So, as usual at the moment, blogging has become sparse, and thinning by the day. Thee past few months, pathetically seem to have flown by. September to now, the verge of the Christmas month, seems to have blinked past. I’ve done nothing.
One thing I’ve realised is that by June next year I’m going to have to get myself a job of some description that pays as a job would. I’ve recently met someone a few years older than me who over the past few years has amassed the level of journalistic experience that I could only dream of. Admittedly the paths are different; she wandered into political, but mainly economic journalism, though not by choice. I on the other hand, proud of little jobs, extra reviews to do. All unpaid, but there we go.
I’ve just finished reading The electric kool-aid acid test, which I enjoyed. I think as a journalist and indeed as a writer Woolfe is nothing on some of his contemporaries of the self-penned ‘New Journalism’ but where I do find a lot of respect for him, is in that invention of said journalism. ‘New Journalism’ is so fucking cool. I mean theoretically its a postmodernist’s dream, but its not really what tickles me about it. It does genuinelly work well; if some straight-up Times critic featured Kesey and his generation then it never would have come across with the same impact, and insight as Wolfe accomplished. Thompson bettered this; he removed the irritating omniscience that was present and unnecessary in Electric Kool-aid…., while Wolfe directs and narrates, or Thompson merely commentates; the journalist should follow, not lead, and Wolfe’s own admission that he researched through others just feels a little, I don’t know, like it hasn’t truly accomplished what it was trying to achieve. I think Wolfe did a marvelous thing, but it was a precursor to something better.
The other reason Electric kool-aid.. intrigued me so much was because it was such a fascinating generation. America through the twentieth century really is wonderfully exciting; in literature, art, film, and music, and then later tv, everything I like comes from the States. The referencing Wolfe naturally has to instill becomes second nature very quickly; by midpoint the Merry pranksters feel like celebrities, or visionaries, or artists, as much as Kerouac or Burroughs or Ginsberg might do. Seeing the coming together of the beats with the acidheads, and the acidheads with the beatles, was just magnificent to see unravel and develop.
I’ve never, — got distracted by Dave – more comedy. Dave seems to be all I watch.
I digress, and should move on.
I just lack any motivation of sorts. Bah.
