Said Ezra Pound in an interview with The Paris Review in 1962.
I found that as a consequence of reading Larry McMurtry's "Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen: Reflections on Sixty and Beyond," pp. 30-31:
“THE ART of storytelling is nearing its end because the epic side of truth, wisdom, is dying out,” Benjamin says. Well, maybe—but I did know an old mountain woman in a Virginia village whose storytelling would have pleased the exacting Berliner. She was eighty-six and had lived in the same house her entire life, never traveling more than six miles from home. If ever there was a local who stayed put, it was she. This old woman had surveyed almost the whole of the twentieth century from her front porch. The young men of the village went off to war; some came back and some didn’t. Then another war came and the young men went off again. Washington, D.C., thirty miles away, was as remote to her as Hong Kong. She had no curiosity about it—the affairs of the village were all she had and all she needed. She had lived through the century of the motorcar traveling almost entirely by foot. But the local lore she knew: every house, every man and woman, and what had befallen them. She told many stories and told them well, but I would not be quick to elevate her stories above those of Frank O’Connor. Consider Ezra Pound’s astonishment when he first saw Walt Disney’s Perri.
Consider a world in which this astonishes Ezra Pound:
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Loved little Perri when I first saw it on "The Wonderful World of Disney," the industrious little squirrel preparing for the harsh winter in the Rockies. You could do worse than show that film to your children today.
Whenever I see the word "plucky," I think of Perri.
Feeding squirrels is quality cheap entertainment. My grandfather used to have them eat peanuts right out of his hand. I'm not that chill yet.
You have to learn to sit next to the little fox. I'm working on that.
McMurtry's anecdote about the old lady was great. But I wish he hadn’t completely cutoff Walter Benjamin’s point he was trying to make. I’m kind of interested in why he thinks storytelling is ending.
Walter Sobchak: You can say what you want about the tenets of national socialism but at least it's an ethos.
Ezra Pound would’ve really loved Planet Earth.
Disney went from children's programming to programming children so fast I don't think anyone really noticed. Whodathunk a corporation built by a psychopath with a fascist streak would've turned into the happiest groomer on earth.
Just so you know.
Squirrels get much of their protein from eating baby chipmunks. Probably small birds like those baby humming birds as well. I am sure they were just looking for "playmates."
The large grey ground squirrels are invasive and have pretty much wiped out the chipmunk population in the northwest.
Reminds me of my old English professor's crack about Ezra (no doubt quoting someone else): "Pound and fury, signifying nothing."
Kay asks about Benjamin's point.
Walter Benjamin's point:
The earliest symptom of a process whose end is the decline of storytelling is the rise of the novel at the beginning of modern times. What distinguishes the novel from the story (and from the epic in the narrower sense) is its essential dependence on the book. The dissemination of the novel became possible only with the invention of printing. What can be handed on orally, the wealth of the epic, is of a different kind from what constitutes the stock in trade of the novel. What differentiates the novel from all other forms of prose literature—the fairy tale, the legend, even the novella—is that it neither comes from oral tradition nor goes into it. This distinguishes it from storytelling in particular. The storyteller takes what he tells from experience—his own or that reported by others. And he in turn makes it the experience of those who are listening to his tale. The novelist has isolated himself. The birthplace of the novel is the solitary individual, who is no longer able to express himself by giving examples of his most important concerns, is himself uncounseled, and cannot counsel others.
https://arl.human.cornell.edu/linked%20docs/Walter%20Benjamin%20Storyteller.pdf
Pound was still in the nuthouse when the
movie came out ...
@Two-eyed Jack
Thank you for sharing this.
I feed the plump squirrels in my back yard every day. I keep unsalted peanuts handy.
They show up looking in thru the windows.
One of them will take a peanut from my fingers. The others run off.
So strange.
My kitties love the show. They make mouthy rattle-squak noises at them. Adorable.
Old Disney stuff is great.. and timelessly kid friendly.
Hillarywoodland today is sadistic, overly sexualized and hollow... and obsessed with teh gay.
Pound was born in 1885. He was 42 when the Jazz Singer came out. He lived in Britian/Europe till 1945 And he was locked up in Prison/Hospital till the late 50s. Conclusion: he didn't see a lot of movies. And I doubt he watched TV.
I'm sure seeing a color movie detailing the life of a squirrel was quite a pleasant surprise. I can remember using my first PC with a phone hookup in the 80s. I found it amazing I could connect with people all over the world. Today, no one thinks twice about it.
As for story telling, I'm finding the move toward audio and visual fiction troubling. People on the net don't want to write anything anymore, they want you to watch a youtube video or listen to their podcast. Seems like a step backward.
Pound's Cantos are difficult for me to read. I've started and stopped many times. One of these days...
Some people thought Ezra Pound was nuts.
Got it. Ezra Pound lived in fascist Italy for years, broadcast fascist propaganda to the West, supported Hitler, and hated Jews. But he liked
early Disney films and squirrels. Voila, redemption. Pound was a scumbag.
Fed squirrels are the opposite of Perri.
Actually Pound never supported Hitler. He did support fascism in Italy. Given large number of intellectuals in the 1930s and 1940s who supported Joe Fucking Stalin and his NKVD excecution squads, show trials, and Gulags, not to mention starving millions of Ukrainians to death, I can't get too upset at that.
Did he commit treason? Per Pound he'd given up his USA citizenship to become an Italian. His broadcasts were more in the line of "Why are over here fighting Italy?" and "Did you know Money power is why you are fighting?"
Many people who'd known Pound in the 1920s and every 30s, like EE Cummings, Hemingway or Dos Passos, met him after WW II and thought he'd gone nuts. But its insane that he got locked up for over 12 years due to a few broadcasts, while Commie spies like Alger Hiss were never convicted of anything, except lying. Even Tokyo Rose only got 5 years. Honestly, can you believe any GI would know who Ezra Pound was in 1944, or care what he said about anything?
Robert Lowell was a manic-depressive. A true "Nut". Yet his letter to FDR refusing to serve in WW II is quite lucid and brilliant. Lowell had tried to volunteer in 1942 because the thought the USA was in danger.
But once we started fireboming German cities and proclaiming a policy of Unconditional Surrender, Lowell turned agains the war and refused to serve when drafted in Sept 43. What makes it even more "crazy" is that Lowell would've been 4F due to his eyesight. But still he served 6 months or maybe it was 12 months in prison.
Wonder if "craziness" and poetry go together.
And Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot fighting in the captain's tower.
I loved Disney in the 1960s. To me that show was magic, especially when they were stories from the animal’s point of view. If you want to read a novel with a similar vibe, try “Martin Marten”. It’s a beautifully written story and the animal portions are wonderful.
Nice to see you have an Ezra Pound tag.
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