[lit-ideas] Re: early recording of 'Howl' discovered
- From: Eric Yost <mr.eric.yost@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 15 Feb 2008 00:28:59 -0500
Mike: I take it Eric doesn't like Ginsberg.
Eric: You must have missed my "de gustibus." I have the collected
Ginsberg. I am not immune to his song. I used to like him, now I don't.
I tried to explain why I don't. My paltry opinion shouldn't (and won't)
influence yours. I respect your judgment of AG, but disagree. We can't
argue about opinions; we can only explain why we have our opinions.
Mike: it's not the soul of the person, it's the book, the painting, the
music, the dance, the poem that matters.
Eric: I just re-read Emerson's* essay "History" (from first series)
wherein he argues that we always read at a more elevated level than we
are in practical force, and that we see ourselves revealed in the
sublime of others' working. So I would add that art shows more in its
first face than in its round. (Wagner is performed in Tel Aviv ... now
if only Teheran saw fit to host Beethoven's Ninth.)
You probably accept the soul or you would not accept the book, the
painting, the music, the dance, or the poem. What is any art but a
striving in materials? What does it strive for, but its maker? What is
its maker but what we metaphorize as soul?
It's the static boho I loathe, not the evolving one. In the '90s, I used
to correspond with Kathy Acker before she died of cancer. My sense was
that she was trying to salvage, if only by appropriation, some order
from a life gone haywire. She was pulling a thorn out of her side, even
though pulling that thorn would kill her. Breast cancer got her first,
but one hoped for that breakthrough from victim-chic to Ur-chic. My
sense is that AG was seduced by his grad-school boys before he got to
his Ur-chic. That's what I resent -- more as artistic failure than
personal failure. Maybe his Buddhism led him to fancy his artistic
failure was not important? I don't know. Besides, I don't matter.
Now Ginsberg is a cult. As a contrarian, I resent cults. Or vice versa.
De gustibus. You may be right, but at least I've told you why I'm wrong.
Eric
_____
*
Who is more "beat" than Emerson? He inspired Nietzsche, made way for
Whitman, and produced some of the finest American prose. All beats are
vernacular footnotes to Emerson, that is, if we want the work not the
life.
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