The Unabomber Library

On her visits, my daughter Cynthia always introduces me to the work of some intriguing artist or writer. Last year she introduced me to visual artist-photographer and writer Moyra Davey who has written extensively about books and the book experience. Last weekend she talked about the photographs of documentary filmmaker James Benning, who is working on recreating the famous cabins of Henry David Thoreau and Unabomber Ted Kaczynski. Included in the collection is a photo of a small shelf hung about eye-level and represents Kaczynski’s library of about 20 books.  

 It is unclear to me whether these are books Benning thought Kaczynski might have owned or whether it was a re-creation of Kaczynski’s actual library. Either way, it includes the following titles and authors (at least the ones that I can make out from the photo):

•  Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi
• Vaslav Nijinsky,  The Diary of Vaslav Nijinsky
• Jean Paul Sartre, (title unrecognizable)
• Robert Starkie, Raggle-Taggle: Adventures with a Fiddle in Hungary and Roumania
• Charles Darwin, The Origin of the Species
• Bertrand Russell, Mysticism & Logic
• E.F. Schumacher, Small is Beautiful
• Theodore Roszak, The Making of a Counter Culture

P.S. #1 I might post the photograph later, but not unless I obtain proper permissions,

P.S. #2  There is another connection between Benning and Atlanta via Hank Aaron. See comments.

Comments

[Murray Browne]

As mentioned in the post, Benning is also a filmmaker, which includes a 1983 work entitled AMERICAN DREAMS that centered around Atlanta/Milwaukee Brave Henry Aaron. Here's a description from a web site (http://www.canyoncinema.com/B/Benning.html)that sells his work:

American Dreams

"... A description of the form of AMERICAN DREAMS is deceptively simple: along a narrow border at the bottom of the screen a handwritten transcription of Arthur Bremer's diary crawls from right to left; a series of chronological baseball cards from the career of Hank Aaron are shown in a steady cadence, first the front (usually a photo), then the reverse side (batting statistics, etc.). Finally, overtitles indicate by year the sources of the soundtrack's fragmentary speeches and songs. ... AMERICAN DREAMS is far from unrestricted in its horizons. A clear 'sense of the ending' is limited by two inevitable acts: Bremer will shoot Wallace; Aaron will break Babe Ruth's record. As a work energized by an autobiographical impulse, Benning nonetheless hides himself in the shadows of time. It isn't necessary to know that Bremer was Benning's neighbor in Milwaukee or that the filmmaker counts among his greatest achievements pitching batting practice to the Milwaukee Braves in 1962. As externally shaped and motivated as it appears to be, AMERICAN DREAMS is marked by a dark and self-conscious meeting of personal and public desires ...." - Paul Arthur, The Appearance of History in Recent Avant-Garde Film