Friday, November 20, 2015

#323



p.345:

There isn’t much obscurity or poetic complication in this prosy Dream Song, but the comparison has some biographical significance. B. sees himself a lot like Winston Churchill. There’s nothing wrong with that. I see myself a lot like Brian Wilson. I imagine that we’re kindred spirits. Brian Wilson doesn’t know me from a donkey, and that’s understandable since I’m not very famous. (I have some wonderful friends, so I’m not so concerned about that). But yeah, I see the guiding spirit of the Beach Boys as someone with whom I share a kindred sensibility: Not put off by emotional work that risks sentimentality, a bit of an artistic sweet tooth, but hopefully with the same kind of tensile strength in my skeletal components. He was tough and confident artistically until the lack of support from his band members, but more than anything his drug abuse, crushed him. Lack of support and interest may crush me yet, but at least I’m not addicted to anything destructive. I like drinking red wine a bit too much, but I so can’t stand the effect of alcohol on my body that I just don’t drink that often any more. I’ll sail on to whatever artistic future I can make, but there’s nothing looming to destroy me that I know of yet.

So, my first inclination to roll my eyes at B. regarding himself as the American Midwest’s answer to Winston Churchill passed quickly enough. There’s nothing wrong with that. And, he supports it. I wonder if he’s not exaggerating a bit in his invoking the kinds of enemies Churchill had as a politician on the world stage. Writers can certainly make their share of malicious enemies though, and the rivalries can be all the more vicious for their squabbling over the trimmings and scraps of broader cultural significance. Poets are known within literary circles. They don’t get read all that much outside of the ivory tower and the tower’s graduates. That’s not totally true, but I suspect more people are reading Churchill’s memoirs still than have ever read The Dream Songs. I have no proof of this, but that’s my earnest suspicion.

He doesn’t let on, but B. gets one thing, I’ve decided. He’s ambitious, and he has that air of a fawning sycophant now and then toward his literary forbears and mentors. He professes to be chasing recognition since his life is a fucking mess otherwise, and the people who choose to love him suffer for his shortcomings. But I think now he truly would write from his coffin if he had to, like back in those crazy 78-91 Op. posth. Dreams Songs. There’s a desperate manic drive to it, sure, but that’s not all it is. I think he knows the satisfaction of making something worthwhile, and he knows the writer’s satisfaction that comes from making a comment, and from bearing witness. He bears witness to his own chaos, but so what? It’s what he was faced with. Churchill wasn’t exactly on the path to glory until the war broke out. Shakespeare wrote in Twelfth Night, ”Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and others have greatness thrust upon them.” Churchill had it thrust upon him. My take on B. and greatness has been that if he had any at all, he achieved it. But maybe that’s not what he thinks. Given what life threw at him, he had no choice but to become great in response. The alternative, to melt away in silence, wasn’t acceptable. It was go for it or nothing. His measure of greatness grew out of the challenges thrust upon him, but not from the outside, like with Churchill, they came from inside. Rather than let it consume him, he responded. Okay. There’s something markedly Churchillian about that after all. Berryman fought on the beaches and fought in the streets, etc.—with his pen, and in a pathetic, hangdog desperate kind of way, through a pea soup of alcoholic fog. But I’m in a place at the moment where I acknowledge that he did it. Give him some credit.

1 comment:

  1. Sorry, but "You know who else I'm like? Winston Churchill!"

    Who next? "Ghandi and I are almost twins...."

    ReplyDelete