Think About It 015: NOAM CHOMSKY

If you care about other people, that's now a very dangerous idea.  If you care about other people, you might try to organize to undermine power and authority.  That's not going to happen if you care only about yourself.  Maybe you can become rich, but you don't care whether other people's kids can go to school, or can afford food to eat, or things like that. In the United States, that's called 'libertarian' for some wild reason.  I mean, it's actually highly authoritarian, but that doctrine is extremely important for power systems as a way of atomizing and undermining the public.
      That's why unions had the slogan, 'solidarity,' even though they may not have lived up to it.  And that's what really counts:  solidarity, mutual aid, care for one another and so on.  And it's really important for power systems to undermine that ideologically, so huge efforts go into it.  Even trying to stimulate consumerism is an effort to undermine it.  Having a market society automatically carries with it an undermining of solidarity.  For example, in the market system you have a choice:  You can buy a Toyota or you can buy a Ford, but you can't buy a subway because that's not offered.  Market systems don't offer common goods; they offer private consumption.  If you want a subway, you're going to have to get together with other people and make a collective decision.  Otherwise, it's simply not an option within the market system, and as democracy is increasingly undermined, it's less and less of an option within the public system.  All of these things converge, and they're all part of general class war.

Interview [Salon, 1 December 2013]



 

Use the link below to visit the website of North American linguist, philosopher, political activist, social commentator and writer NOAM CHOMSKY:

 

https://chomsky.info/

 

 

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Think About It 002: C WRIGHT MILLS

 
Think About It 010: ROLLO MAY

 
Think About It 022: CHRISTOPHER LASCH

Poet of the Month 037: BERNICE KENYON

 

Charles Scribner's Sons, 1951

 

 

 

 

FOR SILENCE

 

 

Since there is not, for you and me,
One instant of tranquility,
But always beating in the throat
Such clamor and such high confusion ––
Let us preserve the mind remote,
And build our silence of illusion.

 

Think for a little of those shining
Worlds where no man has set his foot:
Where dark and daylight have no meaning ––
Only as distance; where no root
Of deep disaster strikes and holds;
Where only wonderment unfolds.

 

Then you will find, most certainly,
That all you sought was fantasy.
The stream of life runs loud and wide,
Bearing us toward infinity.
How shall we learn to know –– to ride
The noise of this our destiny?
Here rest a moment –– rest you here,
Where your own thoughts are still and clear.

 

 

 

 

 

Night Sky 

 

(1951)

 

 

 

 

The following 1982 obituary appears on the website of The New York Times.  [It is re-posted here for information purposes only and, like the material posted above, remains its author's exclusive copyright-protected intellectual property.]

 

Bernice Lesbia Kenyon Gilkyson, a poet and a former story editor and editorial assistant at Charles Scribner's Sons, died Wednesday at Winsted (Connecticut) Memorial Hospital.

 

She was 84 years old and lived in New Hartford, Connecticut.

 

Mrs Gilkyson, who wrote under the name of Bernice Kenyon, was considered one of America's most important young female poets in the 1920s and 1930s and was ranked with Louise Bogan, Edna St Vincent Millay and Elinor Wylie.

 

Her first volume, Songs of Unrest, was published by Scribners in 1923.  Her two other published works were Meridian, which appeared in 1933, and Night Sky in 1951. In 1950, she shared a National Book Award with Robert Frost.

 

Mrs Gilkyson also wrote the libretto for the opera Landara, composed by her friend Efrem Zimbalist, which had its premiere in Philadelphia in 1956. She had completed her fourth volume, Mortal Music, shortly before her death.

 

Born in Oakside, Long Island, Mrs Gilkyson graduated from Wellesley College and went to work at the old Scribners Magazine as a story editor.  She became an editorial assistant to Maxwell Perkins in the Scribner's book division, working with such authors as Ernest Hemingway and Scott Fitzgerald.

 

With her husband, T. Walter Gilkyson, a lawyer and novelist, Mrs. Gilkyson lived in Italy for two years, returning in 1930 and traveling before moving to New Hartford.

 

Her husband died in 1969; there are no survivors.

 

 

 

Use the link below to read a fascinating post about forgotten poet BERNICE KENYON on the Neglected Books website:

 

 

http://neglectedbooks.com/?p=3840

 

 

 

 

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Poet of the Month 035: EDNA ST VINCENT MILLAY

 

 

 
Poet of the Month 032: JENNIFER DENROW

 

 

  
Poet of the Month 022: FAY ZWICKY

 

 

The Write Advice 083: F SCOTT FITZGERALD

Nobody ever became a writer just by wanting to be one.  If you have anything to say, anything you feel nobody has ever said before, you have got to feel it so desperately that you will find some way to say it that nobody has ever found before, so that the thing you have to say and the way of saying it blend as one matter –– as indissolubly as if they were conceived together… It is an awfully lonesome business, and as you know, I never wanted you to go into it, but if you are going into it at all I want you to go into it knowing the sort of things that took me years to learn.

Letter to Scottie Fitzgerald [his daughter] (20 October 1936)



Use the link below to read another piece of sound advice F SCOTT FITZGERALD offered his daughter SCOTTIE:

 

https://awritersden.wordpress.com/2015/08/17/f-scott-fitzgerald-a-little-fatherly-advice-goes-a-long-way/

 

 

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The Write Advice 002: WILLA CATHER

 
The Write Advice 022: GEORGE ORWELL

 
The Write Advice 042: ANNE FINE

Rockers & Mods 004: THE ACTION

THE ACTION c 1967

LAND OF 1000 DANCES

THE ACTION

Debut single, 1965

The Action are the great 'What if?' band of the Mod era –– an act which could have been huge had fate been a little kinder to it and music's most formidable enemy, ego, had not reared its ugly head to sabotage what, on paper at least, had seemed to be an exceptionally promising career.  Unrecognized geniuses or not, The Action were an inspired rhythm and blues band as their soulful cover of Chris Kenner's 1963 hit Land of 1000 Dances should certainly confirm.

 

Use the link below to discover more great music by THE ACTION:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCJ3WsHoRWA

 

 

Special thanks to those who take the time to upload music to YouTube.  Your efforts are appreciated by music lovers everywhere.

 

You might also enjoy:

 

Rockers & Mods 003: JOHNNY BURNETTE & HIS ROCK 'N ROLL TRIO

 
Rockers & Mods 002: JACQUES DUTRONC

 

Some Books About...MODS!

 

 

Last updated 5 April 2021