Literarisches Events (in and around Lawrence KS)

  • PATRICIA LOCKWOOD. Lawrence. Thursday, September 11, 7:00 p.m., Spooner Hall, KU Campus.
  • PATRICIA LOCKWOOD. Lawrence. Friday, September 19, 7:00 p.m. Lawrence Public Library. Sponsored by Raven Bookstore.
  • DENNIS ETZEL, JR. & RACHEL CROSS. Lawrence. Thursday, September 25, 7:00 p.m., Raven Bookstore, 6 E. 7th St.
  • TONY TRIGILIO. Lawrence. Thursday, Oct. 2, 4:00 p.m., English Room, Kansas Union, KU Campus. FREE.
  • CALEB PUCKETT & JUSTIN RUNGE. Lawrence. Thursday, October 16, 7:00 p.m., Raven Bookstore, 6 E. 7th St.
  • BEN LERNER. Kansas City, MO. Thursday, October 23, 7:00 p.m., Epperson Auditorium, Vanderslice Hall on the KCAI campus, 4415 Warwick Blvd.
  • KRISTIN LOCKRIDGE & ROBERT DAY. Lawrence. Thursday, December 4, 7:00 p.m., Raven Bookstore, 6 E. 7th St.

Wednesday, June 25, 2008

"The Avant-Garde Is Neither"

Is it just my imagination, or is the soi-dit avant-garde of today replicating all the cliches?

- artist as heroic, suffering outsider
- military metaphors
- epater les bourgeois (Fr., "freak the squares")
- fetishization of the new
- imagining they're doing something new
- liberal artistic use of bodily fluids
- apolitical politics (a.k.a., "speaking out")
- political metaphors
- anti-academism (Lat., "too cool for school" - advanced degrees notwithstanding)
- creeping academization & institutionalization (in it, but not of it, of course)
- radical formal claims
- drawing within the old generic lines anyway

Or, said another way, how elderly am I, really? I'm not avant or arriere, I just run alongside, nipping everyone's heels. And chasing my tail. And occasionally licking my balls. Being invisible has its advantages.