William F. Buckley Jr., who marshaled polysyllabic exuberance, famously arched eyebrows and a refined, perspicacious mind to elevate conservatism to the center of American political discourse, died Wednesday at his home in Stamford, Conn. He was 82.
Here’s the first half of a 1969 foreign policy debate between Noam Chomsky and William F. Buckley. Part 2 is here. You decide who actually “won” the debate. But there’s no doubt that by 1980, Buckley would become the new establishment and Chomsky relegated to the “radical left fringe.” If you’re looking for more Buckley, try this episode from the Charlie Rose Show, “An Hour With William F. Buckley Jr.” Buckley both defined and epitomized the modern conservative movement.
(Please note, that the last two links contain nudity.)
While the timing may be coincidental, it is surely symptomatic of celebrity culture today. As Amy Henderson points out, celebrity culture has always been part of a culture’s self-definition (”Media and the Rise of Celebrity Culture”). By this logic, celebrity culture seems to be looking backwards as much as being interested in the current celebrities. With George Clooney on the cover of TIME Magazine with the caption “The Last Movie Star”, there definitely seems to be some sort of eschatology at work in these photo shoots.
The religious connotations of eschatology are not coincidental, as celebrities generate a distinct cultish aspect through their relationship with the fans. Many celebrities, if not all, function as idols worthy of worship, and the films they star in, the music they produce, the clothes they wear, all have a distinct aura which is desireable for the followers. Yet, for many of the newer celebrities such as Lindsay Lohan and Jessica Alba, they have little in the way of proper cultural production to enforce their celebrity status. Whatever one might feel about Herbie or Flipper as cultural entertainment products, these are not exactly productions that build long-lasting acting careers.
These new celebrities end up in a particular relation with their followers; they become celebrities based on a certain shared experience for some of them - they became stars when they were young, and in productions aimed at people their same age. Therefore, a kinship can be said to exist between teen celebrity and teen follower, since they have been part of each others lives for a long time.
Also, they become celebrities in the newer sense of the word that Joseph Epstein traces to Daniel Boorstin in his book The Image: Or What Happened to the American Dream (”The Culture of Celebrity”): “a person who is well-known for his well-knownness”. Lohan and Alba are famous because they have always been famous, and part of their followers’ lives. The same goes for a number of other celebrities, who are still too young to be considered true stars, in the original sense of having proven themselves somehow “worthy” of worship.
This is where the past enters the stage, for what can be more worthy of worship than classic Hollywood culture? Hitchcock and Monroe can serve as master-icons, lending their glamour to the new, upcoming celebrities, thus creating a strange feedback, where the old icons are revived because new celebrities reenact their original iconic status, while the new celebrities can obtain more celebrity status by serving at the alter of the old masters (male and female).
It is this relationship between the old and new celebrity icons which is interesting. There is no parodic thrust to any of these shoots, but rather a desire to recreate, perhaps even channel or ressurect, the old icons. Margaret Rose refers to pastiche as reviving things from the past, without parody’s incongruous structure or comic effect (Rose, Parody). This seems to be a perfect description of these shoots, which also overlaps with Gerard Genette’s understanding of pastiche as imitative (Genette, Palimpsests).
Working from Genette’s definition, Linda Hutcheon points to the fact that pastiche functions as the desire for similarity rather than difference. (Hutcheon, A Theory of Parody). This is perfectly clear in the different shoots, as their main purpose is to draw a parallel between the new celebrity and the old, establishing a connection meant to increase the celebrity capital of the new icon.
This desire is most obvious in the case of Lindsay Lohan’s recreation of Monroe’s “Last Sitting”. Monroe’s shoot for the Look Magazine has been called “The Last Sitting” because it was her last photo shoot. Already here, the religious connotations are clear, the name echoing “The Last Supper of Christ”. In the case of Monroe, the parallel to Christ seems to come from the sacrifice that happened to them both; Monroe’s death has always been seen as tragic and as a response to the surrounding pressure of her life. Connecting her death to that of Christ also shows that not only is celebrity partly defined as cultish, but also that celebrity status is always bound up in some form of referral to an earlier icon.
Lohan’s pastiche of Monroe is as full as possible, recreating both hair, make-up and poses. The intention is clear: Lohan is the Monroe of our time and these photos establish that. From a critical point of view, the situation is somewhat different: Lohan wants to be the Monroe of our time, and so imitates one of the most famous photo sessions Monroe ever did. Through this recreation, Lohan hopes to gain celebrity capital by attempting to reproduce a similarity with Monroe, rather than a difference.
Many of Lohan’s followers might not be aware of the original which is being imitated here, but the poses remain a significant part of American culture, and it is likely that they are known by people who do not know who Marilyn Monroe was. The iconocity of her poses extends beyond the historical knowledge of Monroe. Lohan’s photos would still strike a familiar note and provide her with a degree of validity and celebrity capital.
The case of Vanity Fair’s Hitchcock tribute is slightly different. There is no particular reason for why Vanity Fair would do these Hitchcock stills now, other than the fact that this is the Oscar season and all forms of film and film history are more interesting right now. This is further emphasized by the fact that many of the actors used are nominated this year (Julie Christie, Javier Bardem, Marion Cotillard) or have won in the past (Jodie Foster, Renée Zellwegger). Most others have made significant and artistic films, rather than simply popular films.
In other words, there is less a desire for borrowing celebrity capital from Hitchcock and his classic films. Instead, I would argue, the point is to establish that these celebrities are worthy of recreating such classic moments. They have proved their worth in the Hollywood industry and can be permitted to take on the old master. Rather than an attempt to increase their celebrity capital, it is matter of the celebrity culture industry - of which Vanity Fair is certainly one of the leading producers - “knighting” these celebrities, by allowing them to imitate Hitchcock.
Here it is the industry itself which stands to gain from this imitation. By using currently popular icons to recreate classics, they establish that current celebrity culture is just as vibrant, significant and accomplished as old celebrity culture - nothing has been lost. While there is nostalgia at work in these photos, it is a double-coded nostalgia meant to reinforce current culture as much as past culture. The imitation is thus still used to emphasize similarity over difference.
Which only leaves Jessica Alba’s recreations, which is an interesting case of similarity. Alba’s photos come from Latina Magazine which obviously caters to the Latino population in USA. Alba is a Latino star, because she has gained celebrity status in spite of this Latino heritage. Allowing her to recreate classic film moments, is thus to emphasize her status in Hollywood and celebrate that her difference has not inhibited her career. However, there is a certain irony in the choice of films.
All of the films Alba imitates star white females: Scream, Psycho, The Birds, Rosemary’s Baby and The Ring (this is assuming that we are talking about the Hollywood remake of The Ring rather than the Japanese original, something I consider a safe bet). In other words, Alba can only obtain celebrity status by imitating white female icons. We end up being back at similarity rather than difference. Alba is not a celebrity because she is a Latino, she is a celebrity because she can imitate being white. I’m sure there are Latinos that will disagree with me, in fact I hope so, but this does not change the fact that the stars Alba imitates are all white. White is the original celebrity icon, and this has not yet changed, unfortunately.
The final point to be made here, is about celebrity culture as a whole. It seems to me that celebrity culture is turning into a pastiche itself. As Tom Mole points out, the classic understanding of celebrity culture is “structuring the production, distribution and reception of texts around the mystique of a particularly fascinating individual” (Mole, “Hypertrophic Celebrity”). As these photo shoots show us, there is also a new emergent behavior where production, distribution and reception is not structured around the mystique of a fascinating individual, but rather the mystique of the history of celebrity culture itself. Celebrity culture no longer has icons, but imitations of older icons.
As I briefly mentioned in relation to Marilyn Monroe, this has always been the case, but the difference now is that the feedback loop between historical celebrity culture and contemporary celebrity culture is ever decreasing. The Ring was (re)made in 2002 but is already a classic in the vein of Psycho and The Birds. The production of celebrity culture is now as much the imitation of the production of celebrity culture.
References
Epstein, Joseph. “The Culture of Celebrity”. The Weekly Standard, volume 11, issue 5.
Genette, Gerard. Palimpsests.
Henderson, Amy. “Media and the Rise of Celebrity Culture”. OAH Magazine of History
6 (Spring 1992).
Hutcheon, Linda. A Theory of Parody
Mole, Tom. “Hypertrophic Celebrity.” M/C Journal 7.5 (2004). 25 Feb. 2008 .
Rose, Margaret A. Parody: Ancient, Modern, and Post-Modern.
Stein, Joel. “Guess Who Came to Dinner?”, TIME Magazine, vol 171, no. 9, March 2008.
This week’s blog version of The Beat Generation Revisited lecture takes us on a journey into a dark continent of drug abuse, pretty boys who orgasm as their necks snap in the hangman’s noose, and marks and narcs melting into one another - in the flesh - turning into ectoplasm. You’ve guessed it: we are not Stanleys looking for Dr. Livingstone here - rather the topic of inquiry is William Burroughs and his gallery of characters from The Naked Lunch, led by the mad master surgeon, Dr. Benway who’s never met an abdomen he didn’t want to slice open and eviscerate…
Unlike Kerouac and Ginsberg, Burroughs came from a wealthy background, as his grandfather was the founder of the Burroughs Adding Machine Company and holder of a lucrative patent on such machines. The family was located in St. Louis, and Burroughs was brought up to appreciate a Southern upper class life style (leisured and hedonistic), which - combined with his keen and curious mind and voracious appetite for reading - seems to have left a permanent stamp on Burroughs from his formative years and onward. Another contrast with the other Beats is the lack of a non-default ethnicity in Burroughs - no hyphenation in his Americanness. On a balance, Burroughs was, however, quite ready to leave St. Louis at the earliest opportunity - finding it stuffy and intolerant towards his queer sexual tastes which were manifest from an early age.
Whether or not Burroughs continued to benefit directly from the family fortune after his graduation from Harvard (where he studied English from 1932 to 36) is a matter of some small controversy. Certainly, Kerouac seems to have gotten the impression that Burroughs had a monthly allowance from his family to fall back on when the younger Beats first became acquainted with him in NYC in the mid-1940s. Burroughs has, however, since denied this fact.
What seems indisputable is that Burroughs worked a number of short-term jobs in the late 30s and early 40s, including a stint as an exterminator in Chicago, either to supplement his income or simply to scrape by. Upon coming to New York he seems to have made a deliberate decision to join the criminal world and make a living selling stolen goods - including narcotics, which he soon found himself addicted to. Some of his old acquaintances from St Louis and Chicago had also come to the City (among them Lucien Carr, later to be one of the dedicatees of Ginsberg’s “Howl”, and a former Boy Scout friend of Burroughs, David Kammerer. In 1944 Carr stabbed the homosexual Kammerer to death, causing a sensational trial where Carr pleaded self-defense and that the act was an ‘honour killing’), and new friends such as Herbert Huncke, Bill Gaines and other small-time crooks and junkies were soon added to the circle, which also included Ginsberg and later Kerouac, who were both Columbia boys at the time.
Burroughs’ role as a mentor for these wannabe writers is significant. He seems to have been an almost hypnotic figure, holding forth on complex issues in philosophy, history and sociology, which the younger Beats found new and fascinating. Kerouac in particular seems to have fallen for Burroughs’ worship of Oswald Spengler’s The Decline of the West- a transhistorical systematization of civilizations following one after the other as seasons follow each other with inexorable logic. An idea from Spengler which appealed to both Kerouac and Burroughs was that the time of the Fellaheen peoples of the earth (Arabian & North African people of the land) might be dawning to replace the decadent West. In general, Burroughs seems to already have shown a predilection for grand systems of thought and for ideas that diminish the role of human agency in favour of fatalism and the crushing power of ideological apparatuses.
To begin with, Burroughs seems, much like Neal Cassady, to have been a talker rather than a writer. It was only after his relocation to Mexico City (after stints in New Orleans and later East Texas where he has a half-successful project as a marijuana-farmer going) that he was persuaded to attempt to write a confessional book about his life as a junkie. The ensuing manuscript was ready in late 1950 but did not appear until 1953 as part of a true crime pulp paperback: Junkie: Confessions of an Unredeemed Drug Addict, pseudonymously ascribed to William Lee. The volume was an “Ace Books Original - Two Books for 35 c.”, packaged with a memoir by a former FBI narcotics agent, Maurice Helbrandt! Thus Ace Books covered themselves from potential lawsuits by representing both sides of the crime, as it were… (Copies of this pulp now sell for 1.000$, btw… Currently you can see a copy advertised here with both cover images displayed in all their faded pulp colours.)
In fact Burroughs was inspired by the success of writing his memoirs as a junkie that he followed it up with a sequel focusing on the other illicit part of his life, that as a practising homosexual. This manuscript, titled Queer, turned out to be too explicit even for the pulps and did not find a publisher until many years later when Burroughs’ fame as an author was much more established, and more importantly the homophobic climate of the 50s had been replaced by a somewhat greater tolerance for sexual deviance in the US.
Burroughs was, however, getting worn out by a life lived always outside the law. His growing opiate habit was also impeding his creativity and in general his capacity to function intellectually. As detailed both in Junkie and later in Naked Lunch, junk reduces the addict’s humanity and drives to a very simple equation: junk rules your every move and motive, as everything and everyone else becomes a simple commodity or pawn that you will not hesitate to use or sell to ensure your next fix. This economy of junk was rapidly enslaving Burroughs who also was weary of the very logistics of relocating, being on the lam from the law, constant bribery of authorities, doctors, cops etc. The ‘menagerie’ he found himself in (numbering various so-called friends and hangers-on, as well as his wife Joan Vollmer, a Benzedrine addict, and her daughter from a previous marriage plus the Burroughses own son, Bill) was also becoming unmanageable as even in cheaper Mexico City the expenses continued to mount.
Whether what happened next is due to Burroughs, consciously or subconsciously, needing to break away from this situation will remain a matter of speculation. The fact remains that on September 6, 1951 Burroughs shot Joan Vollmer through the temple during a “William Tell act”, which involved her placing a glass on her head and Burroughs attempting to hit it with a shot from one of his handguns. Both were apparently extremely drunk at the time, and reports indicate that Joan had been taunting Burroughs all day, daring him to prove what a marksman he was. She died instantly as a result of the head wound. In the aftermath Burroughs was imprisoned, but released on bail a couple of weeks later (bribery and bent lawyers no doubt being involved in this turn of events). He was eventually charged with criminal negligence but decided to skip bail and not appear at the court case - ultimately fleeing Mexico and travelling throughout South America in search of new, exciting telepathic drugs he had heard rumoured to exist down there.
The trauma of the killing of Joan was however a watershed event for Burroughs. The ghost of her and the guilt he continued to feel no doubt coloured his writerly temperament. Burroughs’ own evaluation of the import of the events is worth quoting at length:
I am forced to the appalling conclusion that I would never have become a writer but for Joan’s death, and to a realization of the extent to which this event has motivated and formulated my writing. I live with the constant threat of possession, and a constant need to escape from possession, from Control. So the death of Joan brought me in contact with the invader, the Ugly Spirit and maneuvered me into a lifelong struggle in which I have no choice but to write my way out.
I am quoting this statement by Burroughs from the excellent ‘alternative’ biography (all pages are on vivid multicolour background, liberally collaged with photographs, drawings, texts etc.) of Burroughs by Graham Caveney, Gentleman Junkie. Along with Ted Morgan’s more traditional biography Literary Outlaw, Victor Bockris’ With William Burroughs: A Report from the Bunker, and Barry Miles’ El Hombre Invisible, these volumes covers almost all biographical aspects one needs to know about the life and times of William Burroughs.
Burroughs criticism also continues to blossom, led by Oliver Harris’ impressive volume William Burroughs and the Secret of Fascination from 2006. (I had the honour to serve on a panel at the British Association of American Studies annual conference with Oliver Harris and Ginsberg-expert, Franca Bellarsi in 2007. Harris presented vividly on Burroughs’ Paris years where my idea of seeing Burroughs as a postmodern flaneur found its seed (i.e. I stole it from Oliver), Franca masterfully compared Ginsberg’s aesthetics with William Blake, whereas I attempted to trace the influence of the Beats on selected immigrant writers from Eastern Europe who came to the US and melded Beat aesthetics together with their own cultural influences). Burroughs’ cultural legacy is particularly strong in sub-cultural and anti-capitalist circles, as I shall return to later in this post.
We now return to our scheduled program of literary history: Post-Mexico City and Yage-quest (documented in The Yage Letters Redux which contains letters exchanged between Ginsberg and Burroughs, again edited by Harris), Burroughs relocated to Tangiers in Morocco - another location which had the distinct advantages of being cheap, having easy access to drugs and a relaxed view of homosexuality. While in Tangiers Burroughs began the therapeutic process of writing almost compulsively about his life and fantasies. In the published version of The Naked Lunch he describes the experience of awakening from his drug addiction and finding these mounds of pages with writing he claims not to remember producing. On a visit to Tangiers by Kerouac and Ginsberg the two younger men were also astonished both at the quantity of writing and the nature of the material. Quickly Kerouac begins typing up some of the handwritten pages and together with Ginsberg an editorial process of sorts begins. Kerouac also dreams up the title of the soon to be born ‘novel’: The Naked Lunch.
The ordering and mixing of the pages is apparently quite haphazard, and this of course greatly adds to the fragmentary and disjointed nature of the book. It consists of ‘routines’ - comical narratives (imagine cutting-edge stand-up material) told in a sardonic voice by a lizardy, Burroughs-like narrator, featuring escapes from narcotics agents, the setting-up of ‘marks’, scoring dope from seedy, undercover characters like Bradley the Buyer, etc., etc. Much of it has to be heard to be understood, and preferably in Burroughs’ own drawl. YouTube has a wealth of clips with material, but there is also a complete audio book version read by Burroughs himself. Of the many available clips I particularly enjoy this early TV-appearance by Burroughs, featuring the “Twilight’s Last Gleaming”-routine from a later novel Nova Express which illustrates the transgressive nature of the typical ‘routine’, but also both its humour and social satirical aim:
The Naked Lunch can also be seen as a compendium of parodies of the various pulp genres, such as crime, thriller, sci-fi, porn, and so on. For more hints on possible readings of the novel, see my agenda for analysis at the course website. Burroughs quickly gained notoriety for the manuscript, which had a fairly hard time finding a US publisher - even Olympia Press in Paris which had published Marquis de Sade were hesitant to accept the manuscript, but eventually realizing that controversy and transgression sells, they put out an edition in 1959. In ‘63 an American Grove Press edition followed. By this time Burroughs had once more relocated - to Paris where his stint at the Beat Hotel produced another chance meeting of great importance for his later prose style, the so-called cut-up technique which painter and collage master Brion Gysin introduced Burroughs to. The video below (pardon the subtitles) explains:
I think there are already traces of cut-ups in The Naked Lunch: certainly it contains pregnant strands of repetitions of phrases with various riffs (minor variations) or fugue-like passages - all features that often are the result of the manual cut-up and post-cut-up palimpsesting done by writing on top of the new sheet on a typewriter, as shown in the clip. Passages in the appended “Deposition: Testimony Concerning a Sickness” from 1960, clearly show cut-up having been applied to it. Nowadays cut-ups are most easily performed with small computer programmes - try this simple on-line cut-up engine…
Other 60s novels by Burroughs, such as The Soft Machine, Nova Express and The Ticket that Exploded continue to evince pulp influences, increasingly so from science fiction and space opera, as Burroughs’ ideas of language as a virus from outer space find creative outlets in these experimental books. Work from the 70s and 80s draws on other mythologies, for instance gangsters (The Last Words of Dutch Schultz) and outlaws of the old West (The Place of Dead Roads). Some of Burroughs’ last works can perhaps best be categorized as post-colonial in their solidarity with the oppressed peoples of the world and their unwritten histories and myths (Cities of the Red Night; The Western Lands). His last book, My Education: A Book of Dreams, is perhaps the closest we get to an autobiography - but all his books are strongly imbued with elements of life writing, drawing on personal experience.
Burroughs’ legacy within alternative culture - globally and in the US is immense. Part of the reason for that is collaborative work with subcultural figures already while Burroughs was still alive. You of the most viewed YouTube clips with Burroughs is his reading to the accompaniment of Kurt Cobain: The Priest They Called Him:
Other tremendously popular stuff is a recording from the late 80s of an alternative Thanksgiving prayer which is the most direct and sharp social critique Burroughs ever produced:
Even his foray into commercial work (for NIKE) is tinged with irony and (not) coincidentally presents some of his ideas on the alienating effects of language itself and of technology:
Another very concrete cultural legacy is in the form of the numerous bands paying homage to Burroughs by taking their names from his books, or characters therein. Some of the best known are prog-rockers Soft Machine; Steely Dan, named after a mean dildo in The Naked Lunch; and Thin White Rope, borrowing a metaphor from Burroughs’ description of the ejaculations of the hanged young men in the “Hassan’s Rumpus Room”-portion of The Naked Lunch.
Many of you may first have been exposed to Burroughs through the film medium, whether it is via Gus Van Sant’s indie film Drugstore Cowboy from 1989 (Van Sant also directed Thanksgiving Prayer), or David Cronenberg’s biographically enhanced version of Naked Lunch from 1991, for which I also recommend the excellent companion book Everything is Permitted: The Making of Naked Lunch which contains a wealth of extra material and historical background, as well as an intro by Burroughs himself.
Burroughs died in 1997 of a sudden heart attack, having spent the greater portion of his last years in his compound in Lawrence, Kansas, known affectionately as The Bunker - the facility offered him ample space to pursue his hobbies: target shooting, painting and pet cats…
April 8, there will be a special primary election for California’s 12th Congressional District, which has become vacant after Tom Lantos passed away last week.
Within days, a draft Lawrence Lessig campaign was set up by Harvard professorJohn Palfrey.
Ars Technica reported;
Legal theorist Lawrence Lessig, who has become an academic celebrity for his innovative work on cyberlaw and intellectual property in the digital age, made headlines late last year when he announced that he would be shifting his scholarly focus to the study of political corruption. But now a burgeoning online movement is urging the Stanford professor to tackle the problem head-on: they are seeking to draft Lessig to run for Congress, in a special election, scheduled for April 8, to replace the late Rep. Tom Lantos (D-CA), who succumbed to cancer last week.
Here’s his announcement video. Anyone familiar with Lessig is familiar with his “powerpoint” and speaking style. This is definitely not the typical political campaign message, but it will no doubt appeal to a sizable portion of Democratic primary voters in his district.
At this point it’s not certaint that he will enter the race. Furthermore, his chances against a popular and well-known politician like Jackie Speier would seem fairly insurmountable.
But this district, spanning parts of San Francisco and San Mateo counties represents one of the most IT tech savvy districts in the nation. Lessig is also a staunch supporter of Barack Obama’s campaign and there has been much speculation that Lessig would play a role in an Obama administration. It will be interesting to see if and how these two races intersect. IT and communications policy, while mundane to the average voter, will be a major issue in the years to come. Obama, for example, has placed IT policy as a top priority for his administration. He’s outlined a very progressive policy (progressive being quite subjective) which can be read here.
Whether or not Lessig enters the race or wins the seat, this demonstrates the increasingly dominant role of not only internet technologies in US politics but of the very active online culture behind those technologies. Lessig, with his dedicated support of open copyright and “free culture” represents the technocratic neo-progressivism which has become a powerful constituency within the emerging new Democratic coalition. Like Carl Pedersen suggests, 2008 may ultimately turn out to be a total referendum on the last 30 years of Conservative free market ideology. Communications and copyright are just a few of the many fronts in what could turn out to become a generational political realignment.
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A book which should appeal to all Danish speakers with an interest in American Studies has recently appeared: Carl Pedersen (now adjunct professor at Copenhagen Business School’s Center for the Study of the Americas) has published the third volume of his Danish-language USA-trilogy, titled Det andet USA. In this book Pedersen examines the roots of the American social and political system from Roosevelt’s New Deal policies to today, and he proposes that after a long spell of Republican mismanagement of the legacies of class solidarity, environmental care and multicultural acceptance the US may be poised for a return to a more caring set of policies under the coming Democratic presidency of Barack Obama…
In the book’s first portion “Rødder” (Roots) Pedersen interlaces his account of US history from the early 20th century onwards with memoirs of his own family, his parents being Danish immigrants meeting more or less at random in New York City, getting married, settling in New Jersey and raising a family there. This personal touch of life writing brightens up the historical account, which also features its own political heroes and villains, in the form of various Presidents and candidates whose various policies and ideologies are examined throughout the book. The “Roots” chapter is followed by 3 more specific case-oriented chapters, discussing Hurricane Katrina, environmental issues, and immigration and multiculturalism issues, respectively. The closing chapter focusses on a more topical issue, namely the ongoing Presidental campaign, but also offers a form of utopian speculation on the future direction of the US, if - or when - the “other” America takes over.
Here is a quote from my review:
Ærindet med Pedersens bog er tydeligvis tofoldigt: Dels ønsker han brændende forandring i sit fædreland og bogen bliver et passioneret argument for denne forandrings uundgåelighed efter en lang række mørke år under regressive præsidenter og deres fejlslagne administrationer; dels vil Pedersen meget gerne have sit danske publikum til at indse at USA er et mere multifacetteret samfund end det mediebillede de fleste danskere ligger under for, hvori USA er et bibel-bankende, skydevåben-befængt, cowboy-bestøvlet, selvtilstrækkeligt forbrugerparadis, stereotypisk befolket af konservative dødsstrafstilhængere og overvægtige, fastfood-afhængige ignoranter med sport på hjernen… Der er altså, som Pedersens titel siger, et andet USA derovre, både nu og endnu mere tydeligt i en ikke alt for utopisk fremtid, som har de svages kår på sinde, som tror på en bæredygtig økologisk rolle for Amerika, og som indser at USA er et land hvor mange racer og etniciteter skal sameksistere og deles om riget, magten, og æren: Et USA der står i en slags multikulturel regnbuekoalitions tegn.
I’m a word freak – one of those teachers that can get excited about a single paragraph in Pym, or get tangled up in runon sentences when talking about the rhythm of Ralph Ellisons prose. And I will inflict spoken word versions of Whitman (or Kenneth Burke for that matter) to who ever gets in the firing line. All this because from the deeply personal level to the interpersonal and collective, the narratives we produce are all inter-connected and reproduced in an attempt to close the gap between experience and meaning – or to quote Burke, who put it more elegantly: Literature is equipment for living.
I’m also a jazz freak – if you’ve ever met one, you’ll know what that means… I will try to refrain from endless lists of personal favorites and jazz anecdotes. But I do use jazz as a way in to those narratives. As a model of epistemology, creating and disseminating knowledge through dialogue and appropriation. In my work I’m currently focusing on the way narratives are formed around jazz in the US and elsewhere, constructing national as well as transnational identitities. More will follow from me on this.
As for Spaces, I am intrigued by those in between – between the words, the notes, between the notes and the words, and just those between…
And to tie you all over, here’s the meister of spaces in between: Thelonious Monk, filmed in Copehagen in 1966…
To follow up on yesterday’s post on “The American Scream” - Ginsberg’s poem “Howl” - the recently discovered first recording of Ginsberg reading Part I of the poem (the famous 6 Gallery reading in October ‘55 was not recorded) has now been made available to the general public…
To listen, go to the Reed College - a Portland, OR undergraduate college - Multimedia website. After you hear the readings, look at John Suiter’s fascinating account (wonderfully illustrated on 6 HTML-pages)(this link opens the article as a PDF-file if you just want text - but the photos should not be missed) of finding the tape and describing the events in February 1956 when Gary Snyder and Ginsberg came to Reed and gave poetry readings to a small student audience…Suiter’s story begins:
In a plain gray archival box in the basement of Reed’s Hauser Library there lies a single reel of audiotape that captures a moment in the early life of one of the anthemic poems of the 20th century. The aging brown acetate clarifies an author’s voice, hints at a spirit, adds to the myth of two poets, and tells of a part Reed College played in the early days of the Beat Generation—before it was Beat, or yet a generation.
Later in the piece Suiter quotes Ginsberg’s introductory remarks before launching into the incomplete version of “Howl”:
Ginsberg pauses to briefly prime his listeners for what’s to come. “The line length,” he says. “You’ll notice that they’re all built on bop— You might think of them as built on a bop refrain—chorus after chorus after chorus—the ideal being, say, Lester Young in Kansas City in 1938, blowing 72 choruses of ‘The Man I Love’ ’til everyone in the hall was out of his head—and Young was also…” (This was pure Kerouac, straight from the prefatory note to Mexico City Blues, wherein Kerouac states his notion of the poet as jazz saxophonist, “blowing” his poetic ideas in breath lines “from chorus to chorus.”)
John Suiter has his own interesting website for his “Poets on the Peaks” project…
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