BOOKS
145
ment in talking about "literature." This
"Malebolge"
-
odious word–
is to the bulk of his criticism what the energetic prose poems of
The
Bourgeois Poet
(1964) are to his poetry. It is a successful realization of
his urge to freedom from imported, un-American forms.
But despite occasional successes like these, Shapiro's career has
largely a monitory value. He has dissipated his forces
in
that old sen–
timental-egalitarian American game of trying to create art while deny–
ing its validity and privileges. He is not comfortable with what he is
making: its claims to special status embarrass him. He ends
in
that
same nervous, apologetic relation to what he has made that has em–
barrassed and perverted countless American writers, including Whitman,
Twain and Hemingway. It is ultimately the American terror of parti–
cipating in a remote and perhaps useless kind of excellence, as well as
the fear of being ridiculed at the barbershop as separate and pansy,
that has done him in.
Paul Fussell,
Jr.
Allen
Ginsberg
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1954-1960.
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I
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N:NleN •
Special Issue
Spring 1969
SI.OO
PER COPY
'UO
THE
YEAR
1..-___________
--1
THE ANTIOCH PRESS YELLOW SPRINSS,
OHIO
4SU7
