JOLLY DAYS

Critics

A good critic can change the climate. They can, at their best, offer enthusiasm and insight. You don't see much of that sort of criticism.

Michiko Kakutani has been all too comfy in her aerie at the NYT. She is worthy of mention here because the Times is so influential and she could do so much good — if she got it.

Helen Vendler, the great poetry critic, who now calls herself “out of fashion”, is just about the opposite in all the ways that matter. You may agree or disagree with individual ideas, but Vendler has a fiber that is admirable. Years ago feminists attacked Vendler — she was supposed to like certain poetry because it was written by a woman. Vendler courageously bristled, she wanted the writing to be the benchmark. She could have just brayed “me-too!” and had a contingent of shrill ideologues backing her as allies — her own Praetorian guard — but she honored what she did more.

A new guy on the block is my vote for a replacement for Kakutani. This short piece about Kerouac is a gem - conversational and filled with insight.

From Kirn's review of a new book of Kerouac's journals:

Without a trace of the self-irony endemic among today's apprentice writers, he obsesses on the fallen state of society and sings of his own misunderstood nobility. ''There's something really wrong about being worldly,'' he observes, writing with the stilted virginal earnestness of a Miss America contestant. Taking on a more Shakespearean tone, he blasts conventional middle-class types for wasting their lives in ''blind acquisitive days.''

About the standard version:

The traditional rap against Kerouac — that he was a sort of half-baked dopehead primitivist who prized sensation over sense — crumbles on a reading of his journals. For every entry concerning a wild night out with his colorful cohort of insomniac poets, opiated philosophers and autodidact ex-cons, there's a meditation on Mark Twain or a list of favorite Renaissance poets. There's no way around it: for all his hobo posing, Kerouac began as a New England highbrow.

“…half-baked dopehead primitivist who prized sensation over sense ” — that's great — a coiled summation of the conventional view of Kerouac.