I got a newspaper column at the
and used it to ridicule arts groups like the NEA, the Florida Division
of Cultural Affairs, the
I called myself the toe-dance critic, from reviewing the local production of
Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite. Snake farms and monkey jungles.
When the state combined the arts and recreation in its Comprehensive Plan,
I said the slogan should be, “
I said that public support for the arts was pork-barrel money, that went to
arts bureaucrats and arts performers. An orchestra, say, rather than
a composer. An art museum rather than a painter. A theatre group
instead of a playwright. And as for a writer…well, what product did
a writer give us? Books? Poems? Philippics, jeremiads, and pasquinades?
Wolftickets? Complaints and alibis? How do you find a publisher
for shit like that? Bear down. Don’t give an inch. Don’t let up.
Keep hammering at them. Be relentless in your condemnation.
Be epochal. We’re talking about history. Culture.
Values. What is good and what is not good, Phaedrus?
Need we anyone to tell us? We need the artist.
We’re in an age of midgets.