[lbo-talk] Kenneth Burke

[Michael Hoover]

On 12/8/06, Michael Pugliese <michael.098762001 at gmail.com> wrote:
>    CPUSA critic Joshua Kunitz, reviewing Kenneth Burke, as quoted on
> pg. 289 of, "Writers on the Left, " the classic by Daniel Aaron.
>   "His program is essentially an innocuous and petty nihilism ; his
> 'negative' aesthetic is the the philosophy of the 'petty-bourgeois
> gone mad.' Inefficiency, indolence, dissapation, vacilation, mockery,
> distrust, hypochondria, non-conformity, bad sportsmanship, dislike of
> propaganda, dislike of certainty, treason, these according to Burke
> are the desiderata of the present..." The New Masses, April 1931, pgs.
> 16-20.
<<<<<>>>>>

i telepathed joshua the other day, he told me that he wished folks
read stuff instead of lookng for bits and bobs that they can post to
e-lists...

my friend bobbie studied with burke in the latter's later years and
he's said that burke could have cared less about the stringing
together of words such as those above to describe his philosophy/work,
according to bobbie, burke would have said that joshua was *actually*
saying nothing and that in sayng nothing he was *really* sayng
nothing...

i mentioned this to joshua who replied that his review was written in
pre-popular front period...   mh