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Aquarian
Weekly 10/17/07
REALITY CHECK
READERS RESPONSES
Mr.
Campion,
Your
take on the University of Florida journalism student, Andrew Meyer
as an Ali G. or Tom Green wannabe was not only apt, but rarely
reported anywhere else! And if it was, it was knocked off as a
subtext to the whole "Don't tase me, man!" over-hyped nonsense
that follows all these news-whores. What is news anymore? You
asked that question and in many ways answered it (not your forte,
usually) by pointing out that everything may be in some warped
sense "news", but is it "newsworthy" in the sense that EVERYONE
has to know about it?
And
don't even get me started on celebrity updates and TMZ and the
constant harassment of these people by paparazzi and the inundation
of weekly grocery store tabloids.
I
think your piece was not only timely, but needed to be said in
the "James Campion" format, in the sense that it is outside the
mainstream but poking fun at it, but also unmasking was is surely
the blurred line between hard-news, news we need to know, and
total exploitation schlock by bored amateurs and cheap showman.
Thanks
for shedding some light on a subject that NEVER polices itself
or its import to society - THE MEDIA.
Stacey
Collins
The
advent of 24-7 tv opened the door to the less talented freak contingent
among us that had, until that point, resigned itself to the shadows
of human existence, or what we now know as local access cable
television. (MASS MEDIA DEMOCRACY
Issue: 9/26) Nowadays, not even a bowel movement goes by un-reported,
famous, infamous, or un-famous (I know that's not a word, but
I like it and it completes the famous trifecta). Some say that's
bad, like expansion was to football and baseball. I say let's
go headlong into that train wreck and see what's on the other
side. No point in putting it all back in Pandora's box, unless
you're talking about Pandora the exotic dancer from that dive
strip joint on the edge of any town USA who likes to stick large
objects up her twat to the amusement and/or sexual fascination
of the depraved, of which I count myself one.
Ken
Eustace
Wait
a minute. Harry Potter is dead?
Doc
James
Campion,
Mass Media Democracy is one of your best.
My
hat to you sir!
Mack
in South Carolina
Nicely
put. You forgot BushCorp, and its predecessor, Reagan Enterprises.
Broadcast
video has had this effect on the human race since it began. Now
we can easily send copies to broadcasters; in the past, we had
to give up the source, e.g., the Zapruder film.
Brad
Morrison
Great
article/interview! It looks like you have uncovered some new info.
(ON THE ROAD
AT 50 Part I & II Issues: 10/3 - 10/10)
I
really enjoyed reading it although I am surprised it has taken
people so long to wake up to the fact that On the Road
is not what it is touted as being. Clearly watered down, but also,
as Leland points out, not much of a novel having dispensed with
most of the things we think of as making a book a novel. It's
not even, truth be told, much a genre-buster ... Henry Miller
had already been writing pretty much the same sort of novels decades
earlier. Miller, in fact, was one of his idols, and he telephoned
Henry from Big Sur at one point.
But
we Americans love our icons and we will make them into what we
want them to be no matter what they actually are.
The
log-roll manuscript was, as far as I understand, the 3rd version
of the novel. Jack was utterly full of shit with his so-called
spontaneous prose ... that is to say, like every writer other
than Andre Breton and a couple of other Surrealists, he revised.
Very little of the image Jack projected had all that much basis
in fact.
Personally,
I think, with the exception of a few stellar moments (the mothswarm
of heaven being one of them) On the Road, is not a very
good piece of work at all. In fact, one day I will make the argument
it-and most of his other books--are not even novels. They are
simply journals dressed up as novels.
But
that is my own ax, and it doesn't diminish my enjoyment of Jack's
work. Desolation Angels is head and shoulders above On
The Road, but nothing-nothing touches the writing in the first
third or so of Visions of Cody. Unfortunately, he ruined
the book with a transcript of a boring conversation that lasts
about 150 pages. This is a good example of failing to make his
journals, notes, recordings into novels-he just transcribed material
he'd recorded. Talk about the lazy man's way out ... and yet the
writing prior to that is just fucking stunning.
Vincent
Czyz
I
also read John Leland's Why Kerouac Matters and thought
it quite revelatory, although a tad gushing. I was never a huge
Kerouac fan, but I always understood On The Road's significance
to the American literary landscape. This is why I thoroughly enjoyed
the quotes you culled from him and getting to the bottom of his
motivation for uncovering the book again from a totally new perspective.
It is amazing how much of the artistic motivation and metaphor
is lost on even the most ardent fans of the work, from music to
film, etc.
I
think it is quite obvious from your article and the Leland book,
and what I have been able to read regarding the new "Scroll" version
of Road, that Kerouac was on a personal journey of faith and maturity
and was angered somewhat by the total ignoring of his tenets not
only unfurled in his most famous novel, but in many others. He
was extremely consistent in this avenue until his death, and again,
I am not a big fan, but know of his work enough to really bridge
the gap between what is accepted as fact about the author and
Road and what lies beneath.
Fine
work.
Stephen
Sarpola
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