Howl Protest
Thursday, February 4
Howl Protest Talking Points
1.
Ike issued a second
military-industrial complex warning, about academics substituting a grant for
intellectual curiosity and free inquiry.
Free speech. If speech codes were
the price of a grant, academics would pay it.
They would sell their birthright for a mess of potage.
2.
Kerouac talked about
the "5,000 sneering college writing instructors" who tried to hold
him down. To keep him out. In his book about
3.
This event is not just
unseemly, it's disgraceful. Ginsberg is
laughing. What else can you do but make fun of it. The enemies of freedom have won, and they get
to decide who's a winner and who's a loser, a wanna-be, a bitter literary
also-ran (BLAR). Thar she blows. They're blowing
4.
If you say that, in
your writing, and send it to
5.
That's what the writer
must do. The poet. Speak truth to power. Thorstein Veblen wrote The Higher Learning In America:
A Memorandum On the Conduct of Universities By Business Men. I write Belles-Lettres
in America: A Memorandum on the Conduct of Publishing Companies, the Media of
Mass Communication, Universities, Arts Agencies, and Foundations by Business
Men.
6.
Zola wrote I Accuse. I accuse.
Read I ACCUSE at The Daily
Bulletin. Freedom of the press
belongs to the man who owns one. I own The Daily Bulletin. I'm my own filter, or unfilter, lack of a
filter,
7.
Whenever a writer like
me sneaks past the gatekeeper it creates a succès
fou, or runaway success. That
happens when the pipes need a good scour.
It happened when Allen Ginsberg published Howl. When it’s time for it
to happen again it will happen. I think
it’s time. I can feel it in the balls of my feet, the balls of my feet. As the trapeze artist said to his deaf-mute
catch-man.
8.
Needless to say, the
pain was excruciating.