The Projectionist's Lending Library

Available Episodes

5 of 38

04.07 The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
The stars of the West are all larger than life: Wyatt Earp, Wild BillHickock, Billy the Kid. Among the brightest of these stars is Jesse James, an outlaw who became a legend in his own lifetime—and, through his death, ascended into the pantheon. But, of course, Jesse James was a man, and not a particularly good one; and his murderer, Robert Ford, was also a man. Their story is much less one of clashing titans and more one of petty squabbles, ambition, and greed. Today, on The Projectionist’s Lending Library, we look into Ron Hansen’s The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. This novel blends history and fiction to reach something like what that epic—that all-too-human—confrontation must have been like. It’s the story of the American West, the story of the American people—butultimately it’s the story of two men and their tragic confrontation. Jesse James was a legend, of course—but he was a man. And so was his assassin.
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04.06 Ruthanne Lum McCunn and THOUSAND PIECES OF GOLD (1981/1991)
In 1872, Polly Bemis came to America. She did not come, as so many have, out of hope of beginning a new life; she was forced here, sold into slavery (as the story goes) to a man named Hong King. One she arrived, however, she set about building a life for herself almost in spite of the men around her: she gained her freedom, she married Charlie Bemis, she settled down. These are details in the life of a single woman who has become famous in her adopted home-state of Idaho. Polly’s life was unique, and yet in some ways it reflected the lives of many other women who made the same journey. Today, on the Projectionist’s Lending Library, we read Thousand Pieces of Gold by Ruthanne Lum McCunn and we learn about this extraordinary woman who became a legend.Ruthanne Lum McCunn's Website
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04.05 Edna Ferber and GIANT--PART TWO
This is part two of a two-part episode on Edna Ferber's GIANT (1952) and the 1956 film adaptation of it starring Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson, and James Dean. In part two, Erik and Nathanael discuss the film, its historical significance, and its contemporary resonance, as well as its notoriety as James Dean's last film.
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04.05 Edna Ferber and GIANT--PART ONE
PART ONE OF TWO Please note that we had minor technical issues with recording on these episodes. We have to the best of our ability edited around them. They say everything’s bigger in Texas—the land, the sky, thehair, the ambitions, the hopes, the fears…. GIANT is a novel about that bigness, a novel about the way that immensity can overwhelm a person…. Virginian Leslie Benedict—nee Lynton—follows herrancher husband out West to begin a new life on the range. Once there, she encounters a kind of life she has never experienced among a kind of people she never dreamed existed. She struggles against insularity, bigotry, and sexism. Make no mistake—GIANT is her novel.It’s also a novel of America, and that is partly what we will discuss in the following episodes. For, whatever problems Texas may have at midcentury with race and class and gender, these are problems that can be seen writ large in the nation itself. And so here we are, in the first of a two-part series here on THE PROJECTIONIST’S LENDING LIBRARY, with Edna Ferber’s GIANT.
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04.01 Alan Le May, John Ford, and THE SEARCHERS (1954/1956)
In 1893, Frederick Jackson Turner concluded his speech on “TheSignificance of the Frontier in American History” with these words:“What the Mediterranean Sea was to the Greeks, breaking the bond of custom, offering new experiences, calling out new institutions and activities, that, and more, the ever retreating frontier has been to the United States directly, and tothe nations of Europe more remotely. And now, four centuries from the discovery of America, at the end of a hundred years of life under the Constitution, the frontier has gone, and with its going has closed the first period of American history.”This season on the Projectionist’s Lending Library we turn our eyes westward and look at a definitively American genre—the Western. For America, the Western is our Iliad, our Odyssey. It’s the founding myth to which we look in order to derive meaning for ourselves. Here all the conflicts central to literature and human existence play out: man versus man, man versus nature, man versus himself. And in it, too, are all the complexities and contradictions of America itself: kindness, bravery, hope—anger, murder, genocide.And how better to begin such a season than by looking at the prototypical director of Westerns, John Ford, working with his recurring star, John Wayne.Today on The Projectionist’s Lending Library, it’s The Searchers.Ford adapts a novel by Alan Le May about two men searching for a girl captured by a band of Comanche in post-Civil War Texas. Their quest is a long one, its outcome ambiguous and unforgiving as the landscape they travel. At the end of both the novel and the movie we are left with a question: who really triumphed, and at what cost? Welcome as we explore these questions and more in the inaugural episode of our new season, all about that most American of myths—the Western.For more about The Searchers, check out Glenn Frankel's The Searchers: The Making of an American Legend.
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