A Restatement
I have to thank Daurade, whose thoughtful comment on the blogh post from yesterday made me see myself from without, and hence this:
A Retraction
Yesterday I posted a rant that later embarrassed me. While I assume everyone who reads this blogh is a friend, probably a friend I’ve known for over ten years! I know sometimes someone comes upon it who doesn’t know me, and that either way a blogh is a public statement, and public statements of the sort I was making usually piss me off. I have no business engaging in things that would piss me off if done by others. I want to emphasize that I don’t retract the substance of what I was saying, but the rhetoric was inexcusable, and I muddled things together into a swirl of violent emotion. Well, since the post is down, what was I saying?
One of the things I said was that i want to kill republicans and i want to kill bankers. I do feel that way, but it is not a real feeling. I don’t believe in violence. I don’t even believe in justified armed struggle. But I know the ANC, the PLO and the NLF (Viet Cong) would all say that they had reached the end of rational persuasion and that armed struggle was their only option, and that it is (was) justified self-defense. I think this gets to the root of the problem. I may oppose violence, I may not want to be like the violent people who oppose me, but when the way of language is abandoned or ineffective, then the way of violence and war becomes inevitable. In those circumstances people have few choices. And I suppose dying for the value of non-violence just isn’t in me. I equated the end of language with apoplexy. It is apt. My own anger makes me apoplectic. In a situation of collective apoplexy, people start to say things they don’t mean or intend (or grunt them). Those who are threatened respond in kind. Violent rhetoric leads to violent action, violent action leads to violent reaction, and there you have it, civil war.
Societies that can no longer reform themselves through peaceful means will do so through violent conflict. I believe ours is such a society. I do not want this to happen. I do feel that my children and grand children are being threatened. I believe the other side feels the same. I know these are dangerous ideas and feelings. I am frustrated that we can’t seem to step back and deal with things. Much of my anger and frustration is directed towards my own side in politics and in art. That is, I believe the left has disintegrated. I believe the left has failed utterly to do the basic political work that would persuade people that their true interests lie with the left and not the right, and because of that, the polar ice caps will melt, and tens of millions of the world’s poorest people will die, and the united states, which is bankrupt through lack of taxation of the rich, will not be able to afford to mitigate rising sea levels, or even deal with baby boom retirements. In my old age I will work and eat dog food. So will you.
As for my evangelical brethren, i repeat, the day of the lord will truly be upon you the day people like me get off their bloghs and decide to actually DO something. But, alas, pitchforks don’t burn. Expect your adversary to be a man in a dress. No, not J Edgar Hoover.
Well, that leaves my silly attack on Michael Chabon and Jonathan Lethem, two authors I respect and like, whose books I have enjoyed. I do believe what i said about them, but not with the hostility that dripped off of my words. I liked Fortress of Solitude and Yiddish Policeman’s Union. I do believe they are tourists in the land of failure. There is a deeply negative, dark and destructive element in American life, the anti-hero of the anti-myth, that of failure, futurelessness, envy, blame, resentment. It is what fuels noir. And I do believe, given the political situation, that rage at the human tragedy is preferable to the detached observation of the human comedy. A real fusion of the literary and noir modes of fiction would be exciting and interesting. Neither of them has achieved this. These two books are fine examples of ironic pastiche, a way of writing that is moribund.
As for Lang Po and the experimental wang of american poetry, well, it is a fruitless battle. poetry is unimportant. I write poetry. i am tired of the poet wars. They mean nothing.
2 comments »
Care to comment?
Ah, but bloghs by definition must be written in the style of the inchoate era. As to your point about violence, should it come to it (fuck forbid) there are people on your side– it’s just time to INS out who they are already. Nobody wants a civil war, but wishing for the sky to open up and pour down money is as effective as trying to convince the ruling class to be reasonable, stop ahooting wolves from helicopters, or read a book.
I’m just saying: things are terrifying in the world, utterly so, and selfishness is not getting us anywhere as a worldview. I will take up my pitchfork for your family if your family’s health or safey is threatened.
And a little vitriol never hurt anybody, especially a stranger. You should go into your wordpress trash and retrieve that post, while keeping this retraction. You never know– maybe people need to be reminded of these things, no matter how you saythem.
Comment by St. — March 11, 2010 @ 3:37 pm
I knew you would say this! judging by the traffic, my public temper tantrum was entertaining to people, like minded or not. I have been thinking of appending, or upending, the dirge to the retraction. but you know people have to be responsible for their words. and there are people, like my family, who depend on me not being labled a violent crank. context is everything. i agree, a little vitriol is good for the soul. i like absinthe as much cherry juice. i don’t know. we can email our diatribes to each other. maybe we are tiny quarks finding the muons and mesons out there in pursuit of a proton, an electron, an etym, and a neuron.
Comment by jonfrankel — March 12, 2010 @ 5:58 am