Chance

Hi rosaliekempthorne.

I'm doing so much reading (biographical and critical) at the moment around various poets and reading original work going back to Dante. It's bad in a way (like a golfer trying to change their swing), but also has me mulling over suggestions that we're just trying to get a moment or a feeling across with as little getting in the way of that as possible. One view among many, I suppose, but the one I feel most intimacy with.

I read an essay last night by a contemporary literary theorist about a text I know very well (Kerouac "On The Road"). If I was being crass, I'd just say "mumbo jumbo". He was clearly developing a scientific/philosophical/analytical argument about something (original endless 1951 typewritten scroll) that was quite clearly a burst of prolonged creative and emotional energy fed by contemporaneous notes. I decided during that reading that I'm not a critic in that structural or poststructural sense. Trying to come up with analyses of writer / narrator / reader intent and interpretation between two versions when one was hacked around by the publisher anyway doesn't add anything for me. By choice, I'd rather be beating hell out of the typewriter as it devours yard after yard of paper.

Plato and those dangerous poets, eh?

Yes, I agree with you. Get it across with as little fuss as possible. Set the reader free and, in so doing, free yourself.

I'm sorry, Ed.

It's good to hear from you, though, and your message/voice has brightened a weary outlook. Looking up, I can see the fells.

You've made a difference here.