Tag: Non-Fiction

William S. Burroughs – The Best of William Burroughs from Giorno Poetry Systems

The Best of William Burroughs From Giorno Poetry Systems

William S. Burroughs – The Best of William Burroughs from Giorno Poetry Systems Mercury 314 536 701-2 (1998)

Burroughs was the godfather of the Beats.  And yet, his extensive career giving spoken word recitations is, in a way, just as significant as his writings themselves (most of his readings were of his own writings) — setting aside entirely his sonic cut-up audio field recordings and mixed media visual artworks.  As a live performer, he worked his way through small venues, much like punk bands (and often in the same clubs that did punk shows).  His intonation, pacing and inflection did evolve though.  Listening to four CDs of material covering a long stretch of time reveals how he fine-tuned his delivery.  He mastered his sneering, nasal delivery, with certain words drawn out for effect, speaking often in a kind of deadpan but breaking from it regularly for emphasis.  And comparing these recordings from 1975 onward shows marked advancement over his 1960s recorded monologues.

Burroughs came from a fairly privileged upbringing and was highly educated.  He mostly used that background to more effectively mock rich elites and to astutely document what goes on in the world outside the realm of respectability.  He gets inside the self-important, smug and arrogant sense of entitlement in cutting, satirical narratives, which often explore basic countercultural themes and the realities of life for the poor.  His aloof, profane, magnificently unsentimental, and often scowling demeanor had a way of depicting vileness with an icy frankness that makes his accounts endearing, in their own startling and unexpected way, fostering a kind of cabal or union of outcasts and freaks who are onto the cons too.  As Barry Miles said about Burroughs in an interview,

“His overall concern was always to confront control systems and attack them.  In literature it was usually done through humour . . . where he would take ideas to some absurd length which breaks through all the normal boundaries of good taste and decorum and it was often hilariously funny.”

No doubt, Burroughs exudes a kind of political libertarian populism, but it runs close anarchism.  At his best (and this Best of collection surely lives up to delivering the man at his best) he could hilariously depict the “country simple” wisdom of the underclasses as fully aware of the grim power struggles playing out under the guise of “neutral” politics that just so happen to prop up elites (something that was most explicit in his essays and Cities of the Red Night).  Burroughs was always on the look out for new techniques to disrupt the smooth functioning of oppressive social structures, taking particular glee in uncovering the overlooked (if not explicitly hidden) and elemental institutional mechanisms that maintain such relations between people.  He can be delightfully ruthless in exposing the vile motives of the self-satisfied “pillars of the community,” like doctors, journalists, police, and so on.  Burroughs’ characters are sometimes surprisingly conventional, even as he takes a very unconventional approach to developing and introducing them.  Burroughs also knows how to deliver an iconic catchphrase, taking colloquialisms to new heights by building so much around them to contextualize their lasting value.  He can also summon a sense of paranoia like few others.  And all this is not to mention his pervasive interest in fringe theories: UFOs, orgone accumulators, and that sort of thing.

Burroughs’ writings were often picaresque, heavily influenced by Céline, but also drawing on the influence of Denton Welch, Rimbaud, Genet, Conrad and others.  The picaresque style lends itself to short — and humorous — readings, the excerpts able to stand on their own.  But from Welch, Burroughs also drew on an ability to describe the ordinary in an uncommon way, and how to reveal with honesty that which is obscured.  Burroughs is able to summon and expand on those qualities in his readings.

As to the actual recordings here, they are mostly arranged chronologically by the date the underlying text was published — irrespective of when the audio was recorded, to some extent.  Then the last disc features a segment called “Nothing Here Now But the Recordings,” which are not based on any previously published texts, but includes lectures and audio experiments, such as the “inching” technique Burroughs employed by manually moving magnetic audio tape through a recorder.

Burroughs actually made many, many commercially released recordings.  This set is exclusively material released on John Giorno‘s label Giorno Poetry Systems, often originally released on albums with contributions from many different performers (rather than exclusively from Burroughs).  There are many more Burroughs recordings out there, very few of which were ever sold in any quantity.  What is here focuses primarily on spoken word recitations, mostly readings of Burroughs’ own published writings.  The recordings not present here delve more fully into experimental sound collages (see Real English Tea Made Here) and collaborations with musical groups (see Spare Ass Annie and Other Tales, The Black Rider).  But there are also various other spoken word albums Burroughs made that were simply made for other record labels (see Call Me Burroughs, Break Through in Grey Room, etc.).

Reading Burroughs is near mandatory.  But a complete picture of the man’s work requires exploring his other efforts, especially his audio recordings.  The Best of William Burroughs From Giorno Poetry Systems makes an ideal introduction to those audio recordings.  And just as to Burroughs’ outlook, a world that continues to lurch closer to a police state can stand to learn from Burroughs’ intelligent studies in ways to counteract those tendencies.

Slavoj Žižek – The Fragile Absolute

Cover of: The fragile absolute or, Why is the Christian legacy worth fighting for? The fragile absolute or, Why is the Christian legacy worth fighting for?

Slavoj Žižek – The Fragile Absolute: Or, Why Is the Christian Legacy Worth Fighting For? (Verso 2000)

Typically Žižek writes long and short books, with the shorter ones restating concepts he had introduced in longer works.  But The Fragile Absolute is a bit different in terms of being shorter but also developing (relatively) new concepts.  His views on christian atheism are significant enough that this book was reprinted years later as part of the publisher’s “Essential Žižek” series.  Yet for as important as the the core christian ideas are to the book, given its title, most of the first half or so scarcely mentions religion at all.  And for that matter, Žižek doesn’t ever mention Thomas J.J. Altizer‘s “death of god” theory, or Ernst Bloch‘s Atheism in Christianity (1968), which seem to set forth a similar frame of discussion.  Instead he starts with Alain Badiou‘s Saint Paul: The Foundations of Universalism (1998).  In short, Žižek’s thesis is that christianity offers a radical position that used “love” as a way toward universality.  Using his typical Lacanian psychoanalytic techniques, and a heavy reliance on Hegelian philosophy, he explores how a sense of duty in the christian concept of love — specifically Pauline agape (love as charity) — can rupture the duality of law and transgression and the pagan notion of life cycles built around a global social hierarchy (of each person and thing in its “proper” place).  In other words, he sees christianity as offering a significant step forward toward an egalitarian society by asserting that each individual has immediate access to (and the right to participate in) universality, without seeing it as “evil” when a person (or strata) no longer is satisfied with a position within an ordered social hierarchy (which inherently has masters who must be obeyed).  Žižek’s key arguments are as profound as ever, yet those could have been distilled to more potent essay or article rather than a book that comes across as rambling in the first half.

Carl Wilson – Let’s Talk About Love

Let's Talk About Love A Journey to the End of Taste (33 1/3)

Carl Wilson – Let’s Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste (33 1/3 #52) (Continuum 2007)

Carl Wilson tackles Céline Dion‘s album Let’s Talk About Love.  His approach is intriguing, based mostly upon the theories of sociologist Pierre Bourdieu (particularly as set forth in his Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste).  In essence, Wilson asks whether his distaste for her music is really a way to distinguish himself from her fan base.  While the basic premise of the book is worth reading about, Wilson stumbles a bit when going about applying the theory to the work of Céline Dion.  For one, Bourdieu was insistent that the point of his analytic framework was to expose systems of domination in order to permit them to be challenged.  Wilson, though, eschews that sort of purpose.  He notes that aspect of Bourdieu’s theory but glosses over it in his own analysis.  He instead ponders endlessly how her fame doesn’t make sense.  But it does!  The essence is that she supports modes of domination, providing a convenient coping mechanism for the victims of domination without challenging the oppression by the powerful.  She is therefore supported and promoted by those who benefit from that domination (key to her having a huge Las Vegas show).  Wilson skirts this issue.  Take this passage concerning her penchant for sentimentality:

“Her songs are often about the struggle of sustaining an emotional reality, about fidelity, faith, bonding and survival — continuity, that is, in the destabilizing flux of late capitalism.  While business and rebel-schmaltz stars alike tout self-realization, social negation and the delegitimation of traditional values, Céline’s music (like Nashville country) tends to prioritize ‘recognition and community,’ connection and solidarity.  Granted, she also promotes overwork, ambition and luxury, which is to say she’s still a pop star.  But in that matrix, sentimentality might be her greatest virtue.”  (p. 127).

Wilson is right that the palliative aspect of her sentimentality can be seen as a redeeming quality, but in positively noting that perspective he deflects attention from who benefits from it.  He recounts an amusing anecdote about how Jamaican gangsters often played her music loudly.  Isn’t the core of gangsterism the direct, physical expression of domination, just as Céline’s music is a facilitator of it through the more subtle economic and political mechanisms of late capitalism?  Gangsters liking it makes perfect sense when ideological alignment is considered.

There are many perspectives on Céline’s music that Wilson never quite considers.  He comes close for some.  He talks about how Céline appeals mostly to people who make use of her music, for weddings, events, and as the soundscape of life, not people (like professional critic Wilson) who scrutinize and analyze it.  Joe Boyd in his memoir White Bicycles, wrote about how in the 1960s folk music scene there was a divide between those like archivist Alan Lomax who pursued “gregarious” music meant for social events — sing-alongs and such — and record collectors more interested in virtuoso performers.  This is a very similar divide between Céline’s fans and Wilson and his cohorts.  But he does not really go there in the book.  Also, could it be that Céline’s music appeals to extroverts, while most music nerds are introverts? This is not to say that these other lenses are the correct ones, but rather that the way Wilson struggles to find an explanation for Céline’s appeal means that he never quite has the crucial insight that explains the divide between her fans and her many detractors.  Put more simply, this is why Wilson’s approach is unscientific and superficial.  He acknowledges that he lacks the funds to perform a large survey like Bourdieu (for that, look to the likes of Gerry Veenstra).  He would be better off looking to the style of Thorstein Veblen, but he disses Veblen and misquotes him (flattering himself by trying to coin the phrase “conspicuous production” in a way that is already subsumed by Veblen’s original theory of “conspicuous consumption”).

There are many passages of great insight in the book.  They unfortunately don’t hang together into a whole, and are offset by unfortunately blunders.  For instance, Wilson contrasts Céline with the Carpenters.  And yet, the Carpenters are actually credited by many with creating the genre of pop power ballads (“Goodbye to Love”) that are the core of Céline’s repertoire.

The extensive personal anecdotes that Wilson injects throughout the book are a distraction.  While those sorts of things can orient a reader to the ideology and perspective of the writer, Wilson is not as candid as he claims to be (for one, he points out that he writes for leftist publications, but his endless claims about misunderstanding Céline’s music is purely centrist liberalism).  The book would have been better without those digressions.  It could have stood to go much further into the application of Bourdieu’s theories as well.  What’s more, his eventual “review” of Let’s Talk About Love is limp and uninteresting.

In spite of its limitations, one hopes that Let’s Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste still encourages other writers to take up a similar approach to criticism.  There are few more intriguing ways to look at the nature of criticism.  (Actually, David Lee‘s The Battle of the Five Spot: Ornette Coleman and the New York Jazz Field is a much more substantial book applying Bourdieu to jazz music and practice, or look to various French writers who have done this in the past).

Astra Taylor – The People’s Platform

The People's Platform: Taking Back Power and Culture in the Digital Age

Astra Taylor – The People’s Platform: Taking Back Power and Culture in the Digital Age (Metropolitan Books 2014)

“There is a war between the ones who say there is a war /
And the ones who say there isn’t”

Leonard Cohen, “There Is a War” from New Skin for the Old Ceremony (1974)

Filmmaker and sociologist Astra Taylor has written an excellent and much-needed book about Internet technology, culture and economics, critiquing the so-called “Web 2.0” phenomenon.  In the beginning of the book, Taylor sets up the supposedly false dichotomy of the debate about the Internet: tech-boosterism that sees everything about the Internet as great vs. Luddite anti-technology naysayers.  However the rest of the book reveals that dichotomy to be kind of a slight of hand distraction.  Taylor spends most of the book talking about how mainstream discussion of the Internet and its political and economic implications tends to be framed as a debate between the political center and the political right, with positions of the political left excluded.  Taylor tries to inject a leftist position.  So she critiques the likes of Lawrence Lessig for advancing what amounts to a Standard Liberal Position (i.e., the political center): finding the “right” amount of inequality.  Taylor, on the other hand, advances the (largely blacklisted) Standard Left Position, which seeks an egalitarian society.  She sees too much in common between the liberals, the fascists, the royalists, and the libertarian right, and therefore offers a politically different perspective, one that many people probably would agree with, except that they never hear it in the mass media.

She particularly objects to the neo-feudal aspects of “Web 2.0” that are premised on a neoliberal, techno-libertarian obsession with creating tycoons and massive inequality, without a democratically-controlled government to act as a check on private power, and tries to reveal the mechanisms those boosters try to conceal.  This is the essence of social science.  She fits into a long line of writers from Thorstein Veblen to Peter Drahos to Nicole Aschoff. Perhaps most on point in a general sense is Luc Boltanski and Eve Chiapello‘s influential The New Spirit of Capitalism, where they make the argument that corporate capitalism is co-opting the empowering rhetoric of the past (the New Left 1960s especially). Aschoff explicitly cites Boltanski on this point in The New Prophets of Captial. Taylor just adopts that same argument (perhaps reinventing the wheel a bit). But Drahos’ Information Feudalism is quite apropos too.

A rather similar observation about growing neo-feudalism has been made by the economist Michael Hudson, who has noted how the “free trade” of classical economics was meant to promote an economy freed from feudal aristocracy, rentiers, and any other predatory interests who sought to siphon off wealth through special legal/social privileges, whereas the neoclassical economics of the neoliberal era seeks to set up an economy free for predatory interests to set up wealth-extracting privileges akin to setting up private tollbooths on otherwise public thoroughfares.

Taylor’s book sets out a kind of narrative that maps rather well onto Hudson’s theory.  For Taylor, the problem is that (a) Internet technologies are praised for the socially beneficial possibilities they suggest, with those possibilities backed by lots (!) of paid advertising.  Despite considerable media attention, (b) little attention is paid to whether there is empirical validation for the theoretical possibilities that Internet technologies suggest.  It is assumed that internet technologies produce positive results without many people bothering to check.  Most importantly, (c) only those internet technologies that bolster concentration of wealth and capital are supported — those who do check up on empirical circumstances and report on the disconnect between theory and reality are marginalized and ignored.  This last point is crucial.  Usually the internet technologies that succeed are not the ones that actually provide the benefits they suggest, but rather ones that meet the dubious criteria of venture capitalists and Wall Street, which are — quite intentionally — never listed as being socially beneficial, because they tend to be parasitic and socially corrosive.  It’s a shell game.  Attention is drawn to dead ends and pipe dreams while the real and often repugnant drivers of the widespread adoption of these technologies drift into the shadows, away from public view and scrutiny.  Taylor re-frames the question, away from that of the mainstream media and tech-boosters (often one and the same people), and toward the vetting process that lurks in the shadows.  She instead asks the great question of the ancient Roman Consul Lucius Cassius: “Qui Bono?” (“to whose benefit?”).  The answer to that question is usually a small minority, often morally repugnant violators of user privacy and owners of parasitic platforms hosting content by those whose labor is exploited.  In many ways, Taylor’s analysis also mirrors that of Jeffrey Reiman‘s “Pyrrhic Defeat” theory in criminology:  while a Pyrrhic Victory is a victory that comes at such a great cost that it amounts to a defeat, “Pyrrhic Defeat” is a nominal “defeat” of stated objectives in which those with power to alter the system benefit from the actually-existing conditions of “defeat” (something sort of related to the notion of “gaslighting”).

One key debate involves those who want the Internet to be a free-for-all, and those who want draconian control over it.  While it is unsurprisingly a small but vocal minority that adopts the draconian approach, there are flaws in the other, free-for-all argument too.  Taylor cites Elinor Ostrom, Peter Linebaugh, and other defenders of the commons against those who frequently take a right-Libertarian view of the Internet as a (market-based) “commons”, pointing out that, “In reality, differing circumstances, abilities, assets, and power render some better able to take advantage of a commons than others.”  (Taylor doesn’t touch on it, but Michael Hudson has again written about “free trade” theory as causing economic polarization in much the same way).  Taylor suggests that having a commons is socially-beneficial but to succeed requires regulation and enforcement of democratically-determined regulations.  In other words, she once again sees the mainstream debate as being between the political right and the center-right, to the exclusion of a politically left position, which she adds to the debate.

Much like Aschoff, Taylor picks apart the fundamental insistence on neo-liberal capitalism embedded in “Web 2.0.”  Drawing from the writings of Alice Marwick, she notes how online “self-branding” and relentless self-promotion is really about an insistence that neo-liberal political values be internalized.  Any other views are marginalized.  A similar argument was taken up by Miya Tokumitsu with her book Do What You Love, exploring how the injunction to do work that you love masks promotion of inequalities, victim-blaming, and anti-labor sentiment.  Or for that matter, long before the Internet era, Erich Fromm theorized a “marketing” character orientation.  This topic has also been the subject of some in-depth writing on the so-called “sharing economy” subsequent to Taylor’s book.

The book is written in a “journalistic” tone, but unlike most books of that sort that rely on dubious citations (if any) and anecdote without a coherent underlying theory, The People’s Platform is much, much more informed.  Yes, some of the citations are still a bit light (many are digressions rather than clear support for her statements).  Perhaps the biggest issue is Taylor’s injection of her subjective perspective as an independent documentary filmmaker into the book.  This proves useful, in that it allows the reader to clearly identify her own point of view, given that every writer has one (some just refuse to admit it).  Mostly Taylor’s own personal narrative provides examples to illustrate concepts she develops more generally.  She does an especially good job conveying the nuance of the debate over intellectual property, and especially copyrights, noting how creative workers rely on it for income, while the “Web 2.0” companies use Internet software platforms to develop audiences that are sold to advertisers without any feeling of obligation to pay a living wage — or in many cases, anything at all — to content producers whose works are distributed on those platforms.  Those who want everything to be free and open tend to be those who don’t depend on such compensation to survive.

And yet, Taylor does kind of overlook an old argument of the Standard Left Position.  In the Nineteenth Century, the third best-selling book in the United States was Edward Bellamy‘s Looking Backward, a Rip Van Winkle tale about a man who goes into a trance in 1887 and wakes up in the year 2000 to find an essentially socialist utopia.  What is interesting is that in that fictional socialist utopia Bellamy suggests that novelists are not compensated.  They raise their own funds to publish — though there is a job guarantee so every citizen has a right to other gainful employment in a socially useful occupation.  The key difference is that Taylor assumes (without explicitly discussing it in her book) that it is socially desirable to have “professional” creators of cultural/creative works.  Bellamy suggested that an ideal society should not have such full-time content creators, but instead such things should all be done on an amateur basis, albeit in a society that provides ample leisure time and guaranteed income to enable substantial self-directed work to be performed.  The idea there was later echoed in W.E.B. Du Bois‘ famous assertion that all art is propaganda, as well as in the work of various Frankfurt School scholars.  This is a small loose end, though, in an otherwise thorough treatment of the topic.

In terms of the suggestions for the future, Taylor (implicitly at least) draws form the likes of Richard Wolff in suggesting cooperatives online, Robert McChesney in suggesting that media delivery companies should be taxed at full market value to eliminate the advantages that their natural monopoly or quasi public utility positions give them (e.g., for exclusive broadcasting licenses), and that content producers should be directly subsidized by the government.  While many books like this that critique and criticize the existing state of affairs tend to fall down by making a bunch of absurd and/or unrealistic policy recommendations, Taylor is thankfully brief and vague about specifics, but offers a multitude of general suggestions that point toward improvements that could be pursued individually or all together.  They aren’t really new suggestions but they are meaningful alternatives.  She does, however, stop short of suggesting that neo-liberalism or capitalism as a whole be jettisoned, even though that is implicitly (and obviously) where her arguments point.

Morris Berman – The Twilight of American Culture

The Twilight of American Culture

Morris Berman – The Twilight of American Culture (WW. Norton & Co. 2000)

Disappointing. I ended up just skimming through a lot of this. Berman presents an interesting topic, but this feels like a five page essay spun out to book length. His analysis is pretty superficial. In describing the decline of American culture he seems to be “preaching to the choir” as they say. The best parts are his personal anecdotes about teaching experiences, but those alone don’t support his premise.

Joe Boyd – White Bicycles

White Bicycles: Making Music in the 1960s

Joe Boyd – White Bicycles: Making Music in the 1960s (Serpent’s Tail 2006)

Joe Boyd is a music and film producer, and onetime club operator.  His name is all over a lot of curious music from the late 1960s and early 1970s (and less conspicuous music after that), mostly folk, folk-rock and psychedelic rock.  White Bicycles is his memoir of that time.  He describes a trip to Great Britain in early 1965, saying, “I loved the feeling that I was in a foreign place, and the more alien the better.” (p. 65).  This works as a concise summary of his musical tastes as well.  Always keen for the most exotic sounds — especially if they can also be labeled “authentic” — he was kind of a collector of musical trophy experiences.  At least, that he how his memoir White Bicycles reads.  He provides only the barest details of anything about his life that isn’t a brag, or used as a discrete counterweight to give a more punch to an extended brag — like the story of walking away from the rights to ABBA‘s publishing before they got huge is really an excuse to claim he was in on the band’s appeal before the rest of the world.  But he certainly did rack up an impressive resume of musical acquaintances, record production credits (or co-credits), and scene caché.

As a writer, Boyd is kind of an expert con man.  He has a journalist’s flair for witty one-liners and turns of phrase.  He also has a deep appreciation for how the universal can be explained though isolated examples, betraying that universality in a memoir that seems to suggest (implicitly) that everything universal about the 1960s had something to do with him.  It isn’t that he lies or exaggerates.  The man was there for a lot of important countercultural milestones, though he should earn no credit or applause for it because anyone with the opportunities and resources that he did should have been obligated to do at least as much.  For instance, he suddenly is helping manage the Newport Jazz Festival, but we read nothing about how he managed to get the job.  We hear about how he stretches his resources and empty pockets when in college, though a moment’s pause might remind the reader that Boyd is in an Ivy League college in the first place, with room and board, and still able to travel and devote any earnings toward discretionary travel and musical investments.

Boyd is at his best doing hit-and-run synopses of particular artists and musical sub-cultures, from the sympathetic perspective of someone who “was there.”  When it comes to autobiographical details, his accounts are thin and self-serving.  There is no shortage of name-dropping.  Yet that’s also the reason anyone reads this book, to find out about the seemingly unending roster of musical luminaries that crossed paths with Boyd at one point or another.  But his little synopses are quite engaging, like one about the music of his teenage years:

“The years 1954 to 1956 were the great cusp, when black music was discovered by white teenagers and sold millions of records. The horrified guardians of the nation’s morals feared the underclass world it represented and the miscegenation implied in its rhythms; major record labels hated it because they didn’t understand it, putting them at a disadvantage with buccaneering independents [he mentions a few, none from the South, leaving out Sam Phillips at Sun]”. (p. 8)

He does sum up the book on a sober point about music in the 1960s:

“The atmosphere in which music flourished then had a lot to do with economics.  It was a time of unprecedented prosperity.  People are supposedly wealthier now, yet most feel they haven’t enough money and time is at an even greater premium.  ***  In the sixties, we had surpluses of both money and time.  ***  The tightening of the fiscal screws that began with the 1973 oil crisis may not have been a conspiracy to rein in this dangerous laxness, but it has certainly worked out to the advantage of the powerful.  Ever since, prices have ratcheted upwards in relation to hours worked and the results of this squeeze can be seen everywhere.” (pp. 267-68).

This is all true, to a point.  But your frame of reference has to be that of middle and upper-middle class white people.  This book will appeal most if you are one of those too.  It also must be mentioned that the way that things have changed such that the 60s experiences can’t be recreated a half-century later just happens to emphasize the rarity of Boyd’s experiences, and that privileged rarity is what he plies to his own advantage.

In the end Boyd manages to paint vivid portraits of scenes and incidents from his life. He is nothing if not articulate.  Whether these portraits, and their point of view, is of interest, though, is kind of a separate issue. Boyd doesn’t emerge from the narrative as the sort of chum you are likely to find endearing. There is an elitism and off-putting self-importance to much of his chosen narrative.  This is to say Boyd stops short of making any kind of existential realization that the achievements he boasts about are just as silly and arbitrary as anything else, and they stand in the way of the benign co-existence he claims to have fostered through music — in a way, therein lies the seeds of the downfall of 60s ideals.  Your interest will probably peak if you have heard a lot of musical acts that Boyd was involved with: Pink Floyd, Nick Drake, Fairport Convention, The Incredible String Band, Nico, Vashti Bunyan, Chris McGregor’s Brotherhood of Breath, etc.