On Saturday 28 July 2001 01:07, you wrote:
> Probably the sense that the novel is in thrall to a stifling realism is a
> personal hangup of mine (and may also be related to the fact that I don't
> know many people who like the kind of novels I do).
Matthew, you aren't the only one. I have spent some dozen years pondering how
to write it differently, so this don't happen. I have looked to JG Ballard,
Burroughs (Wild Boys I find interesting) , Genet, and cyberpunk as a vague
gothic bastard line, to possibly find ways out of this problem.
Also glad to hear you don't like the later Gibson books, so much. I have been
trying to read _Mona Lisa Overdrive_ but have decided I have reached that
stage of my life where I can say: if I don't want to read it then I simply
won't.
I need to print out your poems provided on this list and give them a better
read. After over 20 years of on screen editing (going back to when Bill Gates
was still a pimply teenage geek pre-Microsoft) I still prefer to read on
paper. I was sort of hoping some others in the day to day business of doing
critical readings could comment on the poems. I have some suspicions also
about this term, the new formalism, which I understood (or misunderstood)
your poems where posted in reference to. I understand formalism in a precise
technical sense in aesthetics and was thinking mechanics (as distinct from
mechanism) may be a better way for me to think about the poems. That is,
rather then thinking in formalist terms to describe poetry, thinking the
mechanics of poetry. This way I may learn something new rather then going
over old ground and being caught in a repetition which will fail to solve my
own technical problems. Each writer puts together their own tool box in their
own way, of course, so I am not being prescriptive here, btw.
best wishes
Chris Jones.
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