Action!

"Grant Morrison is no William Burroughs. And a comic in the style of Burroughs would prove to be about as interesting an unintelligible as an action movie made by Carlos Castenada."

I read this over at the CBR forums earlier today (it was posted a few years ago), and it stopped me cold in a moment of hilarity and something like an abscess within the thoughtstream. I know it's saying that comics written by Burroughs, or in that style (Which one of his styles? Who knows, who cares?) would be uninteresting, but the implication, with the followup on action, is that Burroughs couldn't do excitement/action, isn't it? Or that his writing has any similarities to that of Carlos Castenada.

I haven't read a lot of Castenada, but what I have read was nowhere near as visceral, poignant, horrifying or funny, as any random moment of William Burroughs' backlog of literary achievements and gutbuster routines.

But, let's put aside my supposition that it implies a lack of action-oriented work in the Burroughs oeuvre (If not action, what does Naked Lunch start out with? Soft Machine?), and let us have a look at the idea that William Burroughs work is "unintelligible."

Those of you in the audience who have read (or heard) a standalone routine from Burroughs, or have read a complete work: Were you at a loss to explain, not what happened, but what it meant? When Burroughs explains the algebra of need or "the worst thing I ever stood still for" are you scratching you head? On the subject of heads, did the giggling, smoothtalking ghost whispering in your brain and through tape recorders until you believe him to be your voice and do as he says, is that something you cannot reiterate, yourself, in a telling?

I don't think I lot of Burroughs work is concerned with linearity or chronology, no. But, with communication? Intelligible communication? Communication of emotion, of consequence, of drive and sublimation? Yes, I'd say so.

So, has Burroughs been made a bogeyman for the same people who still can't take the existence of Tristram Shandy? Is he a literary archon, now, a facade erected by the desperately ignorant to keep Mr. Bradley Mr. Martin safe?

Platte Valley Review - On Sale

Just a reminder that copies of the 2009-10 Platte Valley Review, if they cannot be located at a fine local bookseller with a physical shop (and why not? What's wrong with them!), are available via pvr@unk.edu for ten bucks, American, and other denominations Earth money of equal value, once it has been converted to American Dollars. Featuring work by acclaimed and brilliant luminaries such as Jack Myers, Anne Waldman, Lolita Hernandez, Quincy Troupe, Ted Kooser, Diane Glancy, and Sam Hamill, and released by the University of Nebraska at Kearney, this is more than worth the money and sure to become a cherished item passed down generation to generation until such time as cults are formed around it while the chimps are busy chiseling the faces on Mount Rushmore into more palatable pan troglodytes visages.

I am proud of my small contributions to the edition (cover design, some layout and proofing), which turned out nice, but even prouder to simply be included in some way in a collection featuring such excellent writers and wonderful people.

Murderer!

It occurs to me that the out provided in Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell's From Hell , for the survival of Mary Kelly - that it's either her or not someone mistaken for her - makes the reader complicit in the murder, by virtue of desire (to see her killed or escaped) and our own innate feeling of rightness. No matter which way you go, you're making a call on a callous and horrible murder, unless you float the story in a nebulous Schrodinger's victim arrangement.

That's quite good.

Future Earth Magazine Volume Four

Tara Betts, Lyn Lifshin, Norm Breyfogle, Marilyn Nelson, Clive Nolan, and more. Coming soon. Very, very soon.

Super Thought

To those who insist you can't maintain telling stories about a character as powerful as Supes is in Morrison/Quitely/Grant's All-Star Superman: How do you explain all the stories told where Superman is that powerful or all the stories with all the proxies, analogs, or allusive characters? How about all the stories that keep going with other godlike or immensely powerful characters?

You can't tell thousands of stories of a Superman that powerful just punching things, no. But, if you change the nature of what he's dealing with, if it is primarily things that cannot be punched into correction, well, then there's a lot of ground that can be covered, a number of stories that can be told, isn't there?

Hunger, despair, poverty, jealousy, frustration, doubt... these cannot be punched effectively, and these are some of the things that Superman attempts to tackle in what I think of as his best stories. All-Star, Birthright, the stories told by Alan Moore and those from Elliot S! Maggin, these are about caring, not about how an alien can never be part of "us" or America (he was raised in Kansas by farmers, of course he's American!), a distant God or whatever. Superman can beat everyone up never appealed to me as much as Superman gives a damn.

As a pretty much lifelong non-driver and perpetual pedestrian, I can't see the point in Superman hobbling himself, pretending a new authenticity by walking around when he can fly. That's like me pretending to be blind because I think it'll make me more humane. It wouldn't; it would make me a pretentious jerk. Even if the lack of capacity were legitimate, a lack of power doesn't make people decent, any more than immense power and all the access in the world does. Decency makes us decent, being kind makes us kind. Being worthwhile makes us worthwhile, and nothing more.