On Dan Pope's "The Bard Crichton"

Dan Pope’s “The Bard Crichton” takes quotes about William Shakespeare and Michael Crichton, substituting references to either name for Crichton’s name. The result is not only hilarious, but it also sharply criticizes the “high” and “low” literature. 

As you read the quotes, a process of understanding occurs that shifts the way the quotes are perceived. One can not directly say to whom the quotes are originally attributed to (with the exception of ones that would be deemed anachronistic in the current form), but the original sense, that it is silly to say the things we normally say about Shakespeare in regards to Michael Crichton, is a notion that itself becomes dispelled. There is no language reserved for Shakespeare. By the time we get to a quote such as “There’s so much we don’t understand about Michael Crichton. His inner life. We know nothing.” It becomes apparent that that is true of anyone at anytime. It demystifies the idea of Shakespeare as that God beyond the common man’s comprehension.

One of my favorites is, “There are people who live all their lives and never read Crichton. Crichton is in them. It can be a deep humiliation when we realize that our own emotions are actually Crichton’s.” The first sentence is true of both Crichton and Shakespeare. And further, it is likely true of the person who wrote it (likely about Shakespeare), that he hadn’t read Crichton.   The distinction is a gulf that opens wide between the classes, with those who read Crichton and those who read Shakespeare. But lastly, the rest of the quote assigns to Shakespeare a status as of a god, as if the emotions he depicts belonged to him, and he were not drawing from the human experience, and we are drawing from his ideas rather than the whole of human existence.

On Jeff Noon’s “Needle in the Groove”

Might be a remix / rehashed sentences put in a new order / order is something that’s questioned / or during interrogation these questions fall apart / These slashes are musical measures / denoting a the rhythm and sep / arating lines to create a time/

Location is key at the outset / a club and a place to stay / perhaps a code at the door

--I’m not welcome

--because you’re different

--I thought I was cool enough

--You’re not cool enough

--I make music

--You make muzak.

Identifying the music through text / not easy to do / outside of sheet music / but this store identifies the / rhythm snare bass / but also the un-notated feeling of song / what comes out when that’s not signaled by / half-note quarter note forte mestizzo / Alto Forte bang the fucking drums

Remix the remix in words / an interesting experiment/

Shake the music sphere / like the earth with all its different sounds / spinning and turning and shaking us all up / like a musical globe/



And on a less playful note. It might be important to know that this story was released along with a spoken word album of the same name. The story is a musical experiment, as well as a literary experiment, though it is interesting to note that the musical experiment is literary and the literary experiment is musical. 

Critique of an Excerpt from Michael Ondaatje’s The Collected Works of Billy the Kid

A number of elements in this story make it seem unconventional. The best way to examine them might be from two separate categories: stylistic and thematic. The stylistically experimental elements involve methods of grammar, punctuation, medium, etc; while the thematic elements are those elements embedded into the story that in one way or another disorient the reader.

Stylistically, Ondaatje utilizes incomplete sentences, unattributed dialogue, onomatopoeia and an eclectic yet calculated mixture of poetry and prose which disorients the reader. The first sentences, “Sound up. Loud and vibrating in the room.” are devoid of subject (with the exception of the room), but still evoke imagery in a the larger context of the nighttime search for Billy the Kid by Pat Garret.

As a side-note, I went to Billy the Kid’s hometown of Lincoln, New Mexico on my way out here this Summer. I saw the bullet holes in the wall where he shot a shotgun full of dimes at Sheriff Farley.

Thematically the story shifts to different narrative perspectives, leaving the reader feeling as much in the dark as Garret and Billy the Kid. This story is Cowboy Poetry for the literati.