Miscellaneous

June 29, 2007

An Open Letter to the Poet Alan Wearne

I read your name today, Alan, in The New Yorker, of all places (do you know? Of course you do. Someone's told you...) You were mentioned in an article on Les Murray, and an extract of a letter you wrote to the London Review of Books appeared, lines which criticised Murray's AIDS poem ("Aphrodite Street") as bullyish pratsterism (and yes, I made up that last word. It means "of, or pertaining to, a prat") Anyway, you know all this.

I don't know Murray's work very well, but the article gives me good reason to suspect that he's very odd. Have you met him? Of course you have. Is the caricature real? Or affected? Or both? I'm rambling.

Listen: I felt a smug register when I thought of how a man mentioned in the New Yorker was also someone I had met (although there is sort of a second. I saw the ex-Chicago Bulls centre Luc Longley in a pub once, and both the New Yorker editor David Remnick, and the late David Halberstam, have mentioned him in articles on his much better team-mate Michael Jordan. But that doesn't really count, does it?) It also got me thinking: what a daring replacement "The 7 Degrees of the New Yorker" would be for the Kevin Bacon version? Dull and educated drink-affairs would never be the same again! But let's come back to Earth. I'm being facetious as to escape the dispiriting reminder of the wankery I felt when I read your name. But... perhaps I can overcome it by making this more than just a cheap "hello". Indulge me Alan, as I introduce myself and riff on the time we spent together...

You taught me creative writing at Curtin University. I was an under-grad. and the year was 2000, or 2001, but either way it was before the towers came down. That's important to me, but you may be grated by the American point of reference--I remember you taking exception to someone writing "ass" instead of "arse" but perhaps I'm stretching a point. In any case, I was taught creative writing when the towers fell by the late and lovely Elizabeth Jolley, and, Alan, she too struggled to turn hacks into anything other.

You won't remember me--I was an exceptionally average writer with an exceptionally enhanced perception of ability. It may have had something to do with the fact that I was 19. Which brings me to an important question: just how the fuck do you teach a 19-year-old to write? The ones (like me) who divine intense and universal meaning from a one-night-stand and vomiting on themselves the morning after? I would love to know.

Christ, I haven't really said anything yet, Al, but that's half the fun--writing this I don't have to mention the words "paradigm" and "discourse" and pretend that I know what they mean, as so I can just feel the sheer shaggy enjoyment of it all. In other words, academia can be a drag, filled, as it is, with pompous terrors. I know that you know this. You always struck me as a man who hated wankers and so you may approve of my telling you that my most recent repulsion of the Ivory Tower came when I read this neat little bit of horse-shit on Michael Jordan: "Finally, there is the subversion of perceived limits through the use of edifying deception, which in Jordan's case centres around the space/time continuum". Wow. That's from an essay entitled "Be Like Mike? Michael Jordan and the Pedagogy of Desire" and the prick's name who wrote it is Michael Eric Dyson. Un-fucking-believable.

But let's get back to you having taught me. One of my fondest memories is of you violently dismissing a student's work under your breath, as she read aloud to the class. I was lucky enough to be sitting next to you at the time, so I heard every word. I won't mention the student's name here, but I remember her, and you were right to swear. She was a pompous yawn, with nothing to say, and she didn't have the excuse of youth. I remember being thrilled by your criticism because I thought it meant you were real, and that you were actually listening. I still think that.

Okay, confession time: I was high on marijuana in that class. So was the guy I was sitting next to. He keeps a blog up on here, too. You must know, Alan, that I am blameless--the guy sitting next to me was an incorrigible dope fiend, forever tempting me with dark delights. Looking back, he was a vicious influence, and the next time I see him I'm going to poke him in the eye and call him a "cheap bastard".

That was, from memory, the only time I was ever under the influence of drugs in any class, ever (excising drunkenness), but let me tell you this: the experience was thrilling and terrifying. Of course, back then it was all in the name of writing--we felt that petty drug use and minor delinquency would provide us with a well of illuminating experience from which to write. We wanted to be pale and inauthentic Genets, before any of us had read the guy. And seriously--who the fuck wants to be Genet, anyway? Or Bukowski, Keroauc or Burroughs. Fuck that. I want good skin and a wife I don't shoot in the head. What do you think, Alan?

I have something else to tell you--I was a really miserable writer. Seriously. I thought that imaginative virtuosity would compensate for all the failures (Norman Mailer is sometimes guilty of this. Have you read his Ancient Evenings? Fuck me). There was a story I submitted to you once, and the thing should really be the final word on the evils of earnestness. The story was about a fictional colleague of Mozart's who, through some divine-tragic genetic anomaly, could actually see the classical musical arrangements of things: rain, trees, traffic infringement notices. But his unfinished masterpiece--unfinished because he goes mad in trying to write it--is his late wife. His difficulty is that she is dead, and so he's got to work from memory on the whole musical notation thing. Soon he's working from a cell in an asylum. It ends badly for everyone. It always did in my stories.

The logistical nightmares of his genetic mishap aside, the piece was, of course, a bloated exercise in youth-fuelled tedium, but you marked me on my "ambition". That was very generous of you. When I asked you to sign my copy of your book--The Lovemakers--you wrote: "To Martin. Keep up the ambition. Alan". What you meant, Alan, was that I overstretched, and I did and I did. Still, you didn't dash my hopes, and for that I'm grateful.

I haven't written any fiction for years. I'm terrified. I've read too much great stuff, Al. How do you escape this tyranny of idolatry? Stop reading? I think I can hear your response: fuck idolatry. Shit, or get off the pot.

That's very good advice, Alan. I think I'll take it.

Hope you're well,
M

Posted by Martin McKenzie-Murray at 10:49 AM

April 21, 2005

Conversation with a Star: An Exchange with an On-line Writer

The following is a copy of a review I submitted for a writer's work on Francis Ford Coppola's on-line workshop www.zoetrope.com. Following is the exchange between myself & the writer, an exchange unhappily inspired by the review.

Your review of Going Nuts At The Movies by Gary Paul Libero
Entered Jun 16 2004 10:46PM

Man, what dross. This is your idea? To anthologise the "weird and wacky" behaviour of American trash in cinemas?
Your bespectacled peanut-patron may have been overweight, but your passage is OBESE with lumbering hyperbole...
ultimately, who cares? a man eats peanuts, loudly, in a cinema. Your attempts at humourously assassinating the man's character failed -- the descriptions lacked pith or wit and were filled with the tedium of a dull self-righteousness.
Look, if you're compiling a collection of interesting cinema stories (are there that many? are there ANY?) gimme something INTERESTING. like maybe there's this prostitute, right? and she receives customers in the backs of cinemas, yeah? and then one customer suffers heart seizure. THAT I might read. Or there's this police helicopter, yeah? And it's circling above a late-night cinema searching for... I don't know, maybe your peanut man's stolen a trailer, or something, okay? And the peanut man, in commandeering this trailer, finds an RPG in the back of it. Peanut man, in an inexplicable fit of violence, shoots down the law's 'copter and it crashes into the cinema ruining the patron's enjoyment of "Miss Congeniality". BANG!
Right?
Whatever. Your story's irrelevant. In fact, I wouldn't even bother relaying that story to my friends. If I did, they'd... I dunno... burn my eyebrows... or something.
You better have better stories. If you don't, abandon journalistic integrity (fuck veracity) and INVENT something.
cheers
M

***

Gary Libero, the writer in question, responded thusly:

Hey Marty!

Thanks for taking some time to read and review my short story.

As I said to another reviewer who didn't like this, perhaps I shouldn't have posted it in here. The collection of stories I referred to is a compilation of TRUE stories. Nothing fictional to do with whores and helicopters (unless something like that actually happens to me one day). I think the story might be read differently in a context of other stories like it. And yes, there are more. Many more! Some from myself, others from friends. There is an in-theater blowjob story you might enjoy, but it's not mine to post.

But sadly, your review offered up nothing useful to me. Your use of every five dollar word you might have learned this week fell on deaf ears. I can't say I'm sorry you didn't like it because I don't apologize for my words.

Also, if you haven't noticed, there is a feature on this site called "opt out". If you don't care for a story and can't offer up any worthwhile criticism, opt the fuck out of it.

I'll be sure to look for your story on here and reciprocate the favor!

Never not,
Gary

Marty wrote:

Gaz,

good, good. never apologise for your words, in fact "never retract, never explain, get it done and let them howl..." d'you know who said that? never mind...
upon reading the first couple of lines of your zmail (zmail?) I immediately felt a little... guilty? but your knee-jerk defense and cuss words soon put an end to THAT little show of emotion.
i understand these are stories that have happened to you, but if they're THAT dull then, "fuck veracity". but sure, stick to your guns...
dunno what you mean by "reciprocating the favour"... sounds ominous. I'll wait here for the shit to hit the fan...
be good,
m

p.s. opt-out? never. there's too much fun to be had, no?

Gary replied:

From:Gary Paul Libero -- Thursday 6: 36 p.m.

I don't know what to think of you Marty. Sarcasm is hard to detect via the written word.

Reciprocating the favor simply means I will read one of your stories on here and review it, just like you did for me.

Also, I'm not sure anyone has ever called me Gaz before. Interesting.

Until we type again,
G

The final response was, alas, a whimper...

From: Marty **Thursday 7:45 P.M.

GPL,

I'd like to extend this missive, gaz, but I've gotta date with the pub very soon, so I've gotta go and look pretty... to satisfy your curiosity, however, I've got a great grin across my face, largely because i have a sick, atavistic sense of humour & no job.
But so it goes.
Secondly, thanx for not responding to my story (thanking you in advance...) with the bloody, retributive fangs of a Nixon, or Bush, or any one of those scum-fuckers you guys like installing into office.
Have a safe and peaceful nite,
m

Posted by Martin McKenzie-Murray at 12:06 PM