(no subject)

[proximoception]

Blurbs I've found memorable:

for Elizabeth Bishop's Complete Poems, 1927-1979:

"Of all the splendid and curious works belonging to my time, these are the poems that I love best and tire of least. And there will be no others."--James Merrill (best)

for The Voice That Is Great Within Us: American Poetry of the Twentieth Century [1970]:

"Not only the best on its period, I think, but is even perhaps safe from the competition of rivals."--Robert Lowell (worst)

for A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man:

"A truly extraordinary novel."--Ewan Mcgregor (Mcgreg'riest)

There's a godawful one by Norman Mailer that's eluding me, for some counterculturish book, maybe by Burroughs or Pynchon.

Comments

[grashupfer.livejournal.com]

That Robert Lowell blurb is, I think, sort of qualified perhaps.

Dylan Thomas on Flann O'Brien's At Swim Two Birds:

"This is just the book to give your sister if she's a loud, dirty, boozy girl!" [Exclamation point is DT's.]

How about this for over-blown:

New York Magazine on Infinite Jest:

"Spectacularly good... It's as though Paul Bunyan had joined the NFL or Wittgenstein had gone on Jeopardy. Infinite Jest is that colossally disruptive... Next year's book awards have been decided."

[proximoception.livejournal.com]

Other problems I have with Lowell's:

1. Can an anthology be said to be "on" a period, as though it were an addition rather than a selection?
2. Can an anthology of 20th century poetry stopping at 1970 ever be said to be safe from competition?
3. Who competes with you if rivals don't? What uncompetitive quality of your rivals can you be safe from?
4. Isn't the very act of trying to compete in fact competition (as compared to the word "competitive," which has taken on "competing well" as one meaning)? Did Lowell really think no one would even try?
5. Isn't everything perhaps safe from the competition of rivals if anything is?
5a. "Even" sets up the extremity of a consequence or comparison, "perhaps" identifies a proposition's being possible at a low, middling or unknown level of likelihood. If you put them together Jesus' wounds reopen.
6. Why is this a sentence fragment?
7. Could anything be phrased more weakly?
8. Could anything be phrased more effetely?

All in all, I'm very impressed. It requires a kind of negative genius to say something like that.

Props to O'Brien for letting that be printed on his book. And to Wallace, for letting on something whose irony he must even perhaps have suspected he'd be feeling acutely "next year".