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his thematic componants include both walt whitman and sholom aleichem ellis island and the golden gate what this suggests in concrete terms is a divided allegiance between on the one hand the intellectual sophistication the new critics the fugitives etc which would be expressed as a contempt and impatience with the beats european new wave cinema etc and a pragmatic belief in the social conscience of the 1930 s a populist attachment to middle class values equality and opportunity on the other that these apparently somewhat incompatible tendencies might somehow coexist without conflict is perhaps the central underlying preoccupation of his work the end of the open road for simpson was in effect a teaching position at the university of california berkeley in the early 1960 s california was the end of the continent and the last outpost of the symbolic westering escape and exile of americans from the old world of europe simpson saw it as the climax the epicenter of a sort of final testing of american dreams and promises not least one supposes his own in order to understand the mood of the time in which this book was written it s necessary to suspend one s sense of the continuity of history this suspension is not unlike the so called suspension of disbelief which readers or audiences are asked to perform whenever they read a piece of fiction or view a dramatic action we tend to think of history that s far enough away from us to be viewed with disinterest as having a fixed finished one size fits all quality but the cultural milieu is rarely that simple and there are usually at least five ways of looking at any period in history picking out this set of facts or that sequence of events to demonstrate whichever point of view the speaker or writer wishes to emphasize popular accounts tell us that the 1960 s represented a revolt of the younger generation against the staid capitulation of their middle class forbears a revolt which set the stage for a whole new revanchment of policy and direction moving into the decades of the seventies and eighties in one sense this was a return to the principles and spirit of the 1930 s the depression had unleashed a powerful backlash of the majority in america and western europe against the excesses of big capital and uncontrolled industrial exploitation world war ii and the subsequent economic prosperity of the 1950 s had driven this populist sentiment underground and especially during the mccarthy era had brought about a strong reactionary backlash against the american left fueled by the cold war accompanied by a lingering guilt over the failure of socialism in russia it seemed circa 1960 as if a generational split along these lines was taking place in politics philosophy and the arts there were harbingers of another wave of liberality figures like simpson a war veteran and graduate of columbia ma and phd tended to see the world in terms of a conflict between order and disorder developed versus undeveloped raw and cooked thus he accepted the formalist academic poetics of his day and tried to interpret digest and incorporate events unfolding around him in terms of dilemma and resolution american poetry whatever it is it must have a stomach that can digest rubber coal uranium moons poems like the shark it contains a shoe it must swim for miles through the desert uttering cries that are almost human simpson s reaction to the whitmanic embrace of the limitless experience of america s vast variety implies that the poet must sacrifice his humanity in order to hold such conflicting elements such engorgement will transform even pollute the mind of an artist indeed simpson who was a fellow undergraduate student with allen ginsberg at columbia published a parody of howl squeal i saw the best minds of my generation reading their poems to vassar girls being interviewed by mademoiselle having their publicity handled by professionals when can i go into an editorial office and have my stuff published because i m weird i could go on writing like this forever at the end of the open road is bracketed by two poems addressed to the state of america towards the end of the 20th century and they define for simpson his place at this watershed moment in his career as well as the state of the union at that point in history perched on the continent s edge in california in california here i am troubling the dream coast with my new york face bearing among the realtors and tennis players my dark preoccupation there once was an epical clatter voices and banjos tennessee ohio rising like incense in the sight of heaven today there is an angel in the gate lie back walt whitman there on the fabulous raft with the king and the duke for the white row of the marina faces the rock turn round the wagons here lie back we cannot bear the stars any more those infinite spaces let the realtors divide the mountain for they have already subdivided the valley rectangular city blocks astonished herodotus in babylon cortez in tenochtitlan and here s the same old city planner death we cannot turn or stay for though we sleep and let the reins fall slack the great cloud wagons move onward still dreaming of a pacific this is outwardly comic writing bald and sheepish but it sets the tone for the entire collection simpson portrays himself as an ambassador from the eastern establishment his dark new york face and regards california as part playground part exploited paradise the eastern seabord was once the promised land for generations of european immigrants but california is like a never never land of empty dreams except our dreams keep on going like cloud wagons sailing west toward the orient our arrival doesn t quench the wanderlust that seduced our forefathers across the vast continent it merely stirs more ambition more anxiety in the concluding poem of the book lines written near san francisco simpson closes the intimations laid down at the beginning with a distillation of the separate observations and images he has laid out in part 3 every night at the end of america we taste our wine looking at the pacific how sad it is the end of america while we were waiting for the land they d finished it with gas drums on the hilltops cheap housing in the valleys where lives and mean and wretched but the banks thrive and the realtors rejoice they have their america still there is something unsettled in the air out there on the pacific there s no america but the marines whitman was wrong about the people but right about himself the land is within at the end of the open road we come to ourselves though mad columbus follows the sun into the sea we cannot follow we must remain to serve the returning sun and to set tables for death for we are colonists of death not as some think of the english and we are preparing thrones for him to sit poems to read and beds in which it may please him to rest this is the land the pioneers looked for shading their eyes against the sun a murmur of serious life but the ending seems so tame a murmur of serious life whatever could he mean the restless journey begun 500 years ago in southern europe to discover a new route to the fabled indies the entire arc of our efforts and investigations ends here on the california coast facing the seeming endless expanse of the pacific unless by serious we are meant to understand our burden to the given to the limit of our fantasy our striving a single earth one humanity no escapes no el dorado no nirvana no xanadu only the settled condition of our common purpose ________ it s also of note that simpson was born in kingston jamaica and didn t come to the u s until 1940 i haven t read his memoir of his early life but the fact of his foreign birth and upbringing probably also contributes to simpson s difference i e being as much a citizen of the world as of america proper posted by curtis faville at 11 15 am 2 comments thursday february 18 2010 la confidential ellroy s poem to noir southland if you ve ever seen james ellroy in person you have some inkling of what a weird impression he can make i m not a big fan of the noir genre in crime literature but ellroy holds down a strong position among the hardboiled or maybe fried contingent never one to pull punches or soften a blow he can be counted on to choose always the most emphatic or tough approach to any situation or expression ellroy s been obsessed with the la crime scene all his life in part as a result of the murder of his mother when he was ten a crime that was never solved ellroy s early life was troubled with petty crime substance abuse poverty and rootlessness self educated he published his first novel in 1981 based on his experience working as a golf caddy in 1987 he published the first volume of his l a quartet which includes l a confidential 1990 his mature writing is complexly plotted and features a dense colloquial telegraphic style that reads like a combination police blotter and rap patois it takes some getting used to and isn t to everyone s taste the movie telescopes much of the detail and plot into a little over two hours but still manages to feel a trifle cramped and hurried in places a tale of corruption inside the los angeles police department involving a high ranking captain james cromwell as dudley smith in probably his finest role ever vamping as the smooth irish operator with a black heart and a small group of goon subordinates it pits three unlikely confederates russell crowe as bud white a tough guy with a chip as big as a bowling ball on his shoulder guy pearce as ed exley also a career role the ambitious young would be chief of police trying vindicate his late cop father s memory and kevin spacey as the celebrity cop jack vincennes each of these unlikely heroes finds his virtue just in time though the spacey character is off d by captain smith well before the movie s violent climactic scene at an abandoned motel out among the oil derricks smith is trying to consolidate and take over the drug and prostitution rackets from a crumbling crime empire of recently imprisoned boss mickey cohen and bumping off anyone who threatens to bar his way both spacey vincennes and pearce exley stumble accidentally onto disturbing contradictions in separate murder cases while crowe white is dragooned as the heavy into captain smith s illegal brutality sessions the plot s thickened by the machinations of smut and scandal peddler sid hudgens played by danny devito and spiced up by high class hooker lynn bracken played beautifully by kim basinger who won the academy award for best actress here jerry goldsmith s original score leavened with contemporary clips from the swing and torchy hits of the time and punctuated with eerie sound effects is brilliant the music combined with the framing device of having devito s scandal sheet voice over touting the chamber of commerce attractions of the new sunlit suburbia and movie land glamour gives the film its nostalgic identity real police department scandals of the 1950 s form the basis for this typical good cop bad cop corruption trope the film is like a bridge between the heavy black and white noir cliches of the 1940 crime films and the later atmospheric evocations like chinatown or goodfellas ellroy s mood restores the punch of the older style while incorporating some of the neglected sleaze homosexual prostitution raw racial violence kevin spacey as usual steals the show with his slick portrayal of the compromised detective taking payoffs from devito to set up celebrity arrests but cromwell captain smith is so menacing and smooth he ought to have gotten an oscar himself the film owes something to scorcese in its flat plane cartoonish cubism where characters and sets become one dimensional but there s something deeper going on here crowe white s past of being raised in an abusive household drives a primitive rage in him expressed both as violence in his work and profound affection for bassinger bracken crowe plays it straight in a part that doesn t allow him to show much intelligence along the lines of how he played it in gladiator there s a clear relationship between the white character and ellroy s own real life obsession about wife abusers the emotional core of the drama there s a saying in the academy that the definition of a novel is a book that has something wrong with it one could make the same statement about ellroy s books and by extension the movies made from them his troubled childhood difficult youth and brushes with madness crime and pornographic obsession gave him a bird s eye view of the social and psychological stress that would become the formulaic game board of his fictional world l a confidential is like a valentine to the noir genre by a man who to some degree lived the reality of it authenticity may get lost when the person who tells the story is too close to the material but ellroy s outsider stance is the perfect imaginative position his characters may at times seem like cartoon versions of people but that s part of their power real life can seem like a dream or as with ellroy a nightmare filled with unsolved mysteries abandoned verdicts and unpaid debts and then fiction can serve as the court of last resort in a personal code of justice posted by curtis faville at 8 47 pm 3 comments irving penn small trades the glitz the grits of irving penn s new book small trades los angeles j paul getty museum 2009 one s first apprehension is its anachronistic anti climactic quality the s mall trades project as it was termed was carried out in paris london and new york in 1950 51 though originally intended to be reproduced in vogue magazine as feature article illustrations penn eventually made full scale art prints from the medium format negatives printing them in platinum palladium emulsions it has always seemed to me that penn s work exhibits a tension between things and people seen through the careful eye of a fashion illustrator and his naturalistic interest in exploiting the gritty verité textures and surfaces of everyday real life fashion photography is primarily about creating a sense of a perfected occasion one in which an invented elevated social or artistic potential is fantasized through the production of idealized images of style wealth conspicuous consumption a demonstration of or the aspiration towards class and esteem working for vogue beginning in the late 1940 s penn s approach to subject matter was studio oriented under circumstances of utmost control never a photo journalist he was always a perfectionist seeing his images as clarified instances with a high degree of definition and purpose there is never anything accidental about a penn still life or a penn portrait everything is just so and the reproduction of the original vision is carried out with painstaking devotion to detail and effect starting out in paris working in a natural light studio setting penn s preference as seen below using coarse theatrical canvas backgrounds exploiting all the primitivistic v...
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