Sean O'Brien accuses Reading of perpetuating the Thatcherite error of
confusing cause (brutality, neglect, impoverishment) with effect
(brutalisation, ignorance, poverty). I think he's actually concerned
with a fairly narrow set of *first* causes - human mortality, moral
frailty, "the vanity of human wishes" - for which there is no
demonstrated political solution. But there is a sort of fundamentalism
underpinning his repeated demonstrations of the futility of it all. He
presents an impressively coherent fictive world, from which many
desirable features of our daily existence appear to have been forcibly
expunged, and then insists that this fictive world just is the *real*
world. It all comes down to coproliths in the end.
Reminds me a bit of the chap in the Leunig cartoon - "so you believe
in *this*, do you?...see! totally hollow!..."
Dominic
On Mon, 21 Mar 2005 11:31:59 -0000, Joanna Boulter
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> I had a piano teacher in the 1980s who'd been at school with Reading. He
> said the two of them were thrown together a lot because they were both
> considered seriously weird (a condition I'm all in favour of), so they used
> to go bird-watching together.
>
> best joanna
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Edmund Hardy" <[log in to unmask]>
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Monday, March 21, 2005 1:14 AM
> Subject: Reading Reading
>
> > Nice distillation Dominic!
> >
> > You forgot the:
> >
> > Always call flora and fauna by its proper latin name, you romantic
> > Idiots.
> >
> > I find the tendency towards epigram the most appealing long-term in
> > Reading.
> >
> > There's a review of Ukelele Music on amazon which reads:
> >
> > 1 Star Not for people interested in ukulele music but in poetry, July 8,
> > 1998
> > Reviewer: A reader from Wash DC
> > Was looking for some listing of old songs with ukulele chords. Not this
> > book! Poetry along the archie and mehitabel line. A few interspersed
> > paragraphs, starting on page 20, about how to hold and strum and finger
> > the
> > uke and that's it! 95% is avant garde post modern 'poetry' if that is what
> > you are looking for. --
> >
> >
> >
> >>Date: Sun, 20 Mar 2005 19:10:31 +0000
> >>From: Dominic Fox <[log in to unmask]>
> >>Subject: Reading Reading
> >>
> >>Dear me,
> >>this Peter Reading is depressing
> >>innit?
> >>
> >>Skinheads are nasty, but you're no better.
> >>Or if you are, it won't do any good
> >>in the end. The *end*, d'you hear?
> >>
> >>What's that? "Your point, exactly?"
> >>There isn't any bleeding point,
> >>you poof. (There's a hundred or so
> >>pages of this _Collected Poems_ to go).
> >>Your effete notions won't preserve
> >>your mortal body from the grave,
> >>(though these bovver-boys, half-
> >>witted hooligans and assorted
> >>rustics-gone-mental may get you there sooner).
> >>Yes. You and your dear sweet grannie. And her budgie.
> >>
> >>Cancer's pretty fucking awful, too.
> >>Did I mention that? Just checking.
> >>
> >>Dominic
> >>
> >>--
> >>// Alas, this comparison function can't be total:
> >>// bottom is beyond comparison. - Oleg Kiselyov
> >>
> >>------------------------------
> >>
>
--
// Alas, this comparison function can't be total:
// bottom is beyond comparison. - Oleg Kiselyov
|