Re: Left-wing Lester Bangs (WAS Re: Marxism, language andlaughter)

[Doyle Saylor <djsaylor@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Greetings Comrades,
    I had thought about replying to Nestor, and Julio, but the longer essay
by Daniel goaded me into a response, where I thought Nestor's and Julio was
lighter in spirit, not worth my thickening things up with turgid thoughts.

    I don't think "good" writing is going to make a difference for the left.
What I think will make a difference for the left is things like this list.
This sort of conversation amongst many is the spirit of what we want.  There
is plenty of room to innovate here in new directions with writing.  Much of
this style of writing where more than one person contributes to the line of
thought has never existed in literature.  I know there are examples in Avant
Garde writing where various people contribute to an on-going thread on a
sheet of paper, but that is different from the sort of thing where many
people aren't doodling, but trying to put their best thoughts forward.  That
is a model of what left wing directions could surely bring forward.  There
is a flash and fire in writers here.

    Secondly, popular writing, for example Twain, requires the high talents
of some writer, but we need the voice of many people to develop.  That is
what will make this movement move.

    Part of the problem for the left in my opinion is not so much a dearth
of good writing, but a way for the left to organize over great distances to
counter act the global capitalists ability to move work site away from
agitation readily.  Much organizing happens locally face to face amongst
workers and that flavors what we think organizing means, and there is a
great difficulty to bring to bear upon such things experience from afar.
Here we have great experience from around the world but no good way to bring
that upon something local (as yet).  I think that is where a creative
thinker could carve out new room for the left, but it would move so much
faster by someone saying let's do it this way and everyone talking and
criticizing, and then aiding and abetting something new going against the
grain of traditional methods.  To explore what this format of many voices
achieves where many voices combine in a new way, combine at great distance,
and combine to focus upon a local place an influence that a world wide
audience really could bring to the left.

    Up until this tool appeared, great writers wrote to large passive
audiences which could not say their piece back to the thoughts they heard.
Reading a good left newspaper certainly helped the left in Russia, and
elsewhere during WWI, but we all know newspapers are declining in the face
of television, and the internet.  It is not the stable of good writers on
some internet web site that makes the web important, it is the many voices
collecting together into a stronger group.  A group honed by the debate
within into a more and more powerful common view.

    Look at it this way, we'll never get around to reading the great
literature, since there is so much of it to read.  What we will get around
to is the common threads that emerge we can all put our minds to.  Sometimes
in the past it was mass gatherings of thousands in a big group roaring and
yelling to say what needs to be said, but now we have the means to speak to
each other and get that multi-voiced beast awakened here and there and
everywhere at once.  They can't out maneuver us by the old means.  They
can't interfere with that multiplicity like they could on the shop floor.
They can't do their old tricks.  They cant They cant cant anymore.  We can
have strength through our numbers, and through our many voices.  That is our
strength now.  Not a revival of the skills of writing to a mass audience
that can't reply at once to what they read.
cheers,
Doyle Saylor