Roundup
Linksy Galore
Did you read these two pieces at the Poetry Foundation about the prize-winning poet whose prize-winning poems about Hurricane Katrina were mostly stolen verbatim from narratives by the non-prize-winning people who actually suffered through the storm and its aftermath? The first piece is by Abe Louise Young, proprietor of Alive in Truth, the site from which the narratives were taken. The second piece is by Raymond McDaniel, the poet who made use of them, and in it he discusses his process of composing the book and attempts to contextualize and justify said use. Both pieces are interesting, though I think that McDaniel’s is most notable for its defensive tone and refusal to deal directly with the concerns raised about his work. I’d be interested to hear what people think about this, though I want to offer the following caveat: anyone who types the words “Kathy Acker” or “David Shields” in re this is a fucking asshole. There I said it.
Another good piece on the late lamented Frank Kermode- “The Literary Critic as Humanist” at Slate.
There’s a new William Deresiewicz piece at The Nation. It’s about Javier Marias.
Franz Nicolay and Peter Bognanni talking to each other. That’s good.
Tao talks dirty at Thought Catalog. “I remember focusing on doing things with my fingers in a manner I felt would be conducive to her orgasming.” Me too, ‘bro.’
David Backer on Shane Jones: It made me write this in the margin on page 26: “it’s as if we can occupy a fantasy world of two-dimensional humanity hoping that truth will come to us. we sit and read literature like this as if we’re eunuchs in some feudal court, prancing around with velvet clothes and bells attached to our shoes trying out-somersault one another while beyond the windowless walls of the castle billions of people live dynamic and variegated lives, in many cases suffering at our expense.”
Paste magazine has suspended print subscription (read=folded) but their website seems to still exist, and may continue to exist. Fingers crossed.
Oh and hey, did you hear the one about the lunatic who took people hostage at the Discovery Channel headquarters? Well, he’s dead now, but his website lives on. Apparently his main demand is for “daily television programs at prime time slots based on Daniel Quinn’s “My Ishmael” pages 207-212 where solutions to save the planet would be done in the same way as the Industrial Revolution was done, by people building on each other’s inventive ideas.” Wow. Anything that starts with Daniel Quinn is going to end poorly; just saying. Read the rest savetheplanetprotest.com.
David Backer wrote a song about Titanic, and has a video of himself talking about the song for over two minutes before playing the song for under two minutes, on a banjo, with a backup dissenter, on his blog.
Something about Mel Brooks.
His opinion is paramount.
the Backer review of Jones is rather idiotic, if trying hard to condemn.
i don’t see what is wrong with any of the following, in the bulk of his complaints:
“(e) There are lists throughout the book, as though it were a draft.
(f) Some pages have only one sentence.
(g) The sentences all sound like this one: “I vomit ice cubes.”
(h) Thaddeus, the main character, doesn’t react when Bianca, his daughter, is killed. Many similar moments of emotion are skipped or merely sketched.
(i) It’s sort of fantasy, but sort of not. For example: Thaddeus goes to a group of owls and asks them where his daughter is and “remembers that owls don’t talk.” He feels foolish for thinking that they do, but throughout the book ants carry things out of the stomachs of foxes who have ripped them open themselves and bears wear coats with buttons and veins grow from the slit veins of men living in the sky.”
that’s easily a list of things i like about the book.
that’s not criticism, that’s whining.
The one premise I can offer to justify my “whining” is this: In Jones’s book, and a lot of writing I’ve been reading online, there is a lack of engagement with extant-real systems of human organization: economies, households, cultures, societies, governments, religions, countries, etc. There is no engagement with the suffering and joy these cause or how to change them/ what to maintain within them/ how it is they come about. Steve Almond wrote an excellent piece yesterday in The Rumpus whose final thesis is that the benefit of writing, why we should keep doing it, is to empathize with the suffering of others. Jones’s writing et al is a florid and solipsistic dwelling on the suffering of a young writer among a group of young writers. There is no substantive exposure of the qualities we have that create or reduce suffering, nor of the suffering itself, either at the group or individual level. The closest thing to this I’ve found in this crowd is Tao Lin’s new novel (though not his older stuff).
I haven’t read any of your longer pieces yet Blake, so I cant say anything about your writing, but it doesn’t surprise me that you don’t share my intuition about Jones as I think you’re thanked personally in the acknowledgements section at the end of the book. (I don’t have it with me right now, but I think that’s right.)
As for the criticism of my song, that’s just mean (and irrelevant). My mom loves that song.
Re: Daniel Quinn, I have to admit that the first time I read ‘Ishmael’ it blew my mind.
Granted, I was 13.
But it remains on the shelf of “those books” with Knowles’ *A Separate Peace* and Gary Paulson’s *Hatchet* and every Calvin and Hobbes collection.
So just wanted to stick up for it a little.
i quite felt the suffereing of thaddeus, and others, and felt empathy toward him. was what made the book best for me. but some of yours are good points to make, though might, maybe, could use some fleshing out.
Another Re Daniel Quinn, oh snap!
Adam Kirsch tells a whopping lie in his piece on Kermode in Slate, which means he’s untrustworthy… or perhaps he just doesn’t read well (which, in a literary critic, is the same as being untrustworthy).
http://contrajameswood.blogspot.com/2010/08/dept-of-filthy-neocon-litcritter-lies.html
This is why I don’t trust any poet w/ the last name McDaniel. Jeffrey McDaniel & his fake-ass ‘working class’ verse & Raymond McDaniel with his General Motors style ‘assembled in the USA w/ imported parts’ class theft.
People like Raymond McDaniel are experience-vampires. They are too chicken-shit to actually live an interesting life and would rather steal the hard-earned experience of someone else. Major creative & intellectual bankruptcy.
I don’t have a problem with found poetry: I write a found poem every day based off twitter after all–but there is no axiom one can use to draw the line between borrowing & expropriating; it’s strictly a matter of good judgment. There’s a line where one is simply stealing someone else’s words and framing them w/ one’s personal title ‘poet.’ That’s what Raymond McDaniel did.
The guy is pretty much everything I despise about poetry.
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/journal/article.html?id=239968
Javier Marias is the stone shit.
Inexplicably so (to me), because most of his work traffics in the kind of mis-en-scene that turns me off in lesser authors’s hands. Plus, he is almost Sebald-level profficient at subverting his own gimmickry by shear force of mesmerism.
David Backer wrote a song about Titanic, and has a video of himself talking about the song for over two minutes before playing the song for under two minutes, on a banjo, with a backup dissenter, on his blog.
Something about Mel Brooks.
His opinion is paramount.
the Backer review of Jones is rather idiotic, if trying hard to condemn.
i don’t see what is wrong with any of the following, in the bulk of his complaints:
“(e) There are lists throughout the book, as though it were a draft.
(f) Some pages have only one sentence.
(g) The sentences all sound like this one: “I vomit ice cubes.”
(h) Thaddeus, the main character, doesn’t react when Bianca, his daughter, is killed. Many similar moments of emotion are skipped or merely sketched.
(i) It’s sort of fantasy, but sort of not. For example: Thaddeus goes to a group of owls and asks them where his daughter is and “remembers that owls don’t talk.” He feels foolish for thinking that they do, but throughout the book ants carry things out of the stomachs of foxes who have ripped them open themselves and bears wear coats with buttons and veins grow from the slit veins of men living in the sky.”
that’s easily a list of things i like about the book.
that’s not criticism, that’s whining.
I feel like you wanted the book to be something else entirely, which is fine, but it’s not particularly useful in judging the book as it is.
Fine, he doesn’t deal with that preposterously high-minded list of “systems” you included, but I’d venture that not everything you enjoy does, either. It’s like comparing Haneke to Tarantino, both fantastic filmmakers but for very, very different reasons. I guess I’m suggesting you see it in its context, and not in yours.
I hear Nero singing
Re: “…there is a lack of engagement with extant-real systems of human organization: economies, households, cultures, societies, governments, religions, countries, etc. There is no engagement with the suffering and joy these cause or how to change them/ what to maintain within them/ how it is they come about. […] Jones’s writing et al is a florid and solipsistic dwelling on the suffering of a young writer among a group of young writers. There is no substantive exposure of the qualities we have that create or reduce suffering, nor of the suffering itself, either at the group or individual level.”
Writing seems to be an attempt to escape “extant-real systems,” which are mostly constructed prior to our existence (we are born into culture, religion, ideology, etc.), in favor of something more humane, something more empathetic. That we have brains which can imagine something like a Shane Jones novel, which allows for the possibility of not having to live under such fascist conditions as ‘reality’, suggests that suffering is already axiomatic, and, relatively speaking, the extent of any individual’s suffering can’t be accurately calculated or quantified, as it is subjective and based on internally-directed empathy. Writing allows one to openly express one’s own internally-directed empathy (with which others may externally empathize to feel less alone), of making up a way to feel better about not understanding anything.
I fear saying Jones’ writing is “florid and solipsistic dwelling on the suffering of a young writer among a group of young writers” may be the equivalent of saying his brain doesn’t work like yours and is therefore an ‘inaccurate’ or ‘malfunctioning’ brain because it doesn’t operate according to your literary criteria/ideology. I don’t know. That seems strange to me. (Do we not all dwell on our own suffering, as universally subjective as it is?) Jones is simply writing how he writes, which is ultimately based on, through invented scenarios, how human societies function and how the individual relates to the purpose of that function. “[E]xtant-real systems of human organization: economies, households, cultures, societies, governments, religions, countries, etc.” are all made up anyway. We’re all just pretending.
Oh my. This is the conclusion to the article on Marias:
“That ‘Your Face Tomorrow’ is the work of a gifted writer is abundantly clear; that it is an epic failure is equally certain.”
Dear readers, no. Read Marias. Read the trilogy. If you liked ‘2666’, you will like this. Marias has nothing in common with Proust, at least not in terms of style or in the way they view and interpret the world. Proust is metaphors and lyricism, whereas Marias is concerned with the way men come to decisions (especially bad ones), and the consequences they have on other men (or women), and the infinite possibilities of human interactions.
Ok, rambling. But if you’re prone to trusting the opinion of anonymous blog commenter (who is an editor, for what it’s worth), than trust me on this.
Oh, and a good intro to Marias, if you’re hesitant on the three volume thing, is the novella New Directions just put out – Bad Nature. It’s fantastic.
good christ
augh
i am now going to read this review and get angry
The one premise I can offer to justify my “whining” is this: In Jones’s book, and a lot of writing I’ve been reading online, there is a lack of engagement with extant-real systems of human organization: economies, households, cultures, societies, governments, religions, countries, etc. There is no engagement with the suffering and joy these cause or how to change them/ what to maintain within them/ how it is they come about. Steve Almond wrote an excellent piece yesterday in The Rumpus whose final thesis is that the benefit of writing, why we should keep doing it, is to empathize with the suffering of others. Jones’s writing et al is a florid and solipsistic dwelling on the suffering of a young writer among a group of young writers. There is no substantive exposure of the qualities we have that create or reduce suffering, nor of the suffering itself, either at the group or individual level. The closest thing to this I’ve found in this crowd is Tao Lin’s new novel (though not his older stuff).
I haven’t read any of your longer pieces yet Blake, so I cant say anything about your writing, but it doesn’t surprise me that you don’t share my intuition about Jones as I think you’re thanked personally in the acknowledgements section at the end of the book. (I don’t have it with me right now, but I think that’s right.)
As for the criticism of my song, that’s just mean (and irrelevant). My mom loves that song.
Re: Daniel Quinn, I have to admit that the first time I read ‘Ishmael’ it blew my mind.
Granted, I was 13.
But it remains on the shelf of “those books” with Knowles’ *A Separate Peace* and Gary Paulson’s *Hatchet* and every Calvin and Hobbes collection.
So just wanted to stick up for it a little.
i quite felt the suffereing of thaddeus, and others, and felt empathy toward him. was what made the book best for me. but some of yours are good points to make, though might, maybe, could use some fleshing out.
Another Re Daniel Quinn, oh snap!
Adam Kirsch tells a whopping lie in his piece on Kermode in Slate, which means he’s untrustworthy… or perhaps he just doesn’t read well (which, in a literary critic, is the same as being untrustworthy).
http://contrajameswood.blogspot.com/2010/08/dept-of-filthy-neocon-litcritter-lies.html
This is why I don’t trust any poet w/ the last name McDaniel. Jeffrey McDaniel & his fake-ass ‘working class’ verse & Raymond McDaniel with his General Motors style ‘assembled in the USA w/ imported parts’ class theft.
People like Raymond McDaniel are experience-vampires. They are too chicken-shit to actually live an interesting life and would rather steal the hard-earned experience of someone else. Major creative & intellectual bankruptcy.
I don’t have a problem with found poetry: I write a found poem every day based off twitter after all–but there is no axiom one can use to draw the line between borrowing & expropriating; it’s strictly a matter of good judgment. There’s a line where one is simply stealing someone else’s words and framing them w/ one’s personal title ‘poet.’ That’s what Raymond McDaniel did.
The guy is pretty much everything I despise about poetry.
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/journal/article.html?id=239968
Javier Marias is the stone shit.
Inexplicably so (to me), because most of his work traffics in the kind of mis-en-scene that turns me off in lesser authors’s hands. Plus, he is almost Sebald-level profficient at subverting his own gimmickry by shear force of mesmerism.
I really want to read the book now, just after looking at your post
I feel like you wanted the book to be something else entirely, which is fine, but it’s not particularly useful in judging the book as it is.
Fine, he doesn’t deal with that preposterously high-minded list of “systems” you included, but I’d venture that not everything you enjoy does, either. It’s like comparing Haneke to Tarantino, both fantastic filmmakers but for very, very different reasons. I guess I’m suggesting you see it in its context, and not in yours.
I hear Nero singing
Re: “…there is a lack of engagement with extant-real systems of human organization: economies, households, cultures, societies, governments, religions, countries, etc. There is no engagement with the suffering and joy these cause or how to change them/ what to maintain within them/ how it is they come about. […] Jones’s writing et al is a florid and solipsistic dwelling on the suffering of a young writer among a group of young writers. There is no substantive exposure of the qualities we have that create or reduce suffering, nor of the suffering itself, either at the group or individual level.”
Writing seems to be an attempt to escape “extant-real systems,” which are mostly constructed prior to our existence (we are born into culture, religion, ideology, etc.), in favor of something more humane, something more empathetic. That we have brains which can imagine something like a Shane Jones novel, which allows for the possibility of not having to live under such fascist conditions as ‘reality’, suggests that suffering is already axiomatic, and, relatively speaking, the extent of any individual’s suffering can’t be accurately calculated or quantified, as it is subjective and based on internally-directed empathy. Writing allows one to openly express one’s own internally-directed empathy (with which others may externally empathize to feel less alone), of making up a way to feel better about not understanding anything.
I fear saying Jones’ writing is “florid and solipsistic dwelling on the suffering of a young writer among a group of young writers” may be the equivalent of saying his brain doesn’t work like yours and is therefore an ‘inaccurate’ or ‘malfunctioning’ brain because it doesn’t operate according to your literary criteria/ideology. I don’t know. That seems strange to me. (Do we not all dwell on our own suffering, as universally subjective as it is?) Jones is simply writing how he writes, which is ultimately based on, through invented scenarios, how human societies function and how the individual relates to the purpose of that function. “[E]xtant-real systems of human organization: economies, households, cultures, societies, governments, religions, countries, etc.” are all made up anyway. We’re all just pretending.
Oh my. This is the conclusion to the article on Marias:
“That ‘Your Face Tomorrow’ is the work of a gifted writer is abundantly clear; that it is an epic failure is equally certain.”
Dear readers, no. Read Marias. Read the trilogy. If you liked ‘2666’, you will like this. Marias has nothing in common with Proust, at least not in terms of style or in the way they view and interpret the world. Proust is metaphors and lyricism, whereas Marias is concerned with the way men come to decisions (especially bad ones), and the consequences they have on other men (or women), and the infinite possibilities of human interactions.
Ok, rambling. But if you’re prone to trusting the opinion of anonymous blog commenter (who is an editor, for what it’s worth), than trust me on this.
Oh, and a good intro to Marias, if you’re hesitant on the three volume thing, is the novella New Directions just put out – Bad Nature. It’s fantastic.
That mess with Raymond McDaniel is so fucked up. I can’t believe people are defending his book. It’s blatant appropriation. There is no way of getting around that. An acknowledgment at the bottom of the copyright page is shit for an excuse, and smug besides.
good christ
augh
i am now going to read this review and get angry
re: “anyone who types the words “Kathy Acker” or “David Shields” in re this is a fucking asshole.”
Fair enough, but what about Burroughs, Gysin, T.S Eliot, Bob Dylan, Girl Talk, and on and on…
Words, colors, light, sound, stone, wood, bronze belong to the living artist.
They belong to anyone who can use them.
Loot the Louvre!
Steal anything in sight.
I just stole those lines.
This McDaniel situation isn’t a big deal. He reappropriated.
‘Reading-comprehension-differently-abled’ would be the most accurate call, in my small reading of Kirsch.
I want the trilogy in hardcover, but it’s expensive.
Thanks for this, Eric. I think you’re right to some degree.
“Anything that starts with Daniel Quinn is going to end poorly.” Hahahahaa. Good one, Justin.
I really want to read the book now, just after looking at your post
That mess with Raymond McDaniel is so fucked up. I can’t believe people are defending his book. It’s blatant appropriation. There is no way of getting around that. An acknowledgment at the bottom of the copyright page is shit for an excuse, and smug besides.
re: “anyone who types the words “Kathy Acker” or “David Shields” in re this is a fucking asshole.”
Fair enough, but what about Burroughs, Gysin, T.S Eliot, Bob Dylan, Girl Talk, and on and on…
Words, colors, light, sound, stone, wood, bronze belong to the living artist.
They belong to anyone who can use them.
Loot the Louvre!
Steal anything in sight.
I just stole those lines.
This McDaniel situation isn’t a big deal. He reappropriated.
you lost me at “Steve Almond”
ZING!!!!!
‘Reading-comprehension-differently-abled’ would be the most accurate call, in my small reading of Kirsch.
I want the trilogy in hardcover, but it’s expensive.
Thanks for this, Eric. I think you’re right to some degree.
“Anything that starts with Daniel Quinn is going to end poorly.” Hahahahaa. Good one, Justin.
Steve Almond lost me at Steve Almond.
Really, Boston should have more to show for than that egotistical minor talent.
Plus, Mr. Backer:
Writing, in itself, has nothing to do with suffering. Sorry to break it to you, my friend.
As for the lack of “engagement with the suffering and joy these [“extant-real systems”] cause or how to change them/ what to maintain within them/ how it is they come about”: Light Boxes is neither a how-to book nor a sociological explication.
Also… happy to hear you live in Brooklyn and that you’re a hipster. I suppose this is intended to be what we call credentials, or something. Either that or a plea for mercy.
But… when it comes down to it, I’m not going to waste my time refuting an outrageous review written by someone who makes complaints like “There is constant mention of clouds”, or “Some pages have only one sentence”, or “Is it really a novel?”.
I’ll only add that I’m thankful to Shane Jones for having written Light Boxes. This slim little gem sits happily on my shelf, between honorable dead guys B.S. Johnson and James Joyce.
you lost me at “Steve Almond”
ZING!!!!!
Steve Almond lost me at Steve Almond.
Really, Boston should have more to show for than that egotistical minor talent.
Plus, Mr. Backer:
Writing, in itself, has nothing to do with suffering. Sorry to break it to you, my friend.
As for the lack of “engagement with the suffering and joy these [“extant-real systems”] cause or how to change them/ what to maintain within them/ how it is they come about”: Light Boxes is neither a how-to book nor a sociological explication.
Also… happy to hear you live in Brooklyn and that you’re a hipster. I suppose this is intended to be what we call credentials, or something. Either that or a plea for mercy.
But… when it comes down to it, I’m not going to waste my time refuting an outrageous review written by someone who makes complaints like “There is constant mention of clouds”, or “Some pages have only one sentence”, or “Is it really a novel?”.
I’ll only add that I’m thankful to Shane Jones for having written Light Boxes. This slim little gem sits happily on my shelf, between honorable dead guys B.S. Johnson and James Joyce.
Boston does have more to show for.
You should read more?
Strictly among published writers, Boston has Jane Unrue. She kicks Steve Almond’s ass sentence by sentence.
If you know of anyone else who isn’t boring, please let me know, I’d love to list them.
Boston does have more to show for.
You should read more?
Your stated ideology is in conflict with how you actually treat art. You are no advocate of anonymous folk art; you couldn’t even write your first sentence without alluding to ‘branded’ writers, etc.
You’re espousing a multi-tier system, where having a ranking lets one get away with pretty much anything; while everybody else’s art is ignored unless another fairy godpimp like McDaniel comes along & rips them off? What kind of sick, medieval French economics is this? Loot the peasants? You can garb your toadying up to the class system in flip sarcasm, but even you don’t believe your own crap.
It’s amazing what a single sentence can reveal.
Strictly among published writers, Boston has Jane Unrue. She kicks Steve Almond’s ass sentence by sentence.
If you know of anyone else who isn’t boring, please let me know, I’d love to list them.
Your stated ideology is in conflict with how you actually treat art. You are no advocate of anonymous folk art; you couldn’t even write your first sentence without alluding to ‘branded’ writers, etc.
You’re espousing a multi-tier system, where having a ranking lets one get away with pretty much anything; while everybody else’s art is ignored unless another fairy godpimp like McDaniel comes along & rips them off? What kind of sick, medieval French economics is this? Loot the peasants? You can garb your toadying up to the class system in flip sarcasm, but even you don’t believe your own crap.
It’s amazing what a single sentence can reveal.
KW––
My above comment has nothing to do with class politics or propping up any sort of hegemonic system. I’m simply calling out the bullshit “originality” fetish writers sometimes invoke. “Oh, I own these words. These words belong to me.” As Burroughs says: Writers don’t own words any more than painters own rivers, streams, and mountains.
I also think it’s interesting that on your site, which is essentially a museum of cutup material and found poems, that you have the audacity to put a copyright in the corner. I think you may want to look in the mirror and see whose stated ideology is in conflict with the way they actually treat art.
Peace.
KW––
My above comment has nothing to do with class politics or propping up any sort of hegemonic system. I’m simply calling out the bullshit “originality” fetish writers sometimes invoke. “Oh, I own these words. These words belong to me.” As Burroughs says: Writers don’t own words any more than painters own rivers, streams, and mountains.
I also think it’s interesting that on your site, which is essentially a museum of cutup material and found poems, that you have the audacity to put a copyright in the corner. I think you may want to look in the mirror and see whose stated ideology is in conflict with the way they actually treat art.
Peace.