Jay Kinney
606 Wellner ROad
Naperville, Illinois, 60540

If anyone has ever said that fan-poetry is for shit, they should read thru THE
LAST FAREWELL and quickly slink away guiltily.  TLF was really a fine poem, and
the only thing that worries me is that it might be true.  Pearson communicates
his feelings and emotions very well, and I am struck doubly as what he is
talking about is an attitude that has taken hold of me in the past and will no
doubt do so again in the future.  Chuck has learned that the favor of "the
Crowd" is cheap, but the reaction in the poem worries me as I feel that perhaps
it is the wrong one to take.  //CUT, CUT, CUT//  If the poem is no longer valid
and is follow thru of some temporary emotions Chuck had in the past -- //WHICH
IS WHY I DID THE CUTTING ABOVE.  CHUCK WROTE IT WHILE INVOLVED IN THOSE
EMOTIONS IN THE PAST -- BUT WAS VERY SERIOUS WHEN HE WROTE IT -- BUT IT IS THE
PAST, NOW.  HOWEVER THE POEM IS STILL VALID, THO IN A MORE UNIVERSAL SENSE, AS
IS ALL TRUE POETRY -- VALID BEYOND THE LIMITS OF A SINGLE INDIVIDUAL// -- I
applaud him even more and say... fine work.  //I TOO FELT IT WAS A VERY FINE
PIECE OF WORK//

It would seem that Stephen's hung up on one old book (old used loosely, not
literally).  I would send him THE BIBLE or something and let him chew on that
for a century.  As I recall, the fault I found most blatant in his article when
I read it, was that he seemed to take fandom and fans out of the context of
society as a whole (Stephen... fans are actually just regular people who happen
to have gotten caught up in SFandom -- not some special breed of people that
are supposed to be anti-intellectual or are supposed to be intellectual.  They
aren't supposed to be anything.  Oh, I might wish that there were a few more
serious zines around... but you or I are never going to get more of them by
berating the editors of the ones run for fun or kicks or whatever.  We are all
fulfilling our particular needs thru fandom and you are not going to get
anywhere telling people what their needs are and aren't.)  Actually I would
rather see some things from Pickering of an intellectual nature that aren't
defending intellectualism or clouding up the intelligibility with big words. 
Hell, a big vocab is great, but one has to consider one's audience, and he is
never going to convince fen that "intellectuals" are wonderful or whatever if
he won't come off his high horse and actually try to communicate.  Has he read
ATLAS SHRUGGED?  If not he should... he seems to be in the same dogmatic ship
as old Ayn.

Hmmm.  Maybe Stephen should read Parable 5 in this NEM too.

[pp. 48 - 49, "Your 5 Cents Worth," Letter 10, NO-EYED MONSTER #10, Winter 1966-
                                                                             67]

[Jay Kinney went on to make a fairly large Name for himself in the underground
comics scene and later founded GNOSIS: A Journal of the Western Inner
Traditions, a major intellectual, spiritually-focussed quarterly.  ~~nem,
6.April.2001]

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