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Greg Olson, author of David Lynch: Beautiful Dark, the essential
book on Lynch’s life and art, has resided in the Twin Peaks
region of the Northwest for decades, and David Lynch spent youthful
years in the Northwest; both of their fathers were woodsmen. Lynch
believes that the world hums with spirituality, and over a
thirty-year span Lynch and Mark Frost created forty-eight hours of
Twin Peaks TV and film, hypnotic cinematic music immersed in the
depths and divine heights of human nature, an artistic song of the
forest, America, the world, the cosmos. David Lynch is an
international icon of visionary artistic innovation, humanistic
thought and philanthropy, and spiritual exploration, and Twin
Peaks: The Return is his magnum opus, a mytho-poetic summation of
his deepest beliefs and concerns. Author Olson, in his
characteristically intimate and personal way, traces the Twin Peaks
currents of Lynch’s emotional-visceral storytelling, themes,
imagery and sound: the way the artist and viewer share an
electrified circuit of mystery and understanding.
For nearly 40 years, David Lynch's works have enthralled,
mystified, and provoked viewers. Lynch's films delve into the
subjective consciousness of his characters to reveal both the
depraved darkness and luminous spirituality of human nature. From
his experimental shorts of the 1960s to feature films like
Eraserhead, The Elephant Man, Blue Velvet, Mulholland Drive, and
INLAND EMPIRE, Lynch has pushed the boundaries of cinematic
storytelling. In David Lynch: Beautiful Dark, author Greg Olson
explores the surreal intricacies of the director's unique visual
and visceral style not only in his full-length films but also his
early forays into painting and short films, as well as his
television landmark, Twin Peaks. This in-depth exploration is the
first full-length work to analyze the intimate symbiosis between
Lynch's life experience and artistic expressions: from the
small-town child to the teenage painter to the 60-year-old Internet
and digital media experimenter. To fully delineate the director's
life and art, Olson received unprecedented participation from
Lynch, his parents, siblings, old school friends, romantic
partners, children, and decades of professional colleagues, as well
as on-set access to the director during the production of Twin
Peaks: Fire Walk with Me. Throughout this study, Olson provides
thorough analyses of the filmmaker's works as Lynch conceived,
crafted, and completed them. Consequently, David Lynch: Beautiful
Dark is the definitive study of one of the most influential and
idiosyncratic directors of the last four decades.
For nearly 40 years, David Lynch's works have enthralled,
mystified, and provoked viewers. Lynch's films delve into the
subjective consciousness of his characters to reveal both the
depraved darkness and luminous spirituality of human nature. From
his experimental shorts of the 1960s to feature films like
Eraserhead, The Elephant Man, Blue Velvet, Mulholland Drive, and
INLAND EMPIRE, Lynch has pushed the boundaries of cinematic
storytelling. In David Lynch: Beautiful Dark, author Greg Olson
explores the surreal intricacies of the director's unique visual
and visceral style not only in his full-length films but also his
early forays into painting and short films, as well as his
television landmark, Twin Peaks. This in-depth exploration is the
first full-length work to analyze the intimate symbiosis between
Lynch's life experience and artistic expressions: from the
small-town child to the teenage painter to the 60-year-old Internet
and digital media experimenter. To fully delineate the director's
life and art, Olson received unprecedented participation from
Lynch, his parents, siblings, old school friends, romantic
partners, children, and decades of professional colleagues, as well
as on-set access to the director during the production of Twin
Peaks: Fire Walk with Me. Throughout this study, Olson provides
thorough analyses of the filmmaker's works as Lynch conceived,
crafted, and completed them. Consequently, David Lynch: Beautiful
Dark is the definitive study of one of the most influential and
idiosyncratic directors of the last four decades.
In Indigenous Missourians: Ancient Societies to the Present,
historian Greg Olson argues that the history of Indigenous people
in present-day Missouri is far more nuanced, complex, and vibrant
than the often-told tragic stories of conflict with white settlers
and forced Indian removal would lead us to believe. In this
path-breaking narrative, Olson presents the Show Me State’s
Indigenous past as one spanning twelve millennia of Native
presence, resilience, and evolution. While previous Missouri
histories have tended to include Indigenous people only during
periods when they constituted a threat to the state’s white
settlement, Olson shows us the continuous presence of Native people
that lasts up to the present day. Beginning thousands of years
before the state of Missouri existed, Olson recounts how centuries
of inventiveness and adaptability enabled Native people to create
innovations in pottery, agriculture, architecture, weaponry, and
intertribal diplomacy. Technological advances made it possible for
Native people to build Cahokia, one of the largest cities on the
planet during the eleventh century. Located just across the
Mississippi River from present-day St. Louis, Cahokia was an
amazing example of centralized power and technological
know-how.Olson also shows how the resilience of Indigenous people
like the Osages allowed them to thrive as fur traders in the face
of French and Spanish colonization. Even as settler colonialists
waged an all-out policy of cultural genocide against them, Native
people persevered. Though the state of Missouri claimed to have
forced Indigenous people from its borders after the 1830s, Olson
uses U.S. census records and government rolls from the allotment
period to show that thousands remained, often passing as blacks or
whites. Removed from their tribal communities, these Indigenous
Missourians came together to create intertribal social networks to
celebrate Native culture in new ways. In the end, Olson argues
that, with a current population of 27,000 Indigenous people,
Missouri remains a part of Indian Country and that Indigenous
history is Missouri History.
In 1837 the Ioways, an Indigenous people who had called most of
present-day Iowa and Missouri home, were suddenly bound by the
Treaty of 1836 with the U.S. federal government to restrict
themselves to a two-hundred-square-mile parcel of land west of the
Missouri River. Forcibly removed to the newly created Great Nemaha
Agency, the Ioway men, women, and children, numbering nearly a
thousand, were promised that through hard work and discipline they
could enter mainstream American society. All that was required was
that they give up everything that made them Ioway. In Ioway Life,
Greg Olson provides the first detailed account of how the tribe met
this challenge during the first two decades of the agency's
existence. Within the Great Nemaha Agency's boundaries, the Ioways
lived alongside the U.S. Indian agent, other government employees,
and Presbyterian missionaries. These outside forces sought to
manipulate every aspect of the Ioways' daily life, from their
manner of dress and housing to the way they planted crops and
expressed themselves spiritually. In the face of the white
reformers' contradictory assumptions - that Indians could
assimilate into the American mainstream, and that they lacked the
mental and moral wherewithal to transform - the Ioways became adept
at accepting necessary changes while refusing religious and
cultural conversion. Nonetheless, as Olson's work reveals, agents
and missionaries managed to plant seeds of colonialism that would
make the Ioways susceptible to greater government influence later
on - in particular, by reducing their self-sufficiency and
undermining their traditional structure of leadership. Ioway Life
offers a complex and nuanced picture of the Ioways' efforts to
retain their tribal identity within the constrictive boundaries of
the Great Nemaha Agency. Drawing on diaries, newspapers, and
correspondence from the agency's files and Presbyterian archives,
Olson offers a compelling case study in U.S. colonialism and
Indigenous resistance.
Folklorist Wayland Hand once called Mary Alicia Owen 'the most
famous American Woman Folklorist of her time.' Drawing on primary
sources, such as maps, census records, court documents, personal
letters and periodicals, and the scholarship of others who have
analyzed various components of Owen's multifaceted career,
historian Greg Olson offers the most complete account of her life
and work to date. He also offers a critical look at some of the
short stories Owen penned, sometimes under the name Julia Scott,
and discusses how the experience she gained as a fiction writer
helped lead her to a successful career in folklore. Olson begins
with an in-depth look at St. Joseph, Missouri, the place where Owen
lived most of her life. He explores the role that her grandparents
and parents had in transforming the small trading village into one
of the American West's most exciting boomtowns. He also examines
the family's position of affluence and the effect that the
devastation of the Civil War had on their family life and their
standing within the community. He describes the interaction of Owen
with her two younger sisters, both of whom had interesting and, for
women of the time, unconventional careers. Olson analyzes many of
the nineteenth-century theories, stereotypes, and popular beliefs
that influenced the work of Owen and many of her peers. By taking a
cross-disciplinary look at her works of fiction, poetry, folklore,
history, and anthropology, this volume sheds new light on elements
of Owen's career that have not previously been discussed in print.
Examples of the romance stories that Owen wrote for popular
magazines in the 1880's are identified and examined in the context
of the time in which Owen wrote them. This groundbreaking biography
shows that Owen was more than just a folklorist - she was a
nineteenth-century woman of many contradictions. She was an
independent woman of many interests who possessed a keen intellect
and a genuine interest in people and their stories. Specialists in
folklore, anthropology, women's studies, local and regional
history, and Missouriana will find much to like in this thoroughly
researched study.
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