JOHN WIENERS & JORGE LUIS BORGES

BORGES: Personally I'm not afraid of dying. I think that if somebody told me, 'You'll be executed tonight,' I'd say, 'Well, that's that!' Of course one never knows. Maybe I would break down. I have a sort of fear of not dying, of going on. And I have also a personal fear about the immortality of the soul, because I wouldn't care to go on and on. I mean if I were sure of immortality and at the same time of utter oblivion then I wouldn't mind. But in that case what would immortality mean? Sometimes I think, 'Why on earth should I die, since I have never done it? Why should I start a new habit at my age?'"

Last night I had the pleasure of watching a short documentary on our most famous librarian, something called Borges & I, directed by David Wheatley. Well-directed, believe it or not, dramatizations of his stories, almost Lynchian filming, all centered around a lovely interview with a twilight Borges, who spoke accented, perfect English. Smuggle it home and weep in private.
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Wieners died this month. When I started reading his Selected Poems 1958-1984 this month I didn't realize this and only found out afterwards when searching for him. just a few notes:

1) A reason to love Ginsburg, if one was needed, is his generosity. As when he says in the preface:

John Wiener's glory is solitary, as pure poet -- a man reduced to loneness in poetry, without worldly distractions -- and a man become one with his poetry. A life in contrast to the fluff and ambition of Pulitzer, National Book Awardees, Poetry Medlaists from the American Arts & Letters & Poetry Academies -- harmless bureaucratic functionaries among themselves, until the holders of these titles deny the pure genius of poets like John Wieners, in favor of society-minded misfits who drink flatter fuck & get interviewed, sucking up the attention of the young, who are misled into the study of minor poetry -- till such books as this emerge from obscurity of decades, to reveal the true ligth of genius in the poem. And if this curse falls on myself, so be it, that John Wieners' Genius may shine froth and be proclaimed by the authority of my own fame deserved or not.

2) Wieners is like, but differently, Gertrude Stein and Louis Zukofsky, poets where sonic concerns are priority. They are all poets of sound, i.e. they submit all -- meaning and grammar -- to the reign of sound; however, in Wiener's case, the result is less intellectual than emotional, melancholic.

3) Though classical sometimes in figures, this ability to prioritize sound above meaning is strictly modern.

4) His poems are amazingly illusive. His images and narratives are instantly forgotten. What is remembered is the pitch of the composition, the sound.

4) An example:

Billie

He was as a god,
stepped out of eternal dream
along the boardwalk.

He looked at my girl,
a dream to herself and
that was the end of them.

They disappeared beside the sea
at Revere Beach as
I aint seen them since.

If you find anyone
answering their description
please let me know. I need them

To carry the weight of my life
The old gods are gone. What lives on
in my heart

is their flesh
like a wound,
a tomb, a bomb.


THE BLIND SEE ONLY THIS WORLD: Poems for John Wieners, edited by William Corbett, Michael Gizzi and Joseph Torra.

John Wieners Papers at University of Delaware, special collections

Search used bookstores's inventory for Wieners books, at ABE.com
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NEXT TIME: Younghill Kang & Youngsoo Park

VICTOR PELEVIN'S Homo Zapiens

"Tatarsky, of course, hated most of the manifestations of Soviet power, but he still couldn't understand why it was worth exchanging an evil empire for an evil banana republic that imported its bananas from Finland."
--Homo Zapiens

There is an inscrutability, a zaniness that tends toward the incomprehensible, which have made critics shrug at Pelevin’s last two books.

He privileges his style over his story and his intuitions over his logic, and – has not quite yet perfected the balance. But readers only concerned with successes – those spectacle-prone who go to ball games only when the local team is making good – may go back to burying their heads in the sand. In Buddha’s Little Finger and Homo Zapiens, when readers complain of insightless fancy and mere metaphysical solipsism, they are being short sighted, for the promise (some already delivered upon) is there.

First, what Pelevin has accomplished in these latest two books, more ambitious though less polished than his previous work, is a unique worldview which is sincerely informed by his Buddhist practice. (That members of that American wing of surrealism, the Beats, also tried a literature informed by Zen, can, by comparison, show how widely divergent such applications can be.) Plus, this Buddhism is shaded with that unique renunciating character of post-communist Russia (such huge historical paradigm shifting leaves one either enormously cynical and/or capable of great philosophic honesty (non-attachment)). In Buddha’s Little Finger, Pelevin delivered a constantly swirling metaphor of the enlightenment “process”, a novel-length kong-an that takes place simultaneously at both ends of the last century.

In Homo Zapiens, Pelevin’s concerns have shifted to the beginning of this one, where the abuses and complete tyranny of the Image reigns supreme. (Stunning, isn’t it, how much the basic theme of our Literature is coalescing completely around this urgency: the dictatorship of the image, and the ecological endgame and prisonhood brought on by our (read: the geopolitical north’s) consumerism. But such a dour face isn’t one to be pulled by Pelevin. As always he is hilarious. His humor is less gallows’ than a combination of laughing-Buddha and satirical wise-ass. (He does a routine – narrated by the spirit of Che Guevara via the protaganist’s ouija board – which explains among other things, the nature of our consumer selves, which one could find tedious (if fighting the ride) and absolutely hilarious (if one momently drops the ingrained dogma that plot, in every atom of a novel's being, be advanced!).

That all being said, the book is a cobbling together of critical set pieces, some of which can be baffling or boring or repetitive. The language is both packed and colloquially sped, a fact which makes the fluid translation by Pelevin's regular partner, Andrew Bromfield, that much more admirable.

As damningly satirical as Burroughs, it is less frustrating to the reader, but -- to the same degree less trangressive, less terminal, and yes, less explosive.

But. Where can all this detachment go? Maybe Pelevin has some sly finale for his middle act. ...A Uzbek friend mentioned to me the other day that the "kids say" Pelevin used to be something, someone whose books they'd pass along on samizdat floppy disks back in the early 90s when you couldn't get anything, but now? He's past his prime.

Not having any idea how 40 year old Sasa gets his street buzz, I'm guessing Pelevin's got some tricks left... (notwithstanding that author photo! Purple! Bamboo! ...Then again, guy's got a certain style...)

One to watch.

Love,
Eustace Limon
Your Pamphleteer for the Front for Full and Final Liberation

A Pelevin page all in Russian, with pictures and interviews.

Gregory Freidin's Pelevin links page

A look at Pelevin in 1994


NEXT TIME:: John Weiner's Selected Poems
oh and MARCH is Small Press Month

EUSTACE'S QUICK SPICY WARM TOFU SALAD

Dear diary, I know this isn't really relative to our main concerns here, i.e. libraries, art, and innovative fiction -- however, I needed place to announce my ultimate victory, achieved on my day off no less, over a culinary problem that has confounded generations. How might I, many have pondered, create a salad full of both protein and scrumptiousness that I can create practically instantly, cheaply, and furthermore which will survive nicely in unrefridgerated non-separation so I may easily transport said salad to consume at my humble occupation? I know many are, even as I type, pounding their collective miserable heads on kitchen counters across the globe, at hard work on this problem.

They may cease their efforts.

Here is Eustace Limon's lunch-packingly-appropriate, cost-effective, vegetarian-friendly, almost-instant spicy warm tofu salad recipe:

What you should have around:
-red onions
-carrots
-cucumber
-mixed greens
-firm tofu [my recent find has been Stow Mills brand organic tofu, firm style, creamy texture. If it's not expensive, try it. Nicely dense.]
-mirin or soy sauce
-cherry tomatoes
-sesame oil [can be replaced with olive or corn or vegetable]
-sesame seeds
-korean hot pepper paste [ko chu jang] or any chili paste/sauce
-miso paste
-hijiki [optional]

Ok, the hijiki prep'll take some time, so if you want the instant version, skip that. The entire process can be done in fifteen minutes as follows:
1)Take your mixed greens (which like you could mix 'em but i can't refuse the convenience of those pre-packaged salad mix things, tho, course, not all are made equal, and if you don't wanna cop out like that, then here's an Eustace tip, screw the salad dryer which takes up too much counter space anyway. Do what I do! Don't wash! Dirt and pesticide's good for you! Or, if yer rich, you can buy fresh mixed greens...) and put 'em in a large bowl.
2) Chop the cucumber up and put it and the cherry tomatoes in the bowl. Note, the cherri-ness of these tomatoes allows their moisture and flavor to not leak out, thus not potentially wilting yer greens when you tupperware the whole thing to work.
3) Put some oil in a pan. Heat to medium. Stir fry onions and chopped carrots (I buy baby carrots. Less pealing. Ok, so there're some compromises, we gotta do this in fifteen minutes right?)
4) Add cubed tofu, mirin, sesame seeds, hot pepper paste, and miso paste. Stir and mix and cook for ten or more minutes.
5) Pour the tofu stir fry mix into the bowl with the greens and tomatoes.
6) Mix. [you can add the hijiki here too, if you prepped it, which means like soaking it for awhile...]

If you eat it then, you'll note the coolness and crispness of the raw greens mixes nicely with the warmth of the sesame flavored tofu. If you tupperware it and take it to work, this effect is somewhat lost, but makes for fine eatin' anyway. You can also add cottage cheese on top of it, but some people find this gross.

NEXT TIME:: Victor Pelevin's Homo Zapiens and Buddha's Little Finger

Sanford Berman's original cataloging to be decommissioned
from library juice 5:9

Folks, Sandy Berman called me today and left a message on my answering
machine that contained some bad news. The list of user-centered original
subject headings created by him and his staff over two and a half decades
at Hennepin County Library is now going to be replaced in the catalog by
straight LC subject headings, or something close to that. In Sandy's
words, "The curtain is coming down."

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Sanford Berman is a maverick cataloger who used to work at the Hennepin County Library system until he was rudely forced into retirement. Before the term "politically-correct", he was radically discussing the effects of naming, and the consequent injustices that could occur when it was done badly or improperly. A thorn in the side of the Library of Congress' Cataloging Division (or its conscience, depending on yer persuasion), he developed progressive subject headings at HCL for over 25 years. That he is lionized by librarians everywhere speaks toward his charisma as well as the far-reaching respect he has gained through his many years of service. That he is treated with such contempt by the library system he worked at for so many years is tragic, disappointing, but nevertheless -- unsurprising.

To update a curse from W.C. Williams:
Send the visionless and spineless middlemanagers of this earth (of which there are legion) to hell.
Make it hot.

Venomously,
Eustace

THE OUTSIDER AND THE CURRENT CHAMPION: Henry Darger at the American Folk Art Museum and
Gerhard Richter at the MOMA

Mrs. Limon -- as my mother was called, respectfully, even though there'd never really been a "Mr." Limon in yours truly's life (tho that's a different story and probably for a different sort of diary) -- was a dyed in the wool communist of the sort produced by the depression and living her entire life in a predominantly liberal Jewish section of Queens. She got her fellow traveler chops by organizing tenants and fighting developers for over twenty years and displays, at hat's drop, her blacklisted creds like they were a framed Harvard diploma.

Which all goes to say, even at seventy five, there's no flippin WAY Mama Limon is going to move out of our five bedroom in Rego Park to some stair-less sunlit condo in Durham. Which is a long way to say, dear diary, that I, once again, did the long haul up to Gotham for a weekend dose of conventional maternal guilt.

However, a traitor to the East Village's ever evaporating grimy lustre for going on five years now, has not beat out the scanning of the library's copy of The Village Voice -- but weekly. Plus, though we're not even connoted with the eastern seaboard so much, and all that Yankee Coo-chure -- Richter's still been inescapable (to the hungry carpetbagger's eye), what with covers on both ArtForum and Art in America plus a NYTimes magazine cover (what a boogie middle-brow piece of shit that was). So to cut to the chase, dear diary, I skimmed a Sunday morning off the mother-daughter happenings and caught both the Richter show and the ongoing Darger at the AFAM next door.
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DARGER'S BEEN, RELATIVELY SPEAKING, so quickly 'canonized' that the term outsider art is now, ironically, one of the (serial) ambitions of every MFA hack who habitually romanticizes their own isolation. The difference of course is that Darger was isolated, almost absolutely so. The critical spin has the schizophrenic problem of needing to acknowledge Darger's outsider status while also wanting to place him in the pantheon -- which means it must say that Darger was conscious, aware, cognizant of what his skills meant and of the era in which he worked. Which might be true enough (Darger left his apartment every day, did not have his head in the sand), but the argument is the trap of well-meaning equanimity. Darger's work is that of a madman. Whatever the slippery distinction between awareness and mindless will, the legal-speak generated from discussion of whether he knew what he was doing -- is beside the point. Or, at the very least, incapable of resolution. Same goes for whether awareness is necessary for an act to be art. In my mind, Darger's work speaks -- and whether it is important to decide if the vessel of speech is psychological artifact or articulated expression is ...someone else's problem.

On the other hand, I understand why critics are faced with the problem. It is almost impossible to talk about Darger's work without describing his isolation and obsessiveness. That he was self-taught and innovative in his techniques was simply necessary and this fact's prominence in the show is only a marketing ploy, i.e. Lookeehere, how clever our boy is! He figured how to do it! All by himself! ...All artists do this. What is central to Darger is the completeness of the world he created, even if it was with a limited (though of infinite variations) repertoire of images. That he could compose these images into epic tableau's is why we now know his name.

A madman on the fringe, who sent us a report. May we appreciate his sacrifices.


Notes from a show produced by the University of Iowa Museum of Art. Includes a personal anecdote by Nathan Lerner who "discovered" Darger, a biographic timeline, images, and notes on some work.

Sara Ayers page on Darger with good links.

John Ashbery's book-length poem based on Darger's work
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RICHTER'S SHOW HAS BEEN HYPED up the wazoo, as had been noted, but frankly dear diary, I was not in the least bit disappointed. That he is a master is a given. Others more invested in such things can argue whether he's a master whose importance will end up matching his current reputation.

Much has been made of Richter's protean qualities, his simultaneous work on multiple and arguably opposed fronts. But the show struck me as incredibly consistent and with an organic trajectory. Some of this, no doubt, is due to curatorial genius, but Richter's concerns, how he sees, seems indelibly stamped on all the variety of works (with, for me, the possible exclusion of the color charts). Probably the difficulty in "naming" Richter is because his consistency is not within the grammar of how the art world has been labeling consistency. But yet he is consistent. From the early blurring to the later blurring, from the idea of the magazine image to the photo-paintings to the brushless-portraits, from the color charts to the tree-fungus winterwork abstractions -- what is consistent is his humor, his awareness of idealism's inescapable tragedy, and that we now see only via other media. This last seems like my best shot for giving Richter a one-liner. That he makes us aware that we can now only see through a mediated haze, but that this too, is seeing!

But even this vagary limits him, and possibly that is why his genius is such a painter's one. That he is consistent is obvious. That we can not define that consistency in our language but only know it through his painting, seems to me to speak of his incredible accomplishment, an effort achieved in that area where only painting can uniquely venture.

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...ok. enuf with the art criticism. ain't really my bag. still got an eyeful this weekend, humming in the mind below the incessant whine of mere Limon.
But.
Next week: back to the books!