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what we write about when we write about lester bangs
Longtime associate D Bauler provides us with a refreshingly contrarian anti-Lester-Bangs rant.
I've never read any Lester Bangs, so I can't say with authority that db is on the right track here, but I can say that people who cite Bangs as an influence are often horrible writers, prone to all manner of hyperbolic excess. This especially comes to light when the Bangs-disciples write about Bangs himself.
For instance, the newest issue of The Believer features an unreadable review of the new collection of Bangs' essays, which is almost entirely composed of overwritten passages like:
"Bangs practiced criticism as a hilarious form of guerrilla class warfare, the revenge of the starving underclass (as much in existential as economic terms) against the proudly oblivious Overclass, the bourgeois-boho-yoyos, the Middle-C brows furrowed in rigid anal-retentive concentration, and indeed the High ideals of Class itself, understood as a plumy nexus of ego-massaging rationalizations, humorless self-importance, affluent pretensions, good table manners, solid musicianship, starched professionalism, and an insatiable appetite for respectability at all costs. Discomfiting the comfortable and afflicting the affected was what he lived for—'you cannot kick intentional cripples awake,' but gee, Officer Krupke, it sure is fun to try anyway—but there was something more at stake than just being a gadfly freelancing boils or a chaotic court-jesting nusiance."
Save me.
A longer rant about The Believer in general is coming soon. (Short version: I'm undecided.) |
Wednesday, October 01, 2003
3:05 PM
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