Ishmael Reed

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
But in spirit I agree. I also get the sense that anal-retentivity is residually characteristic of WASP capitalism as well, more fully bodied in the puritan days presumably.
 

linebaugh

Well-known member
Frued said it was the inability of the child to deal with defecating because they cant handle the temporary loss of control over the body.
 

catalog

Well-known member
But also don't forget that (unforgettable) ginsberg quote I posted, from Iain sinclair's "kodak mantra diaries" where he locates the entirety of Western problems as stemming from the fact we don't wet wash

GINSBERG [talking about a guy getting very angry at him, telling him he should go fight in Vietnam, cut off his long hair etc]: He is suffering more than me. How to get him out of this prison, that is the point. You don't get him out by locking the gates of hostility even tighter. You try and let in a flood of compassion. And I was almost crying for him. He seemed so PAINED it was horrible. He was like my mother, afraid.

GEOFFREY: Which was the relaxation of the muscular tonus to get rid of anal retention.

GINSBERG: If that's what the syndrome was.

GEOFFREY: It keeps people clamped in their heads so they can't relax. Fanon said that in the colonised countries the people had acquired so strong a muscular tonus that they were always tensed up. They didn't know where they were inside their heads.

GINSBERG: One technique that Kerouac discussed at great length in THE DHARMA BUMS is for Western nations to begin washing their sphincters after crapping. He had a big long essay/conversation, riding across country, talking about how the Indians and the Arabs had the good sense after they went to the john and defecated to wash their behinds. Leaving their behinds clean and sweet smelling, so that love-making could take place there, as is natural and also so that people sitting around could relax. They wouldn't have to clench their sphincter muscles to keep the moist damp from staining their underwear.

If people keep themselves ready for lovemaking in that area, or for pleasure, at all times, that might open out a whole new character change in every direction.

I think there should be a great campaign amongst the young for everybody, especially their parents, to wash their behinds. Which would poijt up an area of consciousness which is known but never spoken of - but which is so real that nobody can avoid it. Anybody can see it, smell it, touch it, everytime they take their clothes off to go to bed. But they keep it secret.
 

luka

Well-known member
it also reminds me of Pounds distinction between the south (of europe) and the north and how the south
priveleged its inhabitatnts by allowing them to have 'nerve-set open' whereas here we are obliged to tense up against the assults our environment makes on us
 

luka

Well-known member
Frued said it was the inability of the child to deal with defecating because they cant handle the temporary loss of control over the body.
he also talked about the 'voluptuous' feeling of holding a shit in, its forcing its way out and youre holding it in
 

luka

Well-known member
But in spirit I agree. I also get the sense that anal-retentivity is residually characteristic of WASP capitalism as well, more fully bodied in the puritan days presumably.
pound's cantos are all about this.

Screenomics. Simple/keep it in motion/ the valve is sphincter/unblock the turd-hoard tightarse/and burn the surplus/ in celebration.
 

version

Well-known member
it also reminds me of Pounds distinction between the south (of europe) and the north and how the south
priveleged its inhabitatnts by allowing them to have 'nerve-set open' whereas here we are obliged to tense up against the assults our environment makes on us
I read something the other day about D&G on American writing and geography;

"This book contains a fine analysis of geographical and its role in American mythology and literature, and of the reversal of directions. In the East, there was a search for a specifically American code and for a recoding with Europe (Henry James, Eliot, Pound, etc.); in the South, there was the overcoding of the slave system, with its ruin and the ruin of the plantations during the Civil War (Faulkner, Caldwell); from the North came capitalist decoding (Dos Passos, Dreiser); the West, however, played the role of the line of flight combining travel, hallucination, madness, the Indians, perceptive and mental experimentation, the shifting of frontiers, the rhizome (Ken Kesey and his “fog machine”, the beat generation, etc.). Every great American author creates a cartography, even in his or her style; in contrast to what is done in Europe, each makes a map that is directly connected to the real social movement crossing America."

 

catalog

Well-known member
also pynchon in gr - unforgettable moment when he says the real reason colonialism was so attractive was the sheer joy of just letting your shit fall to the ground and being able to smell it.

also tournier in that friday book talks about it.
 

forclosure

Well-known member
I know @yyaldrin , @catalog and @linebaugh have read Mumbo Jumbo, but has anyone read anything else of his? I picked up Mumbo Jumbo the other day and I'm loving it. I love how loose and ramshackle it is, all these tidbits of history and voodoo and all sorts flying at you. I wouldn't be surprised if Gibson read it prior to Count Zero, given the focus on the Loa in that one. It's interesting to read something positive about a pandemic at this time too; Jes Grew being a virus we should want to spread.
i've read Flight to Canada, Juice and that Haunting of Lin Manuel Miranda play that got talked about recently

also got a collection of his plays that i haven't finished yet, Reed is a guy where even if i don't agree with everything he's always thought provoking and the sense of humour is always there.
 

forclosure

Well-known member
i got yellow back radio broke down in my room somewhere it's short but dense with information

(if any of you want to ask me about Reed then gwan i'm game)
 
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