William Burroughs might not even be bad enough to be the worst American writer about whom any pretense is made of them being significant. He could be the model of bad writers replacing having anything to say, any ideas, any talent, anything worth reading with massively repulsive, cynical and stupid sensationalism. And when that isn't enough to insert some cheap chance, indeterminacy gimmick into the mix. I read some of the beats back when I was young enough to have time to waste. I don't have any of that anymore. Considering the music that was happening at the time, the alleged inspiration of lots of it, that stood up to time the writing, not. But, then, anyone can tap out or scribble out some words, music has to be done, even if you're drugged up, you've got to be able to do it.
Someone said about the abstract expressionists and their theory of expressing their inner, subconscious selves in their stuff, "Why would I want to see the inner life of a bunch of violent, alcoholic misogynists?" And most of them didn't end up murdering their wives. I'm hard put to think of anything the most superficial of them produced that was as truly bad as Naked Lunch, which I have a hard time believing that anyone has ever read in its entirety.
I think that story started with something about Burroughs believing that words in new contexts change their meaning.
ReplyDeleteIt was apparently as much insight as they could scrape up for him. I stopped listening after that banality.
It could happen to even real artists, the felt need to associate themselves with some fashionable intellectual theory. One composer, who I will not name, went on quite embarrassingly about logical positivism in the late 50s. And the stuff that they said about the "advanced linguistics" up to and including Lenny Bernstein's Norton Lectures (if memory serves he right) makes me blush for them. Of course, he said even stupider things about gamelan tonality, which he could have easily avoided by reading Colin McFee's masterful book on the topic.
ReplyDeleteOf course, Burroughs crap would have still been crap even if it had had a real instead of a phony intellectual grounding. You've got to be able to do it, in the end. Maybe that's a rule of stuff that starts with the theory, such as it is, and then practices.