tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6531553.post1441830985566346501..comments2023-06-27T01:34:35.359-07:00Comments on Ted Burke LIKE IT OR NOT: Getting a gripTED BURKEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16610296721891201100noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6531553.post-14178799335410269892009-02-07T18:21:00.000-08:002009-02-07T18:21:00.000-08:00Good post. This is a topic worth exploring. The cr...Good post. This is a topic worth exploring. The credo “live fast/die young/leave a beautiful corpus of works” still persists in some quarters, I’m sure. Flat on its face, the idea that self-immolation raises the value of an artist’s creation is hogwash. Obviously, the same sort of feverish brains that can bring forth a brilliant novel or painting can also generate the seeds of its own destruction. An artist may labor to keep his demons at bay and create art as a kind of byproduct. But would, say, Booth Tarkington or Frank Yerby have been any better artists if they had committed suicide? Would Thomas Wolfe have been less of a talent if he hadn’t recklessly contracted T.B.? And what about William S. Burroughs – are we supposed to consider him a sell-out because he was able to survive into his 80s? How about Norman Mailer – if he had actually stabbed that wife of his to death and been sent to the electric chair, would that have made Naked and the Dead or The Deer Park any better or worse as novels?<BR/><BR/>The issue of whether any of this gives a writer cachet or takes it away is a tangled one. But I can say this – killing yourself as an act of rebellion, as a defiant fuck-you gesture to the world, is pathetic and ridiculous. The world the artist hates WANTS him to die and self-inflicted mortality is no victory. The epitaph on Sherwood Anderson’s tombstone says it best: “Life, not death is the great adventure.”<BR/><BR/>As for the idea that good artistic expression is only in the past – every generation must find its own answers, even if they are the same ones. That’s part of life itself, I think. And by striving to find the right words for the old truths, life is renewed. To quote Anderson again: “There is no such thing as an old sunrise…”mantmarblehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08350882479535662318noreply@blogger.com