What are you reading?

[Thompson]

Just like Bukowski’s wife and Townes Van Zandt’s wife, they just sniff around after the money, after the royalties. It’s truly sickening.

[Thompson]

I got this book in the mail today. Oh man, I thought, it’s Kentucky Outlaw. No, it’s this literary criticism book of noir writers. Good writers mind you, very good writers. I Don’t Want To Read That. I don’t give a shit about what critics have to say because number one they can’t write and number two they miss the whole point. You take a poem like A Home to Crouch In, for instance. How can anybody critique that? It’s pure emotion, it’s a moment in time that’s recorded in a poem. But more than that, you see, it’s an emotion that is so universal, yet so simple, that it hits you right in the gut, and believe it or not, no matter how sad it is, it doesn’t feel sad somehow, it feels different. It’s the
way the words go, the rhythm. You can’t critique that.

[Savage]

I got this book in the mail today. Oh man, I thought, it’s Kentucky Outlaw. No, it’s this literary criticism book of noir writers. Good writers mind you, very good writers. I Don’t Want To Read That. I don’t give a shit about what critics have to say because number one they can’t write and number two they miss the whole point. You take a poem like A Home to Crouch In, for instance. How can anybody critique that? It’s pure emotion, it’s a moment in time that’s recorded in a poem. But more than that, you see, it’s an emotion that is so universal, yet so simple, that it hits you right in the gut, and believe it or not, no matter how sad it is, it doesn’t feel sad somehow, it feels different. It’s the
way the words go, the rhythm. You can’t critique that.

Those who can, write. Those who can, critique. I always found it bit amusing, even as a child, that Shirley Jackson's husband was a critic. Yes, I read everything she wrote (we had the bookmobile) by the time I was eight or nine. The lady died relatively young,