On Joyce (briefly) & what writers know - Slightly TP

[Jude Bloom]

In Alex Ross's The Rest Is Noise, he relates the story of Schoenberg, in a grocery store, spotting a colleague's wife in the produce or whatever, and shouting out loud, "Lies! Lies, Frau Smith (or whoever)! I NEVER HAD SYPHILIS!"

Cause supposedly the main character in Doctor Faustus was a thinly re-worked Schoenberg.

Has anyone done a paper on like, art and syphilis? Nietzsche. Schubert. Keats. A slew of other folks I can't remember. If cat shit can control our behavior, surely syphilis has been an important ghost-writer in western art?




On Jun 24, 2012, at 6:12 AM, Matthew Cissell wrote:

And although Joyce was no specialist in any of these fields, he made extremely  good use of the material. The same could be said of Mann's use of Nietzsche or music. (Kai, if you're reading I know that Mann had more than a passing knowledge of FN and 12 tone theory, but I maintain my argument that he was no specialist. I think it fair to say that Mann knew FN and music better than JJ knew Freud et al.) Kerouac wrote jazz, but could he explain in musical terms what is happening on Kind of Blue. No. Good writers get material and use it well without being experts on the subject.