Thursday, December 1, 2011

A Long Sentence

In Ron Silliman's Ketjak, there is at least one reference that I understood to mean: can this work and be important as art while being tedious and very needless and unnecessary to read? The poem's construction largely growing from repetition perhaps causes the reader to have such a thought while reading it--and this was the brilliance of much of it, the way the poem might predict your mind thinking, while reading it--and so Silliman doubles down on this opportunity to admit a self-criticism in the work--by golly y'all are going to be bored somewhere in this deriving poem going on for a hundred pages--while also perhaps creating a very interesting connection between the reader and writer. All analysis aside, I have grown to return to Silliman's assertion--truthfully asked as a question if I remember correctly, so perhaps I should say my assertion, which is an answer of "yes" to that question--that we can view what is essentially too long to be interesting or what is mundane for aesthetic or other reasons to be considered important or noteworthy art. While reading a collection Harvey Pekar's American Splendor comic books I returned to this mindset as I have several times with Nicholson Baker's contemplation of the trivial. As one might consider from both the URL and title of this blog, I would consider much of my own thought in this category as well; for the purposes of this post, however, I considered it important to note all this. To establish a mood before sending you into one long sentence that, while perhaps too long to be interesting, derives its very importance from its length.