I’ve been thinking, again, about the many culturateurs (i.e., artists and verosophers [i.e., seekers of significant truths]), mostly dead before I was born, who have been responsible for–possibly–most of the pleasure I’ve gotten out of life. Interesting question, that concerning where my pleasure in life has come from. I have clearly attributed too much of mine to other culturateurs. I have to say that I myself, making poems and coming up with ideas, etc., have given me more pleasure than other culturateurs–maybe. Then there’s Mother Nature. Not to mention all the non-culturateurs and the love and friendship I’ve somehow managed to get from them. And the cats–and Patsy and Gigi, the two family dogs who have been in my life. And the computer! I’m sure I’m overlooking many other sources. Still, those previous culturateurs have been responsible for a great deal of my life’s pleasure.
Since they’ve all given me pleasure through their writings and what has been written about them in books, I suddenly realized the other day that people who don’t read–perhaps the majority of people in America?–go through life without this pleasure. How horrible. But many of them, I suppose, get some kind of analogous pleasure from people in the news and/or on television.
Be that as it may, I don’t know how I would have gotten through my own life if not for all the culturateurs’ lives I’ve dived into, sometimes staying immersed in their lives on and off for over a year. I’m speaking of those a large portion of whose oeuvres I’ve devoured, and then gone on to read biographies, and autobiographies if available, of. Excluded, unfairly, would be my first culturateurical heroes, because I encountered them before knowing about biographies–and without the experience to become interested in favorite writers automatically after becoming interested in their writings. Before, that is, I knew myself as a writer–or involved in any vocation. Hugh Lofting, Dr. Doolittle’s creator, for example. The fellow who wrote the first twenty or so Hardy Boys books, whose name I can never remember although I did as an adult read his autobiography. Carl Barks, who wrote and drew the best adventures of Donald Duck and his three nephews (and Scrooge McDuck and Gladstone Gander), and so may others responsible for the comic book stores I loved. Jules Verne and Robert Lewis Stevenson.
As I’ve written, my first cultural heroes as an adult, or near-adult, were writers of comic essays like Robert Benchley and James Thurber. And authors of science fiction whose names I can’t just now remember, except Isaac Asimov’s, whose name I remember for other reasons. Well, Ray Bradbury, too. Mystery writers, too–like Ellery Queen (actually two men whose names I can’t remember) and the author of the Charlie Chan mysteries. But I was still too young to dive into their lives as well as their works. That too often there was little about their lives available to dive into was another factor.
I believe Oscar Wilde, when I was 17, was the first author I truly dove into the oeuvre and life of, and then quickly into George Bernard Shaw’s. About a year later come my first poet, because I was slow to mature beyond simple appreciation of prose in literature–clear prose–and representational visimagery, and marches in music, was John Keats. Wilde wrote some fine poems but I still think of him mainly as a dramatist–an essayist and novelist, too, but a poet as a sideline. H. L. Mencken and Nietzsche were two others. C. P. Snow, Dostoevski (and not Tolstoi), Shakespeare not as soon as one would have thought he’d be, perhaps because I was first exposed to him in school. At the same time, I read many other authors with enjoyment but didn’t dive into. Turgenov, for instance.
I’ve mentioned most of my literary heroes elsewhere, so won’t go on with my list here. I just want to emphasize my main point, which is that some culturateurs got to me to such an extent that I needed to read just about everything they’d written, and as much as possible about their lives. Which is why my greatest hope now is that others will eventually dive into my oeuvre and life the way I dove so often, and still dive. Or do I? I still read a lot, but it’s been a while since I discovered a new writer I wanted fully to devour.
Outside of literature, there have been almost all the standard composers of classical music through Shostakovich and Prokofief, and Glass but not too many contemporaries I’m ashamed to admit. And I’ve not read too many bioigraphies of composers. I’m not sure why that is. I have read quite a few biographies of painters. Cezanne probably the most although he’s not my favorite painter. The painters I would have bought thousands of dollars worth of books containing reproductions of their work if I could have afforded it have been Klee, Pollock, van Gogh, Marc, Renoir, Monet, Picasso, Durer . . . Again, there are many others I really liked, but didn’t like as much as the ones mentioned. Or as Homer, Hopper, Chagall . . . so many others. Only a few architexts. Wright, maybe Gehry.
Contemporaries whom I’ve dived into, principally by publishing them, are Scott Helmes, Guy R. Beining, Karl Kempton, Richard Kostelanetz, Kathy Ernst, Marton Koppany, Marilyn R. Rosenberg, Geof Huth, John Vieira, John Martone, Bill Keith, Carol Stetser, Joel Lipman, John Bennett . . . many more–but none like I dove into Wallace Stevens, because so comparatively little critical and biographical matter is available on them, which is disgusting.
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