![]() ![]() Infants and children of any and all religious backgrounds-atheistic, agnostic, non-Christian, or Christian-enter heaven and grow up to young adult age after death, while adults maintain or regain a state of healthful youth. These spirits end up either in heaven or in hell depending upon the lives they have led and the choices they have made on earth. He counters certain traditional views by maintaining that angels (and devils) are not a separately created genderless race but people (both male and female) who once lived in the physical world. In it he describes heaven, hell, and the world of spirits that lies between them, and he recounts in detail the process of passing from life to afterlife, as well as the subsequent experiences of the soul. He has been president of the American Folklore Society, editor of Journal of American Folklore, and member and chair of the board of trustees of the American Folklife Center in the Library of Congress.Heaven and Hell is Swedenborg’s most popular book and his fullest report of his experiences in the other world. The French government appointed him Chevalier in the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 2002 and Chevalier in the Ordre national du Mérite in 2012. He has been the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, was nominated for a Grammy Award, and was named an Associate Member of the Folklore Fellows by the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters. In 2018, Aperture Magazine published a profile on his prison photography, by Brian Wallis, “Bruce Jackson: On the Inside.” In collaboration with SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor Diane Christian, he has directed and produced five documentary films and written three books. New York Times theater critic Ben Brantley named it one of the year’s ten best New York theatrical presentations. In 2017, New York’s celebrated experimental theater company, The Wooster Group, premiered a play based on his recordings of Afro-American folklore in Texas prisons, The B-Side. His photographs have been widely exhibited. He is author or editor of 40 books, among which are Wake Up Dead Man: Afro-American Worksongs from Texas Prisons (Harvard, 1972), “Get Your Ass in the Water and Swim Like Me”: Narrative Poetry from Black Oral Tradition (Harvard, 1974), The Story is True: The Art and Meaning of Telling Stories (Temple, 2007) and Inside the Wire: Photographs from Texas and Arkansas Prisons (Texas, 2013). He is currently SUNY Distinguished Professor and James Agee Professor of American Culture at University at Buffalo. William Ferris, The South in Color: A Visual Journalīruce Jackson is an American writer, folklorist, documentary filmmaker, and photographer. Things Seen establishes Bruce Jackson as an American treasure. At the age of 82, Jackson recalls his life in prose that is as richly detailed, as are his photographs. ![]() And we meet his friends–poets Robert Creeley, John Berryman, and Robert Lowell, folklorists Alan Lomax and Pete Seeger, photographer Walker Evans, political activists William Kunstler and Herbert X. We follow his travels to Mallorca, France, Italy, Alaska, to Texas prisons and Attica. Jackson’s graphic prose and powerful photographs capture his childhood in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn with Jewish grandmothers who spoke German, Yiddish, Russian, and Polish. Things Seen unveils Bruce Jackson’s extraordinary career as a writer, photographer, and filmmaker. Jackson’s stories about his companions remind me of that old Beat dream of a book as good as a friend. Though I should really find a mot from Jackson’s friend Foucault who’s a live presence in Places, along with Robert Lowell, Pete Seeger, Herbert X, Bill Kunstler, Alan Lomax, et al. Not because he’s a con man out to be on good terms with anyone, but because he means to imagine the real. This politically engaged, ex-Marine aesthete has hung tight with Harvard fellows and Houston DEA agents. Places is a testament to Jackson’s matchless variousness. The things Jackson’s heard and seen include the folk revival and cinephilia, The Grolier and Attica. Places: Things Heard, Things Seen amounts to an alt left history of American culture since the 50s. ![]() His true tales work on their own-Cue reader response: “Bruce Jackson, the great story guy (living and telling) does it again”-but they take on new weight when taken together. This editor has been poaching Bruce Jackson’s memories for ages. ![]()
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