store. You can spend a couple of hours (if not longer) poring over the inventory.

The aisles are pretty cramped; if claustrophobia is a problem for you, then preferentially you may want to visit the Hagerstown and Frederick outlets.

There is the usual large selection of paperbacks. On the day I visited, they had just gotten in a sizeable number of Very Good / Like New DAW books, and vintage sci-fi titles, all on display up front.

The older sci-fi paperbacks, back in the shelving, tend to be in Acceptable and Good condition. There also are some hardbound sci-fi and fantasy titles shelved in the back, too. And pinned to the ends of the shelves are vintage magazines and digests.

As is the case for the Hagerstown and Frederick stores, there are sections for westerns, classics, general fiction, and horror.

I came away from my visit with some nice old school DAW books and a Six-Gun Samurai western novel, at prices ranging from $4 to $8 (below).

One caveat about the Gaithersburg Wonder Book and Video: Shady Grove Road, even on a weekday afternoon, is heavily trafficked, and on the weekends, it's a mess. Trying to get into and out of the plaza where the store is located is not going to be for the faint of heart, whether you are coming from the east or the west. Stuff to think about prior to visiting !