‘Shortly before Catcher's July 1951 publication date, Salinger demanded that there be no publicity for the book whatsoever, including review copies. In the course of settling him down, Angus Cameron, the top editor at Little, Brown, delivered one of the better lines in the history of literary hand-holding: "Do you want this book published or just printed?" ’
— Troy Patterson, ‘There are Two Salingers’, from Slate Magazine
Friday, January 29, 2010
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Sebald, the Holocaust, and the Righteous West
‘Nevertheless, the message I take from Sebald’s works and his scrupulous posture in relation to the remembrance of the Holocaust’s victims, is that such events, far from ensuring a “Legacy of Hope” (the theme of this year’s [Holocaust Memorial] Day), shore up a conception of history, of humanity, and of civilization that depends on a view of the Holocaust as an exceptional and unprecedented mass murder. It is not just in terms of the Zionist eschatology that the Holocaust is deployed as a symbolic event; we also require it as a confirmation of our own righteousness in the democratic and industrialized West.’
— from Will Self's essay on W.G. Sebald, reprinted in The Times (London)
What we should remember on this day, January 27, the memorial of the Russian liberation of Auschwitz, is that genocides had happened before the Holocaust, and have happened since; that this is very much a part of human history, and very much within our capacity. We must learn to be better than our nature for it not to happen again. We must not deny that it is in every one of us.
— from Will Self's essay on W.G. Sebald, reprinted in The Times (London)
What we should remember on this day, January 27, the memorial of the Russian liberation of Auschwitz, is that genocides had happened before the Holocaust, and have happened since; that this is very much a part of human history, and very much within our capacity. We must learn to be better than our nature for it not to happen again. We must not deny that it is in every one of us.
On Gender and Quality
A post at The Poetry Foundation blog directed me to Jessica Smith's blog, Women in Poetry (Again). There Jessica writes, 'First of all, most of the great poets writing today are women. I am not entirely sure why this is, but I think it is partly because although there is something to be said for experimentation and poetry as an art of using words for things other than self-expression, the work that resonates with me both says things and a new way and has something new to say. As I have said before, Cage’s “I have nothing to say and I’m saying it and that’s poetry as I need it” is not poetry as I need it. I still need a book that I want to keep on my bedside table. Now, I am not an ordinary person in that the books I want to keep by my bedside table are things like Susan Howe’s Singularities and Alice Notley’s Descent of Alette. I like and appreciate great technical virtuosity like Christian Bok’s Eunoia, but I do not feel the visceral need to return to its passages any more than I feel the need to return to the work of most of the male Language poets (but I feel entirely different about Hejinian, Scalapino) or post-Language poets (again, I feel differently when it’s Spahr). I don’t think this is simply because I’m a woman, because I know men who feel the same way. Perhaps because women were so long subjected to anonymity, a female experience of the world is still novel. Perhaps because women are still oppressed, the way they think and express themselves is still radical.'
To which I responded, at the Poetry Foundation blog:
‘I got into an enormous amount of trouble here before for discussing just this issue, but I am a glutton apparently.
‘To say that “most of the great poets writing today are women” is first to assume that there are a large number of poets out there who could be considered “great,” even in the casual sense of being “very good” — I think that most would disagree with this. I certainly do. There are many, many poets writing today, writing mostly poor or mediocre verse; although they do sometimes they write a good poem. Sometimes they write many poems with admirably good ideas or intentions behind them. Few poets of any gender or background (or time period) are able to write poetry well on any consistent basis.
‘Explaining the quality of a body of work via the relative novelty of that poet’s socio-economic experience; well, this both does disservice to the tradition of excellent women writers in American letters, and makes me wonder where we will be in fifty years: perhaps only trans-gender Afro-Polynesian albino langpo poets will have a novel enough experience to be considered “great”? Kidding, kidding — I kid because I love.
‘Spahr, as Jessica points out, is a very good poet whose association as post-LangPo I think really fail to assist readers to or with her work: the verse is more than the beauty of language-constuctions, of language sans meaning as music; they are more directed and the experience of reading more shaped and evocative by her choices. Anyhow. Beside the point. D.A. Powell is also very good. As is Geoffrey Hill. As is Mark Levine. But most of the very good or “Great” poets are dead, as is also always the case.
‘There’s no magic of experience that makes a good poet is what I’d like to get at, without seeming to dismiss either the unique experience of women in our culture or that there are a few good women poets writing today. There are. They are every bit as good as the very good male poets writing today. Each of them arrived at their talent individually; each became a good poet through much labor. We should not devalue these facts by attributing quality to gender or class or some other marginalization or difficulty or characteristic.’
To which I responded, at the Poetry Foundation blog:
‘I got into an enormous amount of trouble here before for discussing just this issue, but I am a glutton apparently.
‘To say that “most of the great poets writing today are women” is first to assume that there are a large number of poets out there who could be considered “great,” even in the casual sense of being “very good” — I think that most would disagree with this. I certainly do. There are many, many poets writing today, writing mostly poor or mediocre verse; although they do sometimes they write a good poem. Sometimes they write many poems with admirably good ideas or intentions behind them. Few poets of any gender or background (or time period) are able to write poetry well on any consistent basis.
‘Explaining the quality of a body of work via the relative novelty of that poet’s socio-economic experience; well, this both does disservice to the tradition of excellent women writers in American letters, and makes me wonder where we will be in fifty years: perhaps only trans-gender Afro-Polynesian albino langpo poets will have a novel enough experience to be considered “great”? Kidding, kidding — I kid because I love.
‘Spahr, as Jessica points out, is a very good poet whose association as post-LangPo I think really fail to assist readers to or with her work: the verse is more than the beauty of language-constuctions, of language sans meaning as music; they are more directed and the experience of reading more shaped and evocative by her choices. Anyhow. Beside the point. D.A. Powell is also very good. As is Geoffrey Hill. As is Mark Levine. But most of the very good or “Great” poets are dead, as is also always the case.
‘There’s no magic of experience that makes a good poet is what I’d like to get at, without seeming to dismiss either the unique experience of women in our culture or that there are a few good women poets writing today. There are. They are every bit as good as the very good male poets writing today. Each of them arrived at their talent individually; each became a good poet through much labor. We should not devalue these facts by attributing quality to gender or class or some other marginalization or difficulty or characteristic.’
Nota Bene: Josef Albers
“Tones appear placed and directed predominantly in time from before to now to later.
Their juxtaposition in a musical composition is perceived
within a prescribed sequence only. Vertically, so to say,
1 tone, or several simultaneously,
sound for a varying but restricted length of time.
Horizontally, the tones follow each other,
perhaps not in a straight line, but of necessity in a prescribed order
and only in 1 direction — forward.
Tones heard earlier fade, and those farther back disappear, vanish.
We do not hear them backward.”
— Josef Albers, Interaction of Color: Revised and Expanded Edition (Yale)
Their juxtaposition in a musical composition is perceived
within a prescribed sequence only. Vertically, so to say,
1 tone, or several simultaneously,
sound for a varying but restricted length of time.
Horizontally, the tones follow each other,
perhaps not in a straight line, but of necessity in a prescribed order
and only in 1 direction — forward.
Tones heard earlier fade, and those farther back disappear, vanish.
We do not hear them backward.”
— Josef Albers, Interaction of Color: Revised and Expanded Edition (Yale)
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
An Interview with Colm Tóibín
'Colm Tóibín has an extraordinary head. It looks as if it was sculpted by someone with enormous powers of expression, but fairly rudimentary chisel skills. In photographs, he can look stern, brooding. In the flesh, though, there’s a sprightliness to him, a mischief. People who know him talk about how he lights up a room with his presence. As he sits in an armchair in his house in Dublin, he hugs his chest and emits squawks of delighted laughter. This is after I’ve told him that a friend of mine – a woman — said that she found the sex scenes in his novel Brooklyn, winner of the Best Novel category in this year’s Costa Book Awards, entirely convincing “from a woman’s point of view”. Nothing especially odd about this – except that Tóibín is gay and had, he says, to do a certain amount of boning up beforehand. “I asked this woman friend a crucial question: 'What’s it like this first time?’ And she gave me this — this very graphic account of how it felt and I found that very useful. Once I’d got that, it wasn’t too hard.” '
— from the UK Telegraph
One wishes that Philip Roth would have the good sense to ask someone before the next time he writes about sex. Sheesh. Not being all about skulls and sex tho, the interview somehow makes its way to the subject of writing: ' “Here,” [Colm] says, “I’ll show you what I mean. . .” Tóibín proceeds to demonstrate what makes him such a good writer – and also, you suspect, an inspiring teacher. “For instance, you could write a sentence like: 'He hated his mother more in that moment than he had ever hated her before.’ But, alternatively, you could say: 'When his mother turned away from him, he looked out and he noticed that the branches of the tree were swaying. He held his eyes on it for a moment, and when he looked back she was staring at him.’ See? It doesn’t really matter who hates who anymore, but something has occurred. There’s something there that makes the reader shiver. All writing is a form of manipulation, of course, but you realise that a plain sentence can actually do so much.” '
— from the UK Telegraph
One wishes that Philip Roth would have the good sense to ask someone before the next time he writes about sex. Sheesh. Not being all about skulls and sex tho, the interview somehow makes its way to the subject of writing: ' “Here,” [Colm] says, “I’ll show you what I mean. . .” Tóibín proceeds to demonstrate what makes him such a good writer – and also, you suspect, an inspiring teacher. “For instance, you could write a sentence like: 'He hated his mother more in that moment than he had ever hated her before.’ But, alternatively, you could say: 'When his mother turned away from him, he looked out and he noticed that the branches of the tree were swaying. He held his eyes on it for a moment, and when he looked back she was staring at him.’ See? It doesn’t really matter who hates who anymore, but something has occurred. There’s something there that makes the reader shiver. All writing is a form of manipulation, of course, but you realise that a plain sentence can actually do so much.” '
Thursday, January 21, 2010
At the Gate
I was in need of a bit of good news to cheer me up this week and it came in the form of a blog post from Canongate, which has selected The Critical Flame as its Gatekeeper's Site of the Week: 'Going for quality rather than quantity, each issue features a few reviews of verse, non-fiction and fiction publications. All we can say is if reviews pages ever disappear from the mainstream media, it won't be the end of the world as long as sites like The Critical Flame continue to exist.' Thanks to everyone there — we sure needed it.
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
History Lessons
Well, it's over now. No more awful campaign ads and automated calls. To say that I'm disappointed would be an understatement — not because I thought Coakley was a great candidate (I didn't, although I thought she would be the better senator of the two mediocrities); not because Massachusetts voted for a Republican (it happens a lot actually, we are proudly the most independent state in the country); but because this makes national health care reform so much more difficult. If Brown is the dead weight that he promised to be, an estimated 150,000 Americans will die during his tenure for lack of access to basic health care, and ten times that many small business owners and self-employed Americans will go bankrupt because of illness and insurance costs.
You'll hear a lot about this campaign now: pundit analysis of what it means for the President, for health care reform, for the mid-term elections. Maybe they have merit, maybe they don't — certainly they'll make more of this on both party sides than they should. It is a loss though, and one from which the losing side must learn or be sure to repeat. I've taken time to think about it since last night — couldn't sleep much. It could be that Martha Coakley was a lame duck from start to finish, unprepared for such a campaign. Maybe Scott Brown just found the right moment for himself and his truck. This election speaks to me, though, of a certain complacency, and of history's command on us.
Fifteen months ago, America was a dying animal. It fell to sickness that grew out of corruption and selfishness, out of poor education and poor choices. It was a sickness of the whole system, spread from one organ to the next: our housing market collapsed under the burden of unregulated lending, unregulated trading, unrealistic dreams, and too-meager reimbursement for hard-working Americans; the largest investment companies in the world folded or were close to it as the stock market evaporated; credit markets were paralyzed; millions of people lost their jobs.
In the political melé, a voice of reason emerged. President Obama reminded us that the biggest companies must be kept in check; that what is good for the stock broker and the investment banker is not necessarily good for the average American, and vice-versa; that the Main Street–Wall Street divide is a fatuous creation of small minds; that the whole economic system is one single American system, complicated and unruly, but comprehensible. It can be mended. His administration rebuilt from the foundation up: credit markets allow persistence, cash flow offers existence, companies regain their confidence, the market rises, the dollar regains its worth, new jobs are created. It would take much time and much work to succeed, they told us. We agreed.
The debt accrued in this process is a point of great concern. It is made manageable by future growth in our economy which is initiated and will be sustained by my generation. Those who believe we young folk are destined to falter are also the ones who believe our country is destined to fail. (My bet is on the young. Go figure.) The alternative put forth by opponents of Obama was to allow the banks and markets to fail completely, to allow even more Americans to lose their jobs and homes, and even to allow people to starve, if necessary: obviously wrong, any way you slice it. Between betting on growth or accepting disaster, one places the wager. A government that does nothing to support its people is a democracy in name only.
We are half-way through that process of renewal as I write. Difficulties and complications may arise, in fact I'm certain they will, but reports are beginning to show raises for existing employees and layoffs coming to an end. Companies must regain their footing now. The President asks for patience, because the road is long and hard — because a strong America is worth our fortitude and our fidelity. Yet, in the midst of one of the great successes of our time, a recovery that has turned the ship of the economy in just fifteen months, we have lost our will to succeed.
The supporters of the American renewal lent their attentions elsewhere. In a key election, too much was taken for granted. The same small minds who caused America's illness — those trapped in the analogs of our previous century — took full advantage of the situation and won a key seat in the senate. Politics is, at its most basic level, not about right and wrong, or even about facts. Politics is tactical. There was a feeling of insecurity and impatience, and it was to the advantage of the tactics of our opponents: innuendo and slogans, misunderstanding and false claims. Make no mistake, Martha Coakley lost because of tactics.
We can and must learn from this election. First, we have to realize that history has no hold on people any longer. Massive scrap metal drives and rubber drives and rationing, policies born of virtues grounded in a sense of history, are a thing of the past. The virtues persist, but that sense of the historical moment, of the past and futures connecting through us, seems to be lost. (How very postmodern.) It meant nothing to point out the recent past, the economic ground recovered, and the work left ahead in this election. It is not a strong enough tactic.
We must also understand this: support for the American renewal can not flag, it must not weary, it must not lose focus. If it does, we will surely fall back into the selfishness and ignorance that nearly destroyed this country. It can all be lost again. We all — that is, supporters of a stronger, safer, vital America — have to be more vocal and more active in our support. It must be louder, clearer, and earlier. Writers should be writing pamphlets. Artists should be making fliers. Moms and dads holding signs. Businessmen defending their views in public.
Take no race for granted. Never, never, never, never give up.
You'll hear a lot about this campaign now: pundit analysis of what it means for the President, for health care reform, for the mid-term elections. Maybe they have merit, maybe they don't — certainly they'll make more of this on both party sides than they should. It is a loss though, and one from which the losing side must learn or be sure to repeat. I've taken time to think about it since last night — couldn't sleep much. It could be that Martha Coakley was a lame duck from start to finish, unprepared for such a campaign. Maybe Scott Brown just found the right moment for himself and his truck. This election speaks to me, though, of a certain complacency, and of history's command on us.
Fifteen months ago, America was a dying animal. It fell to sickness that grew out of corruption and selfishness, out of poor education and poor choices. It was a sickness of the whole system, spread from one organ to the next: our housing market collapsed under the burden of unregulated lending, unregulated trading, unrealistic dreams, and too-meager reimbursement for hard-working Americans; the largest investment companies in the world folded or were close to it as the stock market evaporated; credit markets were paralyzed; millions of people lost their jobs.
In the political melé, a voice of reason emerged. President Obama reminded us that the biggest companies must be kept in check; that what is good for the stock broker and the investment banker is not necessarily good for the average American, and vice-versa; that the Main Street–Wall Street divide is a fatuous creation of small minds; that the whole economic system is one single American system, complicated and unruly, but comprehensible. It can be mended. His administration rebuilt from the foundation up: credit markets allow persistence, cash flow offers existence, companies regain their confidence, the market rises, the dollar regains its worth, new jobs are created. It would take much time and much work to succeed, they told us. We agreed.
The debt accrued in this process is a point of great concern. It is made manageable by future growth in our economy which is initiated and will be sustained by my generation. Those who believe we young folk are destined to falter are also the ones who believe our country is destined to fail. (My bet is on the young. Go figure.) The alternative put forth by opponents of Obama was to allow the banks and markets to fail completely, to allow even more Americans to lose their jobs and homes, and even to allow people to starve, if necessary: obviously wrong, any way you slice it. Between betting on growth or accepting disaster, one places the wager. A government that does nothing to support its people is a democracy in name only.
We are half-way through that process of renewal as I write. Difficulties and complications may arise, in fact I'm certain they will, but reports are beginning to show raises for existing employees and layoffs coming to an end. Companies must regain their footing now. The President asks for patience, because the road is long and hard — because a strong America is worth our fortitude and our fidelity. Yet, in the midst of one of the great successes of our time, a recovery that has turned the ship of the economy in just fifteen months, we have lost our will to succeed.
The supporters of the American renewal lent their attentions elsewhere. In a key election, too much was taken for granted. The same small minds who caused America's illness — those trapped in the analogs of our previous century — took full advantage of the situation and won a key seat in the senate. Politics is, at its most basic level, not about right and wrong, or even about facts. Politics is tactical. There was a feeling of insecurity and impatience, and it was to the advantage of the tactics of our opponents: innuendo and slogans, misunderstanding and false claims. Make no mistake, Martha Coakley lost because of tactics.
We can and must learn from this election. First, we have to realize that history has no hold on people any longer. Massive scrap metal drives and rubber drives and rationing, policies born of virtues grounded in a sense of history, are a thing of the past. The virtues persist, but that sense of the historical moment, of the past and futures connecting through us, seems to be lost. (How very postmodern.) It meant nothing to point out the recent past, the economic ground recovered, and the work left ahead in this election. It is not a strong enough tactic.
We must also understand this: support for the American renewal can not flag, it must not weary, it must not lose focus. If it does, we will surely fall back into the selfishness and ignorance that nearly destroyed this country. It can all be lost again. We all — that is, supporters of a stronger, safer, vital America — have to be more vocal and more active in our support. It must be louder, clearer, and earlier. Writers should be writing pamphlets. Artists should be making fliers. Moms and dads holding signs. Businessmen defending their views in public.
Take no race for granted. Never, never, never, never give up.
Monday, January 18, 2010
Nota Bene: Martin Luther King, Jr.
“Of all the injustices, inequality in healthcare is the most shocking and inhumane.”Martin Luther King, Jr.
Sunday, January 17, 2010
On Healthcare & Haiti
Life in Boston is pretty interesting right now.
We have a thriving Haitian community which has been deeply affected by the earthquake — and while we’re at the beginning, let me encourage you once more to donate towards Haitian relief efforts. There have been, and will be, plenty of opportunities to support Haitian relief in the coming weeks (for example, TBG is running an MLK Day and Haitian fundraising event at Boston University tomorrow, 1:00 pm, in the Metcalf Ballroom, George Sherman Union, 775 Commonwealth Ave). Keep your eyes peeled.
We are also the site of an unexpectedly close Senatorial race for the late Ted Kennedy's seat, between Attorney General Martha Coakley (Democrat) and State Senator Scott Brown (Republican). I am honestly shocked that so people want to switch gears halfway through an economic recovery, but I guess I underestimated how impatient we are in this there-is-no-past media culture. The much larger implication of the Massachusetts Senate race, though, is that it’s the difference between passing healthcare reform and a filibuster that would stop it from even reaching a vote. For a number of reasons (that she is more qualified, more accomplished, and is not a do-nothing Bush / Cheney clone in all policies) I will be voting for Martha Coakley on Tuesday; but, the most important reason I’m voting for her is that America needs the Senate to pass healthcare reform.
As these two major happenings inundate me no matter where I am or what I do, I’m moved to talk a little bit about the disparity in the reactions to each. My goal is not to make Haitian relief a political issue, nor to exploit the emergency to make a crass political argument; but, the dichotomy struck me as significant. We have decided that one political party is going to win and another lose in regards to the healthcare debate; this football-as-framing-device mindset has caused the issue to be clouded by selfish ego and the worst qualities of American politics — it is the site of a power struggle rather than a policy issue, and it is understandable that nothing seems clear any longer.
The Red Cross estimates that 50,000 people have died already in Haiti; they fear the number could rise to close to 200,000 in the coming weeks. As a result of this news, and the many images of devastation, millions of Americans have selflessly donated to support relief. We hear of people suffering and dying in Haiti, and we reach for our cell phones and wallets to support them in their time of need — knowing that it cannot fix the larger issues of systemic poverty, knowing the aid is slow to arrive and people will die despite it, and knowing that it is only a help and not a cure.
We do this because, when it is laid out before us, every American recognizes that the worth of a human being is not measured in dollars; that they are “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,” and this is not contingent on income or class, race or sexuality. We see this at work right now, in Haiti, as millions of dollars pour in from every corner of our country: those people should not be abandoned, left to die for the fact of their poverty.
What is remarkable to me is that so many Americans do not experience the same impulse to aide their fellow citizens. One Harvard University study estimates that 45,000 Americans die every year because they lack even basic health insurance; most of these people are self-employed, are small business employees, or are of the underemployed working class. That 45,000 people might die in 2010 from preventable diseases, simply because they cannot afford insurance (or have been denied it), is horrifying to me — these people die because they are poor and because they’re entrepreneurs; but, mostly, they die because we do nothing to help.
Just as those people in Haiti should not be abandoned because they’re poor, American citizens should not be abandoned because they can’t pay for insurance; should not be bankrupted from healthcare costs; should not be scared to visit the doctor. If all that this healthcare reform bill achieves is to save the lives of hundreds of thousands of people in the coming years, by offering them cheap basic health services that are now out of their reach and by closing the loopholes that allow insurance companies to unfairly deny them coverage, it will be an unmitigated success.
I have encouraged you to donate towards Haitian relief over the last week. Today, I encourage you to vote for Martha Coakley in Massachusetts, and to support healthcare reform wherever you are.
We have a thriving Haitian community which has been deeply affected by the earthquake — and while we’re at the beginning, let me encourage you once more to donate towards Haitian relief efforts. There have been, and will be, plenty of opportunities to support Haitian relief in the coming weeks (for example, TBG is running an MLK Day and Haitian fundraising event at Boston University tomorrow, 1:00 pm, in the Metcalf Ballroom, George Sherman Union, 775 Commonwealth Ave). Keep your eyes peeled.
We are also the site of an unexpectedly close Senatorial race for the late Ted Kennedy's seat, between Attorney General Martha Coakley (Democrat) and State Senator Scott Brown (Republican). I am honestly shocked that so people want to switch gears halfway through an economic recovery, but I guess I underestimated how impatient we are in this there-is-no-past media culture. The much larger implication of the Massachusetts Senate race, though, is that it’s the difference between passing healthcare reform and a filibuster that would stop it from even reaching a vote. For a number of reasons (that she is more qualified, more accomplished, and is not a do-nothing Bush / Cheney clone in all policies) I will be voting for Martha Coakley on Tuesday; but, the most important reason I’m voting for her is that America needs the Senate to pass healthcare reform.
As these two major happenings inundate me no matter where I am or what I do, I’m moved to talk a little bit about the disparity in the reactions to each. My goal is not to make Haitian relief a political issue, nor to exploit the emergency to make a crass political argument; but, the dichotomy struck me as significant. We have decided that one political party is going to win and another lose in regards to the healthcare debate; this football-as-framing-device mindset has caused the issue to be clouded by selfish ego and the worst qualities of American politics — it is the site of a power struggle rather than a policy issue, and it is understandable that nothing seems clear any longer.
The Red Cross estimates that 50,000 people have died already in Haiti; they fear the number could rise to close to 200,000 in the coming weeks. As a result of this news, and the many images of devastation, millions of Americans have selflessly donated to support relief. We hear of people suffering and dying in Haiti, and we reach for our cell phones and wallets to support them in their time of need — knowing that it cannot fix the larger issues of systemic poverty, knowing the aid is slow to arrive and people will die despite it, and knowing that it is only a help and not a cure.
We do this because, when it is laid out before us, every American recognizes that the worth of a human being is not measured in dollars; that they are “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,” and this is not contingent on income or class, race or sexuality. We see this at work right now, in Haiti, as millions of dollars pour in from every corner of our country: those people should not be abandoned, left to die for the fact of their poverty.
What is remarkable to me is that so many Americans do not experience the same impulse to aide their fellow citizens. One Harvard University study estimates that 45,000 Americans die every year because they lack even basic health insurance; most of these people are self-employed, are small business employees, or are of the underemployed working class. That 45,000 people might die in 2010 from preventable diseases, simply because they cannot afford insurance (or have been denied it), is horrifying to me — these people die because they are poor and because they’re entrepreneurs; but, mostly, they die because we do nothing to help.
Just as those people in Haiti should not be abandoned because they’re poor, American citizens should not be abandoned because they can’t pay for insurance; should not be bankrupted from healthcare costs; should not be scared to visit the doctor. If all that this healthcare reform bill achieves is to save the lives of hundreds of thousands of people in the coming years, by offering them cheap basic health services that are now out of their reach and by closing the loopholes that allow insurance companies to unfairly deny them coverage, it will be an unmitigated success.
I have encouraged you to donate towards Haitian relief over the last week. Today, I encourage you to vote for Martha Coakley in Massachusetts, and to support healthcare reform wherever you are.
Friday, January 15, 2010
Pritchard on Ashbery
from January 2010 issue of The Critical Flame: ' “Readings” of John Ashbery’s poetry have been a contentious point in critical and scholarly circles for more than half a century. It is commonly held by acolytes and detractors alike that there are only misreadings of his work, to the great delight of Harold Bloom. Stephen Burt recently wrote in the Times Literary Supplement, “When you interpret Ashbery at all, you risk having sceptics tell you that you made it all up: that the poems demonstrate ingenuity not from the poet but from his interpreters, who find music in static, meaning in randomness, synthetic silk in a succession of sow’s ears . . . No one can prove that Ashbery’s poems mean anything.” This is as good a maxim as any.
'John Ashbery uses language in ways that have been emphatically described as being like music, more about evocation in the reader than symbolic or essayistic communication through the text. Thus, a coherent reading per se is nearly impossible; only impressions and techniques can be described. The techniques of Planisphere (Ecco, 2009), Ashbery’s latest collection, consist mainly of collage and pastiche, as well as a shifting, unstable sense of interiority that has marked his work from the very beginning.
'Over the course of his career, Ashbery’s work has presented a prolonged critique-via-exploration of the limits of phenomenological understanding: writing about “the experience of experience,” as he famously put it; trying to explode our coherent sense of the world, time, truth, and the self. This is only the large-scale picture of his work though. Each poem or sets of poems use this larger technique to focus most often on human, personal notions. For the past two decades, Ashbery has been an assembly line of his own late-style verse. Of late, we find him looking back, or rather looking at “looking back,” considering experiences of memory and loneliness alongside themes of generational transition and nostalgia. . . .'
Read the rest at THE CRITICAL FLAME
'John Ashbery uses language in ways that have been emphatically described as being like music, more about evocation in the reader than symbolic or essayistic communication through the text. Thus, a coherent reading per se is nearly impossible; only impressions and techniques can be described. The techniques of Planisphere (Ecco, 2009), Ashbery’s latest collection, consist mainly of collage and pastiche, as well as a shifting, unstable sense of interiority that has marked his work from the very beginning.
'Over the course of his career, Ashbery’s work has presented a prolonged critique-via-exploration of the limits of phenomenological understanding: writing about “the experience of experience,” as he famously put it; trying to explode our coherent sense of the world, time, truth, and the self. This is only the large-scale picture of his work though. Each poem or sets of poems use this larger technique to focus most often on human, personal notions. For the past two decades, Ashbery has been an assembly line of his own late-style verse. Of late, we find him looking back, or rather looking at “looking back,” considering experiences of memory and loneliness alongside themes of generational transition and nostalgia. . . .'
Read the rest at THE CRITICAL FLAME
Thursday, January 14, 2010
Harrowing Self-Realization
James Fallows at The Atlantic writes, 'The private economy was stronger because of the public bulwarks provided by Social Security and Medicare. California is giving the first taste of how the public-private divorce will look — and its historian, Kevin Starr, says the private economy will soon suffer if the government is not repaired. “Through the country’s history, government has had to function correctly for the private sector to flourish,” he said. “John Quincy Adams built the lighthouses and the highways. That’s not ‘socialist’ but ‘Whiggish.’ Now we need ports and highways and an educated populace.” In a nearly $1 trillion stimulus package, it should have been possible to build all those things, in a contemporary, environmentally aware counterpart to the interstate-highway plan. But it didn’t happen; we’ve spent the money, incurred the debt, and done very little to repair what most needs fixing. [. . .]
'America has been strong because, despite its flawed system, people built toward the future in the 1840s, and the 1930s, and the 1950s. During just the time when Frederick Law Olmsted designed Central Park, when Theodore Roosevelt set aside land for the National Parks, when Dwight Eisenhower created the Pentagon research agency that ultimately gave rise to the Internet, the American system seemed broken too. They worked within its flaws and limits, which made all the difference. That is the bravest and best choice for us now.'
Increasingly, I feel our parents’ generation . . . well, that they pretty much failed — at least in this respect. That’s fine; it’s all fixable. There’s nothing that can’t be done, and done well, when we put ourselves second to the greater good. I’m still in the camp that believes my generation will do better than our parents — plenty of reasons to believe so, from internet fluency to Chinese market growth to our being generally more efficient workers —and as I read this article, that goal seemed to be ever more eminently attainable.
'America has been strong because, despite its flawed system, people built toward the future in the 1840s, and the 1930s, and the 1950s. During just the time when Frederick Law Olmsted designed Central Park, when Theodore Roosevelt set aside land for the National Parks, when Dwight Eisenhower created the Pentagon research agency that ultimately gave rise to the Internet, the American system seemed broken too. They worked within its flaws and limits, which made all the difference. That is the bravest and best choice for us now.'
Increasingly, I feel our parents’ generation . . . well, that they pretty much failed — at least in this respect. That’s fine; it’s all fixable. There’s nothing that can’t be done, and done well, when we put ourselves second to the greater good. I’m still in the camp that believes my generation will do better than our parents — plenty of reasons to believe so, from internet fluency to Chinese market growth to our being generally more efficient workers —and as I read this article, that goal seemed to be ever more eminently attainable.
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
The Critical Flame :: Issue 5, January 2010
THE CRITICAL FLAMEVolume 1, Issue 5 | January 2010
Faithful readers! The coming year brings much excitement and two central resolutions for CF — we hope to incorporate and register for non-profit status, and to expand our coverage to include critical essays along with the more typical review format. Lofty goals for editors with little time and no comprehension of our byzantine tax system!
We open the new year with Issue 5, including: a review by editor Daniel E. Pritchard of John Ashbery's Planisphere; a review by Nora Delaney of Nicholson Baker's The Anthologist; an review by Ailbhe Darcy of Daniel Simko's poetry; and more. Hope you enjoy!
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
When in Doubt: Non Sequitor
Future Senator from Massachusetts, Attorney General Martha Coakley: “He wants to go back to those Bush-Cheney policies that provide for the very wealthiest.”
Future Chevy Dealership Salesman-of-the-Month Scott Brown: “You can run against Bush-Cheney, but I’m Scott Brown. I live in Wrentham. I drive a truck.”
— from last night's Massachusetts Senatorial Debate, as quoted in The Boston Globe
I have two options and Martha Coakley is, by leagues and yards, the superior. I can't fathom anyone voting for a candidate whose goal is to be a do-nothing, know-nothing, roadblock to progress.
Future Chevy Dealership Salesman-of-the-Month Scott Brown: “You can run against Bush-Cheney, but I’m Scott Brown. I live in Wrentham. I drive a truck.”
— from last night's Massachusetts Senatorial Debate, as quoted in The Boston Globe
I have two options and Martha Coakley is, by leagues and yards, the superior. I can't fathom anyone voting for a candidate whose goal is to be a do-nothing, know-nothing, roadblock to progress.
Monday, January 11, 2010
Focus on the 26%
Forrester Market Research is useful because, Holy Mother of Jesus, the publishing industry is horrible at accumulating data to make good decisions. The graph below shows a survey of e-reader features about which people are interested (from September, 2009): obviously, cheapness is number one with a bullet; next is the curiosity factor; and after that, interestingly, is 'None of These' at 26% of readers — I take them as the bound-book holdouts, a not insignificant faction. It will be interesting to see what happens when Amazon stops subsidizing the e-book market and prices go up; we might see a sizable dropoff.
Writers, Commentators, and the In-Between
At Conversational Reading, Scott writes about a paradigm introduced to him by Jose Manuel Prieto. Authors are broken own into three categories: the Writer, the Commentator, an In-Between. Scott explains, 'where the Writer holds the power of creation, the Commentator can only create by commenting on what has come before.' He emphasizes that these are not designations of quality (or, it seems to me, even of originality per se), but categories that describe the extent to which an author engages with and draws from the writing of others. Scott offers a list of fiction candidates for Writers, Commentators, and those In-Between; it seemed an interesting idea and I thought I'd offer some poets who might fit into these categories.
Writer
William Carlos Williams
Elizabeth Bishop
Jorie Graham
e.e. cummings
In-Between
John Ashbery
Seamus Heaney
Robert Lowell
D.A. Powell
Commentator
Geoffrey Hill
Wallace Stevens
Ezra Pound
Ange Mlinko
Writer
William Carlos Williams
Elizabeth Bishop
Jorie Graham
e.e. cummings
In-Between
John Ashbery
Seamus Heaney
Robert Lowell
D.A. Powell
Commentator
Geoffrey Hill
Wallace Stevens
Ezra Pound
Ange Mlinko
Friday, January 8, 2010
A Third Kind of Knowledge
'The Internet has changed our thinking, but if it is to be a change for the better, we must add a third kind of knowledge to Johnson's list — the knowledge of what matters. Two centuries ago the explosion of print demanded a new discipline of knowing where to find knowledge. When looking up was hard, one's searches inevitably tended towards seeking only what really mattered. Now that finding is easy, the temptation to chase down info-fluff is as seductive as a 17th century Londoner happily wallowing in books with no purpose. Without a discipline of knowing what matters, we will merely amuse ourselves to death.
'Knowing what matters is more than mere relevance. It is the skill of asking questions that have purpose, that lead to larger understandings. Formalizing this skill seems as strange to us today as a dictionary must have seemed in 1780, but I'll bet it emerges just as surely as print abundance led to whole new disciplines devoted to organizing information for easy access. The need to determine what matters will inspire new modes of cyber-discrimination and perhaps even a formal science of determining what matters. Social media hold great promise as discrimination tools, and AI hints at the possibility of cyber-Cicerones who would gently keep us on track as we traverse the vastness of cyberspace in our enquiries. Perhaps the 21st century equivalent of the Great Dictionary will be assembled by a wise machine that knows what matters most.'
— Paul Saffo, Edge
'Knowing what matters is more than mere relevance. It is the skill of asking questions that have purpose, that lead to larger understandings. Formalizing this skill seems as strange to us today as a dictionary must have seemed in 1780, but I'll bet it emerges just as surely as print abundance led to whole new disciplines devoted to organizing information for easy access. The need to determine what matters will inspire new modes of cyber-discrimination and perhaps even a formal science of determining what matters. Social media hold great promise as discrimination tools, and AI hints at the possibility of cyber-Cicerones who would gently keep us on track as we traverse the vastness of cyberspace in our enquiries. Perhaps the 21st century equivalent of the Great Dictionary will be assembled by a wise machine that knows what matters most.'
— Paul Saffo, Edge
Thursday, January 7, 2010
David R. Godine In New York City
On Wednesday, January 13, 2010, David R. Godine will take part in a panel discussion: “Current Challenges to Fine Printing and Book Design.” The talk will take place at the Grolier Club in New York City from 6-8 pm, and will also feature Ronald Gordon, designer and printer, Oliphant Press; Jamie Kamph, bookbinder; Jerry Kelly, designer, calligrapher and printer; and Luke Ives Pontifell, designer and printer, Thornwillow Press; and it will be moderated by David S. Rose.
With Kindles and iPhones proliferating with Comic Sans, what do practitioners of fine book-making see as the great challenges to making beautiful books in the coming decade? Join us as five Grolier Club members distinguished in the book arts talk about the challenges faced in producing well-made books in the 21st Century. A reception will follow. Held in connection with the exhibition “The Grolier Club Creates: Book Arts by Club Members,” on display through January 15, 2010.
With Kindles and iPhones proliferating with Comic Sans, what do practitioners of fine book-making see as the great challenges to making beautiful books in the coming decade? Join us as five Grolier Club members distinguished in the book arts talk about the challenges faced in producing well-made books in the 21st Century. A reception will follow. Held in connection with the exhibition “The Grolier Club Creates: Book Arts by Club Members,” on display through January 15, 2010.
Paul Celan: Manslaughter by Suicide
'The letters it contains show how simply trying to exist by writing and translating poetry in postwar Europe eventually drove Celan to suicide in Paris. The moving letters it contains recount how a great Jewish poet was egged on to self-destruction in the name of two mediocre poets who happened to be Jewish. Claire Goll, born Clara Aischmann, widow of the mediocre Surrealist poet Yvan Goll (born Isaac Lange), launched these machinations. The Golls spent the war years in safety in America and returned to postwar Europe, after which Yvan Goll died prematurely of leukemia. Celan had translated some of Goll’s poetry into German, as he had translated dozens of other English- and French-language authors, but as a 2000 study from Suhrkamp, The Goll Affair: Documents Surrounding an ‘Infamy’ (Die Goll-Affäre — Dokumente zu einer ‘Infamie’), sadly details, Claire Goll devoted herself to relentlessly defaming Celan as a plagiarist of her husband’s work, quite literally driving the great poet to madness and suicide.'
— Ben Ivry, The Jewish Daily
— Ben Ivry, The Jewish Daily
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
The MLA Gerontocracy
'Without a formal introduction, it's hard to make contact with people; they avoid eye contact and do not return smiles, although both are readily available — if carefully calibrated — once you are revealed as someone of importance (i.e., someone with a job at a good school, notable publications, or — at the bottom of pecking order — media connections).
'One trick for appearing to rank higher in the system is to stride around, head held high, talking loudly on your cell phone. It's even better to walk out, huffily, in the middle of a panel discussion, muttering something about your time being wasted. Be sure to slam the door behind you, but not before people can hear you cackling with derision.
'For the most part, the MLA is a gerontocracy, thanks to the end of mandatory retirement and the dearth of new tenure-track positions. Some senior scholars might as well wear powdered wigs and embroidered silk, and be carried about in gilded sedan chairs, while the hordes of adjuncts lie along the edges of the conference rooms, covered with filth and vermin, begging to teach for scraps of food.'
— William Pannapacker, The Chronicle of Higher Education
'One trick for appearing to rank higher in the system is to stride around, head held high, talking loudly on your cell phone. It's even better to walk out, huffily, in the middle of a panel discussion, muttering something about your time being wasted. Be sure to slam the door behind you, but not before people can hear you cackling with derision.
'For the most part, the MLA is a gerontocracy, thanks to the end of mandatory retirement and the dearth of new tenure-track positions. Some senior scholars might as well wear powdered wigs and embroidered silk, and be carried about in gilded sedan chairs, while the hordes of adjuncts lie along the edges of the conference rooms, covered with filth and vermin, begging to teach for scraps of food.'
— William Pannapacker, The Chronicle of Higher Education
"Like Eunuchs Talking about Sex"
From Spiegel Online: 'It [German intellectuals defending the fatwa] was like listening to the blind talk about art, the deaf about music or eunuchs discussing sex based on hearsay. Because with the exception of the left-wing Die Tageszeitung, the conservative Die Welt and the centrist Die Zeit, every German newspaper and magazine followed the advice of Green Party co-leader Claudia Roth, who said "de-escalation begins at home," and erred on the side of caution by not republishing the cartoons. Prominent German psychoanalyst Horst-Eberhard Richter advised: "The West should refrain from any provocations that produce feelings of debasement or humiliation." Of course, Richter left open the question of whether "the West" should also refrain from the wearing of mini skirts, eating pork and the legalization of same-sex partnerships in order to avoid causing any feelings of debasement and humiliation in the Islamic world.
'Had the Muhammed cartoons been reprinted by the whole German press, then newspaper readers could have seen for themselves how excessively harmless the 12 cartoons were and how bizarre and pointless the whole debate had become. Instead, the assessment was left to "experts" who had in the past defended every criticism of the pope and the Church as well as every blasphemous piece of art in the name of freedom of opinion, but who, in the case of the Muhammad cartoons, suddenly held the view that one must take other people's religious feelings into consideration.
'But that argument was clearly just an excuse, a way of excusing the fact they had been silenced by fear. After all, a few things had happened in the time between the Rushdie affair and the caricatures debacle: 9/11, the London bombings, Madrid, Bali, Jakarta, Djerba — events which some commentators have also interpreted as a reaction by the Islamic world to its degradation and humiliation by the West. Against this threat, it seemed more reasonable and, above all, safer, to show respect to religious feelings rather than insist on the right to freedom of expression.'
I've been reading Fredric Jameson's new book, Valences of the Dialectic, and this morning I happened to be reading his analysis of Lukács. Jameson writes, 'What seems more productive is [. . .] to make an inventory of the variable structures of "constraint" lived by the various marginal, oppressed, or dominated groups — the so-called "new social movements" fully as much as the working classes — with this difference, that each form of privation is acknowledged as producing its own specific "epistemology," its own specific view from below, and its own specific distinctive truth claim. It is a project that will sound like "relativism" or "pluralism" only if the identity of the absent common object of such "theorization" is overlooked — what one therefore does not exactly have the right to call (but let it stand as contradictory shorthand) "late capitalism".'
It struck me that the Spiegel article seemed to present a version — albeit, I think, a confused version — of what Jameson outlines in his text. Certainly, jihadism is a fundamental critique of our culture with its own 'epistemology' and 'view from below' — it posits a form of puritanical religion in the place of the 'absent common object' of enlightenment humanism and late capitalism. These cartoons (and by extension the misunderstood freedom of speech) were the object onto which their critique, the fatwa, was projected: the critique will always seek, and usually find, a useful object.
What Spiegel here describes is the expression of confusion in the intellectuals between comprehension and justification; between understanding the historical basis of the offended response, and the extension of that understanding into a warrant for justification. They were wrong to make this mistake, no doubt. These intellectuals are likely to have been the type to align themselves with Fellow Travelers before the twilight of European communism and obviously none see puritanical religion as an acceptable alternative to our existing system (this is the major difference in that relationship — or lack thereof — between modern intellectuals and jihadism as opposed to communism). Yet, they remain engaged with the critique. Their rootless engagement in the sort of 'inventory' Jameson details has blinded them to the possibility of a third way, neither dismissive counter-attacking nor unworthy justification. It is difficult to defend a "virtue" (freedom of expression) in regards to what is pretty tasteless humor, while admitting deep systemic flaws in the culture and in the face of a group historically injured by those flaws. At one time, they could align themselves with an alternative; now they have only a sense of guilt — that is the real difference between the response to Rushdie's 1980s fatwa and this one.
The Spiegel article, in calling them cowards, too readily dismisses this difficult shift. It implies a dichotomy between the archeology that lead to an unwarranted defense and the dismissive ignorance of culture-warriors who assert 'how bizarre and pointless' the feeling of injury is, to the benefit of the latter. Ignorance will not allow for reflection or improvement though, nor for a change in the relationship; neither will this type of unwarranted justification. It would be better to publicly acknowledge the historical circumstances that have lead to this conflict, call the cartoons stupid (if it is the case that they are), and defend freedom of expression. All can be done at once, and it is well worth doing. Freedom of expression — if not much else — is worth a most vigorous defense.
'Had the Muhammed cartoons been reprinted by the whole German press, then newspaper readers could have seen for themselves how excessively harmless the 12 cartoons were and how bizarre and pointless the whole debate had become. Instead, the assessment was left to "experts" who had in the past defended every criticism of the pope and the Church as well as every blasphemous piece of art in the name of freedom of opinion, but who, in the case of the Muhammad cartoons, suddenly held the view that one must take other people's religious feelings into consideration.
'But that argument was clearly just an excuse, a way of excusing the fact they had been silenced by fear. After all, a few things had happened in the time between the Rushdie affair and the caricatures debacle: 9/11, the London bombings, Madrid, Bali, Jakarta, Djerba — events which some commentators have also interpreted as a reaction by the Islamic world to its degradation and humiliation by the West. Against this threat, it seemed more reasonable and, above all, safer, to show respect to religious feelings rather than insist on the right to freedom of expression.'
I've been reading Fredric Jameson's new book, Valences of the Dialectic, and this morning I happened to be reading his analysis of Lukács. Jameson writes, 'What seems more productive is [. . .] to make an inventory of the variable structures of "constraint" lived by the various marginal, oppressed, or dominated groups — the so-called "new social movements" fully as much as the working classes — with this difference, that each form of privation is acknowledged as producing its own specific "epistemology," its own specific view from below, and its own specific distinctive truth claim. It is a project that will sound like "relativism" or "pluralism" only if the identity of the absent common object of such "theorization" is overlooked — what one therefore does not exactly have the right to call (but let it stand as contradictory shorthand) "late capitalism".'
It struck me that the Spiegel article seemed to present a version — albeit, I think, a confused version — of what Jameson outlines in his text. Certainly, jihadism is a fundamental critique of our culture with its own 'epistemology' and 'view from below' — it posits a form of puritanical religion in the place of the 'absent common object' of enlightenment humanism and late capitalism. These cartoons (and by extension the misunderstood freedom of speech) were the object onto which their critique, the fatwa, was projected: the critique will always seek, and usually find, a useful object.
What Spiegel here describes is the expression of confusion in the intellectuals between comprehension and justification; between understanding the historical basis of the offended response, and the extension of that understanding into a warrant for justification. They were wrong to make this mistake, no doubt. These intellectuals are likely to have been the type to align themselves with Fellow Travelers before the twilight of European communism and obviously none see puritanical religion as an acceptable alternative to our existing system (this is the major difference in that relationship — or lack thereof — between modern intellectuals and jihadism as opposed to communism). Yet, they remain engaged with the critique. Their rootless engagement in the sort of 'inventory' Jameson details has blinded them to the possibility of a third way, neither dismissive counter-attacking nor unworthy justification. It is difficult to defend a "virtue" (freedom of expression) in regards to what is pretty tasteless humor, while admitting deep systemic flaws in the culture and in the face of a group historically injured by those flaws. At one time, they could align themselves with an alternative; now they have only a sense of guilt — that is the real difference between the response to Rushdie's 1980s fatwa and this one.
The Spiegel article, in calling them cowards, too readily dismisses this difficult shift. It implies a dichotomy between the archeology that lead to an unwarranted defense and the dismissive ignorance of culture-warriors who assert 'how bizarre and pointless' the feeling of injury is, to the benefit of the latter. Ignorance will not allow for reflection or improvement though, nor for a change in the relationship; neither will this type of unwarranted justification. It would be better to publicly acknowledge the historical circumstances that have lead to this conflict, call the cartoons stupid (if it is the case that they are), and defend freedom of expression. All can be done at once, and it is well worth doing. Freedom of expression — if not much else — is worth a most vigorous defense.
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
Reading Lists
Oftentimes in the course of conversation with the interns in my office, a lapse of common literary ground is encountered. Usually, when the gap is on my end, I have not read something popular such as the boy wizard or suppressed-sadist vampires; usually they have not read some more "literary" work by authors such as Ashbery, Heaney, Graham, Ozick, Roth, or DFW. I'm always surprised (they're somehow not always surprised) and, if they ask for it, I give them short lists of titles they should read that they might not encounter in class for one reason or another.
Well, this article at FlavorWire on Hipster Reading Lists started me thinking about the way cultural touchstones precondition responses to a certain degree (irony and ephemera and nostalgia in their case); and then I started to wonder what a Late-20th Century Reading List would look like for young college students today. Ed Byrne threw a list of 100 poetry titles together a while back at One Poet's Notes; we've been going crazy about the aughts. Now that we have a bit of distance from it, I'm interested to keep this conversation going: what writing, fiction or poetry, published in 1950 or after, has so far and seems to continue to persist?
Well, this article at FlavorWire on Hipster Reading Lists started me thinking about the way cultural touchstones precondition responses to a certain degree (irony and ephemera and nostalgia in their case); and then I started to wonder what a Late-20th Century Reading List would look like for young college students today. Ed Byrne threw a list of 100 poetry titles together a while back at One Poet's Notes; we've been going crazy about the aughts. Now that we have a bit of distance from it, I'm interested to keep this conversation going: what writing, fiction or poetry, published in 1950 or after, has so far and seems to continue to persist?
Dalliance
'In merely loving poetry, one can comfortably fantasize about meeting her family, inheriting her fortune, and settling into a little nest together, with all the ancestral portraits hanging in gilded frames upon the wall. Pound, Keats, and Marvell are coming over for weekend pancakes and bloody marys. Only after one is actually engaged, of course, do the family dramas start to emerge: the brewing hatreds, the flight into the church or into fascism, the suicidal and schizophrenic tendencies, the evangelical who wants only to convert you or convince you of your irredeemable doom. Many of them are mean, and the meanest ones won’t leave you alone. They want things of you. They make demands. They sneak into your bank account, they make alliances against you, they tell her you’re not good enough. Nor are they all charming themselves. The family tree is dark with withered roots and no-shows, with black sheep and failed writers you would rather not know. You may find yourself one of them, sneered at by the better-groomed heirs, deprived of a chance at the family inheritance and the doors it would open. You might regret your choice, and start to hate yourself and your decision. It may even come between you and poetry. It is best, my aunts used to tell me, to accept all invitations early and get to know the worst of the worst before you’re actually married. All good reasons, sooner rather than later, to begin fucking poetry.'
— Babs de Genlis, "Reasons to Fuck Poetry" from Absent Magazine
— Babs de Genlis, "Reasons to Fuck Poetry" from Absent Magazine
Monday, January 4, 2010
On Beckett & Coetzee
'Beckett and Coetzee repudiate the idea that literature teaches or uplifts — it simply is what it is, thoughtful or not, and incapable of engagement on “issues.” It’s up to the reader to provide meaning. Conrad, too, wrote powerful fiction that readers would invest with contradictory interpretations. In Heart of Darkness, Conrad’s narrator introduces readers to what he is about to recount as one of Marlowe’s “inconclusive tales,” and Summertime, a story that luxuriates in doubt, echoes Conrad’s indirection.'
— John Strawn, The Oregonian
— John Strawn, The Oregonian
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