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Also this issue: Puh-leeze Don't Squeeze the Artwork! Artsbeat Denyce Graves Hands Across Veronica Hillary Rodham Clinton "Stuffing Birds, Pressing Plants, Shaping Knowledge: Natural History in North America 1730-1860," There's Something About Mary These Mortal Coils |
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June 19-25, 2003
artpicks
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After tucking into the ruinous E. coli-laced world of dangerous snacks with Fast Food Nation, Atlantic Monthly correspondent and investigating author Eric Schlosser tucks into the meal that is Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs, and Cheap Labor in the American Black Market (Houghton Mifflin) with equally wry, savage aplomb. Schlosser roots through the nitty-gritty of America's greens and grains to unearth the dirt about the triangular turkey shoot that is migrant labor, marijuana and porn. Rather than take on the broad scale of each megasubject, the incisive Schlosser -- an analyst who never moralizes or objectifies; an opinionated writer with facts at his fingertips and thoroughly reasoned explanations -- goes micro, honing in on several participants like a man with a cheap Polaroid looking to capture pores, not just faces. Like Chuck Close's schematic portraits, Schlosser's work seems to find the tic within the tic of each of his interviewees. (Recently deceased porn king Reuben Sturman is particularly compelling, with his history of physical evasiveness but willingness to blab.) You can't put it down or look away. For all his takes on others, Schlosser's own account of farming through strawberry fields forever is more stark and psychedelic than the song -- a harrowing look at the big and small of cheap labor and the degradation it brings. Smoke it if you've got the nerve.
Eric Schlosser, Thu., June 19, 7 p.m., free, Free Library of Philadelphia, 1901 Vine St., 215-567-4341.
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