On the essays shelf (yes, there are still more books to excerpt in my vast library. I can’t seem to stop this excerpts-from-my-library project. I started it in 2006!)
NEXT BOOK: Aspects of the Novel
In these 1927 lectures about “aspects of the novel,” Forster took an unconventional approach (discussed here). He wanted to ignore chronology altogether, and put authors side by side who were, in actuality, separated by decades. He wanted to look at things thematically and structurally, and wanted to avoid too much compartmentalization. Putting authors/genres/time-periods into separate buckets means you somehow miss the grand sweep of that huge thing called English literature. Instead of moving through the timeline, he mucked it all up, and focused on what he saw were the 7 “aspects” of the English novel (and all novels, really, but he focused on English-speaking authors mainly in these lectures). The aspects were:
Story, characters, plot, fantasy, prophecy, pattern, and rhythm.
He devoted a couple of lectures to “characters,” under the heading “People.” Forster wanted to look at the different ways authors used characters. What does “point of view” mean? What does character mean? How do you get “inside” a character’s experience? Some authors care about that, others don’t, they are up to something else. In this lecture, Forster looks at the difference between what he characterizes as “flat” and “round” characters. He does not place a judgment one way or the other, not really (i.e. “round” is better than “flat”), although he does point out that “flat” characters don’t really work in tragedies. He understands that Dickens is doing something different with “characters” than, say, Emily Bronte (whom he considered, along with Dostoevsky, a prophet. Not just a writer, an artist, a novelist, but a prophet – which he gets to in a later lecture). The approach is different, and the end-goal is different. In re-reading these excerpts it occurs to me that I stated the case too strongly in that former excerpt. Forster didn’t dismiss Dickens – although sometimes Dickens fans can be extremely defensive on his behalf (a sign of how much he is loved. I include myself in this.) Forster discusses differences – and different of course does not have to be a negative. Pointing out differences in style and intent should be instructive. George Orwell, in his huge essay on Dickens, talked a lot about Dickens’ characters, referring to them as “grotesques.” There is a lot of truth in that, and Forster expands on it here, discussing the “flat”-ness of Dickens’ characters (they are brilliant caricatures, for the most part, although he excepts Pip and David C.), and then he moves on to a discussion of the people who populate the novels of Jane Austen.
It’s hard to summarize so I’ll just hand the floor over to Forster. I would be very interested in hearing responses to all of this! (Well, I always am, but here in particular.)
Excerpt from Aspects of the Novel
For we must admit that flat people are not in themselves as big achievements as round ones, and also that they are best when they are comic. A serious or tragic flat character is apt to be a bore. Each time he enters crying “Revenge!” or “My heart bleeds for humanity!” or whatever his formula is, our hearts sink. One of the romances of a popular contemporary writer is constructed round a Sussex farmer who says, “I’ll plough up that bit of gorse.” There is the farmer, there is the gorse; he says he’ll plough it up, he does plough it up, but it is not like saying “I’ll never desert Mr. Micawber” because we are so bored by his consistency that we do not care whether he succeeds with the gorse or fails. If his formula were analyzed and connected up with the rest of the human outfit, we should not be bored any longer, the formula would cease to be the man and become an obsession in the man; that is to say he would have turned from a flat farmer into a round one. It is only round people who are fit to perform tragically for any length of time and can move us to any feelings except humor and appropriateness.
So now let us desert these two-dimensional people and by way of transition to the round, let us go to Mansfield Park, and look at Lady Bertram, sitting on her sofa with pug. Pug is flat, like most animals in fiction. He is once represented as straying into a rosebud in a cardboard kind of way, but that is all, and during most of the book his mistress seems to be cut out of the same simple material as her dog. Lady Bertram’s formula is, “I am kindly, but must not be fatigued,” and she functions out of it. But at the end there is a catastrophe. Her two daughters come to grief – to the worst grief known to Miss Austen’s universe, far worse than the Napoleonic wars. Julia elopes; Maria, who is unhappily married, runs off with a lover. What is Lady Bertram’s reaction? The sentence describing it is significant: “Lady Bertram did not think deeply, but, guided by Sir Thomas, she thought justly on all important points, and she saw therefore in all its enormity, what had happened, and neither endeavored herself, nor required Fanny to advise her, to think little of guilt and infamy.” These are strong words, and they used to worry me because I thought Jane Austen’s moral sense was getting out of hand. She may, and of course does, deprecate guilt and infamy herself, and she duly causes all possible distress in the minds of Edmund and Fanny, but has she any right to agitate calm, consistent Lady Bertram? Is it not like giving pug three faces and setting him to guard the gates of Hell? Ought not her ladyship to remain on the sofa saying, “This is a dreadful and sadly exhausting business about Julia and Maria, but where is Fanny gone? I have dropped another stitch”?
I used to think this, through misunderstanding Jane Austen’s method – exactly as Scott misunderstood it when he congratulated her for painting on a square of ivory. She is a miniaturist, but never two-dimensional. All her characters are round, or capable of rotundity. Even Miss Bertram has a mind, even Elizabeth Elliot a heart, and Lady Bertram’s moral fervor ceases to vex us when we realize this: the disk has suddenly extended and become a little globe. When the novel is closed, Lady Bertram goes back to the flat, it is true; the dominant impression she leaves can be summed up in a formula. But that is not how Jane Austen conceived her, and the freshness of her reappearances are due to this. Why do the characters in Jane Austen give us a slightly new pleasure each time they come in, as opposed to the merely repetitive pleasure that is caused by a character in Dickens? Why do they combine so well in a conversation, and draw one another out without seeming to do so, and never perform? The answer to this question can be put in several ways: that, unlike Dickens, she was a real artist, that she never stooped to caricature, etc. But the best reply is that her characters though smaller than his are more highly realized. They function all round, and even if her plot made greater demands on them than it does, they would still be adequate. Suppose that Louisa Musgrave had broken her neck on the Cobb. The description of her death would have been feeble and ladylike – physical violence is quite beyond Miss Austen’s powers – but the survivors would have reacted properly as soon as the corpse was carried away, they would have brought into view new sides of their character, and though Persuasion would have been spoiled as a book, we should know more than we do about Captain Wentworth and Anne. All the Jane Austen characters are ready for an extended life, for a life which the scheme of the book seldom requires them to lead, and that is why they lead their actual lives so satisfactorily. Let us return to Lady Bertram and the crucial sentence. See how subtly it modulates from her formula into an area where the formula does not work: “Lady Bertram did not think deeply.” Exactly: as per formula. “But guided by Sir Thomas she thought justly on all important points.” Sir Thomas’ guidance, which is part of the formula, remains, but it pushes her ladyship towards an independent and undesired morality. “She saw therefore in all its enormity what had happened.” This is the moral fortissimo – very strong but carefully introduced. And then follows a most artful decrescendo, by means of negatives. “She neither endeavored herself, nor required Fanny to advise her, to think little of guilt or infamy.” The formula is reappearing, because as a rule she does try to minimize trouble, and does require Fanny to advise her how to do this; indeed Fanny has done nothing else for the last ten years. The words, although they are negatived, remind us of this, her normal state is again in view, and she has in a single sentence been inflated into a round character and collapsed back into a flat one. How Jane Austen can write! In a few words she has increased Lady Bertram, and by so doing she has increased the probability of the elopements of Maria and Julia. I say probability because the elopements belong to the domain of violent physical action, and here, as already indicated, Jane Austen is feeble and ladylike. Except in her school-girl novels, she cannot stage a crash. Everything violent has to take place “off” – Louisa’s accident and Marianne Dashwood’s putrid throat are the nearest exceptions – and consequently all the comments on the elopement must be sincere and convincing, otherwise we should doubt whether it occurred. Lady Bertram helps us to believe that her daughters have run away, and they have to run away, or there would be no apotheosis for Fanny. It is a little point, and a little sentence, yet it shows how delicately a great novelist can modulate into the round.
This is a very engaging excerpt, so much to consider in only 3 paragraphs. The first time I read through it I thought of Orestes as a test case for flat characters in tragedies being bores (or not). I decided to not pursue that thought since the particular subject was the English Novel. Then the third time I read the excerpt and really thought about Forster’s comment regarding the Sussex farmer: if his formula were connected with the rest of the human outfit, the formula would cease to be the man and become an obsession in the man. “Only connect.” I didn’t need to go back and re-read the plays to understand that Orestes was a round character because the themes of fate and faith, divine and natural law are common in many lives. An author can go about rounding a character in many other ways, but Forster identifies an interesting way of doing it that is almost the opposite of a Jamesian x-ray of the person’s inner life.
Can you talk a little bit about the distinction he makes between flat and round characters? As an example, I’m thinking of good old Ponch and John from the SPN recaps. They don’t change or grow – but that’s not the same as being flat, I assume. I am having a hard time coming up with characters from English novels who were flat – in large part because (again, I’m assuming) flat ones are not memorable. Was Mr. Kurtz’ widow a flat character? Madame Defarge? Blanche Ingram? The wagon driver who shouts something rude at Tess (or his distant cousin who shouts something rude at Gudrun and Ursula in The Rainbow)? The Mock Turtle? Can flat characters change, or would that make them rounded? It’s easy to think of sit-com characters who are flat, it’s harder to come up with ones from novels. Can you come up with any famous ones?
Also, I have to say I’m intrigued to hear what Forster means by a prophet. Would Stendhal be considered a prophet because of the irony-drenched world he creates in Red and Black , prophesying our current irony-laden culture? Was Virginia Woolf prophetic with Orlando? I hope you continue with these excerpts.
I’m picturing the Union of Flat Characters doing a David Bowie/<The Treasure of Sierra Madre mashup:
Ch-ch-ch-changes,
We don’t need no stinkin’
Ch-ch-ch-changes.
hahahaha
Or Madame Defarge furiously knitting our names into a scarf because we called her “flat.”
“Off with your head, you philistine.”
We’ve drawn The Eye of Sauron, oh no!
Mutecypher –
Ponch and John and Orestes in the same comment. HA!!! Love that!
Forster’s various words on Dickens are SO interesting. I’m out of town right now – when I get back I’ll post a little bit of it. Much food for thought!! I love Dickens so much but I think I do agree that the characters are not, say, the same as the characters in … Henry James. Right? He has a different view of humanity and a different style. He uses characters for different ends. He sees plot in a different way. Not bad, just different.
Because Dickens is who he is – one of the best storytellers ever – his flat characters are memorable, leap off the page. (Maybe not some of his young heroines … they’re pretty stock) Forster talks about that a little – that in a poor writer “flat” characters are unbearable. With Dickens, they are delightful, and do seem to lead a life off the page. (That seems to be one of Forster’s measurements: Does the character seem alive in a way that reaches beyond the structure of the story? That seems to be his point with Lady Bertram in the discussion above.)
Hmm, let me think. I would say Madame Defarge, unforgettable as she is, is “flat.” (By “flat” he does not mean boring, obviously – just two-dimensional). I can describe Madame Defarge in one sentence, and she does not change. She is a “type.”
I’d put Sydney Carton on the “round” character list. But I’ll have to think more about that!
People like Henry James – or George Eliot – with their meticulous descriptions of the inner lives/philosophies/ideas of their characters – are up to something different than Dickens – and their characters feel very different. (Some of the writers he discusses I haven’t read.)
Mr. Rochester, to me, is a “round” character.
The other characters you mention …. hm. I have to think more about it!
Dickens’ characters are definitely different in depth from James. And as you said, I think it’s an aim of the author. Stephen King is similar in that way, I think. Characters are often types or representative/representations of things. I’m curious to find out what Forster means by patterns – I bet Thomas Pynchon is someone who falls into patterns (if conspiracy theories are parts of patterns). Same with Philip K. Dick.
Mutecypher – It’s been a while since I’ve read the book, so I need to go over those sections again in terms of his thoughts on “prophets.” In the first excerpt I talked about how he puts English lit up next to the Russians, like Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, and in general finds the English lacking. Like, no comparison (to him).
He puts two excerpts up side by side – I think one is by George Eliot (one of my favorite writers) and the other is by Dostoevsky. He says that the difference between the two excerpts is that one is “preaching” and the other is “prophesying.” And honestly, I can see what he is talking about. In many ways, this apples/oranges – and pretty much anyone suffers when you put them up next to Dostoevsky – but, in turns, most writers suffer in comparison to George Eliot, too.
He felt that Emily Bronte was working on a kind of magic level of instinct that sets her apart – and he felt Melville and Dostoevsky were in that category too. That they were prophets, their art was on another level – something almost mystical – their command of language so unique and – frankly – strange – Like: How did you get the balls to put down the words like that? Who told you that was okay?? They seem to have emerged from out of another time entirely. They don’t “make sense”. (These are Forster’s thoughts – although I share them, particularly in the case of Melville – who makes ZERO sense if you only look at him in terms of the chronology. Chronology cannot explain Melville at all. He also died unknown, with his books failures. People weren’t “ready” for Melville until 100 years after his death).
Okay, I have to read this book.
Forster was not a big Woolf fan, if I recall correctly. He wasn’t crazy about the modernists, from what I can tell. He felt they were too subjective, too small in scope – but I may be missing some subtleties.
Oh and mute cypher – did I tell you I just read Red and the Black this year for the first time? It was my first novel of the year.
Amaaaaaazing. My God, what drama. What a silly silly society. Stendhal is killer – absolutely love him. He was one of the many many “holes” in my self-education – where I come to books on my own – since I never took English classes or anything once I left high school. Now I need to read more – Charnel House, etc.
I loved how FUNNY he was. Even though the stakes could not be higher throughout that book – his TONE was often so hilarious I would laugh out loud. What an interesting writer!!
I remembered you reading it. There’s just a baroque degree of irony and meta going on in that book. I love that the quote he uses to begin the first chapter, “Truth, bitter truth,” was something that he made up. Danton never said that, as far as anyone can find. What truth are we getting from this novel? He’s a Lewis Carroll-level puzzle maker, among his other gifts.
The fact that Stendhal makes up some of those epigrams is just so so so funny to me!!
This was really interesting. I wish I was more well read so I could comment on these specific books.
But I see an inherent flaw with Forster’s goal of removing the chronology from the works of art.
Every work of art is influenced by everything that came before it. This is most obvious in film, but I would imagine it’s true of literature today. Modern filmmakers are influenced by Eisenstein and Welles and Hitchcock, even if they don’t realize it. Shakespeare influences every writer in the world today, even if those writers hate Shakespeare or have never read him. It all builds on itself. Good artists borrow and great ones steal I believe is the line.
So while it is fun to compare books from different eras this way, I wonder how truly independent those writers are from the influences of those that came before. You have written beautifully and at length about the seismic shock that was Ulysses. I wonder if that book had never been written how the course of literature may have changed.
And I’d like to know how he defines “story” differently from “plot”, since to me those are the same thing. But I’m glad he mentioned these at all since they are the backbone of any good novel or movie, yet they tend to be ignored as integral to the work.
Lots to chew on here though, thanks for the excerpt.
Todd – To look at his approach as “inherently flawed” is, I think, to miss the charm of it! (and also to miss the fact that there is so much out there – basically 99.9999% of analysis- that IS about chronology. Like, enough already. It’s the only way literature is taught. “The Victorians were concerned about this and their literature reflected that.” “The Renaissance cared about this and their poetry reflected that.” And on and on and on. If that’s the kind of analysis people want, there’s more than enough of it out there.
Forster is interested in talking about something different – about the 7 “aspects” that are inherent to all really good novels. And to disengage the novels from chronology means we get to see the text in a new and fresh way, with fresh eyes – especially when you put them back to back (as he did in the first excerpt I chose) – and especially when you present them as a blind sample. Because if you know is something is written by Thomas Hardy, you come at it with all your associations intact (when he wrote, where he wrote, blah blah) – but if you get a blind sample, put it next to a blind sample written by Charlotte Bronte – all kinds of new stuff can come up – stuff that the “canon” doesn’t really allow for, since they are normally placed in different brackets.
Yes, people build on what came before. But that is only ONE way of analyzing a text. It’s not the ONLY way – unfortunately it’s too often seen as the only way. Or – as I mentioned in the first excerpt – by themes/genres/sub-divisions (women’s literature, African-American literature, whatever). It tends to divide up the flow – and also you MISS connections when you focus only on chronology or on sub-divisions.
I talk about this in the first excerpt with my frustration with the auteur theory and how limiting it is and how so many connections/aspects are missed by those who subscribe to it. People like art to be neat. I get it. But art is not neat. And there are those – like Joyce – like Melville – like Dostoevsky – who seem to spring from out of nowhere. They cannot be sufficiently explained through chronology.
My experience in college (English major, natch) reflects what you’re saying, Sheila, with regards to categorizations of literature and groupings of works by time period. That really was the focus of the coursework, though there were also some classes that expanded the thematic elements in interesting ways. For instance, I had a class on Don Quixote and its influences over the centuries which maybe combined the chronological aspect of analysis with a bit of what Forster is getting at. One thing that dismayed me after a while, though, was the lack of “canon” represented in the program–with the exception of 2 mandatory classes on Shakespeare, most European and American canonical writers were represented, if at all, with short stories. All the emphasis was on lesser known writers that represented the classification scheme of whatever class I was in. On the one hand, we were exposed to works we probably wouldn’t have known about otherwise, and we learned about much more than the “dead white writers”. On the other, though, I had to seek out the majority of the canon on my own.
With regards to Forster’s 7 aspects, would you consider them analogous in some way to the “spine of the script” you’ve talked about in your recaps, only on the scale of literature as a whole?
Barb –
Thanks for your English major perspective!
// All the emphasis was on lesser known writers that represented the classification scheme of whatever class I was in. On the one hand, we were exposed to works we probably wouldn’t have known about otherwise, and we learned about much more than the “dead white writers”. On the other, though, I had to seek out the majority of the canon on my own. //
Oh man, this trend drives me crazy. No wonder young kids in high school aren’t crazy about reading if they’re only exposed to second-rate stuff that happens to check off something on a checklist. Yes, it is unfair that “dead white writers” got more exposure – but life is in general unfair, and we shouldn’t dismiss, say, Marlowe, because he was white, for God’s sake. You miss out on so much!!
I am definitely grateful for the writers (mostly) who have exposed me to stuff I might not otherwise have sought out. But I am also so grateful that I have a solid basis in the canon – chronological and otherwise. There are definitely gaps for me – mid-2oth century male American writers, for example – the Roth/Bellow/Pynchon/Styron set … I never took a class in those guys and just never picked them up – I read Sophie’s Choice because of the movie – doh. Silly Sheila. I wasn’t crazy about it as a novel. I did read Inherent Vice, and thought it was hilarious. I definitely missed out on other random writers – like Waugh, and the Victor Hugo and others. Spanish literature I know almost nothing about – and that’s a huge gap for me.
But I was introduced to all the major men and women writers – Henry James, Fitzgerald, Thomas Hardy, Hawthorne, Melville, both Brontes, George Eliot. … If you don’t read these writers, and only read lesser-known (and usually they are lesser-known for a reason – not JUST because they are a woman or a minority – although that is sometimes the case.) Oherwise you may think: “Literature. What’s the big deal??”
Read Moby Dick or Middlemarch and you understand what the big deal is!
And the “aspects” – Hmmm, I have to think about that. I think he does consider these 7 aspects to be “givens” in any work that has any resonance whatsoever. And different writers are stronger in different aspects – or, as he points out, some writers don’t care about “people” at all. He comments that all characters in a Virginia Woolf story are aspects of the author. That’s not necessarily a BAD thing – but it definitely shows what she is interested in, and how it differs from, say, Dickens, who is all about people.
It’s funny – some of the writers today who are credited as “great” writers – I think are seriously lacking. Don DeLillo is my main punching bag in that regard. Obviously he is a good writer, but his prose is too fancy, his people don’t live, and he needs an editor. Then I pick up Hilary Mantel and I’m like, “ohhhhh my God now HERE is a master at work.” I am so glad she’s getting the recognition NOW, while she is alive, and not suffering in obscurity. She is kicking DeLillo’s ass, that’s for sure – and so is Stephen King, in my opinion. Don DeLillo wishes he could write something as wonderful and sweeping and important as 11/22/1963!!
For a spine to have any use to a story – it has to be simple. You have to be able to boil it down into a sentence. No dissertations. I think most great novels can be boiled down in that way. Their thrust/motivation/concept is just so clear. Even more difficult and obscure works like Ulysses are, at the heart of it, really very simple.
But I’ll have to think more about that!
Yeah inherently flawed is too strong. And I suppose you are right, I have been conditioned like everyone else to want to “group” things– these movies are “classics”, these are “foreign”, these are “Indy” etc, etc.
It takes some opening up of the mind to submit to this idea, but it’s a very interesting approach.
Todd –
Ooh, yes, you’re right in terms of genre classification!! I mean, in terms of books – I’ve always felt that Stephen King’s book It was a great book, PERIOD, not a great horror book. (That, for me, is his greatest book – although 11/22/63 should probably be up there too.) And so through that classification structure, you assign value to things – it seems to happen automatically. That drives me crazy in literature – but in films too. This goes along with the whole auteur thing. The auteur thing is all fine and good, and very interesting – but when I have spoken to critics where that is the ONLY measurement of value – I find those people to be …. intellectually limited, is a nice way of putting it. They only know how to talk about direction. That’s it. You bring up acting … they don’t know how to discuss it. They don’t even SEE it. Because if it doesn’t “fit in” with the “auteur theory” they are totally lost.
If that makes sense.
Forster is more interested in how stories (in general) work, and how authors (in general) put together their stories – and there are more similarities between authors than the accepted canon would have us realize.
Camille Paglia’s work often runs along these lines – you know, she compared Byron to Elvis Presley. At length. She is not afraid to make those connections between great literature and pop culture – a lot of academic critics pooh-pooh that (and her). She’s like, “Whatever. It’s all part of the same human story-telling impulse. The connections are there for the taking.” But more classical critics, cloistered up in their own bell-jar, miss those connections – because they dismiss pop culture, or television, or popular music – they don’t see those things as relevant, or part of the same flow.
Ooh, 11/22/63! Just finished it!
Not to get off topic but I read both that and Under the Dome in the past 6 months on your recs. I had read every Stephen King book up through Misery and then just stopped for some reason.
I actually liked Under the Dome more then 11/22/63, I found the storytelling more propulsive. But the ending of 11/22/63 was magical, perhaps the best thing King has ever written.
I was motivated to pick up Under the Dome after your piece on Hanna Compton…now when I am in a particulary good or productive mood I walk around telling myself I am “feeling it”.
And “It” and “The Stand” are great books in any era for sure.
I still find it tough to seperate the literature from when it was written. I have not read too many of the “classics”, but I did read Of Human Bondage from cover to cover, for example. How am I supposed to divorce myself from chronology when comparing it to something more modern, like say, The Bonfire of the Vanities? Part of the appeal of art to me is that it DOES reflect its time.
But I suppose in terms of story, plot, structure, etc. it is possible to see parallels regardless of when something was produced. This whole topic is fun and challenging to me.
Todd –
// Part of the appeal of art to me is that it DOES reflect its time. //
Oh, I definitely agree with that! I just think it’s also interesting to remove chronology and see what you might get. Neil Young said some crazy weird thing – that rock music eventually and usually devolves into folk music. Or the way he said it was “Rock and roll is the CAUSE of folk music.” Obviously, in actual chronology, it was the other way around – folk music (i.e.: hillbilly/country) plus gospel plus rhythm and blues caused rock and roll – but he sees another kind of development, one that is outside of time, outside of chronology.
When I went to go see Griel Marcus interviewed about his new book (interview here) – he talked a lot about how he wanted to structure the book (10 greatest songs in rock and roll history) OUTSIDE of chronology. He wanted to picture all of these songs and singers talking to one another at the same time – even if they came from different decades.
It was a very interesting conversation and is kind of similar to what we are talking about here.
How can Etta James’ songs talk to the songs of Ice T? How do the Stones relate to Nirvana? And on and on. Without the burden of chronology, all kinds of other interesting possibilities come up.
and in regards to Stephen King; YAY.
I thought Under the Dome was amazing!! I was like you – I had stopped reading King for a while, right around the same time, and I’m not sure why. Under the Dome was the first one I had read in a long time and I thought it was absolutely fantastic. 11/22/1963 was a powerhouse – the ending, yes. It left me breathless.
So glad you read them. And Hanna Compton!! That whole sequence is Stephen King at his very best!
Mentioning Lewis Carroll got me to thinking of Alice, and then muses: Pattie Boyd, Beatrice, Raquel Welch, Amanda Lear. Are there famous male muses? Did Forster have a muse/inspiration for Maurice? Did George Eliot or Georgie O’Keefe or Patti Smith have a male muse? Neal Cassady for Kerouac comes to mind.
Is it just male artists who need muses?
Have you read Patti Smith’s book Just Kids, mute cypher? We may have discussed it already, so forgive me.
I think she had many muses – Robert Mapplethorpe being one – but she also seems to walk about being inspired by those who came before her. Verlaine and Rimbaud and … all the other poets she absolutely loves. She would dedicate CBGB shows to Rimbaud and stuff like that. I love her. Her book is so wonderful.
Neal Cassady for SURE was a male muse. To pretty much everyone he met!! He must have been something else in person.
You’ve written about the book, but if you spoke about her muses then I’ve forgotten (sorry). I’m not surprised that she would talk about them, if she had any. She has such a love for other artists – I think that comes through in her kick-ass covers of The Byrds, Springsteen, The Stone, etc – she’d want to give credit where it’s due. I’ll have to check it out.
Muses: I like how that the Greeks had the goddess of memory, Mnemosyne, be the mother of the 9 muses. Memory is the mother of all inspiration. Upon this rock I will build my art gallery.
Everyone needs a good muse!
And yes, Patti Smith is all about her love of other artists – it’s such a beautiful part of her, and really how she got started. The book is just amazing!