Monday, August 08, 2005
from Buck Downs on competition...
I think my take on the competition issue finally is whatever it takes dude, to "keep you sharp" in Frank's phrase, or avoid mediocrity as Kevin puts it. Whatever it takes to keep you scuflling, keep scuffling. The competition is not the thing, which is part of how quickly it becomes a drag when young people of any age take it seriously at all. I suppose the context of the writing program is important, since it is primarily in the arms of institutional care that the penny-prizes of these first-book last-book competitions find the base of their ziggurat, a.k.a your checkbooks.
This question reminds me of listening to a tape of a panel discussion Kerouac was in on. The topic was "Is There a Beat Generation?" and Kerouac, totally in the throes of the Pure Land, asks as an answer, "Is there a World?", i.e, that the taxonomy-building et al. of the literacy industry is always already a distraction from the thing itself, like so many egocentrisms are. If you can read, after all, you can write, and if you can read, you shouldn't really need lessons in how to read.
On a personal note, having demolished my competition into fucking itty bitty fucking smithereens & sown them like salt into the dust of the National Mall where nothing more shall ever grow, I have retired from competition. I am now what is called a "mascot".
xoxo,
-Buck
This question reminds me of listening to a tape of a panel discussion Kerouac was in on. The topic was "Is There a Beat Generation?" and Kerouac, totally in the throes of the Pure Land, asks as an answer, "Is there a World?", i.e, that the taxonomy-building et al. of the literacy industry is always already a distraction from the thing itself, like so many egocentrisms are. If you can read, after all, you can write, and if you can read, you shouldn't really need lessons in how to read.
On a personal note, having demolished my competition into fucking itty bitty fucking smithereens & sown them like salt into the dust of the National Mall where nothing more shall ever grow, I have retired from competition. I am now what is called a "mascot".
xoxo,
-Buck
