A Modest Proposal (was RE: Guthrie to Maggie and Max)

Max Sawicky sawicky at epinet.org
Sat Mar 6 12:40:43 PST 1999



> Max writes:
>
> > The key thing about this song and all the other
> > stuff like it is that the victims of whatever
> > crime was committed do not exist.
>
> Two separate key things.
>
> Key thing 1: like most who respond to Guthrie, including most of
> his admierers, Max assumes Guthrie was utterly lacking in self-
> consciousness and sophistication.

In keeping with my lapsed literary training, I wasn't considering WG at all, but only the text. What the text might mean, irrespective of whatever WG meant. So WG is not in it.


> . . .
> in the courtroom, as victims. It is "We the People:" against whom the
crime was committed, not some alleged individual victim, and if the court acts otherwise, then we have repudiated the rule of law.>

Legitimate, but not relevant as far as I can see. We the people can decide to hang somebody. In consideration of any such hanging, my only hope is that they consider the harm to the victims, both as individuals and as part of society (sort of dialectical), unlike the song quoted.


> And of course that is what Guthrie's last two stanzas are focused
> on:
>
> Tell me who makes the laws for that hang knot...
> I don't know who makes the laws for that hang knot...
> Just because they tied their laws with a hang knot...
>
> Any one who reads or listens to Guthrie without assuming the same subtlety
which one would find in Joyce or Stevens or James isn't listening.>

A good song or verse -- subtle and all that -- can have profoundly anti-social implications. Like that Pound guy.

mbs



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