From: spb0457@zeus.tamu.edu (SubGenius)
Subject: Re: books to avoid
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41    
Organization: Texas A&M University, Academic Computing Services
Date: Thu, 10 Sep 1992 19:17:00 GMT

Maven o'Mirth writes...
>I certainly would hope you would not be so rash as to assume that because
>I enjoy Kerouac, I therefore enjoy Pollack (whom I do not) and Ginsberg
>(whom I do not).  Your assertion that "all the other Beat artists" can be
>lumped into a category of typical writing or art is quite as exclusive and
>poorly thought out as the "literary canon debate."  You may not like any

+-------------------------------------SubG--------------------------------+
Nonsense.  I was neither claiming that all Beat artists are or were similar
in composition, subject matter or style (although strictly speaking that
IS true, if one uses the proper definition of Beat instead of using the
more popular, if less precise, definion--i.e. calling all beatnik artists
Beat artists).  I was making an observation that as a rule of thumb I
a)  don't care much for them and b)  they tend to create art on the ragged
edge of trashdom (I believe that's the phrase I used).

This is no more a spurious assertion than to say, "I don't much care for the
bulk of Country/Western musicians because they tend to have annoying accents
and play the steel guitar."

I do think that one can make general statements about the Beat artists
because (dig this) they are Beat artists.  If there wasn't some common
denominator between them (feel free to gag on the diction), we wouldn't
be referring to them as a group.
+--------------------------------------SubG-------------------------------+

>of the Beat writers/artists; my suggestion is that you may have as much of
>a difficulty with the thought behind the genre as with the style of the
>genre.  Otherwise, you might recognize the tremendous variety within it. 
>I *never, never* looked at a Pollack painting and got the same feeling
>that I get when I read "It was a warm night, a wine-drinking night, a
>night to hug your girl and talk and spit and be heavengoing..."

[deletia]

>Sorry to be a lurker for so long, and show up only to get into an argument
>with SubG here...let us keep this intellectual, if we may.
> 
>Sheryl Stover

+-------------------------------------SubG---------------------------------+
Intellectual lurking, eh?  Better, I suppose than intellectual lurching,
which seems to be more the fashion.

Anyway, pardon my two penn'orth of cudgemudgeonry (spell it yerself) on
intellectualism, but I find that the lads and lasses that make the biggest
productions about being intellectuals generally have the least to be
making noise about.

See also Sam Johnson, Sir Richard F. Burton, u.s.w.

That is to say, intellectualism exists in two forms:  First as a byproduct of
discourse between two or more informed individuals who are concered with
what they're talking about, and alternately as a chief product of boneheads
with a fistfull of catchphrases they're tring desperately to inject into their
conversations with like-unminded addlepates before they dislocate their
shoulders trying to pat themselves on the back or break an ankle when
their knee is jerked by their companion's jingoisms.

[deep breath]





Yours etc.,





SubGenius
Xref: sparky rec.arts.books:15866 rec.mag:172