[The
Forward Bit (on responses to this post):
The below is causing a bit of a flurry in Twitter land – I put the first wee bunch
of tweets on it in update 1, but I’m not putting the rest I read as they were
just the typical put-downs from that part of Twitter known as the shit pond. Although
note I understand those tweets; loyalty to Mr Matthews is anti-intellectual and
knee jerk (and very Left politick), but noble in a certain way – and as with Mr
Tiso, I like the man, but I do not agree with his agenda being enacted out in
the culture pages of my Press. And let
me clarify some points. To the Tweeter (per bio, converted to Twitter by Mr
Tiso), who read some small portion of this then bewailed the state of
conservative intellectualism – ahem, I’m not a conservative; indeed, I’m
neither Left nor Right, both those positions worship the state and I am a
libertarian, capitalist minarchist. Furthermore, this edifice you are before, right now, is
called a blog. It’s not called a tertiary paper or an essay. It is a blog
and is glorious for the freedom it has away from academic rigour which I spent
a smidgeon too much of my life pursuing.
Finally,
this particular post has no intellectual rigour to it at all. The broad-sweep
claims made have their depth in the links to pieces far more thought out – you need
to follow those before you criticise. I wrote the post below merely (initially)
to explain why I will be taking a short sabbatical from this blog – one aspect
of my blog is a diary for what’s going through my mind, so think of this post
as sheer stream of consciousness.
Right
… now read on to see what all the fuss is about.]
This is
my first post since May: it’s not that there’s nothing annoying me enough to blog,
quite the opposite, starting with Prime Minister John Key’s cynical retraction
from taking the lead in a necessary euthanasia debate New Zealand demands be
had on the death of Lecretia Seales: his cowardly
mis-remembering of a promise (twice made), and continuing to think any of us
give a toss about the flag debate, puts him beyond (my) contempt. [Though in
passing, as I’ve been giving ACT’s David Seymour a hard time – possibly
unfairly - well done for drafting his own euthanasia bill; please don’t stop, David,
but unfortunately without the National medievalists on board, including
Catholic mystic Bill
English, civilised euthanasia law, as with individual rights in New Zealand, will
come to nothing – so I suspect you’ll only get your reward in heaven.]
Truth
is I’m growing too angry to post about politics – I said as much in my blog on National’s
Labour budget
of this year devised by that same anachronism, Finance Minister, Bill English, who like his Pope in Rome seems on a conversion to Marxism currently. I’m pretty much had it to the point I won’t be voting in a general election
anytime soon, and as there’s nothing I can do to stop this statist slide to
collectivist hell, I’m thinking bugger it, I’ll do my own thing while drinking
an above average amount of supermarket wine – (noting, please, I drink circa Iain Wowser-Galloway's halved blood alcohol limit because I am a principled drinker, or better put, given how drinking has
become
a subversive act, drinking on
principle).
Our votes based system is so broken in the emoting booth, the only fix to it is a constitutional minarchist republic based on individual rights – but I'm afraid that revolution can't happen anymore. Why? Because the
working statement of this nation, founding each generation, namely, the school
curriculum, is a Progressive program brainwashing each young mind in the
bloodied fallacy of the
common good,
creating illiterate, innumerate little social justice thugs. Add to that 95% of
our teachers are paid up members of the PPTA and you have the algebra of the
repressive tax surveillance states in which we now live.
Checking
proof:
‘Excerpt: New
Zealand Curriculum.
Students
will be encouraged to value:
All
the buzzwords of the twenty first century police state.
Regarding
doing my own thing, I’ve finished the first draft of a novel. But on that I
have a problem. Multiple problems to be precise. Note those last three clipped
little sentences? One of them a fragment, in fact. And that. And this. Pointing
to the first of said problems in that I hate attention-deficit-sentence-bites,
however, since leaving the comfortable bookshelves, doc martens, bongs and smoky
environs of my arts degree, and forcing myself to lie prostrate for agonising
lengths of time, stone cold sober, straight, on the hard steel of two
accountancy degrees, I have been constantly castigated for the long(er),
heavier sentences (and in one case words) of my upbringing, by first a
succession of business professors, against all of whom I fought for the
sentence as it should be, essay by essay, winning every battle until I won the
war (A+ average for under and post graduate degrees; a clutch of scholarships [refer following on having to blow one's own trumpet, though I've three times been of the verge of taking this out]), but now, unbelievably,
from within the literary community as well. No apologies here: I like a large,
meaty sentence that drips with meaning while packing it in, as sentences were
meant to be: proof - Francis Bacon (not the twentieth century painter, the Renaissance philosopher
and author).
More significantly, every sentence I write is exactly the right size for the
meaning it conveys, and how it scans.
… Sorry,
I’ve fallen over myself and am ahead of where I’m supposed to be; I’ve not
dealt to politics yet, and that provides the link to literature, my novel, the
short hiatus coming with this blog, and finally these sentences.
Politics.
I’m bored because deeply disillusioned with politics and this mob rule system
which votes dependency on Nanny State as the answer for everything, despite the
opposing evidence – namely, the twentieth century. When I cloister myself off,
listen to only music, read books and watch movies, I’m happy; but as soon as
the news leaks in, I’m pissed off almost immediately. I have enough political
posts in here to figure me out, and which explain my literary posts; from here every
political post I make is merely repeating myself, so as literature is my first
love, I think I’ll re-re-orientate this blog to devote it mainly – not all - to that: a niche readership within a niche
philosophy, thus barely a readership at all, possibly, given Progressives and
the Left have no ambition or curiosity enough to read anything outside their
own paradigm – (explaining why they’re so dangerous). And this is timely, as heaven
knows New Zealand literature is sorely in need of me. Noting that’s not merely
a matter of being unable to get over myself: rather that my Literary Ramble
IV
and subsequent events have by now adequately demonstrated the proof of my
importance beyond all doubt.
With
the obligatory apology for repeating myself post on post, the premise of Literary Ramble
IV,
part one of my literary manifesto (now in two parts), was simply
put:
State funding of the arts is leading to the
stultification of western literature under the reactionary establishment of
Left-Liberalism, also called Progressivism, which has largely captured the
means of production via the agents and publishers, and quietly indoctrinates
the authors toward a homogenised literature via creative writing courses in
progressive saturated tertiary institutions. Ours is no literature that will
seed Le Guin's resistance and change, or that can be ‘disturbed by power’, as
Solzhenitsyn feared, because it’s a literature which embraces the ethic of that
power, the supremacy of the state over the individual, and incredibly for the
arts, a collectivism over individualism, with at its base, the tax take which
funds a complacent publishing channel, while eviscerating our private lives,
our digital innards disemboweled and served up in the offices of government
officials.
Further
proof from that submitted in the original essay was gained at the end of May in
the form of a literary festival – an actual literary festival - lecturing me on
Twitter about the evils
of alcohol,
dousing in sobriety the whole notion of literature as the outside or a counter culture – (and please, the person(s) running
that account need to take Branding 101; stick to the brand when tweeting, brow beat
people about their drinking from your private accounts).
And
then opening my Christchurch Press Your Weekend
supplement this Saturday morning, June 13, I see the Press’s strident
Progressive advocate Philip Matthews continue to use his editorship of the
culture and arts pages to push an equally strident Progressive agenda in a
manner – despite he has every right to do it - that is a disaster for all of us:
truly the death throes of our literature and civilisation when the arts space
of a free press is used as propaganda against an individualistic ethos - prepared to sacrifice individual volition and liberty to a baying mob - and against the economic
system from which, and only from which, creativity and an essential resistance
against the abusive state can flow; and given how
the identity politick seeks to censor, shape and control language, propaganda
against the free press itself. Matthews has long used his inches and Twitter
feed to promote an airhead emoting Progressivism and Left identity politics –
as I commented on in Literary Ramble IV, referencing the free hit given to Left
bloggers after the 2014 election. So before moving on, I challenge Mr Matthews,
given the words afforded to Thomas Piketty’s econo-political bromide last year, (and
editing this very post today, June 20, two weeks after first writing it,
I see Piketty being wheeled out in the cause of inequality over the book
section yet again; unbelievable – why even bother calling the red tab pages of Your Weekend a book section(?)), ... I ask Mr Matthews does
the Press plan to review, in view of
balance, say, Professor Donald Boudreaux’s recently published Essential Hayek demonstrating
the harm being done by our increasingly large and interventionist governments
in justification of the welfare state? Or any work supportive of laissez faire?
(Lovers of the free society founded on the voluntary transactions of capitalism
are well advised not to hold their breath.)
… Moving back to the present morning of June 13, where over a sumptuous butter dripping plate
of bacon I see a half page review of the first
New Zealand edition of Australian literary Overland
magazine, which, if you look at the tiny print below the title, to allay any
confusion about its raison d'état, is the magazine of, quote, Progressive Culture Since 1954, this New
Zealand edition co-edited by no other than that wily Marxist who features here
from time to time, Giovanni Tiso. (And I don’t
want to be constantly harping on about Tiso, but of course he co-edited this,
so he’s in my cross hairs again.)
Earlier
in the month I’d seen the New Zealand Book Council pushing this political
publication on Twitter and bitten my tongue, stomped on my foot, then crushed
the fingers of my right hand with a hammer in an attempt not to bite back with
words. But this morning was a column too far. The premise of my Literary Ramble IV, and the dire implications of this progressive capture of our literary
endeavour on a vibrant, relevant literature, is conclusive – literature has
fallen to a wholesale buy-in of a philosophy anathema to Art and the pursuit of
happiness. In fact, to adulthood. And albeit I normally read all views,
including Tiso’s often excellent blog - mind, in his latest post** he's stubbed his jackboot on that tired old Progressive contradiction again (he doesn't want to live in a surveillance state while his every policy demand requires the most ruthless one: the tax state) – in this instance, given Matthews review of Overland 219 indicates it contains the
gem that Peter Oborne's story – I'm assuming the circumstances surrounding his resignation from the Telegraph - represented a greater threat to free
speech than the jihadists who murdered the Charlie
Hebdo cartoonists, I don’t think I need read this one (though I might try
and crib a read of Morgan Godfrey’s article from somewhere: the same Mr Godfrey
who snuck Mr Piketty into today’s – June 20 - Your Weekend again). Remembering per my thesis, re Charlie Hebdo, that the identity bound
writers that rule western literature ended up saying in far too great numbers it was
the cartoonists ruthlessly slaughtered own fault for being satirical
offensive that they were ruthlessly slaughtered, not so much the fault of the
jihadists themselves. Over one hundred of these authors put their names to a
protest of PEN’s free speech prize awarded to the satirical magazine. I had that
particular evil in mind when I wrote in the second part of
my literary manifesto:
… [A literature that should be]
on principle, refusing to use trigger warnings, knowing that offence-giving is
vital medicine to vaccinate the population from the censorious tyranny of
umbrage taking. A literature to which the notion of a ‘safe place’ would be
repugnant if it weren't so hilarious. There should be no safety to, or from,
writing. That's why though not of my politick, I was always going to love our
own James K. Baxters and our irreverent, drunk, Sam Hunts ...
Never
forget how murderous the umbrage taking against Charlie Hebdo was. (Because the Progressives never ‘got it’ in the
first place.)
And
that’s what makes this blog essential as the necessary antidote to return literature
to the vital place it should be: the expression of living free, adult lives, and
as a centre of resistance to state abuse against such liberty. My literary
posts are shown in the top content menu on the right, but if you read nothing
else while I’m away for a bit (explained below), read my literary manifesto:
Which
segues to the problem my novel is giving me.
As
a novel, it might not be any good - it might be awful. It certainly is a ‘little strange’, and not
only because I decided it was easier to do away with chronology. My problem is despite the arts degree in English literature and language of thirty odd years and that I can read a novel – of someone else – with good judgement as to if it works, because I can never read my novel for the first time I find I have no
judgement over it. Either to the whole – does it even jell – or to the quality
of its parts. Frustrating, given I work in a vacuum.
Worse.
I was going to write that despite the novel utilises pastiche of several
traditions (consciously) you won’t have read anything like it, but then I read
Shaj Mathew’s Welcome to Literature’s Duchamp Moment, and I probably
can’t claim even that. [A how-to writing piece I stupidly read said you should
never use the word even, but call me a rebel.] Apparently
I’ve broadly been writing readymade
fiction - who knew? Certainly not I until after I’d finished the first draft;
I’d never heard of it. Though I prefer to think of my work as unique within whatever readymade is, as those authors
listed - Ben Lerner, Sophie Calle, Teju Cole, Tom McCarthy, Alejandro Zambra,
Siri Hustvedt, Michel Houellebecq, Sheila Heti, W.G. Sebald, Orhan Pamuk, and
Enrique Vila-Matas, - are not likely to have either my brief, or my particular
beefs. And of that list, ashamed to say, I’ve only read Sebald’s stunning Austerlitz, but even that over October
seven years ago so I can remember nothing of it in the details, just a joy
attached to the text and to a place (Perth), when reading it.
Then
there are a series of practical problems from the novel which wind up
concerning this blog. I keep a reading list on the right hand menu: I’ve been
on my current read, Richard Ford’s Independence
Day, since the start of May – normally I’m a bibliohagist – I read a lot of
books - but I find, for whatever reason, while reading through and editing the
first draft of my own novel, I can’t read other books, so I have stopped.
And
for the same reason this blog. The pre-existing dibbs on my time has to be my
day job, but outside that I can’t edit my novel and write blog posts;
I’m spread too thin. That and I only blog for my own entertainment. So I am
taking a break from blogging until I have finished. I have no idea how long
this will be, I suspect a couple of months at least, but drop in from time to
time, there may be the very odd post - and please, don't take me off your blogrolls, 'I'll be back'.
Which
brings me to the length of my sentences and words. Barry Humphries, a hero of
mine up there with Clive James, opines at how many expressive words in our
dictionaries ‘are going rusty’ and falling into disuse for not being used. He
is right. And it’s the same Generation Airhead [Copyright Lindsay Perigo] ethos
that is trying to prematurely execute our sentences … I think (conjoined with
the short attention spans sponsored by the Internet).
The
main admonition I am getting trying to write a query for my novel – and I admit
my query writing is useless; I can’t write the short form of anything – is my
sentences are too long.
Well
snot.
There,
finally got an expressive short one in.
Although
I reckon my best retort is this sentence in Ford’s Independence Day:
“… We therefore settled ourselves into a little
ongoing pocket drama in which I created the role of avuncular but charmingly
randy white professor who’d sacrificed a successful but hopelessly stodgy prior
life to ‘work’ for his remaining productive years in a (one-student) private
college, where Clair was the beautiful, intelligent voluble, slightly naïve but
feisty, yet basically kindhearted valedictorian, who realised we two shared lofty
but hopeless ideals, and who in the service of simple human clarity was willing
to woogle around me with in private, hypertensive but futureless (due to our
years) lovemaking, and to moon at my aging mug over fish stick dinners and
doughy pancakes in soulless franchise eateries while pretending to everybody
she knew that such a thing was absolutely out of the question.”
That’s
129 words. A single sentence. So, I think I’m done with that. Long sentences
stay, I’m writing for the grown-ups.
Only
leaving me with where to drop you out of this post. What better place than Mr
Tiso.
Given
Giovanni thinks I have a fixation on him – per one of his tweets, although, no,
I just find him usefully representative of ‘the problem’ that has turned our
literature into a mouthpiece of rampant stultifying statism – I thought I may
as well write him into my novel – no context provided, sorry, I can’t be
bothered:
… But despite Henry could see that, he cannot see
the contradiction he has ended up living. At its heart, the Erdal novel is
based on a protagonist whose life ground down to a meaningless anarchy, floundering on the
deadly Humean conceit: a life where "randomness was largely what
determined the future. Along with chance and absurdity - 'its close
cousins'". And yet Henry, in stalking a
moral life following his reason, has delivered both of us to the same
meaningless anarchy. His lack of
self-awareness and self-knowledge is staggering: twice in his blog he sets to
against a Marxist blogger, not a man of big readership I would have thought,
bit obnoxious, called Weasel, no, Tiso, I think, of Italian extraction, Henry
calls him Mr Ban and Boycott – presumably of anything un-Tiso - though what
Henry failed to see staring back at him from his own words, was in his stubborn
pig-headedness and inflexibility, he was Tiso’s mirror image; they are the same
man, throwing angry tantrums at everything. There’s something childish about
them.
Not
long after this section I throw Karl Marx under a Fulton Hogan truck and kill
him in the Christchurch earthquake rebuild, a section which includes my own
homage to the sadly departed Campbell
Live show, all of which probably sounds – if you were a publisher – suicidal/ly
‘local’, to which my response is twofold:
Firstly,
I never wrote my novel with any expectation of being published – that’s the
only way I could approach it. Hell, even if
any good, I suspect there are some trenchant legal problems with it.
Secondly,
in the first two pages of the novel I dare the world to read local or be damned:
… A month ago Eddie and I drove to Port Levy. Daphne became very dear to
us and there had always been this pull to know the truth. It’s a lovely drive
from Christchurch; the Peninsula’s lack of development or human habitation is unfathomable
– (after several trips I have found the sea’s rugged loneliness there comforting,
and am thinking of making the permanent move myself). Traveling over Dyers
Pass Road, the first town, Governors Bay, is too shady snuggled up under the steep
hills during winter, but as the narrow road winds around, coast on the left,
hills and rock or clay bluffs high up on the right, all those settlements face
north into the sun: Charteris Bay; Hays Bay; Church Bay with its yacht club,
the children were out on their little optimists the day we went, like
butterflies bobbing on the water; Diamond Harbour; Purau, and then up over Mt Evans
before falling again through tussock and flowering gorse to isolated
Port Levy. I am assuming the ‘port’ aspect is historical for it’s not a working
port any longer.
There is an otherness, a separation not just of geography, about this tiny village bounded by hills east, south and west, with the sea to the north coming down a narrow neck of rocky burnt coast. (I like that English domiciled word, village, though it’s rarely used about the New Zealand rural landscape). Our latest Mann Booker Prize winner, Eleanor Catton, says she included place in her novel The Luminaries as a character. For her it was the West Coast of the South Island, but Port Levy feels like that; a presence apart and yet entwined in human living. Daphne said Catton’s remark was probably speaking against publishing wisdom whereby writers outside of the US cannot write local because Americans do not want to read novels set outside of their own navels. To which Daphne said, I hasten to add, ‘fuck em, myopic bastards, and outside Twain, Fitzgerald, Cheever, Ford, Updike, Plath and Tartt, what authors have they produced of any good anyway; they’re welcome to rot in their own words as if the rest of the world doesn’t exist.’ (She had Harper Lee on the list, but changed her mind, saying her black characters were cardboard cut-outs.) I am unqualified to speak to this, but I miss my bookish talks with Daphne. I miss Daphne, period.
This from Googling: Port Levy, Maori name
Koukourarata, is the reserve of the Ngai Tutehuarewa, hapu of the Ngai Tahu
tribe. I had to search that because
despite I grew up a mere low lying hill divide distant, I know nothing about Maori
culture (or acculturation) on Banks Peninsula which Port Levy wears in a pedestrian
manner that will leave me forever a visitor –
I hasten to say this feeling is not unpleasant. …
The
novel I set out to write was not the novel I wrote. Its saving grace might be
if you were to ever read it you would know exactly why you hated it.
Perhaps
[noting that same how-to article said never use perhaps] the one thing I have
learned is if my novel ever is imprinted into your mind, then it will be up to
me to push it: silly for me to look to NZ Lit Inc. And that suits me fine: I’d
rather be on the outside looking in, because that’s where I always have been in
everything I’ve ever done. And though blowing my own trumpet doesn’t come
naturally, I’m rather good at it.
Though,
as my final random thought until I come back, those who shouldn’t be blowing
any trumpet are big name authors, (sigh) progressives, who write
anti-capitalist dystopias. Per this drek piece of analysis, The Post-Apocalyptic Present, I have learned
that such authors need to understand what capitalism is first (the first part
of my manifesto would put them right), and that the 2008 GFC was caused by
interventionist governments, nothing to do with capitalism. Mind, the writer of
the piece, Andrew Hoberek, has no obvious bias, right?
These novels are at their best and most challenging
when they withhold such visions of renewal and simply give us images of a
broken United States: people in California, Michigan, Kansas, Tennessee,
Massachusetts, and elsewhere struggling to hold it together amidst the ruins of
a lost society. There are two reasons we currently find these scenes so
compelling. First, they offer representations of the post-apocalyptic present
we already inhabit. But second, and more hopefully, they counter this slant
form of realism with glimpses of a world
freed from the capitalism responsible for the damage.
I
agree with Hobe(d)rek in the first part: we do live in a post-apocalyptic
present, where the big brother tax surveillance state and hugely
interventionist governments have destroyed free markets and individual liberty.
Which gives my answer to what I think of his concluding second part: economic
luddite. Fucks sake … seriously, read my literary
manifesto.
Or better, my upcoming novel.
Anyway
vis a vis nothing above, other than a photo mashup I made for inclusion in my
novel, I’ll end with dear old Dad who died this March. Here’s my eulogy to him, read nervously
at his funeral, and in the photo below that’s the both of us on our respective
wedding days. Dad was a good kind Christian man who thought by this stage he
would be in Heaven or some darned absurdist thing. Me? I suspect he’s just worm
fodder – but he’ll live in me until my turn comes, at which time assuming no
euthanasia law still, if a euthanased death would have been my want otherwise (pending
circumstances), then that’ll be the time I’m thinking of blowing my brains out
on the steps of Parliament, which will perhaps
make a point as well as anything. Though – fingers and toes crossed – there’ll
be many bottles of wine drunk between now and then. To my dear old dad – photo
excerpt from my novel …
** A Giovanni postscript:
Regarding Giovanni Tiso's post referred to above, an excellent post about the mundanity of modern surveillance in the Internet age, I couldn't resist a comment. Giovanni's response is significant, and able demonstration of why Left based societies always flow with blood, ultimately, on the double standard. [Apologies for the formatting which will be lost.]
Mark Hubbard said...- [Observation.] IRD read a good many of my posts against our
(ruthless) tax surveillance state, and the Internet has become a major
source of information for them (including social media).
What do you think of that?
And the fact that I have no right of silence against IRD, no right of judicial review against their actions, the Department has almost unlimited powers to raid without warrant, and the burden of proof is even turned against me. That I have no right at all to be left alone by the state via them, though I harm no one.
Your post sets out the contradiction of the Left who don't want their lives surveiled, but are quite happy mine is on the altar of redistribution. I can't help but think, especially with your citing one of my top ten movies, Lives of Others, your concern is overdone.
Nicely written though.
Giovanni Tiso said...- Interesting parallel. I'm not terribly concerned with IRD using
your public social media postings as supporting evidence that you're
wealthier than you are willing to disclose to them.
Hiding money from the tax authorities isn't a form of dissent or expression. It's just fraud. The powers of disclosure of the IRD I suppose *could* be used to intimidate or persecute (say, if a vocal critic of the government were suddenly audited, for instance), and I wouldn't be surprised to hear that a powerful agency occasionally abuses its prerogatives, but as for the exercise of those powers in general, I'm not against it.
Mark Hubbard said...- All the good work of your post, which I agree with 100%, totally undone in one comment, Giovanni.
(And please read my disclaimer at the bottom of my every post: I'm scared of IRD, you bet I am, and do my taxes conservatively. Though, of course, lost in your brutal cult of redistribution you entirely missed the point, which is an individual's right to be left alone by the state, if they constitute no harm. So I take it back; your concern is not overdone, it's hypocritical.)
Have a good one.
You might find the remainder of the debate in Giovanni's comments section interesting :)
Update the First – The Response.
You’ll
remember that I wrote, quote:
“I have been constantly castigated for the
long(er), heavier sentences (and in one case words) of my upbringing …”
… and then went on to say why I had no agreement with that, I will use
the sentence size that fits me. So, the comments on my post so far :)
@secondzeit holy
run-on sentences, Batman
— Jessica Williams (@mizjwilliams)
June
25, 2015
@mizjwilliams He
is not concise. The irony is that Mark's review of Overland would
probably be too long to run in Overland.
— Philip Matthews
(@secondzeit) June
25, 2015
It wasn’t about being ‘concise’ – I come here to have fun. This’s
playing.
Onward:
@secondzeit bloody
hell, he does go on... @OverlandJournal
—
Sara (@sarabeee) June
25, 2015
True that. I do.
Quoting Mrs H. ‘Oh you go onnn!’ And she would agree with every comment
here.
Next from the co-editor of Overland 219:
@secondzeit And
yet, not a word about the fiction section...
— Jolisa
Gracewood (@nzdodo) June
25, 2015
I’d probably enjoy the fiction section. If I only read books written by
people with my points of view I’d have about three books to read. Which is why
my novel will be … unique. And it’s a shame that the shoe on the progressive foot is not so well traveled in lands they find anathema to them, albeit, I’ve got some new
readers tuning in - and I realise my first three paragraphs would make it hard for them to stay. But welcome to you all.
I have no animosity to anyone above; the furthest thing from that. Plus
I’m a mirror; I respond to people in the manner they bring to me. I’ve been
plain in every post on Giovanni, including above, he is a damned fine writer,
that’s why he’s on my blogroll. It is his politick and approach I find
repugnant, which is why my responses tend to be likewise – but I’d enjoy
sitting in a pub talking over a brew with him. I simply think different … and
comments like this prove my thesis of Literary Ramble IV regarding the
ownership of our literature by a clique of the Left, a very partisan Left where
solidarity ousts principle and – historically – too often humanity. No one wins
from that, certainly not our literature.
Tra la, onward and upward, as some bore once said …
Hi greaat reading your post
ReplyDelete