Ray Johnson Reviews + Ray Johnson Reviewed(fifty years ago today)
reviews, 04/18/14
RAY JOHNSON REVIEWS
RAY JOHNSON REVIEWED
Reviews of The Paper Snake by Ray Johnson, 1965
this is not a bk of poems to be “read” & then yell “GREAT! GREAT!” this is not a bk of poems. this is not a bk. GREAT! GREAT! the best thing to do i’ve found, to approach this “bk” is by picking it up only when you feel like it, say hello, or whatever you say to a friend & then pick out a pg that is appetizing to all of yr senses. eventually every pg will magnetize you. there is nothing in here which won’t be chewed on & researched by all mental cells, but NONE OF IT will be “read” the way we are accustomed to reading anything. it will be “read” the way a scrap bk is thumbed thru or a dream is recollected, piece by piece; for this is nothing more than a man forming a few thoughts & occurrences into a collection via postcards, photographs, check stubs, torn pieces of cloth. whatever is attracted to him becomes him & he, in return, offers it to us along w/words designed not to “say” anything but to recreate these material attachments & incidents for us to behold. GREAT! GREAT!
—from Ole Issue 2, March 1965, publisher: Douglas Blazek*
* Issue number of Ole unconfirmed!
• • •
A reviewer ought to read a book when he reviews it, so I read The Paper Snake. He ought to mention the subject and give you a notion of the author’s competence in dealing with said subject. Reader, dear, here I have let you down.
I tried to find out what the subject of The Paper Snake is, but I’m still mystified. Somewhere along the line I missed the point or lost the thread of the argument and was unable to retrieve it.
It’s supposed to be no fair peeking at the dust-jacket blurb, but this time I peeked. The blurb is by William Wilson (not the same as my friend Edmund Wilson), who is a master of arts and a doctor of philosophy, and it runs to 600 words—not as long as The Paper Snake proper. Mr. Wilson doesn’t say what Mr. Johnson is talking about. He himself seems a competent writer, and he is fairly successful in putting a good face upon the situation in which he is confronted.
Mr. Wilson says, among other things, “The meaning in Ray Johnson’s work is not logical …” I shall not contest that judgement.
The Paper Snake is copyrighted, I don’t know why—that seems excessive caution.
The book is priced at $3.47. Again I wonder why.
—M.B., Source unknown, found in the archives of the Ray Johnson Estate
see also
✼ natalie’s upstate weather report:
April 11, 2024 — The spring peepers have thawed (these little frogs freeze in winter) and now, unabashedly randy, they chirp. At first there was one, then two, and now it sounds like thousands. Two days ago, when it was truly spring, their adamantine chorus was almost deafening (we closed the windows to simply think!). Siglio has relocated to a lush, thriving hollow at the furthest most edge of the Berkshires after two years of peripatetics, sans library—which is now unpacked in a less than Benjaminian manner (little time to contemplate—our urgency in getting books on shelves mirrored the peepers need to mate). The first few months of 2024 were almost unendurable, but we’re home, spring is here, and there are books to made. We are singing!
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