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30 June
Many thanks to Henry Farrell for this entry over at Crooked Timber, which caused a massive spike in traffic. Our statistical analysis department will be pulling an extra-long
shift tonight. The honor of being recognized for Line of the Week is deeply gratifying. Even if the name of the blog
does call to mind Sir Isaiah.
(Actually the line about the crooked timber of humanity comes from Kant. So if you that last paragraph allowed you to get
worked up into a pleasant little spasm of pedantic indignation, all's I can say is, "Settle down there, assmunch.")
29 June
An addendum to yesterday's sprawling entry on the Up Against the Wall Motherfuckers and affiliated matters. As mentioned, the
film I Shot Andy Warhol shows Valerie Solanas exchanging rants, then sleeping, with a character identified
in the credits as Mark Motherfucker. The soundtrack for this scene is "Kick Out the Jams" by the MC5. (How could it not be?)
In the course of writing my article, I watched the film twice. Something about Mark Motherfucker's lines seemed vaguely familiar -- as indeed
they had when we saw it in the theater in 1996.
Yesterday, I got a paperback copy of Kirkpatrick Sale's SDS (1973) in the very same paperback edition
that was my constant companion of most of the 1980s. An altogether astounding piece of work which, like Theodore Draper's
excellent research on the early years of American Communism, has never been equalled, though many have sniped at it without
inflicting the slightest damage.
On page TK (don't have it with me now, will fill this in later), Sale quotes some early statements by
leaders of Weatherman. And they are repeated, almost word for word, by Mark Motherfucker in I Shot Andy
Warhol. In his memoir, Bill Ayers mentions going to meet with the Motherfuckers in the period between Weather's
consolidation as a tendency and their decision to go underground.
Meanwhile, elsewhere in cyberspace, some folks discussing the songbook of the Marxist-Leninist Party USA ( requiescat in pacem) mentioned my article from ten years ago.
Referring to the songbook's title number, "Down With Ronald Reagan, Chieftain of Capitalist Imperialism," one individual
maintains that it is impossible to sing the word "chieftain." This is, of course, quite untrue. Just try; it's not that hard.
The phrase "capitalist imperialism" is another matter entirely, though I suppose you could break it down over a
hiphop track.
As for the idea that MLP may have been infiltrated by the state -- well, of course it was. That pretty much goes
without saying.
What is much more interesting to consider is the FBI's discussion of the MLP's ancestor organization -- the grandly named
American Communist Workers Movement (Marxist-Leninist), originally of Cleveland, Ohio. A document from the Cleveland FBI office from 1970 does not treat the group as an asset. But it does use ACWM(M-L)
as an example of how easy it was for a small group to gain credibility within the left by claiming international
support.
I'm not sure the Feds were right about that. Through the late 1970s, the ACWM(M-L) and its successor group, the Central
Organization of U.S. Marxist-Leninists, were Maoists. But in fact most other Maoists seem to have considered them rather
strange. Perhaps because of their songs?
Just for the record, the MLP was not the only American group looking to the People's Republic of Albania, that "bright
red bastion of proletarian internationalism," for leadership. Another such was the Marxist-Leninist Organizing Committee,
which later became the Communist Party USA (Marxist-Leninist).
Not to be confused, of course, with the Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist). Nor even with the original
Communist Party USA (Marxist-Leninist) whose leader, Michael Laski, was profiled by Joan Didion in an essay from
the late 1960s. I'm not sure when the latter group went under. But it certainly went through
some hard times when Comrade Laski took the party treasury to Las Vegas and, let us say, failed to increase it. My
understanding is that a subsequent meeting of the Central Committee got quite nasty. Handguns were shown.
28 June
Not long after starting at The Chronicle of Higher Education, I told some friends that one of my goals
was to do a story that would require mention of the 1960s radical group known at the Up Against the Wall Motherfuckers.
Having now written this item about a new edition of Valerie Solanas's SCUM Manifesto -- and thereby contributed, however modestly,
to the decline of civilization -- I have that feeling best summed up by the phrase, "My work is done here."
There was no room to mention this in the article, but a collection of writings by the Motherfuckers is available in a
book called Black Mask & Up Against the Wall Motherfucker, available from Amazon -- which, quite unhelpfully,
lists it only by the first two words of the title. Black Mask was a predecessor group, one of whose members was Dan Georgakas, who
I know slightly via the world of C.L.R. James-iana. Dan went on to co-author a history of the League of Revolutionary
Black Workers called Detroit, I Do Mind Dying, which is still in print, it's good to learn. An incredibly valuable book.
I only tracked down the collection of Black Mask and Mofo documents by searching Amazon for "Ben Morea,"
who I take it was the prototype of the character Mark Motherfucker in I Shot Andy Warhol. At one point circa 1967,
Black Mask was the U.S. contact for (if not actually a section of) the Situationist International. They were -- in due
course, and in keeping with the rituals of the SI -- "excluded" from the communion of the Debordist-Vaneigemist faithful. Though some of the BM/MF texts in the collection do have elements of the Situ analysis, the fact is that analysis wasn't
really what the New York group was about. In one of the documents, they refer to themselves as a "street gang with an
analysis," a line that turns up in I Shot Andy Warhol.
Sure wish I could draw a map of the relationships here. The game of degrees of separation is intriguing, given
the thematic links. For example:
-- In Paris (or wherever he was hiding out), Debord analyzes "the society of the spectacle." His American associates
are in contact with Valerie Solanas, who takes a shot at the artist who embodies "the spectacle" at its most self-consciously
self-emptying.
-- Warhol, the son of a steel worker, names his studio "the Factory." Debord's theoretical writings are, in
large part, a critique of Marxist practice in the name of a more radical Marxist notion of alienation
which stresses how pervasive it is at all levels of culture and society. Debord's ideas are lifted by French intellectual
hustler Jean Baudrillard, who transforms the critical concept of "the spectacle" into a notion of "the simulacrum"
purified of any possibility of revolt from below. In gratitude, American academics and/or hipster buy (and
even occasionally read) lots of books by Baudrillard. One of which, Symbolic Exchange and Death, has
on its cover a painting by Warhol.
-- Debord was briefly a member of Socialisme ou Barbarie, and so felt obliged, later, to include various insults
at the group in Situationist publications. Still, lots of Situ theory is influenced by SouB, and in particular
by the work of Cornelius Castoriadis. (For a really interesting and useful selection of texts about CC, check out this recent page.) From the late 1940s through the early 1960s, Castoriadis and SouB are in contact with C.L.R. James's group
in the United States, the Johnson-Forest Tendency, which consists largely of factory workers. Like Warhol's father? You are
way ahead of me, dear reader.
-- One member of the Tendency in Detroit is my friend, the late Marty Glaberman, who liked few things
better in life than teaching Marx's Capital. In the mid- to late 1960s, his course was attended by
some of the people who founded the League of Revolutionary Black Workers. Whose history is later written (as noted above)
by Dan Georgakas, a member of Black Mask, which is (as noted above) the American sympathizing group of the Situationist International.
The League wins the respect of the Italian extreme left. The latter translates a book of Marty's writings. They also read
Debord.
-- Some of the Italian ultra left decides to "take up the gun." Some of the Motherfuckers join the Weatherman
faction of SDS. Many years later, when Marty Glaberman got his files from the Detroit red squad,
he learned that something called the Third World Liberation Army had been training with guns in the basement of his home. (Telling
me about this, Marty was very amused. He said they never had a basement at the house in question.) Meanwhile, one
of the handful of Debord's major writings following the disintegration of the SI is a preface of the Italian edition of Society of the Spectacle.
A quotation from that text, published in 1979: "It is fair to recognize the difficulty and the immensity of the
tasks of the revolution that wants to create and maintain a classless society. It can begin easily enough wherever autonomous
proletarian assemblies, not recognizing any authority outside themselves or the property of anyone whatsoever, placing their
will above all laws and specializations, abolish the separation of individual, the commodity economy and the State. But it
will only triumph by imposing itself universally, without leaving a patch of territory to any form of alienated society that
still exists. There we will see again an Athens or a Florence that reaches to all the corners of the world, a city from which
no one will be rejected and which, having brought down all of its enemies, will at last be able to surrender itself joyously
to the true divisions and never-ending confrontations of historical life."
I'm pretty dubious about the yearning to destroy any "patch of territory" occupied by "any form of society
that still exists." The will-to-purity has written itself into history in ways that are horrific. A later text by Debord, from 1988, just about trembles on the page (or screen) from megalomania and paranoia.....Just add some speculations
about the Y chromosome and you are well over halfway to SCUM Manifesto.
Aside from the volume of MF documents (which is by no means complete, as the editors indicate), there is not much secondary
material on the group. I'd like to think my article will encourage someone out there to advance the frontiers of Motherfucker
scholarship.
For now, anyway, one of the handful of things to read is this article.
The reference in passing to Marcuse calls to mind one other set of links in my spiderweb of relationships. One of the
founders of BM/MF was a stepson of Marcuse. In the early 1940s, C.L.R. James and company were among the few non-specialist
readers of Marcuse's book on Hegel, Reason and Revolution. After Raya Dunayevskaya, who was "Forest" in Johnson-Forest,
broke up the group in 1955, she wrote a book called Marxism and Freedom incorporating the ideas she had
worked out with James and other Tendency comrades. The introduction to that book was written by Marcuse. And it is impossible
to read Debord's Society of the Spectacle or Vaneigem's Revolution of Everyday Life without thinking
of Marcuse's One-Dimensional Man about three times per paragraph.
Like a friend used to say: "It's a small world, but I wouldn't want to paint it."
22 June
File under "wish I'd said that," on Isaiah Berlin, from a review by Frank McLynn in The New Statesman in 1999:
"Can we perhaps now have a moratorium on Berlin-worship? The real man, as opposed to the icon, was a journeyman Oxford
academic who had a gift for lucidity and was a talented expositor of other people's ideas, but he was not an original thinker
nor, it seems, a particularly admirable human being. The notion that he was a major figure in the history of thought says
something about our intellectual poverty as we approach the millennium. Berlin was famous for dividing political thinkers
into hedgehogs and foxes but, given his inability to fight for any noble (that word again) causes, his true zoological classification
was the mouse who wanted to be a lion. "
21 June
Twenty years ago, I used to read Blindness and Insight over and over again. Then we found out about what De Man was hiding, and it kind of put a new perspective on things...."The bases for historical knowledge are not empirical facts but written texts, even if these texts masquerade in the guise
of war or revolutions." I mean, holy crap.. There's phenomenological bracketing, and then there's desperately
hoping that you can keep your story straight.
Anyway, that etymological link between "criticism" and "crisis" (with which De Man made so much hay) turned
up again in my review of Dale Peck's Hatchet Jobs, appearing in Newsday over the weekend.
The fact that anybody is paying attention to the guy is bad, very bad. But then I say that about most of the spectacles
on hand.
18 June
Plenty of ink has been spilled (or photons emitted, or whatever) on the now-classic "terrorists with a dirty bomb
in a major city" scenario -- i.e., given that circumstance, wouldn't torture be not just morally defensible but pretty much
obligatory, if it would yield the location of the device?
There is no more to say on the matter. Or so you might think.Well settle down there, smartypants. You are so
wrong.
It turns out there was at least one more thing to do -- namely, question both "the power of stipulation" and the
implicit movie-trailer logic of the entire conundrum.
Now, dear friends, this is, verily, a crappy morning -- one in which I face an impossible deadline, an
unappealing set of demands on my time this weekend, and the latest phase of a really protracted effort to figure
out how to resolve certain questions pertaining to my writing (problems that, in some pre-caffeine moments, look as if
they may be absolutely insoluble). Not what you would call a TGIF mood, here at McLemee.com. Not by any stretch.
So the fact that Belle Waring has created not one but two quasi-apocalyptic scenarios that made me laugh out loud is
strangely comforting, even if the result is that coffee went up my nose.
***
On two consecutive days, someone has reached this website by the search terms "waffle house jargon."
I don't suppose you found what you were looking for. Then again, it is hard to imagine what that could be.
Upon reflection, of course, it is clear that there must be things about waffle houses that
mere waffle-house patrons can never fully comprehend. There is probably a name for the run-off, for example. Slightly insulting
expressions used for people who eat Belgian waffles without syrup.
14 June
He brought us together.....communicated in a way that no one had imagined possible.....inspired us with his
combination of single-minded dedication and inspired spontaneity....and now he's gone.
But I can't quite stop saying goodbye.
"Like Miles Davis and Lou Reed—probably the two instrumentalists he most admired—Quine brought new ways of
playing to improvised music. Quine had many influences, and he loved perpetuating them (all of his friends have compilation
tapes made for them from his gigantic record collection), but anyone who cares can recognize one of his solos immediately,
and even those who don’t care are likely to perk up when exposed to what he’d wring from a guitar for the 20 or
30 seconds of one of his perfectly structured but outrageously wild expositions in the middle of a song by Reed or me (or
Tom Waits, Lloyd Cole, Matthew Sweet, or John Zorn). His command of technique came from endless hours of studying the records
that moved him—but it was the combination of rage and delicacy, and the pure monstrosity of invention, that set him
apart."
9 June
Just last week, I was commenting on Robert Quine, easily one of the most interesting guitarists to come out
of the New York underground of the 1970s. And now a friend passes along news that Quine is dead. This article says that Quine discovered the Velvet Underground while a law student in St. Louis. Which
seem very, very unlikely, considering Andy Warhol had barely heard of the Velvets at that point.
While I'm on a nitpicking kick....Christopher Hitchens had an article at Slate yesterday called "Not Even a Hedgehog: The Stupidity of Ronald Reagan." In the body of the piece,
the titular allusion is explained, sort of, as follows: "The fox, as has been pointed out by more than
one philosopher, knows many small things, whereas the hedgehog knows one big thing. Ronald Reagan was neither a fox nor a
hedgehog. He was as dumb as a stump."
What is happening here: For various reasons, Hitchens doesn't want to mention Isaiah Berlin, who divided all writers
and thinkers into the two categories mentioned. And Hitch can't recall where Sir Isaiah got the distinction. Hence the invocation
of a philosophizing multitude, of indeterminate size.
In fact the original source was Archilochus, whose work survives only in fragments -- most of them obscene,
which has always made me suspect that Berlin was probably missing something in quoting that line. (My memory is
probably not to be trusted on this, but I seem to recall that in his defense of the free press in Areopagitica, Milton
considers Archilocus the extreme case of what could be publishable.)
In any case, Archilochus was a poet, not a philiosopher. Also, it would take an extremely generous definition
to call Sir Isaiah a philosopher -- though that is perhaps a rant for another day.
Been meaning to put up this link to the website of Jeff McIntyre, a cultural journalist and commentator from Canada. Or rather, in Canada.
Stay up there, Jeff. Seriously. Every time we go to Canada, there follows a day or two of misery upon returning.
A few years ago, I tried to interest someone at an academic press in reissuing Down the Long Table (1955)
by Earle Birney, at one point the country's poet laureate. It's an autobiographical novel based on his involvement
in the Left Opposition. My suggestion did not go over too well.
Be that as it may: If you read one book about Canadian Trotskyism (and you know you want to!) make it Down the
Long Table.....
7 June
Somebody once said: "I always hope that Kenny Rogers is in good health, because when he dies they're gonna play his songs
on the radio all day long."
And in much that spirit of loathing at the prospect of the inevitable forced march through certain memories
-- a public celebration of things better off buried in an unmarked spot, on a moonless night -- I have, for some
years now, dreaded the news of Ronald Reagan's passing.
This morning, a thought came to mind -- the aftermath of digesting as much of last night's Sixty Minutes as
we could stand. (Switched it off halfway through; the gorge becoming buoyant at hearing they were about to do a segment on
the man's irrepressible sense of humor.) To whit: Let nobody say that liberalism has a monopoly on the therapeutic
conception of politics. "He changed America by making us feel good about ourselves."
What a vacuously privatized notion of leadership (let alone of politics or the common good). Jimmy Carter
got no end of grief for having read Christopher Lasch and coming forth with that bit about the nation's "malaise." But the
candidate who "lifted" that malaise did so only by giving the culture of narcissism a happy pill.
Or as Steven Shapiro puts it at his always-interesting site The Pinocchio Theory, the Great Communicator "created an ugly social and cultural climate in America, one that is still with us today: a climate
of cynicism, greed, selfishness, bigotry, frat-boy self-congratulatory boorishness, and blame-the-victim disdain for 'losers'
and the weak, all buttressed by a willfully ignorant, proudly vapid, feel-good-at-all-costs Pollyanna-ism."
That about covers it. Could be worse, I guess. How is Kenny Rogers feeling, these days?
4 June
Thanks to a shift in work schedule, my wife now gets every other Friday off. The nature of my own job is such that I
need to spend a lot of time scanning new books, trying to figure out which ones are worth more time, which is something than
can best be done in my study at home.
But not, dear reader, on her Friday off. Oh, no. Das ist verboten.
On such a day, I am condemned to wander the earth for a certain time. Either that, or sit in this florescent-lit
cubicle farm of alienated professional labor.
Commentary by internalized voice of friends: Dude, you are so whipped.
Subvocal response: You have no idea.
Then again, she has to put up with being married to writer. Which is no picnic when it's not going particularly
well. (For example, recently.)
Upon arriving at the aforementioned cubicle this morning, I find an e-mail message from a reader who,
while digging through some boxes of stuff from the Austin punk scene of twenty years ago, came across a copy of issue
2 (dated November 1982) of the zine Plan 9, containing an article about the Big Boys. He wonders about
the availability of other issues.
My jaw drops. Amazing to think of anyone else having a copy of Plan 9, let alone looking at it again. We did
three issues. The first two had a print run of maybe 50. Assembled with typewriters and scotch tape, and
printed (if that is the word) at a copy shop. Beginning with the second issue, my girlfriend examined the originals
to make sure we hadn't taped down hair or inky fingerprints.
Such perfectionism paid off. So did getting that article about the Big Boys. Our third issue broke out of the
two-digit print run, and included an interview with the Buffalo Gals -- which, with hindsight, was maybe even more of a contribution
to the documenting of the scene, since they disappeared without ever issuing a recording. We ran some pieces by the guy
who played bass for a band called Talmadge d'Amour, which had a sort of cult following. (What the hell am I saying? Every
band in question had a cult following. Except ours. We could barely get our friends to come to the rehearsal space. Too bad
for them. We kicked ass. Especially when got tuned up, which, admittedly, took a while.)
I forget whether we ever ran anything about China Nine, another band lost to history. Their debut was (afraid the only
word for it is kind of tired, here goes) electrifying. It was one of those shows with half a dozen bands,
the opening one being a hardcore group called the Fudge Tunnels, memorable only for their name.
Nobody had any idea who China Nine was when they took the stage. No expectations, except that they would pretty much
have to be better than the Fudge Tunnels. Everybody in the place was busy being punk-rock bored; you know how that goes.
But after about two songs they had the crowd going nuts. Hypnotic stuff with drones, an intricate rhythmic section, an
excellent female lead vocalist who played a solo on some kind of home-made steel drum .... You didn't know whether
to dance or to trance out. There was energy that flowing back and forth between the stage and the pit. (Not quite literally:
the "stage" was probably about two feet higher than the crowd.)
By the end of their set, there was no way we'd let them leave the stage without playing some more. The singer said something
like, "Well, those are all the songs we've written. Sorry!" More stomping and howling. They looked at each other with what
appeared to be astonishment. A sort of "what just happened here?" moment. If memory serves, they played one of the
numbers again as an encore, jamming on the instrumental part for a bit longer than they originally had.
And no, they never got out a record. I saw them play a couple more times, and recall how soon the
happiness and astonishment in their faces that first night turned into something harder. In any case, that first
show was one of those moments that stick with you. An experience that takes the top off of your head.
As for Plan 9 -- that was a long time before the zine explosion of the early 1990s. The
phenomenon itself was already decades old. It sure did feel like we were inventing the wheel, though.
At some point in late 1982, the magazine Texas Monthly ran a short article about punk zines. It
was illustrated with, among other things, the cover of our first issue. Aside from listing the contents, this
consisted of a collage in which a movie still of Lon Chaney as a double amputee was superimposed on an H-bomb
exploding in the background. The meaning of which (if any) now escapes me.
But what I do remember is finding out about the Texas Monthly article. The other editor and I were
backstage at Club Foot, trying to interview Richard Hell, who was in town to promote his second Voidoids album.
It was nowhere near as good as the first. We did not say so. It was hard enough being a couple of nerds in the presence
of such an awesome and legendary (and I mean the following in only the most respectful way possible) asshole.
Now, one of the things I loved about the first Voidoids album was the guitar playing by Robert Quine. Who was not
present. (He may have been off recording The Blue Mask with Lou Reed. Some astonishing guitar on that album, too,
especially the title cut.) No transcript of our interview with Hell survives, which is probably for the best. But here,
for posterity, is the high point:
Me: So where is Robert Quine?
Hell: Probably in New York, doing Quaaludes.
Anyway, some other Austin hangers-on backstage, upon learning that we were from Plan 9, said: "You guys
are in the new Texas Monthly." We assumed they, too, were on drugs. As a matter of fact, they were. But as a trip to
the Seven Eleven soon revealed, they were also entirely correct.
So the next issue, we printed a hundred copies.
And lo! -- so many decades, so many disappointments later -- someone writes to ask if there
are any available. Small world. I'm afraid not.
Bright idea: Time to make the full run available in a limited edition book. And maybe also ttime to reprint the
seven or eight issues of a newspaper called The Spark (you know, like Lenin's Iskra) that a bunch of
us radical-student-activist types did in 1986-87. Yep, that'll sell like hotcakes.
2 June
Yesterday, around lunch time, an editor here at the Chronicle forwarded an item from an Australian newspaper
about a new French novel in which the author uses no verbs. So I dashed off my own piece, also sans verbs, which ran this morning at the website.
Last time I checked, it was the single most e-mailed article of the day. A little while ago, somebody from National Public
Radio called to see if I might be available to yack on the matter. Kind of strange, since I haven't actually read the book,
but it seemed like a good chance to talk about Eugene Jolas's "The Revolution of the Word" and Raymond Queaneau's
Exercises in Style (in which the author narrates a pointless incident on a bus about a hundred times, using
a different style in each telling).
Indicating this was, perhaps, my undoing. I probably should have sounded wacky. Or indignant. Or, best case scenario, indignantly
wacky. Anyway, NPR just called to say they wouldn't need me after all.
C'est la vie. If they had proposed an interview about some article that took weeks to research and write, I would
be pretty disappointed at the change of plans. But given that the entire process of composing this piece coincided
with the eating of a peanut-butter sandwich, it's no big deal.
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