Torrey's book not even TRIES to be more or less objective. His prejudices against EP are
obvious from the first pages on. And the rest of that book tries to construct some kind of
conspiracy theory behind which, of course, is the solid reproach: Pound shd have been
sentenced. He was not insane. He simpy knew how to get psychiatrists and lawyers on to his
side. The whole trial thus was plain nonsense etc etc.
 
  I still find Julian Cornell's "The Trial of Ezra Pound" (NY: John Day 1966) the best book to read on
the "Case of EP". He was EP's attorney, and thus knew everything fist hand - not, as did Torrey,
from hearsay, dubius witnesses, &  a shamelessly one-sided way of dealing with the records.
 
I really don't think it much worthwhile to discuss Torrey any further . Strangely, for example,
when I had hoped that Casillo's "Genealogy of the Demons" wd have raised a pretty hot
discusion [in PAI back then] practically nothing happened - as if some Poundians were AFRAID
of articulating their opinions about Cassilo's critical - but nevertheless highly interesting - bias.
THAT book wd, I think, really offer some very solid ground for discussion... Torrey's does not. It
belongs to the strange world of people such as Robert Graves who tirelessly hinted to the
"fact" that EP shd have been hanged publicly... That's one of the reason's I liked Alfred Kazin's
statement's in the "Pound Odyssey" film so much. Very sound. Very fair.
 
The question of EP's sanity is another and very complicated thing. In the clinical sense [is that the
right word?] he of course was insane or rather suffered from attacks of insanity and in his later
years even from something we today might call Alzheimer disease. He complains often - in letters
to Laughlin, Cornell and others - about "being empty in his head". But the most prominent trait of
his illness must have been his paranoia. There are uncountable examples of typical paranoid
behavior on EP's side. And I believe that even Maryde Rachewiltz wd subscribe to this. And
Hugh Kenner.
 
So - are Rock-Drill, Thrones, and the Fragments "insane poetry"? Are they poetry at all? Maybe
Philip Kuberski's "Calculus of Ezra Pound", I've just started to read will provide some intelligent
answers...-
 
alex