A Pompous, Ignorant Wind-bagJack FoleyNot long ago I received an e-mail request to submit work to a literary magazine; there was no question of any money involved. The person writing told me that he was “a poet and the editor of ----- Magazine, esatablished (sic) 1997.” (Spelling was rather a problem in this person’s e-mails: not a good sign in an “editor”!) He explained that he had seen some of my work in The Alsop Review and commented, “Even when I do not agree with you, I value the questions raised.” He then sent me a second e-mail “explaining” (in case I missed the point) that he “forgot to mention I was primarily interested in soliciting an essay from you or a review.” Why would someone do that? Why would someone who was himself “a poet and...editor” ask me, a poet and critic, to send him only my essays and reviews? If he admired my essays, wouldn’t he be interested in at least looking at my poetry? Subsequent exchanges showed that he was quite ignorant of any verse I had written. Further: look at the terms in which he “compliments” me: “Even when I do not agree with you, I value the questions raised.” The word “I” appears twice in that sentence; the word “you” only once--and that is, here, of some significance. Had he written that he read my piece on Yeats, say, and liked it or disliked it, had he been in any way specific about anything I wrote, I would have found the “compliment” more valuable. Instead, the “compliment” is mostly about himself: “Even when I do not agree with you, I value the questions raised.” Indeed, even if you disregard the implied egotism of the assertion, it is still a totally generic statement: it could be said about anyone who writes anything about anything. This did not look very promising. What kind of scenario was likely? Could it be this? I write some things (essays and reviews) which he publishes in his magazine; people notice them and like them. Then--and this is the important thing--I write about him. (Note that he refers to himself first as “a poet,” though he is contacting me only in his capacity as “editor.”) Since people have been impressed with my other essays, they will naturally be impressed with that one too; and of course my essay on his work will be favorable: I will be predisposed to like his poetry since he is doing me the grand favor of publishing me in his wonderful magazine “esatablished (sic) 1997.” Was I being unduly suspicious here--or do people use each other in these ways? I replied somewhat elliptically--which was perhaps a mistake. I told him that since I was already producing an essay a week for The Alsop Review, it would be a burden for me to produce more. If, however, he saw something on the site that he liked, he would be welcome to re-publish it in his magazine: You write, “Even when I do not agree with you I value the questions raised.” I remember a movie director saying something like that about Pauline Kael. From my point of view, I don’t write in order to secure the reader's “agreement” (or “disagreement,” for that matter), and I’m not very interested in reviews: I write, it seems to me, to wake people up. When I wrote about films, I used to say that I was not interested in telling you whether a film were good or bad; I was interested in finding out what I was doing there in the dark.Amazed that I might object to his comment, he decided that I must have just missed the point and wrote back to “explain” to me that his words were meant as a “compliment”: “Even when I do not agree with you I value the questions raised.” That is a compliment. Likes and dislikes are tastes, systems of taste and artificial objectivity or as Knut Hamsun used to call it “selfless subjectivity.” If I valued only what I liked I’d be a facist (sic).That takes care of me. I answered that pompous statement with “Oh” and gave thanks to heaven that he wasn’t “a facist (sic).” More exchanges occurred. Finally, exasperated, I wrote this: “Even when I do not agree with you I value the questions raised.” I don’t know where you got my name or what if anything of mine you’ve read. It seems to me that you haven’t the wit or originality of thought to be able to recognize why someone might object to that so-called “compliment.” (My reply to you did explain it to some degree, but you didn’t read what I wrote with any care.) And, frankly, if you haven’t the wit for that, I don’t think you have the wit to recognize genuinely new work either--why or how it should arise. Congratulations on not being a “facist” (sic).These remarks of course infuriated him. He was supposed to be the judge, not me. (“I am a poet and the editor....”) He wrote back denouncing me in all the ways he could think of--hitting me with, among other things, Dan Schneider’s “intelligent and witty criticism.” (He gave me the URL, in case I hadn’t seen Schneider’s essay; evidently he hadn’t read enough of The Alsop Review to have noticed my reply to Schneider.) But the interesting thing was that he never did figure out why I should have objected to his “compliment,” never understood why a reasonable person might find such a statement less than kind. He decided finally that the problem was that I couldn’t stand criticism of any sort, that I was objecting to the “even when I disagree with you” aspect of his statement.. Kiddies, there are a lot of people like this person out there in the world of literature. Bertolt Brecht would have called such people “sharks.” I called this one a pompous, ignorant wind-bag.
|
Jack Foley