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david-baptiste's Reviews > Diary
Diary
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Gombrowicz is one of the most extraordinary writers I've encountered in a long time. Only a truly disciplined musician can play Free Jazz, Don Cherry used to say, and such a musician is Gombrowizc in his Diaries. The sense of structure of a Bach combined with an hallucinatory madness which at the same time is perceptive as an incision--the wildly laughing gallows humor, the continual experimentations--a one man band of meta literatures, meta critiques, meta theories being juggled like so many oranges-truly a breathtaking and awe inspiring performer!
Gombrowicz from page to page investigates, questions, laughs at, rages at, describes in such as way as to totally deform and re arrange--writing itself, and the writings with which it is is surrounded and surrounds itself with. Many of his sentences are complete Conceptual projects in themselves--and one finds whole paragraphs like this, packed to the rafters with a cascade of ideas, a torrent of angles, sounds, dimensions, aspects with which writing may be examined and may be used to examine--itself included.
Gombrowicz is one of those rare writers who reminds one of what an explosive material writing may be--especially in the hands of an excellent artist of the making of explosives! It's a tremendous joy to read a writing which is so alive so incredibly alert and so improvisatory while at the same time having such an incredible range of understandings of writing in all its forms. And best of all, it's staggeringly hilarious!!
I often wonder of late if the really most interesting and "innovative" writing has not been very often in prose and theater.
The Russian Zaum poet Kruchenhyk wrote a small book called "Explodity"--this is a quality which seems to be extremely lacking in American "innovative" writing for a very long time now, except among some of the best non-fiction writers, whom I think of as creators of a form of poetry.
Gombrowicz in the Diary--I have only read abt 2/3s of Volume 2 which I found by chance--so far--and the novel COSMOS--is one of these Explodity characters. Very inspiring!!
Gombrowicz from page to page investigates, questions, laughs at, rages at, describes in such as way as to totally deform and re arrange--writing itself, and the writings with which it is is surrounded and surrounds itself with. Many of his sentences are complete Conceptual projects in themselves--and one finds whole paragraphs like this, packed to the rafters with a cascade of ideas, a torrent of angles, sounds, dimensions, aspects with which writing may be examined and may be used to examine--itself included.
Gombrowicz is one of those rare writers who reminds one of what an explosive material writing may be--especially in the hands of an excellent artist of the making of explosives! It's a tremendous joy to read a writing which is so alive so incredibly alert and so improvisatory while at the same time having such an incredible range of understandings of writing in all its forms. And best of all, it's staggeringly hilarious!!
I often wonder of late if the really most interesting and "innovative" writing has not been very often in prose and theater.
The Russian Zaum poet Kruchenhyk wrote a small book called "Explodity"--this is a quality which seems to be extremely lacking in American "innovative" writing for a very long time now, except among some of the best non-fiction writers, whom I think of as creators of a form of poetry.
Gombrowicz in the Diary--I have only read abt 2/3s of Volume 2 which I found by chance--so far--and the novel COSMOS--is one of these Explodity characters. Very inspiring!!
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Reading Progress
June 15, 2008
– Shelved
Another thing: take someone such as Richard Wilbur. A very conventional poet. I don't find him terribly interesting, although, as a pure poet, he's much better than Bernstein. & yet, Bernstein is far more interesting because he deals with a much wider range of issues than Wilbur. Latin American and European innovative writing is much more connected to the day to day political world. I'll check out Gombrowicz.