-----Original Message-----
From: Michael Gardiner <[log in to unmask]>
To: David Kennedy <[log in to unmask]>
Cc: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>
Date: 24 June 1998 15:34
Subject: Re: Slots of diffident huff
|when I briefly coedited Angel Exhaust, one of Andrew Duncan's typically
|ascerbic reviews was of the collection Verbi Visi Voco (OK I'm going back
|a bit). He took so much flak for that and the consensus was that this was
|justified because the review was pointlessly nasty.
I am sure it wasn't pointlessly nasty, just nasty. Andrew has his reasons.
It's just that they're not accessible to the rest of us.
|But of all the moaning
|I fielded as coeditor, none of it tried to make a counter-case for VVV as
|a book with a point - the only counter-case was that Bob Cobbing was a
|decent old guy who'd been a valued drinking partner. But the book was
|truly dreadful - fiddling with typeset and layout about 30 years too late,
|it only put you in mind of beardy guys in tanktops listening to
|scratched Led Zeppelin records surrounded by half-empty cider bottles.
As someone in it, I have some agreement. But only some. The review was
pathetic *and the defence. I would much have preferred my recent work
instead
of what was used. But the point is that it was a collection of selections
from the visually-oriented work that wf had published, investigative work
generally which had suffered from poor distribution and lack of attention
from the likes of AD. It was showing something of the size of the project.
The difficulty was not just that quite a bit of it wasn't so good, in
retrospect, but that people didn't know how to look at it and think about
it. It was trying to celebrate the work of wf and to make it more widely
known. The cretinous criticism undermined that. From some of the remarks in
this posting, it seems it remains undermined. To undermine is *not to argue.
I am bemused by the _beardy guys_ stuff... what?! as to 30 years too late,
it's fault was that it *wasn't up to date. There *was some good stuff in it.
the 30 years too late remark also implies, what?, something that should have
been grown out of. It betrays a deep misunderstanding of what has been
Cobbing's and some others' project for many years - _fiddling with typeset_
is the sort of childish dismissiveness that one expects from Andrew. If the
apparent thrust of the posting was genuine, I would have hoped for better
than this.
|Some quality control was desperately needed. People were putting a lot of
|energy into writing and producing books but there was no quality control,
|no critical community, only a loose collection of people.
quality control is not critical commentary... quality control is what you
need when you are trying to make sure that ball bearings are reliable...
critical commentary is what you need for writing... quality control is being
introduced into inappropriate areas such as education by inadequate mental
masturbators trying to hide the fact that they are clueless; no quality
control here please
|Extend that to
|people whose work I do like and which should be more visibly valued,
oops, where's the quality control here?
|Robert Sheppard, Adrian Clarke, John Wilkinson, and it's extremely
|difficult to find anything decently explicatory and critically serious,
|close to the texts.
Nor here either - and you might look at the serious statements that have
been made by Sheppard and Clarke regarding Bob Cobbing...
|The point is not to praise or condemn these writers
by writing unsubstantiated stratements like _truly dreadful_?
L
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