COMMENT
Harvard University, which, according to Henry Rosovsky, has
resisted the demolition of traditional education, has finally succumbed to the
virus of trendiness. Harvard University Press has just issued a coffetable–
size book (accompanied by audiocassette recordings) consisting of the first of
the six Norton Lectures and seminars given by John Cage. Let me say at
once that the book notably represents the essence of mod thinking but is so
far out that it is virtually unreadable. This is not to say that serious writing
should be reduced to journalese, but surely esthetic sanity requires a
recognition of limits; new art has to have its proper place in the development
of the medium. Those of us who championed modernism against realism and
philistinism always have been open to genuine experiment and advance in
all
the arts. We were excited by such imaginative innovations as, for example,
Beckett's
Wailing for Codal,
Genet's
The Balcony ,
and Joyce's
Ulysses .
As
for Cage's music, I recall being baffled by a concert he gave in New
York many years ago, where the performance consisted of playing twelve
radios simultaneously.
It
was clearly a premature postmodernist work. Music
critics who have promoted Cage admit his music represents a form of chaos,
but, they claim, it is "controlled chaos."
Perhaps my knowledge of music is not sophisticated enough to under–
stand the latest advances. But Cage's lectures seem to be cut from the same
cloth as his music. The first talk begins:
Much of our
Much of our
of borEdom
Toward talks
in
it misled him
diplOmatic skill to
place to place ' but Does it look
at present Most
fivE Iranian fishermen
cuTbacks would not
wHat i have ' but
pOssibilities
Here is another passage, selected at random:
Using these
aM
So
so confidenT the
him
A
world
Not
Could
text
