Pound, Eliot, Yeats, fascists or reactionaries, all great poets. Philip Larkin, right wing racist jerk, same. Kipling, great storyteller. Balzac, great novelist. One of Marx's unfinished projects was a literary study of Balzac. Conrad (monarchist reactionary, Carlist gunrunner), great master of the English language. Celine (Nazi collaborator), great writer. Daughter watched Birth of a Nation with me, fascinated horror. She said, I know I could never admit this outside the house, but this is one of the greatest movies I've ever seen. Riefenstahl, pure Nazi propaganda and high cinematic art. Etc. And one can add: Heidegger, Nazi, great philosopher; Schmitt, Nazi ideologue, great political thinker.
On the flip side there are mountain ranges full of of PC dreck. I will take one page of Balzac or Conrad tforeverything that Mike Gold every wrote, and he wasn't the worst by far.
--- On Wed, 1/14/09, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
> From: Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com>
> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] How Politics Ruined My Life: Was Fuck Hope
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Date: Wednesday, January 14, 2009, 4:40 PM
> On Jan 14, 2009, at 5:29 PM, Chris Doss wrote:
>
> > Somebody's politics are completely irrelevant to
> the quality of their artistic output, as is their personal
> morality. It's a tekhne, a craft. Might as well refuse
> to admire desks made by right-wing carpenters.
>
> Well I dunno about that. Works of art are filled with
> politics - you can't miss it in Stevens or Pound (or
> Eliot or...).
>
> Doug
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