There is very little unsaid in Look Back in Anger. Jimmy Porter lashes out verbally at a huge variety of topics – the class system, American evangelists, Alison’s family, women in general, flamboyant homosexuals.
Every writer who has any degree of aspiration in the U.S. wants to get into The Atlantic and similar periodicals. The popular highbrows, interchanging bylines with senior fellows even, those minute analysts of detail, like Fallows, who effortlessly seams up space in The New Republic and The Atlantic, as easily as filtering sea water with gills, reserving a land organ lung for gulps of oxygen when hauling that reptilian ancestry on the beach. None of you have any idea how hard it was for me to once come as close as I did to both periodicals, though I wised up in my pre-internet era and ceased submitting my poetry to the magazine that made Henry James into a sub-academic gay decoder for the untutored. Anyone of pretension keeps the Atlantic in orbit, knows that James Bennet went to New York after Hitchens passed away, knows Frum took over, without necessarily caring how far this descendant of the Roman working class has fallen, in mortal combat with her marshmallow nigger aide on a daily basis. Conceivably, I could argue I am being abused by this man, verbally, daily, on the eve of the midterm results, Frum rather inconceivably tweets
He was mocked, but my response was not satirical, rather a throbbing pulse of pain, none of you really give a fuck. I took the man off my feed, genuinely indignant, genuinely more than indignant. Given his paranoia over Trump's ostensible Manchurian qualities, I'd be persecuted for cruelty to Canadian expatriates if that poor mother Russian bear shredded his jugular in a particularly creative mortal gerrymander. Do you read this as a victimized outcry? Maybe it is a sentiment we can expect from a Canadian blunderbuss who was 43's speechwriter.
I only ever saw the black and white film version of Osborne's explosive movement drama, find it a consolation that Burton is somehow incapable of anything but a commanding grandeur, and in that, he's irreplaceable, even if cutting feminine love for him into the forbidden orifices is a trifle superlative, wishing that you might have a child and that it would die, the agony he created then triumphant over him. This wasn't the post I wanted to write this morning, obviously, but I'll toss out a discordant positron: The delightful optimism of Antonio Paris pleases me. He honors me, even if the alliance isn't everlasting.
The law doesn't always provide justice. Meloni,ever reliable in summation
I have the same weakness as an active journalist, which at present is a tenuous bracket, due to the fact that my one successful pitch since spring sits in Hugo's Parisian catacombs, gears linked in permanent coitus, my mind looking at puzzle pieces, not particularly desirous of the Defense Department's attention, as does Bennet the menace. As to the DOD, I may actually type out my questions before I start dialing federal area codes. I do not begrudge old hands like Will; don't think that. Nor am I trying to rescue the Trump Administration: I got a little pissed with lax semantics that hit the social media trend curve, and although not quite satisfied with my end product, toggling the worth of rousing an old source if I expand my length, there is an intrinsic flaw in Will's reasoning, and I am trying to illuminate that.
If it eases Jeffrey Tucker's mind, which could be queer, or slightly autistic, I went for paying markets as well, the wise editors who know better than to smart aleck their response, not just The Freeman. Another loaf on the back shelf, or what, not sure, but I will not lengthen it this morning, I doubt, or trouble Nick Gillespie's fiefdom just yet, since I believe I found a way into a longer form about First Amendment nihilism which has been chewing at me for a lengthier time than just the latest shaming or riled Twitter protest. I may also have to walk back, in my expectedly ignored invite to Nick to connect, that I would support Reason indefinitely, interesting as it may be that my poverty played a small part in Stossel's contract. Reason is not only a little too liberal, it is hurried, kinetic, dashing here and here, much like the state of California, an important component territory of American power, to be sure, but this online dominance of Frisco psychology, juxtaposed with New York's offended blue nose progeniture disavowing one of its own, pitted against once energetic authoritarians like Guilliani, who rise with near heroism, then invariably slam dunk into disgrace. failed expectations being the nature of the human condition. The Freeman, in libertarian terms, has a better vitality than Reason, even if we’re all somewhat subliminally aware of what Lucinda Chambers, formerly of Vogue’s UK division, voiced with certain observational veracity without any innovative replacement in sight: magazines are increasingly irrelevant, meaning distinction, in diction and style. There are no more Winchells, and although television formatted Cronkite as Winchell in a video medium, this has long been waning into the diminutive, showhorse anchors. I’ve had a bit of luck in both vocational and professional oscillations as a writer: half creative scholar, half journalist. It hasn’t been without moments, or appreciative response, but my 60th decade is in sight, and I do not have the support of colleagues or editorial staff, exception being Robert’s introduction to my slim, rather jouneyman’s aggregation of work, and my now vanished review of his collection. Is this all there is?
This thing needs to be destroyed.-- John Huston's Cronkrite as bastard
I unloaded some of my ever bridled fury at Niume's official twitter account Friday evening, for those of you paying attention to the needy outlets embedded in developmental damage, and of course it wasn't fair of me, for those of us old enough to remember what life was like writing penny articles before the bloated carcass otherwise known as the Department of Defense bequeathed us with the Internet, barely relevant as the noun is at present. Indulging my neurotic tendencies in the blogosphere may still be a writing exercise, but most of us no longer get paid, unless we're predicting stock market crashes, unraveling diverse financial instruments. Andrew Sullivan, late of the Daily Dish, whose sole dialogue with me, before I became a nasty Richard Spencer empath, was to send me a screen shot of my Amtrak building, was a master of the web log format, briefly became the go to institutional voice, similar to how Cato darlings emerge out of policy analysis onto the documentary video, spend their currency but maintain their admirers (Niall Ferguson?), and he still failed. I never succeeded, merely lit a precursor spark of nihilist rage, keeping illegal details against real persons mainly to myself, sometimes with heavy insinuation, survived Google's threat of suspension, which reminds me, the collective voice of the playful Silicon Ewe, on whom the fate of the world depends, sent me an email about resetting AdSense, which may be interpreted as permission to use despite my mafiaoso tendencies to derive satisfaction out of being a hate crime, but I haven't yet expended three or four gigabytes trying to unravel and regain access to my 3 dollars and change. Add in Niume's suspended revenue, that makes four, and I am, pretty much, into my last cognitive quality years, while James Bennet gets to play a tort pissant against everyone's favorite Alaskan female. Not that I haven't made errors, like misspelling a lawyers name, having for pay topics fall apart, but poor, sympathetic James, who tweeted to me not to feel "guilty," made a game changing falsity. Who am I kidding? Whatever their political differences, Tim Gilmer and Charles Krauthammer are men with their respective province who broke their backs, able to emulate the memory of the ambulatory world they lost. Savants, spastics, such as I, merely conceptualize what we never were. Some of us actually can walk. Gimpy, pigeon toed, but none of us are important, and I've long blown my Inquirer capital. Twitter, thus far, allows my outages to glide, even if Niume's model illustrates what we cannot resolve: everyone can blog, but follower economics? Tenuous at best. My intellectual ally, Mark Antro, has an uphill battle, if Niume's failure to actually improve revenue generation is any indicator. Less collaboration, more accreditation, might work better, in collective venues. I am not sure, or uncertain, and I did not ventilate on Virily because they will be lucky if I post once in an eclipse. I should stop doing this altogether if I need revenue, in other words.
Struggling with my memory, I may have read portions of The Man in the High Castle. I certainly read plenty of poor Dick, spared my wrath, much like Ben Gleib, whom I may have reduced unintentionally. I was attempting to be funny, and may change my mind and bring him back, despite my lack of context for his on camera role. I can say a few things about the series: the title theme song is ingenious. Only recently recognized Ridley Scott. Some actors are known qualities, and the stark brutality comforts me. Take that anyway you like. I will move the plunger along, but not this morning. I had a grave attack, one that tells me if I have to flee the Presbyterians, I had better ratchet up. My only relatively droll news is I got the battery to behave.
I just deleted over 80 emails from Yahoo, knowing that if I put Allison's pendulous list on web only I will cut down a great deal of being overwhelmed by deadlines; my disillusionment is so pervasive, however, that literary journals are making me nauseous, regardless of quality, and playing catch up with poetry and at least one non-fiction collection little alleviates my dun colored views. I'm sick of it. Don't even bother to tell editors I am so striated by economics that supporting them is a struggle. I no longer have time to read them all. I still respect The Atlantic, if not David Frum. What he triggers I am not certain of, but was more sympathetic to Bennet's down to earth sensibility. I still respect American Scholar, and just remembered I've conveniently forgotten my assignment, which, if the powers that be leave me in peace, I can refocus this weekend. (And KDP awaits)
About a year ago, I suppose Welcome Table Press was soliciting me. Did they interpret my voice as a variation on EB White? Do I genuinely generate that much content about writing? I forgot about my assignment because I have to psyche myself up to lie my way into getting a lawyer to sue Trudy Richardson's ass back to Raleigh. I know exactly what Sexton's victim was suffering when Sexton denigrated her dignity, killing her for an ATM card. I am never going to be able to re-generate enough income to keep myself safe from a fourth, fifth, minority attack. I know I'm going to get hurt again. They smell it on you.
I already thought about what Michael's reaction might be to Susan Schneider's announcement about Williams being in the early stages of Parkinson's, and I pissed and moaned over the sink, not that I have any brief over Fox, he is likable enough and unlike the wizened Hank Stuever-- how in the name of Christ do professional critics like him earn a living?-- the humor in Michael's canceled show spoke to me; it may have been too deadpan for Michael's viewing spectrum, but it was funny, subversively so-- and Yahoo probably had this fucking piece in process while I drolly sighed over France 2 Frank Riva.
I have no desire to talk to Fox, nor identify with him, but I can imagine that Michael had wished upon Schneider slightly more tact before her damage control efforts.
Robin is dead. Michael went into a self-pitying alcoholic binge and then became a point man for motor degenerative studies, and I remind myself on a daily basis that killing my former supervisor in no way buries the scars she permanently inflicted on me, and there are not enough hours in the day to plow through Philadelphia's social paralysis toward justice. I am reconsidering that move to Texas while I consider talking to you about the subterranean obsession of every living writer: getting into The Atlantic Monthly. The one really envious divide between Robert Thomas and myself despite our rarefied civil poetic rivalry: he has had poetry accepted by The Atlantic, which, unknown to him, is a mortal wound to my ego. I think Thursday's rejection of my query on an article counts as my second personal response in twenty years. If I have to buy James Bennet a power chair that climbs its own steps, before I am dead-- writers do actually generate articles for other outlets about the impregnable defenses of this periodical toward any strategism known to man, or even Stephen Glass, for that matter.
I never obsessed over Williams in his life. Liked the work more than not, but this is not one of my pretensions. His suicide hurts. It does, and I tell myself I'm allowed to be mad.
A cloud was on the mind of men, and wailing went the weather,
Yea, a sick cloud upon the soul when we were boys together.--G.K. Chesterton
I did not read Christopher Hitchens' last review of Chesterton in the Atlantic, but I did read Bennet's editorial note on kindle about the processes involved in editing a polemicist who was literally breathing his last on a hospital mattress, and I had to wonder if in the modern sense of the word, terminal conditions have become a consequential folly, a paradox that the Menippean G.K. himself might have appreciated. Ebert also engaged in a form of self delusion. His optimism could not bargain with death any more than anguish does not hasten it, unless the anguished utilize accouterments; the will to die must have to be very great indeed, and the bargaining with the limits of our biology is nothing new. On his deathbed Henry James bestirred himself to consider Napoleon's delusions of grandeur (again, oddly not uncommon among homosexuals) and it is asserted that Proust revised his lost time to his last breath; J Edgar Hoover, I believe, died in office at a near miraculous time of history. Hollywood would have us believe that Charlton Heston revived Rex Harrison from his deathbed.
Is it necessarily a good thing that Westerners refuse to yield to the inevitable? Cripples face the constant threat of annihilation, and the more astute are circumspect about ontology, but not Caucasians with contemporary bourgeoisie sensibilities. I do not mean to suggest that people past 50 should not fight disease and attempt to remain relevant, only that eradicating death as a ritualized transition, giving way to a sterile clinical environment where our cadavers are rolled to the morgue, seems too much of a trade off to banality. This is more than the residue of religious nostalgia. Death needs to be respected as part of the natural process of a living ecosystem.
James Bennet, the methodical editor of the venerable Atlantic Monthly, invoked a historical conversation between Dick Morris and Bill Clinton on the issue of Presidential ratings to illuminate the preoccupation of the March edition, which is namely, are we watching Obama fail, and I have already answered that in the affirmative. It does not boil down to mere policy issues, like whether TARP was large enough, or his health care reform which did nothing to help me during my extenuating circumstances in his months as the President Elect, now being dismantled by the judiciary, or his I had a monster daddy book, or his audacity of hope. He was a great candidate, and then he vanished, by varying degrees, into the methodology of the executive process, and TNR asked the question early on if that was enough to govern the country.
Not from where I sit.
And this is liberalism which has lost its way. Unlike the top tier executives at Liberty, I will not have a pension, not only due to the fact that I was pilloried by them, but by the time I had stabilized myself, about a year and a half later, I lost my special transportation services, was driven to hell and back by my landlord for the sake of renovations, and my medical equipment safety net went snap crackle and pop, and I'll never recover from this, in any financial sense of the word. My heart isn't in the best shape, aside from other issues, and if my senator will not help me, then I'll break the law if necessary to hold Liberty's COO accountable; I'll suffer if I get arrested, maybe sicker, but I cannot bounce in fresh hoops to reach new heights.
This isn't just about the fact that I allowed Linda to twist my stressed psyche 180 degrees. I admit to a vulnerable culpability, and it is ironic that I am willing to use ADAPT's tactics against their members embedded within CILS when I am highly critical of their value; it is about the methodology, which has a very high failure rate, unless you are so disabled, so poor, that a coordinator marking compliancy checkmarks is an upgrade from institutional restraints.
Those who really know me know how much of a quadriplegic I am. Must the system fail me so horribly because I want the same professional and social equality as Jerry had, or John Tassoni obtained? Unlike Erik, or even Jimmi, I want to work and earn a living.
The Matrix Research Institute was my failure, but Liberty promised me support which never materialized, and I have been dealing with this CIL's crippling institutional pathology for over twenty years. It has to change.
