This toon was inspired by last month's issue of The Smithsonian, which featured, though not on the front cover, the photos of Beatnik academic Allen Ginsberg, who was, more than anything else, an expert marketer and literary ladder climber. In the long run, his poetry was not in the least threatening to the established order. Hell, Ginsberg became the established order, a bona fide high and mighty bourgeois member of the exclusive American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Ginsberg was worse than a corporate parasite because he invested his ascendancy with a nauseating self righteousness. If William Blake was "a wild pet for the super-cultivated", then Ginsberg was the family's masturbating parrot.
ReplyDeleteInteresting image, S! It would probably make for a good toon. I have been battling with the CEO of Poets Against Wars Canada. I always seem to extract good material from such jousts. The things these guys say become predictable. Criticize the poets and they'll call you names. It's odd. Do Not Criticize the Poets!
ReplyDeleteThe insouciant looks on their faces are perfectly juxtaposed against their free swinging dicks. Bravo! This is a winner! Seriously, I love it.
ReplyDeleteReading your comment, M, I burst into laughter... just what I needed! Insouciant looks and swinging dicks! Perfect. You have to write a Beatnik poem on that one.
ReplyDeleteT.
I think this toon is just plain stupid. I can't see any meaning at all other than possibly you were trying to be offensively meaningless.
ReplyDeleteI think you should have included P Maudit at the sideline as he often does but in this case he should have been dressed the same fashion as your targets, just to be consistently obnoxious.
Your blog often shows that you have a problem with people getting various kinds of recognition. I just shared your toon with a friend who said that you are acting grimly envious and petulant. I agree.
Hi Charlotte,
ReplyDeleteYour comments are of interest. Thank you for them. I’ll try to explain the cartoon, though it is evident that no matter what I say, nudity is upsetting to you. You also got upset RE the cartoon with the nude breasts, as I’m sure you recall. Perhaps I’ve done three nude cartoons out of the 2000 or more I’ve sketched. Anyhow, Ginsberg became famous when he stripped down completely naked on stage and read his poem “Howl.” Thus, I drew him naked. He also became a famous homosexual and pedophile. Gregory Corso, depicted next to him in the cartoon, was also a famous homosexual. But the real purpose of the cartoon, since you missed it entirely, was to simply depict how easily the supposed “countercultural” Beatniks have been coopted by the established order… in this case, The Smithsonian, a magazine put out by the famous museum. And in that case one really has to wonder just how countercultural they really were.
As for your friend’s comments, I’ve heard similar comments quite often. They are as unoriginal as it gets: ad hominem. If I criticize “various kinds of recognition,” for example, the Pulitzer, tenure, appearance in Best American Poetry or whatever, then I am to be dismissed as “envious.” How facile! Rarely, if ever, is my criticism examined and disproved with logic and fact. Evidently, my criticism often tends to expose uncomfortable truths, which cannot be disproved; thus, the need to respond via ad hominem, as in “envious and petulant.” After all, how can one possibly argue against, for example, that one man only, the librarian of Congress, decides who the nation’s poet laureate shall be and that one man was put into power by Bill Clinton, a base politico. So, yes, just dismiss me as “envious.” But that still does not make that uncomfortable truth disappear. It does not make the fact that the Beatnik myth is one of counterculture and disinterest in money, whereas most of the Beatniks in reality sought wealth and recognition by the culture they were supposedly trying to counter. Thus, I expose the myth. Thus, you or friend are to label me “envious.” I know you will not be able to understand this because you are angry at me and anger serves to blind.