shade under the jaws of a dog with a bird in its mouth trotting along to the master's voice

• I drove Arlington from Old Georgetown to Bradley yesterday 
• Bethesda boarded-up, Apple store, Urban Something, gourmet wine shop
• the CVS at corner of Arlington and Bradley not only boarded-up but had minimum wage Security Officers in (unintentional irony) yellow vests guarding its plywood doors
• WTOP (with its new sound identity, so jarring I forget already the old sound identity) broke news of hundreds of rampaging high school kids Black Lives Mattering traffic at Bradley and Wisconsin two days ago at four in the afternoon
• The carnage and destruction wrought
• I thought about taking a photo of the cowardice of property and its landlords but fuck that, here's Fleabus yesterday

• Speaking of cowards, our pantspissing emperor
• Motherfucking cops
• State monopoly on violence
• Motherfucking cops 
• Our future: restored neoliberalism or hybrid neofascism
• Higher Education in the Age of Coronavirus
• Mid-June, plague-wise, end of June
• Tom Cotton yesterday auditioned for Emperor
• *this* aspiring sociopaths' psychopath I am telling you three times YES AGAIN! *This* motherfucker
• Quo Vadis?
• Pelosi tried to out Bible the Pants-pissing King because its always decorum, never policy
• Race trick, virus trick, science trick, whoosh
• Counterinsurgency: dousing the flames of Minneapolis 
• American virus
• Six principles of Kingian nonviolence
• White people to the front! 
• On Ammons' great Garbage (h/t Charley): For American poetry, Garbage has removed the nature poem from whatever the category “nature poem” inaugurates in the imaginations of readers. Unlike the America that Walt Whitman heard singing, unlike the voices Frost heard arguing behind a door, Ammons returns us to our community of waste-makers. For the nearly thirty years of poetry that have followed the publication of Garbage, Ammons translated that American landscape into a symbology applied by us, a community of trash lovers, everyone who built the temple of garbage as a gesture towards posterity. Ammons writes in the last section: “celestial // garbage is so far the highest evidence of our / existence here,” and again with his particularly discomfiting wit, he points to the making of his poem as a mechanical artifact; Garbage, of course, is evidence that Ammons was here, and my reading his poem is hopeful evidence that I am here too.
• It occurs to me I haven't read in a couple of year, I can see it on my shelf if my office
• HEY! Mr Alarum has a new album!
• The obvious XTC song for this post

EACH DAY UNEXPECTED SALVATION

Anne Carson

having proceeded by the logic of your personal vacuum you will perceive your continued lightlessness as an excuse to go on

At approximately the time motherfucking pigs dispersed peaceful protesters from 16th and H so Diapered King could cosplay as a Christian, Earthgirl and I hiked past Hidden Pond at Rachel Carson

• I live in a democracy of three and am outvoted more than not so I wasn't Downtown and, until I win a daily vote (I anticipate losing again today) I won't go - they are fearful I'll lose an eye to a rubber bullet, sure, have my skull cracked by uniformed crackers with immunity for cracker crimes, sure, but they are deeply frightened I'll catch plague and, in the case of one, will give it to her before it manifests itself in me. I feel guilty, yes, but not enough to create discord in my peaceful coalition (beyond damage to my own self-regard at not participating)
• Today is Maryland's primary. I received my paper ballot two weeks ago, it went into the three-day mail isolation MOMs paper grocery bag the day I received it and I recycled that bag without reviewing its contents a week ago yesterday. I could mask-up and blue nitrile glove my hands and vote at the Gaithersburg Community Center but fuck that, and not from fear of plague
• Hey, beaver in Hawlings River last night at Rachel Carson

• American exceptionalism, or: fuck the police (also too) (also too) (also too)
• Reminder, friends and beloveds who are going in DC and other cities, DO NOT TAKE YOUR CELL PHONE! (he self-incriminatedly types into his bloogle self-incriminating platform). If you must have a phone put on your mask and gloves and buy a burner
• Also too: how to cop-proof your phone (though if you can take a burner please take a burner) 
• Pigs
• Pigs heart crackers 
• Hypocrisy and human rights
• Biden's Choice
• American autocracy and the corruption of language
• The Minneapolis putsch: America is still a racist country, but America is no more racist today than it was when Barack Obama was president. A lot of American police are brutal, but no more brutal than when Obama was president. America didn’t radically change the day Donald Trump was sworn into office. All that has changed is the official narrative. And it will change back as soon as Trump is gone and the ruling classes have no further use for it.
• Where did policing go wrong? 
• Over/under number of days before internet blackout?
• Let the motherfucker burn
• No one is coming to save us
• He *is* a dictator, you can decide by what percentage the Democratic Party is complicit v cowardly v craven
• The privatization of morality: the psychologically vulnerable will always choose catharsis over the long, hard road to win power, and so the private will always be an effective means of protecting an increasingly decrepit public realm.
• Two days late, Maggie's weekly links
• Two days late, { feuilleton }'s weekly links
• Reminder, friends and beloveds who are going in DC and other cities, if you take photos of the protests, from your cell, from the burner, from a camera that connects to wifi, upload them to your PC and take screenshots of the photo (he self-incriminatedly types into his bloogle self-incriminating platform).  
• Bojovat Za Novy Zivot
• Bernadette Mayer
• Quietude and the power of listening

LOGIC

Alice Notley
 

It was a poem

men took because it said ovary

 

didn’t take my

political poems

they took the one that said ovary

 

Are you sure it was because it 

           said ovary?

 

Yes, for them that’s logical.

 

---------------------------

 

Destroy another

          city 

What 

else 

is war for? So

 

you’ll go down

each of you does. dies in

                           whirlwind

 

each of you who does, dies 

          paying

for the pain you experience

         Just that 

and nothing is established

 

Because I am a woman

Cutting as many cords 

as tie you to me. this isn’t

           anarchy 

it isn’t anything you

           could name

 

You’re still here 

without ties?

 

because they were logical.

 

---------------------------

 

Dance little asshole dance

oh he gets elected, like a Calvinist 

He says, I have these guts 

Men, I have these guts.

 

---------------------------

 

Having dedicated whole 

regions to the destruction

          you inspire, the 

logic will be to go on doing it 

doing it. Having proceeded by

 

the logic

         of your per-

sonal vacuum 

you will perceive your continued

          lightlessness 

as an excuse to go on. having 

gone on 

as you have. And so one continues.

 

-----------------------------

 

Lead the boy out of

          the building on fire

his head twisted 

          upwards

all fucked

 

What else is there to

       know if 

one has gotten 

twisted up 

all fucked

 

he is a screaming fire

 

-----------------------------

 

In the explanations 

of our lives’ experience

 

they’ve left out this wild moment

the long mirror on the right-hand wall of the

corridor suddenly shattered

I can’t see myself anymore.

 

-----------------------------

 

I repeat that I am not frightened

          and why not 

I don’t know 

what my reactions 

are supposed to be.

 

-----------------------------

 

        “Please tell me something 

with which I’m familiar.”

 

isn’t there another part of now

I'm So Fucked Self-Indulgent to Think You'd Like This Song

                     

1. ▲'s  most posted video on this blog by a factor of X. ▲'s the BLCKDGRD Bleggalgazing Anthem, has been since Day One, people can vouch, today High BLCKDGRD Bleggalgazing Day
2. Chris Elliott is 60 today
3. New for 2020, previous years' news removed
4. New for 2020: since last year's Bleggalgazing Day two weirdest hardest life episodes I've witnessed, the first core frightening, the second core sad, beloveds can vouch
5. I never posted about here but (did hint shit happening) did type into a blooger draft what I wrote in tablet and then edited it to as good as my patience could take then deleted it without copy/pasting to even notepad
6. beloveds can't vouch for that
7. now the months of plague and advent of crackergeddon, I chirp neverendingly
8. It seems my motherfucking free blogging platform is my processing machine for what I won't post here, fine metaphors abound
9. The coming year will make this last year seem ordinary what I do type and post here, just wait until October (I'm told 
10. get a non-US based VPN and duck duck go my ass to tor and for fuck's sake get off your motherfucking free blooging platform) I'm (glad I can login and my lap
11. top and wifi 
12. working) hoping for nothing in my or my beloveds life I type into a draft here then kill
13. New for 2020:

• I got Dr Sevrin ears
• New for 2020 because my eyes see it better, Georgia font 
• Old for 2020, I'm not surprised that Serendipity aligned peak clusterfuck (so far, wait until October) with the holiest day in my self-indulgent calendar 
• New for 2020: because it is a Sunday, because it is the blogdays of Summer, because the country is on fire, this will be the least read of Bleggalgazing Day posts, happy and appropriate fine metaphors abound 
• New for 2020, I changed my watercolor palette to my favorite red, yellow, and blue, and yes
• Yes, I'll keep the image on blogroll, but Egoslavia/Egoslavian now retired, I'm so fucked self-indulgent to think you'll like this song

• The three other BLCKDGRD Bleggalgazing Anthems ▼ Reminder: The Archers of Loaf is this shitty blog's official Theme Song. 

                

1. My free motherfucking blogging platform (tells me In late June, the new Blogger interface will become the default for all users. The legacy interface will still be optionally available. We recommend trying the new interface by clicking “Try the New Blogger” in the left-hand navigation. Please file any critical issues encountered) ate one of my blogrolls, the one previously below Dr Sevrin, I don't remember who was on it, if one was you, please please please let me know
2. First thought Fuck Bloogoogle, I have access to a wordpress dashboard, for $42 a year I could have a 47th blog and new domain name! (I shit you not!) blckdgrd.dog

1. Beloveds, kill me if ever

Meanwhile a Riot Began Over a Grilled Cheese Sandwich

I'm trying to write a post now was gonna quickbark a crackerscreed, I *love* a good crackerscreed, but you've your own to knead (or are out of yeast) (or are kneed in the neck) and don't need mine but click links, yo

• UPDATE! how cops kill with impunity
• The riots, and a reminder: If you’re protesting in Minneapolis, remember to wear a mask so you don’t get killed afterwards like Ferguson protestors AND don’t carry your goddamn phone. Don’t take pics of each other either, nor wear real distinctive clothes. It’s AFTER that matters. The cops will hunt you down if they can figure out who you are.
• UPDATE! Follow-up on above
• UPDATE! It's political violence, not criminal
• White backlash as societal control
• Looters
• Reminder: Baltimore 2015
• At some point crackergeddon was gonna happen, was easy to guess it'd be a shitlord campaign strategy to reelect Trump
• UPDATE! The Civil Wars of 2020 have begun
• The blue plague and black death
• Imagine having to ask with genuine unawareness if capitalism is racist
• Meditations on whiteness
• Killed by a cop, 1968
• UPDATE! Fear cops, not protesters 

 

• UPDATE! Me, 2020 May 29
• Capitalism: same as it always was
• UPDATE! Expect heads of police unions to denounce busdriver unions
• More random plague thoughts
• Introducing Ina Boyd
• The Invention of Streetlights 
• UPDATE! State monopoly on violence
• Bronwyn Wallace
• Kim Gordon, quarantined
• UPDATE! on Kidney Bingos, one of the five most posted songs on this shitty blog
• As good as anything
• Why cats hate Mahler symphonies
• Requiem for a Nest

  
SHITTY KITTY

Don Mee Choi

Here comes Shitty Kitty en route to the Gulf of Tonkin or en route to a race riot? That is the question and meanwhile discipline is the keystone and meanwhile did you see on TV helicopters being ditched into the sea? That is also my film and meanwhile all refugees must be treated as suspects. Looking for your husband? Looking for your son? That is the question and meanwhile she was the mother of the boy or that is what the translator said or Shitty Kitty or shall we adhere to traditional concepts of military discipline tempered with humanitarianism? That is the question and meanwhile South Korea exports military labor left over from the war. That is also my history or is that your history? That is the question and meanwhile

                   

          (CHORUS: Dictator Park Chung Hee and his soldiers in Ray-Bans)
      

          How much?

          $7.5 million=per division

          or Binh Tai massacre=$7.5 million

          or Binh Hoa massacre=$7.5 million

          or Dien Nien—Phuoc Binh massacre=$7.5 million

          or Go Dai massacre=$7.5 milion

          or Ha My massacre=$7.5 million

          or Phong Nhi & Phong Nhat massacre=$15 million

          or Tay Vinh massacre=$7.5 million

          or Vinh Xuan massacre=$7.5 million

          or Mighty History?

That is the question and meanwhile a riot began over a grilled cheese sandwich at

Subic Bay. Discrimination or perception? That is the question and meanwhile the

sailor refused to make a statement or translate? That is the question and meanwhile

twenty-six men all black were charged with assault and rioting and meanwhile did

you translate? That is my question and meanwhile lard or Crisco? Aye, aye, sir! 
        

          (Anti-CHORUS: kittens in frilly white bonnets, bibs, and mittens)
           

                                                       K I T T Y  S O N G

                                                     I, aye-aye-sir!

                          I, crazy-daisy-sir!

                         I, export-quality-sir!

                            I, grill-grill-sir!

                          I, meow-meow sir!

                            I, kitty-litter-sir!

The Crypt of Meat I Am

I wrote an opening block re: shitlords competing to be Shitlordiest in the global game of Shitlord all want Trump reelected re: human capital stock and dangerous vector class, you and me, wrung now like a dish towel for the last few drops of profit, this paragraph and the seven deleted started in head while I stared at this power line break on the Seneca Ridge Trail in Moco (though I hadn't heard yet the new branding, human capital stock, dangerous vector class), other dangerous vectors and us hurrying into the tick-filled briars (risking lyme to avoid Covid) to avoid each others' exhaled droplets of plague on the trails, all but a few nodding thanks, maintaining our human if not our capital stock

• the rest now >> deleted bleggalgaze<< (four days away from High Bleggalgazing Day, which will (perhaps half-assedly*) or won't happen....)
• Today in Rules of Crackerstan
• Bleggalgaze (not mine)
• Left gatekeepers part one
• Left gatekeepers part two
• American violence in a time of plague
• Vulture capitalism
• Lesserevilism
• The unthought unknown
• What about the rotten culture of the rich?
• Moral problems of the masked era 
• The work of feelings in public schools
• A novel way to think about novels
• H1N1
• Siouxsie is 63 today 

• John Barth is 90 today, (*apologies for font size below, I can't fix, can't find where I found it), from John Barth's Giles Goat-Boy:

  
Publisher's Disclaimer

The reader must begin this book with an act of faith and end it with an act of charity. We ask him to believe in the sincerity and authenticity of this preface, affirming in return his prerogative to be skeptical of all that follows it.

The manuscript submitted to us some seasons ago under the initials R.N.S., and by us retitled Giles Goat-Boy, is enough removed from the ordinary and so potentially actionable as to make inadequate the publisher's conventional disclaimer: "Any resemblance to persons living or dead," etc. The disclaimer's very relevance-which we firmly assert-was called into question even prior to the manuscript's receipt, as has been everything about the book since, from its content to its authorship. The professor and quondam novelist whose name appears on the title-page (our title-page, not the one following his prefatory letter) denies that the work is his, but "suspects" it to be fictional-a suspicion that two pages should confirm for the average reader. His own candidate for its authorship is one Stoker Giles or Giles Stoker- whereabouts unknown, existence questionable-who appears to have claimed in turn 1 ) that he too was but a dedicated editor, the text proper having been written by a certain automatic computer, and 2) that excepting a few "necessary basic artifices" * the book is neither fable nor fictionalized history, but literal truth. And the computer, the mighty "WESCAC"-does it not too disclaim authorship? It does.

* The computer's assumption of a first-person narrative viewpoint, we are told. is one such "basic artifice." The reader will add others, perhaps challenging their "necessity" as well.

Frankly, what we hope and risk in publishing Giles Goat-Boy is that the question of its authorship will be a literary and not a legal one. If so, judging from the fuss in our office these past months, the book affords more pregnant matter for controversy. Merely deciding to bring it out has already cost us two valued colleagues, for quite different reasons. Five of us were party to the quarrel, which grew so heated, lengthy, and complex that finally, as editor-in-chief, I was obliged to put an end to it. No further discussion of the book was permitted. Inasmuch as the final responsibility was mine I requested from each of my four associates a brief written statement on the questions: should we publish the manuscript entitled Giles Goat-Boy? If so, why, and if not, why not?

Their replies anticipate, I think, what will be the range of public and critical reaction to the book. I reprint them here (with signatures and certain personal references omitted) not in the hope of forestalling that reaction, but to show that our decision was made neither hastily nor in bad faith:


Editor A

I am quite sensible that fashions have changed since my own tenure as editor-in-chief: marriage has lost its sanctity, sex its mystery; every filthiness is published in the name of Honesty, all respect for law and discipline is gone-to say nothing of propriety and seemliness, whose very names are sneered at. Cynicism is general: the student who eschews cheating like the young girl who eschews promiscuity or the editor who values principle over profit, is looked upon as a freak. Whatever is old-a man, a building, a moral principle is regarded not as established but as obsolete; to be preserved if at all for its antiquarian interest, but got rid of without compunction the moment it becomes in the way. In the way, that is, of self-interest and the tireless sensualism of youth. Indeed fashions change, have always changed, and there's the point. Granted that every generation must write its own "New Syllabus" or re-interpret the Old one, rebel against its teachers, challenge all the rules-all the more important then that the Rules stand fast! Morality like motion has its laws; each generation takes its impetus from the resistance of its forebears, like runners striving against the ground, and those who would abolish the old Answers (I don't speak of restating or modifying them, which is eternally necessary) would turn the track underfoot to quickmire, with fatal consequences for the race of men.

This Revised New Syllabus is nothing new, but as old as sickness of the spirit- not a revision of anything, but a repudiation of all that's wholesome and redeeming. It is for us to repudiate it. Publishing remains despite all a moral enterprise, and is recognized as such in its heart of hearts even by the public that clamors for gratification of its appetites. The sensational, the vulgar, the lurid, the cheap the hackneyed-there is an innocence about these things in their conventional and mass-produced forms, even a kind of virtue; the novelists everyone purchases do no harm as they line our pockets and their own. They are not difficult; they do not astonish; they rebel along traditional lines shock us in customary ways, and teach us what we know already. Their concerns are modest, their literary voice and manner are seldom wild, only their private lives, which make good copy: in straightforward prose they reveal to us how it is to belong to certain racial or cultural minorities; how it is to be an adolescent, a narcotic, an adulterer a vagabond- especially how it is to be the Author, with his particular little history of self-loathings and aggrandizements. Such novels, I conceive, are the printed dreams of that tiny fraction of our populace which buys and reads books, and the true dwelling-places of art and profit. In serving the dream we prevent the deed: vicariously the reader debauches, and is vicariously redeemed; his understanding is not taxed; his natural depravity may be tickled but is not finally approved of; no assaults have been made upon his imagination, nor any great burden put on his attention. He is the same fellow as before, only a little better read, and in most cases the healthier for his small flirtation with the Pit. He may even remark, "Life is absurd, don't you think? There's no answer to anything"; whereafter, his luncheon-companion agreeing absolutely, they have another cocktail and return to more agreeable matters.

Consider the difference with R.N.S.: here fornication, adultery, even rape, yea murder itself (not to mention self-deception, treason, blasphemy, whoredom, duplicity, and willful cruelty to others) are not only represented for our delectation but at times approved of and even recommended! On aesthetic grounds too (though they pale before the moral), the work is objectionable: the rhetoric is extreme, the conceit and action wildly implausible, the interpretation of history shallow and patently biased, the narrative full of discrepancies and badly paced, at times tedious, more often excessive; the form, like the style, is unorthodox, unsymmetrical, inconsistent. The characters, especially the hero, are unrealistic. There never was a Goat-boy! There never will be!

In sum it is a bad book, a wicked book, and ought not-I will say must not-be published. No computer produced it, but the broodings of an ineffectual megalomane: a crank at best, very possibly a psychopath. As the elder, if no longer the ranking, member of this editorial group I urge that we take this opportunity to restore a part of the moral prestige that was ours when our organization was more dedicated and harmonious, if less wealthy; to reverse our lamentable recent policy of publishing the esoteric, the bizarre, the extravagant, the downright vicious. I urge not only that the manuscript in question be rejected forthwith, but also that the "Author's" superiors, his Dean and Department Chairman, be advised what they are exposing undergraduate minds to. Would the present editor-in-chief, I wonder, permit his own daughter to be taught by such a man? Then in the name of what decent principle ought we to make his scribbling available to all our sons and daughters?


Editor B

I vote to publish the Revised New Syllabus and agree with the Editor-in-chief that Giles Goat-Boy is a more marketable title for it. We all know what [A's] objections to the manuscript are; we also know why he's not editor-in-chief any more, after his rejection of __* on similar "moral" grounds.

* Not to injure unnecessarily the reputation of that splendid (and presently retired) old gentleman here called A, let it be said merely that his distinguished editorial career never regained its earlier brilliance after the day some years ago when, in a decision as hotly contested as the present one, he overrode the opinions of myself and several other of his protegé's to reject the novel here cited by B which subsequently made the fortune of our largest competitor. No further identification of the book is needed than that it concerns the adventures, sexual and otherwise, of a handsome, great-spirited young man struggling against all odds and temptations to fulfill what he takes to be his destiny- that the plot was admittedly not original with the now-famous author; and that the book bids fair to remain a best seller forever.

What I must add, at the risk of "impropriety," is that in addition to his predictable bias against anything more daring than Gay Dashleigh's Prep-School Days, he may have a private antipathy for this particular manuscript: his own daughter, I happen to know, "ran off" from college with a bearded young poetry-student who subsequently abandoned her, pregnant, in order to devote himself to sheep-farming and the composition of long pastoral romances in free verse, mainly dealing with his great love for her. Her father never forgave her; neither has he, it seems, forgiven bearded heterosexuality or things bucolic, and it is a mark of his indiscrimination that he makes a goat-boy suffer for a sheep-boy's sins. Much as I respect your request that these statements remain impersonal, and hesitate as a new employee to criticize my colleagues in addition to disagreeing with them, I must argue that the "personal" and "professional" elements are so bound together in this case (indeed, are they ever separable in literary judgments?), that to take a stand for or against Giles Goat-Boy is to do likewise on the question whether this organization will prosper in literary judgments?), that to take a stand for or against Giles Goat-Boy is to do likewise on the question whether this organization will prosper in harmonious diversity or languish in acrimonious dissension. In choosing to publish or reject a manuscript, one oughtn't to bear the burden of choosing professional friends and enemies as well. Where such has become the case, the new man's only choice is to follow his best judgment, laying his future resolutely on the line; and I respectfully suggest that the responsible administrator's best hope for curing the situation is to turn any threatening ultimatums (like A's) into opportunities for revitalizing and reharmonizing the staff.

The fact is, I happen to agree-I think we all do-that Giles Goat-Boy is tough sledding in places, artistically uneven, and offensive (we'll call it challenging, of course) to certain literary and moral conventions. Personally I am no great fan of the "Author's"; like [Editor C, whose opinion follows] I found his early work lively but a bit naïve and his last novel wild and excessive in every respect. I frankly don't know quite what to make of this one. Where other writers seek fidelity to the facts of modern experience and expose to us the emptiness of our lives, he declares it his aim purely to astonish; where others strive for truth, he admits his affinity for lies, the more enormous the better. His fellows quite properly seek recognition and wide readership; he rejoices (so he says) that he has but a dozen readers, inasmuch as a thirteenth might betray him. So far from becoming discouraged by the repeated failure of his novels to make a profit, he confesses his surprise that no one has tarred and feathered him. Apparently sustained by the fact that anyone at all has swallowed his recentest whopper, he sets about to hatch another, clucking tongue at the compass and bedazzlement of those fabrications. Plot, for the young novelists we applaud, is a naughty word, as it was for their fathers--story to them means invention, invention artifice, artifice dishonesty. As for style, it is everywhere agreed that the best language is that which disappears in the telling, so that nothing stands between the reader and the matter of the book. But this author has maintained (in obscure places, understandably) that language is the matter of his books, as much as anything else and for that reason ought to be "splendrously musicked out"; he turns his back on what is the case, rejects the familiar for the amazing, embraces artifice and extravagance; washing his hands of the search for Truth, he calls himself "a monger after beauty," or "doorman of the Muses' Fancy-house." In sum, he is in a class by himself and not of his time; whether a cut above or a cut below, three decades ahead or three centuries behind, his twelve readers must decide for themselves.

My own net sentiment comes to this: the author in question has, I'm told, a small but slowly growing audience, more loyal than discerning or influential, of the sort one needs no expensive promotion to reach, as they have their own ways of spreading the word around: penniless literature students, professors in second-rate colleges, and a couple of far-out critics. Giles Goat-Boy isn't likely to make anybody rich, but if we can saturate this little group it should at least pay its own way, and may even redeem our losses on the man's other books. One day those penniless students may be pennied enough- those professors may rise to more influential positions; the far-out critics may turn out to have been prophets . . . Alternatively, the author's luck may change (rather, our luck, as he seems not to care one way or the other): by pure accident his next book might be popular, stranger things have happened. Meanwhile we may write off our losses to that tax-deductible sort of prestige associated with the better publishing houses; the thing to do is keep the advance and advertising expenses as low as possible while holding him under contract for the future, in the meantime exploiting whatever ornamental or write-off value he may have.


Editor C

I vote against publishing the book called The Revised New Syllabus, not for reasons of morality, law, or politics, but simply on aesthetic and commercial grounds. The thing won't turn us a profit, and I see no ethical or "prestigial" justification for losing a nickel on it. Publishing may be a moral enterprise, as [A] likes to claim, but first of all it's just an enterprise, and I for one think it's as unprofessional to publish a book for moral reasons (which is what young [B's] enthusiasms amount to) as to reject one for moral reasons. [A] quite obviously has personal motives for rejecting the book; I submit that [B] has motives equally personal, if more sympathetic, for pushing its acceptance. He's new to our profession, and knows very well that discovering fresh talent is a road to success second only to pirating established talents from the competition. He has a young man's admirable compassion for lost causes, a young scholar's sympathy for minor talents, and a young intellectual's love of the heterodox, the esoteric, the obscure. Moreover he's a writer of fiction himself and no doubt feels a certain kinship with others whose talents have brought them as yet no wealth or fame. Finally, it's no reflection on his basic integrity that on the first manuscript he's been asked his opinion of, he might be less than eager to oppose the known judgment of the man who hired him; but that circumstance probably oughtn't to be discounted-especially since his vote to publish is a "net sentiment" by his own acknowledging, arrived at over numerous and grave reservations.

I think I may say that my own position is relatively objective. I agree that there are inferior books which one does right to lose a bit of money on in order not to lose a superior author, and there are superior books (very rare!) which one publishes, regardless of their commercial value, merely to have been their publisher. But the book in question I take to be neither: it's a poor-risk work by a poor-risk author. It wants subtlety and expertise: the story is not so much "astonishing" as preposterous, the action absurd. The hero is a physical, aesthetic, and moral monstrosity; the other characters are drawn with small regard for realism and at times lack even the consistency of stereotypes the dialogue is generally unnatural and wanting in variety from speaker to speaker-everyone sounds like the author! The prose style-that unmodern, euphuistic, half-metrical bombast-is admittedly contagious (witness [A's] and [B's] lapses into it), even more so is syphilis. The theme is obscure, probably blasphemous- the wit is impolite, perhaps even suggestive of unwholesome preoccupations; the psychology-but there is no psychology in it. The author clearly is ignorant of things and people as they really are: Consider his disregard for the reader! Granted that long novels are selling well lately, one surely understands that mere bulk is not what sells them; and when their mass consists of interminable exposition, lecture, and harangue (how gratified I was to see that windy old lunatic Max Spielman put to death!), it is the very antidote to profit. Indeed, I can't imagine to whom a work like R.N.S. might appeal, unless to those happily rare, more or less disturbed, and never affluent intelligences-remote, cranky, ineffectual-from whom it is known the author receives his only fan-mail.

What I suggest as our best course, then, is not to "protect our investment" by publishing this Revised New Syllabus (and the one after that, and the one after that), but to cut our losses by not throwing good money after bad. My own "net sentiment" is a considered rejection not only of this manuscript but of its author. He has yet to earn us a sou; his very energy (let us say, inexorableness), divorced as it is from public appeal, is a liability to us, like the energy of crabgrass or cancer. Despite some praise from questionable critics and a tenuous repute among (spiritually) bearded undergraduates-of the sort more likely to steal than to purchase their reading matter-he remains unknown to most influential reviewers, not to mention the generality of book-buyers. In the remote event that he becomes a "great writer," or even turns out to have been one all along, we still hold the copyright on those other losers of his, and can always reissue them. But no, the thing is as impossible as the plot of this book! He himself declares that nothing gets better, everything gets worse: he will merely grow older and crankier, more quirksome and less clever; his small renown will pass, his vitality become mere doggedness, or fail altogether. His dozen admirers will grow bored with him, his employers will cease to raise his salary and to excuse his academic and social limitations; his wife will lose her beauty, their marriage will founder his children will grow up to be ashamed of their father. I see him at last alone, unhealthy, embittered, desperately unpleasant, perhaps masturbative, perhaps alcoholic or insane, if not a suicide. We all know the pattern.


Editor D

Failed, failed, failed! I look about me, and everywhere see failure. Old moralists, young bootlickers, unsuccessful writers; has-beens, would-bes, never-weres; failed artists, failed editors, failed scholars and critics- failed husbands fathers, lovers; failed minds, failed bodies, hearts, and souls-none of us is Passed, we all are Failed!

It no longer matters to me whether the Revised New Syllabus is published, by this house or any other. What does the Answer care, whether anyone "finds" it? It wasn't lost! The gold doesn't ask to be mined, or the medicine beg to be taken; it's not the medicine that's worse off when the patient rejects it. As for the Doctor-who cares whether he starves or prospers? Let him go hungry, maybe he'll prescribe again! Or let him die, we have prescription enough!

Let him laugh, even, that I've swallowed in good faith the pill he made up as a hoax: I'm cured, the joke's on him! One comes to understand that a certain hermit of the woods is no eccentric, but a Graduate, a Grand Tutor. From all the busy millions a handful seek him out, thinking to honor and sustain him- we bring him cash and frankincense, sing out his praises in four-part harmony, fetch him champagne and vichyssoise. Alas, our racket interrupts his musings and scares off the locusts he'd have suppered on the wine makes him woozy, he upchucks the soup; he can't smell the flowers for our perfume or hear the birds for our music, and there's not a thing to spend his money on. No wonder he curses us under his breath, once he's sober again! And thinking to revenge himself with a trick, he puts on a falseface to scare us away. We had asked for revelations- he palms off his maddest dreams. "Show us Beauty," we plead; he bares his rump to us. "Show us Goodness," we beg, and he mounts our wives and daughters. "Ah, sir!" we implore him, "Give us the Truth!" He thrusts up a forefinger from each temple and declares, "You are cuckolds all."

And yet I say the guller is gulled, hoist is the enginer: the joke's on the joker, that's the joker's joke. Better victimized by Knowledge than succored by Ignorance; to be Wisdom's prey is to be its ward. Deceived, we see our self-deception; suffering the lie, we come to truth, and in the knowledge of our failure hope to Pass.

Publish the Revised New Syllabus or reject it- call it art or artifice, fiction, fact, or fraud: it doesn't care, its author doesn't care, and neither any longer do I. I don't praise it, I don't condemn it- I don't ask who wrote it or whether it will sell or what the critics may make of it. My judgment is not upon the book but upon myself. I have read it. I here resign from my position with this house.

One sees the diversity of opinion that confronted me (I do not even mention the disagreement among our legal staff and such nice imponderables as the fact that it was Editor A who gave me my first job in the publishing field, or that Editor D-present whereabouts unknown-happens to be my only son); one sees further something of what either option stood to cost. One sees finally what decision I came to-with neither aid nor sympathy from the author, by the way, who seldom even answers his mail. Publishing is a moral enterprise, in subtler ways than my dear A asserted; like all such, it is spiritually expensive, highly risky, and proportionately challenging. It is also (if I understand the Goat-Boy correctly) as possible an avenue to Commencement Gate as any other moral enterprise, and on that possibility I must bank.

Herewith, then, Giles Goat-Boy: or, The Revised New Syllabus, "a work of fiction any resemblance between whose characters and actual persons living or dead is coincidental." * Let the author's cover-letter stand in all editions as a self-explanatory foreword or opening chapter, however one chooses to regard it; let the reader read and believe what he pleases; let the storm break if it must.


The Editor-in-Chief

* In the absence of any response from the author, whom we repeatedly invited to discuss the matter with us, we have exercised as discreetly as possible our contractual prerogative to alter or delete certain passages clearly libelous, obscene, discrepant, or false. Except for these few passages (almost all brief and of no great importance) the text is reproduced as it was submitted to us. [Ed.]

    
REVELATIONS IN THE KEY OF K

Mary Karr

I came awake in kindergarten,   

under the letter K chalked neat   

on a field-green placard leaned   

 

on the blackboard's top edge. They'd caged   me   

in a metal desk—the dull word writ   

to show K's sound. But K meant kick and kill

 

when a boy I'd kissed drew me   

as a whiskered troll in art. On my sheet,   

the puffy clouds I made to keep rain in   

 

let torrents dagger loose. "Screw those   

who color in the lines," my mom had preached,   

words I shared that landed me on a short chair   

 

facing the corner's empty, sheetrock page. Craning up,   

I found my K high above.   

You'll have to grow to here, its silence said.   

 

And in the surrounding alphabet, my whole life hid—  

names of my beloveds, sacred vows I'd break.   

With my pencil stub applied to wall,   

 

I moved around the loops and vectors,   

Z to A, learning how to mean, how   

in the mean world to be.   

 

But while I worked the room around me   

began to smudge—like a charcoal sketch my mom   

was rubbing with her thumb. Then   

 

the instant went, the month, and every season   

smeared, till with a wrenching arm tug   

I was here, grown, but still bent   

 

to set down words before the black eraser   

swipes our moment into cloud, dispersing all   

to zip. And when I blunder in the valley   

 

of the shadow of blank about to break   

in half, my being leans against my spinal K,   

which props me up, broomstick straight,   

 

a strong bone in the crypt of meat I am.