Jon:
Can't resist a word or two on Zane Grey. Made a fortune, bought Kaiser
Wilhelm's (I think it was) yacht‹anyway it was a great lavish thing fit for
a Sheik‹was a world-class sport fisherman with many world records, wrote in
pencil sitting at a Morris chair (more than 80 books), fled from Lackawaxen
PA on the Delaware to Pebble Beach CA to be closer to the folks making
movies of his books ( a zillion of them), had an accommodating wife who was
great at business and editing, was my father's favorite author, has been
largely replaced in the affections of Western-lovers by the even more
prolific Louis L'Amour, was buried back in Lackawaxen under a modest stone
along with his wife. About both ZG and LL the accepted opinion is that they
were impossible hacks, but they sure as dickens SOLD. Eat your heart out.

Riders of the Purple Sage is one of those books that every would-be hack, me
included, dreams of having handed him by the Muse when he is most in need
(that's what happened to G.): it is in its realm a work of sheer genius. By
all means dwell on the central horse race as you read. The mother of all
cinematic horse races. And the tiny Shangri-la the protagonists spend time
in is the Utopia to end them all. I came West to find it and am still
looking. Good luck with your marvelously innocent tutees. Tom White

> From: Jon & Anne Weidler <[log in to unmask]>
> Reply-To: - Ezra Pound discussion list of the University of Maine
> <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Thu, 2 Jan 2003 10:30:55 -0600
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: A complete (ly welcome) change of subject
>
> I have nothing to say about whether or not Pound would e-mail to a list
> purporting to discuss his work.  The notion is absurd and misleading,
> in my opinion, and a poor use of our collective gray matter.
>
> So I'm about to begin teaching next semester, in about two weeks.  The
> first novel I'm teaching (like three other novels I'll be teaching) is
> one I've never read before, The Riders of the Purple Sage by Zane Grey.
> I've been told that this book was a massive bestseller in the teens
> and twenties, and that it is something of a standard bearer for the
> Western novel at large.  Does anyone have any excited or exciting
> opinions about this book, its genre, or the possible relationships
> between it and the modernisms flourishing at the time?  I have no idea
> myself, though I imagine I'll develop a number of opinions as I read
> the damn thing.  Oh yes, and does anyone (preferably educators) have
> any opinions about teaching books one has never read?  I seem to be
> drawn inexorably towards the new read whenever I'm designing a class,
> and have convinced myself that my inclination has some pedagogical
> justification.  Of course, I'm blind to much about myself.  Who after
> all is not?
>
> Speaking of which, the internet doesn't just suck because you can't see
> the asshole on the other end.  You also can't see the people who read
> your screed, and since you can't recognize or accomodate their
> responses, you also can't see the asshole on your own end.  So hah.
> Not only does everyone have an asshole, everyone in some respect is
> one.  Let's be polite, productive, and entertaining assholes, shall we?
>
> One other thing: what's the point of distinguishing between poetics and
> politics, when any inclined reader can find that they're implied in one
> another?  I'm sure that the teenager writing the broken hearted poem in
> his Trig class doesn't think much about its socio-political sources,
> consequences, and subterranean content.  Does that mean one couldn't
> read it as a document that emerges from a socially pressurized
> evnironment?  Maybe you wouldn't want to disillusion (or discourage or
> confuse) the Noble Teenager by telling him what it was that he REALLY
> said, but that's not really the point.
>
> This seems like a fight about what's REALLY being said in a given
> verse, and that by itself begs the question.  The political seems more
> materially grounded as a concept than does "the poetic", but that's a
> dead end: neither concept, the political or the poetic, rests on some
> permanent or secret foundation that makes one more real than the other.
> After all, they're concepts, not colors or quantities (which I know
> are also concepts, but hopefully you get my drift.)  And as concepts,
> we can recognize when they apply and when they don't, when they're
> gateways to interesting discussion and when they're just ideological
> toys.  Pound certainly did not consider the political disposable, and
> neither did he dismiss the poetic.  Partially, what he did was to set
> the stage for the difficulties we're having, implicating the lofty
> traditions of fossilized poetries within the sordid ethical
> complexities of modernizing humanity.  And vice versa.  I realize that
> what I've written says very little that is substantive, merely that
> there are connections between poetry and politics that Pound makes
> active problems of, but perhaps it can clear the way for a more
> interesting dialogue, and a little less of an
> "I'm-astounded-by-that-asshole-over-there" polemical clearing house.
>
> There's no need to save Pound from anyone.  He's already dead.
>
> Respect,
> Jon Weidler