MASSCULT AND MIDCULT
613
more they
try
to shock the Midcult audience,
the
more they
are written up in the Lucepapers; they are "different," that
potent advertising word whose charm reveals how monotonous
the landscape of Midcult
has
become.
The beatnik's pad is the modem equivalent of the poet's
garret in every way except the creation of
poetry.
Our well–
oiled machinery of cultural exploitation provides those who are
Different with lecture dates, interviews, fellowships, write-ups,
and fans of both sexes (the word's derivation from "fanatics"
is clearer in these circles than among the more restrained
enthusiasts of baseball, possibly because the latter have a tech–
nical knowledge rarely found among the former). The machin–
ery tempts them to extremes since the more fantastic their
efforts, the more delighted are their Midcult admirers.
HP()Ur
epater les bourgeois"
was the defiant slogan of the nineteenth-cen–
tury avant-gardists but now the bourgeoisie have developed a pas–
sion for being shocked.
"If
possible," Kerouac advises young
authors, "write without 'consciousness' in a semi-trance," while
a prominent advanced composer has written a Sonata for Six
Radios that is performed by turning each to a different station,
a sculptor has exhibited a dozen large beach pebbles dumped
loosely
on a board, a painter has displayed an all-black canvas
only to be topped by another who showed simply-a canvas.
At last, one hears the respectful murmurs, The Real Thing I
The avant-garde of the heroic period (except for Gertrude
Stein) drew the line between experiment and absurdity. Efforts
like the above were limited to the Dadaists, who used them
wittily and imaginatively to satirize the respectable Academic
culture of their day. But the spoofs of Dada have now become
the serious offerings of what one might call the lumpen–
avant-garde.
XVI
At
this
point, a question may
be
asked, and in fact should
be
asked, about the remarkable cultural change that has taken
