In the impermissibly muddled verbiage before me, one can, with a great deal of squinting and a modicum of good faith, discern a few notions struggling to be born. To wit: the purported subject, a certain folk singer, is a purveyor of sonic pleasantries—a “word slinger,” in the text's own patois—who, through the happy accident of musical restriction, occasionally stumbled into something resembling coherent thought. The author further laments the singer's foray into prose, a book whose unmeditated spillage is defended by a credulous and misguided flock. A single, fleeting glimpse of self-awareness is, however, detected and noted, which is perhaps the only genuine thing in this whole affair.
Let us begin with the fundamental error, the failure of definition. The author, in his evident haste to blurt out a collection of thoughts, confuses an artist with an artisan. The subject, it is conceded, may sometimes manage "genuine poetry," though this claim, like most unsubstantiated laudatory remarks, requires more than a little scrutiny. But a writer? A craftsman? Not in any sense that a serious person would understand the term. A writer, after all, does not simply spray verbal effluent upon the page, hoping that some stray spatter will form a pattern. A writer constructs, builds, and, most importantly, guides the reader on a journey. The subject's lyrical flights, from the "surreal or nonsequitor" meanderings of his youth to the ponderous and frankly senile observations of his more recent efforts, are, at best, a series of disconnected, albeit sometimes compelling, soundbites. They are not the product of a mind that thinks in paragraphs, but one that thinks in couplets. The limitations of line and rhyme, the very shackles the author notes, were in fact the only things that imposed any sort of discipline upon the singer's ramblings, forcing him to conclude his "obscure imaginings" before they dissolved into total gibberish.
And then there is Tarantula, the book that proves the rule. The author correctly identifies it as a product of "high doses of speed and maybe other drugs," a statement whose veracity requires little verification from the text itself. The prose, if one can call it that, is a sort of second-rate Burroughs, lacking the master's grim humor, and a flabby Kerouac, minus the "jivey swing". It is, as observed, a historical artifact, a curio to be admired by those who worship at the shrine of celebrity, rather than a work of art. The defenders of this drivel, the "true believers," are a pitiable lot, willing to tie themselves in "self-revealing knots" to justify their idol's every indulgence. This is the pathetic fallacy of fandom writ large: that one's affections somehow lend artistic merit to the undeserving.
The only truly interesting moment comes at the end, the acknowledgment of the subject's fabricated "persona". Here is the crux of the matter. The very thing that makes the subject such a commercial phenomenon—the conspiratorial air of authenticity, the notion of the humble folk poet—is revealed, even in this amateurish screed, to be a fraud. That a "genuine poet" would feel the need to construct such a transparent façade is a matter for some passing psychoanalytic consideration. That he might one day have to "account for the construction of the whole matter" is the only thing in this text that offers any real hope. Though, given the nature of celebrity and the short memory of the public, the final accounting is likely to be as evasive and unsatisfying as the work itself.
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