I don't really know what I'm going to say today, except it is about information and my poetry -- not poetry in general, but my poetry.
This has somewhat been confused in my mind by what I read yesterday on the plane -- Horace McCoy's novels THEY SHOOT HORSES, DON'T THEY, KISS TOMORROW GOODBYE, NO POCKETS IN A SHROUD, and THEY SHOULD HAVE STAYED HOME. Horses is the best because of the setting / shape of it, but it doesn't have the plot or character development of the later novels. This to me is not really a flaw. Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye -- I read it first -- despite the timing of its writing, it is the most "genre novel trying to be literature" novel here -- one marked superlong vocabulary word
aside -- the type of novel which contains the phrase "bald pate" -- I was disappointed in THE LONG KISS GOODBYE so I picked up KISS TOMORROW GOODBYE to read -- THE LONG KISS GOODBYE was the type of novel that would include the phrase "bald pate" but miraculously didn't -- KISS TOMORROW GOODBYE contained the phrase
and a lot of weird mystical / oedipal stuff at the end that must've gotten edited out of the earlier parts of the book, but the plot not as clunky and there aren't as many lectures about MARX and the blacklist as POCKETS or SHOULD'VE
I was reading an emerson book EMERSON IN HIS OWN TIME -- review copy I got a while ago -- Amos Alcott calls him "Mr. E" -- Mr. E "favors written works. He holds men and things at a distance; pleases himself with using them for his own benefit, and as a means of gathering material for his works. He does not believe in the actual. His sympathies are all intellectual. He pursuades me to leave the actual, devote myself to the speculative, and embody my thoughts in written works." His "idealized picture is the true and real one to him..." Beauty charms him. Something garbled about things which aren't beautiful but which are true have no appeal to Mr. E, who prefers to set forth the beauty of truth.
I picked this out because I'm thinking about information, and also not a little about Emerson.
This has somewhat been confused in my mind by what I read yesterday on the plane -- Horace McCoy's novels THEY SHOOT HORSES, DON'T THEY, KISS TOMORROW GOODBYE, NO POCKETS IN A SHROUD, and THEY SHOULD HAVE STAYED HOME. Horses is the best because of the setting / shape of it, but it doesn't have the plot or character development of the later novels. This to me is not really a flaw. Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye -- I read it first -- despite the timing of its writing, it is the most "genre novel trying to be literature" novel here -- one marked superlong vocabulary word
aside -- the type of novel which contains the phrase "bald pate" -- I was disappointed in THE LONG KISS GOODBYE so I picked up KISS TOMORROW GOODBYE to read -- THE LONG KISS GOODBYE was the type of novel that would include the phrase "bald pate" but miraculously didn't -- KISS TOMORROW GOODBYE contained the phrase
and a lot of weird mystical / oedipal stuff at the end that must've gotten edited out of the earlier parts of the book, but the plot not as clunky and there aren't as many lectures about MARX and the blacklist as POCKETS or SHOULD'VE
I was reading an emerson book EMERSON IN HIS OWN TIME -- review copy I got a while ago -- Amos Alcott calls him "Mr. E" -- Mr. E "favors written works. He holds men and things at a distance; pleases himself with using them for his own benefit, and as a means of gathering material for his works. He does not believe in the actual. His sympathies are all intellectual. He pursuades me to leave the actual, devote myself to the speculative, and embody my thoughts in written works." His "idealized picture is the true and real one to him..." Beauty charms him. Something garbled about things which aren't beautiful but which are true have no appeal to Mr. E, who prefers to set forth the beauty of truth.
I picked this out because I'm thinking about information, and also not a little about Emerson.
Comments