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In dreams begin responsibilities? The hell. In dreams the death-wish renews itself.
XX~ Theodore Roethke, Straw for the Fire
I am humbled before the prodigious realization that I know, without a footnote, that Roethke's words are a response to Delmore Schwartz. I am humbled that I know who Delmore Schwartz was; that I know Lou Reed to have cited the book here alluded to by Roethke as seminal to his own urge to create. Since VU days, Lou Reed’s music has humbled me. I am humbled by my own knowledge; humbled that I can drive a truck and earn my bread, never sending my knowledge out to whore in the marketplace, where a rose is not a rose, but a bar-coded commodity.
Today is Memorial Day. So, who’s dead? Show of hands, please.
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Showing posts with label Delmore Schwartz. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Delmore Schwartz. Show all posts
Monday, May 25, 2009
Sunday, May 18, 2008
Readings: A Cultural Nexus
I was sorry to see in the New York Times an obituary of novelist, Oakley Hall. Hall was the author of one of the very few western novels I have ever read--especially with any kind of pleasure--an off-beat re-imagining of the legendary gunfight at the O.K. Corral, entitled Warlock. If you will read the obit, you will learn that Warlock was lauded as a major American novel by the radically reclusive, post-modern novelist, Thomas Pynchon. It may, therefore, have been something written by Pynchon that turned me on to Warlock. I certainly would never have picked up a western novel unless it had been recommended by somebody in whose endorsement I had complete confidence.
Pynchon is the author of three novels that I read in what might be called my “formative years.” In chronological order they are: The Crying of Lot 49; V; and Gravity’s Rainbow. Pynchon is an inventive and difficult writer whose major works have gotten longer and longer, and more and more obscure, over time. I have read a couple of his works since these three, but never with as much pleasure and sense of awe as these earlier works inspired in me at the time I read them, in the late 'sixties and early 'seventies.
Strangely enough, until I read the Oakley Hall obit with its mention of Pynchon, my memory had been that I read Warlock based on an endorsement of it in an interview with rocker, Lou Reed. Now I’m not sure. I would have trusted Lou Reed's opinion of a contemporary novel, due to his history as a devoted acolyte of writer, Delmore Schwartz.
I am sure, however, that I bought a CD entitled “Nobody’s Cool” by a band called Lotion, because I read somewhere that Thomas Pynchon had written liner notes for it. This was around 1995, and any contemporary rock album being promoted by a famous novelist of Pynchon’s age was too intriguing not to check out. I bought it “sight-unheard” and was not disappointed.
So here we have this strange nexus: Oakley Hall, Lou Reed (?), Lotion, and Thomas Pynchon. I have enjoyed the works of all four. I encourage anybody reading this, and who has not already done so, to give them all a try. (You might also try Delmore Schwartz, although he is not technically an element of this nexus. Recommended--by both me and Lou Reed--In Dreams Begin Responsibilities)
Pynchon is the author of three novels that I read in what might be called my “formative years.” In chronological order they are: The Crying of Lot 49; V; and Gravity’s Rainbow. Pynchon is an inventive and difficult writer whose major works have gotten longer and longer, and more and more obscure, over time. I have read a couple of his works since these three, but never with as much pleasure and sense of awe as these earlier works inspired in me at the time I read them, in the late 'sixties and early 'seventies.
Strangely enough, until I read the Oakley Hall obit with its mention of Pynchon, my memory had been that I read Warlock based on an endorsement of it in an interview with rocker, Lou Reed. Now I’m not sure. I would have trusted Lou Reed's opinion of a contemporary novel, due to his history as a devoted acolyte of writer, Delmore Schwartz.
I am sure, however, that I bought a CD entitled “Nobody’s Cool” by a band called Lotion, because I read somewhere that Thomas Pynchon had written liner notes for it. This was around 1995, and any contemporary rock album being promoted by a famous novelist of Pynchon’s age was too intriguing not to check out. I bought it “sight-unheard” and was not disappointed.
So here we have this strange nexus: Oakley Hall, Lou Reed (?), Lotion, and Thomas Pynchon. I have enjoyed the works of all four. I encourage anybody reading this, and who has not already done so, to give them all a try. (You might also try Delmore Schwartz, although he is not technically an element of this nexus. Recommended--by both me and Lou Reed--In Dreams Begin Responsibilities)
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