Sinister: It's too late now to die young

[P F]

That Virginian Ringwald fact was a corker. She was on
British TV last night. It was fairly 'explicit', I'm
afraid. Sixteen Candles fans really missed out. And
I'm a Sixteen Candles fan.

Miller mulled:

>>> Yes I know people can be entertained by Virginia
Woolf and Syliva Plath,

And it's true, the very thought of Plath's syliva
entertains me for hours.

It was deliberate? Oh, yes, I see.

>>> in which VW takes the wooden spoon with "How It
Strikes a Contemporary".

She would have to take it, wouldn't she, cos in that
famous essay about, ho-hum, 1910 she banged the drum,
nay, the saucepan lid, about how ONE'S COOK is not
what she was in the C19. eg: the cook now insists that
madame do some of the cooking. If that means taking a
wooden spoon, madame, so be it.

>>> But somehow I struggled through it, only to find
T.S. Eliot's "Tradition and the Individual Talent"
blocking my path.

Golly! But this sounds like one heck of a book.

Odd thing about that essay: the way he stops halfway
through (it was in the Egoist in 2 parts, I think)
having started on his scientific metaphor, then comes
back in the second half and says, 'Welcome back - and
we're joined at this point by listeners to the World
Service' - and adds, 'You may recall that I talked of
carbon monoxide blah blah... the meaning of my
metaphor was this'.

I could check these details, but to what end? I am
just too lazy to walk across the room for them right
now. The geezer Miller knows what I'm on about,
anyway.

Oh, OK. here he is:

'The analogy was that of the catalyst' - that's the
bit I find silly and fun. 'When the two gases
previously mentioned are mixed in the presence of a
filament of platinum, they form sulphurous acid. This
combination takes place only if the platinum is
present; nevertheless the newly formed acid contains
no trace of platinum, and the platinum itself is
apparently unaffected: has remained inert, neutral,
and unchanged. The mind of the poet is the shred of
platinum'.

(T.S. Eliot, Selected Essays, London: Faber: 1951,
p.18.)

I have only just noticed that he dedicated that volume
to Harriet Shaw Weaver, 'in gratitude, and in
recognition of her services to English Letters'.
That makes me think. For TSE to dedicate his Selected
Essays (and this is a big tome we're talking about,
with many of his greatest thoughts in it) to a
Communist lady - that was sweet.

Maybe if I ever get to publish a Selected Essays, I
should make a point of dedicating it to Harriet
Wheeler, in gratitude, and in recognition of her
services to English records.

It's a good thing, by the way, that Steady Mike is off
discussing old TV programmes in that Alaskan pipeline
of his. If he was around he'd undoubtedly tear a strip
off TSE's pseudo-scientific platinum jargon.

I quite like that essay, really. It once struck me
that the best way of understanding it was to think
about 69 Love Songs. No wonder Miller doesn't dig it.

>>> Edmund Wilson nearly finished me off with
"Philocetes: The Wound and the Bow". Each unto
their own.

I have never read that one, but I love Wilson all the
same. Axel's Castle is enough. But there's a fine
essay on James, a staggeringly knowledgeable one on
Shaw, an original and pioneering one on 'Flaubert's
Politics' - this all in The Triple Thinkers, I think.

Gosh - I love being on The Official Edmund Wilson &
Lionel Trilling Mailing List.

>>> Slyvia Plath fan

That's a good one too. SP has surely never been
mentioned as much before on sinister in a single week.
I think it's all a cunning advertising plan by La
Welthorpe. He'll, I mean, she'll, have us hotly
debating PAUL MORLEY next.

That reminds me: 'I Love 1984'. Morley was good value
for money, I thought. Especially when dissing Robert
Elms and the Modfather. I thought that was the best
episode yet. Anyone else?

>>> Joan Didion's in it, Lloyd Cole turned a
whole generation on to Joan Didion.

There's no doubt about it.

Dan Wakefield (see previous e-mail - I think it may
have been 'We Don't Need No Piece Of Paper From The
City Hall') turned on the whole previous generation to
Joan Didion. Or did he just turn on to, or even into,
Joan Didion? I mean, Joan's not been seen around for a
while. Hasn't posted for yonks.

>>> For instance, I really like the subnormal Black
Sabbath roadie riffing on one of the Foxgloves' songs
("Second Hand"?),

treasurable.

>>> but not to the exclusion of more delicate
offerings, like the Welthorpe penned "Stop
the Bus I Want a Wee-Wee".

outstanding.


You, I mean. Not us or anything.

>>> Am I right in thinking the next Papercuts will be
out to coincide with ATP?

Yes - ATP 2002. And there'll be another one along in
the summer of 2010, to coincide with the rerelease of
the film of Arthur Clarke's novel.
 
>>> it's all thirty-five yard aerial benders.

That's what I heard.

>>> I bet Anthony Powell didn't do his own dusting.

No. He had to write, or thought he did. Some have
disagreed.

Best recent thing on Powell: Michael Wood in the LRB.

It's grate being on the Michael Wood Mailing List.


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