Going through the great Poet John Ashbery’s mind is something one does not take for granted. For one, I have almost the same taste as Ashbery. Throughout my life, I have always been attracted to the French avant-garde, a love of the low and high culture that may bring, and a sensibility of almost smelling a person of a similar taste. It’s a small party, but I look at Ashbery as if he were an older influencial brother, and keep in mind this is only in theory or imagined because I neither have a brother nor sister. Come to think of it, reading or books are my true family.
Selected Prose is a collection of Ashbery’s essays, introductions, and thoughts on his fellow poet friends, who are equally excellent, but even more important to me are the things I don’t know about that he brings to my attention, such as a novel by Michel Butor, La Modification, written in 1957. Butor is a name I know, and usually, one reads that name in association with Marguerite Duras, Alain Robbe-Grillet, and others associated with the nouveau roman genre. Also, an American poet from Boston who died in the 1940s by the name of John Wheelwright is an unknown figure to me, but the way Ashbery writes about him, I need to read him as soon as possible, not unlike Butor.
Reading, for me, is an intense pleasure. And like other things in my life, it is a very textural experience. It allows me to time travel back and forth and go to lands that I do know and know nothing about. It allows me to explore my home and discover new names that lurk on the bookcases, even more importantly, within those books. Ashbery is a poet who isn’t shy about sharing his knowledge, and he is like the fellow in the room who blindfolds you, spins you three times around, but makes sure you don’t fall or approach the staircase. If you fall backward, he will catch you before you hit the ground. And with that in mind, that is how he leads a reader to a new author or a culture that one may not be familiar with.
Ashbery writes about a film he claims is a masterpiece called Out 1. French filmmaker Jacques Rivette made this work over 12 hours long, and I found it online (Kanopy) in several segments/chapters. I love nothing more than reading about either out-of-print books or films that are impossible to see. A critic should never make it easy for you; locating these gems is part of the process or journey. And I didn’t even finish reading Ashbery’s critique of the film before I started to search for Out 1 as a hound dog starved for blood.
A favorite critic is not necessarily someone you would always agree with, but one that you enjoy entering their world and how they see something that is artful or profound in their eyes or mind. One can either dismiss that critic’s choices or engage in and with that subject matter. At this moment, I just received La Modification, and I’m geared to free myself schedule-wise to watch the entire Out 1. Will I love, hate, or be indifferent to these works? Who knows? All I know is I enjoyed being here with John Ashbery at this moment.
Thanks Tosh, I have this book and couldn’t agree with you more.
Excellent, thanks for sharing.