David, etc.,
ho. Only one oblique reference to Scotland's 3-0 humping despite my
comments about England-Romania. Cheers Ric.
First - someone, and it may have been Ric, but I think Robin picked it up,
referred to my promoting 'Scottish poets'; as I rememeber it, it was only
Ian Hamilton Finlay, but even in doing that I had an idea that it would be
taken to mean look here, don't forget us Scots. This is ironic given the
amount I've published (as I said, I'm doing postcolonial theory now more
than anything) setting out modern nations as objects of
(psychoanalytic) identification, always incomplete, in process, the
product of mismatching axes of identity cutting across one another, etc.
etc. I try to leave the tokenism for sporting events, and now that we're
out the world cup...
Thinking more abour Cambridge, and how many apparently innovative
movements have turned out to be plain reactionary, from New Criticism to
logical positivism to Stephen Hawking. Aye OK OK it's not because they're
not smart enough - I can only put it down to the biscuit-ersed joylessness
of the intellectual environment... there is always more than a whiff of
lunacy to the seriousness with which bits of unanalysed trickery are
put forward. (Perhaps the single damning quality of anglo langpo is that
it contrives to take ideas from the likes of Steve McCaffery and Stephen
Rodefer and somehow make them humourless). Slowly built-up reputations
based on techniques which are never quite as subject to critique as they
should be. But we know that in London-Cambridge this process is especially
personal, and so especially prone to the hint of lunacy... for example,
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. 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.
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. Extend that to
people whose work I do like and which should be more visibly valued, like
Robert Sheppard, Adrian Clarke, John Wilkinson, and it's extremely
difficult to find anything decently explicatory and critically serious,
close to the texts. The point is not to praise or condemn these writers
but to try to get beyond a situation where establishing a reputation is
not just swimming through jelly, hanging around for 20 years and writing
unhelpful jacket notes for one another's books. And the minute sliver of
'mainstream' credibility JHP has got from Bloodaxe hardly vindicates this.
Thanks though, to R. Hampson for pointing out essays on Denise Riley etc.,
which show that I haven't been keeping up. Robin, speak to me about New
Criticism, Cambridge, Prynne Criticism, for Christ's sake.
Loved Peter Riley's parody. (Tho' I've been on the list a bit longer than
a month). More parody instead of less, I reckon.
Back on the Directory Enquiries tip, can anyone sort me out with email
addresses for Lyn Hejinian, Marjorie Perloff?
Michael Gardiner.
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