Some Online Conversation About Jack
From scott zimmerle:
>Jeff,
>I printed out the “bicycle cycle” yesterday and showed it to my significant other over Thai last night. (Didn’t get a chance to print the Vignettes till this morning.) We read the part about Zora Neal Hurston and Alice Walker and liked it. She said, “The ideas are interesting, but the style is…not.”
Glad you’re hanging in there! 🙂
You’ll find more ‘home runs’ in the Vignettes. Well, all home runs, I think.
The Bicycle Cycle is a slice of something far huger. There’s a whole rhythm that takes awhile to acquire. It is something new and like coffee, one doesn’t always like it at first. If you already knew it, it wouldn’t be new.
I find one of the hallmarks of me and something new is that I strongly react against it at first, almost every time! I burned my first copy of ‘Confederacy of Dunces’ in frustration. It then incubated 2 years, gestated and turned into a favorite. Jack did that for me, too. I was annoyed at first, wanted to edit.
I find that Jack is FAR beyond the Beats. First off, he’s a family guy who has sweated bullets to stay integrated into a local culture and ancestry which has persisted despite most vestiges of it melting away beneath him. His wife, kids, extended family and home town is essential to his work. No other Beat is this way.
Jack is something like the movie ‘Ruby in Paradise,’ which he uses.
Jack’s style is very musical, jazzy, blues which is annoying until you pick up the beat.
The Vignettes will show you just a very little of what he can do with a quick riff.
Remember, too, that you will not read similar material about ZNH or AW anywhere else. Sometimes he does have the effect of gems hidden in lulls. Even when I hated him, what finally made me come back was that no one else had anything like what he had. He fills a certain need.
When you see the big picture, you see the lulls aren’t really lulls at all. It’s Proustian. We simply haven’t seen such in a few generations in America. The Bicycle Cycle is part of an ouevre which you hopped into without first getting your feet wet. But then again Jack is a big river. It’s all part of the whole. Everything fits with what went before. That’s true of any artist, but usually you don’t get to see it so clearly, nor are you usually confronted so strongly with the feeling of being shortchanged. You can’t get at the other stuff. Usually an artist’s other work is more available. He plays up that sense of lack. He doesn’t just whine about rejection. He SHOWS what it’s like to only be able to get a small taste of a small part of a huge body of an artists work. He pays homage to all the greats whose work mildewed out in the shed. They’re all around us. It happens to most of them, in fact. You’re seeing just an outline of a mountain that had a huge approach leading up to it.
*****
How is Jack Different from Camille?
From Scott Zimmerle:
>I really don’t think that there’s a great deal of continuity between Paglia’s ideals and goals and the ones you outline, but I’m not sure.
PS: Here’s my quicky list:
ESTABLISHMENT:
- group power
- careerism
- patronage
- legalistic
- making friends
- brownnosing
- committees
- image
- comfort
- manipulation
PAGLIA:
- scholarship
- French theory
- freedom
- tradition
- modest amount of personal experience
- polished essays, one genre
- candor
- education
- development
- general
- integrity
- continuity
- bravery
- energy
- honesty
- race
- sex
- no threat to libel
- player in the system, even as rebel
- chaos
- Italian
- Jewish
- new and old together
- antiquities
- rock
- movies
- criticism
- academia
JACK:
- archaelogy
- anthropology
- freedom
- tradition
- huge emphasis on personal experience
- polished literature, six genres
- candor
- education
- development
- general
- integrity
- continuity
- bravery
- energy
- honesty
- race
- sex
- libel
- beneath the underdog,
- worker in System for decades
- chaos
- folk
- art—fiction, poetry, creativity, boundary pushing Southern
- new and old together
- classics
- jazz
- movies
- criticism
- academia
- censorship
- banning
- officework
- corporations
*******
From Scott Zimmerle:
>Here are some genres Paglia might say she’s mastered:
Ah, but perhaps you miss an important distinction. I contend that Jack has INVENTED six NEW genres AND mastered them as well. It goes without saying that he does pretty well in several existing areas. Novel, essay, letter, cover letter, short story, poetry, screenplay, newspaper column, memoir, mystery. (Ha, I’m not sure I include ‘cover letter’ as a new form of art in my list of new genres, but it might as well be.) It’s also vital to note that he’s written 250 books
His new genres are:
- Enema Verite’
- Swiss Family Paranoia Critical
- Crank-Lettres
- Daily Typewriting
- Stark-Nakedism
- Bebop Musical
- Wewa Gothic
Oops! I forgot, in the last couple years he added the last one. 7 genres. The new one is actually quite a scary one. Wewa Gothic shows how the stress of your art over time changes you into something monstrous and new (as per some lines of classical poetry). (‘Wewa’ being what locals call a town he’s from in Florida.)
>* essays
>* performance art: half professor, half stand-up comic. * movie reviewer/psycho-analyst
>* public policy commentator/wonk
>* PR wizardry, a la Madonna
>* art critic, extending art to include modern mass media (the first to do so?)
The above is a good first for her, and a good list.
>AN IMPORTANT POINT:
>Under “establishment”, you list “image”. To Paglia, at this decadent time in history which has produced the decadent Paglia, nothing is more primal, more basic, more all-encompassing, than the image. “To Paglia, images are quasi-essences” ~Mike Rice, Paglia-L member
You’re right! There are important differences. Ce la vie! 🙂 It’s amazing how many similarities there are also, is my main point. I think there would be natural crossover in appeal.
Jack is a reformed alcky. He knows he’s decadent deep down.
CP talks about the doom of her generation. But does she work on her *own* errors and shortfalls in public? Ha! Not likely. Her friends know. It will come out sometime. If then why not now? (That’s a part of crank-lettres and stark-nakedism: include it all as it happens from the start. A real fan will eventually want to piece it all together anyway. Mix the autobio IN with the work. Set and setting. Moderns expect nothing less!)
Jack’s work can be painful to read, but his thrust is that it’s painful to have a conscience. We whitewash too much. We’ve lost the habit of looking at things squarely (see William Burroughs, Jack says). I suspect that CP (and everyone) must have a little such feelings, too, sometimes, that’s why I think there’s crossover. A decadent can relate to struggles with decadence. The guilt. It can’t always be easy to be Camille. To do and not tell. However, if people don’t want to confront things or be uncomfortable, then Jack isn’t for them. He may be offputting to many gays for this reason. Or anyone else with a cause or an axe to grind—who don’t like the camera pointed at them. Oops, I mean who don’t like to be made aware of their own souls. Their cultivated superficiality doesn’t always endear them to such work. But I think that such work can INCLUDE their worldview then PRESS ON. Not sure that Bukowski is a popular gay writer, either, even if he’s unreformed, because he asserts the self above the image. Yucky. Jack represents indulgent slumming AND revival. Only the boldest can handle it all. 🙂
*******
From Scott Zimmerle:
>Well, off the top of my head, Saunders seems to recommend sustainable living, and a higher quality life, in which “quality” is defined in a more traditional way, that is, less mass media of the typical variety,
>Paglia very rarely refers to environmental policies as important. She believes, I think, that the mass media–in its current form–is a wholly good thing. I mean, she thinks that the Jerry Springer Show is a GOOD thing–a minority view.
>Did you know that she wrote a worshipful review of the Stallone movie “Judge Dredd” and it was pubilshed in, of all things, the London Times Literary Supplement? I have a copy. I consider it part of the national archives.
***Jack writes positively about mass media as well. He thinks that America loves great art and that whenever great art gets thru the gatekeepers that America runs wild with it. He’s way into Kerouac, Miller, Lenny Bruce—Camille is, too, I think. He’s hopeful about the mainstream. He says that the people are good and that the mainstream does appreciate good work. He thinks that those in power now have usurped the mainstream and are getting less from it in exchange for simply protecting their jobs and those of their pals. —Readership and serious novel purchases are way down I gather, but the publishing establishment won’t change. Jack also does write about the environment and is in favor of clean air and such. But he also wants it very much to be a place for people and for good hard work. I think also that Jack is willing to experiment a lot in what society allows but also that for such experiments to be successful that honest reporting of negative reactions has to be allowed. You can’t succeed by squelching dissent. So he’s in favor of homosex in some ways but also feels compelled to be honest about ways in which it bothers him or turns him off, as well as to simply describe how he reacts in daily life, using the speech of daily life. If many decent people are privately still calling gays ‘fags’ at home, then our art MUST reflect that. He’s really into the acknowledgement of life at the street level, especially that of his social class, which is ignored. Also, CP uses an encyclopedic reference to a wide variety of her favorite culture items (appropos items anyway). I love this. It is quite rare. (Jim Harrison does this, too.) Jack does it, too, but even better. More lyrical, melodic, broader and in more detail. He really brings great old art to life. CP seems a beginner at this in comparison. Jack is the supreme storyteller in modern art. A modernist storyteller. Those things don’t seem to go together. It’s something new. For our generation anyway. We’ve forgotten what it looks like! CP has lots of great references, but Jack brings them to life. Builds it all IN. Allusions and symbolism in the work. CP is too dry for that. Her stuff is ABOUT such things. Actually, I think she’s just plain not as good. Jack has more talent. Of course, the world needs them both. Comparisons aren’t about getting RID of everyone else. Not if you know how to fight a fair fight. But who does that anymore? (Some still know how to a little better than others.)
[ ]
>* founding of “Sex Studies” departments rather than Women’s Studies or Queer
>Studies dept.
Jack wouldn’t make the same specific challenge that CP does. But WHY does CP make this challenge? I think Jack sympathizes with her rationale. Jack has done HILARIOUS dead-on explorations of the dynamics of conference-think. About how the system wants acolytes not growth. He kills on these topics.
Here’s a chunk of literature you won’t see the likes of anywhere else, guaranteed (people would pay for it if they knew it was out there):
****
I remember one time at a scientific meeting, it started with speeches about cooperation and amicability and mutual goals, it ended with two power-mad old buzzards tugging at a potsherd. “It’s Norwood,” said one.
“It’s Orange,” said the other.
They don’t speak. They fuck over each other’s students. And the same sherds are classified Norwood by one and Orange by the other. I vow to turn over a new leaf, to leave off complaining about having to work when I should be brooding quietly. I begin with the best intentions. Soon I am slap in the middle of my chronicle. This is the middle. The center. One creates from the center. A fragment struck off the whole will be isomorphic, structurally, with earlier or later fragments. I’m not complaining. I have found my center, my spot. What do I have to complain about: I have everything I need. I don’t need a publisher, an agent, a small press assistance grant, or an honorary title. All I need is ink. 2 fl. oz., 69¢.
****
>There are many more; these come to my mind first. But she’s quite sex-centric [ ]
Yes, CP has a lot of sex-stuff. But not a lot seems very much applied or very sexy really. Quite dry. She doesn’t use her own life! But that’s beside the point. Jack also explores sex a lot and greatly includes the dark side and scatology. Almost always in a humorous sense. So shocking that it’s funny. He’s also in favor of porn and prostitution, not because it’s good but because he simply asserts that we can’t get past our dark sides until we expose them to the light of day. Admit that you need it before you can hope to get rid of it, is his approach. He’s into exposing the sort of puritanism that is actually a cover for worse exploitation.
I agree that there is quite a bit of content difference b/w Jack and CP. They’re very different people. But they also have a lot of common ground it seems. (As per my previous table.)
