{"id":44183,"date":"2011-11-23T08:41:05","date_gmt":"2011-11-23T13:41:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=44183"},"modified":"2015-06-28T08:21:13","modified_gmt":"2015-06-28T12:21:13","slug":"lester-bangs-was-the-messiah-of-the-losers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=44183","title":{"rendered":"“Lester Bangs Was the Messiah of the Losers.”"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Yes. Lester Bangs could write. Boy, could he write.<\/p>\n

But so can this woman<\/a>, in her essay about Lester Bangs (but it is really about so much more). <\/p>\n

But, of course, Bangs wasn’t a rock star. He was a poet. He was totally fucked. Bangs was writing literature, as much as he wished at every moment while doing it that he were writing a three-chord power ballad instead. Rock ‘n’ roll is for lonely people. Literature is for terrified people. You put the two together into the kind of rock n roll literature Bangs created and you get an art form so luminscently emotionally crippled that no one can do anything but fall head-into-cement in total pathetic love with it. Which is what I’m pissed off about not having the chance to do because I was born after Bangs and this, right here, is the closest I can get to fucking him or his writing and let me tell you, it is not enough. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Please read the whole thing. It is a bold, passionate, and confessional piece of writing, smart, sharp, and aching with feeling. I am so glad I came across it in my web surfing this morning. <\/p>\n

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