Halfway through Robert Creeley: A Biography by Ekbert Faas

I'm reading two biographies right now... one on woody allen and one on robert creeley. Interesting to see two people who have had such diverse and also important impact. Their distinct worlds. None of this is today's point though... I mention the woody allen bio only because it is interesting to read the two simultaneously and contrast concepts of artist and megalomania... as like, you know, an exercise...

The real point, halfway through the Faas biography of Creeley, is the repulsion I've toward the young Creeley's violence. And let me say that Creeley's work, I love, and believe, if any can, will live far past us. Creeley has admitted before that, when younger, he had been a "competitive poet" -- but I really wasn't prepared for his anger, violence and vengefulness. [I think -- perhaps this is naive -- but i think that the next generation will discover fame with less of the asshole "will to power" aspects demonstrated in the last. If by any chance, this isn't entirely a pipe dream, it'll be becuz of the aesthetics and morals of punk rock.]

When Creeley literally goes for another man's throat, as he does so frequently it's almost a joke, or upon displaying his callousness and cruelty to his wives and dearest friends -- it's physically painful to read. Yet let it not be said that Creeley was ever a liar. He's aware of his sins, and has different definitions for what constitutes one. Moreso, he's allowed the record of his cruelty to be well documented in the current bio (as well as, though obviously fictionalized, in his own poetry and prose). The honesty doesn't overcome his failures, but does give us some insight into their cause.

...So,
so far, happily surprised with the Faas' biography. I was expecting dull academic writing and sycophantic details (don't know why ... maybe for the lack of Sorrentino in the index!), but his writing is better (thank god) than Mariani who wrote Hart Crane's and WCW's biographies. But, though Mariani writes tin-ear sentences, he correctly and publicly gave Williams, with the biography, the credit for remaking American poetry. So far, no major discoveries, but Faas does, for the first time that I've seen, give Creeley's novel The Island the status of a major work that it deserves, as well as speak of its influence.

Faas' style mixes in the lingo of his sources and writes in a style which manages both to be personal and consciously derivative of Creeley. This could be grating, but haven't yet found it so... To repeat, I think the reason I decided to write an entry, dear diary, prior to finishing the book, was to note the repulsion I felt toward Creeley's violence, before tales of his later-life mellowness (and regret if there is any), quieted such reactions.

NEXT TIME: Maybe the 20th anniversary issue of CONJUNCTIONS, which reads like a friggin who's who...

John Kenney Toole’s Confederacy of Dunces as related to Gaddis

I’m not terribly amused by situational comedy… don’t know why. A sight gag or a punch line makes me laugh more than awkward or absurd situations. For these I smile, but no out and out guffaws. Toole’s comic novel then, isn’t one that I loved, though was impressed by and enjoyed, and my opinion matters even less than usual because everyone else seems to love it and the author’s bio (early death) is indeed tragic.

The thing I’d like to comment upon, is this novel’s structural relation to William Gaddis’ work -- both masters of dialogue, comedy by situation and plot interweave. I think as time goes, the rushed and embarrassed canonization of Gaddis (embarrassed because of how wrongly panned his work initially had been) will be re-written, again, as overcompensation as Gaddis fades in memory and influence (as will, eventually, Pynchon).

What Gaddis was brilliant at was satirizing angrily (but perhaps ineffectively), the intricate plot constructions of interwoven characters props and events, and -- dialogue. More too was he quite excellent at, but these I think are matters of pyrotechnics rather than art. Toole's novel is similar in talents (though perhaps a little middle-brow in ambitions, they were expertly completed middle-brow ambitions.) You can go elsewhere for plot and promotion of Toole's work…

Toole satirizes with equal bile, though more successfully, because it is tempered with less ambitious plot. Gaddis’ ambitions are monumental so his failures must be seen in light of what he was trying. However, the relatively minor-writer ambitions of Toole (crisp story, satire, believable-yet-larger-than-life characters, exorcism of private demons) are more successfully packaged than Gaddis’ volumes of brilliant ego-mania.

And it is brilliant, though tiresome to read, mainly I’d say because Gaddis’ writing is too look-at-me. Toole is the look-at-me of the stand-up: when you look, you’re impressed and amused – not impressed and bored. But I’m really not reactionary at all, dear diary… but Gaddis’ pendulum has swung too heavily back, s’all I’m saying.

NEXT TIME: Scott Mccloud’s REINVENTING COMICS and/or The Projectivist Novel, Part II and/or the new Creeley biography

Gordon Lish (Dear Dear Mr. Capote, Extravaganza, Mourner at the Door ) and an introduction to the idea of THE PROJECTIVIST NOVEL

Though achieving some notoriety as the man who edited (some say made) the stories of Raymond Carver (see salon article), and a reputed opportunistic, egomaniacal scam artist of the writers' workshop graft -- Lish is not nearly as well known as he'd like to be (obviously), but also not as well known as he prolly should be.

Lish is a great stylist, though somewhat a one trick pony. (But that ain't no big thing as so was Beckett, but -- what a trick!) Lish's style in the three books I read rarely diverged, on the surface level, from slangy 'jewish'-rhythmed sentences. The ethnic notation I'm risking, but look-see and tell me if you think different. All things considered though, the voice wears thin and doesn't have enough variation to carry through all the books.

Of the three, Extravaganza's the one's most worthwhile for me. Mr. Capote's about 75 pages too long and deals with, ho-hum, a serial killer (or, ho-hum again, a man who might be a serial killer).

But Extravaganza is one of those books in a genre we should have a name for but don't. A different idea of plot, if we can still keep that word. A whole range of works I'd like to hereby re-categorize/reclaim, but to which various and wide examples might be placed like: Coleman Dowell's Island People, David Markson's Wiggtenstein's Mistress and Reader's Block or some of Beckett's or Kafka's short prose or Gilbert Sorrentino's Red the Fiend or even Eileen Myles' Cool For You (though it has more narrative) or Braughtigan's Trout Fishing.

I'm using Extravaganza as just a jumping off point. Though good, it isn't the best in the category, but it might be, in useful ways, representative. This category I'd like to call that of the Projectivist Novel, after Olson, and say that it's main properties are one, like Olson's idea, of field. But achieved in a very simple technical sense: the dismissal of plot-arch (character introduced, mayhem fallen to, then shoot-out or cool walk into deserted streets) in favor of a "field" entered into, by both reader and writer.

By that I mean, writing must be linear in the sense that the eye moves along a line across the page, but the added dimensions are what makes for its art. And now that movies "sculpt time" so well, writing can go with its strength, which is the mental dimensions which are related to space and time but more properly called the worlds of thought, meditation, and dream. Those are the fields in which these novels play, creating through rhythm, repetition -- poetry -- a space where the reader can exist and enter. And not merely climb on board like an amusement park's joyride. Here, one may portentously declare, is where the future of fiction lies. Not in the cinematic-driven comedies of, for example: Foster Wallace, Murakami or Pelevin (who're absolutely respectable and whom i count among my favorites -- i'm just trying to be a little politico/dogmatic), but in the poetry of a Markson or Dowell. Something I read in an essay by John Barth says this, which I always took to be a similar argument: "Novels are now doing the job that poetry used to do..." (from Barth's essay, "The Novel in the Next Century") Which speaks toward the meditative aspect of reading, those dimensions which are not time, and which were -- prior to the world of movies and television -- more appropriately used in poetry. Now those aspects are, in addition to poetry, also under the novel's jurisdiction, as movies have stolen some of the fire of plot. This theft is both blessing and curse (and of course, not complete) because it takes away some of the tricks of storytelling but also allows the full power of reading's meditational aspect to blossom.

Unlikely place to begin, but have just finished reading Andrew Vacchs' novel CHOICE OF EVIL. Vacchs writes variations on the noir/hard-boiled/underbelly theme. This was prolly not the best one for me to start with... have hurd rumors that STREGA and FLOOD are better... So the story follows survivor and revenge-addict, Burke, who drives a tricked up Plymouth and is, you know, pretty baaad, as they say. The plot evolves around a bitchy femme fatale that Burke's having nothing to do with (though she spends much of her screen time trying to get him to fuck her) and a serial-killer who's somewhat sympathetic in that he kills only gay-bashers. (In other words, his victims are jerks, so it's okay that they die... since it's just a novel) All in all, it was well paced and quick going, though the characters had backstories, I'm guessing from previous novels, and were hard to keep separate since Vacchs doesn't introduce them in detail here. The main question is the ending, which is somewhat out of left field and loose. Which in another type of book i wouldn't mind, but here somewhat feels weakly and vaguely "mystical". Anyway, a fine trashy read. (Book should either be fun or save your life). Vacchs himself has got a nice biography, which you can check out on his webpage.

Having read one walter mosley book recently -- FEARLESS JONES -- which had two pages which i LOVED on libraries (describing their use by the devastation they can cause in their absence), i think i've had my fill of this genre. Instructive to hear the toughie jaded male voice some, as well as to feel how the plot works, but these works, feels to me, kill time better than they fill it. Next time: Gordon Lish.