The Changing of the 'Garde and more rambling.

[Prsamsa at aol.com]

Otto wrote "It's difficult to think of any artistic avant-garde 
thesedays."---------------------I agree, which is what prompted my initial question.  My 
fear is thatover-commercialization of the art process and the co-optation 
ofpotentially vanguard movements (especially in music) that very little isproduced 
which could be regarded as revolutionary.  Presumably, theadaptation of the 
title "avant-garde" to any author/artist/musician isthe kiss of death or perhaps 
the tolling of the end of the revolution.    

--Maybe, maybe not.   People keep telling me I have to listen to Radiohead.
Ani DeFranco.   Couldn't it also be that
with so many of the pioneers in post-modern writing becoming older--and I
don't mean to be ageist here--newer writers are rebelling against the 
well-wrought,
Borgesian or Munro-tight story and writing what they feel?  in what genre 
they want as well?  Seems market forces, including a glut of creative writing 
grads, will
direct them to supply what the market wants, so naturally they might try to 
make
some money at horror, gothic, mysteries,  true love stories.   Maybe just 
wishful thinking
but if I read another he-said-she-said wistful romance in a slick quarterly, 
with the epiphany inserted right near the end, I'm not only gonna beat the 
writer over the head
with Madonna's SEX book but maybe beat off onto the pages to see if some real
message lies there.  
     The permutations of creativity are endless but the formula for this 
imaginary love story
is still there:   Wit, description, dialog, longing, distance, plot kink, 
epiphany.  Am
I just wishing for stories that actually give people pleasure?  Yo, dudes.  
I'd love to
see  Philip Glass in concert but gimme Bruce to heal me or make me cry.
Perhaps I'm saying--I mean to be irony-free here, but pumping up those wit 
muscles so long that--that in uncertain times, people want familiar, "classical" 
themes rather
than more "romantic" or experimental ones.  And it's a cycle:   AC, not DC.  
So, strange-- would that make S. King this age's Hemingway, or Dickens?  
There's a certain morality to his stories without Updike's prissiness.  Oops, there 
I go again.         
          It's late as hell.   Give up you say, or give us an example:  'kay. 
  The stories
in TC Boyle's "if the river was whiskey."   George Saunders.  E.L: Doctorow, 
a recent
New Yorker,  "Jolene:  A life."  Ray Carver, "Will you please be quiet, 
please?"  And yes I liked that Updike continues the Rabbit saga by focusing on 
Nelson Angstrom
now.  --got distracted, not talking avante-garde--just Mindless pleasure.  

G'night.

P.