BOOKS

The Will to Criticism

by Lamont Shadowski de Bom Bom

  This is a trenchant manifesto by the brilliant expatriate Roumanian literary critic, Lamont Shadowski De Bom Bom. * Although the writing is superb, it seems as if the book were written in some passages by two men – the one, such a critic as Mr. Shadowski De Bom Bom’s other, earlier work has given us to expect; the other, a raving romantic subject to almost impenetrable morasses of formless and fuzzy verbiage.

  Compare his rigorous and authoritative analysis of Mein Kampf with this disturbing surd of solipsistic obfuscation: “…so that finally, the poem is a concreventional tension, a heaving together whose magnetic radiance, wider and brighter than God himself, must, if we are to call ourselves “men,” transform a common factory into, quite simply, a mosque, which…”

  Clearly, this is nonsense, and it is disappointing to see so astute an observer of literary fashion as the missing Roumanian so give himself over to this dreadfully appalling anti-criticism.

(See p. 4, col. 1)

RECORDS WITH NARDIS

Reds Taking Over Record Industry?

  In this week’s batch of records from all over the world, I found an Lp titled Slow Boat to China by the late legendary tenor saxophonist Chu Berry. And there is a story behind this one, folks: as the legend goes, the recording was made somewhere in the Midwest in the late ‘30s, but no record of the date has survived. Now, all of a sudden, here are the tunes which have since become one of the greatest legends in all jazz.

  The tapes, originally recorded on a Sears-Roebuck home wire recorder, were found last month by a group of laborers in an excavation somewhere in Nebraska and turned over to the late saxophonist’s brother, F. Manley Berry, who brought them out on his own label, Hima Laya. The LP is now selling like hotcakes all over the nation.

  The trouble is, the deal – all of it – looks pretty fishy to the observer. I intend to get to the bottom of it, no mater how many pink toes might have to be stepped on. There is really something wrong with this record, and I don’t mean maybe. Watch this column for further news of this latest Red brainwashing attempt.

– Nardis Drake