Eric MOTTRAM's views and opinions on America that not many "literary and academic loafers" might like, but there it is: from the pen of one of the Greats in the long line of them in the English tradition...

AIR-LETTER
Dept. of English, New York University, Washington Square,,
New York, New York 10003
Addressed to: Mr. T. Wignesan, 28, Cheniston Gardens, London W.8, England
re-addressed to 33, Mimosa Street, S.W.6
January 2, 1966

Dear Wignesan,

A happy and prosperous new year -- and as far as I can gather from your letters, it may well be if you don't fling one of your characteristic spanners in the works. Your letters were crammed with the usual guff of ego and I'll ignore it one more time. Although the tale of your Blond litigation is nauseating [Blond sold the rights to the BUNGA EMAS anthology in America – to Tri-Ocean Books and Folcroft Library Editions – without my permission, besides « hooking » me on two other books he commissioned.], ditto the Commonwealth Institute [I lectured for them on a pro rata basis but could not make a living on their conferences], ditto the landlord [I was evicted by the landlord after a County Court case for he pretended to want to convert my tiny – three by three metres -- room into a bathroom), ditto the NUJ (National Union of Journalists) [for I refused to accept to join the "secret services" -- the fate of one of my predecessors in the job - a willing candidate though - as the London Correspondent of the Straits Times Press Group of Singapore: I was forced to resign and the NUJ would not defend me against the employers.].

Contrary to your letter's hint, I took all this and believed it and couldn't understand why it should all happen to you [ with EM's nephew as the administrative head of the intelligence services in the Home Ministry ???] Did anything ever come from Rajaratnam ? [S.Rajaratnam, former editor of the daily: "Singapore Standard" and a short story writer himself, was first the Minister of Culture and by 1965, the Foreign Minister; he arrived in London with Premier Lee Kuan Yew for Independence talks when he offered me the post of "Chief of Protocol" in his ministry, i.e., If I could get my Malaysian citizenship back - a tall order since I was "deported" by the Malaysian authorities in 1962. cf. my "Victorian Vignettes" book, pp. 160-200.] And the SOAS lectureship? [School of Asian and African Studies.] This all from the October 29 missile.

One thing I can I'm afraid say for certain : it is highly unlikely that Laughlin will do Bunga Emas [underlined]: he is blocked with reproducing his past books which turn out to be so excellently judged that reprints are needed. Can I see the Soyinka review ? [ I did a review of the (later) Nobel Prize winner's play : "The Road" which was part of my syllabus for doctoral DEA-students at the Sorbonne-Nouvelle]

(Much as I hate Peace News' guts at the moment) : contrary to your thought, Tom McGrath did not send a copy, the b.....d. He has not replied to my letters either and is hanging on to my Burroughs article when I want it back to try to find a home for it over here.

Incidentally, I do NOT burst out laughing (your phrase) at your advent into writing reviews, etc. : I'm really glad -- how can I possibly not welcome any success you have, considerinhg the struggle for a place in the sun you have had ever since I've Known (?) you. As for your comment on my own pitiful lack of confidence and hubris, you are not the first to say that, and some one over here said exactly the same thing last week. With which I'm tired. But I do see I'm in danger of being left far behind by activating loafers. Your choice of politics or university is so enviable I could weep. It's probably that my birthday, just 'celebrated', makes life hateful. I must make decisions I can't make about my future career. If only it were as easy as just accepting the jobs offered here . What happens is I don't think about it and go on writing, thinking, reading, talking to people. The reception of my TLS [Times Literary Supplement] piece was decent here -- even among Negro writers who saw it. Which is a test. The response to the Stand piece on Williams has yet to come although Roy Fisher wrote me nicely about it. Now I have just finished another marathon on Arthur Miller for next year's Stratford Theatre Studies. No more commissions now , so I must get on with my books. Only a jazz piece to do, but it's nearly done.
You seem to think I lecture, etc. here -- not at all: my fellowship strictly says no lectures except one-shot occasions. So I turn down offers, although I am doing a summer course at Buffalo in July, when my grant technically ends: it's a very lucrative affair and should be interesting working with postgraduates on American nineteenth century writers.

I did one lecture recently on Auden as Anglo-American poet for NYU. Mostly I listen to others, which is good for me. Already a third of my visit gone and I have to book my cabin home this week ! Good old tempus. But at least the reading for the Negro article – masses of it which did not go into the final thing – will come useful.

I’ve just read Stepenchev’s American Poetry Since 1945, and it is one of the worst books of criticism I have ever(y) read ; fortunately it is short or I wouldn’t have bothered to finish it. It claims to be a survey and treats the poets like bits of literary history – and even then has nothing on Koch, O’Hara, etc. and their crowd ( a little and useless on John Ashberry) , nothing on McClure, Snyder, Ferlinghetti or Corso or Whalen, and inadequate on Duncan. And Ginsberg treated simply as a ‘popular poet’ who sells well for inexplicable reasons.

You’d never guess from this book that the poetry scene is rich and widely varied : I have been to a number of good readings by a variety of poets and the younger men still come on, as Sandburg might say. The avant-garde theatre too : last night I saw a production of Getrtrude Stein’s Play I Play II Play III and Ruth Krauss’s A Beautiful Day – at the Judson ‘Poets’ Theatre : both were brilliantly done, with a flair and a certain vigour which I liked very much.

The Columbia Contemporary Music Group puts on programmes which would make the Third [BBC] blush for shameful conservatism and the experimental cinema has two regular theatres for its stuff, much of which is admittedly pretty awful but some of which is really new and …………….[indecipherable word] mostly in the field of combining film with stage and happening ideas. The new Tulane Drama Review will give you an idea. In painting and sculpture, the pop, op and abstract expressionists and hard edgers are still pouring stuff out. Recently, at the Jewish Museum, they had a show of Tinguely’s mobile sculptures, and Kenneth Koch put on a play which used them – actors in the production included the painters Jane Freilicher, Larry Rivers, Joe Brainard, etc. and the writers John Ashbery and Arnold Weinstein. I was lucky enough to get a seat – the performance was oversold many times. So while establishment poetry, theatre, etc. is as businessman-bound as ever it was here, the new thrives as nowhere else. The trouble is that politically America is imperialistically nineteenth century and socially it lives in the past era of charity. As for the integration of Negroes – what a joke ! Nothing substantial really has happened at all. And yet jazz is greater than ever : the new names – Shepp, Ayler, Sun Ra, Pharoah Sanders – are unknown in England but soon will be. I heard Mingus the other night and it was just pitiful repetitions of old successes – he seems temporarily to have lost the gift. But at the New School, they had the New York Art Quartet in a programme of advanced jazz (tiny audience) which was superb.

Incidentally, you would be interested in the Free University over here, set up to counterattack the other universities as a Marxist and progressive evening affair, with lectures on subjects the universities don’t make available. There seems to be a strong case for such a thing in London. For instance, who gives a course there on Marxism and Existentialism – and after all, it is here that the crucial enabling beliefs and actions lie, it seems to me, too.

Well, enough. Best wishes for everything.

Yours sincerely,

Eric

(c) T. Wignesan - Paris, 1966-2023