Beat poets who have come to Chicago and Algren says, “who’s
beating them? I don’t see anybody
beating them?
I have to respect writing as a trade. I mean as you respect shoemaking. I don’t think you can get a pair of shoes
stitched together by going into hypnosis or magic. I don’t think you paint a picture suddenly by
getting a bucket of paint and putting it on canvas and then you’ve got a
classic. So I’m not in support of this
idea of the writer who goes up – like one of them hollered out, “Do you love
Shelley? I’m going up on a high mountain
to pray to him for forgiveness.” What
got me about it, I didn’t mind him going up on a mountain and praying if that’s
what his feeling is. But why not go to a
believing Christian – come see Ernie Ford.
I mean Shelley was a furious atheist.
Shelley became a pariah from society because of his atheism. So what this kid wants – Shelley isn’t going
to listen to him. I have nothing against
a belief in God. Don’t misunderstand
me. But I think that it’s the writer’s
territory -- Norman Vincent Peale
maybe. But I don’t know what they’re
trying for outer space for because if they’re writers as they say. If people are close to God they walk the
earth. For me, people who are close to
God are like Louie Armstrong when he plays and you get a feeling from the music
well here’s a friend. And he can touch
the heart, well that’s as close as you can come. And I don’t know if you’ve got a right to
find God before you find yourself. It’s
a very big thing just to be yourself. I
think the people who are really close to God are people like Bessie Smith when
she sings… Well if that’s a rose it’s a
big, bleak, it’s as big a laboratory of human suffering in that of what Dreiser
wrote, or Baudelaire. And it strikes me
that we are a people that have such an abundance of physical luxuries and at
the same time such a lack of the emotional necessities that this recent
invasion of these kids asking for forgiveness makes me feel that we are
probably the first people that have become so affluent that we can support infantilism. I mean it’s a trade pursued by professional
infants… I think it can be misleading for people who are seriously interested
in writing. It feeds people who like to
be smug and feel that the writer has no relationship to people. That’s what these kids do. They aren’t in any sense rebels against
anything. I think it’s a very servile
thing that they do. I mean they’ve
pulled down sweaters and blue denim over the grey flannels but they’re executive
type kids who’ve found a way to please the people. They’re booked as artists and writers but
it’s a perversion of what the writer really is.
Cause the writer usually is a pretty dull guy, or the artist. He doesn’t usually stand in front of a
mirror. I mean, he’s interested in man
and these kids are so far away from the human race and that’s the only place
that anything gets written… So I’m not mad about them coming. I hope they had a good time but in the long run
I don’t think they will be missed.
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