the impulse to group-historicise vs the causes of bad writing

[dubdobdee]

follow-up to:
(a) a post i made on freakytigger's thread
and
(b) the part of my EMP paper which i actually pussied out of and didn't explore (as requested by dickmalone(a) i was wondering about the social context "ver kidz" are downloading all this material INTO, and suggested that the impulse to group-historicise what's shared is going to catch up with every new

Comments

[koganbot]

I still don't think you've successfully explained to me what your critique of "influence" is - that is, what type of argument about influence you think is the "bad" argument, or how one deploys the "good" ones, say Harold Bloom or yours. (And I've probably spent as much time as anyone except maybe you trying to understand what your critique of influence is.)

What you're criticizing upthread is the sort of writing that goes "Frank Kogan is writing in the spirit of Lester Bangs and Richard Meltzer" and then says nothing interesting about what Lester or Richard did and how I used their ideas myself. Publicists and reviewers make such statements all the time (though it's usually "Band X channels the spirit of [Gang Of 4, Slits, Stooges]). But criticizing this writing isn't criticizing any concept of influence but rather the simple failure to say what the influence was, since the reviewer/publicist isn't telling a story of influence but is rather just invoking names. All this means is that there are a lot of shitty thinkers out there, or OK thinkers who don't have the space to say what they mean, or the impetus to figure out what they should mean. But you've left the notion of "influence" unscathed (in this thread, that is). "In the mid 1980s Frank Kogan took the Bangs-Meltzer-Marsh assault on progressive FM rock as a model for how his own attack on the postpunk alternative-indie rock world and his own call for a new regeneration." That sentence shortchanges my originality somewhat* and overlooks a bunch of my other sources, but I don't see where there's anything fundamentally wrong with it. This is the standard story of influence: Person B uses Person A as a model but applies it to new situation C, modifying model A as necessary, and in rare circumstances overthrowing model A and coming up with something substantially new.

(*I didn't actually read Lester's "James Taylor Marked For Death" until after my first Why Music Sucks broadsides, and I remember when Psychotic Reactions And Carburetor Dung came out Luc and I remarded to each other how similar were the things Lester was wrestling with to the things I was wrestling with.)

[koganbot]

Close quote after "[Gang of 4, Slits, Stooges])." Delete "how" from "as a model for how his own attack."

[koganbot]

remarded - remarked

[dubdobdee]

yes these argts were posted very off-the-cuff and unrigorous to get me back into thinking about them, so w/o doubt full of holes as is -- i have printed out yr replies and am taking them off to shropshire to discuss with my dad instead of getting him a birthday cake ponder while i read my advance copy of luc's book

off-net from 5-ish today till late monday